I like the Illuminator and the TEC Railgun idea.
Because Advent is my primary race to play, in dont know TEC very well.

At the beginning i thought "oh nice damage" as i have seen the illuminator stats...3 cannons, cool.
Then i have seen...stupid unit, y u no focus one unit? 3 Units at all, that means the enemy have to spread out so the illuminator can target with all his cannons. Focus fire would be real nice.

The Revelation Battlecruiser is not so interesting. to recharge your shield you can use your Mothership.
Advent units are very effective if you combine them.

Also causes nearby kinetic weapons to fire 40% faster
Why? you said it allready, you can use the Halycon instead.

Reverie sounds ok, but is it possible to disrupt other races planet raze abilitys? If yes: i have to say no to this idea.


The Railgun buff sounds interesting, the flak buff doesnt.
Flak is very effective at the moment.

Antorak Marauder
Phase out Hull:
Cooldown time 5 - 3 - 2
Duration 6 - 8 - 10

so...no to the damage upgrade...but i dont realy know, is it a dot?
if no: damage up would be ok

to shorten this:
There are some interesting ideas, but most of it sounds not so good.
you want to to Advents units do the same things with multiple ships (shield regeneration, rate of fire)
nah
Also the TEC Frigate idea sounds not that good. i think they are good balanced at the moment. Advent is the weakest of them, Vasari is the strongest i think.

Noted. I'm considering revising that section.

 Dunov doesn't need any help IMO.  The addition of titans(and consequently greater focus upon cap-ship & titan fleets rather then massed frigates) has done a great deal to help the Dunov.

 I agree with most of this list, though I'd be careful about messing with Ruthlessness....sure it sucks, but destras currently have the best damage per cost of all heavy cruisers(in part because of the weapon speed boost on advent plasma research)

 no complaints here

 Not much to add here.  I'm at a complete loss as to how to address fighters.  Though honestly while they are countered to hard by flak, they aren't in as bad a place as most of the other ships you've listed.

 Honestly I think the problem is more their survivability in later game fleet battles.  That said I don't think LFs should be touched- they may fall off into the late game, but their role in the early game is so pivotal I'm hesitant to mess with their general strength.

 What I was thinking would be good for the Cielo is to replace it's default ability(the small single target regen buff) with some sort of small scale multitarget damage reduction(think much smaller scale weaker version of the domina effect that only affects maybe 5-6 nearby frigates but has no channel).

With the appearance of titans, there's a lot more AoE damage flying around these days and the TEC have no way to mitigate it on a wide scale.  Thematically the idea was each Cielo command cruiser has an ability to take command of 5-6 nearby frigates, reducing all damage they take by 15-20% for up to 1 minute(ending early if the cielo dies or a frigate moves too far away from the cielo).

not as astrong as the domina's effect(that is one of the advent's main frigate selling points after all), but it would synergize with hoshikos and provide the TEC with some means of mitigating wide-scale AoE damage.

Honestly I think your Gauss change is way overboard.  even after for shield mitigation, Gauss Railgun can exceed the single target DPS of the vasari Evacuator's nano-dissembler- the problem is it drinks up too much AM to be spammed.  That said, I don't think anything that deals high immediate damage should ever ignore shield mitigation(especially when it already ignores armor).  Likewise I think jump-drives disabled is too strong of a mechanic to be on a damaging ability(and should be reserved for pure-utility skills).

I actually disagree with you a bit o the core problems: The Kol has 2 main problems IMO:

1). Too much of an AM hog.  In reality, Gauss railgun would easily allow Kol to match the single-target damage output of any other capital ship if it could be spamming it every cooldown.  As it is Kol has 3 active abilities, 2 of which are AM hogs.  At the very least I think one of Kol's abilities(likely adaptive forceshield) should become a passive(with soem stat reductions of course.  I also think it would be good to reduce the AM cost of Gauss a bit more and buff the effect of Flak burst, but give it a longer cooldown(stronger effect with longer cooldown will be less of a burden on AM)

2).  Flak burst doesn't fufill it's role.  This has 2 causes: it takes at least 2-3 flak bursts to get anything done(as it does nothing but damage and won't kill squads in a single burst), by which time massed bombers have already made capitalships dead.  THe second problem is that it's a fundamentally difficult ability to balance the damage of since each faction's strikecrafts have wildly different hull strengths.  If flak burst is balanced around advent bombers it will barely scratch vasari ones.  Likewise if it's balanced to be useful against vasari bombers it will annilate TEC/advent bombers.  Honestly I think it either needs some sort of utility secondary effect(such as a debuff), to deal damage equal to a % of each squad's maximum hull, or to flat out kill the nearest 2/3/4/5 squads when activated....somethingt hat guarantees a noticable effect and is equally strong against all 3 faction's bombers.

