Newbie, cant beat LRM spam

TEC versus Advent on a small map is a difficult situation to be in. The TEC is already the best rush faction and the Advent is currently a pretty slow starter, so if you two are of a equal skill level you'd still be in for a rough time.

Defense vessels are indeed your best option, both them and LRMs take two military labs so it shouldn't be any harder for you to build a fleet of them than it is for him. Defense vessels are a bit harder to use however, to get the most out of them you need to exploit their ability to fire in all direction and run in circles and through his LRM formation, forcing them to turn around to keep up with you. I'm sure some of the pro players can give you advice on that.

Otherwise the next best thing you can do is to try and get guardians online as quick as possible, on order to get the shield regeneration/shield projection combo to keep your fleet alive longer. Getting a couple of your own illuminators at that time can help keep kill his capitals, or you could just get carriers and bombers (might be the more flexible option).

I would try playing on a map with more space between you two, once that Advent get their higher level techs and ships online the TEC rapidly diminish as a threat, but early on you will have a rough time.

A double Halcyon start with adept drone anima on each gives you 8-9 fighter squadrons fairly early on...you can que up attack and move orders by the way which helps prevent the fighters from chasing strikecraft...also, seekers aren't bad against lrms either though they'll be easier for opponent to counter....advantage of seekers is that they don't require labs, but they are more vulnerable to flak and don't do jack to shoot down strikecraft...

Flak works best overall but you can spam seekers if you're really desperate. Once you get enough flak to counter LRM  switch to illums. Later on get guardians with repulse and its gg. Trick is he won't be able to beat your flak with LRM so he has to get flak or LF to counter your flak which is in turn countered by repulse.

And Goafan how the hell shield-something helps with LRMs? IDK.

Like Goa said, flak are your best bet; they cost the same (research-wise) as the LRM, in terms of both number of labs required and in terms of flat research cost.

If you try going for flak, and lose, it's because you're not getting enough flak in time. Try building a military faster. (remember: don't research ANYTHING you don't absolutely have to, and make sure you develop planets out of the red as soon as you colonize).

Fighters only work in the very early-game before your enemy has flak. After that, the enemy is likely to have at least a few flak ships, which counter fighters HARD, making fighters virtually useless in most situations. Carriers are often not a very useful ship to rely on except in the later parts of the game (with bombers).

Something else you may find surprising: If you're playing a really small map (where homeworlds are 3 or 4 or less phase jumps away from each other), you may find that building a lot of Seekers to counter LRM is viable. Cost-wise, if you build Seekers to counter LRM, Seekers will come out with a slight advantage. This is because scouts (of which the Seeker is one) do a good amount of damage against the "Light" armor of LRM frigates - and Seekers have a TON of durability for their cost.

If your enemy starts to adapt to your pure Seeker spam: use Seekers and Disciples (Seekers counter long range frigates, Disciples counter everything else in the beginning of the game - except for capital ships and starbases). This is known as "Tier 0 spam" which is Advent's greatest strength in the very early-game, and is used very often by pros.

This strategy is most effective with Advent, and although the other factions are capable of using it too, the other factions are usually more able to rush to decent military units.

Also, as Mecha-Lenin said, after the beginning of the game it's a good idea to switch to using Illuminators in general, because they're extremely effective at fleet-to-fleet combat. They're bad at focus-firing but do a whole lot of damage overall.

Pirates on? That'll throw the game... ugh.

If you want you can post a replay of a game you play and we can review it.

Wrath's advice is excellent, and I would stress his very first statement:

Even if you do everything right tactically (building the right units, micro battles, etc), you can easily lose simply by not having the economy to back up military production...it is fairly easy to pick up on fleet composition strategy just by doing some reading on the forums, but good tactics must be coupled by a strong early game expansion, and that will only improve with practice...

Learn some tricks of the trade (like using scouts and turrets to aid in you colonization efforts), and then practice...I'd suggest going on a small 1v1 map against an AI, ideally an unfair...you need to practice expanding wicked fast without compromising your ability to fleet up and stick it to your enemy when the first battle occurs...you don't need to play the entire game, just until after you've won the first fleet battle (or are clearly in a dominant position)...as you gain more experience, you'll acquire an intuitive feel for when you should have your 2nd, 3rd, 4th planet and so on...you'll also develop a good feel for how many scouts and colony ships you need, when and where you should send them, when to start heavily fleeting up for your first engagement, etc..

