Returning Armada and the Vasari after 1.1

You also get them all at once at any place you have a stabilizer. I think it'll be best as a 'fast reinforcements' kind of thing.

I don't play Vasari at all really, so would that one capship that has the ability to act as a stabilizer work with RA?

If so, that could be very evil to have a decent supply of ships appear instantly where you were fighting.

It doesn't. But that would be very nasty.

actually it does the warpgate it makes does summon fleets. I like the old mode better you get a swarm of at ALL your gates. I love massacring people with the multiple gates one second it's ohh he's so tiny. And 2 minutes into their attack... OH SHIT HE'S GOT A WHOLE #@!@$*LOAD OF SHIPS!!!

The only reason RA worked was cause you could scrap the useless ships for cash. Now you cans till do it but if u do u still wont get the money back us pent on summoning probably, and you will not be able to summon more ships. So out of the 90 supply, you may only end up with 2 heavy cruisers and 2 assailants, rest all junk like skirmishers and carriers and flak. Thou I am not sure how the carrier thing will work after the patch. They may be so big and bulky, one will take up half the supply cost lol. A newly spawned carrier in the middle of a battle field is worthless no matter what buffs they give them, since it still won't spawn with squadrons on board.

As far as the nerf to subverters, don't even get me started. It makes the cannon look more appealing!

My god you people are STILL whining about RA? give it a rest for pity's sake!

I think it would make sense if they made RA just a single level of research and got rid of the intermediate level 1. The level 1 RA is not going to be worth the summoning price considering you won't get exactly what ships you want. Level 2 RA will be a good value to bulk up and augment your fleet. Considering the new summoning cost, I don't think it is a bad idea to cut down full RA's research requirement. RA has a huge research and infrastructure cost associated with it -- now that the ships aren't free, I don't think it hurts to lose some of that.

And for the record, yes, RA did need to be rebalanced. I think having a cost associated is reasonable.

The subverter nerf is going to hurt.

the subverter nerf might not hurt that much depending on what Repulsion is like next patch.

Hopefully carriers will be good as i want to use 10 per fleet. If i read correctly 10 transports will equal 30 strikecraft or am i wrong?

Depends on the race. Probably 20 or 30.

Imagine what the game would be like if one of the races were suddenly kicked out of the game for online multiplayer. Yeah, it's kinda like that.

i think the coming changes to RA wil have a positive effect, right now it is possible 2 tech to RA and win the game, with the changes to RA it is only considerd a strong research, just like the TEC pirate raids wich u wont research after your empire = big enough

and so does it has to work for RA, dont tech RA until your empire is big enough to sustain itself, RA = just another way for Vasari to get free ships in LATE GAME, if we are going to nerf it again it wil yet again become a rush tactic, wich we are trying to avoid



now alot of people try to play this game as short as possible, wich is not the way to play. this game = perfect as it is, all you need is enough time, if you dont have enough time dont play and try to make a short game "and possibly whine about people that think big and play the game long"

so right now i guess we will see what happens, should RA have troubles then it'll be fixed, should RA have troubles "i.e RA = IMBA WEAK I CANT RUSH ANYMORE, then i guess you'll have to live with it, cuase RA rush is the only major racial imbaness so far, and its about to get balanced

No one here is arguing to keep the current RA, they are discussing the future of it and how it can be balanced.

Also, as it currently stands, RA rushing will likely get you killed against an experienced player. The people who have the problem are the ones who don't go on the offense and who sit around. Unless the map is very big or multistar, it is easy to stop RA.

In multistar campaigns RA is awesome. It frees up your resources for planet development and allows you to reconstitute a fleet with almost no down time.

In a large campaign like that it can make losing large quantities of crusiers and frigates more of an annoyance then a crippling blow.

I picked up the Vasari after a break for a while from the game, and I think the changes to RA are great for a few reasons.


First id like to talk about how the Vasari work great in the field.


The best control of fleet movement and presense of all the races, denying the enemy actions in combat or out of combat (in the same planet or not), Medium/Heavy standard combat ships with self-repair (best if micromanaged) which can give you an edge in fleet spamming at any point in the game, powerful LRM (and their ability), incredible strike-craft, and by far the best multi-front capable fleets and ships.


So remembering all of that, and the two most important Sun Tzu concepts for this race :

"Be mysterious rather than obvious. Pretend to be here when you are there. Be close when he thinks you're far, and far when he thinks you are close.

