A plethora of Suggestions for balancing the game. :]

Well I hope devs read this. It's long, but I think it has to be. It explains how your people that tear apart your game to play to win understand it. I'm sure you guys play it for fun, and it is fun. IF it wasn't fun, I wouldn't be playing it. It's pretty much the only game i'm playing now, and have been playing for months! But really, we're basically playing a different game than you guys are.. (And anything to improve the competitive game shouldn't make it any less fun! Balance is balance for everyone!)


Bullets are the suggestions, all the other text is explaination. Want to just see what I think needs changed? Read the

• Bullets!
  

More and more playing the game, more and more it becomes apparent which strategies dominate. I have tried so many. Friends and clan mates have tried so many. I've even tried the "just so stupid it may work!" which turn out to be just so stupid they don't.
Of course this isn't what dominates people who can't play, it's what works when we play one another. Really it's leading to the game becoming a bit stale..
1.04 is a big step up. The market is great, the changes are nice. (Okay I liked Illums being unique with anti-cap damage, but I like 'em still. With the cost and damage increase they are basically equal to 1.02's, but better early game which they needed) But there is much to change. Before in 1.02 the balance seemed fine, but really we simply hadn't torn the game apart enough. Now, I'd say we have.

This time I'll explain in detail why I believe something needs changed. Hopefully people will learn something as well, because a lot of these things involve revealing "secrets" I and something others really would like other people not to know so we can keep them as ace in the sleeve for ourselves, but it's for the greater good to help the gameplay is further enhanced.


Before the patch we knew one thing would happen and that is that HC's rush would become better now that LRM's are slower. As it turns out, yes, yes it is. But LRM's are also still barely worse than before, it's just helped get rid of that annoying "chasing caps through planet to planet ensuring it's death".
And that's mostly it, it's HC's and LRMS.
Now, a lot of people would like to say "Well flaks counter LRMS!", or "Bombers counter Heavy Cruisers!". This is the case, but it's not.
A lot of us used to think flaks where a good counter to lrms, and a good unit in general(due to high survivibility/cost letting them soak up a lot of damage), but they aren't. We learned to play. The problem with most arguments and theorycraft is that the game is about STRATEGY. It's not what unit does good against what, it's about what strategy works.
I build LRMS. You build flak? Okay, so you killed my LRMS. Now I have HC's which kill your frigate factory, kill your military labs, and then kill all your flaks. Your flaks are worthless except to kill scouts, construction vessals, strikecraft, and lrms. My LRM's not only kill your light frigates, but they kill two of the most important things in the game: Capital ships and Buildings. They'll also do fine against HC's.
Against Vasari it MAY work. Vasari might just build 1 mil labs and 2 civ for a start, so they're 4 mil labs from HC's. But TEC and ESPECIALLY Advent will have more. It's especially the case with Advent who need 3 mil for their Illums. This, is really an advantage for them, as it means they're just 2 mil away from HC's.(Goes against my complaining about patch before it came, sure, but text and guessing is no substitute for seeing how 1.04 plays.). Tec needs 3. So if you go flak, they're VERY close to getting HC's. You might as well resign if you're going to counter someone using lrms with flak.
The only counter to LRMS is more LRMS/Better Micro, or Heavy Cruisers.
Is there more counters to the UNIT? Yes. But this is a game, it's not about countering units, it's about countering strategies. The LRM strategy is only countered by a better LRM strategy or by HC's. This ins't an "absolute" but it's so close to it it shows the overpowered and underpowered units and just the game in general.

So how to fix this? Raise some numbers on some units, lower some others? Well the problem is in the fundemental design of the units, how they work. LRMS kill buildings. Killing buildings is useful. If someone doesnt' have buildings, they can't fight back. HC's break the rock-paper-scissors with their rock-paper-scissors-nuke. Is there a counter to the HC UNIT? Yes. Bombers do like 18 dps to them. Some Support Cruisers can shut them down 1-for-1 for slightly less cost, but require insane micro which many people can't handle. But if you compare Carriers/Bombers to HC's.. well it's blarringly obvious it's better to counter HC's with more HC's. Simple as that.
It's not like the game is decided by just who can spam more HC's. If it was, wouldn't I and others be easier to beat if that's all we did?
But the problem isn't all these two units. Why aren't flaks good? Why aren't bombers good? SHOULD flaks be better than they are against buildings? Well no flaks shouldn't, but i'll get into more of a major flaw with them later. Bombers and fighters DPS/Cost is poor, so is survivibility for them in the Carrier. But even if you went numbers for numbers, Carriers do way worse than they SHOULD. There is a huge problem with their AI which i'll go over. But FIRST! HC's and LRMS!


