StatusIpod: 

*curtsy*

Many thanks for that info, I have searching and reading the forum to try and figure out what is a good balance for the Advent ships to make. 

Now I am trying to find two pieces of info:

1) If I leave my ships alone (not micromanage the battle) do they pick out the right targets?

2) If I micromanage the battle, what ships of the enemy (Tech, Vasarri) ships should I try to remove first.  My thoughts are for Tech-Robotics and Vasarri-Subverter). 

They generally pick the targets their weapons are most effective against, within the local area. Heavy cruises target LRM, light frigates target flak or support/repair cruisers, LRM target LF, etc... but your ships won't move very far to engage a higher priority target. That is, if you have a LF and the enemy has a LF close to your ship and a flak 5 tactical squares away, your LF will target the close enemy LF even though it's more effective against the flak - because the flak is too far away. This is important for heavy cruisers, because often the enemy LRM will fire from far away enough that your heavy cruisers won't automatically move to attack them.

It really depends. That's a very complicated question which is at the core of playing Sins well. But since you don't want to keep your fleet permanently locked up, destroying enemy Subverters often takes priority. Or, if both you and the enemy only have a small number of ships, destroying the enemy's repair cruisers first is usually a good idea. If the fleets are big enough that ships explode every 5 to 10 seconds, the repair cruisers usually don't get enough time to repair anything significant, so it's better to focus on the enemy's biggest damage-dealing ships like HC or LRM. If the enemy has a dangerous L6 capital ship and can't heal it very fast for whatever reason (not Vasari, or fleets deal so much damage they overpower repair abilities), it's often a good idea to have your better anti-capital units target it (bombers, LRM). If you have LF, they'll often auto-target flak: if there are any other decent targets for the LF, tell your LF to attack them instead, because flak frigates have tons of HP but do pretty low damage. You should generally always be manually targeting enemy ships, based on damage type effectiveness or very dangerous targets: auto-targeting has a bit of intelligence, but no more than that. You probably shouldn't attack carrier cruisers if the owner of the carriers has any intelligence, because they'll warp it out as soon as it takes a significant amount of damage - and even if you destroy it, its strikecraft will still be orbiting the gravity well for couple of minutes.

There are a whole lot of variables, including the composition of your own fleet, so it's difficult to completely answer the question.

Ruthlessness I think is solely there to negate regeneration.  I mean, it does vast amounts of damage overall, but unless used with Malice, it's more or less worthless.  Now, if it stacked a few times or affected SC, then it would be very formidable.

Well, 1.5 DPS against 50 ships is 75 DPS (which is substantial), but it's negligible because it's healed because it's spread so thin.

gosh another ability that seems it should stack since its such a low dps but doesn't  Oh well illums it is then.

Oh yeah...  Can you imagine what would happen if it stacked infinitely?  bring in 50 of the things and roll over entire fleets passively.  75 DPS to every ship in your entire fleet is going to hurt big time.  Or go late-game and suddenly you've got more than a hundred passive DPS that your enemy takes merely by coming in weapons range of your fleet.  Forget side beams.  This would pound fleets.  Now, if there was some sort of pattern where say the first one does 2 DPS, second one does 1, third does .5, etc, then I would be fine with infinite stacking because adding more does increase damage, but not to the point where it becomes a passive steamroller.  

Oh, and if it stacked, that's 75 DPS from all ships plus Malice...  Uh...  Can you say instagib to whatever gets malice'd?  30% spread from 24 targets let's say getting 75 DPS.  That's an additional 517.5 almost-passive DPS to 25 ships on top of the 75 the ships are already getting, meaning each ship takes 582.5 DPS using only 50 Destras and a level 5 Progenitor.  That kind of abuse outdoes a starbase's power against a single target.  Frigates would die within a few seconds, and you are seeing 24 ships pop at once.  It will shred anything in its path.  Also, important to note is that the Destras still do what is it.. 19 DPS?  so, that's an additional 950 DPS.  That would most certainly demolish a starbase (and anything else within range).

Basically, unlimited stacking of Ruthlessness=unbalanced broken shattered REALLY FREAKING BAD!

Whatever.

I don't see any applicable uses unless it is flat-out broken.

