Federation versus Dominion

posted on April 11th, 2011, 4:41 am

Actually this is a lie. I'm somewhat crippled but have two hands again so I'm playing again.

Dominion rush for B5s to pair with bugs.
Federation should go for what to counter? The bugs are the easy kills but the B5 can dance at range making them hard to target and lots of firepower can get wasted on bugs/fighters.

Teching up to avalon and giving the dominion the same issue is less a counter and more a creating the same issue. Although the Avalon is slow compared to the b5.

Is there an easy way to sweep up the fighters? or do you suffer them and head hunt the b5s ignoring the bugs/fighters. Usual strat sees 3 teir 1 ships and a warp in against 3-5 bugs and a b5 proto.

posted on April 11th, 2011, 4:49 am

Try intrepids with their special. They will take very little damage from the bugs and enough tri cobalts can take down a b5 and kill it

posted on April 11th, 2011, 9:52 am

currently the fighters are bugged and count as short range when the carrier is medium (most likely to see puretech doing this strat). when the bug is fixed, intreps will be a great counter as the fighters will be medium range and adai will mean the intreps tank both fighters and bugs. if u are going for intreps you can focus on weak defence bugs to try kill stuff they paid for. or focus on carriers, where your torps will hit more and you might get a single, more important kill. really its fluid and you should do whatever makes you more comfortable.

obviously, something with ablative armour would do you wonders here, but the earliest you will see that is a defiant, which will do brilliant if they leave you alone that long (unlikely). maybe a canaveral or two could help you, they do extra damage to short range, and the fighters are considered short range cos of the bug, not sure if that will help as their pulse could probably 1 shot a fighter without the boost lol. make sure ec3m is on of course. if u mix with intreps, then the intreps should be autotargeted and their speed will let them escape. try keep cans at long range, its very tempting for your enemy to focus fire on cans cos they are rather costly.

[Elim]

posted on April 11th, 2011, 10:32 am

Last edited by Elim on April 11th, 2011, 10:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Fast warpin with continous intrepid pumping, then later e2's from the big yard and you will be able to swamp them, just be careful not loosing warpins .Don't build too many turrets, they are not relly useful aginst B-5s (they target fighters usually) You don't really need to be agressive until you are maxed (10/10) on warpin.  Unless the dom player starts to spam supply mining, if you see 3 or more kethracel synthesizers going up, go and crush him instantly, as he will heavily lack on ship numbers, you will be able to fedroll him.
Be careful though, if he sees that you are gearing up for this kind of a fedroll, he will most likely go for desperation HSA.  If he is breen, it's kinda insta win for you, if not, be very careful.

posted on April 12th, 2011, 12:19 am

If you're fed in a 2v2 on a smaller map or one were you know the layout quite well, then from the do this build order (-1 and -2 denote first and second constructors to pop out)

yard-1 (and start pumping sabres right away)
dil mine-2
SCOUT SCOUT SCOUT. you NEED to know were the enemy base is for this to matter much.
2nd yard-1 (first yard usualy will be done before the dil mine) start pumping sabres right away
trit mine-2
At this point, strategy comes into play
Give building more a slight break as you continually pump out sabres, go for either engineering or science when you have the cash (whichever is cheaper first usualy) and get covering fire when the sci goes up.

Once you have 4ish sabres out (you need to be VERY fast on this) put them to minimal movement autonomy (may be best to set this on the yards too so they come out that way) and go park them out of starbase range at the enemy base (if they allready have a builder going for an exp, kill that first for the sure thing kill). Your aim should be to kill his miners. If the miners at his main base just pull back, let them and dont take starbase fire if you can avoid it.

If still unconteted, keep harrasing him and stop or delay his produiction.

If contested, kite his ships and be very quick on pulling back. priority repair ships with low shields, while sending new/repaired ships back up to the fight.

While doing this, try to send a builder to build a dil mine, and once you have a little excess after that build a 2nd or 3rd miner to go with it, this will make building reservers while dobule yarding even easier.

From there your partner starts to pump larger ships, while you're keeping at least one enemy compleatly shut down, or both of them on smaller maps, and still retaining a moderate force yourself.

If it comes to a fight between you/yorually against combined or single enemy fleets, only then do you engage covering fire, as normaly you dont want it due to it fraking up the ships obeying orders during micro.

posted on April 12th, 2011, 2:44 am

Maybe it is the morphine talking but my one on one straight up question. Seems to hold little in common with tok'ra's answer. The idea of rushing sabers agressively against a Domion player spitting out B5s and a bug swarm seems really counter intuitive. Fighters and an all phaser opponent line up negate the few strengths sabers bring.