Heavy Cruisers
Ignore their damage type, their armor type. Just look at their Survivibility and DPS and they're the best. Throw in the best damage and armor type in the game, and this point is even sent more home.
The only unit besides support cruisers that can do decent against them is LRMS.. Yet LRMS are the 2nd best at everything else!
Herein lies why these are the two best units.. They're also the two best against each other. This is why Light Frigates, Carriers, and Flak don't matter.
The biggest change needs to be Heavy Cruisers get their effectiveness against Light Frigates drastically lowered. Both LRM and HC's, the predominate units, counter Light frigs. But you need light frigs to be good to counter those support cruisers supporting the Heavy Cruisers.
And god forbid, Carriers be given proper treatment so people use them, then people would have flaks supporting HC's and you need light frigs to kill the flak.

• Change Composite damage to do 25% to Medium armor, down from 100%. (Light frigs are the only unit with this armor type.)
• My suggested changes to technology, here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/307771/page/2/#1691395 doubling ship costs would delay HC's by about 2 minutes, making HC rush slightly less effective.

Now before you think "OMG CUTTING HC DAMAGE DOWN TO 1/4TH TO LIGHT FRIGS?!?!" you have to take into account HC's have 20 dps. Making it 50% wouldn't be enough to matter, they'd still tear through light frigs effortlessly, like paper. AND you have lrms to do the job of tearing up Light frigs. LRMS are easily accessable anti-medium unit.
To go on further, 25% of 20 DPS is STILL 5 DPS. (18 dps for kodiaks, 19 for crusaders, without upgrades. 20 is vasari's.)
What else does 5 dps? Well, Light Frigates AntiHeavy damage is around 5! (less than 5 for advent and tec, slightllyyy more for vasari)
So then Light Frigs and HeavyCruisers would then do 5dps to each other, basically, without upgrades. But HeavyCruisers have 2.5x-3x the Survibility. So it's not like Light Frigs become a counter to HC, it just allows them to be a counter to those support cruisers and flak supporting the HC once the game is properly balanced in the other aspects.
It's not like LRMS are getting removed from the game, either. You have those LRMS then to kill light frigs instead of HC's doing it all.

• Reduce Composite damage to 50% against Capital, down from 75%.

They already have High DPS. 10dps against caps would still be much more than any other unit does, as most things do do.
Herein lies another issue with HC's and LRMS is that they're so good against caps. Almost all damage types are 25% or 50% against caps. Composite and AntiMedium is 75%. Fair enough. Except, not, because the unit that does Composite damage and the unit that does AntiMedium unit are also the two units that have the highest dps!. So this makes them more than simply 25% better against them, and these two units also do so good against killing everything else.
Personally, I think the rate that Light frigs spam kill caps at their 50% is a good one. HC's will still do better at 50%, as 50% of their 20ish dps is still 10dps like I said. It's just less-than-absurd from the 15dps.

Long Range Frigates
Our second "problem" next.

• Reduce AntiMedium damage to 50% against Capital, down from 75%. It should possibly be 25%.
  

That's really it. Besides that they'll be fine. It's really this one and only problem that would imbalance them if the rest of the units where well balanced.
Why this though? Well we got the problem of them chasing caps so easily fixed, which is great!
Now theres the big issue still of: If the enemy has a large amount of LRMS, you can't even send your Cap to the fight.
Capital ships are supposed to be an important part of the battle.. what tips the balance when used right. But you can't even use them since they'll die in an instant.

And you can't just measure Capital ships in the cost of their 3000 credits, their 400 metal, 250 credits, or that 50 supply. Or that cap ship crew upgrade, furthermore. You have to measure their value in the time to level them up. They're worth more than that credit cost, yet they'll go down in MOMENTS.
This LRMS dropping them so fast is in my opinion the main thing that makes Capital ships so bad.
Why make caps when someone can easily make LRM and waste your efforts in leveling them, waste that cap ship crew research that you can't get the cost back on? And it's not like caps would be immortal if LRMS weren't so made so over-poweredly good against htem. Light frig swarms kill them pretty fast too, just not ABSURDLY fast.

Alternatively you could make lrms ONLY good against light-frigs and Caps, but be aweful against buildings, HC's, support cruisers, and everything else. But in my opinion it's best to make nothing countering Caps so easily.



Subverters
These are more overpowered than anything else, but are less of a fundemental problem I guess, so I went over HC's and LRM's first.
Subverters haven't been a big problem due to only a few people knowing how to use them.. But knowing how to use them, and in using them, they just break everything.
Really it's a bit annoying that they weren't delt with at all in 1.04 :/...
Okay let me explain.

