So I'm not sold on the idea that this ship is good for the game and the simple reason is that when bringing a large ship, if you are outdeployed by a fleet featuring an Onager I find that unless you're a starhawk, you can often take crippling damage. I'm a big believer that the potential for bad matchups in game design should be minimized but as a rebel player who recently brought a home one (a slow ship I grant) and was forced to face off against an onager positioned as far from me as possible and armed with the longer range superweapon (name escapes me at the moment) I was forced to take really heavy damage on the way in which I didn't really have any kind of answer for. I brought Agate which guaranteed me a brace but it wasn't enough. I just couldn't get out of his arc. My defense tokens were never effectively locked down either. I got full use of them throughout the game.

FWIW, the onager was also packing ordnance experts, veteran gunners and Romodi and was the testbed class with the Rakehell title which allowed turning at speed 0.

Any tips?

Engine Techs on the MC80...

Fortunately Rebels have the best anti-Onager tech in the game with the MC30. If they hadn't been released first I would say shrimp were designed to kill the donkey.

Alternatively Dust Cloud objectives and Ezra can block the Ignition shots entirely on your approach. Onagers dislike Salvage run and they're absolutely not going to take Rift Ambush, giving you Advanced Gunnery so when your MC80 does close, it can shred the Onager with its side arcs.

What sort of list comp are you using?

Alzer is correct, pretty much.

If you don't have Engine Techs, a H1MC80 can't do very much except repair a lot - I've used a Testbed vs this setup twice and failed to kill the 80 at all (won by killing other things the 2nd time, so watch out for that).

A single CR90 in the side and then rear of the Testbed will (eventually) kill it, but loses vs the OSD version.

MC30s are horrible to Onagers, along with any sort of bombers. And a Raddus drop of an MC75 or equivalent will kill it quickly.

Dust Clouds, of course, but whether you want them vs non-Onager fleets is another matter!

What's the rest of your fleet and what else did the Imperials have?

So good old flanking maneuvers just like the core set and wave 2 days?

Does the Onager get that "stay out of the front arc" problem back into the game? Just seems like ISD front arcs are not feared like they once where.

Onager def has a higher learning curve to play against vs. the Starhawk, imo.

For me, Starhawk is like a mini-SSD, took me about 3-5 games playing with/against to figure her out. Onager I'm still learning and that's after using it 10+ times myself and getting murdered by it at least a dozen times. As folks have said, bombers, flanking, enginge techs, nav commands. Also anything that hurts her tokens suite - Mon Karren, Intel Officer, O. Palpatine, dare I say HTTs/Overload Pulse/NK7s.

If you don’t have a trick already in your fleet building, remember to keep speed up. Slow rolling benefits only an Onager. Even if you don’t get out of ignition arc, get into range where you can start hitting back.

If you are using Agate as your commander, I strongly advise getting an evade from her ability if playing against an Onager. It massively reduces the damage at extreme and long range, especially if you have a brace too.

That’s why Amity is the best Starhawk title in my opinion!

I was first player and chose rift ambush. I brought a home one with Agate, a trc90, a hammerhead torpedo with ex racks, two flotilla with one outfitted with tractor beam and slicer tools to stop a demo. Also brought Tycho, Shara, nym and two additional scurrgs. The other transport was on carrier duty and the trc was on flanker duty.

I was outdeployed by one and I hate Demolisher so I really wanted to drop the Demolisher stopper last but he just dropped it on the other side of the board. I ran home one beside the rift for the speed boost afforded by the objective to close as fast as I could. I took one red dice ignition attack and two more full red and black attacks on the way in despite me charging him. Between that and being pinged by couple of fighters that was it. It literally came down to a damage point. If he hadn't pinged me with one fighter on the very last squadron activation I would have lived and probably toasted the onager with double arc right at the start of the next round. I did manage to double arc him once and he did take three to the hull. Demo took out the hammerhead I was trying to run up the side to flank the onager. God i hate that ship. It's the laziest ship to play in the whole game. Small ships can't charge it, can't pass it, can't entrap it, can't outwait it. Seriously I hate this ship because you can only silver bullet it with lots of bombers over time. You can't oumaeuver it all and it almost never has to care at all about what you're trying to do which to me kinda defeats the point of a lot of what armada is about.

