Yes it can disrupt a Marza, but just how often do you meet Marzas ready to MB you? Many TEC players use it, ok, you need Marauder to stop it, I agree. But being able to stop a missile barrage does not mean a game won.
You can catch those carriers. Awesome. Particularly now that they have had their speed nerfed.

Marauder sounds nice and cool, but except being able to help in a few, unique situations that may or may not even happen in your game, it does NOTHING.

Every game sooner or later comes down to a battle betwen your forces and the enemy forces. Every single game.
And every other cap helps in a battle. The EGG will nano the enemy cap, Kortul will suck it out of AM, Skirantra will heal the strikecraft (and other stuff a little), Vulkoras will suck balls (but at least he can beat a 6000 hit point planet into submission the fastest of all caps in the game - and in every game you have to destroy enemy planets). All of this stuff is mediocre compared to what TEC/Advent ships can do, but they do something.
Once the battle begins, the Marauder does NOTHING. Zero, nil. You can phase out some enemy ships... so what, they'll be back in 8 seconds, get a free regeneration tick and continue beating the crap out of you. You can phase out some of your ships that are focus fired, but so what - they'll focus fire another ship, blow it up and then blow up the previous one as it pops back up.
Being able to fly fast won't help once you are in a fight - you won't scare the enemy by showing off how you can do circles around his fleet.
Subversion... meh. He can just produce in the next world. Besides, the bonus is not crippling until it stacks three times. Stabilize phase space requires you to actually have reinforcements built and ready, phase gates researched, built where your reinforcements are waiting to jump from. It is cool in very late game on HUGE maps... that I agree. But nobody plays such stuff in multiplayer as it would last 15 hours and in single player you could just as well build a phase gate network and the Marauder's gate will mean only about 20-30 seconds saved.

Trust me, I tried to abuse the Marauder in a million ways, cause I really liked the idea behind it. But except disrupting MB, this thing seriously does nothing. It just doesn't help at all.

The vasari caps logically should be either completely obsolete pieces of crap (cause they are 10,000 years old) or machines of utter ownage (cause they are aliens), but what they are, are merely adequate. The kortul's disruptive strikes is one of the most annoying abilities on the game to fight against, i must say, and power surge can be too since it takes an extra second or two to die.

Vasari caps need a reworking of their abilities, not just buffs to the ones they have. Nano disassembler is great, disruptive strikes is useful, and after that comes the situational or just plain crap abilities. Every race has some crap abilities (heavy strike craft, TEC colonize, missle batteries, adept drone anima...) but the vasari have the lion's share.

RA calls remnants of the dark fleet and they have the exact same ships as the exodus fleet, so this suggests their tech hasn't changed much. Btu that's not the point, the vasari need some reworking IMO.

The TEC can spam all day and the Advent have good ships that work great together, the vasari can't spam too much and their ships do not have as much oompf as the advent. This is particularly true of vas caps, they need NEW abilities, not buffs to old ones.

You know what, come to think of it, the Vasari in general need a boost to their ships in terms of price:performance.

Especially the enforcer...

The high fleet points cost is also unnecessary, they get FTL transmisions research, but they are forced to up their fleet research earlier to keep up... usually destroying the economy if there are not enough neutrals around.

By the game's name, i get the feeling that the TEC and Advent were the original races and the vasari were an afterthought.

Sigh*, the days of RA supremecay were nice though...

To be honest, I'm not sure what is the best Vasari combo. I've heard before of people deploying 1 Kortul supported by 4 Vulkoras Desolators, and then there is Maruader+Kortul+Space Egg (a guerilla force, Marauder to phase space, Egg uses nanites, plus gravity warhead to slow enemies down, and Kortul power surge to more or less shoot everything up), but I'm not sure there is one that is truly outstanding.

I would have to say that the Advent have the best capital ships.

Malice, by the way is one of the most powerful abilities around. It inflicts 30% of the damage you inflict on the nearest enemies up to a range of 8,000.  Suppose you do 100 damage on an enemy ship and there are dozens of enemy ships near him.

Level:

1 - the nearest 8 enemy ships take 30 damage

2 - the nearest 16 enemy ships take 30 damage

3 - the nearest 24 enemy ships take 30 damage

This is very costly in antimatter, but IMO, well worth it. The Progenitor is one of my favorite capital ships.

Let us consider the situation so far for Vasari capitals (which generally stink):

- Kortul: Less durable than Kol. Weapons are arguably worse than Kol. Volatile Nanites does not compare to Cleansing Brilliance on the Radiance or Finest Hour on the Kol (although that could be debated).

