Fine the way it is IMO. It's there as an ALTERNATE win condition, not the only one. The defences are good enough to stop someone from rushing it too early, but not enough that you could have easily won the game normally a long time ago.
Main problem with red button is you don't need to fully upgrade a SB to get that fleet-wiping power. You can easily destroy 4-5x the cost of a SB with two red button upgrades. With the range increase there is literally no safe way to destroy a TEC SB. At best you will lose your entire SC force to it. At worst running into a TEC SB will just instantly lose you the game. This is just a no-skill super ability that needs to be toned way down.
I think they just need to disable the minelaying code for Advent AI. Advent carriers are too expensive and important for the AI to waste them as minelayers the entire game. It severely cripples the Advent AIs ability to attack starbases.
Generally good, Corsev badly needed those AM buffs. But, seriously Red Button BUFF?! I was going to make a thread arguing it needed to be NERFED. A well placed TEC starbase will basically require you to send in a titan to tank the nuke now. Not sure what the devs were smoking when they put that in. Please revert that one!
Impossible to fix until there's a ladder system. Then competitive players can have proper stat tracking, while the non-ladder players can have all stats but 'games played' removed. I completely agree that it's stupid to have visible stat-tracking for non-ladder games, as this leads to all kinds of stupidity and frustration. However I am completely glad to see more RTS' finally putting their foot down on smurfing. It is such a coward
Bombers and LRFs have always been a thorn to balance for some reason. They seem to finally have LRFs under control with corvettes working well against them, but bomber spam is still pretty lame. It's not as bad with Visari not in the game yet, but I'm worried once they get put in Visari bomber spam is just going to come back full force.
I really only fine it useful as a cleanup ship. After the threats are gone, park the starfish in the middle of the structues and they'll all be dead soon. As a starbase counter, bombers are clearly better. Damage increase, #targets decrease is the most sensible fix.
Caps on units in RTS' only makes sense if that unit is intended to be above the power curve for normal units. For example Dawn of War Dark Crusade slapped a limit on each races elite units. This allowed them to keep the heavy tanks and super infantry powerful anti-everything units, while preventing the late game from being nothing but those units. In Sins, there are no such units except caps and titans. Assuming balance is working as intended, every unit has a hard
As for anti-SB, starfish could really use tweaks in this regard. Right now they are optimal against someone building a turret farm, something generally only done by AIs. Against a single strong target bombers are better. A halfway point would be a good idea (ie fire at less targets, but more damage) IMO. But yes, Advent's cap ship lineup has always been flaky leading to carrier cap spam (and not just because SC were OP). BATTLEcruisers with t
[quote who="SageWon" reply="6" id="3138554"] What is it good against? Er, supports that anything can beat and with the current flak nerf, flak; except no one will spam flak anymore... -They get hard countered by HCs, a commonly spammed late game unit. Sloan, they are good against Carriers too (Heavy armor too), and late game when their abilities are teched, they fulfill various roles. So: flak, carriers, support, and then add special abilities.&nbs
So the red-headed stepchild of the Sins unit roster. It gets hard countered or breaks even with just about everything in the game, and is particularly crap with Visari in the game since they can hard counter it with one lab. What is it good against? Er, supports that anything can beat and with the current flak nerf, flak; except no one will spam flak anymore. With corvettes now in the game and considered viable unit, what exactly is the point of LFs anymore? Corv
Titans keeping their XP just renders cap ships completely pointless mid-late game. Of course I will want all my XP going to the super cap ship that never truly 'dies'. Why would I possibly want to waste my money on additional caps in the current state of balance? Fairest solution is push the titan tech up the tree and rebalance their power accordingly. Whatever your stance on the XP is, it is hard to disagree 4 labs is way too early for a 'superweapon'.
Limit of 4 superweapons will be fine, but their power needs adjustment now. Spamming superweapons is silly, and simply a sign that a game has gone on for way too long. TEC loyalist is not 'ruined', they still get access to them way earlier than any other faction.
Looks good on the whole. I don't think the problem with super weapons was spamming them, the problem was solely TEC loyalist getting them at tier 6 with no prerequisites.
Pirates are meant to be a FFA mechanic, and they work well in that regard. In a 1v1 they don't work, as the first couple raids require your entire fleet to fight off basically giving the other player full reign of the map. In teamgames they are a joke, as they only attack one player out of up to 10. A few tweaks that could be made with them still IMO: -In larger games, launch more than one raid. Maybe something like 1-4 players = 1 raid, 5-8 - 2 raids, 9-10
This of course would all be rendered moot if there was a way to counter titans for cost with normal units. The root of the problem is that the only thing that can touch a levelled titan is another levelled titan. This is not how a RTS is supposed to play out, everything needs counters (aside from itself) or the game becomes completely stale.
I would really like to hear from the devs on this one as to whether the titan techs were made so low tier for the beta (ie so we can test them easier), or if this is actually want they want. Right now the game revolves around titans, and that's not a good thing. These things needs to be move to, IMO, at least tier 3-6 techs or even further back. 1-4 is far to easy to rush out.
So, if the devs are stuck on this how about Titan cost/buildtime increases with its level? At least then losing a level 10 titan would still be more than a minor set back (by the time you have a level 10 titan, you probably have the economy to buy it back nearly instantly).
Artifacts can be great and all, but the cost to use what is essentially a gamble button is very high unless you are Advent with the cost reduction tech and/or the Progentor colonize bonus. The minor discoveries (ie Penal Colony and such) are clearly meant to be more useful when a planet is first colonized, but nobody can afford to do this early game. Right now this option is basically a late late game thing for TEC and Visari. Advent are a bit better off because of said tech
For Mass Communion, move it to tier 3 and give it two levels. An earlier 50% cost decrease would be pretty significant. Right now it's definitely too far up the tree.
Losing a titan wouldn't completely screw someone if it had other counters besides a titan. Titans are strong, and should be strong, but basing everything around them is completely stupid.
The buffs, while needed, didn't really help it much as the main problem with it is that its primary ability - Boarding Party - is still far too weak. Long cooldown, highish AM cost, duration is low enough that you have to time it pretty well to get a ship steal even early on. It definitely needs more work still. The salvage thing sounds cool on paper, but it becomes a Kol situation; why target the Corsev if it's no threat?
[quote who="wbino" reply="3" id="3122568"] Quoting Polistes, reply 1You multiplayer people need to stop trying to ruin the fun for those who play SP only. I agree with the OP and I play single player only, simply put, having Titans retain their XP and Level is ludicrous, it goes against everything in the game. [/quote] I have to agree as well. Losing a titan should be a big deal, but it's basically just a slap on the wrist. While you can argue
This one might need to be rethought or replaced. It's so incredibly situational I'm not sure I'd bother buying it in most cases.
Never been a big Advent fan, but the rebel titan really just made me go 'meh'. It has a severe case of 'Kol Syndrome' where it's only really effective if you opponent focus fires it. Sure it does a lot more DPS than a Kol does but if you don't shoot it 2 of its 4 skills don't do anything. That's really not good design. The passive in theory is designed to make ignoring the titan bad since it powers up, the the damage increase isn't n