Subverters are a support Cruiser.
They are the counterpart to Subjugators and Cielo's, thus they cost around the same. (400$ 80m 80m. Subjugator is also 400$ 80m 80m. Ceilo is 425$ 25m 60c)
However they have one thing that no other unit comes close to in the game: AoE disable.
For 100 of their 350 am(250 after jumping in) they can disable DOZENS of ships. The AoE is quite large as well. It lasts 30 seconds, and has a 60 second cool down. (So with 2 subverters, you can chain it per clump.)
It often takes out 20-35 ships with just one. Those ships are then easily killed, especially with nanites(kortul cap ship ability.). That's just with one subverter.. you can, of course, make more than one. It's something you'd except to be a cap ship ability if anything..

All one new player has to do to beat others is learn to abuse subverters, and they can beat all other new players.. it's simple as that.
After long and hard thinking, and talking with a lot of people(no one of which can say they aren't overpowered. Some could in 1.03 due to vasari having horrible economy, so Subverters where their crutch that made them playable. But not Vasari is proper without them pretty much)

• Rework the ability so that it can effect a maximum of 7 or 8 targets. Keep the AOE size the same. This would be a FAR better solution than nerfing their range as units can clump together a lot, and well Vasari does simply need this to counter advent.
• Increase the supply to 7(up from 5). This is equal to Gaurdian, which is more to what it should be compared to as Gaurdians are the second best support cruiser, and Subjugators are 4 so you can figure you can nearly get twice as many Subjugators for the same supply then. (Though Gaurdians are balanced fine. Increase cost to 450/150/100 or 450/100/130 up from 400/80/80. (In comparison, Gaurdians are 525/110/120)
  
• Increase the range on the AoE disable by 1500 or 2000. This is so it's easier to hit Gaurdians trying to repel them. A little buff to go with the nerf. It shouldn't be TOO easy to get that disable in against repulsion though.
  
• Make the AoE disable no longer effect buildings.
• If more has to be done to nerf them then make the disabled targets take reduced damage like -30%.
  
• Don't overnerf them by like just making the AoE tiny because it's easier than making it effect a max number of units, or making them only disable one unit. :/ They should remain the most powerful Support Cruiser, or on par with Gaurdians, they just need to not be insanely overpowered like they are now.
  

Gaurdians. added 04/15 1:30pm
Used right they can be harder to stop than Subverters, because they can stop the overpowered subverters. But with Subverters getting properly balanced, this isn't an issue, nor should one overpowered unit counter another.

The issue is that the range of things that counter Repulsion, are less than repulsion. The range of these disabling abilities(typically a miniscule 4000, barely more than HC's range.). Also, Tec doesn't have anything like these units except their light firg, which ability is too weak.

• Make using Repulsion disable the shield ability for 30 or 45 seconds.
• Make Repulsion no longer effect Capital ships.
• Fix how the skill works. It pushes people hard, but drains constant AM. So you can just turn it off and on. It should drain AM in "pulses" every few seconds each time it pushes, not a constant am drain per second.
• In addition to the above, have the repulsion be a constant "push" for 5-10 seconds, cancling the ability would make them not push back as far. Then pulse of am drain would be for this duration, and then it wouldn't drain am until doing it again.
  
• Make the Gaurdians take damage to shields whenever the lose antimatter while using Repulsion by 1.5 damage per am. This will make their am drain that repulsion has drain their shields. Being hit by AM drain abilities(such as EMP from Dunov, Detonate AM from Radiance, the AM burn from Kortul) further damage them.
  
• Increase the range on SUBJUGATORS DISABLE to 6500.(up from 4000 I believe)
• Increase the range on SUBVERTERS DISABLE [as noted above in subverters colemn] to 5000 or 6000. (up from 4000.
• Increase the range on the Cobalts ability a lot. I'm not sure how much, probably 5000. Something in the 5000-6000 range would be good, much further than the range of their weapons.
• Improve autocast on Cobalts ability. It's a hell of a thing to micro.
  
• Increase the duration of Cobalts ability to 25 seconds.(up from 10.)
• Possibly also increase the damage of Cobalts ability to 150 as well.(up from 100)
  

Carrers/Bombers/Fighters/Flak
These have to go together, as balancing one requires changes to the other.
Now theres the arguement for Carriers where that they're the only unit that can replenish after dying.. their strikecraft that is.
But that would be like argueing that when LRM's took 10% damage they couldn't fire for 2 minutes but "they gain that 10% shields/hull back in the 2 minutes when they can fire again!"
Even if strike craft where immortal, carriers die easy. They're slower than HC's and have the survivibility of a light frigate, but they cost almost the same as HC's.
Their DPS/cost for fighters and bombers is basically the worst. Couple this with them having damage types that are only good against specific units(AntiLight and AntiVeryHeavy), unlike the LRMS and HC's which have a damage type basically good against every armor type. AntiVeryHeavy does half damage to all but heavy, and 3/4 to caps. AntiLight does 1/4 damage to all but verylight, and double to light. Coupled with low dps.. that sucks.

