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Analysis of late-game Entrenchment Advent defenses

Annatar11

Join Date 11/2006

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Analysis of late-game Entrenchment Advent defenses

Okay, so I've been playing a large game since Entrenchment's release and been attacked by pretty much everything (sometimes by 2 AIs at the same time, same planet) to arrive at the conclusion that the Advent defenses with all the Entrenchment changes are a bit *too* powerful.

There's little bits and pieces that, on their own, don't pose much of a problem. But when you add all of them together, it becomes incredibly difficult to knock out fully built up Advent defenses.

The little bits and pieces:

- Hangars grant 750 shields and 4 hp/sec shield restore.
- Beam turrets grant shields per nearby turrets to another +1000 total.
- Beam turrets now have increasing shield mitigation (hangars keep at 15% base)
- Shield tech research and culture research increase max mitigation by 10%.
- Transcendia's Mass Disorient/Meteor Storm combo.
- Research for +10 tactical slots per planet.
- Reduction of all ships' damage against MODULE armor.

When you combine all of this, you basically have 20-30 (depending on how many hangars you want) beam turrets, each with mitigation reaching upwards of 70% and 1750 shields (not to mention ~3k or so hull and fairly high armor) and shield restore of 4/sec and hp restore of 30/sec from repair bays. You then have Transcendia's Meteor Storm which outranges even the Ogrovs.

That means the new designed counter is not very feasible. An Ogrov does 900 damage per shot. At 70% mitigation, a turret will take 270 damage. The more Ogrovs you bring, the more damage they do but those guys all die after 3 meteors (or 2, when rank 2 is fixed to deal 750 damage instead of 500). The hangars' shield bestow range is large enough that they can be kept out of reach of Ogrovs/Adjudicators and still provide 750 shields and the shield regen. The Adjudicators do much worse, because they're designed as a constant rather than burst DPS and even though they can attack 5 structures at once they will take much longer to destroy them. Both the Ogrovs and the Adjudicators become nullified by Meteor Storm since they can't attack outside its range.

And with the turrets being as sturdy as they are now, a fully build up defenses cluster can survive an incredible amount of punishment. I've only lost 2 Transcendias in my current game. One was at a wormhole and I noticed too late that the enemy fleet had 11 Ogrovs, and the Meteor Storm was auto-casting on heavy cruisers up front instead of them. I noticed when it was down to 5k hp and no shields, and if I noticed earlier it probably would've survived because they all needed one more meteor toss to all die. The second was when I was attacked from two sides at the same time by two AIs and could only throw meteors at one side. The starbase was eventually overwhelmed by bombers, but the beam turrets were holding everything off until I built a new cruiser, flew it 3 jumps, rebuilt the starbase, and upgraded it with meteor again (first upgrade). At that point, there wasn't enough of either enemy left to put up much of a fight.

Thus, the *only* feasible late-game counter to decked out Advent defenses is a mass of bombers covered by fighters. Their hangars take a lot of tactical slots and starbases need their meteor upgrade to beat back defense busters, so fighter cover is their weakest point. But with bombers alone it takes an incredibly long time to kill everything, which just means more time for the defense to get there.

So, solutions. I'm not going to propose anything too drastic, because it's no one thing that gives the Advent this huge advantage, and so I'd rather make a few adjustments in a few places:

- Drop the max mitigation on the beam turrets so it caps out at about 40-50% with research (so, 30-40% base).
- Decrease the range of hangar shield bestow, so they have to be built closer to the front turret line and thus be in more danger from defense busters.
- Possibly drop shields gained by beam turrets to a max attainable +500, for a total of 1250 with hangar, down from 1750.
- Increase the cooldown on Transcendia's Meteor Storm to allow for more balanced fleets keep up their ships longer. Longer cooldown means more time for Hoshikos to throw repairs on Ogrovs. Vasari Repair Cloud for their ships and Advent's AE shield restore will also have a bit more time to patch up their ships.

