@myfist0 - Look here for the most recent attempt. https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/379304. Raging Amish also had a community balance mod that took a back seat around when 1.18 came out if I remember right.

I actually liked the 1.18(1)/1.04(1) balance more so than the current situation.

My personal philosophy on how to balance is with quick iterations.  Make a few changes, and test them to see how they turn out.  Adjust other values to compensate as necessary, and test those.  Rinse and repeat. 

Most balance mods were abandoned after 1.18 because it was very well polished, and its biggest outstanding issue was the illum bug.  I'm not sure what's happened to RA, but I suppose he's moved on (or else become a lurker).

I just managed to beat jbaum with the 2 skirantra start.

there was no feed, there was no ally intervention... although i think i had the better map position.

anyways, here is the replay: http://www.mediafire.com/?zmnzmmjuyh3 

is it my personal view or did Jbaum just give up way to easy?! Correct me but he could of continuted to fight, if nothing else to stall. *shrugs* The whole center of the map was ripe for taking... blah, i shouldnt care as much as i do...

alot of the good players can read the tea leaves... he had only 2 military labs, and would need to build a third to build a starbase... by which time i would have moved in with my fleet... and he couldnt expand without building 2 civic labs thanks to his starting location... he was preety stuck, and i had the better econ. his team mates were not doing well enough to bother trying to dig in either... arrk was playing simcity for most of the game, why was being doubled... lepar was doing well, but 1 out of 4 aint that good. 

well, i did have to fight for the center of the map... course the guy i was fighing was being doubled... and i was closer... soez...  i just watched the replay myself... and i felt like jbaum was not at the top of his game that day... he was very indecisive (his marza jumped to my planet, and then did a u-turn), he made questionable cap ship desisions (a marza with its first upgrade incindary shells? a kol with lv 1 gauss rail gun... what?(lv 2 flack burst ofcourse))  he never sent a colony ship to the neutral i had guarded by a single scout...

it was really funny though... 30 min in jbaum was like

"/a well, its good game here"

and then his (smurf) ally was like

"you got him?"

"no, he got me."

and his ally was so stunned he had to double check and ask again.

course... this only means that i will be first pick/captain for a while... which means that my win ratio is about to nose-dive...

it looked like Jbaum didn't fleet enough even though you 2 were so close to each other. thats all.

Tho Im really new with 8 or so games (name WazzaDuke)  i agree this is a BS strategy. in a 2v2 the pros on each team faught out while i pwned the other noob (Advent) who pretty much had a progen,flaks, halcyon, and disciples. i MURDERED his early fleet with lrms and dual skirantas... yes this should be balanced, Perhaps the bombers shouldnt spawn instantly or something like that.

i just finished a very intresting game as vasari. it started as a 5v5, but quickly collapsed to a 2v2.  one of the enemy fell rather easily, and went on the run, colonizing some central planets, but the other one was doing rather well. really great really, because he was vasari, and had an amazing quantity of bombers, and quite honestly, both me and my ally could not compete with his amazing fleet (at the end of the game he had over 100 bomber squads, and 40-50 flacks)...

course, we did not have to beat his amazing fleet which followed "the strategy" almost perfectly (i am sure we could if we wanted to, rock vs rock and all, but thats kinda "boring")... but we resorted to... smarter means than just plain brute force to defeat our enemy. 

http://www.mediafire.com/?ttzj0nkl5ww

I left multiplayer a few months ago, and the 'lum spam was going strong. I come back to the forums, and the VASARI are now the dominant race? I did NOT see that coming (they were always viewed as weak). Seems like everything has degenerated into spam... So sad...

And for scmorris: karma is just a silly little way of telling someone you appreciate what they do or say. Usually people with high amounts of karma are big contributors.

I wasn't surprised.  Vasari gameplay and strategy really matured in 1.181, and the only thing IMO stopping them from reigning supreme were weak scouts and the dreaded illuminator.  With scouts nerfed to the point of being insignificant for all factions and illuminators put in their place, Vasari are now rock solid.  The Skirantra buff was just overkill that put them into overpowered territory.

