Returning Armada: More harm than good?

from Sins Forums
Playing the Vasari on Single Player FFA on Systems Of War (which is a 5-star, 50-planet map), I eventually got to the point of having all researches and a maximum fleet. The rest of the game involved me hunting down the remaining empires on the other star systems. The Returning Armada skill began to hurt me in this regard. The Dark Armada would spawn at over a dozen planets where I had built the Phase Stabilizers for quick phase jumping. This put my fleet capactity in the negative hundreds, even though I had full fleet capacity research and there was no way of getting it back to a positive value, except scouring down all the planets with Phase Stabilizers, scuttling the Dark Armada units, and hoping I could rebuild my actual fleet before another Dark Armada spawned. The Dark Armada are nice as a supplementary defense for your planets, but they become pointless as they use up your supply. And since the Returning Armada skill is at the final technology level, by the time it is researched there isn't a need for it.

I suppose I could scuttle Military Laboratories until the last level of military research is unavailable to effectively stop the research. I do not know if there is a way to undo research, but in future games as the Vasari, I will never research Returning Armada.
45,911 views 29 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Turn off autocast.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
ya turn it off and link all the dark armadas and send them to the "eye of terror" Lanneshe welcomes them all lol. I use Vasari almost exclusively and go out of my way to kill them first in MP that autocast from the tunneler is both helpfuland a hindrance so turn it off
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Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
It's a high end Vasari tech, that causes your phase gates to spawn reinforcement ships periodically, as long as you have fleet points available.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
The autocast function really is a nuisance if forgotten about, which I have a knack of doing. I don't like the fact it can take logistics into the negatives instantly. Does anybody know what the stopping point is for that? I've had it up to -81 before.

It sucks when (god forbid) one loses a cap ship and it's logistics is automatically taken by one of the gates one forgot to turn off, but easily remedied.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I don't like the fact it can take logistics into the negatives instantly. Does anybody know what the stopping point is for that? I've had it up to -81 before.
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That's strange, as it shouldn't be able to go more than one ship past the limit. Once you're negative it won't summon ships when cast.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
My first thoughts were like yours but i learned to like it. Since... think about this scenario. You have many planets with phase stabilizers (5 or so) and one of your planets is getting raided by enemies but your main fleet is on another system. Given the great timing by the AI your defensive fleet is outmanned & outgunned to defend it.

The trick is i can send in endless supply of "free ships" that can keep them occupied until i can send in my bigger fleet to scare them away or use it as an advantage : attack a planet of theirs (AI calls them away quite fast). It's quite handy if your empire is well connected. There's many uses to it.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Playing the Vasari on Single Player FFA on Systems Of War (which is a 5-star, 50-planet map), I eventually got to the point of having all researches and a maximum fleet. The rest of the game involved me hunting down the remaining empires on the other star systems. The Returning Armada skill began to hurt me in this regard. The Dark Armada would spawn at over a dozen planets where I had built the Phase Stabilizers for quick phase jumping. This put my fleet capactity in the negative hundreds,
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A kryo noted, this shouldn't be possible - Returning Armada should only summon ships when you have positive capacity, so it should only be able to go one ship's worth of negative (for example, your remaining capacity is 1, Returning Armada summons a ship with a capacity cost of 6, the ship arrives, your capacity becomes -5 and new ships stop arriving).

Do you have a replay of the game you could post?


even though I had full fleet capacity research and there was no way of getting it back to a positive value, except scouring down all the planets with Phase Stabilizers, scuttling the Dark Armada units,
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As others have mentioned, simply turn off the autocast on your Phase Stabilisers if you want them to stop summoning ships.


and hoping I could rebuild my actual fleet before another Dark Armada spawned.
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Erm, I use the Dark Armada ships to build my fleets...


The Dark Armada are nice as a supplementary defense for your planets, but they become pointless as they use up your supply.
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Ah, yes, if you're using them as defences, I can see the problem. I use them as factories that produce ships for free. ;)


And since the Returning Armada skill is at the final technology level, by the time it is researched there isn't a need for it.
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It's possible to tech up to Returning Armada within an hour of starting a (normal speed, normal research) game - in fact, teching directly to it is a valid strategy for the Vasari, at least in single player against Hard AIs.


I suppose I could scuttle Military Laboratories until the last level of military research is unavailable to effectively stop the research.
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Returning Armada is a civilian tech, not a military one.


I do not know if there is a way to undo research
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I've not had it happen to me, but as I understand it, if you don't have enough labs for a tech, it stops functioning - or at least you can't build new ships based on the tech.


but in future games as the Vasari, I will never research Returning Armada.
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Entirely up to you, of course, but I fear you're denying yourself one of the Vasari's greatest strengths. It would be like playing TEC and not researching trade centres...
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

"A kryo noted, this shouldn't be possible - Returning Armada should only summon ships when you have positive capacity, so it should only be able to go one ship's worth of negative (for example, your remaining capacity is 1, Returning Armada summons a ship with a capacity cost of 6, the ship arrives, your capacity becomes -5 and new ships stop arriving).

Do you have a replay of the game you could post?"

