oh, this is a cumulative topic. Feel free to add on and discuss guys.

@Innociv why in the world do you think RA needs a lategame buff. Why Why Why? The whole problem with vasari is how powerful RA is in the lategame...

Illums overpowered, nerf please! removing/heavily nerfing the side lasers would be ideal.

Lrm and assailant are fairly easy to out-micro (just dance or charge the ff'd unit through their formation) but illums dont even bother; Flying into the middle of your formation to get all 3 lasers to hit is unfair, because they can advance while shooting , yet your ships can't withdraw and shoot at the same time (you can do this in homeworld though), nor do most ships have aft-mounted weaponry.

So when illums come in, there's are almost no ways to avoid the (unfavourable) attrition... hopefully that's not their job ...

After playing all through 1.03 with Advent, suffering through lrm rushes, i say thank god advent has a powerful illuminator. The illum is the most expensive, why should it not be most powerful? And it takes 6 supply instead of 4. Just because illums now actually cause you to be a little frightened of advent in the early game (finally) doesnt mean they need nerfing.

do not nerf RA. Instead buff other end game techs...

I dont know what games you play, mines end before anyone reaches full fleet cap. And what would that have to do with anything? Making other end game techs better would benefit the game overall, allowing for more dramatic endings and better strategies.

Quite frankly, culture and research ought to be really viable options as opposed to simply military-duking out or econ booming.

Right now it's almost -always- much more useful to invest in economics or ships rather than culture or research (With the exception of improving ship access). Investing in a culture base and research means losing out on at least 1600 you could have used to build ships or planetary improvements, which is alot of money. More often than not that investment is not returned at all- It doesn't really force your opponent to build more culture, and the economic benefit is negligible.

What needs to be done is to make 1600 invested in culture as effective as 1600 invested in ships- a culture base should be at least as threatening as 5 LRMs, and a veritable army of culture and research- should be a threat capable of converting at least 1 or two planets before the enemy can respond (If he has built -no- culture)

The sad fact is if you spend 100,000 resources in culture, you won't get any payoffs- the enemy can easily negate whatever you did because he has plenty of time and foresight to research culture and put up 2 stations at the edge of his empire.

Compare this to someone who builds 100,000 worth of military and sics it at someone who's built nothing- the results are far more devastating and impacting.

Since culture has no other substantial effect than hurting the enemy (There is a slight economic boost about equal to a trade station- depending on the planet, that also takes a long time to kick in), it should be as effective as directly fighting the enemy with ships.

The easiest, and most direct solution to this is to make culture spread fast, and allegience decrease fast. Culture spread across friendly space lanes and planets ought to be nearly instant- there simply should be no need to wait for the effect to kick in. It's not a balancing thing; culture simply isn't that powerful, and it's not a realism thing- we have space transmitters, and it's not a gameplay thing- it immediately demarcates the border of your empires and creates and interesting dynamic. Setting it to 4x the current speed seems to work- you should actually be able to -see- culture spreading at least at the rate it takes a fleet to jump through an empire.

Decreasing allegiance ought to occur more quickly as well. Give people enough time to react, but make them have to work for it. If you're caught with your pants down in a culture rush, you ought to be prepared to lose a frontier planet. It should take something like 1 or 2 minutes to send a planet to zero allegiance. A civ with bigger culture ought to slowly make it's way into foriegn culture, perhaps at the rate as it does now, amplified by research and the number of culture stations. Opposed culture should take the length and time it does to spread and convert as it does now. While perhaps a planet exposed to stronger enemy culture shouldn't flip, it should suffer a penalty to it's income.

What does this mean?

It means putting down culture quickly becomes important, making you choose between culture, military, or economic. Going culture and defense forces your opponent to do the same while breaking his stride. Eventually this turns back into the military game, with opponents trying to destroy each other's culture stations. The game proceeds as it does, only now -culture- is just as an important factor in killing the enemy as...killing him is.

Good post.

I feel RA was overpowered in 1.03, not for 1v1 but for team games on medium to large maps. I think with the changes in 1.04 it's definitely going to delay the amount of time and the amount of units which can be had with RA, which makes it more viable to get in and take out those phase gates before total doom arrives. In 1.03 I don't ever recall seeing TEC spam ever beat out a good RA. If it did, the TEC could not keep up with the rate of which the units were replenished. Just not possible to keep up production with RA.

Culture does not play as large a role as it should, and things can be done to improve on it. Making culture centers stackable which would cause culture spread faster and take down a planets allegiance at a higher rate. The deliverence engine should only enhance this further. If this proves to be too powerful, perhaps counter the effect by making it so that the higher the allegiance on an enemy planet, the slower the rate goes down until it reaces certain threshholds, at which the pace picks up. Giving the other races an incentive to build culture before enemy culture is a threat.
I don't know how well that would work in game, but I'm just throwing ideas around. =O

I just like the fact that I can discuss these things in a sensible manner.

Good one antracer! Hmmm...perhaps he is a Cylon afterall

Except it's not, though debatable for the TEC. The culture bonuses for the Vasari (+damage) and Advent (+shield mitigation) for your entire fleet will give you a much higher return than a few extra hangars around some planet. The AM recharge for TEC isn't bad, but not always needed.

As for the Deliverance Engine in regards to the OP, stop trying to think of it as a planet killer and think of it as a weapon that denies your opponents his culture bonus anywhere on the map, and grants you your +6% mitigation. The combined effect isn't as dramatic as "Hey, big boom on a planet", but you can't argue that it's not useful

If they are, it's for the wrong reasons. I would gladly forsake the Illum changes for stronger culture. Either way is fine with me anyway. I stopped playing Advent 1.02+.

Good suggestion on the face of it but it'll cause micromanagement hell..

It's only good for a situation where a player with many planets suddenly loses ALL his ships and.. by then he should have enough economy to run with it, along with sci upgrades

I'm with the people who say RA doesn't need to be nerfed. Not because I use it, but because it really isn't too effective.

1. Provided the map isn't gigantic, in general the Vasari player isn't going to have a lot of military upgrades. The logistics labs take up the logistics slots.

2. It takes a long time to get an RA fleet up and running. In general, you should be attacking before the Vasari player has time to get a fleet going.

3. RA cripples the economy. RA makes you rely on those ships, especially as a source of income (scuttling them does give significant resources i'll admit). Once they're gone, the Vasari is absolutely screwed.

But that was with 1.03. I'll take the further nerf for 1.04. Makes it easier for every race, including a non RA Vasari, to destroy.