Counters to vasari uberness.

It's incredible that good counters haven't spread already, there are numerous people using them. Just look around.

you could not reply at all,really.

The honest answer for advent is that there is not much.  Caps die easily to vasari bomber and assailant spam.  If you are close enough, scout and disc spam do work still if you do it right.  Carrier cruisers can be used to snipe caps if you can surprise them with it(IE hold them in reserve out of the well until the skirantra take decent damage and then jump them in to finish them off).  Bad thing about the carriers with your own bombers is they will pull out phasic trap on defense and totally negate them.  Illums do ok until they pull out a SB then you are screwed.  You are still going to level up their caps with them though(assailants are 20exp, illums are 2 or 3 times that).  TEC admittedly have it easier with better focus fire LRMs, more hull, and hoshis.  The only good part is if you survive to get repulse and then you can slow the caps down long enough to kill them.  They still outrange with bombers and assailants and phase missles kill the guardians sooner than one would want.  Advent is uphill the whole game against vasari though if its played halfway decently.

[_]-Greyfox

good counters haven't spread because there simply aren't any.

as tec LRM kill caps very efficeintly if your oppenent is stupid enough to let this happen, but the skirantra can outrun LRM and if the caps are paired with a few ruiners (vas mine layers)...well goodluck

and contrary to popular belief bombers counter flak not the other way around, unless u build a stupid amount of flak and a skilled player can easily avoid flak and also all that flak is pretty useless against the caps, especially with repair cloud

doesn't look like anyone cares about this either as this has never been addressed in any patch and probably never will

a level 5 kol with level 3 flak burst will devastate strike craft but the trick is keeping it alive till it reaches said level, and again this can easily be avoided

dunovs also work ok (ive done it) using emp pulse to keep the skins' am low and shield restore to keep each other alive

the biggest problem is that the skirantras are highly effective at causing massive damage while keeping a safe distance and everything iv'e suggested must first get into range of the carriers to counter them/kill them and will likely die to his dozen or so assailants while trying

Admittedly it has been months since I've played/updated my copy, but if bombers are the only thing giving your enemy an edge over you( i.e you have strategies for taking down everything else that doesn't rely on strikecraft) then simply make every squadron into fighters and negate strikecraft altogether on both sides.  (May requre 5-6 Light Carriers if you have only 1-2 low level caps in your fleet to add to SC.) They'll do crap damage to most ship types if you manage to take out all bombers and have fighters left, but at least you won't have to contend with bomber swarms screwing with your strategy.

Again, this is only viable if you do not utilize strikecraft in your core strategy, and some game mechanics may have changed in the time since I last played.  If you do choose to use it, some players in the past have recommended putting all squads in a tight area and set them to hold position so they wipe out anything that gets near them, place them in the path of the bombers and adjust as needed.  Holding position seems to make them able to fire faster, apparently, and with them all in one spot are able to vaporize weaker targets like bombers, scouts, and colony frigates.  (LRF too if I remember right, but I'm not possitive or it may have changed.)

The down side is if they have flak, your fighters are toast if you let them get in range, so remove those first and keep them down.  Squadrons are taxing in the micro-manapartment, unless you just use them to add a little chaos to your strategy and let the computer choose targets for you.

Theoretically, it is also possible to "Trick" your opponents into wasting the Antimatter required for making the squads, by spreading out your attacks over 5-6 of their mid level ships, giving them insentive to use their repair ability often. (Forgot what it's called)  Best used when you are on defense and able to call reinforcements faster than your opponent can get their to the battle, as you will lose ships faster than them until they can no longer repair.

Lastly, I cannot remember if the abilities work on cap ships, but if they do, the TEC Cobalt's Sabotage Reactor and the Advent Light Frigate's Steal Antimatter would also work extremely well.

-Twilight Storm

You really cannot kill flak or carriers with lf in mid game anymore.It is almost garunteed at least 30 lrf in a fleet by then toasting any amounts of lf.Along with 4 levels of pm ups.Also as vasari they dont need carriers by mid game.2 level 3 skirntras can produce like 30 ish bombers in just a few min.Along with the pm ups and the 30 kanracks any caps are toasted within 10-15 seconds.To counter this fleet you would need 60 fighters.In which case you really dont have anything to deal with the skirantras.Not really an option as getting that many fighters would take an obscene amount of time.Vasari would just build flak and use his bombers to kill you.A good player would be building flak if there was a hint of fighters anyway.