I've had this happen as well, i think it only happens when you have alot of phase gates built before you research the returning armada tech. Then when you do research it, the moment its done all your gates simultaniously summon reinforcements. If you already have a large fleet at that time its easy to go far into negative...
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Here is a replay of the last few seconds of the match before I saved. You can see my fleet supply is less than (meaning a bigger number, in negatives) -100.

http://www.ilstu.edu/~bswilli/ReturningArmada.record

I was unaware that you could disable autocasting of the Returning Armada. Thanks for the tip. Also, BigBadB, you are correct: Returning Armada is in the civilian technology tree, not the military. Scuttling the civilian research labs would therefore have an adverse effect, because it would also negate the Highly Attuned Sensors research.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
dont scuttle em.... use your imagination and pretend you are an AI and send them all in useless pathetic waves against them!
btw, dont forget to make sure they dont move together to get the full effect :P

anywho, back to my vasari game on my huge map :D
108 planets and 9 AI
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Scuttle the Dark Armada for additional pirate funding. :P
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Yall are right, they don't summon the armada if the remaining logistics isn't enough to summon. I think Horazon is somewhat correct about summoning from pre-built gates. I think when the research is done for the gates to summon, and it sets them to autosummon automatically, the timer for all gates is set to the same moment, and don't take into account other gates summoning at the exact same time.

I personally love the dark armada ability because, hey, free fleet in a matter of seconds.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I think the principle issue is that you sat and teched despite massive superiority over the enemy empires. You won't run into an issue with Dark Fleets being harmful in a hard fought game. :]
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
I've not had it happen to me, but as I understand it, if you don't have enough labs for a tech, it stops functioning - or at least you can't build new ships based on the tech.
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actually i thought that was how it worked but when watching a replay against the last person i played spamming that ability it turns out you can still summon units even without the labs. but you need at least 5 labs to rebuild all the gates destroyed.

honestly i think returning armada is a neat skill but when people abuse it and never build more than there beginning fleet of ships its ridiculous. I'v played against people on a medium map with 1 star where he maxed out his highest fleet capacity and was summoning ships on par with 3 other players built capabilities combined. the guy only had 3 planets and 1 asteroid counting his home world. where the 3 other players controlled 70% of the map
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
The problem for me is the difficulty is coordinating the gates in a large map. They are built with returning armada set to autocast, and you can't switch it off until the thing is built - so you need to come back in a few minutes to systems where you've queued up a bunch of buildings to switch the thing off. Otherwise you end up with odd ships scattered all over the place.

It'd help, and be really nice in general, if there was a way to select a system and say: all build rally points come to this system now.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Capital ships are actually a hinderance to Returning Armada. You'll get more bang using the supply pop on the dark horde than a level 1 capital ship.

Unless it is a tiny map, it is almost statistically impossible for your opponent to destroy ships faster than they are summoned in from multiple stabilizers. Keep in mind each planet can have multiples.

If you dislike recieving free elite ships faster than you can get them destroyed I'm not sure I can help you.

Returning Armada is actually a game-breaking ability and needs to be retuned. It will fill up a completely full researched pop cap in 5-10 minutes. After that it cannot be destroyed faster than new ships are coming in. Try filling your pop cap with Dark Armada and taking them, or even a portion of them, to a fully developed pirate planet. Even in that huge, 10 minute long battle will your fleet diminish. You will never leave your pop cap and essentially cannot lose. This is assuming a larger small type map or any medium+ map with a normal amount of planets.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with Luften on the tweaking need for returning armada.
If the Vasari established it and has a few gates ready it is extremely difficult to defeat him. Not only does he get free replacements faster than you can destroy them, he also can react with his entire, continuously replenishing fleet through the use of gates.
He doesnt even need an economy except for maxing fleet cap and the occasional weapon research.


Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
maybe they should set a logistics cap per gate, as in you can't have more dark armada from this gate until some of the fleet from that same gate is destroyed. Of course, that would kind of turn the gates into big hangars.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Returning Armada should be at least limited to ships you can build. Being able to pull down Enforcers for free with no military tech is crazy. I seem to remember that the official reasoning behind the siege nerf was that the counter took way more then the original strategy. Isn't it the same in this case? Unlimited free ships is a bit much, even for an "end game" tech.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top

The problem for me is the difficulty is coordinating the gates in a large map. They are built with returning armada set to autocast, and you can't switch it off until the thing is built - so you need to come back in a few minutes to systems where you've queued up a bunch of buildings to switch the thing off. Otherwise you end up with odd ships scattered all over the place.

It'd help, and be really nice in general, if there was a way to select a system and say: all build rally points come to this system now.
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This is what I've found as well, really there needs to be a way to turn of autocast for all your phase stabilizers, as well as setting a rally point. Going through all your planets looking for those with phase stabilizers turning auto cast off one by one is just a pain. It's really annyoing when you need a scout, colony ship or replacing a destroyed cap ship and can't build them because of reinforcements arriving.

I feel this is somewhat a issue with superweapons as well if you build several of them, no ability to coordinate them on a global level. Although if you get to this point you've probably already won the game.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
Shut up you idiots! Of course you can get it over capacity! That's the best thing about it! Now be quiet or you will get this nerfed or fixed D:
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

I don't like the fact it can take logistics into the negatives instantly. Does anybody know what the stopping point is for that? I've had it up to -81 before.


That's strange, as it shouldn't be able to go more than one ship past the limit. Once you're negative it won't summon ships when cast.


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Would be nice if instead of using antimatter and the cooldown just to summon nothing, it would make the fleet check BEFORE burning the antimatter and cooldown.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
This was a problem in beta, not sure why it wasn't fixed. :)

-100 is nothing, you guys aren't even scratching the surface with that.

If you really want to cheese the hell out of it, group your entire supply of phase gates(and not just one per planet, think bigger), take them off auto-cast, and fill up that fleet cap till you're nice and close to maxed, flip the auto-cast on.