Any Guides For 1v1, By Faction?

The 1v1 random map is unique among the randomly generated maps both in terms of relative size and start positions.  In the 2v2 random map it's possible to start pretty far away from your nearest opponent, but in 3v3 and larger unless you're pocket you should anticipate to be close enough to see immediate action.  It's very rare that you can make that presumption in 1v1; in fact, the closest I've ever seen players start are 6 jumps away in a random 1v1 map.  That's insane given that the map is only 20 planets large.  By the way, that's 10 planets per player, relatively speaking the largest random map generator.

Of course, you know where I stand on pre-set maps as alternatives

Reading through this, your post is more a rip on the current game balance.  I can understand being dissatisfied with Advent, but I find TEC vs Vasari is fine as is.  Once illuminators and scouts take a hit for Advent, I think their advantage won't seem so daunting at all.  TEC have hoshikos, and Vasari... well, they do need something early on, but if they survive to the 5-lab level they get subs.

Simple; if you take damage, shield mitigation goes up.  If you don't take damage, it goes down.  Typically any unit that is focus fired will have maximum shield mitigation after a single volley, which works out to about 65% damage reduction.  It should be noted that mitigation reduces damage to both shield and hull.

I wanted to establish whether the game has a widely-agreed balance problem, leading to a need to fix it.  RTS games seem to need to be extensively balanced for 1v1 play, and there is scarcely any 1v1 online. 

If it does need fixing 1v1, is this even possible on the current random map?  Which 1v1 map should be played?  Darvin's point that the 1v1 random is out of line with the other maps is well made- though this tends to be true of all other RTS as well...?

Advent seem to me the major balance problem, and still will be, even without the impossible illuminator bug.  I also cannot understand why the faction that is supposed to be strong on health is at a repair disadvantage early- a slight and cost-inefficient health advantage that is unrepairable isn't that much of an advantage at all.  To be the equivalent of Guardians, Overseers would have to be area-effect- as would Hoshikos...!!!  Hoshikos are simply not as good as they are said to be- without a level 6 Marza..  Guardians should help a single target.  The so-called Guardian nerf just isn't.

Apart from Advent, better capitals offset cheaper ships and repair advantages to some degree, but this is about ship health, which means that each faction can destroy the ships of the other.  The material issue turns entirely on neutrals- there has to be a fair few to offset, and they have to be placed correctly.  However, I hadn't wanted to suggest fixes, just to suggest that there is no established map for a balance test and so no balancing going on.. there is really no player balance testing without 1v1, just opinions from mixed faction feed-happy 4s 5s?  Can the 4s and 5s be played faction versus faction at all?  Other factions vs 4 Advent is a non-starter? 

On mitigation.. what I wanted to know is whether the shield just mitigates while there is shield remaining?  As soon as damage eliminates all shield, is it then unmitigated? 

I have to disagree with this for the most part.   I've played a lot of 1v1's on ICO and every race can be quite viable given specific strategies. 

The random small map is really the biggest variable in the equation, the map layout varies so much and can really favor one side depending on how it's set up.  One of the biggest problems is the pirate base is sometimes the only link between the two halves of the map.  This will often mean that whoever got the better half has the win.  The other issue is with start position, like whether or not you have a starter asteroid connected to your homeworld, how many mines are available on your near planets, and the number of pirates guarding each planet.  Due to how it's generated these things can be slanted heavily in one side or the other, even mining, or trade bonuses can have a huge effect.

For each of the races in 1v1 there are specific advantages that can create a winning scenario.  For Advent it's fleet, advent ships pound for pound are the strongest and if you can press an early battle as advent, with proper micro and fleet management the other sides just can't compete.   For TEC the advantage is in economy, espescially with the buff to the akkan, if TEC can gobble up enough planets and get trade going, their economic advantage will allow them to roll over just about any opponent in a 1v1 situation.  For Vasari it's all about abusing the mobile starbase.  If you can get one built in a nice choke point system particularly if there are no other paths into your empire it can become an all but impassable barrier for your opponent, then you can tech/econ turtle till the overwheming endgame vasari techs pretty much guarantee victory, with the full tech tree Vasari are pretty much unbeatable with phase gates, RA and the Kostura go anywhere cannon.

Strongly disagree.  Hoshikos are awesome, if anything borderline overpowered. Yes, Guardians are awesome and also borderline overpowered, but frankly I consider them the equal of Hoshikos.

Area of effect Hoshiko repair would be a capital class ability... in fact, it is (Skirantra repair cloud).

Guardian shield bubble isn't that great without a Progenitor.  They run out of shield points rather quickly and then they die because of their low hit points.  It's the synergy that makes them awesome.  Repulse is still sick, but that's another topic in and of itself.

Nope; as it says in the manual, shield mitigation stays online at all times.  There are some abilities (phase missiles, nanos, radiation bomb, etc) that ignore shield mitigation, but otherwise any damage is always mitigated.

