^

.. That's why I suggested a weapon cooldown...

Replicate Forces.. Siege Turret...  Missile Turret..  Scramble Bombers..  All of them effectively give you extra ships for a time.  This would be giving you a super ship for a time.

Good point.  Also I've been thinking that I may have been a bit to conservative with the cooldown/duration(scramble bombers has 30/75, missile battery has 35/180).  The DPS per cast is already much lower then scramble bombers, and while the duration should definitely be lower then missile battery, I think 1/6 as long may have been a bit low.

I'm thinking perhaps 50-60 seconds duration may have been a bit more in line with existing abilities- close, but a bit shorter to compensate for the added flexibility of being able to buff a unit of whatever damage type is desired.

Realistically speaking it's not all that different from Missile Battery.  it creates a single frigate.  The buff is significant enough that it allows a single existing frigate to carry the firepower of multiple frigates, which ultimately is aboutt he same as creating a new one.  

Heck, the closest analogue is actually the Skirantra's level 6 ability which clones a single target frigate a few times.  In the end of the day, this ability provides comparable added firepower to creating 2 clones.  Honestly I don't see how creating clones of a single frigate is all that much oe impressive then a buff that allows the same single frigate to perform as though it were multiple frigates.

Of course replicate forces is much stronger(it is a level 6 ability after all), but the basic principal is the same: Gain extra units of firepower proportional to a single targeted frigate.

For those who can't test this themselves, here's a quick mod to demonstrate Bilun's suggestion.

AM: 50/55/60/65
CD: 35

Damage: 80%/120%/160%/200%
Bombing Cooldown: -80%/-120%/-160%/-200%
Ability Cooldown Rate: 100%
Armor: 4/6/8/10

Duration: 50/53.3/56.7/60 

Download

What about microing the ability? I mean for the player who is fighting the Revelation, it makes since to focus fire the buffed combat frigate. Replicate Forces, Siege, and Missile Battery doesn't have quite the same problem since a player knows they will be destroyed in a minute or two anyways, while this buffs something already in existence. I'm not against this, just pointing it out.

I haven't tried this just yet, but if it needs to scale better, you could make the cooldown decrease with each level and the duration increase so a Revelation could buff mutliple ships at once.

I may play with Volt and Bilun's numbers later to see if it can get a bunch of ships going.

Vengeance?

That requires another cap, but good point.

While it is true that Guidance would be comparable to these abilities, I don't think they're abilities worth aspiring to...these actually are probably my least favorite abilities conceptually as they don't scale at all (siege turret I'm actually okay with just cause it's still very useful)...

I put a version of cluster warheads on missile batteries to make them scale against larger fleets...I don't have any suggestions for scramble bombers in vanilla, though I also am working with a mod where there bomber spam isn't an issue...you could probably add Adept drone anima and heavy strikecraft up there as well, both of which are abilities that I reworked because I thought they were lame...the point is, while Guidance may be comparable to things we have, those things I'd argue need to be changed themselves...

Aye, this is very true.  While I doubt it would make vengeance worthwhile(that ability is even worse then people think IMO), I do think it would be important in the long run for this rework of guidance to add some sort of reasonably noticeable particle effect to the buffed frigate to allow an opponent who is paying attention will notice the buffed unit(as focusing the unit is likely often the tactically clement decision). 

I think some of the balance is how early you get a cap. Missile Battery is great early in the game. Siege can be coupled with replicate....giving it a second life....since the Revelation's ultimate is great for the entire game, mostly we've been working on the Revelation's early game.

But feel free to put up another idea.

I'm going with zombie's implemenation that each advent cap (including the revelation) has an ability that becomes buffed when the cap is affected by guidance (similar to overcharge)....it scales as well as the as the ability that is affected and is useful at all stages of the game...even a revelation going solo could benefit from the ability if allowed to use on self and buff reverie...

Interesting approach but somewhat complex to balance especially if it gives a different buff to different abilities. Using Guidance on itself could give Reverie a small AoE and/or allow targeted ships to receive more damage before causing the ability to wear off.

Erm... It's not a different buff to different abilities. It's a 10% buff to their current effect. It's a lot of setup to do and will be cool in a mod, but I doubt IC would do it. It is rather cool though and fits inline with the other abilities that promote synergy with the Advent faction.

Reverie does not need a 10% duration buff.  It's borderline-overpowered as is, easily edging out all the other disable abilities in usefulness.

I think Zombie was suggesting using Guidance to buff other abilities, not just buffing Reverie directly.  So the potential overpowered-ness (I was going to say OP-ness, which isn't right) would actually result from a combo of 2 abilities.

A 10% buff is hardly, no not even close to OP.

It wouldn't be OP at all.  You're getting a relatively weak ability (Guidance) with the most utility in the game late-game.