Erm, not innociv in that 5v5...ehtom =p...

well easiest way to try to balance this without touching anything else is making one phase gate/well

that will force vasari to expand a bit instead of stacking 3-4 gates in systems.

I realy dont see the problem of RA if its only 1 gate/well.

Also make the "phaselane" ability disabled for 5 minutes if you summon RA from that gate.

This will add traveling time. and you got more time to do damage to vasari when you destroy one of his fleets before you get swaremd all over again.

so in summary.

1 gate per system
Disable phaselane ability untill the RA recharges again, and you can chose either keep it as a phase node or summon RA and disable it again for nexst 5 minutes.

Dont forget that if they phasegatse dont work as phaseline nodes for 5 minutes after summon, you will lose some mobility.

and this will force you to have some gates unsummoned.

Lets say you take one starsystem with 15 planets.

you will want to have atleast 2 of the gates constantly workking incase of emergency.

If the map have wormholes, even more. So maybe in 15 planet system you will get 11 phasegates that you want to summon constanly, or you will take risk of losing mobility.


RA shuld be powerful, since vasari get shafted in credit income hardcore. And in 1.03 credits = infinite metal and crystal.

I don't really care how RA is going to be "nerfed"´, as long as it is. As it stands now in 1.03, RA is only tolerable on the larger maps due to the combined unbalance of TEC trade and the black market. And you can't ignore one or the other without leaving the other overpowered. As it stands now, both TEC trade and RA detracts from the game experience.

Not to mention that since trade is so powerful, the Vasari are at a serious disadvantage against TEC and even Advent in the short/mid game. In my opinion, RA helps make the Vasari less worthless.

I think you should periodically get pirate ships coming through the gates... that'll teach em... lol.

RA is extremely imbalanced. Innociv was convinced it wasn't a great strat either until HuntingX and I played him 2v2 on a medium random map. This was in 1.02 mind you, where the black market wasn't as easy to abuse as now. I was TEC and I fed HuntingX money. He got RA and completely bulldozed innociv and his partner.

Seriously, once you get RA, if you know what you're doing, it's GG. Obviously if you just get it as they're coming to raze your planets, that's a different story.

Bah, stop using that innociv replay as a proof that RA owns or something. His teammate was at best "average" as an online player, and innociv himself made some glaring mistakes even the best of us sometimes do ~.~

I kinda regret about the time i spent to get that replay, rapidshare doesn't like my connection a whole lot.

yeah I have to agree with jinx

I watched that replay. innociv's teammate wasn't very good, and should have attacked hunting a lot faster. Or they should have made sure to win the pirate bounty and send it at hunting... but they didn't, and he didn't rush hunting fast enough, and the game was therefore over.

And that's stupid, that RA is so powerful that once it comes online you more or less win. No ability should be that powerful.

I remember playing my first 102 planet map against 1 AI, before I knew it (forgot to turn RA off) my fleet had hit max cap. I had something like 90 carriers. So. Many. Strike. Craft.

It's more of a novelty ability, when it's used like it should be (i.e. late game). However, if you let a Vasari player turtle until he can make a couple gates then well... that's your own fault I guess.

I wouldn't say RA is unbalanced, however, the Nano-Disassembler thing on the Evacuator is borderline overpowered. You can put it up on two different ships and keep firing at a different one. It's great being able to kill like 15-20 ships with one ship.

Yeah, but flak + heavy cruisers is pretty lethal on its own, and you get enough carriers free to either neutralise bombers or assassinate cap ships. How many ship types would you say you manually build once you have RA?

I just played a 3v3 game where Returning Armada was used by both sides. Two members of the other team quit right before the other guy got returning armada(they seemed to think they were losing.) The returning armada guy then proceeded to max his population cap and hold the 3 of us off with his heavy cruisers while the AI occassionally attacked just to be annoying. It got to where the one guy had, for a while at least, a fleet that was as big as the 3 of our fleets all put togather, and there was nothing we could do against that. Except, returning armada right back at him.

I sold most of my structures, had my allies pump me full of resources, got dark armada, got up 6 stabalizers(3 per planet, I only had 2 planets because one of my allies stole my astroid...) and withen a relativly short time span went from being 6th in military to 2nd(behind the first returning armada guy). The point here is that I was able to reach almost equal military ranking with this guy without even needing a frigate factory. I didn't even need to have enforcers researched, or carriers, or assliants. All I needed was some expensive techs that my allies paid for, and a few stabalizers. Something with that just seems wrong.

Maybe returning armada should only spawn ships you can already build(requiring military labs as well as imperial ones). Maybe planets should be limited to one phase stabalizer each. Maybe only a certain percentage of your fleet cap should be able to consist of dark fleet ships. Whatever it is, something should be done because it certainly appears that the ability is too powerfull in its current state.

RA, while certainly strong as anything, I think is intentionally so. I mean, the game MUST end at somepoint, otherwise the Vasari would just be sitting around like anyone burning infrastructure and the like.
By the time level 8 premiere techs have been researched, it should really be a zero-sum C&C style game with superweapons blowing things up left and right.

Of course with respect to the fact that other races don't have this easy "End the Game" ability, there is a problem. RA is relatively easy to get and occurs frequently, giving you -free- money.

TEC and Advent "Game Enders" are pretty much horrible with respect to that. Militia is pretty worthless by the time you get it, as a late game player isn't going to be hampered by a bunch of pirates.

Capital ship EXP +Allegiance is pretty much a joke- Capital ships aren't worth much in the late game, and Allegiance even less.

What would be a good solution? Increase the power of the Game Ending technologies. Novalith, Culture and Kosutra cannons ought to be cheaper and quicker to fire. Militia should be spawning siege frigates and LRM that kill infrastructure all over the place. Advent capital ships should be coming out of the factory, reaching level 10 within a matter of minutes. Just have everything go freaking nuts.

If rushing endtechs is a valid Vasari tactic, it ought to be valid for TEC and advent. After all, once you've gotten -that- far, isn't the game pretty much over?

That said, the DA ability requires you to push through a short useful tech tree, while the paths to militia and advent culture are long and useless. I think it'd be more than fair to slash the research costs on those techs, which are primarily culture techs, by as much as 3/4s and amplify the effect of culture dramatically, doing something crazy like making broadcast stations generate additional revenue like Trade Stations, or slashing cost by half and decreasing logistics cost by half.