Returning Armada useful?

It is useful if you need re-enforcements right now, and have the economy to use it. By that point in the game you "should' have a fairly decent economy so that shouldnt be an issue. I havent compared the cost vs just building the ships, but i figure if you have a key world under attack, and need a few extra ships in a hurry, then use RA.

The ships RA spawns are mostly carriers, and Enforcers with a little bit of other frigs mixed in. I had one spawn of nothing but Enforcers. They are not weak, and with the 1.1 carrier changes the hordes of carriers it occasionaly spawns are hardly weak in their own right.

Again i dont use this to build up my forces. I only use it "in case of emergency", and need ships fast.

Aye. Think of them as Rapid Response Teams

Thanks for the input.  Maybe my problem is I'm usually on small maps, so my economy, even at max, is never good enough for them.

I like the idea of using them as response teams though.  Although my fleet will get there pretty quickly in most cases, it might help stop that back door attack.

Thanks

It is bs.  Phase gates are terrific, RA and DA are not worth it,  Sentinels come.  There are great ships that come like enforcers, overseers, subverters but sentinels suck, The research costs a fortune for the unlikely chance that it will be used.  Maps favouring the building of a lot of phasegates do make the research to RA and DA somewhat worthwhile as the likelyhood of those phase noded planets getting raided is high and your ships may be elsewhere and unable to phase gate to the raided planet in a timely maner but the ships recieved are only a stop gap, and not a strong one as subverters go down quick, an overseer is marginally usefull in a fleet of 3-4 ships when it is likely the second ship to be attacked. And if your strategy is to research fleet supply and max out your fleet by purchasing what ships you want and where and thus leaving no room for RA let alone DA then it is absolutely useless unless you suffer a catastrophic fleat engagement defeat and you have a shit load of cash that can't be spent in all the frig factories you built that can be phase gated pretty quickly to a fleet assembly point. RunonRantOver

Bottom line:

It is useless.

I think the current use is not good. It should summon 3-4 ships with no charge that leave the game when the threat is gone.   this is what i thought it meant to begin with anyway since the explanation of the ability is vague.

In a short game on a small map RA/DA is not worth researching at all. However on huge maps, and in long protracted battles then DA comes in handy. In games like that your fleet caps will more than likely be maxed out anyway. Along with all of your researches. You probably will have tons of credits, and resources to spare. Especially if you control a star system.

Obviously if you built up enough ships to where you have little to no fleet cap left then there is no point in using DA. Just divide your fleet up and phase gate them where needed. However in a big battle it can be useful to re-enforce your fleets if they are taking heavy losses, and you need to replace those ships right now. Instead of waiting for your factorys to build them. Which by the time the newly built ships arrive it may be too late. They can be used stop gap until your main fleets can arrive, but you are correct in that the forces are not enough to hold untill your fleets get there. Unless you use DA on multiple gates on adjacent planets.

With the advent strike craft increases in 1.1, I dont think a few extra sentinals would hurt. Granted i do agree they shouldnt spawn in DA. Sentinals are easy to replace without needing DA. I have seen mostly cruisers with a few rare instances of an all sentinal spawn.

I agree that the cost needs to come down a some. I do like the suggestion that the summoned ships should leave after x amount of time, and return to phase space. The units shouldnt cost any fleet cap at all being that they are NOT part of your fleets. The same thing bothers me about the iluminators deceptive illusion. The fake ships use fleet cap. This would make for some interesting fights if someone forgets about the dark fleet ships in your group, and they dissapear in the middle of a fight because their time expired

Returning Armada is not totally useless. It just needs some more work, and tweaking.

The illum illusions use fleet cap.  I never noticed. gotta test this, unbelievable if it is true, really boneheaded (sorry IC).