 Like I said, disagree here.  EMP burst is good against the vasari and AMAZING against the advent. Both EMP & the level 6 ability were made stronger by the presence of titans and the greater reliance on capitalships as a result.  Shield restore also has been improved by this shift in fleet composition.

 This suggestion would be way too strong.  17 DPS(actually in the beta it's 18 now) is too great  of an advantage over the other LRFs.

I think a more reasonable solution would be to either:

A).  Change the % of damage allocated to the main beam vs side beams from 9/4.5/4.5 DPS to 11/3.5/3.5 DPS or maybe even 12/3/3 DPS

or

B ). Drastically increase how wide the firing arc on the sidebeams is(perhaps to maybe 150-160 degrees, whcih would allow sidebeams to fire on any target 10-15 degrees off center on their respective sides). part of the problem is that it's too hard to make sure all of your illuminators are firing all 3 beams at all times, which means illuminators don't regularly get their full 18 DPS

Honestly I think B is the bestter solution, though in all honesty I could see both being implemented.

 Still not convinced the Destra need it, but if ruthlessness were to be changed this is a fairly reasonable solution.  Well, may be necessary to make the effect not extend to starbases/titans as that would be a bit too nuts

 Too strong IMO, since perseverance also affects capitalships and has a long duration.  Honestly all I think needs to be changed is perseverance needs to be made omnidirectional.

 WOuld definitely help with the fact that Radiance doesn't have the beefyness to actually tank damage late game(though there are other ways to accomplish this).  

That said you haven't addressed Radiance's biggest problem: lack of early game firepower.  Battleships are in direct competition with carriers as they are "pure combat ships" without much in the way of support or utility(such as the ability to colonize).  At the moment carriers win hands down as most battleships(including radiance) simply don't have the firepower to compete with an extra 3-4 squads of strikecraft as an early game capitalship pick.

The problems with animosity & energy absorption armor are late game problems, but radiance's early game issues are as much if not more of a concern as the early game is when pure combat ships excel most(late game a large fleet make support/fleet synergy ships more attractive).

 Very interesting suggestions.  I definitely agree that guidance is the problem, and while I have done a great deal of brainstorming on how to fix it myself I hadn't thought of strikecraft build rate.

That said, I think the other issue with guidance is it is an AM hog and uses AM that would be better spent on Reverie. I think it would be good to turn Guidance itno some sort of passive, regardless of the specific effect therein.

You're mistaken about reverie though: it's widely considered to be the best disable in the game and the only reason to even consider building a revelation(though doing so is rarely a good idea all things considered).  Reverie needs absolutely no buffs.

Also one other issue with the revelation is how squishy it is.  This is mainly a problem because when it invariably gets focused and is forced to retreat any currently active instances of Reverie end prematurely if it gets to far away from the slumbering enemy.   This means the relative squishyness of the revelation means it's strongest tool will rarely get to see it's full effect against a smart opponent who will force the revelation to retreat or die.

I like the idea of increasing it's range, but 800 is too much.  Phase out Hull is a very powerful tactical tool.  Also I think it used to have 7000 range as was reduced.

 Too many effects IMO. Shutting down a planets economy, culture, and production is already on the strong side, and simultaneously shutting down the planet's chief tools to chase the Marauder out of the gravity well(orbital stuctures & production) is simply too much.

It would mean the only way to chase the thing away would be to commit a fleet, at which point it's mobility means you won't catch it anyway.

Adding an economic debuff may be a good idea, but your proposition is IMO way too mcuh for a single skill to do.

It's an interesting direction you're going, but the numbers sound way too high.  in 30 seconds w/ researches the desolater could easily be putting out something like 3k-4k damage to each target.  Way to strong of an AoE for a non-level 6 ability even with the 8 limit maximum.

Honestly I think the ability would be very strong without the inclusion of the weapon speed buff.  Just give it a long duration so it's up most of the time-heck it may even be too strong then.

But strong attack based AoEs are dangerous in general as they are high susceptible to synergy with other ship effects & research weapon upgrades, which makes them hard to balance- which honestly makes me think as far as capitalships are concerned they should be relegated to level 6 abilities.

That said I don't think the current version of this ability is inherently flawed.  The inclusion and efficiency of corvettes will likely mean any buff of this ability will make it an appealing tool.  In my opinion the biggest issue with the ability is too many parts of it scale to level, resulting in it sort of sucking hard until it hits rank 3-4.  I'd like to see the max targets fixed at 7-8 for all levels and the damage perhaps upped a bit(perhaps a bit of a AM cost reduction as well).  