Have you tried bidding to be second? Using your objectives or certain upgrades to force it where you want it. It loves to be long range. Close range, not so much.

Demolisher needs practice to play - both to use it and to face it. It's actually very fragile and can be killed easily if you play better than your opponent. Your slicer flotilla sounds ideal to help with this.

I recommend you play Demo yourself and see how your opponents kill it, if you haven't done so already.

Did your H1MC80 have Engine Techs? If so, use them to get out of the Ignition arc; if not, Repair a lot - 6pts (with a token from Comms Net) gets you 3 shields back per turn, which negates approx 90% of the damage dealt by an Onager after bracing. (Which is why my Onager has an Intel Officer on board!) Agate allows you to get an Evade to cancel 2 dice at extreme range too.

There's lots of good advice here. I remember when I started playing my opponent played Ackbar Conga and I couldn't find a counter to it, until I posted here and someone suggested shoving a ship in the face of the front of the conga. I did that with my ISD2, and - lo and behold - I had found a fix. Everything has a counter.

I really recommend that you go for a large bid to get second player. At the moment, your opponent can pick the range, objective, and deployment to suit them. Even the best players would get stuck facing that. You can't beat your opponent on deployment, probably not on range, so go for objective. Choose some with few objectives, or ones where YOU place them, then move them all out of the way so he can't use them to boost Romodi's damage. I think the bid here will be key to your victory.

Given what you have listed as your fleet, I would suggest you drop Home One. It only benefits your TRC90 and Hammerhead, and neither of them see a major gain from it. That's 7pts towards your bid.

Move your tractor beam to your HMC80, because then it can be used against any ship you're likely to meet, instead of only small ships when it's on the transport Since the HMC80 will be Demolisher's primary target you'll get best use out of it that way.

5 hours ago, Gilarius said:

Demolisher needs practice to play - both to use it and to face it. It's actually very fragile and can be killed easily if you play better than your opponent. Your slicer flotilla sounds ideal to help with this.

I recommend you play Demo yourself and see how your opponents kill it, if you haven't done so already.

The thing about Demolisher that separates it from any other ship in the game is that I find it relies on user error to be defeated barring always bringing bombers which usually don't stop it from reaching it's target anyway. It has too much freedom to determine its approach and angle when you consider it can act on those things by firing immediately. I sat with a Demo and a maneuver tool for an hour and tried to work out any safe way to deal with it when it is facing a lone small ship and I came to conclusion that unless you're a flotilla or an mc30, every other small ship anywhere near it either becomes dead or crippled. It simply throws too much firepower with too much positioning flexibility and doesn't permit the chance of a substantial response. Obviously if you throw enough firepower at anything it will crack but you have to get that firepower to where demo is and you have to do so in time to stop it and also hope that firepower isn't interfered with on the way in. Unlike Every other ship in the game Demolisher doesn't entrap. It doesn't care where you're going because it can simply move towards you and kill you. It has no need to preposition. I've seen it take a home one from full to dead in a last first move and home one never got a shot off. That's wrong.

I watched the Master of the Fleet Armada channel for 32 hours. Demolisher featured in 12 of those games and was only destroyed 3 times:

Once where the opponent outactivated it by two, outdeployed it by four and made demo the most wanted ship so everyone was slinging more dice at it than normal.

Once where demo was used as the set aside ship in hyperspace assault and was immediately under fire from multiple ships and squadrons the moment it dropped. Even then it still destroyed it's intended target (an assault frigate) before going down.

Once by another Demolisher which simply out-demolishered it by doing what Demolisher does.

That's bad. It seems to suggest that barring extremely favourable circumstances that often involve a silver-bullet solution, Demolisher simply can't be handled if it's being properly employed. It falls on it's user to make a mistake because on it's own it's simply too flexible a tool. That removes agency from the opponent and from the strategic value of armada at large.

