I actually thought that was how it was going to work..

would be much better in my opinion...

Well if you think I am hardcore Advent player you cannot even be more wrong, I am exclusively a TEC Rebel player (when I play online), but I care about balance, and the reason I never played Advent online is because they don't have a chance against Vasari if it reaches mid or late game. I don't see it is the same in the TEC-Advent battle, TEC can rebuild losses but Advent can't due to it's inferior economy (level3 trade ports, latest increase for extraction, no increase for trade income, resource focus is worse than a joke), and even their superweapon is almost useless (I never shaked in fear when a deliverance signal approached one of my worlds, but when a novalith or kostura warhead... better get ready for extinction, though nowadays it - the deliverance - is starting to get better, but culture is still a weak part of the game).

Got that, saw it when I first bought this game (it is very obvious), doesn't change anything, Advent ships are meant to last longer too (mainly bigger ones), because they can't easily rebuild them, but yay, Vasari slaughters them in no time and boom u r dead, so Advent ships are meant to be protected by shields, but phase missiles ignore them, so it is not a fair match. Advent are meant to be a highly advanced race who is strong in military, but all you get is a race that can defeat TEC (though in a good fight) but against Vasari it is only a fair fight in the early game (assuming there is no defending Orkulus), I don't see why? Isn't story about TEC (!!!) getting raped hard by Vasari? Why Advent? Maybe I am missing here something..

Well, you might be playing TEC, but you clearly want to be Advent player. The reason you never played online for Advent is your fear of losing, not balance concerns. In short, you rather win than play for your race of choice, congrats. 

And btw, how can you know, you would get beaten against Vasari as Advent, when you never tried it yourself online?  Would it not be wise to try it out before complaining? 

I think the bigger reason why PMs are unbalanced is that they disproportionately affect the factions....they are far more effective against Advent than against TEC, which means that no matter what bypass chances or damage values you give them they will never be balanced in faction matchups...

If they are perfect in the TEC vs. Vasari matchup, they'll be OP against Advent...if they are perfect in the Advent vs. Vasari matchup, they'll be UP against TEC...

I honestly don't think the issue is the PM techs (other than the VR ones)...the real issues are the base damage of Vasari bombers and lack of unique Advent protection against them (a wimpy culture bonus is not adequate)...

At this stage though, I'm tempted to take our pound of flesh with the other balance changes and rehash PMs later....

I would really like to know why Yarlen and the other devs believe that phase missles as they are right now are not a balance issue.

Always wondered myself too.. Why do they think it is fair (the huge PM damage increase VS higher mitigation levels) when they only give tiny weapon upgrades to every other race? 5-5% with each research capping at 20-30%? Maybe they know something we don't and we are all wrong?

Or maybe they want it to be a surprise like the planet DLC? I once asked Yarlen whether there will be new planet types and he said NO, but after some months a DLC was announced with new planet types.... strange..

Zombie, I'm fully aware of the mathematics of PMs and read that thread when it was made...

Advent do have higher shield mitigation late game, but not in early or even mid game...however, they always have more shields and thus will always be more susceptible to weapons that bypass them...well before late game, you will commonly see advent capital ships or titans die to Vasari fleets (read: bombers or kanraks) despite still having substantial shield points -- the same cannot be said for TEC or Vasari ships (though I'm sure it occasionally happens if a Dunov or prog ally is involved)...

So, at stages where all factions have the same shield mitigation (early and mid-game), Advent caps/titans are dying with shield points left while TEC and Vasari caps/titans aren't...the subject has been hashed to death and the math shows that targets with relatively less hull points die significantly faster to PMs (though honestly that should be intuitively obvious)...

If you take away all the shield mitigation bonuses Advent can get, their ships will still die much faster to PMs than TEC or Vasari ships...it is not because the PM DPS is relatively higher against Advent (though it would be if they had shield mitigation bonuses) but because they have relatively less hull points (and armor) on their ships...

In short, even if Advent did not have any shield or culture techs to raise their shield mitigation, they would still be disproportionately affected by PMs...

PM's I don't think are inherently OP, case in point being the kanrak...when comparing upgraded LRFs, the kanrak is best against caps/titans but is the weakest in fleet battles, so it is more or less balanced...Vasari bombers on the other hand are OP, but more because of the base damage...kanraks have low base DPS per fleet supply because their weapon techs are going to give greater bonuses -- it only makes sense that Vasari bombers also would have lower base DPS per fleet supply because they also will get greater bonuses from weapon techs...

If Vasari bombers had their base damage nerfed, Vasari would be more or less fine in the TEC vs. Vasari matchup, but it still would have a huge advantage in the Advent vs. Vasari matchup...you can't make a general nerf to PMs that won't affect both matchups, so it is only logical that you give Advent bonuses that specifically help them block phase missiles...the culture buffs do not accomplish this and never will because they only affect the Advent's defense (the current values also are way too low)...only a straight bonus to PM blocking from the Advent shield techs will solve this issue...