All in all, while I may sound critical, kudos on the post.  You've clearly put a lot of thought into the matters and the formatting is beautiful.  While I may disagree with you on many points this is the sort of post I'd like to see more of on these forums.  Also I'm glad someone is finally pointing out the proverbial elephant in the room(classic ship balance) which has alrgely been skirted around and discussion only on a per-ship basis.

Bilun,

Unfortunately, I don't have time to do a point-by-point reply. However, I have three general comments:

1. Thank you very much for your input! It's much appreciated; in fact, I'm giving you karma for it.
2. You were critical, yes, but your criticism was constructive, which is always welcome
3. Your ideas make a lot of sense, much moreso than mine.

I have one or two minor disagreements with you, but only one worth discussing: Subversion.

If you look carefully, Level 3 Embargo does the following:

1. Shuts down all tax income on a planet
2. Sends this money to you
3. Shuts down ship construction
4. Shuts down orbital construction
5. Prevents trade ships from leaving the system

Even if you implemented my Subversion suggestion to the letter, there would only be three major differences between the two abilities:

1. Embargo gives you money; Subversion does not
2. Subversion shuts down culture and planet upgrades, Embargo does not
3. Subversion achieves its full effect at level 1, increasing in duration with level; Embargo increases in both effectiveness and duration with level

TBH, I'm not sure the differences are sufficient to compensate for the Sova's immense early-game power due to fighters and missile platforms (who in their right mind gets a MARAUDER in the early game?).

Some interesting points here.

The proposed Subversion buffs seem fine to me, especially since the ship is overall weaker than the Sova.

Frostflare's Vulkoras Phase Missile Swarm proposal is I think a better idea than the current implementation (especially because in this case, the phase missiles would actually have a chance to bypass shields) although doubling the rate of fire is probably unnecessary.

On another thread I saw a proposal suggesting that Animosity should be a target able ability that can be used on the Radiance itself or an any friendly frigate, cap ship, titan, SB or structure. This could make it a very powerful tool.

Also, I had an idea rather similar to something already suggested: the Illuminator could have a toggle able ability which shuts down the side beam emitters and channels that firepower through the central beam emitter instead.

The Corsev is the one ship most worthy of being discussed here and yet it hasn't as far as I know. However, I don't have any suggestions as to how to change it.

Volt,

I appreciate the effort. In fact, I give you karma for it. I don't think you were being a jerk, either -- it's what's called "constructive criticism," and it's extraordinarily useful.

...unfortunately, you wasted all that effort, because I accounted for most of your concerns after Bilun joined the fray.

So come on back and weigh in on some of the new ideas.

Also: I should note that I play Vasari. I buffed the other two because I felt they don't pose a decent challenge.

I'll cut out that bit about Designate Target, though. I've just never seen it used unless the game had already been won.

The Illuminator is actually probably the best LRF in game. It actually does not need a buff since Corvettes have become the new opener.

The Destras Ruthlessness is very lack luster, it almost does nothing it helps only slightly against fighting against hoshikas a real buff would be to give this ability a stacking debuff that would. For every Destra around, all enemies receive a 5% debuff to all regeneration effects. This stacks up to 50%, so 10 Destras with Ruthlessness would nullify 50% of the regeneration. A very expensive and worthy investment.

The Domina: Yes, needs to be omnidirectional.

The Radiance: hardly needs a buff as stat wise it is very strong, its problem however lies in that it has no military niche. Its bad early game is made up by its late game. But there is no way for it to survive into the late game. Give it a role as a anti-corvette/fighter Capital Ship. Give it flak turrets, and I honestly would much rather see telekinetic push on the Radiance then the Halcyon, but I know alot of people do not like that idea.

The Revelation: I agree the ship is to squishy, its pretty much a gigantic siege ship, why does it not have alot of hull? As for Guidance its main problem is that most advent units do not need Cooldowns, either add something to the ability(an antimatter regeneration aura) or rework it. And the Clairvoyance buff would be very nice.

Edit: As of Patch 0.80, the Domina is omnidirectional.

What if EA converted energy damage to shield regeneration? Not a lot of it, maybe 10% max or so. That would make it sort of like a Kol, but not completely (still vulnerable to phase missiles for instance). It could also help a bit with survivability for animosity.

I like the suggestion for phase missile swarm. I always thought it was odd that phase missile research doesn't affect that ability. I think 30s is a tad too long though. Perhaps 10-15 seconds with a (slightly) reduced cooldown? It could force players to make a choice between quick enemy fleet destruction and quick planet destruction.

