1) Phase missile swarm at rank 3 does 600 damage to 7 ships for 90 antimatter. That's 4,200 damage total dealt every 15 seconds. I don't know how you can say it isn't effective
How?
I ran a test.
Level one Vulkoras with 2/2 basic phase missile upgrade went to fight sum neutral ships with autoattack turned off.
I fired the phase missile swarm. Experiment repeated twice.
Both times, all of the hit frigates were damaged for 170 on shields and zero on hull. What does this mean?
1)
Phase missile swarm does not, in fact, fire phase missiles, just simple flat physical damage, subject to shield mitigation and armor. Sooo...
a] if you want the target destroyed, meaning it is under fire and has maxed shield mitigation, a 600dmg swarm will in fact deal 240 damage considering 60% shield mitigation. And if it is an advent ship (more shield mit) or the shields are down (armor in play), this damage goes down even further, so you'll deal less damage for that 90 AM than a standard salvo from its missile banks would do.
b] if the missiles hit random targets as they seem to be, those targets will then regenerate, unless you specifically order your forces to focus on one of them. So
this damage wears off, because you aren't hitting all those ships. Also, with a battle of let's say 80 ships on both sides, a chance that your next focused target will be one of the few weakened by phase missile swarm is somewhere near 7/80 = 8,75%, which means almost naught. Might be a little higher if you follow each missile volley carefully to see if it hits a target type you want to focus next, but seriously, meh. This ability doesn't scale in usefulness with the number of enemy ships. Volatile nanites would cause so much more mayhem. Or even Radiance bomb. Missile Barrage.... just because they hit all targets in area, not SEVEN.
c] also note that
Vulkoras has the second smallest antimatter pool of all Vasari cap ships, looking good in that field only against kortul.
So yeah, this is not effective in my opinion.
2) Disintegration, even though it's channeled, deals 1600 damage and heals the Vulkoras for 1500 hp over 8 seconds. Just because it's channeled and interruptible doesn't mean it always gets interrupted, or that it sucks
Maybe with 90 sec cooldown after the patch it will be considerable. As of yet, I find it that even normal AI ships often interrupt disintegration.
But I agree that if the enemy oversleeps it and all of the disintegration works (why does Vulkoras heal when disintegration damages shields, btw??), it is 'good'. Nowhere near awesome though.
3) Assault spec deals an extra 180 points of damage to structures with every shot, making it the best defense buster in the game.
a] Bombers are no.1 defense buster in game hands down.
b] 40 Assailants or 20 Enforcers will still three-shot any building. Don't know why would anyone ever send a cap to fight buildings. Caps do little compared to any, even small fleet, and it is their array of abilities and ability to bomb planets that make them even worth keeping around, not the pitiful damage of their guns, which Vulkoras doesn't really shine so brightly with - see bottom of the post.
IF the Assault Spec bug is corrected, then Vulkoras should be dealing 53dmg every 4 seconds to the planet (a salvo takes 4 seconds and has 6 sec cooldown thereafter, with -100% cooldown it should be 53dmg per 4 secs). THEN and with Platforms will the Vulkoras be a nice planet bomber... which makes him a support ship, not a combat damage dealer.
4) Each siege turret does 32 bombing damage (just 8 less than the space whale) at rank 3, and the Vulkoras is able to keep 2-3 of these deployed at the same time. Planet drain does 1,350hp worth of damage with a 3 minute cooldown. It takes 30 seconds to channel, so the egg get another 150 seconds to shoot the planet. With 40 damage/10 seconds, the total damage dealt is 1950 (1350 + 40*15). Ignoring Vulkoras' bombing cooldown ability, it deals 53 damage every 10 seconds, plus let's say 2 platforms for another +64 every 10 seconds deals 117 damage/10 seconds, which is 702 damage per minute, which is 2106 damage in the same 3 minute time frame. Since it can maintain 3 platforms at least part of the time, it can do even more
In fact, he can keep 3 all the time and four for about 10 seconds before the first blows up. BUT..
a]
Platforms are two-shotted by 4 bomber squads, meaning bringing them in while any resistance is present is less than pointless. Space Whale/Egg can do all its mayhem without relying on 100AM/use platforms that will likely be killed by anything in a second. Yes, it is a long channeled ability, but unlike a typical Disintegration target, planets do not interrupt abilities. And if something interrupts the Egg's Drain, then it would likely disable the Vulkoras or its platforms too.
b] Platforms eat out
100 AM for each, so if you are after a fight (whoever has absoltely defenseless planets on their frontline?) or after a few jumps to the enemy's less defended inner worlds,
deploying the max number of them may be severely delayed due to lack of antimatter (again, mind
Vulkoras' low AM pool compared to other caps).
So, the only way to REALLY use the full potential of an (unbugged) Assault specialization + platforms is to have a Vulkoras with near-full antimatter pool put up against against a defenseless planet.
Which puts the vulkoras again amongst support ships, not battle damage dealers, to be used after a battle instead of siege frigates.
IF
a] Vulkoras phase missile swarm dealt 100/200/300 (even flat physical dmg as it does now), but instead cost 40-60 AM with 8-10 second cooldown and a limit of 6/10/14 or maybe even 10/20/30 targets;
b] Disintegration dealt the same damage with the same cooldown, but over half the time (so it isn't so easily interrupted).
THEN I would be willing to agree it has some combat purpose or survivability.
Right now, Vulkoras is, for me:
1] a "meh" combat ship:
- Kortul does 25dps forward and 10 dps for each bank giving it 45 total dps
---- increased insanely by the spammable Power Surge
---- which also increases its survivability greatly
---- Casting Volatile nanites on a big fleet (the bigger the merrier, unlike with PMS) and destroying two affected ships does more or less similiar mayhem as the PMS.
- Vulkoras does 34dps forward and 4 on each bank, summing up to 42 total dps.
---- increased by his PMS ability which eats away his AM pool quite fast and handicaps his bombing ability later.
---- also note Marza does 46 straight FORWARD dps alone, plus 4 on each bank, which makes Vulkoras look small, even if it isn't *phase* missile dmg.
2] a good planet bomber... but to become a good planet bomber, you actually have to drop another cap ship to bring this bloke into battle for him to gain experience. Which is kinda risky, cause he has no survivability boosters. And handicapping you, cause he has little-to-zero utility, unlike any other cap.
Oh and his Assault Spec iz buggit 
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/329932
edit. to Blair - I never really had trouble with that deployment range bug. I just ordered him a little closer before I ordered to attack the planet and turned on auto platform deployment.