So right now they're basically HC cost. So lets compare to HC's.
NAME.............DPS....vs.v-light...vs.light...vs.med...vs.heavy...vs.v-heavy...vs.cap....vs.bomber
TEC.FIGHTER.....9.75..........9.75......19.50.....2.44.......2.44.........2.44.....2.44........14.63
TEC.BOMBER......16.44.........8.22.......8.22.....8.22.......8.22........16.44....12.33...........NA
VAS.H.CRUISERS..20..............20.........30.......20.........25...........25.......15...........NA
So Excluding against Fighters, HC's are just always better. (I know Tec does the least, i just had thsoe numbers on hand. And vasari's is the most.. but that's because it's easier to do the math with 20 The other HC's DPS are close at 18 and 19.)
Even against HC's, which bombers are supposed to counter, HC's are a better counter, plain and simple.
HC's do double damage in ALL cases except against other HC's, lrms, and buildings they are only 50% better. HC's also are the best tanks. So why build carriers? That's the question that many have answered.(Answere being: They don't use them.)

Bombers can take out a few HC's with their bomber range, sure, but then you have to jump out your carriers. Yes you can spread carriers around so it takes longer to kill them, but they could just use flak and wait for flak to kill then hunt your carriers. So yes, you can't compare carriers/bombers/fighters purely by their dps and survibility, but you can compare how they perform in game, and in game they suck.

Now there are some instances where Carriers are OKAY. They are about 3x better when you Micro them(everything is better when you micro, but carriers benefit far more than any other unit), they actually do rather well with gaurdians and repulsion, and they are the only current counter to subverters(though if you make subverters not so overpowered that won't be an issue.), which have to be taken into account. They can't be made simply on a level where they are good when you don't touch them and don't use a proper fleet combination and don't micro, becuase then they could be overpowered if people do do that.


Doing some experimentation.. we found one of hte biggest things holding Fighters/Bombers back is their AI.
As it turns out, what looks cool where squadrans go in, then break all over, then make circle strafe attacksi n all directions, which LOOKS cool, make them SUCK SO BAD.
This is because of how flak works.
Flak has 4 guns with 90 degree arcs (i believe 90 degrees at leasT) to cover 360 degrees. Their ~20 dps is split to 5 dps per gun. If 1 gun attacks, it does 5 dps. Simple, right?
So with strikecraft flying all around the flak, they get to fire all the guns. This means they do 4x damage, essentially, because of this. Also, Flak have short range. Normally, this effects nothing as strikecraft go all over the place BUT...
Now if you select all your strike craft, turn off their auto-chasing targets, and control them manually you can have them hit a ship at the edge of flaks range. You can make it so some of the flaks hardly get any shots off.
Not only this, but you have the squadrans attack, then order them to all move back away all in one direction instead of scattering all over.
You keep the squadrans together like this, in one big clump, and only hitting at the edge of most flaks range, and you're only allowing one flak arc to fire doing 5dps, and many flaks not even fighter. At a minimum, they do more than 3x better.
You have 30 squadrans against 15 flaks microing, and the squadrans will kill the flaks. You just let them auto attack, and the flaks will win with only taking about half losses.

So, lets assume that strikecraft where made as good as any other unit when not being microed, then they'd become so dominant it wouldn't be funny.

So what both needs to be done is improvements to not jsut the units, but the ai, and how flak works.

For Fighters:

• Give them a new specialy damage type that does 100% damage to medium. (75% at least.) Bombers have their own for good reason.. it's nessisary. As it is to balance Fighters better. :/ Just making AntiLight better would imbalance scouts.
  
• Increase attack time to 10 seconds(down from 12.5). Basically about 20% increase in dps. Of course move a bit faster and turn tighter if they can't otherwise attack every 10 seconds. Just increasing damage would make them over-kill things too much, faster attack time is better for them.
  

For Bombers:

• Their survivibility is nice now. Just need some more DPS, 15% more damage would be good.

