I think it is a bit of an exaggeration, but titans have a unique feature that eventually makes them far superior to every other unit. They actually get stronger the more you use them, yet their costs and build time doesn't change. The fact that they keep their XP and level means each time it levels up, rebuilding the titan gives you a far stronger unit to work with, and its no harder to regain than the last time you bought it. Nothing is going to be as cost effective as rebuilding a level 10 titan.

That said, without this I think it would be an even worse version of "Sins of a Titan". Rather than late game being centered around them, it would quickly turn into a "The last one to lose their titan wins", since the player who lost a titan will be back to level zero, while the player who won just got a lot more XP for their titan, making it hard to bridge the game, especially after levels 5+.

Personally I would like to either have titans lose just 1 level on being destroyed and/or a modest increase in build time each time they are rebuilt, but I don't think the entire system needs to be scrapped. Perhaps buffing some frigate's effectiveness to titans would also help, especially at lower levels.

I still believe Titans should lose all there xp, but that's not the way devs are making it, they will be more expensive to build depending on the level lost.

That said...I think if people were forced to baby their Titans, it would be interesting dynamic where you would be forced to retreat to safer areas and either a chase would take place or a final battle........

They're not stupid like some say, but they aren't at the same game level of good MP players. This means they sometimes fail to see ways certain strategies can be abused. The Vasari are a great example of this, Starbase mobilization and stripe to the core where meant to be late game strategies only, but for good players getting even 8 labs can be done fairly quickly. Thus if any tech is good enough, mere research requirements are not a good way to balance things.

That is certianly part of it, but I've heard of people getting striped to the core in the suicide spot. If you can do that in a 5v5, doing it in a 1v1 should be a breeze.

It seems like a significant issue is that higher-level rebel titans can plow though most opponents with little or no support.  Obviously, such an expensive unit should have a major impact, but when two level 4 Chastic Bursts will destroy most nearby subcapitals, you're rendering a chunk of the game obsolete - players have to build a very specific fleet composition (large bomber count) or lose.  Problem is, the fundamental focus on Rebel Titan abilities (and the Maw) is widescale fleet destruction - nerf that, and they become a waste of space.

One idea might be to reduce the level scaling of the offensive abilities - if a Level 4 Chastic Burst is only moderately stronger than the level 1 version (but perhaps has reduced AM cost), then the game would become less about not feeding the titan.  Can't think of any other ideas.

I'm sticking with any level retention being the lamest feature of the game.  If not being able to rebuild your titan with most levels retained means game over, then either let the game end or balance them.

5 v 5 games remind me too much of the Red Alliance & Band of Brothers "PET" bullshit. 

My opinion?  Game is Sins of a Titan...

Don't believe me?  Watch a late game battle...nothing is left standing other than titans, SBs, caps, and carriers...

People will disagree, people will claim "Well that's a bit of exaggeration"....but I just ask you to think, really think: how much of your strategy and decision making is directly related to titans?  Your fleet composition, your capital ship choices, the abilities you pick, all of it is directly determined by titans once they roll out...

High level titans actually occur quite frequently in large games, and their presence single handedly determines your fleet composition and strategy...

Haven't actually touched the game in over a month because of the titan dominance, they totally killed the game for me.  They are simply too powerful, and make frigates worse than useless (because they feed titans XP).  Once they gain a couple levels they get overwhelming aoe nuking power and become extremely durable.  The 'worst' titans, the ones people ask for buffs on, are the only ones that aren't completely broken.  Once titans come into play, all strategy goes down the toliet and rest of the game revolves around the titans.

A lot of people were concerned during the beta that titans were too much a gameplay focus, and they've been proven right IMO.  Their ability damage output, stat growth, and XP retention all need to be rebalanced.

Can't speak for Sel, but I stick around for moments like this to smack the crap out of 1 month newbies for being petulant with people who've been here for years, played for years, modded for years and know the in and out of the game enough to be able to honestly and eloquently say "What the blue hell". 

"Rebellion" used to be "Corvettes of a Solar Empire", but the devs saw reason and nerfed them -if you enjoy non-capitals being useful, thank everyone who aggressively pulled the ships apart and pointed out issues. 

"Rebellion" is currently "Sins of Poorly Conceptualized and Implemented Titans and Phase Jumping Starbases", which might or might not change with Patch 1.04. We all knew Titans and Corvettes were the Rebellion selling point (sure wasn't the crap diplomacy my 2 cents), but we didn't think the entire game would revolve around them at the expense of everything people have enjoyed for 3-4 years. 

Devs,

Very nice that you nerfed the corvettes, take the plunge and fix titans -and all the other issues

It wasn't meant to be a cheeky question.

I'm just rather enjoying the game and I'm curious if the general sentiment amongst the veterans here is that it's not worth falling in love with.

I'd rather not waste my time.

So I'm only asking so I know personally whether to keep putting time into it.

There's a mix on this forum of those that play SP, MP and mods.

For SP play all the factions are for the most part fine with the advantage given to Human players. The reason why the AI can't compete with human players is because it doesn't have access to or doesn't use properly many of the OP technologies introduced with Rebellion. 

For example: 

Wail of the Sacrificed: Can't be used by the AI

Phase Jumping Starbases: Will never be used affectively by the AI compared to a human player

STTC: Can't be used by the AI

RB: Never seen an AI upgrade a starbase with this, 99.9% of the time goes to weapons, armor and strikecraft

Meteor Storm: ^

Other starbase upgrades: ^

There's actually quite a few techs that aren't available or used by the AI outside of those examples.

For the MP guys these strategies get used and used quickly as setting up 7 or 8 labs takes less time than setting up a trade port line. Basically if the tier-8 technology provides a tactical advantage that can swing early-mid game if you can set it up then it's worth going for. This category falls into Phase jumping starbases and Strip to the core. The Kostura used to fall into this category when it disabled ships too, so this isn't a foreign concept to the developers as they NERFED the Kostura for this very reason. 

If you can get a TEC and Advent only game going it's actually quite fun, but if you get a skilled player with STTC then the game just drags into a cat & mouse scenario. Vasari always has the upper hand in this situation with Kostura and phase gates. And no starbase can stand up to 50 carriers, multiple skirantras, kortuls, etc while your jumping half way across the system to try and defend your empire hoping you can get there before they drop a phase node and jump away again.

I don't play online , but believe alot of the issues could be resolved if like some mods, the supercapitals would come out END game.

Titans should require at LEAST six military labs...but I like eight...

this way Sins starts as a frigate/frigate game,

then cap/cap game then come the brutes....to final battles.

I'm not saying the system is great right now, but I do think (at least some) titans should be more than super capitalships.  Before Rebellion, there was no "counter" to large number of frigates, the few abilities that could wipe out a fleet where extremely hard to use and could be avoided by a competent player. When you had hundreds of LRF flying around it really made capitalships hard to use. Titans have changed that, making capitalships much more vital late game, as the titan can provide cover from frigates while the caps buff your titan and debuff the enemy's.

Honestly the only major thing I'd like to change would be a totally different system for titans to level up, so that destroying frigates wouldn't lead to it leveling up. But at this point that'll probably never happen.