Are you kidding me? The Kortul is by far the most durable cap in the game. The Skirantra and Jurrasul are great caps as well. Even the Vulkoras can be amazing with either a rush or hit and run attacks before starbases are up. The new nanite cap is kind of meh but it can basically spawn overseers, so its definitely not weak. And the Antorak... well okay it sucks if you're not playing a flagship game, but 3 always good, 1 situationally good, 1 average and 1 weak cap is definitely no worse than the TEC or Advent.

Totally false, you forget the overseer, which is the best cruiser in the game for keeping single targets (caps, titans and starbases) alive. So that's another benefit the Vasari have for them. Their repair bay isn't near as good as the other two but that's more a defensive weakness.

In hindsight I half agree with this. I would have given fighters pulse weapons and bombers the pulse beams. I don't know if we can still sell that idea though.

My idea here is more that Vasari use the PM for two reasons:

1. It bypasses shields. That's why their LRF and Caps use PM that excel in bypassing shields.

2. You can't dodge them. That's why the Junsurak and SC (should) use them. Screw shield mitigation ignore—phase space allows the rockets to travel faster than any SC. (Maybe this should then be reflected by the Junsurak and SC having 100% Chance to hit while lowering their base damage by 30–50%.)

That's why I would propose to change Repulsion so it counters all missiles (TEC too) but has high AM cost, low range and doesn't block 100% of the missiles (more like 30% with first tier of research and maybe 50% at second tier). That way you'd have to decide which Guardians to use to counter energy weapons via shield bubble and which to counter rockets via Repulsion, both wouldn't be possible except with AM restore e.g. by using Disciples. The new ability would kick ass, but has some serious downsides e.g. high cost (AM restore or more Guardians needed).

Isn't that completely in line with the Vasari liking hit-and-run best? I mean regarding SC bombers should be the slow and heavy-hitting ones while fighters are fast and agile and can quickly take out certain threats to the fleet. So for the Vasari I'd imagine the fighters to be like saboteurs that take out the enemies SC (and corevttes) to let the few Vasari ships reign free (of SC attacks) and also secure their escape should the need arise.

Okay, sorry. I truly forgot the Overseer.

My biggest issue that keeps me from playing Vasari is that I don't seem to be able to keep my caps alive early in game because I lack fleet size (and ship construction speed) which often means that my cap has to defend itself in tight battles which it often can't.

So yeah, for me the caps seemed too weak. But that may just be my fault then... sorry, I take it back.

It is true that the Overseer needs 1 more lab to deploy, so there might be a bit of truth to that. However, most all Vasari players will get a Skirantra Carrier as their first or second cap. It's repair cloud gives you access to a nice AoE healing ability that should allow you to keep your caps protected until you can get overseers online.

Actually I agreed with taking phase missiles off of bombers. I just didn't agree with why the Vasari need phase missiles. Heck I think you could change phase missiles to a normal %damage increase instead of shield bypass, and all you'd need to do is buff the Assailants' damage and the Vasari would still be playable. They have so many other cool toys now so its not all about phase missiles anymore. I'm not advocating that off course, but I don't think we have to worry about either Vasari suddenly becoming under powered with anything suggested here.

You are right but that is the weakness of the Advent as they have higher DPS. We want to keep that effect while making it so that the phase missiles aren't as powerful as they are now if the Advent does their job right.

From a lore perspective, PMs don't really travel large distances in phase space...they use jumping in and out of phase space to "bypass" the shield frequencies...they aren't teleporting to their targets at all, but blipping through shields...

I think you misunderstand...unless we are talking about a modded version of sins, I am strongly against a fundamental change to repulsion...while I don't like repulsion, it unfortunately is a necessary evil to keep Advent competitive and should not be swapped for a different ability...

Advent are in a state of pain right now being the weakest faction...especially with the wail and Eradica nerfs, we don't need "swaps" or "even trades"....we need buffs to fill in some of the Advent weaknesses, and those buffs should not replace already vital assets to the Advent arsenal, but rather compliment them....

However, because repulsion is already so powerful, it most certainly is not a good ability to add buffs to...simply, it needs to be left alone....the PM blocking needs to be added elsewhere, and either shield techs or shield projection seem to be good places to look at...

Vasari fighters are the best fighters without PMs...I think granting them a better weapon is taking balance completely in the wrong direction...PMs should be on bombers, not fighters...it makes sense gameplay wise, and it makes sense lore wise...

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things in the manual that are completely irreconcilable with actual gameplay....in this case, strikecraft most certainly can dodge sentinel fire...it suffers the same accuracy penalties all anti-strikecraft ships suffer (these values can be seen in the gameplay.constants file)...

I assure you they are....Advent are limited by their poor economy (which is coupled with expensive cruisers) and simply can't compete with the "bag of tricks" that Vasari have....Repulsion is one of the few "tricks" Advent have that keeps them competitive militarily....skilled players use repulsion all the time to isolate and kill titans or high level caps...it also can be used to force defenders away from a high level SB or titan, allowing them to be engaged safely....and of course, it is great for covering a retreat...

In skilled games, repulsion is huge and necessary to keep Advent competitive...

Yeah, but there is evidence for the other side. Mainly that you can never avoid all damage from an attack in Sins, is just reduced by the accuracy penalty. So technically all flak always hit.

I highly recommend you try out some competitive games on ICO sometime then. I was in the same boat as you for a while. But I definitely think it helps you as a player to try games where the stakes are high enough that you can't just play for fun. If you're not fighting for your life against intelligent players its hard to know what strategies, abilities and techs are good and which aren't, because against the AI and to a lesser extent against friends who don't know any better, you can get away with all sorts of bad things. And as an Advent player repulse is something you should be exploiting to maximum effect, if for nothing else as a means to keep enemy ships from retreating.

Yes, all the terrible things you've heard about it are probably true, and you'll probably get abused as a newb, but I think even for fun players benefit from trying a couple to see how different it really is.

From what I have noticed yes. I have never noticed an attack totally "miss" (it may do so graphically but internally). Try it by setting flak damage to 9999999999 or something and accuracy to 0.01. I didn't use such an extreme example but I meticulously watched a ship I have 35% accuracy to and I never witnessed an attack miss.

Come to think of it I think I was playing with chance to hit, not chance to dodge with the ability I was doing that test on, but internally they are the same modifier so I doubt that matters.