Great Game ... but phase jumping is out of hand

Gravity warhead, phase disrupters.

Raze his homeworld while he's running away.

Oh, and I think the Ion Cannon on the TEC support cruiser can disable someone from phase jumping.

There is a building you can make that blocks phase jumping out of the sector. Also, Some capital ships have the ability to disable other ships from entering phase jumps. Look into it

vasari interdictor ships, amongst numerous other abilities that can stop phasejumping.

*goes daydreaming*

ah the days of betas 1 and 2, one you could jump from ANY part of the gravity well to any "adjacent" grav well (making skipping planets INCREDIBALLY easy) and in 2 you did not have the 30 degree arc, you had to enter/exit precisely on the phaselane. now its beta 4 and we have the buffer region where ships can come and go in mirror to where they land!

almost all of those ideas were either mine (the 30 degree arc) or were developed independantly by several people (the enter-exit region was independantly developed by myself, who no one heard, and I believe it was wedge who came up with the idea second...) almost everyone complained about bunny-hopping grav wells though
ah the memories...

in any case the new system is MUCH better than old, trust us.

If they're that afraid of you then you don't have much to worry about it if the Cap comes back into the system. Let them run.

although if they turn and run that may very well be a good time to rush them and try and assassinate their forces

I admit though, I liked it better when Phase Inhibitors blocked jumps and once a force was sent to a inhibited world it was committed to at least blow the inhibitor up.

Those capital ships upgrades shut down another capital ship for barely a few seconds. Hardly enough to make a big difference. I'd love it though if the amount of time the ship was shut down could be increased through more expensive tech research.

The phase disrupter no longer blocks ships from phase jumping. It only increases the amount of time it takes for a ship to jump, but again I don't think it's very useful at it's current setting. And again, I'd love to see a more advanced version of this tech at a higher cost.

Anything that would keep fleeing ships in sector longer.

Yeah, frequent phase jumping is annoying. What I don't understand is why phase jumps (without the upgrade) consume 100 antimatter, yet you can still jump away with 0 antimatter.

Doesn't block anymore, just slows (which, IMHO, was a bad change. If you're willing to send ships to attack a planet you should be risking losing those ships if you can't take it and it has a phase disrupter, or at least be forced to destroy the phase disrupter).

Exactly! When playing TEC I try to pursue a fleeing ship to the next sector but when I get there I never have enough antimatter to disrupt them again.

So far when playing against friends, the second they arrive in a new sector while fleeing they immediately turn around and jump back (hence the passing each other while phasing)

*shrug* its a valid tactic, bait and retreat.

ew, really???
how long is it slowed to? please tell me upwards of 20 seconds...

Schod,

If you're refering to the PJI, it now increases jump charge time (from opening the white window to actually jumping) to 250% of normal. I'm pretty sure that means 25 seconds.

I've seen a lot of ships get away under the new PJI rules (even scouts), but combined with Ion Bolt (each time they're Ion Bolted it resets their jump charge), I can keep a ship from jumping for a good minute and a half at least. That's usually sufficient.

The good news is that the charge slowdown applies regardless of whether they're jumping to another one of your grav wells.

In battle outside of your control you can't bring the PJI with you. We need a portable one. I haven't found a TEC portable PJI yet... not to mention it being on tech 4 is stupid. I second the original poster.

cause they dont have one.

ok, that sounds good

although I still believe there should be some sort of increase for allied planets, because as it stands it does absolutely nothing to keep your enemy from skirting your planets like it was originally supposed to.
the original use of the PJI was to force enemies to at least lose some ships by plunging head first into your defenses.

well think about it, tech 4 is ~ 30 minutes into the game, maybe shorter. anything before that and you start choking out some pretty unique strategies, which I generally find an unacceptable sin.

I agree with the phase jumping. There really needs a way to slow down the retreating enemy forces. It gets boring having to continually chase the enemy without forcing any major battles.

there are a couple reasons I disagree with this, but I'll go with my most prominent one, one I can give an anecdote for:


retreating is not an issue because:

the only ships you should be concerned about stopping from a retreat are the cap ships, your enemy can replace frigates rather easily in just about anything but EXTREMELY early game, and frigates far far far exceed the speed of capitals, as a result if your enemy needs to retreat because he's going to lose his capital you should have the speed and the firepower to take him down if you have a handful of frigates lying around. as a result even chasing your enemys through different gwells shouldnt pose an issue for you, unless of course your enemy has an absurdly high amount of health, in which case you werent going to get him anyway.

I've assassinated many a capital ships using the technique of popping out from behind and giving chase through neutral gravity wells (if you dont get him the pirates might!) just ask my good friend the great emperor, I pulled off a real epic assassination against one of his level 5 marzas once, god that was one amazing battle   

and if that fails just ally yourself with a vasari, or get an akkan so that you can paralyze him!

I think that jumping out of a hostile system should take twice as long. Ping-ponging between planets is really, really annoying.

YEA! Screw the capital ship! Let him run!

Why are you chasing them anyway?

There's nothing like hanging out next to an enemy planet to make them recall their fleet. Then you can run away too. After crippling them.

Well they're capital ships after all... I usually dont even try, they're not supposed to be the kind of ship you can just pop quick even with lots of ships. If i go in a system and they decide to retreat, so be it. When they engage and decide to fight seriously, i havent found that hard to blow em up during the battle, it's not like they just retreat right away.I blew up 2 or 3 of em in the same battle yesterday, and i lost 1. When i imagine a capital ship i think about the Galactica, not just an oversized frig.

I completely agree there needs to be a way to stop fleets dead. I've just played a game where I controlled an entire Solar System. I've placed a massive fleet at the star, but when enemies jump in, they can quickly get to a Phase Lane before I can take out more than one or two ships.

I've practically got a wall of frigates, and they just waltz by to siege my planets and kill my structures. I've ended up with a bunch of enemies running around my empire, with a bunch of large fleets and fortified planets wondering how the enemy got behind them. They can't cause too much damage (a factory here and there) but it's incredibly annoying that it took no effort on their part.


At very least, I think they should have to stop and take out jump inhibitors before they leave the system.

Jump inhibitors wont help with your star issue.

Have you tried large numbers of carriers? A wall of frigates probably wont do jack diddly, but strike craft can generally intercept stuff booking it through a well. I had a fleet sitting in the enemy solar systems star well, the 30 advent carriers and support took quite the nice chunk out of the ai fleets as they ran through to hit my other systems. Not having defense on your planets just isn't an option, and not having a fleet somewhere close is just as mandatory. After they got through in a depleted manner, they got the chew on full tactical slot planets with a smaller fleet running them down if they were too much for the defenses to easily handle.

I do miss the pji's blocking incursions though.

The delay needs to be bigger right now it's pointless.

Interesting to hear that it went from a phase kill to a phase sorta delay system.

i say they should stop them from jumping further into your empire if okay pay attention lets say they attack planet b now planet a only has one rout to it through planet b if you build a disrupter on both planet b and a they cant jump to a because duel disrupters this would work abit better and still give retreat a chance but the disrupter should slow retreats away from your territory i say add in 30-50% longer and thus you lose ships if you send a massive fleet to attack no matter what even if you just turn around immedetly you still lose a light ship or two.

this way we please all sides of this lil discussion.