Erm, not innociv in that 5v5...ehtom =p...

Yeah...which is why I don't think RA is an end-all, be all. I had the biggest fleet, but your guys fleets were tougher. And quite frankly, the fights were getting just silly, it takes so long for fleets of that size to kill each other.

You either counter RA if the map is small, or pimp your economy so you make money faster than you make Kodiaks. Once the game drags on like that, it starts to be about who can burn down the others guys infrastructure, because the fleets are all big and replaceable.

I just never get to see how it pans out, because I get tired of watching everything in slow motion!

well easiest way to try to balance this without touching anything else is making one phase gate/well

that will force vasari to expand a bit instead of stacking 3-4 gates in systems.

I realy dont see the problem of RA if its only 1 gate/well.

Also make the "phaselane" ability disabled for 5 minutes if you summon RA from that gate.

This will add traveling time. and you got more time to do damage to vasari when you destroy one of his fleets before you get swaremd all over again.

so in summary.

1 gate per system
Disable phaselane ability untill the RA recharges again, and you can chose either keep it as a phase node or summon RA and disable it again for nexst 5 minutes.

Yeah, I wouldn't complain if they limited to 1 phasegate per system. Actually, the bigger the map, the less you need multiple phasegates...there comes a point when you get stuff faster than you can use it. And a planet with 3 phasegates is pretty easy to raid compared with one with 1 phasegate and 20 slots of defense. When I have 6-7 worlds, I tend to use 2 phase gates in core systems with repair and defense around em so I have time to respond if someone attacks.

BTW, you can only get 4 gates in a system if that world has a special resource, like the "security" one that gives you extra slots. I've never seen a 4 gate planet, though I know it is possible with one of these specials.

Dont forget that if they phasegatse dont work as phaseline nodes for 5 minutes after summon, you will lose some mobility.

and this will force you to have some gates unsummoned.

Lets say you take one starsystem with 15 planets.

you will want to have atleast 2 of the gates constantly workking incase of emergency.

If the map have wormholes, even more. So maybe in 15 planet system you will get 11 phasegates that you want to summon constanly, or you will take risk of losing mobility.


RA shuld be powerful, since vasari get shafted in credit income hardcore. And in 1.03 credits = infinite metal and crystal.

Actually, I don't think the phasegate losing its stabilize phaselane ability makes much sense -- I was mainly just pointing out that too many phasegates can create other issues, just like too little phasegates. The main time you NEED to stack them is when you have RA rushed, and you only have 2-3 systems in which to build your gates. This is also the situation when you are most vulnerable. I have never needed more than gates per system, and in outlying systems, I tend to just build one.

I don't really care how RA is going to be "nerfed"´, as long as it is. As it stands now in 1.03, RA is only tolerable on the larger maps due to the combined unbalance of TEC trade and the black market. And you can't ignore one or the other without leaving the other overpowered. As it stands now, both TEC trade and RA detracts from the game experience.

Frankly, I don't think RA needs to be nerfed. Its a risky strategy to pursue, it leaves you vulnerable while getting it, and your not invincible when you DO get it if they raid your gates.

Not to mention that since trade is so powerful, the Vasari are at a serious disadvantage against TEC and even Advent in the short/mid game. In my opinion, RA helps make the Vasari less worthless.

I think there's a consensus in general that yes, RA isn't overpowered on the small/medium maps, but that this is the case on the large/huge maps. It has been discussed to death, so I won't go into the finer details. Look to my previous suggestion on how ensure that RA is only "nerfed" with regards to the bigger maps. I'm not trying to get personal or anything, but man, I am tired of people saying RA isn't unbalanced due to the fact that it isn't unbeatable. Even if I for some strange reason decided to concede and say that RA isn't unbalanced, I would still want RA changed. RA simply isn't fun to play against, and diminishes several of the nuances of the game, just like the overpowered trade. And with regards to that:



I've pretty much already replied to this:



Again, the unintendedly overpowered parts of each of the races' arsenals might somewhat balance eachother out, but they sure as hell also makes the game less fun. And that's why I'm playing, to have fun, not to win.