RA needs majar tweeaking, back to its glory days!!!! Although the notion that they return to the ether is interesting.  Meaning one would have to be fast on the scuttling.  Seriosly a simple fix would be that all things remaining the same tweak it so RA and DA come even if fleet is maxed out.  I am not really thinking of massive maps, I want it worthwhile to research it on on a map where one builds 2 or 3 phase gates.  Balancing the usefullness of RA on small maps through to huge maps probably needs a lot of tweaking, perhaps with each additional phase gate the cool down or am cost increases a small amount.

With my idea above the ships would not have a time limit but would leave when the enemy leaves the gravity well.  Also they would not be able to leave the gravity will they were summoned in and not be able to be scuttled. I would also eliminate the cost completely.   RA would also be only be cast once for each time youare attacked.

Returning armada is useless period.I spend a ton of money on phase nodes,research and I get only 3 ships!?I only use it when my fleet capacity is used up and even then its still useless.

Ok, fine, dont use it then, but dont try to discourage others from using it. This is a beta after all. The Dev's need better feedback than "This sucks". Why does it suck? and what do you think can be done to fix it? They need detailed answers.

Most agree that RA needs some serious tweaking. Some naysayers not just on this thread sound like they want it removed. If RA is to be removed, Then remove TEC's Insurgency along with it. Insurgency is basically the same thing as RA. It costs damn near the same. The only exceptions are that the TEC player has no control over the units, units spawn randomly, and use no fleet cap. That IMO is how RA "should" be except they can be controlled, and you chose where they spawn from. If you are going to dump all of your resources researching phase gates, phase tunneling, RA, Then building the gate network. Then the units spawned should be "Free" as far as fleet cap. Returning Armada needs to BE an Armada.

I like insurgency, and irc I was on the recieving end of it and that was about the only time I found RA of any use.

Opponent response would be phasing to another well and then coming back. Unless they wanted easy experience for leveling caps.

You make that sound like a bad thing. If I need to scramble ships to a certain planet it's usually to hold the opponent up while the real cavalry arrives. Getting them to phase out, then phase back, seems to fit that bill.

Even better if it's free (except for AM cost).

Okay, RA was a gamebreaker. Winning against multiple opponents with RA on a consistent basis was too powerful, period. Now that it has been nerfed beyond serious impact its too weak for being justified, seconded.

As far as i can see there are two solutions.

1. Majors Stress's sugestion it should be like insurgency. Without control it can't be abused, and its power could be easily tweaked to a fitting level. The only problem i see is that it would be a mirror of the TEC ability and that is not good. It could surely be tweaked to some kind of individual behaviour wich works in a similar way but is not quite the same.

2. My suggestion it should use the same slots as ship yards spewing out ships like in the old days - but not SUPPORTING shipyards, rather be a no-cost but random form of shipyard. The power could be tweaked by spawn cooldown for making it a worthy addition without singlehandly overthrowing galaxys (as it did before, not eating shipyard slots, rather adding and kinda double production capabilities to Vasari colonies wich is a good deal overboard).

What if:

Each phase gate could support 5 ships.  The 5 ships would live forever, and move wherever they were commanded, but an individual gate couldn't support more than 5 ships.  You get 6 or 7 gates, and thats a good 30 ships, not to bad.  If one of the ships died, then it would be replaced by it's gate 5 mins later.

You could also give the option to let players choose what would spawn from the gates.  If you did this you could also choose to limit the spawnable ships to those which are actually buildable from normal shipyards.

You could also simply go back to the way it was in 1.05, but double the time (or whatever is appropriate) it takes for a fleet to arive.  TEC get free resources forever without earning them, which can be used to build ships; nobody complains.  Vasari get free ships, and it's a huge imbalance.  So, you could leave it alone, but just increase the time between ariving fleets enough that things stay managable.  Things still may get out of hand is someone has 20 gates, but if they've managed to build 20 gates, I think they diserve the win.

You could also do something about the gates themselfs to make them easier to destroy.

What is destroying one gate destroyed all the gates because they are linked together?