Assuming these changes the table would look something more like(with taking account my suggestion to reduce Composite damage vs. medium to 25%) Just rough numbers:
NAME.............DPS....vs.v-light...vs.light...vs.med...vs.heavy...vs.v-heavy...vs.cap....vs.bomber
TEC.FIGHTER.......12............12.........24.......15..........3............3........3.........17.5
TEC.BOMBER......19.5..........9.75.......9.75.....9.75.......9.75.........19.5.......14...........NA
VAS.H.CRUISERS....20............20.........30........5.........25...........25.......15...........NA

Compared to current:
NAME.............DPS....vs.v-light...vs.light...vs.med...vs.heavy...vs.v-heavy...vs.cap....vs.bomber
TEC.FIGHTER.....9.75..........9.75......19.50.....2.44.......2.44.........2.44.....2.44........14.63
TEC.BOMBER......16.44.........8.22.......8.22.....8.22.......8.22........16.44....12.33...........NA
VAS.H.CRUISERS..20..............20.........30.......20.........25...........25.......15...........NA

For both:

• Fix their AI! Make squadrans all either break left, or break right, alternatively. Like on one pass the whole group breaks left, on another right. Or you could make some like flip upwards to dive downwards and back around to give some variance, and some in between, but keep all either reversing back.
• Split the buy Carrier Cruiser button in two. One button buys one with a full fighter squad already built, and the other button buys one with a full bomber squad already built. Then only changing from one to the other would take build time and use up all their AM!
  
• Reduce Crystal cost of Advent Carrier to 50.(Reasoning that theirs have so little hp they lose dps fast, despite having the most base dps without upgrades. Just a few shots and they pop, then the overall dps lowers. Also drone host has less HP, and many advent units cost far more crystal than other ones it may make carriers something they'd make when there are no ice planets.)
  
• Tec Carrier to 60. (Reasoning is that they have so many units that win cost per cost to others. Why should they get a cheaper carrier just because their squadrans are worse? Not to mention Advents drone host dies the easiest.)
  
• Vasari Carrier to 65.(With phase missile upgrades and due to them losing damage faster due to the ships dying slower, they are the best)
• Increase their AM regen to .5/sec(up from .25). Increase AM cost for building fighters/bombers 75%. At their current .25am/sec they take 400 seconds to regen AM after a jump! It's good to have them not be able to jump around to much and replace squadrans.. but 400 seconds is a longgg time and is one thing gimping them a lot.
  

For Flak:

• Change it with 3 guns with 180 degree arcs each(having some overlap of the guns, instead of just 120degrees and touching), the dps for the 3 guns combining to the same as 4. (So 7.333 dps per gun for advent, up from 5.5, tec and vasari's would be a bit less.)
• Increase their range to 5200. (Up from 3000).
  
• If you can't improve fighter AI.. then make Flak have 1 gun in front, one in the rear, at double dps. :/ But that's not ideal..
• Reduce their chance-to-hit penalty while moving a bit.. Now they can't even hit bombers while moving at abit of an absurd amount.
  

In comparison, bombers have 2400 range. With good micro, they can basically hit, then draw back pretty fast before taking much fire.
This range is a bit below Illums range, higher and flaks would be able to just keep outside illums range(5520) to kill them without getting shot.

Now notably i've suggested Fighters do better against Light frigs(Medium armor). Why? Because fighters are basically only good against LRMS.
Fighters DO do more damage against siege frigs, construction frigs, colony frigates, and scouts also. But against these targets bombers still do 9dps, which against these lightly armored is enough, and not worth switching strikecraft and taking 2 minutes!. That's why fighters need to do more against light frigs as well.
Now you may say Light Frigs are supposed to counter Carriers, becuase theyr'e heavy armor. Well yeah, now they do, and they counter them so easily.
Light frigs move almost twice as fast, take like no damage from them, and do about 12dps. With what I've suggested they'd take 12dps, but also do 12 dps, with nearly the same survivibility and 1/3rd the cost(1/4th currently, 1/3rd assumes suggested cost changes). Or at least about 9 dps if they do 75% to Medium. You must consider, though, if someone uses flak(which you can easily get when someone is spending money on carriers), it's lowering those carrier DPS.

Of course, rough numbers getting, different strikecraft and light frigs have different dps from each other, but they're close enough.



Those are the Major issues with units, really it's not much.. minor tweaks except for how fighter/bomber AI makes them so bad.
THEN there are capital ships.
There is clearly good ones, and bad ones. They need better balancing, which is a lot more changes.. I'll go over them one by one.

It's not that any cap ships are overpowered, really. The overpowered ones represent how the bad ones SHOULD be.(With the exception of embargo being too good and malice a bit too good.)

Siege Frigates
What more can be said? They need 50% more DPS at least to be worth anything. Keeping their survivability low and cost really high making it hard to build many is fine. That's good since you can counter them easier. But they do no damage, they are nothing compared to siege caps.


Vasari Skirmisher light frig.
It's bad. Just plain not worth the cost at all, and it's not like light frigs are overly useful. (Though, in this thread i've proposed improving them with HC's not mauling them so hard.)

• Raise Hull to 800(up from 700).
• Lower shields to 340(down from 440).
• Increase range to 4200.(up from 3500)
  
• Increase max velocity to 925(up from 800).
• Increase armor to 5.0(up from 3.0).
  
