Canaveral worth the counters?

posted on June 10th, 2010, 8:47 pm

I've been doing a lot of Canaveral/Norway start strat lately, and I've been losing horribly. This is mainly due to a tri shortage that prevents building SFC and often delays expansion. I would save the strat for certain situations except I recently tried it against another Fed player, who was doing a build of 6 Intrepids (and only intrepids.) My fleet of 2 Canaverals and a Norway did well, but he got Warp-ins (which I couldn't afford due to my Canaverals taking up my Tritanium.) Sure Canaverals technically counter Intrepids, but they don't seem to be worth it.

I've talked with players on Tunngle, and noone seems to ever use Canaverals, one even said he'd never seen anyone win with them.

posted on June 10th, 2010, 8:59 pm

hey i only spammed intreps from 1 yard, i couldnt build monsoons as u had romulan ally with all shrikes, which would OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM CRUNCH my mons. the intreps were the only non destroyer unit i could even build, the second i had the ability i put out akiras to mix my fleet.

i think you nailed the reason your fleet wasnt effective, supports take too long to build and munch hard on tri, meaning you couldnt build sfc. u had too few supports out, with the exception of leahvals, early supports doesnt have enough offesnsive power to be effective. even though your supports countered my intreps, they just couldnt get kills. thats why they are called supports 

the canveral is a good unit if u make sure to keep it where it belongs, supporting your meat shield ships, like intreps and akiras. its specials make it useful. just build a couple after sfc i would say.

i guess canveral/norway/support in general spam could work against bugs, they are ADAI and have low def values, meaning the weak off supports could get kills. but against more powerful ADAI units like intreps i think support spam isnt gonna win.

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:01 pm

So use them for what they are:

SUPPORT ....

 If your opponent just spams ADAI units like intrepids or Bugs then yeah, spam the hell out of your Supports (Canavs/Norways), but they are not the best fighters again other vessels and should only be-

SUPPORT.  :D


Canavs have a much better survival rate now that they have the +defense ability and got a speed increase.  Keep them on the outskirts of the battle and target enemy destroyers.  If you have Blackout then deactivate the shield boost, hit blackout, then reactivate the D boost and stay back.

 Takes a little micro but since most Fed ships are 360 shooters it should not be difficult to let your Intrepids/Monsoons/Akiras have at it for a few seconds while you play with a Canav.

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:09 pm

hey boggz, fed supports spam dont work against intrep spam, intrep spam from one yard allows sfc to be built. instantly mixing the fleet. the problem was that even using only 1 yard i had more intreps than he had supports due to their build times. thats why support spam cant handle intrep spam. but it might handle bug spam as they are def weak.

i regret having to build only 1 type of ship early on, but if i built mons/sabres my romulan enemy's shrike spam would have flattened me fast. the second my res count went high enough for chassis upgrade i went to akiras to balance my fleet.

hey boggz we both on 1633 lol

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:29 pm

If you mix your supports with Sabers then you get a nice good Intrepid hunting force . When out of Tri, build Sabers  Incidentally, a single Canaveral kills a single Intrepid - in fact, a single Canaveral kills two Intrepids if left to their devices . However, as Boggz said, use them for support - if you can't micro them well for combat, then leave them in your fleet for a supporting role

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:30 pm

I still think that a Mayson support spam will beat Intrepids .

 

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:34 pm

he did mayson support spam, and it failed. i just got too many intreps out too fast, and sfc as well. plus the supports couldnt seal the deal, they may win 1v1 if u leave the ai sitting there fighting, but if when an intrep takes damage it gets retreated then the supports couldnt kill it. he had sabres too.

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:40 pm

The main problem I'm getting at here is that the amount of tri sucked up by building Canaverals basically kills your ability to build SFC. Although they did good at killing Intrepids, they don't do it fast enough to offset the inability to build SFC (Intrepids just got back to yard for repair with a little shielding left over, meanwhile his SFC came online.) Against bug spam it might work, but again you can say goodbye to building SFC anytime soon, with a smaller non warp in fleet too. Better hope there are only a few bugs to kill.

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:44 pm

he did mayson support spam, and it failed. i just got too many intreps out too fast, and sfc as well. plus the supports couldnt seal the deal, they may win 1v1 if u leave the ai sitting there fighting, but if when an intrep takes damage it gets retreated then the supports couldnt kill it. he had sabres too.

I'd buy that - it's a defensive strategy more or less on the whole too . With good micromanagement of small numbers of Canaverals and Intrepids on the field, the Canaverals won't be able to kill the Intrepids (if they are microed out of range when they lose about 30% shields). Once you get higher numbers of Canaverals then the Intrepids start dying fast and hardly can be microed away. Norways of course can kill Intrepids all the time, and are better for Mayson in this regard due to Plasma and the speed and no weakness to Monsoons

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:45 pm

You might simply have to rework your build order, as I don't have a problem getting to SFC doing the canaveral/saber route.  Can you PM me what you're doing?

posted on June 10th, 2010, 9:51 pm

monsoons werent a problem for cans here as his ally had shrike spam. i was restricted to cruiser intreps. if i could have built mons i would have.

i was really unlucky in that match with my warpins, got many excels and only 1 steamy.