I've been thinking a bit more on this issue and something occurred to me: Reverie has certainly become less useful late game in rebellion then it would have been in diplomacy. In diplomacy it could lock down the biggest fish in the pond(capitalships), which is nolonger the case(titans are immune to disables).
Moreover there is A LOT more AoE flying around now the least of which is the advent titans attacking 4-3-3-4 enemies with their fore-side-side-back banks. That's potentially 14 enemies, only one of which you choose. These circumstances makes keeping enemies locked down in reverie much more difficult and often a matter of luck. Not to mention reverie has always had problems in late game fleet battles as if enemy focus-fire forces the Revelation to retreat out of range, all reveries end prematurely.
Which leads me to believe we may be thinking in the wrong direction. Rather then try to make the Revelation a strong late game combat frigate(which is an uphill battle) as many ideas involving a rework of Guidance have attempted, I suspect a better choice may be to focus on buffing the Revelation's early game combat presence.
It's level 6 ability alone would give it a reasonable transition into a siege-ship late game, but making it strong in the early game when fleets are small(perhaps even as a start ship) would be a great way to round the Revelation out, playing to the strengths it already has and giving it more of a purpose.
Now this is all very abstract, the question then becomes how could this be accomplished? Guidance seems to be the obvious candidate, and that said what generally makes ships strong in the early game is one thing: Raw firepower added. Note the word "added". Most fleetwide buffs are fairly small and pander more to the late game as a result. More often abilities that create ships, or give large buffs or debuffs on a small scale tend to add more raw firepower to a small fleet.
Traditionally this is the reason carriers have a long history of being used as early game capitalships- their complement of strikecraft mean they have more raw firepower then other capitalships. Not to mention all 3 carriers have an ability which adds firepower independent of fleet size(Missile Batteries, Expert Drone Anima, & Scramble Bombers).
Of course there are a number of ways to go about reworking Guidance to give the Revelation more of an early game combat presence. The first that popped into my head which would accomplish this while making thematic sense for the name "guidance" was:
Guidance: Target single Allied Frigate or Squadron of Strikecraft Deals 80/120/160/200% increase damage, has it's abilities cooldown 100% faster, and gains +4/6/8/10 armor for 30 seconds
Cooldown: 35 seconds
AM cost: 50/55/60/65
Note: the numbers looks big, but keep in mind this ability would be unable to target capitalships, titans, or starbases. it supercharges one of the little guys, that's all.
[comments: This ability would allow a single allied frigate or strikecraft squadron to do it's job substantially better, whatever that job may be, with added survivability. Not hugely significant late game, but very potent and flexible early game when fleets are small. Numbers of course may not be right, but view this more as a proof of concept.]
As I said previously there are a ton of other ways guidance could be reworked to accomplish this goal- this one was simply the first that popped into my head.
Also, Volt's implementation of Clairvoyance from his mod would be another tremendous contribution towards focusing on buffing the Revelation's early game, as getting deployable free culture centers would be most potent early when the enemy hasn't had time to build much culture.
All that said, specific ideas aside what do you guys think? I'm really startign to believe the key to making the revelation viable is to focus on early game buffs. If it had a strong early military presence that transitioned into a siege ship late game I suspect it would get used a lot more.