• Increase DPS to 12(up from 10.5).
• Repair Rate to 1.5(up from 1.0)
  

Reasoning for hull and armor change is that it'll make that self-heal ability better. It's a good ability for Enforcers, as they tank well, but not for Skirmishers. And faster speed, more range, instead of just making the Skirmisher be a cost-per-cost or supply-per-supply copy of Cobalts, it'd be more interesting that way than things carbon copies.

For reference(things that are different):
Name.........Hull...Repair...Armor..Shields....DPS...Range...Supply......Cost...Build time
Cobalt........600......1.0.....2.0......350....9.5....3500........5..300/55/0...........24
Skirmisher....700......1.0.....3.0......440...10.5....3500........7..420/70/0...........34
Proposed:
Name.........Hull...Repair...Armor..Shields....DPS...Range...Supply......Cost...Build time
Cobalt........600......1.0.....2.0......350....9.5....3500........5..300/55/0...........24
Skirmisher....800......1.5.....5.0......340...12.0....4200........7..420/70/0...........34
Keep in mind though tec gets more armor upgrades.

If anything i'm not suggesting improving them enough.

ALL CAPS

• Remove the silly XP splitting! It is one of the big hinderance to people making more than one cap, making more than one less viable. When an enemy dies near them every cap should get full xp!
  

Advent
Radiance Battleship
Good for 1vs1 to make sure you don't get screwed by enemy abilities like Embargo or Malice, and otherwise it's a good tank with good damage output.

• Detonate AM: Fine
• Animosity: This doesn't seem to work right.. It seems someone can just give an order to their ships and it cancles the attack? It should make ships attack for 5/8/11 seconds and ignore any orders, including orders to use abilities. Then for a bit less than 1/3rd the time at lvl 3 you could stop orders from being issued, stop people from retreating, and so on.
• Energy Absorbtion Armor: Fine
• Cleansing Brilliance: Add a 2 second delay for the beam to "charge" giving a SLIGHT warning to move what it's targeting before it starts dealing damage.(Not enough for the aoe to never do damage, 2 seconds would have the ship just accelerating.)
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine
  

Revelation Battlecruiser
It's not that good as a first cap, but in close games the Clairvoyance is a really nice benefit. But still, would never make it over Radiance or Mothership.

• Reverie: Fine
• Guidance: When targetting a non-capital ship it should be an AoE effect which effects all frigates and cruisers. So basically you can have the cooldown of one cap abilities be half at level 3, or a decent sized group of frigates/cruisers instead, either or from one ability.
  
• Clairvoyance: Fine
• Provoke Hysteria: Fine
• HP/DMG/ETC: Increase base Planet Siege damage 30% (up to 65 from 50). Advent lacks a good siege cap. This is supposed to be their siege cap sort of but.. it's not, it's rather weird. It has Provoke Hysteria which is nice, but it's level 6. Even 30% damage won't make it as good as the others for siege cap rushing, but it will raise it enough to possibly be worth chosing over the other advent caps to do so. Especially considering you could bomb a planet and use Reverie to disable their cap as you do so. Though advent having a worser siege cap wouldn't be much of an issue if Siege Frigs weren't completely worthless.

Progenitor Mothership
Awesome Colonizing ability with awesome malice. Now with increased speed it's even better than before. Hard not to pick it.

• Colinize: Fix it taking so long for the cost reduction to kick in!
• Shield Regen: Make it sort of like a reverse malice. Make it last 20 seconds.(up from 8) When your ships in the aoe take damage, all other ships take a % of that damage, reducing the damage done to the targeted ship. Ontop of that, regenerating the shields/per but a lesser amount like half or so. Why? The problem with all AoE heals is that you aren't usually taking AoE damage except from Nanites or Malice. So basically this ability counters nanites and Malice.. but countering malice with another malice is better to just kill them back. 62 shield restored per second is An AWESOME amount, especially when you factor in taking less damaage from Advents insane Mitigation.. problem is it might as well be "Restores CAPITAL SHIPS ONLY 62/second" because like i said, damage isn't spread around, it's only healing 1 ship, not all ships within 4000 range. Ships are dying one at a time, negating this skills potential.
• Malice: Have damage from other skills (IE brilliance..) not propegate damage, just normal ship firing. Increase cooldown to 25 seconds.(From 20. Before you could chain it non stop, now there'd be a bit of a break.)Lower damage spreading to 9/16/22(From 8/16/25) By itself it's a SLIGHTLY too good, with high direct damage abilities it's way too good. But besides that it just demonstrates how good other abilities SHOULD be.
• Resurrection: Fine
• HP/DMG/ETC: Lower armor to .3 per level, down from 3.75.
  

Halcyon Carrier
I liked this before I learned to play.. It's mainly bad due to squadrans being bad.

