Fury of the Unity... is that good?

I do believe it does. And as for the upgrade I don't really think its worth the cost really.

You don't normally get any damage bonus in culture (unless you're Vasari). I believe what the tech does is adds that affect to your culture. After you take that tech, you do 5/10% more damage while in your culture (depending on the level you have).

It's good, but comes too late to be of any real use. And I think it's in the wrong tree really... It should be military. Anyhow, With this and grabbing the deliverance engine, you can do something like 35% more damage, 20% phase missile block, and 6% additional shield mitigation, which is like freaking awesome.... but it's very ineffective to pull off....

Although, I do sense the potential to make it work like other factions tech to super weapons (in an effective manner) with some tweaks.....

So its 5% standard increase and then it goes up to 10% when you are in an area where your culture is in control.

No Fury of the Unity only works in culture... but I did forget that the loyalists have another tech that is military called Ancient Retribution, and that adds: 10% dmg, 5% range, 2% mitigation all of the time.

So, the final tally, if you have AR, the tier 6 shield tech, DE, and FU (heh) is: +45% dmg, +20% phase missile block, +12% mitigation, +5% range.... if in culture and hit by a DE... without the DE, but still in culture, you're all of the above -25% of the dmg bonus (or only +20% dmg).

Outside of culture, you're just +10% dmg, +6% mitigation, +5% range (due to AR and shield tech only).

[quote who="SithLordAJ" reply="4" id="3143049"]....

So, the final tally, if you have AR, the tier 6 shield tech, DE, and FU (heh) is: +45% dmg, +20% phase missile block, +12% mitigation, +5% range.... if in culture and hit by a DE... without the DE, but still in culture, you're all of the above -25% of the dmg bonus (or only +20% dmg).
..../quote]

Not quite the case as from what I've seen there are 3 stages of multiplicatively stacking damage boosts:

Passive: Weapons tech upgrades(ancient retribution falls into this category)

Conditional Passives: mostly includes in-culture bonsues

Actives: These are the ones that display their bonus as +X% damage on the infocard rather then actually updating stats

Which means the combination of Ancient retribution, Deliverance engine, and Fury of the unity results in 1.1*1.1*1.25/1.05=44% damage increase(it's only lower because only 5% of the in-culture damage bonus comes from fury of the unity, the other 5% is presumably inherent).

That said, Ancient retribution is applied during the same stage as weapon upgrade techs, so with +30% weapons damage researched ancient retribution only actually increases damage by 1.4/1.3=about 7.7%(not 10%). 

The good news is that the multiplicatively stacking phase in which Fury of the Unity is applied is advantageous.  That said I agree it's a bit underwhelming considering how late it comes out.

I don't know where you got this either. The game files clearly say when in culture and there isn't a normal damage buff paired with it. That said I wasn't able to find out where the other 5% was coming from either so maybe you're right?

Either way, yeah this is a little lackluster for its level, especially compared to Ancient Retribution. Should probably be buffed with an antimatter regeneration bonus too so the Advent Loyalists get all the possible culture buffs.

It was a guess yes.

It's weak sauce at tier 8 and will probably never be researched in pvp matches unless you've already won. What it does do is give a base 5% weapon damage for free while in culture which isn't too bad. It's just unfortunate the next 5% bump costs the same as any other 8 lab research tech. 

The thing is the actual research doesn't have a base value though, so that 5% has to be coming from somewhere else right?

TXT
entityType "ResearchSubject"
hudIcon "HUDICON_RESEARCHSUBJECT_FURYOFTHEUNITY"
smallHudIcon "HUDICON_RESEARCHSUBJECT_FURYOFTHEUNITY"
infoCardIcon ""
NameStringID "IDS_RESEARCHSUBJECT_FURY_OF_THE_UNITY_NAME"
DescriptionStringID "IDS_RESEARCHSUBJECT_FURY_OF_THE_UNITY_DESCRIPTION"
...
modifierType "CultureWeaponDamageAdjustment"
baseValue 0.050000
perLevelValue 0.050000
artifactPicture ""
uniqueOverlayBrush "RebellionResearchOverlay"

Honestly I think this Tech could be the missing part of the equation if moved *mush* earlier in the tree.

At present despite the advent loyalist's early culture techs it's really not too hard for the opponent to avoid losing much allegiance with the use of capitalship culture repel and perhaps a culture building of their own.  It's prohibitively difficult to really cause any meaningful lasting damage via culture presses early.