I don't think it would hurt to change the VR PM tech to simply buff damage, not chance to bypass, but that is of secondary importance to nerfing Vasari bombers and giving Advent better PM blocking....

Well I decided to opt out of the Beta now, dunno why but I'm able to deal with Hard AI better in the current version...in the beta they all crushed me.

Anyways, even though it has nothing to do with the changes in the beta...I remembered some people found the pacts kinda useless in MP. Was wondering if changes to the pacts would be a good idea, kinda like how they're dealing with the artifacts. Just a thought.

I agree with you - I think the devs need to take a look at all diplomacy, not just the pacts. Just one thing that I think would help tremendously would be to lower the supply required to construct an envoy. I think it is 8 right now (I am not sure) but I think that making it 4 and possibly cutting the cost by a large margin as well would have more players using them online, and in turn using pacts and diplomacy in general.

Buffing the pacts in general and lowering the cost of their research would help too. Maybe next patch - but I love how exploration is so much more worth it now. And this will only be improved further with the coming DLC. Maybe if there was a second DLC focusing on culture and diplomacy (I know, diplomacy again? Yes, to make it actually powerful now) then the problems with those weaker areas of Sins could be improved.

And I started playing a game yesterday with Hard AI - and it was hard. I enjoyed getting pummeled from all sides though. But strangely, I explored every one of my 5 planets expecting to find SOMETHING with the increased chance in 1.5, but I couldn't find a thing. I hope those explorers got hit by a direct nuke from all those attack by other empires. 

Oh, and on another note it is a good point that the Kanraks are pretty balanced right now and that a phase missle nerf would render them too weak. So I would say that Seleuceia has a good plan for what to do about the phase missle problem.

I don't know if anyone has reported this bug, but I was playing on a large-multi map and this happened.

http://postimg.org/image/3quevgnb7/full/

My scouts kept just going around in circles and there was no way to get to any other parts of the system except through the wormhole. Is that supposed to happen? I've never played a game where this happened. I think it's kinda unbalanced. I have to spend a bunch of money on research stations to get up to the tier to research wormhole travel.

EDIT:

I went ahead and researched the wormhole tech and it didn't work. My scouts tried to enter the wormhole, but no go. 

http://postimg.org/image/5c0hvsirx/full/

Here's the full system just so you can see it:

http://postimg.org/image/5u4u34n4x/full/

Yep, the beta needs updated for maps to work correctly. It also affects pre-set maps in the same way. They've noted it's fixed internally so we're all waiting on the patch before we can test again.

This probably explains why I couldn't get the old bin-to-text converter doesn't work on the new planet files contained in 1.5.  Could just write a beta mod that removes the new planet types from the GalaxyScenarioDef file as a temporary fix.

Another unusual issue I experienced while playing last night:

As an Advent Loyalist, I somehow tapped in to my Vasari Loyalist ally's phase gate network and used it to jump across the galaxy.  I would figure just an odd glitch, but then it happened again later between completely different planets.  In both cases, the there was Antorak Marauder with Stabilize Phase Space, and one time a Starbase with the same, but I'd have to do further testing to see whether that mattered or not.  We jumped the same direction one time and opposite directions the other time.  I did not see any of my units using his stabilizers other than those two times when we were both moving units.

Advent Rebel was my fav before going online, but the advent strategy doesn't suit me well (massing lame corvettes and lame disciples?? man I don't like those ships) so after some games I switched to TR. I just want to play Advent sometimes too, and not fearing the fact someone chooses Vasari and I don't have a chance because--->

If I bleed my whole fleet to beat that stupid Vorastra to some hundred hullpoints left and it will leave the well because even my bombers are too slow to catch it, so I will have to face that ship again, all losses are like for nothing. Not even mentioning Vasari bombers, killing the only things that can face the Vorastra well (alias not frigates or cruisers) and maybe you don't know, but Vasari fighters are very good at killing Advent bombers in large numbers.... By the time bombers get the Vorastra below 1000 health it leaves, gets healed asap by serevuns, comes back, but my bombers are devastated by Vasari fighters so they won't be as strong but the Vorastra will be at full strength again.

This argument is basically over, if someone knows how to use microphasejump well, his Vorastra is hardly ever killed, not even bombers can catch that ship, and sure his next world has at least 10-20 serevuns to heal it in a moment and bloody fight begins again (bloody for advent lol). These are my experiences from online skilled matches (though I haven't played for years but I wasn't a bad player based on what other skilled people told me sometimes, and played a good number of skilled team matches).

Maybe you noticed I never told a thing about VR, I stopped playing multi 2-3 months ago when VR was still a somewhat banned faction and everyone playing Vasari preferred to choose VL. But I guess the Kultorask is even worse, when facing AI titans it is brutal fight to kill it at higher levels, I guess it is worse online but never saw it.