The trick you are mentioning does not work because you are wasting your dps.It might work if he was doing 0 damage to you but he can spam bombers and jump out to his well repair at bay then jump right back in.While you are shooting his caps his ships and bombers are laying waste to all in its path.

Problem with vasari is the skirantra bomber spam along with pm.When they hit 4 ups on phase they have a significant dps advantage over any similar sized fleet.Thats even with both sides of upgrades.The bomber spam adds the most dps out of any ship or ability in game besides a perfect missile barrage.Mb are rare.There are some awesome advent cap ship tricks that do alot to fleets but are extinct now because you must go all carriers and advent caps cannot survive to make 180 degree turn against vasari.This is mid game im talkin bout.

Carrier capitals are too powerful and Skirantras are the worst offenders.  Phase missiles are absurdly effective compared to other upgrades and come far too early in the technology tree.  Plus they then fit onto fighters and flak as well- ever had a capital taken down by Vasari fighters?  When Vasari have the most durable strikecraft and in the ridiculous numbers produced by Skirantras, they combine fleets with their starbases far too effectively.

However there is little hope for any kind of balance patch to fix the game.  Firstly the game has never been remotely balanced, we whined for ages about the bugged illuminators which took six months to fix and killed a lot of interest, but there's stuff in the technology trees that has been rubbish as long as the game has existed.  The Skirantras are just the latest in a long weary line of poorly considered additions and attempted refinements.  Stardock and Ironclad have just never put enough effort into the game, they say count the patches, but look at the content compared to the needs.  Secondly, even if at this late stage there was a wholehearted effort made at a beta balance patch, there aren't the players to support it.  Even the most experienced players seem to be of the opinion that the game can be balanced using their 5v5 experience, and it just can't.  5s are rubbish games almost always decided by being stacked or on drops. 

Nearly 3 years into this game and there's still no agreed 1v1 map for testing balance changes.  There is a grand total of one set of replays that I'd recommend for balance, the Star vs Tyr replays, which are outdated.  Any serious discussion of balance demands a replay.  I'll say this for Leisure Suit Vasari, on his balance thread there was at least a replay, even though and somewhat incredibly he wouldn't admit to being in the game that showed the situation he described.  It's amazing to me, when that one was of the few pukka efforts this community has managed to discuss balance, that the Skirantras were then given the huge buff that Leisure Suit demanded and which we had exposed as not being shown to be necessary by the game he was referring to.  But then when was the last time anyone from the development side discussed the game with players at all? 

I don't know why I bother any more.  A long, long time ago, this game had a huge amount of potential.  The mechanics are still fun, in terms of the physical act of playing.  The game side of it is poor and has been for at least half the life of the game.  If there is ever a proper beta patch then I'll make an effort to support it with enough 1v1 replays for a discussion.  Until then threads like this are just venting.  What are the counters to disinterest?

An interesting game

New people start playing soase everyday,to keep them interested we only have to supply them interesting matches with diversity of tactics and strategies - currently most effective way to counter skirantra spam is do the same.

First step in making game deeper would be tweaking some balance issues,for example: big part of soase playerbase love using capital ships and not spamming frigates - making capital ships more durable against bomber spam or LRF spam would be a nice step in reawakening interest to soase online.

I couldn't agree more.

Seleuceia and I did some experimentation this summer with a balance mod, and tried a bunch of different approaches to fixing this issue.  Some worked well, others had unintended consequences.  I did find one change was extremely effective not only at keeping capital ships alive but also making other types of capital ships competitive when compared ot the carriers.

What we did was we changed their move speeds, so different classes of capital ships moved at different rates.  The carrier was the slowest capital ship (its speed was unchanged) and therefor the least able to withdraw and kite.  This makes sense, since the carrier's abilities already allow it to more easily avoid getting in weapons range in the first place.  It also means other capital ship types can catch up to a kiting carrier capital ship, which means a carrier cap can't just spec itself with bombers and expect to whittle away any other capital ship variety while it kites.

The speeds we chose were:

Battleships - 600
Support - 575
Siege - 550
Colony -550
Carrier - 525

Currently the colony capital ship moves at a speed of 475 and all others move at a speed of 525.  By comparison, the LRF has a move speed of 500.  I find the slow move rate of colony caps to be one of their greatest liabilities and relegates them either to the center of a massive fleet or far away from any major conflict...

