Countering naval with air

[gvibes]

I am only about ten games in, but I have had a couple games where my early navy gets wiped out, and I am facing attack from, e.g., ~15-20 mostly T2 ships with shields and a T3 or 2, perhaps an experimental carrier too. I have T3 air, air superiority and a healthy economy. What's the best way to counter? It seemed to take a shit-ton of T2 torpedo bombers to even get through the shields, and they all get shredded on a single pass. Strategic bombers did OK, but not many managed a second pass. Didn't try gunships.

[uberge3k]

Mass for mass, T2 torp bombers can counter any naval unit cost-effectively. The solution is probably "MOAR torp bombers!!".

If you have a replay we might be able to offer more specific advice.

[gvibes]

Mass for mass, T2 torp bombers can counter any naval unit cost-effectively. The solution is probably "MOAR torp bombers!!".

If you have a replay we might be able to offer more specific advice.

That is the answer I was looking for. Thanks.

[Kryo]

as long as there is no splash anti air (either mobile aeon anti air or i think seraphim cruisers) you can also try gunships. Good thing is, when you succeed you can use the gunships somewhere else too.

[Batmansrueckkehr]

Mass for mass, T2 torp bombers can counter any naval unit cost-effectively. The solution is probably "MOAR torp bombers!!".

If you have a replay we might be able to offer more specific advice.

if so, please tell me the amount of torp bombers attacking 4 cybran cruisers. consider they are moving away from the torp bombers.
then tell me how many torp bombers u need for 3 uef cruisers under 2 shield boats.
considering the build time u cant compete with the production of the navy player. so if the navy player adapts properly there is no hope for the air player - even mass for mass.

so if u try to get rid of navy with only air, it is very hard. only chance would be to get him by surprise and to kill his navy production fast.

[Isen]

there are diferent kind of cruissers, there are real cruissers and fake cruissers, uef aeon and sera have real cruisers with the posibility of getting shielded or getting t2 hover flaks.
Cybran cruisser is just a fake. Gunships vs cybran cruissers. Gunships will win mass by mass, and as bigger are the numbers of gunships and cruissers, more % of gunships alive.
Test it if you dont trust me.

[noobymcnoobcake]

Mass for mass, T2 torp bombers can counter any naval unit cost-effectively. The solution is probably "MOAR torp bombers!!".

If you have a replay we might be able to offer more specific advice.

Not when shields are involved, and in phantom you will also see massed hoverflack

[-_V_-]

Countering naval with air is a bad idea in the first place.

It's only effective in the beginning.

It's only manageable in the beginning, but at some point you need to get in water and at least produce frigates (a swarm).

Once nicely shielded, air won't do shit except for the strats but then, have you checked the costs ?

BTW, this is part of the reason why seton is won by NAVY and not by AIR despite the urban legend that floats around

[Batmansrueckkehr]

8 gunships dont kill a single cybran cruiser when the cruiser drives away from the gunships.
2 gunships die before they reach the cruiser and the rest dies afterwards..

u only got a chance when the navy player sleeps...

[Myrdral]

This entire post is in direct response to the original poster, gvibes. I am not trying to teach anyone else here what to do, as they probably already know. This is neither a rebuttal or agreement to any of the other posts in this thread. It is my thoughts on a few reasonable approaches to give him the best chances of achieving a victory or at least salvaging some good fights and respect in any future matches where he finds himself in a similarly bad situation to what he describes.


[/TLDR]
Most likely, trying to kill his navy will only make your situation more desperate and eventually seal your defeat when you fail to kill his navy. Your best chance for victory is likely not in destroying his navy, but in sniping his ACU, production or economy. An ACU snipe attempt is likely your only reasonable chance of winning this game. In the case of destroying his production and economy, you are forcing the game to be a competition of his navy/other units vs your ACU, economy and production matched against your air/other units against his ACU, economy and production. Avoiding his navy as much as possible while you do this is paramount. You should also carefully plan out some shielded firebases and shields to protect your vital economic/buld power units and structures as long as possible. If your opponent's faction and naval composition allows for it, then you may try to kill the navy and succeed but it is really their mistakes that will allow you to do this, not your own micro or the air units you decide to build.
[/TLDR]

The remainder of this post details a few of the approaches you might take in this situation you descrbie, gvibes. Instead of immediately choosing to build an air attack force against his navy, quickly use your current air production to get T3 spy planes and scout for his ACU, production, economy and exact naval composition. First priority is to find the ACU and decide whether a snipe attempt has a high enough chance of success to warrant using what little time you have left due to the naval bombardment that is imminent. You must then analyze your intel quickly and choose to try to snipe his ACU, build up a force to kill his navy and any reinforcements or to destroy his economy and build power before attempting one of the first two options.