Vasari has never really been weak.  Playing advent only I have always dreaded vasari opponents more so than other advent or TEC even when advent was supposedly the OP race.  Its funny how even a small change in power/perception can switch everyone from thinking one is weak to thinking one is strong.  Vasari were not changed that much but now they are the dominant race that 3 out of 4 players play anymore when before everyone thought advent was great.  My opinion is that certain vasari things were OP before but no one paid attention to them because a few vocal people(mostly vasari players) griped very loudly about illums and advent in general.  Once they got their way it became obvious that vasari had their own issues.  I don't think vasari as terribly OP but they are somewhat.  I am just tired of being forced to build a carrier cap just to stay in the running.  They didn't need buffed to begin with much less several buffs to the skirantra specifically.  I am surprised anymore when a vasari player picks something other than a skirantra or 2 or 3 or 4.

[_]-Greyfox

On bigger maps the Jarrasul's colonize ability is still enough to merit skipping the carrier, and later on a Kortul with jam weapons isn't bad, and when you need siege power a Vulkoras is a better investment than siege frigates.  Otherwise, yeah, there's really no reason to go with anything other than Skirantra-Skirantra-Skirantra.

I'd agree that carriers in general are too good right now, and I strongly believe that the other classes of capital ships need to be buffed up to their level.   The colony capital ships are very close, and only need slight buffs to be brought up to level, but the battleships, siege capitals, and especially support caps need some serious improvement to compete.

we have to be carefull though. i find use for the other capital ships occasionally, and it doesnt take much from "occasionally" to "always". 

nerfing scramble bomers to 1.18 level is a great start, but we must also remember that the skrims, and the enforcers were rather nicely buffed as well, but for some reason, still rather unseen.  this is due to phase missles, and thier amazing damage bonuses. I made  seperate thread for my thougs on phase missles.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/383347

now, about the other caps.

well, i think i need to make a new thread for that too.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/383363

Certainly, it's about finding the right happy medium that gets them all used.  The ones to look out for are probably the Kortul and Revelation.  The Kortul is rock solid to begin with, the Revelation has one wickedly powerful ability kept in check by the fact that the capital ship is otherwise suck.

I'm not sure how to proceed on this.  I like the concept of the 1.19 scramble better, even if it's clearly too strong.  I'd prefer some sort of hybrid between 1.18 and 1.19 scramble.  As I said in another thread, I believe the strength of scramble should be its ability to quickly deploy lots of bombers, and what needs to get toned down are the ridiculous masses it can build up.

At the risk of repeating what was said there, changes have to be made to make Vasari less of a one trick pony... and generally move emphasis away from the LRF/fighter/bomber/flak combo that currently dominates the game.

Threads like that were how 1.18 was born, and that patch was a masterpiece.  I approve.

as far as sb, i like the 1/2/3 squads better too, but right now, its a bit too powerfull.  Someone suggusted nerfing the cooldown by 5 seconds to get the number of squads the exact same as 1.81, but with the multiple squad launch, and i think this is a great plan, however, when a skirantra runs out of antimatter, suddenly the ablitiy is just as powerful as it is currently (when launching is dependant on antimatter and not cooldown)... so In addition to the slightly longer coodown, I would ask for the antimatter cost to be 50/55/60.  (this way, at lv 3 and lv 1, and almost lv 2, the antimatter cost is the same as it was in 1.81.... 20 am/squad.

does that seem decent? 

Definitely sounds like we're on the right track.  Personally I'd like to see a duration nerf (so the maximum number of strike craft you can have at once is toned down) rather than the AM change.

However, boosting the cooldown times by 5 seconds doesn't produce the same number of squads... you would need to implement cooldown times of 40/50/60 seconds to achieve that.  Level 3 of Scramble Bombers would still be stronger than the L6 power Anima Tempest, because of the extra duration. 

The single squad launch was meant to be the drawback that prevented Scramble Bombers from rivalling Anima Tempest.  With a multiple squad launch a reduced duration would be appropriate.  Just having the same squad production rate as it was with 1.18, but with multiple launches, would lead to a stronger ability.