I think you should periodically get pirate ships coming through the gates... that'll teach em... lol.

Says the one who NEVER played large maps as a TEC or Advent against Vasari......

RA is extremely imbalanced. Innociv was convinced it wasn't a great strat either until HuntingX and I played him 2v2 on a medium random map. This was in 1.02 mind you, where the black market wasn't as easy to abuse as now. I was TEC and I fed HuntingX money. He got RA and completely bulldozed innociv and his partner.

Seriously, once you get RA, if you know what you're doing, it's GG. Obviously if you just get it as they're coming to raze your planets, that's a different story.

ummm Corpse_maker, I've been playing TEC pretty much exclusively since 1.03...and yes, on large maps too...It also just so happens that some of my opponents were vasari... so that statement of yours fails =p.

Heck, look at my previous post when I mention a 5v5 against Cykur. I was TEC. He was Vasari. He went RA in that game (on the other team). It was a 100 planet 5 system game (each team started on one system).

If that doesn't qualify as a large map I don't know what will.

After that statement of yours, people should just ignore everything you say for a month...lol.

Bah, stop using that innociv replay as a proof that RA owns or something. His teammate was at best "average" as an online player, and innociv himself made some glaring mistakes even the best of us sometimes do ~.~

I kinda regret about the time i spent to get that replay, rapidshare doesn't like my connection a whole lot.

It's not like with RA we won by squeezing by. I made a bunch of mistakes with my timed explosives as well. That was actually the first time I tried it. It was by a landslide once RA was up.

As you saw, once he had RA, there was nothing they could do. Obviously, if you shut it down ahead of time, you "beat" it. However, the statement that you people seem to be making is that RA, even when it's really goind, isn't a big deal. When you get it, and you get your fleet size to match your opponent's, it's game over. You can produce ships much faster than any other player, all at zero cost. Your money goes to researching and possibly buying subverters. Assuming your micro skill is as good as the other players, how is that not GG? You have everything in your favour, more ships, MUCH faster "build" rate, dedicated money to research and possibly support ships. So long as you don't die getting it out, you've won the game.

yeah I have to agree with jinx

I watched that replay. innociv's teammate wasn't very good, and should have attacked hunting a lot faster. Or they should have made sure to win the pirate bounty and send it at hunting... but they didn't, and he didn't rush hunting fast enough, and the game was therefore over.

And that's stupid, that RA is so powerful that once it comes online you more or less win. No ability should be that powerful.

The option to disable the OMFGWTF stuff from MP matches would be nice until the DEVS figure out what to do.

I remember playing my first 102 planet map against 1 AI, before I knew it (forgot to turn RA off) my fleet had hit max cap. I had something like 90 carriers. So. Many. Strike. Craft.

It's more of a novelty ability, when it's used like it should be (i.e. late game). However, if you let a Vasari player turtle until he can make a couple gates then well... that's your own fault I guess.

I wouldn't say RA is unbalanced, however, the Nano-Disassembler thing on the Evacuator is borderline overpowered. You can put it up on two different ships and keep firing at a different one. It's great being able to kill like 15-20 ships with one ship.

okay, first of all, RA is not an instant win button,there are ways to beat it, one being kill the guy beforehand, but if you cant do that, then just destroy the phase gates or cut them off from all their resources, herby draining them of all power with or without phase gates, honestly, a carrier is weak a heavy cruiser is only moderately powerful compared to caps and all the other ships are weak little frigates so RA is not overpowered just hard to beat it only gives one or two good ships per use so no big deal.  

Yeah, but flak + heavy cruisers is pretty lethal on its own, and you get enough carriers free to either neutralise bombers or assassinate cap ships. How many ship types would you say you manually build once you have RA?

