Missle Frigate - Area Damage Immunity -> Serious Balance Problem

[Spymine]

Heeeeeeeeeellllllppppppppp  
I just tried 3.188 and found out to my utter surprise that area weapons (flak turrets, lightning turrets) dont even scratch the paint of missle frigates. No problem, just have to build lots and lots of heavy beam cannons to take care of those pesky frigs

Imagine my surprise when the heavy beam cannons also decided not to waste their precious ammunition on the frigs!!!!!
Hellllloooooohhoooo - how am i supposed to stop 2k frigs without the above named turrets

The heavy beam cannon according to its description is NO area weapon - so pretty please make it shoot the frigs again (or make the frigs very very vulnerable to basic turrets   )
Even if i use tons of the other "normal" turrets, it takes forever (and i mean forever) to wipe out big frig waves.
Thank you  

[superking]

fortress > frigates

[carlosjuero]

HBC is actually a fan of beams (making it a minor AoE).

To take on frigate waves use a combination of Grav turrets, multiple clusters of tractor turrets (I use up to 2 clusters of 5 per wormhole) and put in bunches of Basic Turrets & Laser Turrets.

Frigates have long range but are slow to reload (AI frigates at least, don't get me started on Marauder Dagger Frigates :/) so you can also keep waves of fighters/bombers on hand to help deal with them. One trick I like using is to either have a Leech Starship orsome Parasites (either unlocked via ARS, special selection, or Mercenary Dock) on hand and reclaim them as I kill em.. then use the reclaimed ships against future waves.

Another thing you could do is plant minefields (if they are enabled).

Heeeeeeeeeellllllppppppppp  
I just tried 3.188 and found out to my utter surprise that area weapons (flak turrets, lightning turrets) dont even scratch the paint of missle frigates. No problem, just have to build lots and lots of heavy beam cannons to take care of those pesky frigs

Imagine my surprise when the heavy beam cannons also decided not to waste their precious ammunition on the frigs!!!!!
Hellllloooooohhoooo - how am i supposed to stop 2k frigs without the above named turrets

The heavy beam cannon according to its description is NO area weapon - so pretty please make it shoot the frigs again (or make the frigs very very vulnerable to basic turrets   )
Even if i use tons of the other "normal" turrets, it takes forever (and i mean forever) to wipe out big frig waves.
Thank you  

[Spymine]

well -thanks for the input but
a) fortress need to be unlocked (3000 - 4000 - 5000 knowledge) - and its no cost effective to just spend that knowledge to counter 1 class of enemy ships (aside from the point that building more than 1 decreases their efficency)
b) i use grav turrets and lots of normal turrets right now - but I was arguing that there is NO way at the moment to get rid of tons of frigs in a reasonable time period (around 1 minute for 2k frigs)
c) it doesnt say area weapon for the HBC (the level 1 has only 1 shot)

[carlosjuero]

Just trying to help.

The reason I know HBC is classified as AoE is because keith has chimed in on the matter. I believe that frigates were given the AoE immunity mainly because of HBC's.

[keith.lamothe]

All weapons that can hit more than one ship in one shot are aoe weapons (though perhaps we missed classifying one or more of them), and each individual HBC beam can hit more than one target if the first one doesn't survive.

That said, I kinda would like to make HBCs able to hit most immune-to-aoe ships since it isn't a radial aoe, rather a line aoe.  But that's mostly up to Chris.

[Spymine]

Thanks,

thats what i was thinking too:  Armor Piercing  (HBC) vs High Explosive (Lighnting Turret)

Immunity should only cover one kind of weapontype - not both

[keith.lamothe]

Well, HBCs are not armor piercing, they're "big wall of energy running over ships like a freight train", and Lightning Turrets are not high-explosive, they're the unleashing of a tremendous amount of stored electricity.  Flak turrets and grenade launchers (which are essentially the same thing, weapon-wise) are high explosive, though in the case of flaks it's more of a fragmentation-grenade.

[Spikey00]

Are frigates still immune to lightning missile AoE (I'm guessing so)?

This seems odd to me, as they are a "super weapon" in a way, unless frigates are now symbolic of cockroaches.

[carlosjuero]

Meh - I still manage to wipe frigate swarms out with my defenses. They don't have immunity to sniper shots so my Spider turrets and Sniper blobs tear 'em to pieces and make them motionless. Laser, Missile, and Basic turrets also tear 'em apart - plus fighters and other fast ships can get in on them in swarms easily, with their slow reload time the change for AoE doesn't make them too OP really.

This coming from the guy who has had trouble with just about every other recent change made

[Fox Soul]

Frigates fire missiles so a good counter to them are the counter missiles.

I'm not sure how big the area that is protected is, but if its as large as the counter sniper then you have more than enough room to place a wide assortment of turrets that's under constant protection. Then no frigate will ever be able to touch the command center.

[snrub_guy]

I think just a decent selection of the basic turret types- basic, mlrs and laser- usually takes them out for me. I haven't noticed a problem, and because I'm fighting the Neizul Youngster and viral enthusiast, AOE is my focus in my defences. The back-up turrets seem to deal with waves of frigates fine though.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, one thing to remember about the missile frigates being immune to aoe is that they are the only "triangle ship" that can be totally hard-countered in the general defensive case, namely through counter-missile turrets.  So them in turn having a really important immunity isn't really all that out there.  Defense-by-pure-aoe is not intended to be possible, and it doesn't take a ton of direct-fire power to take the frigates down.

[RCIX]

I had capped MkI, II, and III MLRS turrets on my chokepoint wormhole once; frigates weren't any more of a problem than any other ship that came through...

[Sunshine!]

Are missile frigates immune to Beam Frigates then?  I'm assuming they would be.