A possibly game-unbalancing combo

from Sins Forums

Okay, so I understand that there are some very effective synergistic ship combos out there. For instance, a fun and rather obvious one for the Advent is to max out the Halcyon Carrier's "adept drone anima" ability and combine it with a Rapture's ability (I believe this is "Concentration Aura") to boost damage output for all strike-craft (or 'fighters', but as people have mentioned before, this works for all squadrons). Although this is kinda fun to do, it's not a game-winner for obvious reasons. However, I stumbled upon a rather simple one today that seemed quite unbalancing. Granted, I just started playing the game last weekend, and haven't subjugated myself to online slaughter just yet, so I may not have a broad enough perspective on what all can be done to counter this. And I suspect that some of you have already figured this out, since the combo is relatively simple.

Three ship types are involved: the Progenitor Mothership, the Revelation Battlecruiser, and disciple vessels. I'm not totally certain, but I doubt this combo works without researching the first six shield regeneration techs (the higher shield mitigation research makes it that much more gross), though I haven't tried it otherwise. This all centers on the Progenitor's shield regeneration special ability (maxed out to level three, which means your progenitor has to see some combat and get to level five or six, I believe). The Revelation has an ability that decreases the cooldown rate (by 40%) of all other ship's special abilities within a certain radius. Big woop, except you know what disciple's can do: they steal antimatter from other ships and transfer it to your own. What this means effectively is that your fleet ends up with an effective shield regeneration rate of around eighty to ninety points per second. The disciple vessels that the AI chose to focus fire on would typically lose their shields in about five to ten seconds (enemy fleets from 50 to 200 ships). I would activate the shield regeneration ability (which thankfully only lasts eight seconds), and their shields would be back up to full in less than eight seconds. Well, because the Revelation battlecruiser reduces the cooldown rate to about 15 seconds (I think it might be twelve, actually), I was losing very few of my ships in the first 45-90 seconds of every major battle. Yes, once everyone is out of antimatter, then the combo is much less effective. But if you haven't tried this yet, do so and tell me why you do or don't think this is too powerful.

Here's why I think it's unbalancing. Firstly, 45-90 seconds (the larger range of duration being for larger enemy fleets) is way too long to be losing only roughly three out of fifty of your fleet, particularly when the enemy is losing about 15-20 out of one hundred. Also, the combo isn't completely ineffective after that initial time period. In my own task force, all I had were 25 disciples, the 2 cap ships mentioned above, and 10 drone ships with fighters. This was against a much larger fleet of AI, half of which were LRM's, many cobalt's, about 10 (each) cruisers and flaks, and three cap ships. I ended up with both cap ships and about 10 disciples, which I think you'll all agree is a decisive win.

Here are some possible counters that I've thought of so far, along with why I don't think they will work well enough.

The Akkan Battlecruiser Ion Bolt directed at the Progenitor: this isn't a sure thing, simply because you can't keep the fast moving disciples from closing in to steal the Akkan's antimatter before your other two cap ships come within range.

The TEC's splash damage missiles for the LRM's: this is the best counter I can think of, but it still lacks in that it may not be enough damage. The shield regeneration ability targets ALL ships within a certain radius, so hitting all the ships with damage isn't a theoretically appealing way to circumvent the problem, although I've obviously yet to try this out with someone. Also, the LRM splash damage requires antimatter. This might have worked in the above example, but if I had roughly the same number of disciples as LRM's, it probably wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.

Let me know what you guys think. I'll be testing this again with much better mixes of ships (i.e. which will invariably include Iconus Gaurdians and Destra Crusaders) with my brother online. Anyway, I think this combo needs to be "mitigated" in some way.

strategy
10,578 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
The power of the Advent comes from these abilities. Other good ones that can decimate fleets are animosity and vengence, malice combined with other attacks... etc. The Advent's power is based off fleet combos. If you take that away, there goes the ability to win.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
"Here are some possible counters that I've thought of so far, along with why I don't think they will work well enough."