This may be based on an assumption, and might also sound harsh, but please, read the arguments and counter arguments already made in the thread before posting. Now to touch on a few of the things you say. Of course, there are strategies to employ against RA both before and after the fact. The most simple one being to kill the Vasari player(s) before they reach RA, but there are several scenarios in which that quite honestly isn't as straight forward as it sounds. And, unless the Vasari RA player is significantly less intelligent than you, it's is considerably easier to defend against raids on phase gates than to succeed with them, due to the mobility the very same phase gates grants the Vasari and the resources the Vasari can spend on defenses since they aren't tied up producing units. And lets not even begin to discuss the cost effectiveness of these raids. The same is pretty much true for raids targeted at the Vasari player's economy, from which his fleet is largely independent compared to a TEC or Advent player's dependency on a functioning economy. Remember that the comparative cost of a unit grows as the fleet sizes increases, in effect increasing the strength of RA as the game goes on. And when it comes to your arguments against the usefulness of the ships "gifted" to you by RA, they are at best, to be frank, ludicrous. For example: To say that a heavy cruiser is moderately powerful compared to a cap, is to me an argument for, and not against, the heavy cruiser. Especially when it's free...

I just played a 3v3 game where Returning Armada was used by both sides. Two members of the other team quit right before the other guy got returning armada(they seemed to think they were losing.) The returning armada guy then proceeded to max his population cap and hold the 3 of us off with his heavy cruisers while the AI occassionally attacked just to be annoying. It got to where the one guy had, for a while at least, a fleet that was as big as the 3 of our fleets all put togather, and there was nothing we could do against that. Except, returning armada right back at him.

I sold most of my structures, had my allies pump me full of resources, got dark armada, got up 6 stabalizers(3 per planet, I only had 2 planets because one of my allies stole my astroid...) and withen a relativly short time span went from being 6th in military to 2nd(behind the first returning armada guy). The point here is that I was able to reach almost equal military ranking with this guy without even needing a frigate factory. I didn't even need to have enforcers researched, or carriers, or assliants. All I needed was some expensive techs that my allies paid for, and a few stabalizers. Something with that just seems wrong.

Maybe returning armada should only spawn ships you can already build(requiring military labs as well as imperial ones). Maybe planets should be limited to one phase stabalizer each. Maybe only a certain percentage of your fleet cap should be able to consist of dark fleet ships. Whatever it is, something should be done because it certainly appears that the ability is too powerfull in its current state.

I agree it's OPed, but 3 players should easily be able to blow that away.


Why the hell would you engage his -free- fleet head on like that? Send ships behind, just suicide gank his phase stabilizers.

RA, while certainly strong as anything, I think is intentionally so. I mean, the game MUST end at somepoint, otherwise the Vasari would just be sitting around like anyone burning infrastructure and the like.
By the time level 8 premiere techs have been researched, it should really be a zero-sum C&C style game with superweapons blowing things up left and right.

Of course with respect to the fact that other races don't have this easy "End the Game" ability, there is a problem. RA is relatively easy to get and occurs frequently, giving you -free- money.

TEC and Advent "Game Enders" are pretty much horrible with respect to that. Militia is pretty worthless by the time you get it, as a late game player isn't going to be hampered by a bunch of pirates.

Capital ship EXP +Allegiance is pretty much a joke- Capital ships aren't worth much in the late game, and Allegiance even less.

What would be a good solution? Increase the power of the Game Ending technologies. Novalith, Culture and Kosutra cannons ought to be cheaper and quicker to fire. Militia should be spawning siege frigates and LRM that kill infrastructure all over the place. Advent capital ships should be coming out of the factory, reaching level 10 within a matter of minutes. Just have everything go freaking nuts.

If rushing endtechs is a valid Vasari tactic, it ought to be valid for TEC and advent. After all, once you've gotten -that- far, isn't the game pretty much over?

That said, the DA ability requires you to push through a short useful tech tree, while the paths to militia and advent culture are long and useless. I think it'd be more than fair to slash the research costs on those techs, which are primarily culture techs, by as much as 3/4s and amplify the effect of culture dramatically, doing something crazy like making broadcast stations generate additional revenue like Trade Stations, or slashing cost by half and decreasing logistics cost by half.