1 hour ago, Garrett17 said:

The thing about Demolisher that separates it from any other ship in the game is that I find it relies on user error to be defeated barring always bringing bombers which usually don't stop it from reaching it's target anyway. It has too much freedom to determine its approach and angle when you consider it can act on those things by firing immediately. I sat with a Demo and a maneuver tool for an hour and tried to work out any safe way to deal with it when it is facing a lone small ship and I came to conclusion that unless you're a flotilla or an mc30, every other small ship anywhere near it either becomes dead or crippled. It simply throws too much firepower with too much positioning flexibility and doesn't permit the chance of a substantial response. Obviously if you throw enough firepower at anything it will crack but you have to get that firepower to where demo is and you have to do so in time to stop it and also hope that firepower isn't interfered with on the way in. Unlike Every other ship in the game Demolisher doesn't entrap. It doesn't care where you're going because it can simply move towards you and kill you. It has no need to preposition. I've seen it take a home one from full to dead in a last first move and home one never got a shot off. That's wrong.

I watched the Master of the Fleet Armada channel for 32 hours. Demolisher featured in 12 of those games and was only destroyed 3 times.

That's bad. It seems to suggest that barring extremely favourable circumstances that often involve a silver-bullet solution, Demolisher simply can't be handled if it's being properly employed. It falls on it's user to make a mistake because on it's own it's simply too flexible a tool. That removes agency from the opponent and from the strategic value of armada at large.

I don't know how much experience you have, but this sounds very familiar! Almost all players new to Armada come across something that makes them say 'Not fair, it's unbeatable!' when what they should be saying is 'I don't know how to beat this - yet!'

An experienced player can generally beat an inexperienced one, even if they switch fleets over.

For a small ship, Demolisher is very expensive. It relies almost entirely on being able to use all of its defense tokens against even medium-sized attacks, without being able to equip ECMs (generally - Brunson or Iden are better choices than Tua). Even one accuracy can mean it dies against a large attack.

A flotilla laughs at Demo. A flotilla with Slicer Tools laughs even more as it can't even be rammed to death easily. A flotilla blocking Demo's attack run on something vulnerable negates so many points of your opponent's fleet that yours can get dominance elsewhere. Even when it finally gets into position and kills your large ship, it can be far too late and loses the game. If you have no flotillas, even a cheap Hammerhead can keep Demo away long enough for you to win. A fast-moving Demo can't turn sharply; and vice-versa. Make it hard for your opponent - and practice.

Demo can be outplayed by many fleets. But, you have to outplay your opponent. Then Demo becomes a liability due to its cost. It's 80 to 100pts, so losing 2 Hammerheads to it can still win you the game if the rest of your fleet succeeds.

2 hours ago, Garrett17 said:

The thing about Demolisher that separates it from any other ship in the game is that I find it relies on user error to be defeated barring always bringing bombers which usually don't stop it from reaching it's target anyway. It has too much freedom to determine its approach and angle when you consider it can act on those things by firing immediately. I sat with a Demo and a maneuver tool for an hour and tried to work out any safe way to deal with it when it is facing a lone small ship and I came to conclusion that unless you're a flotilla or an mc30, every other small ship anywhere near it either becomes dead or crippled. It simply throws too much firepower with too much positioning flexibility and doesn't permit the chance of a substantial response. Obviously if you throw enough firepower at anything it will crack but you have to get that firepower to where demo is and you have to do so in time to stop it and also hope that firepower isn't interfered with on the way in. Unlike Every other ship in the game Demolisher doesn't entrap. It doesn't care where you're going because it can simply move towards you and kill you. It has no need to preposition. I've seen it take a home one from full to dead in a last first move and home one never got a shot off. That's wrong.

I watched the Master of the Fleet Armada channel for 32 hours. Demolisher featured in 12 of those games and was only destroyed 3 times:

Once where the opponent outactivated it by two, outdeployed it by four and made demo the most wanted ship so everyone was slinging more dice at it than normal.

Once where demo was used as the set aside ship in hyperspace assault and was immediately under fire from multiple ships and squadrons the moment it dropped. Even then it still destroyed it's intended target (an assault frigate) before going down.

Once by another Demolisher which simply out-demolishered it by doing what Demolisher does.

That's bad. It seems to suggest that barring extremely favourable circumstances that often involve a silver-bullet solution, Demolisher simply can't be handled if it's being properly employed. It falls on it's user to make a mistake because on it's own it's simply too flexible a tool. That removes agency from the opponent and from the strategic value of armada at large.