If something along the lines of Fury of the Unity were available early it would promote accompanying culture pushes with military pushes & raids(in which the advent loyals would with Fury of the Unity have an edge), forcing the enemy to spent income on defenses/fleet rather then culture buildings.  it could also make it a bit easier for Advent Loyal fleets to raid enemy border world that *aren't quite* losing allegiance in order to destroy a key enemy culture building.

Actually on that note, what if Fury Of the Unity were shifted to focus more on such raids?  Such as by having the damage bonus increase when attacking buildings.  Perhaps something like:

Fury of the Unity:  While in your culture you ships deal 5% increased damage to enemy ships and 15% increased damage to enemy  structures.

This would promote raids to destroy enemy culture buildings and would in general fit well with the expansionist leanings of the advent loyals.   Additionally this would encourage the Advent Loyals to be launching two-prong simultaneous attacks- Culture offensive to weaken the enemy economy assisted by a convetional attack to keep the enemy focused on defense and destroy any enemy culture buildings.

Well the biggest problem with this idea is it would need Fury of the Unity to be relatively low tier...and in all honesty it's pretty much the only high-research tier tech the advent loyals have left in the civilian tree.  Move it dow ni ntier much and we lose even the illusion of new incentive to go deep into the civilian tree.

Also a thought that just popped into my head of a way in which fury of the unity could be made more interesting, unique, and possibly strong enough to warrant being T8:

What if instead of buffing the advent fleet in advent culture it debuffed the enemy fleet?  Something like:

Fury of the Unity:  Reduces the shield mitigation of all enemies inside your culture by 3%

Against enemy capitalships it would translate to something like an 8.5% damage increase at max shield mitigation, 6% for frigates(for an enemy advent player 12% & 7.5% respectively).  That said it would be stronger by virtue of stacking better with all other damage increases and it would certainly be unique(the only culture-based debuff in the game)

Anyway, just some ideas that popped into my head and I thought I'd share.  Would certainly be nice if Fury of the Unity became a larger part of the advent loyal's strategy(I welcome any change that further encourages the advent loyals that rewards fighting in friendly culture).

I still don´t undestand that mysterious 5% bonus damage in culture

Well I guess I'm blind, that section of code Zombie posted means that without any research at all the loyalists get a 5% damage buff.

I don't understand you're confusion. The tech is supposed to make anything you own that has weapons and is under the influence of your culture deal X% more damage. Lvl 1 X= 5, Lvl 2 X= 10.

That's pretty straightforward. what is unclear about it?

Bilun: I agree about moving up Fury... And about your reservations for doing so. The other factor is that Ancient Retribution is a similar tech that Loyalists have.

Here's the problem with trying to optimize the layout of the Advent Loyalists: they have no focus. There is nothing that screams "this is what this faction is about"... So you could argue all kinds of layout reconfigurations.

What my current thought process is: a complete re-ordering of the abilities and 1 redesign.

Planet for a Planet is.... dumb. useless. Unless this is made into some mega-buff (read: triple damage), I don't think this ability is going to ever be a good mechanic. There's other mechanics that could be done by say adding a DoT to beam weapons or even something along the lines of 'multi-bank weapons do extra damage' or ships affected by more than 1 of your abilities have boosted AM regen.

I actually have 2 new layout designs: Start the harmony tree with Fury (possibly affected by the strength of your culture), move the faction culture techs up a bit, make the every-planet-generates-culture tech (believe it's Mass Unity) the penultimate in harmony (believe it's T6 now... I would say make it T7, a little bit stronger, but completely separate from the other culture tech). This layout would have culture be like a train gaining momentum... and just leave it up to you when to weave in military upgrades

The other possible layout that i see: Start the military tree with Ancient Retribution, move Fury up to T4/T5. This would promote more of a military start (which is honestly the way I think loyalists should go), and then at some point weaving in culture. most likely, your military would be ahead of your culture in this layout, so you dont get the Fury bonus, however, trying to take one of your planets is going to pretty rough.

It only has one level, which brings the damage bonus from 5 to 10%, insinuating that Advent loyalists have a baseline 5% bonus damage in culture and that's what's causing confusion.

ah, so it does... It had 2 levels a patch or 2 ago... I wonder if that was done on purpose?

[edit:] or so I thought.... I just looked at the files for the last 2 patches and its not 2 levels... 

It's always had one level as far as I can remember.

Yeah, Planet for a Planet is kind of lackluster.  I think the idea is supposed to be  that teh advent loyals stay on the offensive rather then actively defending a border asteroid/moon being attacked, yielding a fleetwide bonus when the asteroid/moonf alls- but then the enemy can't actually colonize their prize anyway because of the advent loyal's culture.