I'm not suggesting increasing or decreasing the damage of anything, especially bombers/defense busters vs MODULE armor, because shield mitigation and high shields are what gives the Advent this rather unique but huge advantage. TEC and Vasari defenses go down much, much easier so I don't want that thrown out of whack and made even faster to die.

Thoughts?

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Ron Lugge

And what he proposes makes it still very strogn and powerful and a real pain to deal with but not imposible.

The core of my suggestion is to keep Advent with their buff in survivability, just make it slightly less of one so that big clusters of defenses don't take as long to break.

The Advent are not invulnerable with these, but while TEC and Advent received more direct combat upgrades, the Advent ones eat away precious time. It's a huge difference between unmitigated 3.5k hp turret, and a 3.5k hp/1.75k shield with 70% mitigation turret. This doesn't change if it's SP or MP. Multiply that by 30, and throw in a meteor Transcendia keeping the bulk of your fleet away until you wittle things down with bombers or, in the case of TEC, Ogrovs + Akkan and it just takes too long. The Transcendia's Mass Disorient even keeps Cielos and Subverters far enough away that they can't put their mark target/phase missile debuffs on the things.

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I havent fought an Advent SB in exactly the conditions described but I have fought at least one really big one (17,000 odd Hull) - and only had 3 Ogrovs - but I had 3 caps - 25 odd Kodiak, 27 carriers, 40+ LRM, 20 odd Hoshikos and 20 odd LF and if lasted like 3 minutes.......

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Try this one. Cluster 4 Advent starbases really close together at a star. and upgrade only their armor to level 3 and give them the meteor and mass disorientation at level 1 each, pick whatever else you want. Anything that gets close will be bombarded by 4 meteors before they ever get into range to shoot back, and before that, they get stuck from the disorientation for a long time. I guess if you really wanted, you could put the weapons upgrades, but I didn't see a reason to, I spent the last 3 upgrades on the evangelical modules level 3 x4 starbases makes my culture go everywhere.It takes more than 7 propaganda satelites to counter that.

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Well, considering:

There is also an active thread about the Vasari starbase (particularly with lots of hangar support) being absolutely unstoppable.
I have personally witnessed the TEC starbase with tactical structure support hold off substantial forces. It finally went down from a 1200+ supply fleet, but took them all with it anyway using Final Protocol.

I think we'll need to do a lot more playtesting before we can claim that one race's setup is drastically more powerful than another's.

Even so, it appears to me that there is a little rock-paper-scissors deal going on. It seems that the Vasari starbase, with phase missiles, frontal shield, and self-repair, is the best counter for an Advent turtle. It also appears that the aoe starfish (kill the turrets and hangars), shield regen (don't lose anything), and lots of strike craft (kill the starbase after hangars are down without losing the fleet to self destruct) make the Advent the counter for a TEC turtle. Not to leave out TEC - burst, long range, single-target structure dps is ideal for taking down the oft lone wandering Vasari starbase.

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jjandrah makes a good point. just todY I WAS PLAYING IN SOME SKILLED GAMES and some of the skilled players were saying how much of an advantage a moving sb is over the others and is one of the reasons they are playin vas. as things are now in a skilled game im scared to waste my resources on advent sb cause it doesnt defend anything but itself. yeah maybe with aux gov but the vas dont even need it. you have to waste a slot on it. thats like the vas get a free slot over the others along with moving it. not to mention the amount of resources it would take to build this kind of defense would almost be late game where there is huge fleets flyin around.

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I'm realy starting to think they should drop the cost of the Ogrov and Solanus back down. It would help get a counter to starbase rushes easier. Currently a starbase rush is nearly unstopable because you can'T counter it. Cost you more to counter it them to rush it.

Ogrov Torpedo Cruiser:
-Fleet supply cost increased from 8 to 12.
-Resource cost increased from 490/100/70 to 620/130/95 credits/metal/crystal.

Solanus Adjudicator:
-Resource cost increased from 1100/210/135 to 1210/235/160 credits/metal/crystal.

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But what about Advent vs Advent, or Vasari vs Vasari?

