For the record, I don't have a problem with the current cost of turrets.  They are not and should not be free and building and placing one remains a matter of strategy.  Sometimes building them makes sense and sometimes it doesn't.

Game duration is a very legitimate and signficant issue with this game.

I will admit that at times I have trouble with scout spam, but only from JJ.   His micro is just too good.  Carrier caps, flak, and SBs work amazing to counter scouts/LFs.

Maybe drop it a little for hangars, not 25%, but 10-15% maybe.  but turrets seem perfectly fair as they are.

LRFs have a large amount of counters already.  There are masses of flak which do a pretty good job in taking care of LRF and tank the damage.  You can use rock against rock and use LRF to counter LRF which works just fine.  There are HC which counter just about everything.  There are support cruisers including subverters and guardians that could be used.  There are starbases which take a lot of LRF to be taken down if even halfway upgraded.  There are carriers with fighters that take down LRF pretty quickly.  The problem with the scout/LF spam is that you can't open up to the possibilities because you are trying to deal with 40 each of scouts and LF or more and done without having to build labs.  Scout/LF spam doesn't open options, it closes them.  There are lots of ways to deal with LRF spam but there are limited timely ways to deal with scout/LF spam other than spamming LF yourself.  Saying scouts are a necessary thing to have for a counter is BS because there are already lots of ways to deal with LRF.

[_]-Greyfox

Many new players already build enough turrets for us to be confident that cheaper turrets would not slow the game down.  Later in the game they can be destroyed while you siege a planet, or left alone, if you prefer.  Sort of ready-made monuments to your victory.  Static defences can often function like that.

They just need to be made cheaper so that enough can be deployed against the very early rush, if needed.  Otherwise they have no purpose in the game and all the tech tree devoted to them is wasted.  If a player can use the threat of a rush to force another to build static defences that are too expensive, there is a problem with game balance.

Everyone except online beginners plays with maxed speeds, and you have to max all the speeds or leave them all normal in order to avoid altering the game.  It's also very rare to save or even pause an online game.  The single player game helps the player too much against the AI if you can save or pause it, though.  Apart from that, starbases are popular and I've rarely played with quickstart online.  I doubt cheaper turrets would bother anyone, under most circumstances any experienced player will prefer fleet, its just the exceptions that need to be covered.  Single player types are very much the minority on this forum...?

In may of these topics about balance yes we are minortiy, in the past we been told our opinion doesnt count cuz we dont MP. Though some of us still post.

I still stand by my suggestion to increase the battle potential of turrets so they can be helpful even late game. Instead of decreasing their cost. I rather pay more for something I know will be helpful past a rush.

Where I'm getting lost is why you have a problem with two ships that gel well together. IMO the scout/lf ships are intended so that a player can go eco early and not pay the price. Pushing back a scout/lf spammer is not hard. If he's not investing in upgrades or other ship type expansions to his fleet, he's easy pickins.

Ok, let me give another example of a two ship fleet that is hard to counter. HC's and Fighters. The only hard counter to HC's is bombers. But if there are fighters, those bombers won't do jack. So what's the counter to this fleet? Pure HC's.

This is a game of counters. Know them, and you will succeed.

Flak were never intended as the lrf counter, and against a wise enough lrf spammer, they won't work. Flak shoot 25% of their damage in 4 directions (hence their design as the fighter counter). Ever gone up against an Illum spammer who just used shield regen to negate the damage that you were sending in every direction?

I also hate using fighters as a counter to lrfs purely because for TEC/Vasari they're tier 3 (aka expensive to tech), and if flak are out in sufficient  numbers, the fighters will die quickly.

I also hate saying HC's are a sufficient counter because they just aren't a viable option very early. They're expensive and seriously slow down the economic expansion of an empire.

That leaves scouts as the  VERY VERY early game answer. Scouts are so rarely viable as a fleet after the first 30 minutes that it's not even funny. They die to just about anything. The only time I've ever had 300+ scouts is against someone spamming pure lrfs, and that's rare.

DING DING DING DING

i think the real problem isnt scouts in general, it is how strong advnent scouts are. You dont see near as many skilled TEC scout LF spammers because they cant compete with advnet ones. Advnet scouts should be nerfed to the lvl of the TEC scout. There is no reason it is almost 1.5x stronger than the others for the exact same price (or less against the Vasari.)

_|~Uber

Scouts are now up on the PSCF, come cast a vote now.

So what you're saying is that it turns into a game of scouts and LF spam because no one in their right mind facing an opponent with scout and LF spam would build military labs?  The military labs you would build for your LRMs are the ones you would also use to research other things and to leap up to being able to get carriers and heavy cruisers.  But if you're under an onslaught of light frigates and scouts how can you invest your money in anything but your own light frigates and scouts?

First of all, Scouts only counter one thing, and that's LRFs.  LF's counter 4 things, Flaks and 3 Cruisers but even still, with simple LF + Scout spam, you will be extremely weak against capital ships.

LRFs counter not only LFs, but also capital ships, and to a MUCH higher degree than LFs could even dream of.  Do you have any idea how long it takes for even mass LFs to take out a cap ship?  I won't even bring up mass Scout's against caps because it's just pathetic, it takes forever.

The problem with building only a LF+Scout fleet is that you then become very weak against cap ships.  If your opponent gets a few Carrier Caps and some LRFs, he will be able to kill your caps faster than you can even escape with bombers.  Sure, you may kill some of his LRFs too but what's more important, taking out caps or killing LRFs?

As has been said many times before, Scouts scale very poorly into late game.  They are easily countered by the same things LRFs are countered by, including other Scouts, and everything else you mentioned.  However, Scout spam is also countered by Flak, something that LRFs don't even have to worry about.

I agree with everyone here that Advent Scouts need a nerf, but holy crap, with how broken Illuminators are right now - it doesn't even matter.  I would much rather take Illuminator spam over Scout spam anyday with the DPS these things can put out now.

People haven't started using scouts as a mainstream combat unit until recently, and the strength of the Advent scout has been an issue since scout-based strategies took off.  While it took second place to other issues in our discussions in the last patch, it was discussed in the previous patch-stats change forum.  However, the issue was glossed over at the time because there were others that were more pressing.