Counters for Vasari:

-Phase missiles. Against an Advent, I'd have this highly researched by the time you were able to pull this off. Phase missiles ignore shields, and damage the hull directly.
-Phase out. Ability of one of the Vasari cap ships that removes a ship from play.
-Interference. Once upgraded, the basic Vasari frigate can increase the ability cooldown rate and the anti-matter cost of enemy ships by 100%.
-Subverter. Reduces shield mitigation by 10% and increases chance phase missiles ignore shields by 25% (for a total of 55% chance a missile goes through shields). Also can upgrade distortion field. Subverter can perform an in-gravity phase jump and disable an enemy target for 30 seconds.

I'm sure theres more, but those would be the most effective, and since the cooldown for phase out is so low, I could just chain-phase out one of your cap ships.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks Sentry. Yea, I've only played TEC and Advent so far, so I didn't even realize that the Vasari had missiles that bypass shields. Even if they only did this 30% of the time, that would pretty much kill this combo, without even considering all the other targetted special abilities. That's assuming that ships can't survive without hull points, but I think that's a reasonable assumption.
So maybe this isn't so unbalancing. Here's another question though...
Can TEC deal with this in some way that I'm not seeing? It would definitely suck if the Vasari (and obviously the Advent, since you might even the score by doing the same thing to someone trying this combo) were the only other faction that could counter this. Anybody?
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
for tec

cap abiltiies:
emp charge, ion bolt/magnetize (disables abilities) and armistice that if used smartly you can get half his fleet inside it and other not.

light frigate:
sabotage reactor, which doesnt get rid of antimatter but will help doing damage to the disciples..etc.

disruptive strikes is another thing that can be used by vasari, to increase the cooldown (it stacks and can get to over 60%).
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Hey archpsi... The Armistice sounds highly plausible, since those disciples would be swarming around the Akkan, being as the ion bolt is an obvious disrupter of the combo. I had said earlier that the disciples could be used to steal antimatter from the Akkan, since they are quite mobile and in most situations would have enough time (before the Akkan is within range of either the Progenitor or the Revelation) to deny the Akkan the ability to use the Ion Bolt. This applies to other, similar single-target abilities; e.g., Sentry mentioned above that he would just "phase-out" one of my cap ships. This is unlikely (but not impossible if you're ninja enough) if I jump a ship in ahead of time and find out where your capital ships are at, then jump the disciples toward the one that does this and drain it before it closes in to phase out the Progenitor or Revelation. However, this takes SOME time, and would not prevent it from using an ability before it is drained. If you used the Armistice ability during this initial swarm, the combo wouldn't work, and it's likely that either the Progenitor or the Revelation could be dealt with handily at that point.
So I could choose to send my disciples in with the two cap ships. But then the progenitor would just get "ionized" and would be useless for some time, not to mention clinging to life by a thread by the time it was able to do anything.
Needless to say, if someone had countered (before today) this shield regen combo with an Armistice, I would have shit a brick. Pretty clever thinking Archpsi.
So I feel pretty confident at this point that this is not an unbalancing tactic. Thanks a lot guys.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
This is unlikely (but not impossible if you're ninja enough) if I jump a ship in ahead of time and find out where your capital ships are at, then jump the disciples toward the one that does this and drain it before it closes in to phase out the Progenitor or Revelation.
End of quote


Does the Disciple's Steal Antimatter ability work on capital ships? I tried to deliberately target a capship with the ability once, and was told that I needed to target a frigate or cruiser instead. I might have done something weird, though; can someone confirm that capital ships are a valid target for steal antimatter?
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Against enough disciples, nothing would have enough anti-matter to counter the advent player's combo. You would only get one Ion bolt off etc. I've beaten this strategy in multi-player as Vasari. The way to do defeat it actually relies more on micro and having a superior force than anything else. Once all of the antimatter is depleted, you will be able to rip through the pathetic disciples like tissue paper.

