Send me a pm so you can organize a time when i will pwn you with tec.

@ adama
I'd love to play you. I'll pm you later today as I am working now. You still seem to miss the point. The TEC factions way of over coming the more advanced factions is suppose to be super strong eco and a higher achievable military output. The Vasari can actually have a stronger eco. and a higher achievable military output. The Advent have so many off the scale abilities it doesn't matter if they shot bb's. They would be tough to beat.
After playing all three factions extensively. I believe the Tec needs something. I do not believe the other races should be nerfed. I have no idea what it needs though.

I guess the way the upgrades work it comes out better I only noticed this in 1.05. Test it yourself dont take my word.

All of the races have their advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses. The TEC get the Novalith cannon (by far the most powerful and most useful of the three super cannons) and they can rush the enemy better than any of the other races in the game.

In an online game I choose my race based on my expectation of what the game will be like and I will choose from all three races depending on the situation.

Will there be early, close combat or will I be safely tucked away so that I can play Sim City in Space for a while or will it be somewhere in between? How big is the map and how many other people are playing and what races are they picking?

Those are some of the factors that I take into consideration.

I'd just wait for the Marza's lvl6 missile ability to be fixed, which does 3000 damage to every target in range (spread over 25 seconds). Sure, the enemy fleet just can move out of the range - but if they don't, small things tend to die around the Marza

That will make a big difference in SP vs. comps, yeah.

It's not nearly as significant in multiplayer though. Unlike Malice/CB or Nanites that only require an small time frame for instant application, the barrage is a channel over time and susceptible to cap ship disables.

I half agree. TEC does need something, but a few nerfs here and there might not be a bad idea. I think the Subverter's area effect stun should have a cap on how many ships it can effect. Given that it only takes 5 supply and doesn't cost a whole lot more than a Hoshiko, it's capability in terms of cost is sky high. If it was capped at 6 or 8 ships I think that would still make it one of the Vasari's more powerful weapons without it being OP.

I've actually been working on a mod for about a month that tries to re balance the factions. One of the solutions I'm coming up with is a buff of light frigates. LRFs still smoke them pretty bad in a straight up fight, but I'm increasing their lifespan in a fight. Long enough that they can do some damage to hostile support cruisers before they are destroyed. I also made the Dunovs EMP charge more useful by removing the restriction that the Dunov had to be facing its target.

The problem, of course, is that I don't have the time to playtest it MP, so I'm not sure I've got the balance right.

Vas can't hold it's own vs TEC early on without RA? Sounds like someone's a little lost in the SP world.

Go ahead and PM me on MP for a nice 1v1 you TEC and me Vas. We'll see who is worthless early on.

I know what needs to be done. The Hoshiko needs its repair ability to be AOE.

There are eight million reasons I don't play MP. This has been one of them. (Apologies to The Naked City, for most of those here who are not, ahen, of a certain age.)

This is exactly the attitude that pisses me off--and its displayed by almost every MP supporter here. People who are only, or primarily, interested in SP are either lying or too stupid to know what we lke. (And speaking of which, since subtlty seems to elude you, the reference in my previous ost was to the taunting "come play me online and we'll see who's worhtless." Just the type of crap I wish to avoid. I always play PVE in MMOs for the same reasons.) Ok, here's the short version of why I don't play online, which is largely twofold.

First, online play would largely negate what I find enjoyable about Sins. While I have tried many RTS games (including Starcraft, Warcraft, RoN, RoL, Dawn of War, all the AoE games), it is not a genre that I particularly enjoy. I neither like nor, frankly, am particularly good at the frantic clickfests that make up most RTS games. My favorite genres are traditional RPGs (Wizardry, M&M, BG, Morrowind--but not Oblivion) and TBS (Civ, GalCiv, HoMM, Disciples, AoW, Paradox games--which are much more akin to TBS though billed as real time). I enjoy building and micromanaging my empire and take considerable time considering my next moves. I invariabley play a turtle/development game and combat is my least favorite aspect of these games. Sins is billed as a 4X/RTS hybrid and I enjoy the 4X aspects more than the RTS aspects (though as a SF fan for more than 40 years, I do get a kick watching the battles). I always play the game at the slowest possible speed and probably spend as much, or more, time paused as otherwise while I contemplate my actions. Online play would emphasize the very aspects of Sins that I least enjoy--fast and frantic play emphasizing combat and rushes far more than development.

Second, I do find the game enjoyable against the AI and I have no desire to put up with the macho BS inherent in MP, nor do I wish to min/max every little aspect of the game in order to be competitive. I remember one particulary obnoxious MPer, arguing for more action/RTS oriented play in an MMO forum, proudly recounting how many hundreds (or was it thousands?) clicks per second he could maintain in competitive online RTS play. I am quite willing to understand that this may be fun for you, why can't you understand that it is not fun for me?

I'm an online savvy player, and have played my fair share of online games (of every genre) as well as single-player games. There are particular reasons as to why I really stopped playing online (which are completely reversible by some patch changes).

First and foremost, in order to win an online game of Sins you have to employ a monotonous strategy in order to win. This means rushing to tech to certain units and technologies because they are superior choices to anything else in the game. There are way too many ways in this game to fail online such as simply choosing to build a balanced force containing a supposed balanced selection of units that fails against spammed LRM frigates. It really limits the playability of the game online because you will always see the same thing, and then have to do the same thing every time in order to counter it. Because of this, I'd rather play against the AI because I can build a balanced, self-supporting force and go up against the AI's equally balanced and self-supporting force. Not face incredibly mind-numbing "insert ship class here" spam. I mean come on, its not even really considered competitively valid to build light frigates anymore, just goes to show how stuffed up some of the game's balance is.

The second reason is due to time constraints. Online games just take too long to finish and its too much of a commitment to see one to the end.