Demolisher costs, as a realistic minimum, 73pts. That's with External Racks, Ordnance Experts, and the Demolisher title on a Gladiator I. More commonly it'll cost 90, with Brunson, Engine Techs and Assault Concussion Missiles in place of ExRax.

That's the price of a medium base ship.

Of course a 70-90pt small base ship will destroy any other small base ship apart from the MC30, which typically costs 70-90pts. You'd expect it to, just as you'd expect an ISD2 to beat an MC80.

I got pretty hung up on the Starhawk when it came out and decided it was unbeatable. Eventually I realised that killing everything BUT the Starhawk could win the game, and I started ignoring them.

I'm not saying 'ignore Demolisher', but it's not overpowered and you will find an answer.

3 hours ago, Gilarius said:

I don't know how much experience you have, but this sounds very familiar! Almost all players new to Armada come across something that makes them say 'Not fair, it's unbeatable!' when what they should be saying is 'I don't know how to beat this - yet!'

...

Demo can be outplayed by many feets. But, you have to outplay your opponent. Then Demo becomes a liability due to its cost. It's 80 to 100pts, so losing 2 Hammerheads to it can still win you the game if the rest of your fleet succeeds.

Except that those hammerheads sole purpose shouldn't be Demolisher fodder.

Let's work backwards from that.

A Demolisher can often flatten a hammerhead with a double arc. An easy thing to achieve given demolisher's movememt options. A Demolisher racing down the side of the board will often make contact with ships on the opposing side no later than turn 3. If you brought small ships that gives you three turns before it starts killing. That means you have three turns to get mileage out of a flanking hammerhead before it's brought down. Maybe 4. While a hammer head is worth less points it typically needs more time to contribute and since a hammerhead doesn't typically one-shot things itself it's usually expected to contribute to a larger mass of firepower. Thus the destruction of one before it's had a chance to contribute (especially since it often requires short range to do so) means you not only lose the hammerhead but you also lose the firepower contribution you were going to bring against another target which "loses" you the points it can no longer help score.

A can-do attitude is all well and good but in 20 games played and 30+ or so games watched I have to see a viable strategy against it that didn't involve Demolisher starting at a big disadvantage.

Most other ships have a discernable weakness or set of principles you should follow when confronting it which can be applied by almost any other ship because they almost always involve positioning. I.e a home one has a weak front arc and so confront it from there, approach liberty from its flanks and no defensive retrofit, don't let an mc-30 get close or try to pass it or park a ship in its front arc until you can. Race to the back of an SSD while keeping your distance. The Starhawk and the VSD are slow so keep your distance until ready to close fast.

These are all things that can observed and acted upon by an opponent.

Demolisher advice always seems to be silver bullet advice. "You have to bring bombers" is usually the most common. I'm not sure I buy this given the fact that even 3 blue black bombers can't finish demo in a turn and then have to chase it (with a carrier) to follow up by which time demo has often already left and done it's work. The other problem with this is that demo usually isn't the heaviest hull on the imperial side so focussing it means the bombers aren't assisting with that. So devoting bombers to less points and not being able to stop demo in time anyways seems like a waste. Demo is just a handicap you have to live with.

To put it another way, what is the advice you would offer ANY opposing fleet against Demolisher in general regardless of it's make-up other than "avoid it" which is already a very tough ask.

28 minutes ago, Garrett17 said:

Except that those hammerheads sole purpose shouldn't be Demolisher fodder.

Let's work backwards from that.

A Demolisher can often flatten a hammerhead with a double arc. An easy thing to achieve given demolisher's movememt options. A Demolisher racing down the side of the board will often make contact with ships on the opposing side no later than turn 3. If you brought small ships that gives you three turns before it starts killing. That means you have three turns to get mileage out of a flanking hammerhead before it's brought down. Maybe 4. While a hammer head is worth less points it typically needs more time to contribute and since a hammerhead doesn't typically one-shot things itself it's usually expected to contribute to a larger mass of firepower. Thus the destruction of one before it's had a chance to contribute (especially since it often requires short range to do so) means you not only lose the hammerhead but you also lose the firepower contribution you were going to bring against another target which "loses" you the points it can no longer help score.