Regardless, I think the original point I was trying to make got distorted. The player can and will find ways to break the Advent turtle. But it becomes a question of how much time it takes. Having turrets with around the same hp and shields as a capital with 70% shield mitigation, or even 60% discounting the high-end research, and a possibility of 20+ of these sitting around covering a Starbase that's protecting the planet with the (fixed in the next patch) upgrade that prevents planet bombing, and you add a ton of clearing time with anything but the biggest fleets.

One carrier cruiser costs about as much as 5 beam turrets.

And this is why I'm not proposing any changes to bombers, anti structure ships, or what have you. Only the new-in-Entrenchment defense upgrades to tweak the clearing time downwards a bit. Having lower radius for the hangar shield bestow will make the player put them closer to the front, in easier reach of long range ships since right now the only way to reach them is with a bomber swarm (which would also require a considerable number of fighters to keep them covered from the hangar/starbase fighters). Dropping the max attainable mitigation by the beam turrets by ~15-20% will make them die a little bit faster, but it adds up when you're clearing tons. And 40-50% top mitigation is still a drastic survivability improvement over vanilla turrets.

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 7

But what about Advent vs Advent, or Vasari vs Vasari?

Vasari vs Vasari, I haven't seen too much trouble. I use multiple caps for that task: the Egg armor subtraction and the Vulkoras bonus structure damage help beat it down and the nano repairers help keep your heavy cruisers from going down.

Advent vs Advent, though, I haven't tried too much. AIs don't build the defensive rock that you described, and I'll admit, it may require some tweaking. I'll see if I can experiment with this tonight.

But just to be sure - it seems that the root of this issue is that Advent defenses might be too difficult for Advent to crack?

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it seems that the root of this issue is that Advent defenses might be too difficult for Advent to crack?

Difficulty is a very vague term. It's a lot of little things fitting together just right to cause it. TEC repair bays repair more than Advent's, but TEC turrets take "full" (reduced from non-antimodule) damage from ships. The Advent ones take only 40-30% (depending on research) of the damage TEC and Vasari turrets have and their 30hp/s fix from repair bays and 4 shield hp/s from hangars start meaning a lot more.

The smaller the attacking fleet, the more dangerous and the longer it takes to destroy a cluster of Advent turrets compared to TEC and Vasari ones. This is regardless of what race is attacking them. Some will do it faster than others, but comparatively it would still take much longer than it would take that same fleet against the same number of TEC/Vasari ones.

So in that sense, I suppose you could say that the Advent defenses are more "difficult" to destroy, but that difficulty scales with the number of ships you have. 500 FP worth of ships will get through 15 TEC turrets with hangars/repair bays much, much faster and safer than 15 Advent turrets with hangars/repair bays. But at the same time, length is not the same as difficulty. It would require more ships to get through Advent's in an equivalent amount of time, which then also has issues of it's own.

So as you can see, it isn't so simple, or completely race-dependent. It's a very unique situation for the Advent defenses that is almost completely caused by high shield mitigation of each individual turret. It really should not be compared directly to the TEC or Vasari, because they don't have anything like it.

Just think about this easy example: An Ogrov attacking a TEC or Vasari turret always deals its full 900 damage. An Ogrov attacking an Advent turret deals 270 damage to a maxed out Advent turret (after the first shot, its mitigation will be capped). You need basically 3 Ogrovs to do the same amount of damage to an Advent turret than to a TEC or Vasari turret. Or a single Ogrov would take 3 shots to deal the same amount of damage to an Advent turret than a TEC or Vasari one. And that's also giving the Advent turret 3x more time to repair/regen shields. Whatever the anti-module armor bonus is applies to both sides of the equation so it still holds.

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 9

TEC turrets take "full" (reduced from non-antimodule) damage from ships. The Advent ones take only 40-30%

Whoops - sorry I missed this detail before. I had thought that the TEC defensive structures received the 'Shield Mitigation' boost as well. I fully agree with you now that Advent defenses are much more powerful than other races'.

