Kiting carriers still possible?

Hmm, let's see:

Advent carrier:

Acceleration 100
Turn Speed 1.65
Max Speed 500

TEC LRF:

Acceleration 150
Turn Speed 3.3
Max Speed 500

TEC Light Frigate:

Acceleration 200
Turn Speed 3.3
Max Speed 800

TEC Scout:

Acceleration 225
Turn Speed 4.95
Max Speed 1000

TEC Kol Battleship:

Acceleration 100
Turn Speed 1.0
Max Speed 525

TEC Siege Frigate:

Acceleration 130
Turn Speed 2.2
Max Speed 525

Yeah, it doesn't look good. Just about everything and its big brother can outrun carriers now. Ships seem to have been boosted to give chase better than before.

wich is a good  thing really...

carriers still remain a potent unit... 4 advent carriers totaly own 15 cobalts.. even tough cobalts should have a high damage vs carriers advent squads take them out to fast

so carrier-kiting is ineffective... just eep them behind the fleet, turned around ready to jump out,   any damaged carrier should be evacuated >.>

..wait  KOL battleship is faster then LRF??i thoguht they had identical speeds

All colony caps have slower than average speeds, 450 max. All other caps seem to have a max speed of 525.

The Vasari scout cap also has a max speed of 525, which can be further boosted from distort gravity. It used to have a deliberately reduced speed without it.

The change is fine, I just wish I had known about it before.  Was this change announced in the change logs?  Why did I never see it?

I call shenanigans!

Hooookay....I know I'm taking a break from the game, but I feel compelled to comment......

There have been NO SPEED CHANGES recently!!!  The main thing that changed in Entrenchment as far as I could tell was that ship chase AI attempts to follow more inside the optimal range.  In Vanilla, chasing ships would get into weapons range and tend to slow down sooner to engage weapons.  In Entrenchment they try to stay closer.  This is great for things like basic frigs chasing carriers, because they used to constantly cut their engines too soon and fall outside of weapons range and spend all their time being kited.  It required a lot of manual control / micro to chase carriers effectively.

LRM and Assailants are not the best chasers because they tend to fire while their engines are cut and they are coasting / stopped.  Illuminators are the nasty exception in that they shoot their lasers at whatever is in range, though they have less range overall as a counter-balance.  A smart player chasing carriers will always stay on the inside of your circle so he has more time to shoot at your carriers when they are in the turns....smaller circle = less distance to cover = more time to shoot at the ebil kiting carriers.  It is possible the AI is doing this better in Entrenchment, but I honestly don't know, because I don't let my LRF get kited by carriers....it is not in any way cost effective unless you massive superior numbers of LRF and expect to kill the carriers quickly.

Carriers always turned and accelerated like pigs.  LRF have been the same speed since their speed nerf back in ....1.04???  It was about this time that Colony Caps got their speed boosted up to 475 I think...it used to be like...400 or 425 or something very slow.  I didn't even use Colony Caps back then...I used Marza's and Kortul's and killed everyone elses Colony Caps with my LRM/Assailants because there was no way a damaged colony cap could escape.

15 cobalts should get the 4 carriers or at least most of them, unless...

A.  The carriers are hiding next to a Progen with shield restore and maybe a guardian
B.  The carriers have access to repair
C.  The cobalts are being sent in one or two at a time to die as they are being built or arriving and not in mass (wtf, those carriers have killed 30 of my cobalts???? nerf carriers!)
D.  The other guy has good micro..is retreating and repairing....etc...and you don't

One of the last games I played a couple weeks ago was against an Advent player who just straight up rushed me with carriers, so I just spammed cobalts, and when he retreated I chased the damage carriers and killed every last one of them.  He probably built about 8-10 carriers, and I built about 30 cobalts, and lost almost half of them.

Ah.  Interesting.  In just about every online game I've played recently, kiting hasn't worked.  Now, I'm not talking about playing against pros - nothing works against them, and nothing ever has.  I'm talking just playing the average Joe.

So if you say speed hasn't changed, what has?  Anything?

The main thing that changed in Entrenchment as far as I could tell was that ship chase AI attempts to follow more inside the optimal range.  In Vanilla, chasing ships would get into weapons range and tend to slow down sooner to engage weapons.  In Entrenchment they try to stay closer.

Maybe someone else has an insight -- that was mine.  Carrier kiting should be about as good as always with the exception of the recent change that makes strikecraft build more slowly.

a week ago i played someone "microman if i recall"  he also build carriers only (and a few bombing frigates) most of the squads were bombers tough,   i made around 15 cobalts to defend a planet he was attacking with 4 carriers (nothing esle) i managed to get 1 carier to critical health until it just retreated,  by then i lost over 10 cobalts

so to summarize

A, not the case,  4 carriers entering my grav well, no support no other ships...

B carriers had no repair in range .., they could retreat and get them repaired on their planet nextdoor tough

C, 12 coblats jumped in, les then 10 seconds later, 3 more arrived. who were sluggish with the jump

D, he was microing,  not moving around just holding his ships ready to withdraw when they sustained heavy damage. and then repair them back on his planet nextdoor, cobalts do not get the chance to retreat "even if it has 100% hull,shield it'll still die of focuss fire from 9 bombers before it can reach the grav well end and phase jump out..

 (it's not the carriers that should be nerfed here!!!)

Well, that is why you lost, aside from you being a little bit light on counter units.  It wasn't the cobalts' fault you didn't get kills;  it was because he was retreating and repairing and coming back.  It is a good tactic, .... to deal with this sometimes I chase em and kill em and come back.  Carriers turn and accelerate pretty slow, so you should be able to catch the damaged one in the other gravwell, and he has to make a choice about whether he sends his other carriers back to his side to chase the cobalts or keeps bombing your infrastructure. 