You have many options other than a direct attack against his navy. However, you must act quickly before he bombards your economy to the point where you cannot have any realistic hope to build a snipe attempt or counter. Remember, just because you have been building mostly air up until this point, does not mean that you cannot switch to something that is supported well by your high power output air economy. Do not FORCE yourself to build only air units and only to attack their navy. You can build whatever you think will make you win, be it T3 land, experimentals or of course your air. Attack whatever you think will give you the best chance of winning instead of only considering attacking his navy first. Such things include experimentals, air or otherwise; T3 land with rapid deployment in transports(circumvent their navy or it will fail); a secret navy; nuke; TML; artillery; PD; shields etc. You have so many more and almost certainly better options than trying to kill such a HUGE navy with just ASF, gunships and bombers.

If you insist on trying to rapidly build a way to defeat his navy, then at the very least, you should kill his naval factories first with strat bombers while attacking his engineers and other economy at the same time with other bombers and air of various types and tech levels. Gunships of any tech level, lower tech level bombers and transport drops with land of any tech level should be used to cleanup his engineers. You need to cause as much economic devastation to his ability to produce and fund his (hopefully) soon to be needed replacement naval units as possible. Only then should you regroup and return your air to air staging facilities. These same units you use to kill his production and economy will also be used in the attack on his navy. Basically, you kill any his high priority non-combatants which are not adequately defended against your forces while avoiding any that are well defended. You are looking to minimize any losses to your forces while causing as much damage as possible. Fly around his navy of course when you do this. The main naval force which is attacking your shoreline shortly will not be able to return in time to defend. He will likely just race against you to destroy each others economies. You are making the game a competition of who can mor quickly and efficiently kill each others economy with this strategy. It will be much easier to defeat his navy if you can first kill most of his eco with mainly strat bombers and also his production with mixed units.

Whenever you get enough forces to warrant trying to kill his navy, remember that is just as important to carefully consider how to go about destroying his navy through the air in addition to what units to use to do it. Considering you are attacking through the air, it is best to first focus fire on defeating the shields which are covering his naval AA units with the most AA potential against your particular air composition(flak is an increasing priority to target the lower tech air units you have in comparison to if you had more higher tech air units) and least health(usually cruisers and floating flak who are under the least number of overlapping shields will be your first targets here). This will allow you to kill your first cruisers more quickly then targetting his more heavily shielded naval AA first, or even worse, spreading your air attack against multiple units and even more shields before you get any damage or kills against his naval AA. There is quite a bit of micro and things like the angle of at which you launch your attack to consider as well as which air units to send in first to take fire or draw off fire and make it miss where applicable. Usually you want to maneuver in such a way as to draw as much fire as possible onto your fastest and most maneuverable air units. You can also use a few T1 air as fodder to take the hits from their initial volley of AA and quickly engage with all of your other air. Every little small advantage you can gain though micro and plan of attack here is valuable in deciding if you are successful in defeating the navy with your hopefully appropriately sized and composed air force. The solution to beating this diverse and large naval force is not to spam any one air unit or the other and to just start attacking random cruisers with them all attacking the same cruiser. You must find every advantage you can and are skilled enough to exploit. If your micro ability is not so great, then you can at the very least focus the cruisers who are covered by the least amount of shields and try to break through the more weakly shielded areas of their navy. Strat bombers are your best option. The aoe is so very important if they have as many shields as 'top players' get. To be honest, they are going to have enough shields and cruisers to make your air attack near impossible to succeed. They are going to be trying to scout you and seeing that yo uare still producing air and will spam even more shields, cruisers and other AA. Remember that they can bring engineers into the water to reclaim the naval battle that they just won against you and also to start b uilding things like AA defense structures. It seriously is near impossible for you to build any sort of air force composition and nubers to defeat this navy which already has a huge lead against you whle they are similarly building more counters to your air. You cannot win this race. The water is there domain and they will not lose it unless you severely outplay them in the next few minutes and the build the wrong units for some strange reason.