ya, vasari need thier numbers reduced...
but we cant nerf them back to when they were almost non-existant...
do you remember before carriers were buffed? skirantras were still quite common back then... expecially when compared to kortuls, mauraders, and desolators. course, everyone got them for thier 2nd or third cap ship for the repair cloud. skrantras didnt really need to be buffed, but Scramble bombers was horrible, so thats fine... but then, buffed again! rediculous! a mid point between rediculous (now) and horrible (then) needs to be found.
Though, that might not quite be enough. May i suggust lowering the modifier of (VASARI ONLY) assailants and vasari bombers vs cap ships from 75% to 66%. this lowers their damage output to capital ships only by 12%. The reasoning is phase missles, and the higher shield mitigation on capital ships... since the phase missle research increases damage depending on the shield mitigation of the target. (do the math... 30% phase missle upgrades increase damage by 45% vs frigs, compared to 70% vs a lv 5 capship) I think this will do just enough to not kill off the vasari, and maybe bring a bit of advent back.
Vasari need their numbers reduced.
Very funny. Really. The only thing that needs to be done is to rework SB. It is clear by now that there is no middle ground for this ability. Nerf it and it becomes obsolete. Leave it and people start spamming it and pretty much winning games with scrambled bombers only.
SB has to go. Something else has to be put there, or the way it works has to be changed into something that does not allow a player to win by just picking 3 skirantras.
I strongly oppose reducing Vasari "numbers", however. Vasari already have the shittiest fleet/caps IN TERMS OF HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER. Nothing in their fleet really supports other ships, nothing cooperates.
Subverters disable the enemy and die.
Overseers still only manage to heal caps and starbases, anything else dies before they turn to face it. reintegration on enforcers and skirmishers is still a joke really, completely unhelpful.
Assailants excel only at attacking single tough targets, their missiles' speed is so bad that they can fire two salvos at a target that would die of the first one anyway, effectively losing a huge amount of firepower in huge battles, unlike illums or javelis.
Discharging missiles are absolute, total junk on assailants - you can, for example, kill a lvl5 cap with only tier 1 missile upgrades done and discharging missiles on; as the cap goes down you notice that a light frigate is hovering next to it with its hull barely touched because of discharging missiles procing off the cap.
DM are decent at sentinels, but the sentinel AI is so dumb that they simply refuse to turn DM on when in the middle of your fleet - nooo, they have to fly to the other side of the GW and there, there is the place to engage DM. So it is either forget you had DMs or turn them manually on/off on all your sentinels - have fun.
And so on.
Without any cooperation, synergy between the ships, big vasari fleets lose to big fleets of other races simply because "every man for himself" cannot defeat a fleet where each ship supports the other.
Bottom line is - without the ability to snipe caps with bombers/assailants, Vasari will be pretty much an "orky rush or sub/ruiner combo" race.
As for:
Reverie is not imbalanced. Vasari have several means of accomplishing basically the same thing. In regards to preventing a retreating cap, vasari has several methods. PJI of course is mentioned but is for all 3 races. However if you were to combine that with an egg's gravity warhead(which is AE and NOT single target), you can prevent a whole fleet from retreating and they die for trying(something that Howthe used to love doing). Using subverters(also AE) accomplishes the same thing for fleet and stops them from fighting but it does not work for caps. Disruptive strikes which you also mentioned saps AM(no AM means no reverie), interupts, and costs no AM. Also, reverie only lasts the whole time if you leave it completely alone for the duration as a small amount of damage will make it poof so its only really good to interupt a jumping cap or otherwise slow its retreat or to take a cap out of the picture temporarily in a fight/interupt a channeling ability. Reverie is basically the only good ability on the ship and even that is meh. Clairvoyance is replaced by a 200 credit scout. The cooldown reducer does not work on itself and does not work on ultimate abilities. Provoke hysteria is nice if you can get one to 6 and even then it is beaten by non ultimate abilities on other races' caps.
None of what you said negates how good the ability is.
- if someone tries to retreat from a fleet with an egg and PJIs around, then he's either drunk, high or in coma. Such a person, upon regaining conciousness and mental stability, should read MY ARTICLE ON SOASE WIKI about the Vasari egg.
- Subverters are good, but as you said - don't work on caps and the caps are the juiciest targets.
- Disruptive strikes is absolutely useless against Revelation because you cannot shoot and therefore drain Revelation's AM if you're affected by reverie. And that's what a revelation should do first, Reverie on the Kortul. No weapon jams, no DS, no volatile nans.
- the fact that damage cancels reverie is not a problem at all. As of patch number something, ships tend to refuse to aquire Reverie'd targets. When the victim finally wakes up, it is alone in the middle of a hostile fleet. Have a nice day.
Dozens of times I played Advent AIs and my most important caps just froze for half of the fight, until I managed to eliminate the enemy Revelations without any of my core abilities. Only then I managed to regain a resemblance of control over the battle and work out a victory. Had the AI been smarter with those revelations I am pretty sure I would have been left with craplods of debris floating between a couple of frozen caps, picked one by one by the enemy fleet.
Reverie is awesome, one just has to understand how to treat it. It is not POH that throws the target completely out of existence. It is not just an ion bolt that interrupts. It is not just a single-target grav bomb to stop the victim.
It is a tool that allows you to virtually cut your enemy's hands off by locking down his core caps and never allowing them to take action until you've dealt with their whole supporting fleet.
If you have a Revelation, you calculate:
"can my whole fleet with my caps - Shield restore, telepush, energy amp aura etc etc - deal with the enemy fleet if he suddenly doesn't have any caps?"
If the answer is yes, and it usually is, you disable the enemy's caps, wipe his unsupported fleet and finish the leftover caps off.
As I said - I would trade DS or POH for Reverie any time.
