Dominion strat vs Leavhal spam (B8s dont count)

posted on November 25th, 2010, 7:12 pm

Gamer, Lahvals don't counter long range, 3 of them can take out 15 bugs, and how do you expect him to get 3 expansions? His overall complaint is that he can't defend his expansions...

posted on November 25th, 2010, 7:17 pm

Dont get me wrong but I am speaking about really agressive Rom players. So they keep attacking Exp at different locations eating your frighters constantly. Neither Bombers nor Breen can be there as quick as required...so outproducing is no real option imo. And I also realized that early leavhals snipe bombers almost on instant and cloaking out then. Unless you can reach crit mass its extremly hard to take out Leavhals (autorepair and lvl 3 ability). I need to test out Breen Curisers...since Leavhals are medium and not sr as I always think... they might be a good mixin.

The neat thing about Breen cruisers is that you can produce them non stop from two yards with only one di and one tri moon the entire game. Given that usually players have an expansion up early, two of each moon is more then enough to pump out Breen cruisers from two yards non stop and eventually three yards once you have excess di. The downside to this is in my build order you need a supply miner up really early, so the early game might feel a bit slow compared to other strats. This avoids the need to ever buy supply though, which is epic. My build order for Breen Cruisers is:

- Queue 1 builder, 2 miners
- 1 yard immediately
- send 2nd builder to exp
- 3rd builder makes di facility
- 1st builder makes tri when yard is done
- breen cruiser proto
- 2nd builder makes yard at exp
- first miner goes to di, 2nd goes to tri
- 3rd builder convert to worker and mines di
- 1st builder makes supply mining (preferably at starting tri moon)
- 1st builder convert to supply miner
- make a 3rd miner and send it to tri
- build mining bases at your exp and saturate the moons
- Jam on the breen cruiser button at your yards.
- Add a third yard when you get to about 1500 di


Try out this strat vs Leavahls. I can guarantee that they will absolutely smoke them as long as you keep them out of range and their fire arc on the enemy. No matter how aggressive a Romulan player is, if they attack anywhere one breen cruiser can hold off fire if you keep it near a yard to repair until more breen cruisers arrive.

posted on November 25th, 2010, 8:35 pm

as long as you keep them out of range and their fire arc on the enemy

How can you kite enemies AND keep them in fireing arc all the time? Not possible if you ask me.

one breen cruiser can hold off fire

That one cruiser will be sniped down even before it can reach the yard!

I agree to the fact that 2 early supply miners are a good choice in order to keep production constant...in my game I had to buy supply 2 times because my supply line was not up early i.e. cost me ship production time.

posted on November 25th, 2010, 9:45 pm

How can you kite enemies AND keep them in fireing arc all the time? Not possible if you ask me.

That one cruiser will be sniped down even before it can reach the yard!

have you tried it? Last night me and a friend did an unlimited resources game and compared several races counters in 1vs1 and 2vs1 (depending on ship cost) 'duels' . it was interesting to say the least.

I suggest you do something like we did and try the breen cruisers.

posted on November 25th, 2010, 10:18 pm

Maybe my post was misread, I suggested them purely as support for the Bombers, not as a stand-alone counter. The biggest thing in Fleet Ops is to mix your fleets. It would be better to counteract with a mixed fleet than just another spam.

Basically as I just quoted, Bombers are the main focus, and the two others are simply for support and helping where the bombers fail. I could go on an on about why I suggested it but then I would be trolling wouldn't I?

Mixing fleets doesn't somehow magically make your fleet more effective, it just makes it harder to completely counter (mixing fleets is not the biggest thing in FO, it is only something the devs try to encourage by making passives that punish single-ship spams); putting a ship into your fleet that is first on the targeting list (unless you have C-11s, which are also great at dying and being countered by Leahvals) and absolutely supercountered by your enemy's ships is not a good idea.

posted on November 25th, 2010, 10:42 pm

  So Speaketh The Authority! 

  Good thing we've got you here, Nebbie to tell us what the Devs intentions were  !

posted on November 26th, 2010, 12:10 am

The bug has one real use in this, unless you have stupid numbers of them to win by volume of fire.

You can ram with them.  Suicide them to keep the Leahvals off your bombers.  Or even chain-ram the rommie ship until it dies if that's your only option other than losing the expansion that you need.

Grouped turrets or a Perimeter are better options, though, than bugs.

posted on November 26th, 2010, 12:17 am

  Good thing we've got you here, Nebbie to tell us what the Devs intentions were  !

Am I mis-paraphrasing Optec or mixing up his and Dominus' words or something? It's not like I'm going to go back and search for the posts where they talked about that stuff, the point is we have counters that help to punish spam.

posted on November 26th, 2010, 1:23 am

How can you kite enemies AND keep them in fireing arc all the time? Not possible if you ask me.

That one cruiser will be sniped down even before it can reach the yard!

I agree to the fact that 2 early supply miners are a good choice in order to keep production constant...in my game I had to buy supply 2 times because my supply line was not up early i.e. cost me ship production time.

Hehe, I guess I'll have to get Ray to record a match of him vs me to show. He was the first victim of my Breen Cruiser strat vs Leavahls. 

posted on November 26th, 2010, 5:19 am

1. I am copy/pasting that build order, TUN, and will try it out shortly.

2. Drrrrrr, you've already hit on the biggest problem of bombers vs leahvals: they can outmaneuver you.  The key to winning is to open fire on them before they reach you at the start of the battle, but since they can cloak, you lose your edge.  Try building a single sensor station at the expansion, in a forward position.  Spam bombers out of two yards and when you get spare funds, build 3-4 more in a forward arc with your bombers in the middle.  Your opponent gets a nasty choice: he can either fight fair against your bombers now or wait for you to get your advanced cloak detect, which you are trying to do ASAP, by the way.

I know I made that sound much easier than it actually is, my point was simply that a little cloak detect can go a long way in controlling the range of the battle.