The problem is that it's too situational- what if the enemy attacks an actual important planet?

More to the point it's a fairly large research investment that may or may not pay off if the enemy happens to attack an unimportant world at a convenient time.  Short of that it just becomes wasted credits.

I liked the original idea of this tech, but it just seems too situational to me, especially being that it doesn't boost your entire fleet- which is to say if you have a carrier fleet, the tech barely does anything for you as it does not buff strikecraft.

Also on the topic on alternative reworks of Planet for a Planet, As I implied in my first post I think a tech that improveves how fast the advent loyals can kill structures would fit into the advent loyal strategy perfectly-a very large part of waging an effective culture-war is launching raids to knock out enemy culture buildings and retreating before any real opposition shows up to defend.

I was actually playing with a similar idea the other day.   Though one other possibility I considered was moving Coward's submission back to the harmony tree from defense, putting at high tier(maybe 7 or so) and givving it a bit of a buff.  Coward's submission was a really cool idea, but at 5% it's barely noticable.  Having it be a higher tier then the current T5 could give some wiggle-room for a buff(after all military T5 isn't much of a requirement for the advent).

Well in all honesty it just struck me as one of the easiest pieces to move to late harmony as it is in it's current form completely unimportant to the advent loyal strategy(moving it won't really hrut their early game) and conversely with a buff it could actually become useful.

That said I like the direction you're going with this layout- as I said I think the Advent loyals early on should be mounting a two-pronged assault, culture to weaken their opponent and an physical attack to keep their target under pressure so they can't devote resources to countering the culture-threat.

Having Fury of the unity ealy would lend it's self well to this sort of play.

Not as crazy about this one- the advent have always had abundant incentive to go into the military tree, so I'm hesistant to add another new faction-specific tech to the military tree, rather then making it incentive to go harmony.

Not to mention to actually use this tech you need 2 harmony temples, so 4-5 hostility temples really means you need to build 6-7 temples before it would be worth researching.

That said It's still WAY better then the current state of things.  Though I'd kind of like it if the advent loyals were more suited to investing more heavily in the harmony tree early.  The Advent rebels already are well suited to focusing on hostility temples through the early game(since they basically get all their early harmony techs by harmony T2-T3 then get nothing else for harmony until T6 or so, encouraging them to grab 2 harmony, focus on hostility for most of the early game, then late game if the game hasn't ended go for their deep harmony techs).

wow... it's impossible to criticize that... kudos to you

Yup, its pretty much that. i didn´t understood it coz´ it has only 1 level

Planet for a Planet may be useful. Yesterday in online, 1 tec player attacked me in one of my planets with a bunch of LRMs and gardas in one side, and 2 Marza in the other side bombing my planet.

I wonder what would happen if i´ve researched that thing : P

The problem with planet for a planet isn't that it's never useful- It's that it's so situationally useful that it's too much of a gamble sinking that much into research it(it's not a cheap tech) when whether it comes in handy really has more to do with your opponent's actions then your own.

The point is it's just too situational for a tech of it's cost.  By contrast researching something else with that money WILL do something.

Moreover it's made further situational by the fact it doesn't buff you entire fleet(strikecraft are unaffected)- so any carrier-heavy fleet recieves minimal benefit from planet for a planet.  Frankly something that empowers your fleet to recover from losing a world really should buff everything rather then only making a difference if you have a specific fleet composition(being that you don't choose when the enemy takes your world and there are going to be times when you're carrier heavy).

Honestly It might be a different story if Planet for a Planet affected strikecraft and actually buffed rate of fire like the tech description claims(instead of the attack range buff it actually gives). But at present it feels too situational to me.

well, it seems to me that the current setup promotes a mixture of both military and civil at the start. And while that's not a bad thing, I would hope for more differentiation. The cool rebel techs are harmony, so they seemed like the ones to go for a civil start. And while I've said before that the Loyalist have no 'theme' per se, the story theme is that they are more militaristic. So, going down that route makes sense.

I obviously am not saying "the only good start for loyalists should be military", what I'm saying is whenever a 'staple' tech for them is found, I think it would be best in the military tree to promote differences between the common starts of the advent factions. 

planet for a planet... I would rather just get something wholly new. hows about a tech that makes getting additional capital ships early easier? Advent are rather dependent on their capitals, and earlier means less tier 0 spamming, and it's worth the investment if it's early....