You were right, plats flat own HW1 fighters.
we ran 3 test, got flat owned all three times
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I did go specifically to the single largest resource concentration and rushed plats in a near optimal fashion though. On Wreck (where some random BC showed upâŚ) I actually had 6 collectors on the spawn patch until the MS moved close to the mid then relocated everything.
It turns out that your best bet is defender spam - their combination of armor and (slightly broken) evasiveness makes them difficult to take out compared to interceptors or bombers.
I also think a HW1 player doing a near optimal DD rush after an initial fighter attack can still win in a 1v1, but that would not work in a 2v2 as you would get hit during the tech switchover.
Aye, plats are the only thing that can make the dps/hp/time-to-build threshold to survive a B&C attack.
Then the HW1 player can react, by pulling back the ball, and attacking where the plats are not.
Plats are cheap, but they ainât free. They take up that critical single build que. Once they get done waddling along to their position, theyâre done. They can protect but not project.
The B&C makes a HW2 player react, rather than allowing preemptive action.
It can be used to help dictate what the enemy does and where⌠for a time.
What you do with that window is another discussion. 
Yep, didnât imply it was a winning strategy, just an effective counter to not losing in the first 10 minutes.
If I face plats as an answer to early HW fighters I would switch up to defender then frig destroyer quickly.
What plats do is let you last long enough to tech up a bit. In a 2v2 or 3v3 they will hold off rushers long enough to let whoever isnât being attacked make a move.
Did you tried to rush the plat subsystem, everytime that i see one i go for it, usuallay i have fighters enough to destroy it, and the enemy only gets 2 or 3 plats out in the meanwhile, unless he does have carrier and ms togheter, in that case it is not possible to destroy 2 plats subsystems at the same time.
I had carrier and MS together with 10+ platforms out before Rata had enough interceptors to launch an attack. I did micro them a bit to target interceptors over scouts (20 scouts wonât kill a subsystem quickly where 20 interceptors certainly will) but I had unit cap in platforms before he could get bombers out.
I teched to flaks and stationed them inside the platforms - once you have 6-8 of them they can take out HW1 fighters and even assault frigates fairly easily, then with imp manufacturing and ions+marines even ion frigates or DDs are of limited utility.
I have not tried this strategy with Vagyr but I think it would work better assuming plats are equal - Vagyr assault frigates are very good against HW1 fighters (they 1-shot them and hit 31% of the time) and HMFs can even handle DDs factoring in relative build times.
A Taiidan player can try defense field shenanigans but that ties up 2 production lines (to have enough to block fire most of the time) and lets the HW2 player simply spam ion/HMFs until they have unit cap and just run them over, or send capture frigates to the CC/DDs which do appear.
I still think HW1 has a slight edge (maybe 60/40) against platforms but by no means can a fighter rush alone win against this strategy. You need to get DDs out fast and keep fighters back far enough to defend against marine frigates (or abuse the HS bug but I wonât consider that).
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