Earth Third Age problems

[Garthim]

Need some tactical help. My friends does Earth Third age fleet and usually runs a fleet of nothing but hyperions and olympus corvettes. For command ships, in low pointage games, he uses the Avenger class carrier or in high lvl games, the Warlock. Any flights of fighters he has he uses as additional interceptors for his fleet, giving him lots of interceptor dice.

With my Centauri fleet, I cant find an effective way to combat the raw power he can throw in any direction from the Olympus corvettes turreted missles and railguns, the frontal barrage of the laser cannons on the hyperions, and of course, how well his ships are protected from all the additional interceptors.

Any ideas on how to combat this problem with a Centauri fleet and how I could find an effective way to down a Warlock with so many interceptor dice?

 

[Da Boss]

Ok what ships are using and at what levels

things to do:

Use your fighters (esp Raziks) to deal with his - yours are better (naturally) and your Balvarin is even more effective than his Avenger and still has Command to help you win Iniative.

Once its launched its fighters - use it as a gun ship - it has 10 dice double damage guns on the front, an inteceptor and good damage!

Concentrate fire on one ship - your guns should get through and once they do most of yours are double damage - nasty............

Beam ships - (Centauri have ships for whatever you want to do ) 8)

Sullust - 4 dice Precise beams at 24" (better than a Hyperion) and more importantly front arc (plus has two interceptors of its own)
Liati - Dodge, Double damage, precise front arc DD beam, rutarians, 2 90 degree turns - oh yes its good.
Primus - big bruiser with 6 dice beam
Dargan - Stealth, beams and very good guns and not that fragile.

PLUS use a Maximus as you approach - lending interceptors whilst on CBD

my normal fleets

5 pt raid

Liati or Primus
Balvarin
Maximus, Demos
Demos, Kutai, Haven x2

5 pt battle
2 Primus (squadroned)
Liati
Balvarin, Demos, Kutai, 2 x haven
Elutarin. Demos, maximus

Against a Warlock - simply overwhelm it with your own firepower - it only needs a couple of D Damage crits to really hurt him. Interceptors are good (thats why you have them too) but will go down.

Or use a Liati / Dargan combo - its unlikely he will get Boresight and once your on his flanks - pound him into oblivion.

 

[Greg Smith]

Bring a Balvarin with Raziks. The superior dogfighters with make quick work of his extra interceptors (and give you a command bonus and an initiative sink).

Also lots of dice from Vorchans/Demos will fairly quicky override interceptors. Even large numbers of interceptors will only stop 4-5 hits.

Or build a beam fleet with Sulusts and Darkners, and use Maximuses to give them interceptors of your own.

 

[No. 1 Bear]

In a 5pt Raid game bring 8 Demos and A balvarian. Send you fighters in on the hyperions first. Strip them of their fighter escort and their interceptors. Then unleash a payload of missiles. Repeat every other turn you have the manouverability to be able to do this. Hide behind some terrain and just unleash pain everyother turn at ranges where he can't hit you with his low range secondary weapons.

 

[Burger]

Haven x2

Remember they can't init sink any more. Well they can, but only once between them :lol:

 

[Da Boss]

true but they are useful little ships anyway

 

[Target]

I fight EA quite often with my Centauri & my mate does the same thing. I usually just take Vorchans ,Centaurions,Kutai & Balvarian mainly. I don't bother with Razik as i use Sentri as interceptors & for nothing else.They don't like when their missles don't do anything. Taking wings of sentri's as well ones on the balvarian.
He will quickly lose his fighters to your firepower. Just make sure what you shoot dies.
You either go all beam or all interceptable fire, just overwhelm it. Olympus are your first targets as they hurt if they get behind + easier to destroy-strip him of ships & bigger boresight ships start losing their effectivness .
Maximus is also useful for escort & manever to shield something important.
I prefer the Vorchan over the Demos for pure damage output. Sentri's keep them alive long enough for them to really hurt. DD just rocks.

 

[Joe_Dracos]

Need some tactical help. My friends does Earth Third age fleet and usually runs a fleet of nothing but hyperions and olympus corvettes. For command ships, in low pointage games, he uses the Avenger class carrier or in high lvl games, the Warlock. Any flights of fighters he has he uses as additional interceptors for his fleet, giving him lots of interceptor dice.

I run 3rd age and there are a few things that would make me worry about the Centauri. 1st though, use the P&P redundancy system and one of the optional Beam rules. This may hinder your beams, but it also hinders the Omega's beams too and that is the important part (I prefer beam option A). In high level games, use a single octurian in a squadron with 2 Primus's and 2 Maximus frigates. Your capital ships CBD while your Maimus frigates Conentrate All Defenive Fire Power. Next, you buy down and purchase as many hunting packs as you can. You can purchase a Patrol level hunting pack for 4 patrol points (2 Kutia's and 4 Havens). A couple of those hunting packs can go Olympus hunting, the thing with the olympus is that it only has one interceptor.

With my Centauri fleet, I cant find an effective way to combat the raw power he can throw in any direction from the Olympus corvettes turreted missles and railguns, the frontal barrage of the laser cannons on the hyperions, and of course, how well his ships are protected from all the additional interceptors.

If he's not using his fighters offensively, then he's wasting his fighters. Go on the offensive and dogfight as many of the enemy fighters as you can. They can't act as interceptors and dogfight in the same turn. It doesn't matter if you win or lose this dogfight, just that you dogfight and then waste the ship they were protecting. Amar carriers are a good choice for a skirmish level ship. They have 4 fighters and still have a matter cannon to supplement your Vorchans in a hunting pack.

Any ideas on how to combat this problem with a Centauri fleet and how I could find an effective way to down a Warlock with so many interceptor dice?

If you can't dogfight the fighters, use a few Rutarians (if you can afford them) and force him to roll his interceptors before the shooting phase. It doesn't matter how many interceptors a ship has, 1 is almost as good as 6 in the long run. After that use your Octurian+primus beam team to kill it or a hunting pack full of Vorchans. Also you can use Corvan's to twin link your matter cannons making them frighteningly effective.

In the long run, its important to make him choose between shooting at your big ships or your fast small ships moving up the flanks. All your DD weapons make every ship in your fleet exceptionally dangerous, especially in squadrons. Don't worry about being boresighted, it would be to costly for enough init. sinks to make that effective.