If you get in a situation where you are going to lose your fleet because you don't have repair or enough counter units to effectively take out a ship fast enough, fall back and build repair at the edge and try and get more appropriate counters in play.....maybe a hangar bay with fighters if you have time and he is going to attack your next world, etc.  It sucks sometimes, but a fleet retreated because it is too small to get decisive kills is a fleet that might make a difference tomorrow.

Cost of 15 Cobalts (5 per m):
$4500 825m  = $8625

Cost of 4 Aeria Drone Hosts (5 per m/cr):
$5120 920m 880cr   = $14120

Cost of nearby Repair in neighboring gravwell:
Priceless

I played the same dude last night.  He went Advent and hit me with an HC rush - had a bunch of them in no time.  Had me on the ropes early with that crap but I fought back and ended up taking the fight to his homeworld.

The replay showed that he, in a quite deliberate manner, dropped 5 military labs right off the bat, in straight succession, as soon as he could do it.  The goal was to tech to HC as soon as humanly possible.

how is a HC rush supposed to work? wouldn't that just get completely owned by hangar defense set to bombers?

nah, i had a teammate who did the same, worked preety well. but then something happened, ill go check the replay.

the player whos going to rush HC build up HC fast. neglect econ and col. go directly for the kill. If the player is TEC there is a problem with resupplying and surviving if ur enemy has an ok fleet. The player who is rushing HC relies on the stregnth of the HC alone to push him through. If they ignore a small enemy fleet, no caps, at their home the absence of resistance and (eventually) labs kills the player. also, with a HC fleet there is a problem with destroying planets without caps, which tend to go fast.

anything else i missed?

I don't know how it is "supposed" to work, as I'm no expert on it.  In fact, that was the first time I ever experienced such a thing.  However, I can tell you that it caught me, and nearly killed me outright, because I had focused on expansion early, which is a totally natural thing to do.  In other words, I dropped 2 civil labs to get the volcanos and ices next to me, plus built a few disciples and what not to help me do it.

So I'm on my third planet or so and in rolls his cap with a bunch of HC, with more being pumped continuously.  I had nothing to deal with it, had to fall back.  Lost my initial frigs of course, plus a planet or two.  I ended up dropping two mils and researching drone hosts, and going bombers with them.  Thing is, 1 or 2 or 3 drone hosts won't cut it against a mass of these things.  So you are taking a lot of damange while you pump enough drone hosts to deal with it.  In truth, I thought I was dead.  As far as hanger defenses, yeah I suppose it would have been great.  But at that stage of the game, I didn't have them.  And researching and then building them at the planet you are being attacked at, well... that's not gonna work either.  He'll either kill the builder, or kill the lone structure once it's up.

even  repair bays wont be able to hold of carriers,  just move the carriers so that the cobalts are forced in leaving its range  most of the time   they wont  even have to,  becuase repair bays do not reach far enough to repair a light frigate o nthe grav well edge anyways

chasing the carrier back to the other players grav well would probably not have worked either,   i was able to deplete haf of the carriers hitpoints when it bailed out,   by then i lost over 10 cobalts, and  i ought to lose 2 more during phase jump charge   when i finaly get to the other grav well ive got around 3 left    nowhere near enoguh to kil 750 hitpoints from a carrier before it can reach its repair bay

i admit i was low on units, went economical (trade ports), and didnt expect him to skip 2 planets take a desert (minimal militia) and start pumping carriers, by the time he invaded i  was just about to place trade ports....  wich  gives me a dilema,  either get tradeports and lose alot of other economical structures,  or get more ships    but get stuck with low income   eventualy getting owned by more and more advent carriers pumping out, either way is a big loss, 

if the rush were a simple lrf lf, carrier configuration atleast you'd be able to have multiple different unit types to counter each one,   with carriers solely  cobalts die to fast lrf is a bad idea,   flak just kills squads...  and are not good at their task at the start of the game

i really fail to see why carriers "or the squads they carry anyways" havent gotten a nerf yet, as right now whenever i do finaly play a game of sins   i always end up getting carriers, since they have no real weakness other then a combination of carrier and flak

light frigates?  bomber squdrons

flak frigates? carriers cannot do much vs a bunch of those  but flaks arent able to do something vs the carrier either

siege frigates?  obviously no chance  fighters own those

colony frigates?  "laughter at the idea of a colony ship spam" ... fighter squadrons

carrier?   combination of fighters and bombers

support  cruisers?  fighters + bombers

heavy cruisers?   bomber squadrons

starbases?   bombers

carriers are units that have an effective counter to any unit "except the flak, but carrier stil wins when you micro them" you start with few...  and killing goes slow    but you keep getting more and more.... eventualy killing anything but a starbase in a single pass

my games always end in who has the most and best carrier + flak combination and it has been a long time since i've actualy had any satisfaction from beating someone / large fights / getting owned (yes that CAN be fun sometimes)..... im starting to miss the LRF spam....

What about a combination of flak and light frigates?

let the flak take out the SC and then jump in your lf's.

The disadvantage of carriers: once the SC are dead (and maybe AM is depleted) their dps is somwhere near 0.

Well, you have all the answers why you can't win.  I don't have it anymore, but I wish I could post my replay where someone rushed me with Drone Hosts exactly like you got rushed.  I had gone econ too.   The only difference is I killed his drone hosts with my cobalts.

My recommendation to you is to start rushing people with Drone Hosts until someone kicks your butt, then watch the replay and see how they did it.    

Otherwise, not much else can be done for you.