I like brainstorming threads like these. Keep the ideas rolling

...in that case, I suggest Animosity provide either sufficient damage reduction OR sufficient shield regeneration to make using the ability a reliable form of crowd control and not a death sentence.

THEN TAKE IT UP TO ELEVEN!

• Energy Absorptive Armor: In addition to its current effects, each incoming attack now causes the Radiance to do 25% more damage, to a maximum of +100/200/300/400% of its normal DPS.

My point is, it's a good idea, you just have to tweak the numbers a bit to get it to work.

I will, however, add to the OP that you can take one or the other of these suggestions.

I'm not either, but it's simple and it solves the problems. TBH, though, I think the ability itself could use some work -- the bonus it provides simply doesn't synergize with the rest of the Advent fleet, nor does it allow the Revelation to further perform as a bombardment vessel.

In my experience, Distort Gravity does what it's supposed to do only SOME of the time.  Other times, there are ships in your fleet that get caught outside its radius (i.e. the range is too short), and if you try to use it to speed up a phase jump, it just doesn't work.

I'll stick to my guns on this one, for the moment.

Ah, but they're currently almost identical. Both abilities reduce ship and structure build rates (by the same amount, no less); both abilities have almost the same duration; and both abilities are contingent upon the casting ship being in the system.

The problem? Embargo also steals income AND comes with a ship that is far superior in combat by comparison to the Marauder.

So, Subversion is currently like the neutered sibling of Embargo; it needs to be differentiated into more of an outright sabotage ability, in my humble opinion.

A passive ability that also restores shields with each attack? Slightly problematic. A flat mitigation rate would be better, but I don't want to go that far if I can help it. I'm trying to keep the ships differentiated as much as possible.

I'll just go through what I did for Rebalanced Races for these..

Animosity/EAA: I made Animosity simply deal 7/14/21 DPS to all afflicted enemies so it would synergize with Malice which an Advent fleet is sure to have available, making it a more valuable fleet ability and come to think of it, simply buffing it's firepower won't do a whole lot unless you turn it into a nuke, but it already has Cleansing Brilliance so I'd like to avoid that..

Guidance: I just buffed the percentage..  I really had no idea how to fix it.  Maybe make it increase the range of abilities on the affected ship?  Idk if it's possible via modding, but that might be a better way..  Alternatively, I guess you could make it increase the target count or stacking amount on abilities..  That could make it one of the most valuable abilities in the Advent arsenal.

Distort Gravity: I didn't mess this ability.  It's not for use with large fleets and if your small fleets get out of it's radius, no offense, but micro your ships better.

Subversion: Yeah, it's similar, but it's going in different directions.  Embargo is "Ima rushin your homeworld with mah hoal fleet" whereas Subversion is "I just ignored your main fleet and jumped straight to your homeworld with a dozen ships."  See the difference?  Subversion is an flanking assault ability while Embargo is a direct-engagement attack ability.  For a rush, it's good to disable and steal income because they won't have much else to compensate for their income loss.  It seems to me like the Antorak ought to actually be useful in aiding in the destruction of enemy structures.  

The way that someone else suggested a while back (and I incorporated into RR) was causing it to deal damage to structures in the gravity well periodically.  The numbers I settled on were every 45/40/35 seconds, it would deal 200/300/400 damage to all structures in the gravity well, including starbases.  This may seem like a lot, but you have to consider that it's only 4.4/7.5/11.4 DPS which is largely compensated for by armor and passive regen.  The primary point is that it assists in the destruction of structures, allowing the player to assault the enemy's rear worlds more quickly.

EDIT for ninja:

The abilities aren't the problem and never have been.  LF are actually quite good.  It's just that players like LRF... A lot...  And LRF counters LF.

The way the LRF hard-counters the LF is that their damage type gets some sort of bonus vs the armor type of the light frigate, correct? What if we went with Volt's suggestion and reduced that value slightly in some sort of a mod? We would have to see if that messed up any other ships/counters though...

And yeah, scratch my EA idea. Was kinda half-baked anyways. A bonus to mitigation might be good, but you still have that max cap to deal with (which under continued fire, the radiance would reach anyways). Perhaps there may be some value reaching the max mitigation cap sooner, but I'm not sure it would make much of a difference in a sustained fleet engagement.

LF deal 75% damage to LRF

LRF deal 150% damage to LF

LRF counter LF and should.  With corvettes, I'd be afraid to nerf LRF too much and if you nerf LF too much they'll be OP early on and lead to a lot of spam rushes.

volt is reciting old data. It was lowered down to 133%... around the same patch LFs got a hp buff. (cant remember if they got a weapons buff or not)