I agree completely and have been fairly vocal about it.  Vasari have it particularly rough in this setting considering their scouts and LF suck comparatively combat wise.  A scout nerf against LRF particularly the advent scout would do nicely.  Building labs when your enemy is doing this is a liability because you will be behind spam wise.

[_]-Greyfox

this is so silly... we whine... they buff... and now we whine the exact opposite way...

you want to know what counters scout/lf spam? try turrets. ya... seriously... they do anti-medium damage... and scouts and lfs suck against them.

maybe not the answer you were looking for? try carriers filled with fighters and lrms... make sure you start with your fleet on the wrong side of the grav well.... have your fighters take out the scouts... and when their fleet reaches yours, jump your carriers awway one at a time (whichever one is be focused)... have a repair bay in that back grav well... of course. If your winning, great. if your not... run away... hopefully by that time you had built something evil in your back grav well... like a phase jump inhibitor... and maybe a 1/2 built starbase.

if he doesnt follow... great. you sucessfully defended... if he does (cause he is chasing your captial ship or something) seriously... he killed none of your stuff.. you killed at least some of his stuff... seriously... either you have him beat... or you were allready screwed cause he started with a 3 rock neutral next to his homeworld and you started with a magnetic storm... or some other map way to get mapfracked.

We just need to reduce the amount of damage they do to LRMs and perhaps make them as susceptible to damage from LRMs as they are from light frigates.  I think it would be bad to reduce their shields and armor because that would interfere with their ability to fulfill their role as scouts--to quickly travel through hostile gravity wells, obtain information, and survive in order to move on to the next gravity well.

The problem is that turrets don't move across phase lanes and it can take a while to build them and when the scout attacks come, it's often at a gravity well that you have just colonized.

Carriers are expensive in the early game and since you spent a lot of money building military labs and researching carriers, your opponent now has a fleet of 60 scouts and disciples for your three or four carriers.  The light frigates will eat the carriers.  LRMs will be consumed by the scout swarm.

You're going to need a lot of carriers for this.

You've just lost ground and given up that gravity well.  Vasari can counter it with starbases, I agree, but those are expensive and you could end up being holed up at your home terran with your starbase and carriers while the other guy happily takes the surrounding real estate.

You haven't successfully defended; you just lost that gravity well that you ran away from.

To nerf the amount taht scouts do to lrms, that would require nerfing the bonus that anti-light gets against light armor, which will directly affect fighters. You could buff the damage fighters do to compensate for the damage fighters do against light armor, but then this opens up having to balance the stronger fighters (lower anti-light multipliers against all other armors).

I wouldn't count on option 2. That could potentially harm vasari players with their neutal hunting.

You also can't nerf their health/shields, because then they will die too quickly to pirates as they're scouting.

The most realistic option is to lower the dps of the scout, but then the very early game lrf spam doesn't really have an adequate counter (mix in flak and the fighters go bye bye).

The pure scout spam is easily counterable. A starbase or a light frig spam screws the very early scout rush. Fighters are the best counter to scouts, but they come out in the early-mid stage of the game, so it's really hard to get them out in decent numbers early. The pure scout spam is laughable. Just don't build long range frigs. It's that simple.

End of the day I feel the current balance is fine. The light frig/scout tactic is the new trend because people find it to be the most successful, and it makes sense. People aren't used to using multiple caps/light frigs because of stigmas with their old status, but I swear to you the light frig/scout spam is counterable if you see it coming.

Personally I think the balance of scouts should fall around where the TEC scout is. I think the seeker is too tough, but that the Vasari scout is pathetically weak.

This doesn't strike me as something the devs would see as a problem. I now for a fact Blair has stated that he sees that scouts have an easy counter. I would like to add in that light frig/scout is a balanced early game fleet. It makes sense that you'd have to be clever to fight it off.

Whatever happens with balancing this I will accept. I don't see the current strategy of scouts as a problem because they have a counter like everything else in the game. If the devs change this, I'm sure it will have been for the best, but I really have a hard time seeing this as a game breaker.

I think the Advent scout is a problem, but the TEC scout is fine.

I do agree that turrets are too expensive for their current.  If they were reasonably cheap then we'd have the ability to hole up and fend off a scout swarm.  I've done it before as TEC (range upgrade makes them more dangerous), but it really burns a hole in your pocket.

What I find funny about this whole thread is that we have finally found something that can disrupt the LRF/Illum spamming issue that cannot repeat cannot really overpower the big guys (caps/starbases) amd now we say lets nerf them.

I say NO! to this issue (well maybe a slight knock on the Advent scout).

Scouts beat LRFs, LRFs beat Caps, Caps beat Scouts

Rock, Paper, Scissors

agreed.  There's not an issue here.  Just a trend that won't go away.

Lol @ MP being, well, MP!  

/snarkmode

Diasagree with scout nerf.

I agree wholeheartedly. Scouts are really weak and nerfing them will only make LRF spam come back. LFs are more then sufficient to crush scouts. Turrets and hangars should be cheaper imo. There will always people who spam so no matter how good the balance is, this will always exist. You can't stop people from doing what they want in a game. Its not as if pure scout spam or scout/LF spam is hard to deal with anyway. As RA said, go pure LFs. Just plain logic, really.

The hillarious thing about this is, the minute you make them cheaper and people start using them more, people who play the game online will scream that all the defenses are slowing the game down too much.  I would bet everything I own on that.

I know the online types.  They max all the game speeds out, they play with the quick start option, and they will hate anything that they feel "bogs the game down" or slows it down in any capacity.  A lot of them hated the idea of starbases for this very reason.

Whats the point then karma?The devs wont implement something just cause you say you tested it and its balanced and if you dont release it as a mod then there is no point.RA,Eadteas,and myself all tested balance and made changes and released our balanced versions of the game with little succes of it being accepted.

Well I never said the devs would do this or that, and I never said they should.  It just seems to me that a lot of people sit around discussing unit balance.  That's all the forums are packed with.  Well... I say put up or shut up.  Why sit around just blowing a lot of hot air?  If someone says "this needs buffing" or "that needs nerfing," what good does it do, unless someone is willing to prove it or back it up?

If you say it's already been done, I respect that.  Then, as you say, "what's the point?"  I agree, so I retract my proposal.  So all we are doing is wasting time, bandwidth, and blowing a lot of hot air.  I guess we all just like to talk to hear outselves talk?