A can-do attitude is all well and good but in 20 games played and 30+ or so games watched I have to see a viable strategy against it that didn't involve Demolisher starting at a big disadvantage.

Most other ships have a discernable weakness or set of principles you should follow when confronting it which can be applied by almost any other ship because they almost always involve positioning. I.e a home one has a weak front arc and so confront it from there, approach liberty from its flanks and no defensive retrofit, don't let an mc-30 get close or try to pass it or park a ship in its front arc until you can. Race to the back of an SSD while keeping your distance. The Starhawk and the VSD are slow so keep your distance until ready to close fast.

These are all things that can observed and acted upon by an opponent.

Demolisher advice always seems to be silver bullet advice. "You have to bring bombers" is usually the most common. I'm not sure I buy this given the fact that even 3 blue black bombers can't finish demo in a turn and then have to chase it (with a carrier) to follow up by which time demo has often already left and done it's work. The other problem with this is that demo usually isn't the heaviest hull on the imperial side so focussing it means the bombers aren't assisting with that. So devoting bombers to less points and not being able to stop demo in time anyways seems like a waste. Demo is just a handicap you have to live with.

To put it another way, what is the advice you would offer ANY opposing fleet against Demolisher in general regardless of it's make-up other than "avoid it" which is already a very tough ask.

To win consistently in Armada, you have to play better than your opponent. Having a 'hard counter' in your fleet means you can beat a particular type of fleet easily, eg a triple Onager fleet will beat some fleets 400-nil, whilst losing 400-nil vs some other ones assuming equal skill.
There is no 'hard counter' or 'silver bullet' against Demolisher, so winning during list-building is much harder. Practice against it. Practice using it. These are the best methods of finding out how You can beat it. What works for one person, with one fleet, has no guarantees to work for another player - or even the same player using a different fleet.
I am not an expert; I've attended one real tournament and one online tournament (which I played more than one game in). Mid-table results both times. I've had Demo shot out from under me, and also had Demo win me games.
Things I've learned: Demo does not like bombers; does not like being shot in the rear; does not like Raddus drops or Hyperspace Assaults; does not like facing Mon Karren, even at long range; does not like being rammed; does not like Dodonna inflicting his choice of crits; does not like Precision Strike repeatedly flipping a Structural Damage card face-up again; does not like having to slow down in order turn sharply or be out of the game for multiple turns but then has to stay in range of enemy attacks; does not like Onagers; does not like any large ship acting after it has to; does not like accuracies (or Sloane pre-spending its tokens); there's a massive list of these! I haven't put the flotilla stuff in again, you can read that from the previous posts.
And the good thing for you is, this list applies to most ships. You don't have to do anything really special to counter Demo!

According to the Prime Championships data speadsheet, Demolisher gets taken by approx 1/3rd of Imperial players; and approx 1/3 of Imperial players in the top rankings have it. By itself, it seems to make no difference in how well an Imperial fleet performs. The previous year, 40% of them used it - and 40% was the average for the top ranks again. This shows it isn't overpowered. Counter-play by almost any fleet can beat it.

There are other people also saying the same thing in this thread: practice. 30 games is a decent number, you probably have most of the tools you need to be successful already - just take in what we are all saying and don't fear Demo so much that you can't see its vulnerabilities. At the moment, it reads like you feel beaten before you start, which then leads to you losing and that adds to your feelings.

Fly it yourself. Discover how it loses. Good luck!

6 hours ago, Garrett17 said:

I sat with a Demo and a maneuver tool for an hour and tried to work out any safe way to deal with it when it is facing a lone small ship

You have already solved the conudrum, you just dont realise yet.

The key is not to let Demo gang up on one small ship at a time. You can afford to lose a small ship as bait, but no more, so bring your fleet together and overlap threats.

Nah that was my first thought too. The problem to that is two-fold and relates to a deployment problem.

Typically I will bring no more than one large or medium ship. This means the rest of my battle line is anchored by small ships which always creates one of two scenarios.

1) if my opponent outdeployed me, he'll run demolisher down the side furthest from the largest ship which brings me to the traditional problems described above. The smalls will be eaten first from the side or from the back as demo gets behind them and if my regular opponent thinks it's too risky he simply doesn't engage. Barring facing two souped up hammerheads head-on no two rebel smalls (barring the mc30) can destroy a demolisher because one of them will likely being destroyed first.

