I think that, on small maps at least, it is perfectly feasible to stop RA. The problem comes when you start playing longer games where everyone has had time to get higher fleet upkeep levels. The vasari player doesn't HAVE to rush to RA for it to be stupidly good. He can play normally, and then when everyone has lots of research and huge fleets, he has the ability to replace losses. With upkeep upwards of 50%, other people don't. The vasari player can take bigger risks with his fleet, accepting losses that would cripple TEC or Advent fleets. And it never stops, unless the TEC has somehow built a big fleet AND plenty of novaliths. Advent really has nothing to do.

They need to fix it in 1.04.


My two cents...

The fix can come in two parts. First, require that ships that come in have the requisite fleet research. Draw from all the ship types. A force of heavy cruisers will save you? Sorry, you get colonizers. Scuttle them, better luck next time. And, now you'll get the specialty cruisers like overseers and subverters. Much better.

That'll make it so that meaningful rushes are harder because it takes a lot of military labs as well as civilian. It won't stop the late-game dominance, though.

For that, I propose upkeep be a RANGE of percentages for each research level, a minumum and a maximum based on how many ships you actually have. Just pulling numbers out of the air, perhaps 0-10%, 5-20%, 15-35%, 30-55%, 50-80%...Hmmm...that's too much too fast, but you get the idea. The minumum of each level should be less than the previous maximum, so rebuilding is easier. This should make free fleets less of an insurmountable advantage in the late game.

With those changes, I think that the two times RA is truely overpowered will be curbed. It's too powerful at the beginning when fleets are small, and at the end when you have no money to build a new fleet because of the upkeep system's rigidity. During the middle, it's good, and a nice ability, but not game-breaking due to the cost of the research and stabilizers.


And that was way more than I wanted to write. I hope a dev sees it and it sparks some thoughts.

@Diplomimator: The composition range seems like a great idea!
But more fleet research will not address the effectiveness of early RA rushes in team games. It simply means that you'll need two allies to provide you with planets and resources instead of one...


Most importantly, RA shouldn't be a source of income at all. No scuttle!

Also, I stand by my proposal to also nerf DPS of RA ships and lower their armor, lowering the total fleet strength proportionally to how many RA ships are employed in it. To elaborate a bit, this would a) ensure that if a TEC / Advent player actually manages to get a similar amount of reinforcements to the frontlines through regular production & flying there, the Vasari will either have to spend more too (to buy non-RA ships), or loose that fight (although he may still win monetarily), and that sending a suicide attack fleet of the largest size permitted isn't something a Vasari would ALWAYS do without second thought, since the attacked player "roll over" (kill) it, the one-time instant RA reinforcements, and the regular non-RA forces before there's time to react by building an aedequate amount of non-RA ships to counter.

I think the easiest and most simple way to balance RA would be to make the quantity/quality of ships provided by RA inversably correlate with the size of the Vasari player's existing fleet, i.e. the quantity/quality of ships provided by RA decreases as the player's fleet size increases. This would ensure that RA exists only as a powerful supplement to a functioning economy, and not a complete replacement. Furthermore, it wouldn't hamper the usefulness of RA on the smaller maps on which the fleets by nature are smaller than on the larger maps. Thoughts?

The problem being that RA will still be pretty much unbeatable after that.

Why? Well, you essentially have instant and free replacements to your army, which will be at around (estimate) 50% effective/desirable ships against your enemy's army, even if this army is based on only like two ship types. Plus you can harass your enemy quite heavily for free (with the disposable RA part of the fleet), and the RA thing also works as sort of a rather insane production bonus to frigate / cruisers, making having a Vasari "Champion" player in the team to produce these ships pretty much the only desirable thing.

I suggest to nerf the RA ships themselves quite heavily, so that Vasari have to juggle RA ships vs. regular ones a lot in order to be efficient, and can be overrun by a very heavily massing TEC / Advent player. Also introduce a tiny happiness penalty to blowing ships up.
It will still be good enough a tech to be considered "ultimate" without full ship strength and scuttle, having instant backups and free capability for harassment and all that...

Well, that's a point, but its not "considering" the ridiculous trade port advantage - don't forget that in two+ player teams where the TEC feeds the Vasari, the bonus to resources totally stacks with that "bonus to production" sort of thing the Vas have in RA...

complaint: phase gates should be able to set rally points.

Q doesn't select everything in the grav well; it casts the returning armada skill for the currently selected phase gate.

Q, W, E, R, T
A, S, D, F, G

each button maps to the corresponding position in the UI for the selected unit.

For example, for all ships, f is fleet mode (i think). A is attack, Q colonize for colony ships, etc etc.

IMO, It also should be way more convenient, like any produced ship inheriting the group of the factory / gate it belongs to, and group-casting (shift modifier for all at the same time, single-click for single-ship casts) for marked units of the same type. Stuff like this.

Imbalances introduced through usability & clickfests will also only lead to AutoIT-scripters and their kind to have undue advantages in "otherwise exactly the same" games.

It is true that if you let an RA teched Vasari sit with his 2 or 3 worlds and slowly collect ships, he will have a huge ass fleet. But he will also have virtually no economy. You just take those Kodiaks and drive into his system and kill the phasegates. When he tries to rebuild, you just kill em again. You will lose a lot of ships, but you will cut off his supply, and he is completely economically crippled. If you have a fully developed TEC economy, you should be making money faster than you can turn it into Kodiaks at this point, and you just wear down his fleet.

Of course, a little scouting and STOPPING the RA before hand is advisable too, as people have stated. The other problem with RA is that you can often destroy the Vasari's ally while he sits there and techs up.


I ran into this once back in 1.02... the Vasari was so far from me, I couldn't do much to stop his RA, but we kept hurting him economically. With the new market making resources readily available to econ players, TEC can do even better in 1.03. The RA player ended the game with the biggest fleet and not much else.

https://www.sins.bz/infusions/pro_download_panel/download.php?did=99



As for the problem with huge multi-star games, I'm not sure what the best answer is....I don't play a lot of these because everyone's fleet gets so big my computer grinds to a halt. I will say that Advent endgame fleet synergies and the massive TEC economy still give them a fighting chance...and once you hit the fleet cap, the Vasari doesn't have as much of an advantage anymore.

I'm unsure tbh.

If they RUSH for it, I can't imagine it working well. The TEC economy will steamroll you, and combined arms with capship support >>>>>>> HC and carrier spam

As for Advent...sorry, multiple advent capships + Advent support ships will fucking walk all over them.

there could definitely be an imbalance..I just don't think it's with the Dark Armada RUSH.

If you take a more slow-paced, reasonable tech to it (like how an Advent player might get Deliverence Engine or Allure of the Unity), it can be ridiculous. DA should be balanced to the other end-game abilities, which it really isn't currently.

Yeah, I think RA is balanced for maps up to a certain size...on the really large maps where the Vasari grows a bit before going RA, I'm not sure what to say. I think it will balance out again when you hit fleet caps, assuming your economy is turbo charged. The ship density of TEC and Advent fleets is much higher than a Vasari fleet due to high Vasari cap requirements for ships. I have seen Advent fleets chew up Vasari fleets twice their cap size. But of course, the RA fleet keeps getting replaced.

I really don't have as good an idea on game balance for huge multistar maps. As I said, my system starts grinding to a halt when everyone gets huge fleets. I will say that if you build trade posts all over the place, the TEC economy can replace ships pretty damn fast too. But in that middle ground where Vasari uses RA to hit the fleet cap before you, it is not pretty. I never rush to RA, I expand a bit first and then dig in and RA, and it is SO much more powerful than an RA rush.