• Telekenetic Push: Might be good if people actually used fighters/bombers.
• Adept Drone Anima: Should give 1-3-5 more Fighters, 1-2-3 more bombers, not 1-2-3 more of either.
• Amplifying Energy Aura: Fine
• Anima Tempest: Needs more clearification in the description.
• HP/DMG/ETC: 0.65 more squadrans per level.(Up from .5 which will mean 1 additional at level 7, max of 8 at lvl 10 up from 7)

Rapture Battlecruiser
This is the worst of Advent's caps. it's USELESS. It looks good to newbies, those numbers, but they aren't if you think about it in a realistic way like i'll explain.

• Vertigo: It would be decent if it had big AoE. So give it a big AoE. In turn, lower it's cooldown to 30.(up from 20. In comparison, the duration is 25.) to compensate for being able to catch a lot of units in it.
• Concentration Aura: 8000 range sounds like a lot, but it isn't with strike craft. It should be 15000 range.
• Vengance: Make it a small AoE(as in buffs multiple units, something like vertigo's CURRENT size.). Reduce duration to 15(unchanging at lvls). Increase damage returned to 500-800-1100%. Cooldown at a set 60 seconds. 40-80-120% damage returned sounds like a lot, but that's the equivalent of two light frigs shooting at each other at where one has a 20% damage upgrade.. it takes like 2 minutes for one to kill the other(because of mitigation and natural regen mostly. The natural regen of ships is basically countering the damage done :/)! With proposed changes, at level 3, it'd be like 11 ships of the same type returning fire for 15 seconds, but the counter to it would be to cancle attack orders. Maybe it needs to be even better than that, though. Would need to test, but currently it's insanely weak.
  
• Domination: Reduce cooldown to 60(from 90)
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine.
  

TEC
Kol Battleship edited 14/04 2:00pm
Lots of people like it since it looks cool and fires cool lasers.

• Gauss Rail Gun: Change damage to 450/625/800(from 300/550/800). Change cooldown to 20/13/6.(from 6) This will make it better earlier on, without buffing it later on where it becomes good when you can keep the AM up to spam it.
  
• Flak Burst: Would be useful if fighters/bombers where.
  
• Adaptive Forcefield: Fine.
• Finest Hour: Fine
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine
  

Sova Carrier
Embargo rush is it's only purpose.

• Embargo: Reduce max speed to 300 for it's duration.
  
• Missile Batteries: Reduce cooldown to 30. (AM is still a big limitation early game, it'll just allow making more later on) Reduce how long the Missile batteries last to about 60% what they are currently.
• Heavy Fighters Upgrade: Increase the fighters/bombers hp aswell the same 10/20/30% or raise the damage boost to 15/30/45%. Fix description so people know it's both fighters and bombers.
• Rapid Manufacturing: I don't see why this shouldn't last as long as the duration so you can keep it at base on autocast to spam better. Right now the duration is almost 1/3rd the cooldown. People obviously make sova for embargo rush, not to get to lvl 6 and aid spamming.
• HP/DMG/ETC: 0.65 more squadrans per level.(Up from .5 which will mean 1 additional at level 7, max of 8 at lvl 10 up from 7)

Akkan Battlecruiser
Colonize is nothing compared to Advents. Not that Advent can't have or shouldn't be the best, it's just the vasari and tec colony cap colonize is laughable in comparison, not even half as good. So how about making them half as good?

• Colonize: Remove the extractors thing. Tec gets cheap extractors from civ1! Have colonized planets start with +1 construction frigates and get 0/1/2 civilian infrastruction upgrades for free, already upgraded, instantly after colonizing a planet.
• Ion Bolt: Reduce AM cost to 55. Duration to 5-7-9(from 3-5-7)
• Targeting Uplink: 4-6-8% increased damage would be nice as increased ranged isn't as useful in comparison to other abilities giving damage. Keeping the range and chance-to-hit bonus in addition to giving damage aswel, though.
• Armstice: Fine
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine
  

Dunov Battlecruiser
Does alright in pairs, but partially for the reason at the top(split xp) you tend to not build more than one cap, especially if not Advent.

• Shield Restore: Decrease AM cost to 2/5ths current amount(to 35, from 90). Decrease cooldown to 2/5ths current amount(to 7, from 16.) Decrease amount of shields restored each level to 2/5ths current amount(to 150/300/450 from 350/700/1050). It's alright for keeping up caps now, but useless otherwise, probablem is it currently over-heals things currently, and tec has low shields on most units. Changed like this it'll be more useful for actually saving your frigates and cruisers.
• EMP Charge: Either make it fire 360 degrees, or make it fire off the side the cap turns to fire from! It just turns so slow ughghhhhhh
• Magnetize Hull: It'd be nice if you could make it so your own fighters/bombers will crash into things.. but be able to not aswell currently.
• Flux Field: Unclear description.
  