For an advent player to have those 2 cap ships at high level means that we're roughly 20+ minutes into the game. Disciples are actually extremely easy to kill, and as medium assault ships, only do 50% of their damage to heavy cruisers (see reference: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p7xc_snd9Cc-6o2UwvPEWUg&gid=1) If you have heavy cruisers or a ton of javelis LRMs or Assailants, you can target everything on one of the Disciples whenever their shields aren't regenerating and take them out. I can take out 2 disciples every 6 seconds this way with a fleet of 10 enforcers and 20 assailants.

Additionally, it is important to note that everything runs out of antimatter extremely quickly. The advent player's combo will only work for around 2 minutes before all of the antimatter is exhausted, which means that the best solution is to prolong the battle and force his disciples to target heavy cruisers or something they wont do much damage to.

Again, the idea is to use up all of your antimatter as quickly as possible. Anything with antimatter abilities, "like enforcers" should use their abilities immediately to get rid of antimatter.

Additionally in LARGE battles (aka: after 40ish+ minutes), when fleets are composed of 50 ships per side, the solution is extremely simple: target everything on the progenitor. with 20+ heavy cruisers you will make short work of it.

Another practical solution: Use lots of bombers (which have no antimatter) and target the progenitor. With 10+ bomber squadrons (and maybe 15 or so assailants) attacking the thing, it should be destroyed sufficiently quickly (especially if your opponent didn't bring along his defense vessels).

In actuality: Lots of players use the progenitor's shield regen ability, which is amazing, but disciple vessels are pretty terrible mid-late game. Also, remember that in most games players are attacked before getting a cap ship to level 6. If a player has nothing but disciple vessels, he (or she) will lose before he (or she) gets the cap ship to level 6. Advent players are often forced to "rush" to defense vessels, drone hosts, or illuminators, which are much more effective on their own than disciple vessels.

I am still convinced that this is a viable advent "combo", but the fact that it relies on having a ton of disciple vessels makes it weak in practice against the right fleet. The vengence/malice "combo" is equally powerful and more effective in the general case. Still, the progenitor's shield regen is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. Without having the right counter to disciple vessels or being able to take out a cap ship quickly, one will lose versus this combo, but i'm relatively sure that a fleet comprised entirely of assailants or javelis lrms (standard fleets) will be able to beat this "combo" by simply "taking out" the progenitor or forcing it to retreat, leaving the disciples easy to take down.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Nope.

Countless ways to stop it, just like every other "unstoppable godly combo!"

Try it against one of the experienced players.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
It's really difficult to get disciple frigates to steal antimatter from targets that makes sense. Most of the time I see them autocasting on some poor robotics cruiser that has had 0-5 antimatter for the past five minutes while they chain drain it instead of the 300+anti matter capital ship, or even just one of the many other nearby cruisers. IMO the AI could use a "Target largest anti-matter pool" script.
But, even assuming they targeted intelligently, your main problem is that you're using disciple vessels, which are made out of paper-mache. If somebody notices their antimatter vanishing and decides to do something about it, your Uber batteries are going to be dead in micro-seconds against any fleet of noticeable size. Granted you've bought the other ships in your fleet time to work by sacrificing disciples, and you probably axed a lot of their antimatter in the mean time, but it isn't going to secure you an easy victory for sure. A valid, effective strategy, but not an uber strat.
BTW, my first multi-player game, I tried to do more or less exactly this... And I ran into some dude with like 6 Dunov's, who ate my disciples for breakfast and chain spammed their 1000 point instant restore shield spell on everything in range. I was sent home crying, waiting for the rest of his fleet to jump into my system and obliterate me. Lesson learned: Never -rely- on 1st tier units. Use them, but don't count on them to work. Also, Dunov's are gay when massed.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
You forget couple of things too :O TEC Designate Target, reduces mitigation by 25%! HUGE. Magnetize also disables abilities! I learned this myself only today :) And it lasts 10 seconds at lvl 1!