- Carriers on the whole are pretty weak right now and need to be beefed up to be honest.

- Egg is pretty good, although the colonize ability isn't as good as the Progenitors. Egg could be a bit less vulnerable. Perhaps give it the firepower of the Akkan and you'll have one hell of a ship.

- Antorak is useful in some situations, useless in others. When you compare the overall usefulness against the Dunov or Rapture, it is clearly inferior.

- A Vulkoras is a heavily armored siege platform ... unfortunately, in this role, I would have to argue that the Marza is better (and is a better warship as well). Improve the Phase Missile Swarm (actual phase missiles would be nice and the Disintegration abilities). Improve the durability somewhat, and raise the damage of the Phase Missiles from 24 to 36 in terms of damage per second by decreasing the cooldown per volley.

These mods should make the Vasari warships at least competitive with their TEC and Advent rivals. Of course, I think that even they could be beefed up, so perhaps the Vasari need an even bigger buff for their capitals.

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Pretty good?  You're talking about one of the strongest capital ships in the game.  Yes, the Progenitor's colonize is better, but that's also one of the strongest capital ships in the game (imo Progen is the strongest).  This capital ship already does absolutely insane damage in the form of nanos.  If it wasn't fragile with low damage, it'd be a nearly unstoppable killing machine.  It's constantly spitting out death sentences to enemy units in the form of nanos, and even enemy capital ships must run in fear if it turns to face them, because their health will disappear in a heartbeat.


To the contrary, the Egg would still be slow and vulnerable. Faster ships, heavy cruisers, and bombers, would still be able take it on. The nano is deadly, so is drain planet, but the vessel is hardly untouchable. I'd guess that a level 10 Radiance or Kol or Marza still stands a fair chance 1 vs 1. Of course, the Egg is not intended as a direct combat vessel.

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Antorak really can't be compared to any other capital ship in the game.  Really the Sova is probably the only equivalent to the Antorak.


Antorak needs to be completely redone from ground up. Enough said. Maybe more firepower and a more speed (it is a guerilla vessel after all).

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Simply comparing raze planet with siege platforms and you are correct.  However, the Vulk's passive ability makes it the most powerful siege capital ship in the game overall.  It's more specialized than the Marza, but it is certainly the better of the two in terms of this one specific role.




In terms of overall usefulness, I'd have to say the Marza wins by a landslide.


Perhaps Raze Planet is inferior to seige platfroms. Raze planet is sort of those one time bursts that does a lot of damage to the planet, whereas siege platforms, its fire, forget, and hopefully, especially if the enemy's attention is diverted in battle, you'll destroy the colony.


Even so, let us consider the other abilities. Beef up the Phase Missile Swarm and Disentegration (and make both abilities immune to shield migitation) to begin with. Assault specialization should be able to boost the phase missiles whatever you're attacking (although not as much), not just planets and buildings.


Make the vessel a bit more durable (raise shields by say 50%) and a bit more firepower and you've got a formidable vessel.


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Talk to most people and you'll generally find agreement that Progen, Egg, and Marza are the three best capital ships in the game (imo in that order).  Other powerful capital ships are Radiance, Halcyon, Kol, and Akkan.  Underappreciated gems include the Rapture, Dunov, and Skirantra.  Less powerful (but still useful) capital ships include the Vulkoras, Revelation, and Kortul.  The situational (that is to say, usually very weak) capital ships are Antorak and Sova.[/quote]




I saved this for last. The real question is, do they justify the costs needed to build all but the first? You're taking a gamble here. Most capitals are not going to survive to become level 10s, especially not in multiplayer.

Cap ships in the mid to late game are basically glorified suport cruisers, how much damage they do is irrelevant and their abilities are the only use they have. By level 5 they can have one ability maxed, and one at level 2 and as most cpas have one very useful ability (SR, Nanos, Raze Planet) and another fairly useful ability (Malice, Grav Bomb, Radiation Bomb) Anything after level 5 is fairly superfluos, other than something like MB, obviously.

At higher levels, they need to gain more per level I'd say. There's got to be a way for them to hold their ground. Else they are target practice later in the game. Send in the heavy cruisers and LRMs. Problem solved.

Another idea is to just make the abilities themselves more powerful or easier to recharge. (Ex: A Cleansing Brilliance from a level 6 Radiance uses 150 antimatter. At level 7, it'll be 130, then 110 at 8, 90 at 9 and then 70 at 10). Plus they still get more antimatter and a hell of a lot more HP/shields.

Yay well now maruader will be much better with the new patch