If you can acquire planets quickly and be ready to dominate the first battle then you are well on your way to being a competent player...everything else will be relatively easy to learn once you get that early game down pat (though true mastery will take some time)...

It also never hurts to consciously be aware of what your intuition is used to (like what game speed and map size) and what you are actually playing on...if you practice on normal speed on a roomy map (which surprisingly the small random map is) but then play with your friend on fast speed and on a more cramped map, your intuition is going to be off and you'll need to make a conscious effort to adjust accordingly...

As just an example, the turrets and scouts you build to help colonize planets will build faster on faster game speeds, but the AM regen of your colony ship or the damage done by bombarding krosovs won't be affected...in short, certain strategies work well on faster speed but not so well on slow or normal, and you'll need to adjust accordingly....

One other possibility to beat LRM: tech up to Heavy Cruisers ASAP. A certain player online always goes for heavy cruisers as soon as possible and is actually relatively effective at it, even in extraordinarily cramped maps. Scrap your capital ship factory on your HW after building your free one, upgrade logistics slots, and build a total of 5 military labs as soon as you can and research heavy cruisers. They counter LRM pretty effectively, but take a significant amount of research to get going. If the enemy builds mostly LRM and you build HC and the enemy isn't a skilled rusher, you'll almost certainly win, even if you have an economic disadvantage.

Or you could try using a more conventional strategy (like flak) while also effectively balancing economizing as well. Balancing fleet and economy well is a key skill of the experienced players.

If all he's doing is throwing LRMs (or Vasari Assailants) at you and you are Advent, then go with mass scout spam and be sure to set them to auto-attack (lower left setting, goldish button with a swirling arrow).  When you start the game, build one military lab and a 2nd frigate factory and start pumping out scouts.  Research the weapons upgrade for scouts/disciples; you can up the damage by 10% with just that one military lab.  Also consider upping the shields and hull by 10% (still only requires that one military lab).  Pump out a large amount of scouts.  If he counters the scouts by going with Cobalts or Flaks, you can start spamming out Disciples.  IMHO, Advent has the best (fighting) scout and light frigate in the game and you don't need any military labs to produce them.

Of course, while you're doing this, your capital ship should be out colonizing.

Does that mean go prog to start?

It really depends on how much space there is between homeworlds. Unfortunately OP didn't specify which map(s) they play with. If it's standard random-small he'd be best off with a Progen/Seekers to colonize and then getting Illuminators or flak soon, rather than rely on tier 0 when fighting the other player.

The less space there is between homeworlds, the more a player should think about using just tier 0 spam and with starting with a carrier instead of a colony cap.

Thats the general rule I go by but I wanted to clarify what Sanchez said...

spam colony frigates and dunov class capital ships and you will probably do fine.  remember to turn auto attack off.  hope this helps!

Thank you for all the usefull tips.  I appreciate it.  As for what maps, we've been working our way down the list of 1v1 small maps.   so sometimes theres 18 planets and some decent depth, othertimes...there isn't.  Ill try the scouts in our next vs game, and let you know how it goes.  it doesnt help that other then being a good rusher, he doesnt forget economic growth either.  So i just have to learn to suck less and be faster.   Happy new year all!

Ignore the post by Nightraid3r, he's just trolling.

The preset 1v1 maps are generally quite badly designed, unfortunately... nearly everyone in the multiplayer scene plays with random maps.

If the enemy knows how to rush well and is good at getting an economy up quickly, the heavy cruiser strategy I described will not work well. You would be smart to build an overpowering flak/Illuminator based fleet as quickly as you can, engage the enemy's fleet, and pursue the enemy once they retreat. If you invest solely in fleet and have Illuminators and Defense flak, your fleet will be much superior to a TEC enemy trying to eco on the side; the resource damage per second you do to their fleet will far outweigh whatever economy they've tried to build. (if you build and rush quickly enough). Keep pursuing the enemy fleet until it's almost completely dead or until they've managed to build a superior force up (unlikely).