I could see saber spam against say A20s or b8 spam but bugs and b5s?

posted on April 12th, 2011, 2:48 am

I submit as Exhibit A: 


  Sabers owning Bugs / B5's


    You jelly, B5's? 

posted on April 12th, 2011, 3:04 am

Interesting match why was sutee not building bugs from the small yard while he was setting up the b5 rush? A couple of bugs with the first b5 would have set up a better match up than 8+ sabers against a pair of b5s

posted on April 12th, 2011, 3:11 am

Saber Spam was pretty "new" in terms of viability as Cover Fire had just come out.

  Thus, I think he was a little taken aback and didn't know exactly what to do.

  Frankly, I didn't even know if it was going to work

posted on April 12th, 2011, 3:14 am

Most players have seen cover fire now, I've played b5 rush and without slowing down you can snag a couple of bugs early and then stream bugs for support. I agree that warp ins cover fire and sabers can smoke b8/b5 unsupported tho. That was very definitive. Still completely unsupported except by a handful of b8s isn't the best use of the small yard or the b5s to be honest.

posted on April 13th, 2011, 6:30 am

If anyone cares. Played out Bugs +B5s with eventual T15 support out against various fed strategy.

Full saber spam. Honestly this this didn't work in its full glory or delayed a little with SFC, The saber just lacking hitting power and the bugs and about the 2nd B5 start a long downward spiral for the feds.

Intrepids spam + Warp ins. A closer game , really depends on how well the fed player micros he can tip the game in his favour by sniping the B5s with his torpedos.

Intrepids +SFC with a 2nd yard going up for Akiras. This strategy was the last tested and actually did the best. The Akiras were too tough to be easily chewed apart, the warp ins and the intrepids hammered b5s killing a fair chunk of the dominion fleet in a straight swap. A roughly 25 second inattentive fed player lost a chunk of his combat power and only killed some of the fighters as his fleet was fighting on autotarget for that fateful time. I'd say this counters B5s the best but it was a see saw match and after playing a bunch of the same strat Dominion I was getting a little too cocky and sloppy. I got lucky to pull out with a dominion win.

B5s and bugs are entirely beatable. It requires more than just monsoon or intrepid or saber spam to manage it tho. Which tells me the balance is either right on or just a touch in the b5s favour atm. Which is fine the doiminion is hurting for units in 3.1.5.

posted on April 20th, 2011, 8:49 am

Saber Spam was pretty "new" in terms of viability as Cover Fire had just come out.

  Thus, I think he was a little taken aback and didn't know exactly what to do.

  Frankly, I didn't even know if it was going to work

Cover fire is really a pain 90% of the time due to the replaceweapon bug causing ships to come to a stop.

That said when you want to tank, you can have people freaking out.

Played a match that just ended, klink/fed against rom/dom, I was the fed. Just after the dom was knocked out the roms lack of presence was explained in the form of a tavara.

All I had nearby was some saber's with hyperimpulse that I'd left near my mining to tank and delay raiders.

The sabers almost all died BUT by the time they died the pack of brels and one vorcha my ally had killed it without any damage.

posted on April 29th, 2011, 1:07 pm

What can I do as Fed when the Dominion is spamming & double yarding right from the beginning A26 Bombers + Bugs A20 ??

I had early warpins several intrepids but he simply out produced me and killed ship after ship and since those bombers are long range defensive turrets are also useless.

There is not even enough time to retreat as soon as the shields are down all ships are toast instantly. I always seem to have massive problems against dominion. Any counters any recommendations for the early game phase against dominion ?

posted on April 29th, 2011, 1:12 pm

intrepids not so good really. any bonus they get against the bugs is more than wiped out by the bombers which hit 80% of the time and do 50% extra damage.

warpins also are bad, galaxy centaur and nebs are medium range and the bugs tank against them. and bombers hit the warpins often. plus warpins arent terribly fast.

i'd go for double yard monsoons. bombers miss 40% and do half damage when they do hit. compared with only 50% extra damage for the bombers against the mons. the bugs do dps spread out with beam weapons, so if u retreat the monsoon well it shouldnt get killed. the bombers will never catch the mons, the bugs are also slower just not by much.

the proximity torp is perfect for killing bugs and bombers, they are low def so you wont need all your proxies at once. you can harass with a large fleet, while their bombers will be a liability.

try a couple sabres with hyperimpulse if u want, will dodge loads of bomber torps and sometimes cause cover fire.

posted on April 29th, 2011, 1:14 pm

Nice i'll try that. Both are ships which I usually never build... So this sounds interesting thx.