A strategy to beat federation mayson turrets?

posted on July 15th, 2013, 3:37 am

Hi all. I'd value your advice on how to beat Federation photon turret turtlers. I usually do LAN play with a few friends, a couple of whom rely heavily on Mayson photon turrets. As soon as the Feds build one, then two, then five photon turrets and sensor platforms defending stations and moons, my attacks with my Klingons becomes a lost cause.

Attempted Strategies:
A)
As klingons, I've tried kvort cloaked torpoedoes, 12 ships of which are not enough to take down a photon mayson turret. And once a sensor platform is in play, it becomes even more impossible.


I've tried sending a dozen sang's at a row of three photon turrets and one sensor platform taking out the sensor in about 10 seconds, then taking on the photons unsuccessfully until destroyed. Then the Feds sweep in with their ships to quicken finishing off my sangs.

C)
At first we played larger maps which just fed the Feds, haha, resources, then a smaller map, hoping the lower resources would discourage turrets, but no, it's just less area to defend.

D) early rushes--Usually I can take out some miners in hit and runs before the turrests are in place, but that isn't good enough, eventually the turrets make it in.

E) ganging up on the fed turtler -- Another klingon fleet and my klingon fleet tried to gang up on a fed turtler to no avail. His ships just level up as mine get picked off or wiped out.

End result:
The fed players don't go on an offensive until they've built a blockade at which point they can build a massive fleet of Sovreigns to roll through the rest of the map.

Any ideas?:
It's frustrating playing against this strategy and I am eager to hear from you experienced players how you get around this.
I did a search on fleetops forums but couldn't find a related topic other than maybe one for a Romulan strategy (I read this a month ago and can't find it). I'd appreciate a strategy for Klingons and perhaps other races against this. If this thread already exists, I'd welcome a link to it.

Better way to search forums?
Is there a best way to search the forums i'm missing? I tried the Search textbox on fleetops.net and also google, but didn't find a good existing thread for this question.

Thanks for your help.

posted on July 15th, 2013, 3:55 am

Turret rush them or yard rush them send you con ship in there expansions or near base an yrad rush or turret rush them

posted on July 15th, 2013, 12:10 pm

gayson's torp turrets are quantum turrets, risner fires photons.

go with option D. built 2 yards and queue up at least 8 monsoons spread between them. get their special. after 2 or 3 monsoons are built, attack. keep attacking his miners. use the special. if you're mayson as well, consider building a norway after 5 monsoons, then use that norway's level 1 special to recharge your monsoons energy. don't forget to expand. your biggest advantage over a turtler is that you can control the map. don't let him build new torp turrets at any expansions. turtlers can only turtle in a small area.

if it gets to the point where your enemy has numerous torp turrets at several expansions then you failed, stop him earlier. make sure you scout. build a couple extra scouts and send them near possible places he would expand. a bunch of monsoons can snipe his constructor while it's building.

for klingons replace monsoons with kvorts or kbq. always have at least one kbq for every 5 kvorts as a tank. use their specials similarly to snipe stuff. also try a veqlaragh or two, it's special disables engines so that if they commit a ship, you can get the kill.

posted on July 15th, 2013, 4:55 pm

As Klingons I'd recommend Sang/LuSpet+Vor'cha+MoQbara. Vor'cha to disable the weapons systems of each turret, Sang and LuSpet to tank. Sang are relatively cheap, you'll be able to build many more of those than turrets (and you can kite). LuSpet take advantage of weak Federation hulls, so enough of them will finish off a turret before the shields go down.

If you feel especially daring, use Negh'var+MoQbara+Weapon Overload. Enough Weapon Overloads and you can just fire a volley, run off and wait for the cooldown to finish, then go in and finish the turrets off.

There's also SuS'a' spam if you want to remove stations really fast - extra bonus damage

posted on July 15th, 2013, 5:34 pm

Kill miners, especially Dilithium miners; warp-in ships; and constructors. Kill them early, kill them often. In the current version, the Fed's only reliable source of Supply is through purchase at the Starbase, killing those things will provide a constant drain on it while slowing down how quickly they can expand and regain those resources. Start raiding as soon as you have two combat ships. At latest three.