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine

Marza Dreadnought
The best for siege rushing.

• Radiation Bomb: Crease AM cost to 60(down from 85).
• Raze Planet: Fine.
• Incendiary Shells: Fine.
• Missile Barrage: Just seems extremely weak, I'm not sure why. It's 150 per volley, how many volleys? I've used it a few times and it hardly does any damage.(And yes, I know it's channeling, and have to stand still while it does its thing.) It needs a buff but i'm not sure how much.
  
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine

Vasari
Kortul Devastator
I'd <3 you if I wasn't more in <3 with Antorak.

• Power Surge: Fine.
• Jam Weapons: Fine.
• Disruptive Strikes: Fine.
• Volatile Nanites: Needs a 30% increase on the range of the explosions AoE. Right now it's real good because of overpowered subverters, but won't be as good when they're fixed.
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine

Skirantra Carrier
New players seem to think it's good for it's repair.. but it's not.. as again, the repair is only good for repairing caps, or one single unit poorly.(but is way worse than advents, though has the benefit of being able to be used while moving/attacking).

• Repair Cloud: Needs to work similarly to how I said for advents shield restore.. make all units under it's effect spread damage to friendly units, thus reducing the focus fire damage to it.
  
• Scramble Bombers: Reduce AM cost 20 per level from what it is now (. Reduce cooldown to 40 seconds(down from 60.)
• Microphasing Aura: Fix description to show how it does the chance and time between chances.
• Replicate Forces: Reduce cooldown to 120(from 180)
• HP/DMG/ETC: 0.55 more squadrans per level (up from .45 i believe it is.)

Whale :3
Colony cap, blah blah.

• Nano-Dissembler: Fine
  
• Gravity Warhead: Increase range to 9000.
• Colonize: Give 1/2/4 Free extractors instantly built upon colonizing. Give 1/2/0 planet exploration instantly constructed upon colonizing.
• Drain Planet: Fine.
  
• HP/DMG/ETC: Needs faster turn rate, .4 armor/lvl(up from .35), more starting hull. Gahh the must face forward abilities burnnnnn cant turn to grav warhead too slowwwww. :[

Antorak Marauder.
Why I like Vasari. It augments micro'ing so well with Phase Out Hull. An example of something being good but not overpowered. It's got all kinds of creative abilities all in one.

• Phase Out Hull: Fine.
• Distort Gravity: Fine.
• Subversion: 40/55/70% in both regards.
• Stabilize Phase Space: I wish more caps had abilities so creative. :] This one is fine too.
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine.
  

Vulkoras Desolator.
Kinda works.

• Phase Missile Swarm: Too weak.
• Deploy Siege Platform: Is buggy, if you select it and target planet your cap then turns around after laying down the platform, moving to like a random spot. It's fine though I think.
• Assault Specialization: Could use a buff to the damage vs structures.
• Disentigration: I'd much prefer this if it worked where you selected an enemy ship, then a friend ship/structure, then it drained from that ship and healed the selected friendly, rather than just healing the Vulkoras.
• HP/DMG/ETC: Fine.

Culture. added 04/16 8:00pm
There are a lot of complaints about this. This reason why I think peopel complain is simply:
With Military, you fight military with better Military.
With Economy, you fight economy with better Economy.
And those can win you the game.
With Culture.. You make it and it doesn't do that much, and fighting it doesn't require better culture, It requires hardly any culture to counter it.

Now, counter-arugement to this is that putting up culture buildings is far far easier than managing a military and economy, so it shouldn't require making more culture than your enemy to counter in it.

See I could make 8 broadcast centers on a planet neighboring my enemies. All he needs to do is stop it is put what.. a cap ship there, and 1 broadcast? Unlike the other things, I haven't done enough testing to see how many broadcasts it takes to counter other broadcasts, but it seems like a very low amount.

• If I put 8 broadcasts up, it should force the enemy to build at least 3-5 to counter it, or else they start losing A LOT of allegeance. So basically what I mean is culture repulsion needs a nerf. The spread rate could use a slight buff too, like +20% at normal amount.  So I could force people to scuttle logistics buildings in order to make broadcasts to counter mine.
  
• Some more benefits to culture would be nice too.. Currently it's where if a planet is in hostile culture, you can't colonize it. That's really neat. But what if a planet you want to colonize is in FREINDLY culture? Since planet flipping is gone, why not have the planets you colonize in friendly culture start with much higher population? I think that's a good compromise to how it was in beta.
  

Ah I could go on with little things like cielos.. But those are the real important things there.

Thanks for reading, if you managed to.