Stupid ability. I think it should distribute the levels between the present caps ships. However subtract one from the total levels added and make a max of 2 or 3 levels added per ship.

My thoughts

-Phalnax

I like it.  You can bring back dead ships.

when does this ever happen, honestly? i'm pretty sure that the Mothership is always gonna be the first target anyway just to get rid of the Shield Restore if nothing else. the Mothership has to be alive to Ressurect dead cap levels and thats why the ability is bad. 

my opinion is that the ability should function as a re-incarnate in advance kind of ability. this is how i'd like it to work:

first you cast Reincarnate on a ship thats still alive. you would normally do this out of combat. whichever ship had been designated with Reincarnate you would be able to rebuild that exact ship at any capital ship yard any time after that ship had died. you could target the mothership itself with the ability as well so the thing would keep coming back over and over again no matter how many times you killed it. 

now that would be a noticeably powerful ability. the way it is now is gimicky and mostly useless since the Progen is the most likely ship to die first anyway. 

It is a great ability for a worst case scenario. But it is usually the lower level capital ships that die first. Might be different in multiplayer, but for singleplayer you usually have much more serious issues when you mothership, usually your no.1 cap ship, dies.

this suggestion is really getting to the heart of just why the ability is underpowered and impractical. if you've got 2 level 6+ cap ships running around you ought to be just dominating with that fleet. if you were a TEC player and could double Missile Barrage people, would you expect to be losing capital ships? no you'd be dominating.

in my opinion no, it isn't worth it. its the couple thousand experience part thats not worth it, the economic costs aren't nearly as big of a deal. if that experience were directed into increasing the combat strength of your fleet you might not be in a situation where you're losing cap ships in the first place.

would it? Advent fleets are very centered around their capital ships and as such are more adversely affected by losing them then other factions. there are many different implementations that could be used for the Re-incarnate ability that are balanced in various ways. I was merely suggesting that it should be more useful. The crux of my suggestion is that the #1 problem is that a Mothership cannot save itself. I think Ressurect or Reincarnate or whatever its called should be able to address this issue in some way because it loses 100% of its utility if your Mothership is killed first, which is basically always what happens if you're in a battle big enough that you start losing caps.

balancing factors could be included to reduce the relative power of the ability i have suggested. perhaps increase the cost of rebuilding a lost high level ship, to make the economic penalty much more severe. perhaps put it on a cooldown (can only rebuild a Ressurected ship once every 10 minutes, maybe?) to prevent spamming the high level ship and sending it on suicide missions.

you see what i'm getting at? i'd like to see the basic flaw of the ability fixed. if fixing that flaw overpowers it then it should be balanced in some other way that doesn't reintroduce the flaw that was fixed.

That's a great ability. Eternal high level caps, especially for Advent that needs the abilities, is nothing to laugh at. Like CommanderAdama says, put all that hard work into taking out his high level caps, and they're back in two minutes. Building a new one is almost quicker then repairing the old one !

Wish TEC had it to replace my Level 10 Marza Planet/Fleet killers if one gets killed. Makes me sad to see one go 'boom'.

The ressurrection ability is a great asset, but you don't "pre-emptively" add to it.  If you don't have any high level caps to ressurrect, just add your skill point to something else.  You add to this ability once something has died and you want to replace it.

This ability works fine with all motherships after your first.  The first mothership obviously has the paradox that it is the highest level cap and therefore the most likely to die first.  I think this is fair given how powerful a colonizing mothership is.  You basically get a gimped ultimate if you pick mothership first, but otherwise with a higher level cap the ability works great.

You can argue its "uselessness" all you want, but when i have mass transcendance and the ability to ressurrect my caps, they are no match for any other cap ships, simply because i can keep getting my level 8-10 caps back over and over, while the enemy loses theirs for good.

i think this is not a comparison you want to start making. not unless you're prepared to argue that Advent's late game cap ship spam is somehow a match for Returning Armada + Phasic Transmissions or Pervasive Economy + Industrial Juggernaut. 

Just to let you know, im playing a match against 5 AI in the Ancient Gifts scenario. Fleet size is set to huge. I've hit the fleet cap myself, but only have 2 real fleets because the AI have basically all of their ships in 1 fleet. if i try to divide up my forces, i wont stand a chance in a fight. in fact, i've had to use both my fleets in some battles. and they have ALOT of carriers.

anyhow, my point is that i play as Advent. I have used that Resurrect ability about 5 times this game. never put it on auto cast, its broke or something. All my capitals are lvl 10. Why am i losing capitals? as I said, they generally out number me if 1 of my fleets goes against 1 of theirs. recently, the vasari AI has started disabling all my shield frigates or all my healing frigates, or some combination plus my progenitor (actually, does anyone know which ship of theirs has this ability? i need to make it a priority target). so, i usually start off pretty good, then suddenly start dying vary hard. and retreating from a fight against the vasari also means im losing at least 1 capital ship. they lock out my phase jump and wail on it. i've even lost 1 progenitor, but because i have 2, i got the replacement back to lvl 10. its really awesome that basically once i have a ship at lvl 10, ill never have to worry about what level my ship is at. if it dies, its right back at 10.

In smaller, shorter games, i can see how it might not be very effective. so, in general, you should probably be putting your points in Shield regen and Malice (maybe a point in colonize if you think its worth it). once those are maxed out, any extra points are leftovers anyhow

Your first point goes in colonize, because it's your first cap ship and a 20% discount is very helpful.  Your second point goes in shield regen, because you're fighting, and it's damn good, but also because it won't let you put it in colonize yet.  Your third point goes in colonize, because a 40% cost reduction is even better than a 20% cost reduction.  Your 4th point goes in shield regen, for the same reasons as the second.  By the time you get to level 5, you might not be colonizing anymore, but if you are, raise colonization to level 3 and wait til level 6 for level 3 shield regen.  Get resurrection at level 7.

You do it that way because it's your first cap ship.  It's your first cap ship because there's no reason for it not to be your first cap ship.  If you build another progenitor later (and you're not using it to colonize as well), then you can do shield regen/malice/shield regen/malice/shield regen.

The Vasari disabler is the Antorak Marauder.

If you read the thread I linked, you'd notice down at the bottom that the game stores the cap ship levels even before you have a Progenitor.  No one ever notices this because they always make it their first cap.

I've never once lost a capital ship to the AI, so I only add to ressurrection at level 10.  However, against a player it's entirely another story.  I've never payed a multiplayer game where I haven't lost at least one cap.

As I said earlier, add a point to ressurrection only once there is something to ressurrect.  If nothing is dead yet, don't bother adding to it yet.  If there's something available for ressurrection, then go crazy, but don't pre-emptively add to it and then complain you never got the opportunity to use it.