So normally I defend the marza's ridiculous ultimate ability. You can counter it easily with the appropriate interrupt. However today I experienced hell.. aka 3 lvl 6+ marzas. As advent, I only have caps that can counter the marza's ability, and of the two caps that can do it, the only one that ever sees gameplay is the radiance battleship. Having 3 radiances, in any other scenario, is practically pointless.. other caps are much more useful to the fleet.
So it happens I only had 2 radiances at the time. Now you can say I shouldn't have warped my entire fleet in.. sure this makes sense, except my opponent had a sizable fleet there in addition to the marzas and would (and did) easily kill off my radiances. However since I brought the fleet along for the ride, I also lost a 1500 fleet point fleet. and I lost the fleet (the whole thing) before the radiances could even get in range to counter two of the marzas. If I had sent the radiances in alone, yes they would have countered the marzas, but they also would have been dead because of the supporting fleet and the marzas would be ready to fire again in a little over a minute. Radiances + guardian push? Perhaps. Guardian push can be exploited in any number of ways. Generally the push moves the marzas out of combat range anyway. Against an unskilled player this would likely break their fleet.. but agaisnt anyone with any small amount of skill this is at best a "soft" counter.
Then there is the bomber option. nope, no go there. 5 carriers and at least 20 flaks were in the defending fleet.
So, my argument isn't that the marza alone is overpowered. It is that multiple marza's are overpowered. Not only is it moderately difficult to counter, the range on the weapon is greater than the counters, and several marzas firing at once can destroy any number of ships before they can be moved out of range or close enough in range to kill the marzas. While there is technically a counter to this, I argue the ease with which several level 6 marzas can be obtained far outweighs the difficult and forced counter that must be put into play to stop complete destruction. The marza is versatile and powerful.. the counters necessary to beat it cost as much as the marza, but are far far less useful. However, they must be obtained in order to have a chance of beating a TEC player who favors the marza. I'll throw in a comparison between the marza and the advent starbase meteor shower here too.. it does 500 damage to a group of ships and has a significant recharge. The marza will have killed the entire fleet in the time it takes to recharge the meteor and both can be disabled equally easily.
3 marzas with this ability can also clean out an entire upgraded defensive setup (unless there's a starbase there as well) and all supporting structures in range in under a minute.
How to fix this? Well, I don't generally encourage increasing or decreasing abilities along the same axis (i.e. if firepower is too great, don't decrease it. You can't ever get quite the right balance doing this and you just end up with minmaxing and boring cookie cutter ships). Instead, I prefer changing some other facet of combat to create a more nuanced game. My solution would be to have the marza full stop while firing (this may already happen) and then have a significant cooldown period after the barrage during which movement, weapons fire, and antimatter and shield recharge are halted on the ship. This would make the TEC player be much more cautious about deployment of the weapon since the marza would be vulnerable for a period after firing, but it wouldn't eliminate the destructive power the marza is known for. It would also give other races more strategies to counter the marza..
Thoughts?