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Ha, maybe I'm not as crazy as I was starting to think.. Nope, TEC and Vasari turrets still have no shields and 0% mitigation. An Advent turret is now roughly equivalent to a capital ship in effective hp.

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This does seem like a good way to beat a Advent Turtle. Just stay far away from the Starbase, turret death trap and build your own starbase on the other side of the gravity well. Lets see how well the advent fares against a Vasari Beast with frontal shields and vortex

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Well you make a good arguement but dont forget its easier to kill advent structures with sc. They have no sc defense whatsoever.I hope the auxilary gov will be really good as you will definately have to waste a slot for it.

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Irrelevant. Amount of time needed to destroy the same defenses with the same ships isn't going to change drastically between AI and a player.

Duhhh... what are you talking about? The AI will mindlessly fling itself headlong into turrets. Defending against the AI is not the same as defending against a real person. So I will say it again - when nerfs or buffs or rebalances are being argued for, play testing should be conducted againt real people, not against the AI.

"Quite relevant" I'd say.

So, first you say that it has to be left up to MP playing against people, and then that it's fine if it takes too long, even though the other major complaint about MP is that games take too long?

Your reading - comprehension skills need a little work. I said 1) if nerfs/buffs are being argued for, then the playtesting to "back up" your arguments should be against real people, not the AI, and 2) my "bias," if you will, is to err on the side of "OP" defense. Nothing hard to understand about either of those.

try to at least put as much thought into your reasoning as I did into the OP, without trying to brush it aside by saying it's against AI so it doesn't count, and contradicting yourself.

You brushed aside my comments, I didn't brush aside your comments. Furthermore, the "contradictions" you speak of are only in your mind.

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im not to sure about this but

isnt the survivability what makes the advent, the advent

i mean...now correct me if im wrong,

if you were to throw a fleet against a fully defended advent planet

and then throw a similar fleet against a fully defended tec planet

wouldnt the fleet going after the tec planet die quicker?

also is that +1000 sheilds from synergy per turret

or is it from the maxed 50% of having er 4 turrets i think together

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if you were to throw a fleet against a fully defended advent planet

and then throw a similar fleet against a fully defended tec planet

wouldnt the fleet going after the tec planet die quicker?

Much of this has to do with game scaling. A fleet can grow much more freely than static defenses. Beyond adding more ships, there's ship upgrades, etc. Static defenses.. are there. Once you max it out your tactical slots, it pretty much stops there.

So there will always come a point where you will get enough ships to completely stomp any fixed defense, regardless of whether it's TEC or Advent or Vasari. But the various costs of that are usually (and especially now with the Advent changes) much higher than the costs of the defenses.

So anyway, when you look at smaller numbers of ships, the smaller you go the worse the disparity becomes. Mitigation is a funky thing that way. The TEC turrets may deal slightly more damage with their missile racks and Meson cannon, but they still die the same as the un-upgraded ones. The Advent ones still get their 50% damage (both the damage and shield is from the same synergy ability, btw) bonus but now taking one out is like taking out a low/mid level capital ship. Which takes longer and longer if you start dropping fleet points from your total.

And yes, survivability is what makes the Advent the Advent. All I'm suggesting is to tune it down slightly so that it would be more manageable with smaller numbers of ships, since each ship deals 60-70% less damage against an Advent turret than a TEC/Vasari one, currently. And this is on top of the global damage reduction against MODULE armor type.

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The thing is you say a small number of ships cant reasonably attack a well defended planet. To that i say mission accomplished. Even though defenses cost less, every credit spent on defense is a credit not spent on ships. Advent starbase is not invinciable fully upgraded. Mine dropped in about 3 mins with 4 repairs overlapping it. So no reason to drop the power of starbases since they are very weak to anti matter.

As far as clearing a grav well of turrets. Its just a time thing not a balance thing. Yea advent turrets have high shield mitigation but the extra 2 mins in a grav well wnt kill ya lol.

