There's a difference between phase out hull and reverie and ion bolt.  The former two abilities interfere with your ability to attack the target (reverie will time out prematurely if you're attacking it).  Ion bolt, on the other hand, has no such limitations.  You can stun and focus fire with impunity.  I don't think the ability is too weak at all; if you want to buff the Akkan, look at its pathetic colonization ability.

Remember, these stunning abilities are often free kills against a retreating enemy, and often will snag you a capital ship.  Reverie and phase out both have weaknesses that an enemy can work around; if they get hit by an ion bolt, they can do nothing but wait for the duration to expire.

Hence I still give it the least duration of the three.  As it is...it's only good as an interrupt.  3 seconds is aweful short.  7 isn't really long enough.  If in practice it turns out to be unbalanced, it could be tweaked by adjusting the cooldown time or the amount of antimatter it needs to fire.  My stance on this is, I should get a little more bang for my buck when it comes to Ion Blast.

Note I'm giving Phase Out Hull a slight buff too.  I don't buff Reverie as it is a 40 second disabler at it's highest level...unless you're firing on the target.  Then I imagine it falls somewhere close to where I'm asking for Ion Blast to be.

*edit* Well, I'd like to see the Akkan have a slightly different flavor.  Making it's colonize the same as the others sorta makes it vanilla.  Leaving it's colonize sub par and buffing it's offensive abilities differentiates it from the other colony capital ships.  To me, that is more fun than mirror balancing...

I agree with the previous two responses. ion bolt not only disrupts channeling abilities, it also disrupts a phase phase loading which means you can gain quite some time for destroying the enemy, because you can shoot him during the ion bolt and then again when he charges up his drives, which also takes a little while.

and yes, a buff to akkan colonisation is definately needed. iirc the lvl does not give any bonus whatsoever while the other races' colony capships even get a bonus at lvl 1 (though I'm not a huge fan of the vasari's bonus. it's highly situational). the least would be a free extractor at lvl 1 already and more on higher lvls. this of course leads to a slight problem for lvl 3, if there are only 2 deposits. personally, I'd like to see a slight bonus to building cost instead. maybe for logistic buildings only, at least at lower levels. if you don't make it too drastic, and of course timed, if would be quite useful indeed and make the akkan a much more preferable early ship to pick. because right now, I for one don't think that the pure colonisation ability compensates its other weaknesses. better go for a kol or marza and colony frigate.

Hi!

I tried to mod that for Entrenchment (BuffTechCapitalColonize.entity), giving 1, 2 and 4 free extractors, but I can't make it work. Akkan correctly shows it will made 1 free extractor at first level, but when I colonize with it, there's none. Hardcoded ability?

BR,  Iztok

What about construction ships instead of extractos?  I think one per level would be a nice reason to use the Akkan.  The way to balance extra construction ships is to have them only be replaced when destroyed if the planet has enough upgrades for them.  EX colonize asteroid and get 3 constuction ships which can put to work bulding extrators or other structures.  For the asteroid if it gets no upgrades to increase the number of constructors and the enemy destroys all three, then it can only rebuild its default one.

I think being able to get several structures building right after taking a planet would be a good reason to take an Akkan, especially if its a planet you just took from the enemy and need to get defenses up quickly.(Plus considering the TEC research for cheaper extractors means free ones are less of a deal for them then for other races.)

Ion Bolt shutting down starbases would be a bit too powerful.  However, having it partially work on them might be nice.  Having it disable abilities and movement(for the Vasari) while leaving weapons alone might be worth thinking about.

The Akkan's colonization ability does not need a buff.   The research tech, Expidite Permits, cuts structure build time by 33% and with extra contructors for every colonization level will make any attacks to regain the planet impossible.

What are you talking about?  You don't get extra constructors when you use the Akkan's colonize.  You get extra extractors, the little resource buildings that cost a paltry 250 each.  Zero at level 1 (yes, it does nothing special at level 1), one at level 2, and two at level 3.  That's it, 500 credits worth of basic structures for a level 3 colonization ability.  It's virtually worthless right now.

Even if it did provide extra constructors, that would hardly make the planet unbeatable.  If the conquering player wanted to fill it with static defense, he'd still have to pay for it.  That doesn't come cheap at all.  If colony frigates actually had decent anti-matter to do its job right, no one would get this ability at all.

But if you attack the reveried ship, it will break free and can run away.  Ion bolt doesn't have this weakness.  I can have my entire fleet focus fire the target ship and kill enemy caps with ease.  Early game, reverie is definitely the stronger ability, but later in the game a team of two Akkans can shut down an enemy capital ship completely, while still allowing you to focus fire it with impunity. 

It's a different ability completely, you can compare it all you want to Reverie, but the fact remains that if you attack the reveried capital ship, the ability goes away.  There's nothing that can be done about ion bolt.

perserverance

I'm an Ion Bolt/Akkan fan, and would love to have the Ion Bolt buffed a second or 2, but I have a question regarding balance and synergy.

I recently used an Akkan after a Dunov used Flux Field.  The Akkan spammed Bolts like mad.  Was tons of fun, and pretty nasty.

So, again, while I'd like to have the Bolt buffed, I ws just curious if anyone knows how much a factor synergies are taken into account with strengths of abilities.  Perhaps the Bolt was factored down with the potential of the Flux Field?  and, if memory recalls, didn't Ion Bolt originally more AM to use?  (Same thing with the Kol and Gauss shots, AM cost becomes minimal with the Flux field).

DH

And don't forget the egg's grav warhead! i ussually use that ability in a similar way as RS-fx uses reverie, or even trade off using that and phase out hull if i have both the egg and the marauder in the well.

Yeah, that would work just fine.  That would put it about on equal footing with the Vasari colonize, but Advent would still be king.  A very reasonable and conservative buff.