Fighters are a hard counter to both bombers and LRF. In another thread, someone suggested toughening up fighters, and I basically agree. Make them not quite so soft vs. flak, so they can do some harm to LRF spam, and suddenly your light frigates are back in the game.

Tweaking Cap ship speed isn't a good fix, imo, because a single Antorak Marauder is going to still let a Vasari fleet kite just like before.

Tweaking fighters surviveability would be nice but I think that scramble would still need nerfed.  It can simply put out way too many bomber squads to effectively thin out.   Phasic trap needs tweaked too.  Vasari has other issues certainly which have been beaten to death with no good result(eg. a developer change)

[_]-Greyfox

Agreed; it's out of line compared to the Sova and Halcyon.  It's not passive so it should be stronger, but not this much stronger.  I believe the best approach is to lower its duration so the maximum number of squads is reduced.  At the same time lowering the cooldown would have a double-edged effect of allowing it to replace fallen craft faster but also increasing the antimatter cost of doing so.

Again, Seleuceia and I did some experimentation on this, and we found that a duration of 60 seconds and a cooldown of 24 seconds worked wonderfully and left this ability worth spending antimatter on without making it overwhelming.

Absolutely; needs a rather stringent target cap and maybe an area of effect reduction.  This ability is capital ship level in power, and does not belong on a hanger.  A hanger should really only be stunning 2 or 3 squads, and has no business negating carriers that outnumber it 10:1 (or more!!!).  I favour a vastly reduced effect coupled with an antimatter cost decrease so it becomes viable to use this ability in conjunction with strike craft, rather than one or the other.

As an added benefit, a target cap would have to be on a pre-individual rather than per-squad basis.  This means the ability wouldn't affect Advent as much as the other factions, since its SC are smaller but more numerous.  In effect, an indirect buff to the Advent vs Vasari matchup, which needs everything it can get.

To be fair, there hasn't been any patch is quite a while...

All u crying advent bitches STFU.

U had no problem when lums were making HC dmg without any upgrade and 20 lums could level vasari sb with 1 hull upgrade. Vasa rnt even in 10% as overpowered as  advent were. Your problem is Vasari has an answer for your every trick. True, but the cost most , they have many week spots. Stop beatching already and learn , adapt, use best what other races has.

I know Grey nothing i write wont change your mind, cause u have " nerf vasari" implemented to your dna  and even if ill do to u what i did to gandalf when he was singing your song, that is kicked his ass  , me advent, he vasari wont change it.

But to other people: its not true, vasa isnt overpowered. All depends of the map. If vasari has tons of neuts nere him, sure, he is invincible, but if there isnt any or there is little, Vasa is defencless like a baybe and u can  simply outspamm him

Your responses seem less thought out as time goes on, quar.  DT has worn off on you too much.  I remember back in the day when you were halfway intelligeable.  At least star can feign civility on the forums even if not on ICO.  You seem to focus on the time or 2 I melted your SB with a bunch of illums and not on every other time when 40 illums die easily to a halfway upgraded SB.  If you think that vasari is not OP, it puts a different light on your whole "bugged illums" tirades you went on.  It does not help defend your case when you talk like you are "special".  If you can't rationally and logically defend your position that vasari is not OP, then do not bother posting.  Most of us could do without the "nuh uhh! is not!" style of debate.

[_]-Greyfox

Comparing the current strength level of Vasari to bugged illuminators isn't exactly favourable.  The vast majority of people here were celebrating when the illum bug got fixed.

True, and If I recall, Illums were doing extra damage that they weren't supposed to, Scramble Bombers seems to be performing as it is programmed to, it just needs to be toned down.

Though it does occur to me that the Advent get 3 extra permanent squads due to their ability(Don't remember the name) do they still get that?  Been a while since I updated.  The only thing that Scramble bombers has over the advent ability is that it replaces the squads for free.  So how about raising the Antimatter cost initially, do one squad at level one for 60 AM, 2 max squads at level 2, and at level 3, drop the cost to 40 AM instead of allowing a 3rd squad.  Then there aren't too manyscrambled squads of bombers out and the ability is still useful.

