hey, maybe it’s better at the next beac 
With no way to disrupt a formation, a number of engineers and guard frigs is a very tough nut to crack. If Jericho torpedoes had better blast radii and damage and didn’t get shot down, they might break it up. Same with Nukes.
Sadly, right now there isn’t an option. It’s too bad the otherwise worthless tacklers can’t pull ships to them or push ships away, and Jericho torps are too slow and easily countered.
yep, currently there is nothing viable to use against a frig ball except for another frig ball
if you manage to kill some, the ones you killed first get respawned and magically teleport back where you killed them while you’re still working on the remaining ones and that is the most annoying part
i know when i kill them in sequence - 1… 2… 3… 1 returns… 4 almost dead, 2 and 3 return… endless cycle… where you add invulnerable barriers to the list
My first thought on the fourth picture, great, they’ve wasted all their minefields trying to get a kill for themselves. That’s a lot of mines. Minefields are an issue, but the pilots were wasteful. One minefield will shun an inty who sees it. It’ll disturb a fighter. A guard might say “let me clear the way, just heal me fast.” That looks like four minefields at least.
As for frigballs, based on news from the latest patch, I’ll assume the dev team will wait until after the tournament to deal with it. I don’t know how much code is set, but the recent nerf of Engineers was because it was determined their power was unbalanced and it would shame the devs while the tournament occurred.
With no way to disrupt a formation, a number of engineers and guard frigs is a very tough nut to crack. If Jericho torpedoes had better blast radii and damage and didn’t get shot down, they might break it up. Same with Nukes.
Sadly, right now there isn’t an option. It’s too bad the otherwise worthless tacklers can’t pull ships to them or push ships away, and Jericho torps are too slow and easily countered.
yep, currently there is nothing viable to use against a frig ball except for another frig ball
if you manage to kill some, the ones you killed first get respawned and magically teleport back where you killed them while you’re still working on the remaining ones and that is the most annoying part
i know when i kill them in sequence - 1… 2… 3… 1 returns… 4 almost dead, 2 and 3 return… endless cycle… where you add invulnerable barriers to the list
Frigballs are certainly hard to crack and frustrating to deal with regardless of the circumstance, but they aren’t invincible. They have their weaknesses which can be exploited. Granted, the margin of error with a frigball is smaller than it is with other team compositions, so perhaps this is where the balancing needs to be focussed.
As for how to deal with a frigball, take advantage of the fact that frigates are slow. Play a step ahead, and if that’s not enough, play two steps ahead. If it comes down to killing them to dislodge them from a beacon or a captain, make sure your team is focus-firing. Tacklers can reduce resists, Recons can reduce healing. Missile defence requires LOS. Ultimately, you’ll need a full team to crack a frigball – whereas other enemy compositions may require less group effort – which is why, I suspect, they are so powerful.
A squad of 4 cloaked interceptors can mess up a frig ball pretty bad… 4 fly in with camo and suicide in the middle.
censored, and that most likely ends up with no kills and only half-dead enemies at best…
because everyone has more than 40k EHP. not to mention the guards with their phase shield on thermal will barely get damage.
You would also have to be in a squad of 4 people with CO, which for me, is quite rare as well.
And engineers are really not the problem in frig balls, it is the guards that is the problem since they remove the abiltiy to counter them with inties.
I have no problems dealing with frig balls by myself. What makes my efforts useless is that it takes time to kill one and the previously killed will just respawn and come back while my team chases ‘killable’ oponents instead of focus firing / helping. A simple 1-2 ships holding them in spawn after i kill them would be enough for me. Solo playing is more complicated… yet simple if you don’t care xP
My first thought on the fourth picture, great, they’ve wasted all their minefields trying to get a kill for themselves. That’s a lot of mines. Minefields are an issue, but the pilots were wasteful. One minefield will shun an inty who sees it. It’ll disturb a fighter. A guard might say “let me clear the way, just heal me fast.” That looks like four minefields at least.
We were down to 8 points and they had 73 seconds on the beacon, they could afford to empty their minefields.
As for how to deal with a frigball, take advantage of the fact that frigates are slow. Play a step ahead, and if that’s not enough, play two steps ahead.
I was at C, I tried going to A and there was a mini frigball already at the beacon. I doubt going to B would have helped much.
A squad of 4 cloaked interceptors can mess up a frig ball pretty bad… 4 fly in with camo and suicide in the middle.
Assuming you don’t get killed by pulsars, or fire on the way in and you are still down your four covert ops. Right now you cannot defeat a frig ball without more ships and/or coordination. If they are spaced out, you might not even kill four, which hinders you just as much. Plus, you can always rely on the frigs moving to the next beacon before the first is gone, and if they do so as a group, your only recourse is to have your own ball to meet them.
So far the only thing that can put a dent on frig balls are the Anomaly generators. Since frig balls are at their strongest in Domination and Beacon Capture where they swarm and hang very close together. But even that is not a sustainable strategy. I really feel like making the Jericho torpedo require 2-3 shots from the missile defense would work wonders for breaking it up.
I was at C, I tried going to A and there was a mini frigball already at the beacon. I doubt going to B would have helped much.
That is where part two of my previous statement comes in.