Be unpredictable. Be frightnening. Be daring."

"Always Expect attack. Be ready to respond. Know your enemy. Know yourself. Stay high on the plain. Act quickly. Never be vulnerable. Never expose your weakness. Focus on your strength and power."


Ok, we got that right?


So lets use the environment, or in this case, the tech tree of the Vasari, to our advantage. Lets make the decision for the RA tech.


Situation A) The game has progressed to a point where we are in need of more defenses, we have many open spots that the enemy can attack from, and we need to be prepared for recooping minimal losses, or defending against strong opposition.

Situation The game is nearing its end, the enemy(s) are boxed in, there is no need for defenses.


So situation A is the case here, we tech up to Phase Stabilizers, the speed improvements for Phase Stabilizers, hopefully grabbing our tech to see all phase space jumps in the universe, and grab Returning Armada if the situation requires even more defense.



Ok - so now we have Returning Armada in patch version 1.10 . What do we do with it?


Well, a few things:

One of the key uses for Phase Stabilizers is to move troops quickly from defense point to defense point, and if you are able to and have the right capital ship & level, you can move troops directly to the battlefield as well.

Imagine the look on an enemys face when they see a small raiding group, and a larger fleet attacking a prime world.

The enemy commander sends his fleet to defend against the larger threat, and may or may not send a smaller fleet to defend against the raiding group, or just let the local defenses hammer it out.

- wait a bit, and if you have the tech, wait for their main forces to be several jumps away. Trigger the Capital Ship Phase Stabilizer ability, warp in a much larger fleet, and move to a more important objective, while his fleet is still far far away. A very unhappy foe you have made.



As Vasari, our solutions to problems are usually solved with speed and presense. Faster jumping, faster capital ships, faster to defend with a fleet, faster to build defenses on a planet or buildings, faster to kill with Phase Missiles and Culture bonuses.

The only thing we havent been able to do is quickly build a fleet in an emergency situation, or to press the attack and become more "fearsome" - by that I mean, "oh, yeah you killed 130 ships a second ago, but I just made 130 more in a few seconds, come and take me if you can."


So now thats exactly what we can do, we can build a defensive fleet should all our forces be away on the assault, or we can quickly build troops to reinforce the assault, or we can quickly summon ships to stay in the game if we fail the assault.

Infact if you take into account the cost per fleet for each unit, you can end up with the possibility of the same cost, but in most cases, less cost in all resouces for that many units. Very very cool.


This is win-win here, Returning Armada has been very imbalanced the last few patches, and the fact that we got this little change is great - that means they took their time in deciding how to make an end tech tree change benificial, but not so extradordinally powerful.


If this is how Returning Armada worked in the first place, none of these discussions would be taking place, and other than someone asking "how do I use this seemingly useless tech?", we'd never hear about it.


Not to say the game will not need future patches for balance, but to really win in combat you have to take what you've got, and make a victory out of it. Sometimes it is a lot worse than this situation, but because of the large number of Phase Stabilizer nodes you/we should have near the late game (you do have that right?), and our tremendous resource income by that point, and since the recall is DOUBLE what we got before at each location, this is a great change, and a much better situation than it could be.

Ok, so I normally play Vasari, and I generally do not rush RA. I usually only go RA if I know I am going to win and I just want to win quicker or I am severly out numbered because my team mates minidumped. Anyway, I played Advent yesterday and after two of my team mates left, handling a 2v4 when the other team had RA was rediculous. I think the nerf to RA is great. I had #1 econ and everything else (ok, that's a lie, I was #3 in metal, but considering I was Advent, it didn't matter), all the way up to the time the one guy got RA, and then he stomped me. Let me ask you, should the guy with the #1 econ and #1 fleet get stomped (obviously once he got RA I wasn't #1 fleet anymore)? The answer is no. I think adding a cost to get the ships is a great idea. There is still a lot of benefit to RA because it will give you highly discounted ships, but not unlimited ships. Anyway, I will probably still play Vasari often, even after v1.1. Playing Advent and not having phase gates was awful. Those phase gates are jewels even without teching up RA. And the phase missles? They're fantastic against the illum and guardian and can grind up capital ships in a heart beat.


Thats my two cents. I initially disagreed with the changes to RA, but now that I was on the receiving end, I think the nerf will bring balance to the game.