You would never want to do balancing on a random map.  You would always want to balance against a non-random map which is mirrored for both opponents.

I strongly disagree.  I think they are the best, or certainly one of the best, support cruisers in the game.  As an old vasari player, I could always only wish that the overseer and subverter stacked up.  Overseers come later in the tech tree, yet are suckier and harder to use (in addition to being more costly and flimsy) than the hoshikos.

I'd be surprised if there were a few 1v1 on ICO, as I haven't seen many, I suppose they might fill quickly and a game list would help, but there rarely seems to be one open.

If we are agreed that a random map can't be used for 1v1 balance, can any of the set maps be used?

What would an ideal balanced map be composed of?  It should probably be mirrored, as has been suggested.  One of each of terran, desert, volcanic and ice for each side seems good?  Two roids and a dead roid each?  Should the map be a multi, and with a wormhole, for the entire tech tree?  How many neutrals and of what kind?  Again, one of each for each player.., or only one of each asteroid belt, and a single gas, plasma and junk ?  Pirates?  Should the map be choked, or more open?  How long a possible trade route should there be, without starbases? 

The map that is perhaps most like this of the set maps is Storm Front.. though it is a single with no wormholes, and fewer neutrals.  It has 23 planets to the random's 20, and only one volcanic, with 6 roids.

Other issues- I can't disagreee with most of Valkya's suggestions, though each of the factions would seem to be unstoppable!  However the advice doesn't seem to be specifically for 1v1.  Advent might be able to best force a fleet battle on a 1v1, where there is more limited opportunity for manoeuvre..?   The Tec early material advantage is complicated, because the Akkan has very weak combat abilities, and improving its colony ability doesn't help them.  Is quickstart an anti-Tec option... as early financial help for all factions means that the Tec advantage is much diminished?    The mobile starbase is just not as effective as a threat when you are that much further from the enemy home planet, and as a choke, if there is just one choke then perhaps, but your attack will be diminished.  Phase gates aren't a great investment on that sort of map, either- where else will your fleet want to be..?   
 
On Hoshikos, perhaps I underutilise the unit, but it seems to me that at least Overseers can perform their function of making one cap invulnerable.   Hoshikos cannot start healing until shields are down and cannot stack...  they just can't either keep caps alive, or protect frigates and most cruisers.  Unlike Overseers they will combine with heavies, but then Overseers might not have to repair heavies? 

Guardians start healing instantly and have no targetting problems...  As the health repair starts later, I cannot understand why the Skirantra is so disadvantaged compared to the Advent colony ship... the ability just repairs far less at every level.  On top of which, Advent get bays that repair health- why?  The other factions cannot repair fleet shields quickly at all?  

However the last word on repair is the 'Battleball'.  Advent ones exist, no other faction has them.  They don't exist at all without Guardians... all you would have is a Skirantra type group.  Perhaps any area effect healing- fleet healing-  should be a capital class ability?  If the Guardian ability was target-only, the ship would still be far more effective at healing than a single Hoshiko- perhaps as it should be considering the cost and the far superior secondary ability....

Well, back to cadets then, I have to read the manual.  The Elite Warlords Lobby will be disappointed, though I had become slighlty less shevelled than might be considered fitting, in any case.  Time to rest and preen..  'Once the primary shield has failed, emergency generators are brought online to maintain this last line of defence throughout the armor..' I had considered that the state of the shield was maintained, so that when projected again it had the same mitigation, though only if passive shield regeneration was actively removed would there ever be no mitigation..  I'm not sure that I understand how phase missiles are supposed to both bypass mitigation using phase and impact on armour when the mitigation is 'throughout' the armour at zero shields..?  The missile has to be out of phase to impact at all...? 

Overseers are nice cause unlike all other support curisers their effects stack. warp 10 overseers in next to your dieing starbase/capship and you will see what i mean.... can we say not quite dead yet? lets see hoshikos do that.

and subverters are definatly the hands down best support cruiser in the game. thier shield breaker... that 10% shield mitigation block means that that lv 10 advent cap ship with its 85% shield mitigation is now taking 66% more damage (drops from 85% to 75%)... and thats before the phase missle bypass... can we say 55%  (30+25) sheild (and mitigation) bypass chance? can we imagine guardians dieing with over 1000 shield left EASY?  and Distortion field... whooly cr@*... 20 seconds of free shots per subverter... and if you have a pji and they try to leave... there will be absolutly nothing left of their fleet if you can micro it right.  Using these suckers I WON a 4v1... 2 of those 4 players were considerably more skilled than i was. (course i had the help of 3 lagged out players ais...)

The problem is surviving to the point where you can bring overseers and subverters out.

Nah.  Sounds fantastic in theory, looks great on paper.  But you aren't going to get your 10 overseers anywhere near a battle with a skilled player.  If you do, you will lose them all in your suicide mission to heal your cap or starbase, so you are on the losing end of that transaction in my opinion, even if you do get the heal off.  Your overseers suck balls.