You also have cloaked scouting. Keep eyes in their base--learn the size of the Fed sensor turret's ping, and place accordingly. Keep eyes on their fleet--use the "Guard" command to have a scout follow their main concentration of ships.

Edit: also, leave all of the advanced rules on default. Increased resources, a cease fire, build time modification, and so on, all wreck the balance of the game. Play with them for coop AI bashing, but never for a competitive game.

posted on July 15th, 2013, 7:29 pm

--great. long reply written up and forgotten about, to be posted hours later when the user notices the tab is still open.


I can second Myles approach on it, cease fire or similar "gentelmens agreements" benefit turtling and skipping early tech.
Usually it is considered bad play to rely heavily on turrets since all the resources spent in turrets mean less resources spent on ships, and while turrets are more cost-efficient regarding pure firepower and hitpoints, they lack a significant trait your ships will have: engines.

So, you build 2-3 ships and start harassing. Don't stop harassing either unless you can't reasonably attack anything. Never completely stop ship production either. Miner kills are always good, and use your scouts to keep tabs on him to spot and intercept all attempts of him to expand. Split off a small raiding force if you see two juicy targets or just need to intercept a lone constructor. If he has turrets in one place, raid another, you're the one with the ability to move. Especially with cloak you'll leave him wondering where you will strike next.
And that is thoroughly positive. While you are playing with him, making him even more paranoid and focussed on turrets, he will not attack you. Since you don't spend money on turrets you will have a large advantage in ship production and your fleet will outnumber his soon.
The aim here is containment. Limit him to one or two pairs of moons while you expand all over the place (not all at once though). Then you will have the ability to simply outproduce him and overpower him with a huge armada.

You might already know of it, but on the Guide there are many comments on general strategy and opening moves that will get the ships out for shooting at the pesky fed builders quick.

In specific, with Klingons K'beajq's and K'vort's form a good early game multi-purpose force. Especially with the Martok avatar the K'Vorts will output all of their damage as pulse which are consequently more effective versus civil ships and most early game ships (like monsoons).
With both avatars the special forces extension might be worth a look, but only in extreme circumstances you'll find yourself wanting to exclusively use the ships from there.
The Sus'a has a damage bonus versus buildings and a special which boosts their firepower for a while to make them very effective versus turrets. Unfortunatly pulse turrets and one or both of the heavy turret variants have a passive that reduces damage from these short ranged ships by half.
On the other end of the range spectrum does the Veqlaragh outrange all regular combat ships, but unfortunatly not the heavy turrets. They're nontheless very effective at taking out ships, especially small, weak craft. You can draw his forces out by shelling them from afar and stun them with the special and also pick on miners from an angle not covered by a turret. Unfortunatly another cloaked enemy can just decloak on top of them and eat them all up in no time since they are made of paper, so you have to be very careful about them not taking fire and you pretty much can't use them against another cloaker.
The Sang', while it's named after the Klingon word for destruction, can very easily be countered by the federation using monsoons who take half damage from long range and dodge 40% of these torps on top of that. Only if you manually target Sang's they are useful against the Federation, but the damage they do on turrets is nice. They also bunch up very well (read: spam spam spam).
The Vorcha might also be noteworthy against torp turrets. Not only are they solid ships all around, but their special destroys a random subsystem for a good while, making the strong turret useless while you take your time shooting it.
The Vutpa's main strength is arguably its torpedo avoidance, but the torps of the turrets always hit. Stay away.
Similarly, the LuSpet is kinda pointless because of the damage that partially pierces shields. SInce they have ADAI, which doesn't net them any boni against anything but pulse turrets, they cost a lot of supply which is bad as a Klingon.
Another interesting option might be the Cho'naQ which is the first, always available ship at the Imperial yard. It's slow (especially with its special which is a must if you want to fight with them), but since turrets don't run away and you're likely to outproduce any enemy that shouldn't be much of a problem. Their major disadvantage is overkill since their weapons only switch targets after an enemy is already dead for a couple moments, but this is somewhat migitated when shooting big targets like turrets or with appropiate manual management of their targets.
Negh'vars, lastly, shall never go unmentioned. Their special does massive damage and can when used in mass, one-shot even the biggest of targets. This reduces their firepower for a while by a significant percentage, they don't have cloak unless you invest gross amounts of resource and time, they feel quite fragile.

posted on July 15th, 2013, 9:29 pm

Thanks for all these detailed ideas.
\(^.^)
I am always open to more input, and will work on your suggestions.

