[quote]The issue, for vasari any way, is that they can shut down the entire enemy fleet for a seemingly endless period of time, so it doesnt matter how long that delay is. [/quote] Right, which is why I said merely [i]touching[/i] the mine during this period would be enough to destroy it. Hence deploying a mine right next to an enemy unit would cause the mine to self-destruct and deal no damage.
[quote]Thats the trick, to get the traps to work appropriately.[/quote] I think the first step is to balance the antimatter usage of the hanger for strike craft, and only then start to deal with phasic traps (and balance them according to the new hanger's antimatter). A target cap would be the best way to fix this, as it really doesn't have any business being uncapped in the first place.
That's the point; memory is the current bottleneck, so it makes by far the most sense to patch.
[quote]So you don't think that something that can completely disable any amount of SC indefinitely is overpowered? Interesting.[/quote] Phasic traps is the problem, not the hanger itself. In fact, the hangar itself [i]is[/i] quite underpowered, people currently don't build strike craft in order to conserve AM. The antimatter of the hangars should be rebalanced balanced according to their needs [i]as hangars[/i], and then phasic trap's cost should be adjusted to compe
I think many people in higher management genuinely believe that piracy is a threat and there is something they can do about it (in case it wasn't obvious, I disagree on both counts). People unfortunately have a nasty habit of being irrational creatures, particularly when they feel wronged. When you're in the business of selling a product, you get upset with the cheaters; I get that, I totally sympathize. But I also think that DRM as an anti-piracy measure is an expensive and
[quote]So diplomacy is pretty much all the expansion packs?[/quote] It [b]is[/b] all the expansion packs. There is no "pretty much" about it.
[quote]DRM has evolved from it's humble beginnings as a weapon against piracy[/quote] DRM as a weapon against piracy has [i]never[/i] been a serious enterprise. After all, who in their right mind spends valuable and highly limited development resources pursuing a market whose [i]defining characteristic[/i] is a refusal to pay for things?
[quote]Processor quickly becomes the bottleneck once memory is good.[/quote] True, but memory is still the biggest factor currently.
Hmmm... just an idea: What if a mine that contacts enemy units before it arms explodes uselessly? This would mean deploying mines right next to enemy units would have no effect, and you'd need to be sure they had time to arm before the enemy got there. That would go a long ways to making them mines rather than hand grenades without completely killing the in-combat application Vasari has going (just making it appropriately more difficult to pull off)
[quote]I only bring up the old tables because I've not seen good, completely fleshed out suggestions.[/quote] We did some experimentation over the summer, and we were quite happy with the combination of a 24 second cooldown and a 60 second duration. I think you could tweak antimatter costs to taste from there. [quote]I will say that people are, in fact, maintaining maximum squad numbers '24/7', by constantly activating it.[/quote] Completely in agr
Once again, I reiterate that the "buildup time" of scramble bombers is also part of the equation. Unless you're willing to blow 100% of your antimatter maintaining it 24/7, it's going to take you two minutes to reach full squad power, and the longer the cooldown between scrambles the more likely they are to be blasted between intervals and you [i]never actually reach your maximum[/i]. This was the problem that made scramble so weak in 1.18. I strongly believe that reduced
[quote]20 subverters 20 overseers and 4 Skirantra caps lvl3 or higher accompanied with fuly upgraded vasari SB and some phasic hangars and relevant phase missile research can beat any fleet that will fight in that gravity well.[/quote] Actually... because you're missing assailants that's still reasonably easy to crack: massed disciples with Halcyon backup. So long as I don't let myself get entirely locked down, the disciples sap 'em of antimatter in no time flat and le
In some cases, it's okay to have 2 capital ship crew upgrades and one fleet supply upgrades. This can be a pretty sweet opener. Later on, though, definitely try to work more on your fleet supply than capital crew levels.
[quote]I would love to see Revelation's Provoke Hysteria moved and adjusted to be a 1/3/5 available siege ability.[/quote] Reworking hysteria as a 1/3/5 skill, dumping guidance, and creating an entirely new "ultimate" ability for the Revelation would be the preferred way to go. Doubt it will happen, though.