If anything we need to be talking about that moving vasari base. That thing is just brutal. And the fact you can put one up in an enemeys grave well so quick is crazy. Plus tec starbase is a brick and once its about to die just self destruct it and take a fleet with you. So quite frankly as of right now defenses are balanced and fit the racial profile of the races.

fake edit* even in a game with experts if you let someone research the entire research tree to get full bonues then lost the game anyway.

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Its just a time thing not a balance thing. Yea advent turrets have high shield mitigation but the extra 2 mins in a grav well wnt kill ya lol.

Well, 2 minutes per well, 10 wells, that's 20 extra minutes right there. It adds up. And ultimately, it's easily more than 2 minutes per well.

Advent starbase is not invinciable fully upgraded. Mine dropped in about 3 mins with 4 repairs overlapping it. So no reason to drop the power of starbases since they are very weak to anti matter.

I didn't suggest anywhere to "drop the power" of the Transcendia, other than a slight increase in its Meteor Storm cooldown. It's not really weak on antimatter either, Transcendia can infinitely cast Mass Disoerient and Meteor Storm

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Only if you have both upgrades.

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 11

Is that bad, though? Compare their turrets to that of TEC. TEC turrets get rocket pods, beam cannons, etc. Advent's just... shoot (albeit for more damage).

I'm primarily an Advent player, but I'd switch my beam platforms for TEC guass cannons any day of the week. I've actually found myself playing as TEC far more often as I find the Advent defenses to be relatively meh, although still awesome.

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 13

Well, they do help, but not forever. There's also some finer math, like the shield damage the "main" Guardian would take (since the buffs do not stack) is also reduced by 33% by a second guardian, and so on. But, that's basically the main issue with all of this: the new Advent defenses are not completely invincible, but they take considerably longer to die than they should.

" ...But they take considerably longer to die than they should."

Hmmm... I am an Advent player, and a probably low end one at that, i have enough trouble staying alive with pirate raids stacked at 10 minutes apart, so im not a statician or general on the field, however, If Vasari have inherent pluses in some areas, and they have to be countered in a specific way to beat them, and the Tec have low cost ships that swarm the grav well in waves, then isn't it a balance to have the Advent have superior shields?

If we increase the cooldown time, or lessen the restore rate to a maximum number, or clip the upgrade values then aren't we hamstringing the Advent in early and mid game? I mean if a fully maxed out Advent fleet is hard, or difficult, or even very difficult to take down in late game, what are the Vasari like? What are the Tec like? What are their strengths late game and are they as difficult to take down as the Advent?

I am no pro player, but for many late games for me as Advent against Tec i know that i get swarmed with wave after wave of ships, sometimes two or three times as many as i have on the field.

For me the Vasari are tough, but i try to build a sizable fleet, with as many caps as i can get in a short time and attack them in early or mid game, if i wait to long they overwhelm me with phase missiles and their ability to jump off planet when things get too hot using their phase stabilizers and i can't follow as they just jumped 2 or 3 planets, sometimes more away.

With the Tec i have to use the same tactic, attack hard early, but again, this only works if i do it really early, and sometimes even then im caught between them and the Vasari. Of course i could go 1v1, but i like to think im past that and 1v2 is where im learning my hard lessons, but still trying to learn, haha, instead of my just backing down to a lower level. But anyway, my analysis of this as an Advent "Supporter" may not count for those who have played much longer than i, and are way more experienced. I just hate to see my "precious" Advent getting clipped when i have to hang on with the skin of my teeth just to get past the hard ai against Tec and Vasari.

Just my opinion, thanks for listening,

-Teal

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You know i side with the Advent, but i shouldnt be unfair if you prefer another race, but a question:

What about the Tech bringing 3 times as many ships to the table as the Advent for the approximate same cost?

Or the Vasari dealing how much damage to hull while ignoring the shields altogether?

It seems to me that each has a strength countered by one of the others, so no one is tops, but at the same time weakening any of them, including the Advent mitigation and shielding leads to an OP condition on the other side. If we do what you say, then how will i as Advent counter the sheer number of ships the Tec can throw at me, and if one ship on one takes xx time to kill, what of your 3 Tec ships or more, sitting on my one Advent ship? I will go down, and quickly for frigates and cruisers if i dont field enough shielding.