Zap, thanks for pointing out the SuSa weakness against certain platforms.
Pulse platform & Torpedo platform's 50% short pulse weaponry damage reduction.
http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/basics/ ... mor-Plates
I will also review the opening moves guide, starting with the K'Vort rush or early Sang.

Myles and MadHatter, I like your scouting suggestions, especially MadHatter's Guard order.

Dominus Noctis, thanks for the specific ship ideas. I will try the: Sang+Vor'cha+MoQbara. I'm sure the MoQbara will come in handy past the early game with it's 75% boost for ten seconds.

Dominus Noctis & Myles' tanking tips sound good too, thanks for the specific 5:1, K'Vort:k'beajQ ratio.

jokarrr, I will try to get constructors into or near enemy expansions for a close repair yard.

Much appreciated, and by all means, if you have any more tips keep them coming.

posted on July 15th, 2013, 10:15 pm

thanks for the specific 5:1, K'Vort:k'beajQ ratio.

don't take that as written in stone, i only gave you it as a way to remember to build a few kbqs as tanks. feel free to use 3:1 if you like it better.

posted on July 15th, 2013, 10:22 pm

if they have had enough resources and time to build a large collection of those turrets, you could tech to
BortaS



send in all 3 (thats the max you can build) cloaked BortaS to the line of turrets,
decloak and instantly use the "Artificial Ion Storm"

if they have cloak detect then send in a few cheap ships like birds of prey to take the volley just ahead of the BortaS

that should rip a hole in the line, then follow up with a fleet of what the other guys suggested

posted on July 16th, 2013, 2:31 pm

While yes, the BortaS could be used as you suggested, the damage they do is fixed. Turrets may not be able to run out of the effects area but they have high individual hitpoints and are strong in low numbers already. The BortaS major strength is taking out or heavily damaging fleets of small and individually weak ships that all take damage at the same rate.

But still, they are devastating in any case. Although it is sometimes considered a waste, placing their special over a moon may be a viable method of raiding too.

posted on July 16th, 2013, 6:39 pm

Well if you drew the fed fleet out when you took on their turrets a bortas ion storm comboed with luspet field of fire could do some nice damage...

posted on July 16th, 2013, 7:12 pm

Or just don't give them the resources and time to turret up, it is not as if Fed Torp turrets are cheap :/

posted on July 16th, 2013, 8:21 pm

One other thing -- Fed platforms are very vulnerable during the turret upgrade. It takes 10 seconds to upgrade to a torpedo turret, and the process cannot be cancelled. Additionally, there's a bug in 3.2.7 where if you manage to destroy it during the upgrade, the area it was built on (from 2x2 to 3x3 depending) remains blocked for further building.

Strangling the Fed's resources will work best though.

posted on July 18th, 2013, 9:03 pm

A combination of all your suggestions worked, and I was finally able to get a win in against the Feds...one win, but a win nonetheless in the right direction...
(^.^)
Hopefully I didn't speak to soon.

If you're curious, details ensue:
Battles 1 & 2: Lost
opened with K'vort rush, but ships weren't strong enough even in numbers to take down multiple build ships building Mayson turrets. Feds took over the map.

Battle 3: Won
opened with early Sang. Continued to churn out ships to kite and tank. Feds down to two sets of moons. Took out remaining Fed expansion and it's 9 Mayson turrets in end game rather quickly using the suggested Polaron torpedoes, Ion Storm, Field of Fire, MoQbara & sangs....a bit much....maybe....but it worked nicely.

Thanks again. Not to close out the thread, but I just wanted to say this forum's been a great resource.

posted on July 21st, 2013, 12:17 am

9 mason turrets?

Woho. I'd really like to see the games and setups you are playing.