Responses to some interesting points in this thread.
Literally no one who understands the game agrees with you siddy...
They have always needed supply costs, the vasari starbase more than any other.
Yes, lets nerf the vasari to the ground... Surely they didnt get enough nerfs the last five patches right?
The purpose of balance is to balance, with a game like sins perfect balance will not be achieved. Yet, relative balance is of absolute importance, and there are some glaring issues with relative balance between the races. The vasari are still majorly imbalanced. People spam their starbases because they give the best bang for the buck. I think the vasari shouldn't be forced into a turtle situation every game, balancing their starbases can create a dialog on actually balancing the whole race itself.
We need to organize pure 5v5's to truly test racial efficacy. One team will go all vasari, the other team will go all TEC or all Advent. Then after a few games we could get a really clear sense of the level of balance, rotating skilled players around in an attempt to limit the impact of skill.
Corsev does seem OP late game.
I couldn't agree more, this ship is incredibly tough to kill.
I don't see major imbalances in Orky vs TEC/Advent fleet. While Orky has no fleet supply cost (after it's up) it does have non-trivial build costs, so the cumulative costs of adding one that can survive the single enemy fleet of doom at every planet is what constrains such a strategy...
Yet at the end, the vasari strategy usually wins because the vasari player has far better control of timing due to the design of the abilities of the race. They can choose when they build the starbase, so therefore they will build it when it has the best chance of surviving the build(usually when your fleet is away). This forces the advent/tec player into playing a defensive (and therefore wasteful and losing) strategy. I for one am against vasari starbases being constructed freely anywhere in the map. Perhaps having a requirement that the starbase be constructed only around a vasari colony, or having the fleet supply cost of a capital ship. Starbase construction has always given the vasari far too much control of the game.
On the other hand, the Vasari repair platform seems excessively weak
Weak repairs are the best balance that the vasari have in the early game, taking this away ensures complete vasari imbalance. If you need better repairs, then build around your strategy and build a carrier. Honestly, Vasari repairs are tech 1...they do a great job hardening a starbase already... Don't forget that overseers are the strategically best healers in the game, well used they can lure massive amounts of dps from an enemy fleet at no risk to your assets, yet still compel players to focus fire on the target because it is low in health.
Anyway, why does Phasic Barrier make my units attack another thing?
This annoys the crap out of me, too.
Because the hidden underlying advantage of the vasari is superior strategic control of time. Having a better control of time through their abilities the vasari will be inherently stronger.
And in general, given the importance of planet constructors, repair ships and platforms should auto-cast on them, not turn Sins in a game of "you were-1s-too-slow doing that obnoxious click sequence for the N-th time, therefore you lost the game to resource econ attrition".
This game is more aptly called Sins of a Runaround Respawn Retardant.
I agree. I posted a thread a year or two ago that discussed ideas on improving planetary constructors in general, allowing players to improve them via specialized tech's as a way to provide simple upgrades to substantially change the game.
Anyone can write an "explanation" as to why they feel this or that is OP/UP/Good/Bad/etc, but that doesn't automatically make them right. Crunch numbers, run tests, even look at everything that would be affected by changing the stats on flak (not just the one aspect of frigates), and then display everything for all to see... not just say you did and we should take your word for it (or expect that we have to do the same... you're the one making the point, the burden of proof is on you).
That said, I'm not in 100% disagreement with you. My thoughts on it are actually a bit different and fairly complex, so with the little time I ever have anymore I doubt I'll be able to do much proof of concept testing on it.
Crunching numbers won't help a lot with your higher understanding of sins, the game deals with other strategic variables that are not number friendly, such as what is the precise numerical value of a starbase that moves vs. a starbase that does not? What is the precise value of repulse? What is the precise value of 3 jumps to an enemy HW vs. 4 jumps? This is where experience comes in. If you have experience and know the mechanics then you can provide a good opinion, the downside of experience is that it doesn't usually have the happy feeling that we are taught in school to have when we use math to prove ourselves.
Also, if you look to math as the sole satisfaction to your burden of proof, then you will limit your understanding as math itself is an idea, it is our best guess at understanding what IS real. Math is taught as if it is real, yet it is truly an imagining of the mind, as well as being only a small part of understanding what can observed in our world. Math does attempt to explain it all, much like a religion, yet it cannot.
You do a disservice to your intelligence by limiting your thoughts to mathematical certainty. Math is not the only certainty, and this philosophy that pervades our educational system is a major cultural bias, nothing more, nothing less.
Also, you assume that people writing an explanation are "feeling" it. Experience comes from actually living it, observing real phenomenon, much of which is outside the scope of quantifiable observation, even a game that is composed of pure math can express realities that are not mathematical. So, we resolve this via rhetorical discussion, which has it's own set of flaws and is currently in disfavor within academia(not because it is flawed, this is instead a bias). Since our understanding of our world is so small we have to use other less precise forms of discussion. If this troubles you then become a scientist.
"Burden of proof" is just an excuse for fans of a belief considered to be the status quo to avoid having to actually engage with the issue at hand.
A more efficient reply to the above response, definitely quicker to read. 
Well, there is the point, too, that the Orkys are slower than shizniz. If the Vasari player is merely starbasing the chokepoints, it's actually not that hard for an enemy fleet to bypass em.
It's also very easy for the vasari to put up some jump destabilizers so that you can't bypass them...So easy in fact that this happens almost every multiplayer game I play against vasari players.
in 5s games, Feeding vasari is most cost effective way to spend money because you get a good efficiency % on the feed and you can push the gravity well and leave defenses.
I couldn't agree with siddy more. Vasari need a feed nerf, and have since entrenchement.
No, feeding vasari is vastly inefficient because it doesnt translate inti an immediate advantage... its not uncommon for vasaris to float thousands of credits at a time... vs tec/advent who are going to spend it on flak/lf spam.
Seemingly true if you play some multiplayer, yet in an actual high skill game you will realize that this is false, majorly false. Siddy and I have played with the best players this game has ever had, not just a few games, but years of games. Any player with this level of experience knows that if you give a good vasari player early feed and they have even a few neutrals on the map, the vasari player can quickly and easily 2v1 anyone(this is an immediate advantage...you just aren't used to playing against great vasari players). I am not making this up, I have seen it happen a LOT. The thing is the vasari allow for far more control, so if you have two players of extremely high skill, the racial advantages of the vasari win out. The greatest determinant of the vasari victory then becomes luck(map placement). That should not be so for any race, that is why we need better balance so that skill can be the determining factor for vasari victory. Map placement is so important because of the vasari's inherent turtle abilities. I propose that the developers rebalance the orkulus in fundamental ways so that the vasari aren't so map bound. The thread I have written on making all starbases have some degree mobility allows for this reality.
These initial results are promising, so I'm confident that with further testing I can truly confirm that Flak frigates are the most powerful in this game. Of course, my most "realistic" tests have already been conducted, which were actual games against Unfair AIs where Flak proved to be by far the most efficient unit to build and was instrumental in the tipping point fleet battles..... but that is not enough for the "burden of proof" I suppose.
Flak make great frigate killers in sustained fights. Players jump their fleets in and out of gravity wells all the time in multiplayer. Doing this changes the nature of the fight, using flak effectively becomes more about reaction time and therefore will alter your simulation's results, as the flak will take heavier initial losses when the fleets come together. Much of the other flak dps is uncontrolled and therefore requires time to see value, time that a smart player will not give you. Therefore flak being overpowered is a nice idea but it is not overpowered because both players have control over time, player skill is the primary balancing factor here therefore flak is balanced.
Good thread
