An effective counter to Zenith Chameleons

[barryvm]

Hello,

I've just finished my first 7/7 game and I started anew with Fallen Spire and Hard Golems on.
Surprisingly the exo-waves are not the hard part of this game: it's the medium to large waves of Zenith Chameleons one of the AI's throws at me.
Since they have a "swarmer" type hull I ordered my missile frigates to defend against the early waves of these and they would take care of them (but it would take a long time before they finally expired) but they seem incredible tanks, surviving against them for several minutes.
At the start of the game this wasn't the problem, they would eventually die, but last night I barely survived a 1.5k counterattack guardpost wave: the chameleons went straight for the home command station, ignoring my entire fleet (including an armored golem) firing at them and nearly exhausted my shields before finally expiring.
Waves of about a 1000 of them now blow almost all turrets (even flak and tractor turrets) at my whipping boy and when my frigates come in to help fend them off they just run (barely damaged), after which I can spend the next twenty minutes thread hunting in neighbouring systems.

I'm considering unlocking the missile frigates Mk III and the riot control Mk II just to deal with them but I'm short on knowledge at the moment and I don't know if any of these will be effective.
I would also try gravity turrets to slow them down but this would obviously not impede their escape.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on this one, I would be very gratefull.

[PokerChen]

Are you sure they are swarmer hulls? They are meant to be close-combat hulls, which you attack with Fighters, not Missile Frigates.
Combining several of the below will help:

- Unlock Fighter III, not Missile Frigate III. You should have a much easier time already with them.
- In fact, you may as well send you whole triangle-ship blob if possible. Chameleons have no bonuses against them.
- Snipe at the main blob with a squad of plasma seige-Is (immediately available). You want to disable their engines (15 ships each shot) and leave those stragglers for the clean-up duty afterwards.
- Get the Grav turret-Is, and cover your flaks and tractors with one FF. Hardened-FF will last a bit longer.

[barryvm]

Stupid mistake on my part  : I probably misread and didn't check again afterwards.
I already unlocked the fighter II and because the other AI is rather fond of the raiders so no harm done unlocking the frigates there.
I also didn't know the plasma sieges did engine damage which would help a lot.

The trick then is to slow them down with grav turrets and engine damage because even the combined firepower of my fleet ball was barely able to stop the counterattack waves in time.
I assume riot control starships would be a bonus as well.

Thanks for the tip Zharmad, ill try it this evening.

[zoutzakje]

Build Heavy Beam Cannons and Lightning turrets as well. Combined with tractor and gravity turrets, they will really help against most waves.

[Hearteater]

Don't forget you can put Lightning Turrets and Flak Turrets under Force Fields (multiple force fields if possible) and you only cut their damage by 25% (unlike all you other units, which lose 75% damage under force fields).  This lets those turrets live much longer, as well as giving you a good place to stick a Gravity Turret, Tractor Turrets, and even a Tachyon Turret if cloaking is an issue.