I view this ability as part of Advent's synergy. Having Destras with Ruthlessness and a late game Illuminator fleet can do a lot to keep the side beam damage persistent on shields as targets are shifted.

I don't see much value to have Ruthlessness if your fleet is primarily Destras as FF dominates the game currently and the intent of this ability is to keep shields from regenerating during battle which isn't a concern with targets taking fire at that moment.

One buff that might be nice is to increase the range. It's currently set slightly over the Destra's weapon range.

Another buff would be to disable passive shield regeneration (frigates only) while in it's current range I don't think this is a supported buff though currently.

I'm with the greater range increase...1.5 DPS ain't much but since Advent have malice this honestly isn't as awful as it is sometimes made out to be, especially when compared to the other HC abilities which aren't particularly great either......the real issue is that most ships won't get affected by it since the range is so small...

A more interesting debuff could work...shield mitigation penalty, damage reduction penalty, etc...but honestly I think raw damage is okay enough...

Alone, no it will not...and alone I doubt the other two HC abilities would either...granted I think they are better than ruthlessness, but like many things in sins it is often a compilation of many smalll features that can lead to victory...

It's really the malice+ruthlessness combo where you can get some noticeable damage...if you do the math it is still not a whole lot but for an ability that will be spammed anyway you are essentially getting free damage...

A range increase would be a huge help...other than that, I think the biggest drawback is simply the cost of the tech...level 7 for this ability is just too expensive...

3-4 more Crusaders would probably be much more worth the money than Ruthlessness.

I'm going to quote your number of 11.85 DPS...personally when I do the math I'm getting 10.8 but either case it is somewhere around 11 DPS...

Let us grant the range increase to Ruthlessness that I'm advocating...make it 7000m or 8000m, and let's just assume that range is good enough to encompass most it not all of the enemy fleet (which is not unreasonable since your own destras will be spread out)...

11 DPS being done constantly to at least 24 ships (or more depending on number of progs) may not seem like a lot....however, as you noted FFing is big in sins and so most of those ships will be at a low shield mitigation (15%)...so, let's just underestimate that to be 9 DPS...in one minute that is 540 damage done to each of those 24 ships...add another minute, or add another prog, and you can quickly see how that damage can add up to quite a bit...couple minutes and many frigates will be killed outright despite not actually ever being fired at...this is not any different than how malice currently works...it spreads out damage to the point where you get a cascade effect because all the remaining enemy ships have really low health...

Obviously even with the range increase there are some limitations...you need to have a prog with malice, and preferably a level 5 so you can have malice level 3...but, the ability is still contributing in a meaningful way, and unlike the other two abilities it can affect structures which do not generally have shield mitigation (excluding Advent)...

Let us compare that to the Kodiak's or the Enforcer's abilities...

The Enforcer's ability has a range of 4000m...like ruthlessness, that is a very limiting number...also, this ability does nothing against structures...while slowing down ships may slow their retreat, the range on this ability inherently implies that the enemy ships are in weapons range...so, it is not preventing them from killing you by reducing damage or something...if you are losing, or the battle is really close, this ability is not going to do you any good...

The Kodiak ability, like the Enforcer's, is only useful for chasing fleeing ships...and like the Enforcer's ability, this ability is completely useless during a pitched battle...

In both cases, neither ability helps you directly win a battle...they can help you capitalize on a battle you've already won, but only ruthlessness actually helps you win in the first place...in very unique situations these abilities may help you kill a fleeing cap that has taken damage (so, there is no implication that you've actually won), but in general it is actually advisable to focus on fleets before caps...and if you are choosing to focus on a cap, then you should have enough firepower to do it fairly quickly, again making both of these abilities not very useful....

In the end, none of the cruiser abilities are all that great...they all have a chance of tipping the scales in your favor, but all three have severe limitations, mainly their utility and their range...

However, a range increase to Ruthlessness would increase the effectiveness of it (since right now many ships often aren't in range)...and combined with malice, the damage that ruthlessness does is actually considerable...

The only issue with Ruthlessness other than its range is that it's a level 7 technology...like the overseer's abilities, while they may be somewhat useful in a particular situation, the tech cost simply does not justify the benefit...but, I'd say that applies to the other HC abilities as well...