[quote]his fleets arent only kols and HC, he has a few other caps as well as about 1:5 repair ships to HC's as well as a good number of LRM's[/quote] Okay, he's within the "sweet spot" for hoshiko proportions, and those LRM's are rock solid units as well. If he's got a few gardas to round it out, then his only real issue is that he's capital ship happy. Again, I reiterate that you need to focus your attention on the ear
[quote]it took less than an hour for me to mop up the rest of the Vasari worlds, they couldn't build ships in any number to challenge me after that[/quote] This is a typical "collapse" scenario. The AI will often put up a rag-tag resistance for 30-40 minutes while you clean it up, but a human player would surrender at that point. Your decisive victory at the choke point sealed the deal and it was effectively impossible to lose after that. Good job. [quote]I
[quote]Sends in fleet with 20-40 HC, 3-8 cap ships (or in games where he is in different star 50-80 HC and 16 caps)[/quote] Sounds like the primary issue is that he has a far more advanced and powerful empire, and exactly what kind of units he's using is more or less irrelevant. You'd be equally screwed if those were Javelis LRM or Carriers. With such a severe numerical advantage, TEC is going to be very difficult to beat regardless of what he's doing. Instead, you n
[quote]Wormhole use is also less easily detectable - the first warning you get that an enemy is using a wormhole is their ships showing up on the other side[/quote] Yeah, but defensively you can put a starbase right on top of where the invading fleet will appear at a wormhole. I've wiped out someone with a well-placed boombase like this before, and shredded others careless or foolish enough to jump right into the jaws of death. Unless the back door is completely unguarded,
There is a tech ("long range jumps") that allows you to jump directly between any two stars. It's [i]easier[/i] to acquire than the wormhole one, requiring 3 civic labs for TEC/Advent and 2 for Vasari. Other than this, Vasari have the phase stabilizer structure that enables them to jump between any two "stabilized" gravity wells of their chosing, but this does not work for interstellar jumps. The only cheats the AI has is a resource cheat on hard and higher and also does
[quote]while I built up 8 capital ships spread out over 2 fleets[/quote] Eight capital ships is serious overkill. Experience in battle is split evenly between capital ships, meaning the more you have the [i]slower[/i] each one progresses. This means you'll have a lot of low-level capital ships, which is inferior to a few high-level ones. This is even more true for TEC than it is for other factions. Capital ships have lots of selling points, but in terms of sh
[quote](what about charged missles and cluster warheads?)[/quote] Admittedly these are unlikely to be in play with a mere 120 command in frigates on the field. If I had that few frigates as TEC and was moving upwards to 4 labs and fighting primarily assailants, I'd probably be more inclined to skip right to Kodiaks rather than spending money upgrading my relatively small Javelis force. I think a bigger issue is spending priorities. Vasari tend to emphasize phase mi
[quote]this happened with the advent too. explanation?[/quote] My best guess would be that you're looking at the illuminator vessel, which has two beam weapons on its sides in addition to a primary beam weapon up front. Hence, each illuminator fires three beams at a time and they will usually strike different targets. There was a bug last version that caused the illuminator's beam weapons to deal additional damage, but if you're fully patched this should not be an issue
[quote]Hark! do i hear a counter to a sova rush for advent?[/quote] It's a four-lab level upgrade, totally non-viable as counter to rushing. You'd be better off putting up one extra lab and going for fast destras. Three labs is pretty well the limit of what can be considered "viable" as an opener, and for most practical approaches you're stuck with two.
Elemental needs to work on its foundation, not its penthouse suite. Right now, it's an utterly generic tile-based TBS with bland game mechanics. This needs to be the focus of attention, and then you can work up through its haphazard managerie of content, and only then graduate to grander things like co-op campaigns. As it stands, competitive multiplayer is out of the question entirely. You'd have to completely rework a lot of the game mechanics for it to even be wort
This is the "Discharge Missile" special of the Kanrak Assailant. It's a little bit deceptive since the beam is actually created by the missile when it hits its target, so it's not clear that it's coming from the Kanrak at all. The "can't survive more than a few seconds" thing threw me off and made me think this was a bug, but reviewing the replay the issue was merely that the enemy had damage upgrades maxed out and outnumbered you, which is going to be a recipe for sudden death in
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