2)if I outdeployed my opponent i have the opportunity to threaen Demolisher immediately with my largest ship but I have to keep my biggest guns trained him to warn him off and excepting those cases where demolisher is the biggest enemy ship on the board, this means my biggest guns are stuck covering demolisher and the rest of the fleet has to fend largely for itself. Eventually I also have to move. Given demo's threat range I either have to face it head on or make a break for it both of which demolisher can take serious advantage of with its ability to fire first as I close in. A perfect liberty or home one shot at medium range might do it but if it doesn't demo will immediately slip by and usually smash you right in the side or back for your trouble.

I'm not saying defeating Demolisher is impossible but I find it requires so much of your available resources that in a sense it wins anyway just by the sheer amount of effort it draws away from anything else. Even though it's expensive it's almost always worth the points.

As for it not always being in winning fleets I'd venture that's not because of Demolisher but more because the Imperials are a more difficult side to play once both players really know what they're doing (at least until wave 7). A lot of the other ships on the imperial side (arqs, raiders, interdictors, VSDs) don't fill out the imperial ranks quite as well as their rebel counterparts. I would describe the factions as balanced but I think rebel ships are more reliable in general while imperial ships were a mix of hits and misses until a lot of the wave 7 and RiTR stuff hit so they're "balanced" but the rebels have a smoother batting average.

12 minutes ago, Garrett17 said:

Nah that was my first thought too. The problem to that is two-fold and relates to a deployment problem.

Typically I will bring no more than one large or medium ship. This means the rest of my battle line is anchored by small ships which always creates one of two scenarios.

1) if my opponent outdeployed me, he'll run demolisher down the side furthest from the largest ship which brings me to the traditional problems described above. The smalls will be eaten first from the side or from the back as demo gets behind them and if my regular opponent thinks it's too risky he simply doesn't engage. Barring facing two souped up hammerheads head-on no two rebel smalls (barring the mc30) can destroy a demolisher because one of them will likely being destroyed first.

2)if I outdeployed my opponent i have the opportunity to threaen Demolisher immediately with my largest ship but I have to keep my biggest guns trained him to warn him off and excepting those cases where demolisher is the biggest enemy ship on the board, this means my biggest guns are stuck covering demolisher and the rest of the fleet has to fend largely for itself. Eventually I also have to move. Given demo's threat range I either have to face it head on or make a break for it both of which demolisher can take serious advantage of with its ability to fire first as I close in. A perfect liberty or home one shot at medium range might do it but if it doesn't demo will immediately slip by and usually smash you right in the side or back for your trouble.

I'm not saying defeating Demolisher is impossible but I find it requires so much of your available resources that in a sense it wins anyway just by the sheer amount of effort it draws away from anything else. Even though it's expensive it's almost always worth the points.

As for it not always being in winning fleets I'd venture that's not because of Demolisher but more because the Imperials are a more difficult side to play once both players really know what they're doing (at least until wave 7). A lot of the other ships on the imperial side (arqs, raiders, interdictors, VSDs) don't fill out the imperial ranks quite as well as their rebel counterparts. I would describe the factions as balanced but I think rebel ships are more reliable in general while imperial ships were a mix of hits and misses until a lot of the wave 7 and RiTR stuff hit so they're "balanced" but the rebels have a smoother batting average.

You still aren't listening to what we're saying. Try playing Demo.

Your deployment issues are a red herring; you need to be able to play whilst out-deployed because it happens. Try playing Solar Corona as first player? Demo loves being First player more than second, so then try Solar Corona as Second player; again, you need to be able to win from this position too.

And that last part regarding the percentages of winning fleets? That was only looking at Imperial players: 30% of Imperial players turned up to large events with Demo in their fleets; 30% (approx) of the Imperial players who made it to the top in those events had Demo. That isn't 30% of all the players - just the Imperial ones. If Demo were as powerful as you make out, either all the Imperial players would have brought Demo or, at a minimum, the percentage of Imperial players fielding Demo would have increased. The fact the percentage is fairly flat shows that the presence or absence of Demo made no difference to their chances of making higher rankings.

