I still think stardock should consider volts idea of culture from clair. Could make the Revelation a possible economic opener.

Or even offensive if you land the culture on the enemy and you're AL.  Forcing the enemy to culture up early will be forcing them to play a game that you will always be better at.  When I play AL in RR, I generally open with either a Revelation or a Radiance and Progenitor.

Yeap that sounds good to me. Really fits too since the Advent get that tech that allows them to see anywhere their culture is spread. The only downside is that this is essentially what the DE does, spread culture at a target planet (with differences in regards to power, 20% atk bonus, yada yada).

Well, I also made the DE capture culture centers at the target, so.. 

Yeap. I understand why you did such a modification to the DE, though personally I don't care for it. I would prefer culture to still counter it, not be detrimental to yourself. My idea (at the moment , might be trash) would be to have a 100% (half) decrease in planetary loyalty penalty (not -50% flat, but minus -50% of whatever its normal allegiance level is plus culture +10% and research factored in) , making it more similar to the Nova because it has a longer term eco effect, even after it has been "countered."

Maybe, maybe not? Thoughts?

I'd do that except that there's no way to do that via modding.

Couldn't you apply a negative value The Culture Spread modifier  used in the Expulsion buff to the targeted gravity well?

 Then again I don't know squat about modding so I'm probably missing some key engine limitation.

In theory, the DE should affect allegiance indirectly...so your idea isn't trash, it is the point of the DE (just different methodology)...the problem is that in order for any allegiance changes done by the DE to be meaningful, two things must occur:

1. The DE must be able to overcome enemy culture
2. Allegiance must change fast enough to make a meaningful impact relatively quickly

Volt's idea is not the method I'd prefer, but it effectively addresses issue 1, which is what really is holding back the DE (it is too easy to counter with culture)...I also think simply changing the max rate that culture can change would significantly improve the economic impact of the DE....even if it was guaranteed to overrun enemy culture, allegiance values change so slow that the economic impact of the DE is nothing compared to that of the Nova...sure, in a nice compstomp you can eventually flip enemy worlds, but it takes forever...and again, that's assuming you overcame the culture in the first place...

Now, having an istant drop in allegiance as you suggest would give more of a "shock" value just like the Nova...my biggest reservation of that though is that in the long run, the DE is more powerful than the nova because SBs can't prevent culture flips, only loss of planet through bombardment...increasing the rate that allegiance can change simply makes that "long run" not ridiculously far off and therefore DE's become viable...however, immediately halving the allegiancce would allow you to flip planets much faster than a slight increase to allegiance rates, perhaps even too fast...

Yes, though with sins math remember that -100% would only halve culture output...to completely stop culture with that entity modifier, you'd have to have a near infinite value...

That wouldn't make anti-culture, that would just make it send out reduced culture.

utter failure in reading comprehension on  my part- skimmed the previous poster's suggestion and thought it was something else entirely.

Well that's what I thought he meant, but wouldn't that work?  The culture centers on the target planet essentially produce zero culture, allowing you to overcome them...a bit more balanced that capturing the structures (even though it is temporary)...

wrong post...

I'm going to modify Guidance to enhance the abilities of nearby CapitalShips. Maybe give a 10% boost to all abilities in range.

For example the Prog's shield restore is 37.5 for 1st level. When in range of Guidance shield restore is 41.25.

Did you make it a passive? Would sort of turn the Revelation into a Swiss Knife capital. With the actual knife being unlocked at level 6, but hey

No, it's levels will increase the duration in which Guidance affect your nearby ships.

Guidance then gets two abilities that are actually useful in combat. I like this idea a lot and will be putting it into my mod as I've never liked any of the Guidance buffs so far. 

Also makes for better advent synergies IMO.

Sort of..  It still won't work however if you just have culture centers in neighboring planets.  I suppose you could kind of do a chain sort of thing like what I did with Subversion.  You apply a buff to the planet, but then it applies a buff to its neighbors.  Target planet gets 500% reduced culture production and neighbors get 200% reduced culture production.  That should allow the target to be sufficiently cultured while still being counterable.

Think of the Novalith.  You can negate the planet loss component, but you can't negate the trade loss.  In the same way, you'll be able to negate the culturing of your planets by the DE, but you'll still suffer because you'll need more culture centers than you would otherwise have and each of those is one less trade port.  That might actually work...

I think that at 10% you'd want a passive, but for an active, you may want 20% or so.  It wouldn't be as good as Overcharge mind you which doubles the effectiveness of everything, but the ability to do so to an entire fleet would be incredible.

I was meaning the change to be an immediate (and secondary effect) penalty, like the Nova's 100% Trade penalty. Thus this penalty would be non-stackable (even though more DE hits would spread more culture flipping the planet faster). If halving it is too much, how about something like  a flat -10% or non flat -33% of whatever it is?

I have no issues with a flat reduction in allegiance, it's just that that you can't do that via modding.  You'd need a new entityModifier to be able to do it.  While I'm definitely not against more modding potential, it would involve more effort by the devs because they'd have to recompile the game which I'm sure is no quick task.

Yeap. Sad to hear that.

Range and duration will likely be the biggest determination of whether this gets bumped higher than 10%. 

And being passive would require something else to make it worth getting additional levels since the % improvement to other abilities needs to be fixed. 

I think this is a good compromise and would make the Revelation more interesting in my mod until it reaches level 6.

I got that part ("...having an instant drop in allegiance as you suggest...")...it just could result in very quick losses of planets, perhaps too fast...

I'd much rather have a higher allegiance change rate...for one, the faster change rate needs to be done anyway to make culture in general more useful....with that mechanism already in place, allowing the allegiance to instantly be dropped on top of that seems very powerful (50% is definitely too much)...the biggest issue with the DE is not what it could do, its that it just doesn't work because you hardly even get to overrun the enemy culture...

If the DE successfully can overrun culture and allegiance values change to ~twice as fast, I think you'll find this weapon will very quickly become powerful...the massive weapon damage bonus will seem like icing on the cake instead of being the only reason to build the DE...I mean, you would be buffing this weapon from "maybe will overthrow a planet" to "will definitely overthrow a planet, and will do it twice as fast"...I'd like to see how those changes pan out before making this any more powerful...

Yeah. Interestingly, I played a mod in which caps did not repel culture. I actually found this far more exciting, since I could bomb a planet and still not be able to use it. It made hunting down culture far more important, but by no means the only option, since your own culture could always potentially counter it. But to take a front line planet meant you have to have counter culture right up there at the battle lines.

I wonder if this would make Rebellion better. The Vasari have a tech that increase the repel rate of culture, this could be greatly nerfed and changed to giving the caps the ability to repel culture, so they can still go mobile but culture is a way of slowing them down.

By the way, Corona, your earlier idea regarding the possibility of an ability temporarily reducing planet health, I was just looking through stuff and found the modifier from Xeno Defense which would probably achieve what you're looking for.

No, it makes attacking far away enemy planets annoying. Caps need to repel culture.