It would be hard to build a high number of gates if all the them are destroyed whenever just one is attacked.  You'd have to watch out for people just selling their gates before they're actually destroyed.  Perhaps any damage delt to one gate is delt to all?  I don't know, just ideas.

It will most likely never be used in its current 1.095 state.

Free ships for tactical slots are always a problem to be balanced. I think the best way is really to change the slot type of the gates. So it can be a really nice no-cost random shipyard without doubling production capabilities on planets.

Having RA and shipyards on all planets is just too much if you want a powerful effect for the stabilizers. Especially on large maps in teamgames.

Unfortunately, it is absolutely impossible to defend a gate from any large carrier force.  Vs any player with good control of strike craft, the bombers will destroy the gate before you can defend it.

I really like this idea.  The 5 could be balanced more easily... or maybe instead of 5 ships, each gate supports a certain tactical limit... thus if you get cheap ships from the gate you can get more.

I'd also drastically reduce the cost.  The whole RA idea is supposed to be that these ships are already built, they shouldn't cost a fortune. 

I never understood why RA was so strong. All I ever seemed to get was crap ships. If I understand this, you get several planets, put phase stabilizers on them, research fleet logistics, and bingo! Free ships? With all the time and resources you invest, couldn't you build a comparibly sized fleet tailored to your needs?

If you use RA for just to get "free ships" you are wasting your time and resources. RA is meant for re-enforcing. Not building a new fleet. Like what was said before why waste all that resource researching then building the gate network only to get a dark fleet of Sentinals. I only use it when one of my key worlds is getting ganked, and i need ships to draw fire to give time for my main fleet to arrive.

You could. But the problem is the speed at wich lost ships are built.

An example:

A RA player sends a massive Fleet you have to bring down.

You manage to destroy it, but of course you have casaulties. Th RA player will produce new ships - just as yourself. But in his case 1-2 phase stabilizers per planet are harvesting a massive ammount of free ships being ADDED to the normal production, since ship yards are LOGISTIC and phase stabs TACTICAL. In other words... if you control a comparable empire his production is DOUBLED and free to one half.

So he will send the next fleet... you get the idea.

Even if you manage to destroy that one as well he will just continue and you will just continue to loose ground. In fact it was proven the old RA was capable of winning versus not one but FOUR comparable empires at a consistent basis.

I don't think the mechanic is actually at fault. I Making phase stabs not impact ship yard slots is the unbalancing factor.

If I need reinforcements NOW, what I probably should have done is instead of using resources on getting RA, I could have simply spent them on a fleet which I leave sitting at home.  The enemy shows up, my "would have been spent on RA, but was better spent on ships" fleet will be waiting.  I don't even have to wait for them to pop out of a gate, they're already there and waiting.

The BETA RA is useless IMO.  But then most other level 8 techs arn't worth the cost either.  Now that RA is nerfed, I guess well have to fall back onto the Kostra Cannon, lol.

In general, I feel they have "balanced" the game by taking away much of the variety between the different races.  If they want to get serious about this form of balancing, then they could make all races the same, but they just use different ship meshes.

Is there a limit on how many ships come out of RA? Im speaking of 1.05. Is it x fleet points total or x fleet points each gate?

If you take into consideration that this Fleet is constantly replaced at no cost in comparision to your one shot fleet, then this is quite useful. You have to replace and pay for reinforcements where RA kinda supports itself - plus you can still produce reinforcements. The gave RA a big nerf, i agree but it has its advantages over just making one fleet.

Another thing is, while the RA player is teching up.  The other player should attack and stop the teching up, and claim an easy win.  Or they should get some technology themselves.  I bet RA isn't so daunting when you have fully researched armor against the non-upgraded RA ships.  Or if you have the level 8 free resources forever* economic ability of the TEC, I'm sure this would help even things out too.

Problem is people think they can just sit around and then counter RA with some LRMs.

*Free ships forever is unfair, but the TEC free resources forever is perfect fine?