LOL.  That's one of the funniest things I've read in a while.  They are too late in the tech tree for what you get in return for them (too little, too late, not worth the wait), they were nerfed way too hard back in the day, they are too flimsy, WAAAAAAY too micro-intensive... on and on... you want more?  I could give you more if you really want.

You say these units are so great, but you never see anyone use them.  But the tec robocruisers (which you say are surpassed by overseers and subs) - heck, you see tons of them being used, and put to real effect on the battlefield, by skilled and newb alike.

You're just a vasari fanboy.  Hey, I like vasari too - they are all I played exclusively for about a year.  But let's get real, and not let the fact that we like vasari cloud our objective judgement about them.

Correction.  I just downloaded a 4v4 and watched it.  I saw Cykur use a few subverters.  In one instance they all jumped at once and disabled a... (drum roll please...)... extractor!  In another instance they did jump and disable a small group of ships, but it was a very small group of ships that was about to be annihilated anyway, and of course they all jumped and disabled the same group of ships.

If Cykur had been playing himself those subs would have been dead to fighters the minute they hit the grav well, but his opponent didn't know how to micro fighters.

So that's about twice I've seen them used in the last few hundred games, never to any real effect.

Subverters have a thing against extractors.....which replay was this??? lol

If you micro subverters, they are decent.  I think the Hoshiko is probably the best support cruiser in the game, especially for the cheap cost.

Hoshikos have to be among the top two, anyway- while I consider the Overseer more useful for its function, it and the Subverter seem very flimsy for a faction that is supposed to have the most survivable ships.  I've often asked that most of the Subverter (and RA) nerf be revoked. 

However I wanted to discuss what could be a balanced 1v1 map, if the random map isn't considered suitable.  All the features might have to be included, and the map should be a multi, though if the conflict at the star is too prominent it won't work for balance, so the home planets should be in the same system. 

How about this?

There's a small second system to reward research, wormholes are included, the map shouldn't choke up too easily and there are opportunities for trade without having to invest in a starbase.  There's 4 neutrals in the home system, plus one in the other.  I've included every possible type of gravwell except a non-home Terran.  This is just a first attempt though, it could be adapted, or even remade very differently.  It's 28 planets, though I tried to keep it small multis tend to be bigger.   

A bugged game version isn't much good for balance, please fix the Illuminators- and they are too strong even when fixed.

They did partially undo the Subverter nerf in one of the more recent patches.  RA will never get unnerfed, and with good reason.  I don't think I ever lost a game I went RA, and there were a few times when my team got disconnected / crashed, or noobs bailed on me, but I was still able to kill the entire opposing team because I had RA.

The other thing that sucked about RA was that some players would try to rush RA every game, and if you prevented them from getting it, they would just quit.

It's on Astax's replays thread.  You were in the south, had an Advent to your left (the southwest), and a TEC on your right (southeast) who wanted you to suicide your fleet on his "BOOM" SB, ha ha.  He kept telling you that if you'd let him blow up your fleet, he'd quit like a good boy, LOL (yeah, right).

Subverters were always my favorite unit from the instant I first played the game.  I just think they were overnerfed, and they provide "too little, too late" when you look at their cost, their flimsiness, their lateness in the tech tree, but mostly their micro-intensiveness.  Compare all that against the TEC robocruiser, and it's the opposite.  Those things come early in the TEC tree, are cheap, aren't flimsy, and require no micro at all.

Basically, my belief is that if a unit is late in the tech tree, expensive, flimsy, and most of all micro-intensive and requires great skill to use, then it had better be devastating in return!

Yes, I agree with the others that RA was overnerfed.  I will say that OP or not, the game was a hell of a lot more fun when you could shoot for RA, or try to stop someone else from doing it!  If it is true that RA was extremely OP, then fine, I accept that.  So don't offer FREE ships, but make it better than it is now.

Have you ever lost a game when you didn't?  LOL.

I would have the returning fleets free, but not at the previous level.  As it is there is a double handicap to the tech, you can't get the ships that you want, and you have to pay part of the cost.  I would like the size of the fleets reduced to the existing point of economic advantage, and made free.  The ships might get scrapped for extra resources, but this is very micro-intensive, and it might be much better that the abuse of the tech be micro-intensive, rather than its proper function.

I'm happy for Subverters to be devasting but require micro as they are an offensive unit, less happy with Overseers.  However both are high tier units and too easily destroyed.  A faction that relies on health rather than shields shouldn't be short of repair methods for some of its ships outside a single capital ship- I cannot understand why Advent get better repair bays.  Perhaps reintegration could be made targetable..?

Have any replays of 1v1 matches between top players been posted?  Ideally we should have 1v1 replays for each of the three combinations of factions, and a win and a lose for each faction- that's at least six.    

Uh, yeah...many