A Halcyon vs Skirantra, it seems like the Halcyon should win, even now.  Assuming both are level 10, max upgrades, the halcyon can release twice as many squads and absolutly rape.  The only problem I see is with the Sova, it has no equivelent.  (Makes its current squads tougher, and can drop a missile platform, which the other carrier's abilities can vaporize)

-Twilight Storm

The difference is that level 3 scramble bomber can replicate that and then some since the ones you spawned before don't go away when you reuse the ability.  This makes it quickly additive and worth a lot more than 3 squads that advent get with same level if so chosen.  Add in the occasional AE heal which heals the SC too and its practically impossible to thin out.  The heal can be used sparingly for AM sake and it still doesn't matter.  SC don't have much health anyways so one use will do a lot.  As has been mentioned, the other abilities of the halcyon are worth more generally. 

[_]-Greyfox

Grey now u talking no its it cause i say so.

I made 1 hard argument, and u simply ignore it like it doesnt exist. U dont read cause u dont have to or u ignore it cause u have no response?

Sins has many abilities that might seem overpowered like metero storm + dissorientation on advent sb. No counter if u get in range, or u get pushed in range.

Scramble bombers is strong from lv3 cap. It gives vasari some advantage, some replacement for lack of spammin abilities that advent and tec has. I can understand its hard to change your playstyle   habit but if u dont adapt, u get beatten. I can  tell u at least dosens of players r counterinf scintras very effective and i dont see then screaming on forums like u do.

Like i sad, i bet even if me as advent win with u as vasa u wont change your mind, so stop talking about beeing special and arguments, nor inteligence.

Another topic: vasari isnt bugged. Vasari works as they were program to work, no sicret extra damage no extra armor, shield, no magical teleportation. u may say some abilities r overpowered, but i say every race has something thats overpowered like meteor storm, or pervasive economy or..... REPULSE Funny haw u all focus on vasari abilities especialy u Grey

Sins is so ql cause everything has a counter. everything. even scramble bombers. U just didnt unlock it yet, Your main problem is your focus to  win against scintra in air, witch is hard. Ill give u a tip , try something else or ask Aquia for help.

I bet u wil bring an argument about a price of the counter. Here we r hitting the hot spot. Cause vasari  generaly costs 30-50% more then other races , so if u need to spend some more to counter,  u r just matching vasari expences.

Here we r toughing another hot spot, cause everything turns about cash. Haw do vasari get that extra + 30-50% to match advent and tec spamm. answer is : neutrals. So like i sad, and will say again, everything depends of the map

But i have great idea for u lets merge all 3 races into 1, so everything will be equal, no weeknes, no pros, also lets remove all  upgrades, leaving only some abilities, so we will have pure spamm.  lets create such a  comie nirvana, everything equal. i hope u will enjoi it (sarcasm off)

PS, when i was talking about lums i wasnt thinking about u. I know many more notorious lums abusers then u mostly among DT

PSPS i hope its not too rational for u

The main frigate spammed in this patch is the lrf.What exactly costs 30-50 % more? Vas only cost 1 lab to get lrf.It is cheapest to unlock.Has cheapest upgrades for damage that benefit both skirantra and just about everyship they build.Cost of ilum is 380/60/55 and kanrack is 400/65/40.On top of this exp for destroying a kanrack is 20 while an ilum is 45.Feeding your caps while advents lag way behind.On top of that extraction up costs are 1 for both while advents is seperate.Vas also get a tec to reduce the cost of EVERYTHING caps,ships,buildings,labs,tp, ect.It makes vas lrf cheaper than ilum.

Quar meteor is ultra late game stuff.You have to make a fleet drive into its range.Vas can just drive thier sb up to your fleet.Oh ya they can disable your entire sc fleet for 40 sec at a time.Oh ya they can disable your entire fleet from moving or firing for 20 sec with 1 frig.Which alow your sb to get in range and destroy your fleet.Sub tec to high?Get an egg with grav bomb.

So you get a sb with meteor?Spend all that cash and vas drives by.Or you built cause you cant take vas fleet head on.Well vas sit there with huge fleet in your well while buildng his own sb forcing you to attack him.Next to impossible to kill with overseer support.As you mentioned dont try to match vas with sc you cant do it.

Dang quar your right everything is so balanced what was I thinking.