And Annatar, i dont mean this meanly, but the situation you mention only occurs on Advent worlds. If i am in a Tec grav well, or a Vasari grav well, or even a Neutral grav well, then i dont have those repair bays, those hangers and beam defenses to guard my back or to give me an advantage. All i have are my ships, with just the normal mitigation and shielding and hull. Which still stacks lower against the Vasari. And even with it, doesnt stack well against the numbers the Tec can throw at me.

My personal opinion of downgrading Advent mitigation or restore rates or limiting upgrade values for the sake of only Advent world advantage is that it is asking too much.

How much advantage do Tec have on their own worlds with their defenses full up?

Or the Vasari with their defenses full up?

And as an Advent player, even if i were a pro player, would it take me too long to take the Tec down? Or the Vasari?

My point is please dont take a situation where one race has an edge and apply it to the whole game.

I am no tactician, but early games play differently than mid games, the stresses and goals have to be different. Late games as well. And home world battles, be they defensive or aggressive do not have the same set of conditions, nor buffs that those same battles would have if fought somewhere else. This means to me, it is not an OP condition that has to balance the game, but is a condition that is already balanced by the fact that only a small percentage of battles are going to occur on my own Advent world where i have all my forces built up and in place.

Most of my battles will occur off my own world, on other worlds, some of those worlds will be Vasari Homeworlds, or Tec Homeworlds as well, and there i am not OP, I may not even be even if i am Advent.

You have been around alot longer than me, and know alot more than me, and i appreciate your analysis, but in my opinion it does not apply to a larger part of the battles in any one game, and because of that, i dont want to unbalance it in the name of balancing it.

I'm a newbie, but this is my opinion, hope i dont sound like a know it all, but i am trying to look at it from several angles and trying to see if this is something that does happen all the time, all over the map and if it means the Advent are way way too OP. But i dont think they are. But thank you for your opinion and thoughts, I just disagree, Boy i feel lousy saying that to the person who helped me so much to figure out how to do pretty much everything.

Anyway, thanks for listening,

-Teal

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It is pretty well balanced. Some shields for economy and some fire power.

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Quoting jjandrah,

reply 8

AIs don't build the defensive rock that you described

Stratch that... they DO. They even build logistical structures nearby so that they gain the shield and shield mitigation bonuses. Props to the guy who coded these things.

It did take more time to drop than the the other race's fortresses, but from my playtesting against AI this evening, the extra time it took is not gamebreaking. Even if it does eventually prove to require some tweaking, it's not so broken as to need instant nerfing - I think we can afford to wait a week or two to experiment some more. Multiplayer may be a different issue, however, but testing the game against human opponents for balance isn't my specialty at all (:

On a slightly related note, I also noticed that the mechanics behind the structure buff makes covering all angles of a colony less effective than clumping together with the hangars and the starbase - lone turrets seem to snap like toothpicks in comparison. 'All shall join the unity' is more than just a motto, it's a way of life.

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Tested the new beam turrets tonight (upgraded with synergy) - I must say I was impressed. I had some a-hole vasari player try to raid into my planets with a strike force of 2 capships (egg and kortul). I had dropped 4 or 5 beam turrets at the asteroid he attacked, along with 1 repair bay. He attacked the turrets. I lost 1 or 2, that was it. Meanwhile, he was driven off.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, DEVS!!!!! Ever since this game came out I've wanted a way to stop being "irritated to death" with constant raids, having to constantly play "phase jump hopscotch" and pull my fleet off main duty to do 5 or 6 phase jumps back into my empire to stop some stupid raid. Turrets before were ineffective. Now, at least they do something, and perform the function of what they were supposed to perform all along - actual defense. It stopped the raid. In truth, he could have just gone around and attacked further into my system, but he was deterred, and I continued my game.

More playtesting will be required, of course, but at the moment I like what I see.

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