The trick with dealing with an Onager is pretty simple: Make its primary target as inconvenient to attack as possible to buy time to move your other ships/squadrons into position to attack its side and rear arc. The simplest way to accomplish that is to maneuver your big fish in one direction, away from the Onager, while you send your little fish in the opposite direction.

It's not rocket science.

Sure, Engine Techs can help a MC80 try to counter an Onager by either charging forward to try to get past its Special Arc or running away to try to minimize its damage at Extreme range. However, ET requires Nav commands and there are other commands that can be more useful when under attack from a Onager.

If you've brought a MC80 Command Cruiser, presumably you're using it as a carrier and squadrons factor heavily into your build. You shouldn't let the presence of an Onager completely spoil your intended strategy. If you use Nav commands for ET, your MC80 can't activate 4+ squadrons and your squadrons could be left stranded and unable to attack/move. It's probably better to get your MC80CC and squadrons into activation range of the Onager ASAP and attack its vulnerable flanks.

Once your squadrons are in attack range of the Onager, you probably won't need to activate them every round -- they can wait until the Squadron Phase to attack -- so the MC80 can queue up Repair commands to restore shields and shed damage cards. You just need to plan ahead and time the Repair commands correctly. Or, place Leia on a 1-Command ship and use her ability to change the MC80CC's top dial every round to the command that is most beneficial to it.

IME you only need to survive the Onager's Special Arc attacks until Round 4; by Round 4 or 5, your ships will either be destroyed or out of its Special Arc, and you'll be in a position to pummel the Onager. The trick is making sure that enough damage-dealing ships and squadrons survive the Onager's attacks to kill it in the later rounds.

Even if you lose your MC80 to the Onager, it doesn't automatically mean you'll lose the battle because if you destroy the Onager it could be worth as much or more than the MC80.

IME, it's the enemy ships or squadrons that are supporting the Onager that will be pivotal to the battle, because the Onager is kind of a one-trick-pony and it's usually out of tricks halfway through the battle. However, if paired with a Star Destroyer, an Onager can be even more difficult to deal with. A common tactic, especially with Romodi, is for the Imperial player to use a Star Destroyer to block for the Onager so it can use its Special Arcs more than it otherwise would. And with Romodi, the blocking SD gives the Onager an extra Red die while obstructing the enemy's attacks on the Onager.

Another tactic I've seen is the Imperial player maneuvering a Raider to guard the Onager's flank against squadrons. Both Impetuous and Instigator titles can be devastating against squadrons, in which case it's probably better to attack the Onager head-on and keep away from the Raider.

I've also encountered a variation of that tactic with a VSD to counter ships attacking the Onager's flank. If CR90s or Hammerheads or Gladiators or Raiders are focused on flanking the Onager, a VSD can easily take them out with its front arc.

So dealing with an Onager is often a lot more complicating than simply countering the Onager itself. That's what makes Armada such a fun and challenging game!

Lol

4 hours ago, Revan Reborn said:

The trick with dealing with an Onager is pretty simple: Make its primary target as inconvenient to attack as possible to buy time to move your other ships/squadrons into position to attack its side and rear arc. The simplest way to accomplish that is to maneuver your big fish in one direction, away from the Onager, while you send your little fish in the opposite direction.

It's not rocket science.

Insults?

Really?

I always assumed it wasn't rocket science to not open an advice write-up with an insult.

This is usually the part where someone refuses to own up and goes looking for an excuse as to why that's ok.

2 minutes ago, Garrett17 said:

Insults?

Really?

I always assumed it wasn't rocket science to not open an advice write-up with an insult.

Grow a thicker skin and/or stop over-reacting to every little perceived slight.

8 minutes ago, Revan Reborn said:

Grow a thicker skin and/or stop over-reacting to every little perceived slight.

See my last post.

All reaction. No responsibility. 100% predictable. 0% class.

Seriously, what is it with some people that makes them so afraid to walk back a simple mistake?

Instead of "WELL IF YOU'RE OFFENDED IT'S YOUR FAULT!!"

You could try "Sorry, maybe that was a bit harsh."

Sass aside, honestly I AM actually trying to do you a favour here.