Meteor and disorient have many counters.  Mainly it is to not engage directly and use bombers which guess what....2 or 3 skirantra do that nicely even without carrier cruisers or building a SBas minds here says.  2nd is ant-AM abilities such as on a kortul.  Radiances block it too with detonate AM.  Repulse isn't OP.  Assailants and javelis outrange.  The afforementioned bomber spam outranges.  Phase missles make them not that difficult to kill.  I did not see any point in your rambling mess of text, quar.  Only thing there was is something about neutrals being important to vasari which is obvious.  It is not often that a random map does not have enough to support a vasari.  The thing is that most of the games now have 6 or 7 or 8 vasari in them that fight over neutrals and still the vasari manages in general to overpower other races easier.

[_]-Greyfox

Yes assai is so cheap, i love when u pull the rality to your shape, classic.

Assai and lums cost about same, but, 12 assai vs 10 lums assai with 2x lv1 dmg upgrade, who will win?

If u gonna say assay  go do the test.

Lum is lv3 lrf, assai is lv1, thats y its much stronger

Also, your infamous subverters, they r also late late game, as late as meteor but costs 2x more to reserch

Disabling sc also cost a lot, it required 4 labs, and u cant use sc on hangars. but wait, dont hellcion has push ability so 2 of them can  push your sc almost forever? also this ability isnt restricted to your home planet, i u can attack with it. FOR FREE . no reserch cost.

That tec that gives vasa cheapest fleet,  requires 3 industrial labs and cost nmore then metero ( summed bouth levels) and give like....... 8% of cash only!!! (dont even mention about 8 industial lab tec)  totaly usleless unless u bild kosturas .

ye advent are so screwed considering lum is their weekest unit but still outmaches assai in cost and spamming ability.

Ah forgot to mention, about socuts, Advent has best strongest, cheapest sout, that outmaches any lrf fleet .

We touched on spamming already and discovered they equal in cost so they can be spammed equally.Something you forget to consider between these 2 is that kanracks grant you a war without enemy caps which for advent is huge.Advent needs caps to augment there fleet to win.This is on equal eco footing.Skirantra can heal your ships whereever they go which is a soft counter to ilum side beams cutting damage in half.For advent to survive they must invest in repair for caps.

You cant compare those 2 tecs.Meteor is espensive because of all the labs and then you have to buy it on sb.That credit tec for vas is pretty good cause it effects everything in game.Reduces caps by like 300 credits.Buildings labs all ships.Its actually can be worth it.

lol seriously?So getting 4 labs which you would have anyway and researching this to disable 40-80 bombers which would be the entire fleet(all advent has to deal with a sb) is not cost effective?Dont get me started with tk push.It doesnt work against sc.Its range is to low and you cannot push all sc before at least some of the hit your cap.2 skirantra at lvl3 = what 40-50 bombers by themself lol.4 lvls of pm ups forget about brniging haly to the game.

Wrong.You can get subs out mid game and you know why?Because they are infinitely more useful than meteor mid game and late game.Why you ask? Because they can go anywhere and kill fleets.Stop fleets from retreating.All you need is 10-15.Add mines and you dont need much damage dealing ships at all to kill any size fleet.How is meteor being stationary and near impossible to even use on a skilled player even stack up to subs?

Seriously quar try playing advent against skilled vas and see how useful tkpush is against 2 skiratras and all your other tricks you think work.Post up the replay and I wont say no more about it.Show how you can use meteor to win games lol.

Veni vidi , vici

i did to u same i did to gandalf.

Did that kicked ass wonder what will u tell now?

Unless u dont consider yourself as skilled vasari?

All that crap, arguments, insults, and when it comes to mans job, u get your ass kicked  by an ifrerior race.

 adding replay it shoul close your and greys mouth,, but i bet u wont stop crying.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nkbx5k

lol that game had nothing to do with what we were talkin about.You talk about how good ilums are and tk push yet when you played me you didnt use them once in game.You ran your caps from my fleet the whole game and when you did get close I killed it easy.All tier 0 units except a few flak.Why do I want to play a race where all I can do is spam scouts all game to beat someone.When all advent can do is spam scouts and tier 0 stuff to win I would hardly call balanced.How do you think it would have turned out if all i did was invest in tier 0 units as well?I had 6 levels of pm.By the end of the game I could have had subs to but I quit because my team lost not because I did.I would have subbed your gaurds and your fleet.

PS this cheese strat is not new or secret been around for long time.