-double-

Step 1: Scuttle ships you don't need.
Step 2: Collect free resources for doing so.
Step 3: Build whatever you damn well please with the proceeds.

Under no circumstance is having a pile of free ships to be considered a 'bad' thing. It's a heaping pile of free resources, harassment, or fleet support that your opponent isn't getting.

Yes, but none of these strategies are good counters to RA. People know how to use it.

Doesn't the Kostura cannon disable/damage structures? I guess you could get those up and try that.

Of course, if you have the resources to do that, then you should have gotten RA instead. Later on though, that might be a way to counter the other guy's RA production once you two are at a stalemate.

Played probably the best opening 45 mins as TEC I have ever done this morning - 2 development mandates, most extraction techs, trade network on 7 planets (massively out-colonised everyone), 1st level industrial juggernaut, almost all planets taken to max logistics and packed full of trade/tech, got kodiaks and repair yards and had 6 frigate factories up... probably the best 50 minute start I have ever played, though I kept the fleet cap too low and went for one too many cap ships.

Both my fleet and an allied advent fleet were held off by one vasari player with 2 planets and an asteroid, with no economic buildings or research and one military lab, who rushed straight for RA and phase gates. After half an hour of fighting we called it a GG, mostly out of boredom. Eventually it became a total chore to manage both production queuing and microing combat. Aside from - yes he was a better player and was able to micro - the whole thing of being able to totally neglect anything regarding, I don't know, colonising or setting up an economy or an empire just makes the game totally tedious. It's not the usual tense-as-shit back and forth and endless recon and back yard raids fight, it's just a boring unit grinder. Kinda sucks.

Returning Armada does seem to be too powerful when it comes to the late game on the larger maps. Whether or not you want to call RA overpowered or not, it dumps down the experience of the game, awarding players based on their choice of race, not skill. This isn't sour grapes, I've defeated RA several times, but it does seem to prolong games severely, which no other tech is able to do.

Because a lot of people get swollen heads when they beat a POORLY EXECUTED RA rush and think it's balanced. Then they come and spread their fairy tales of how it's easy to counter on the forums.

TEC can counter RA pretty easily. If they have a good economy running and can afford to not only build more units to fight off the RA waves and also expand they have the advantage. Just build novalisks and bomb the shit out of the vasari planets. works like a charm and once they have no more planets its GG no matter how outnumbered the TEC was.

There's something a bit off about this entire statement. Besides, I've found that the biggest problem as TEC vs. RA late game (large fleets) is the fact that fleet upkeep generally eats away your ability to easily replace your fleet, even if you've got two thirds of a star system fully maxed on eco fighting a RA Vasari occupying the rest of the system. The RA advantage gets bigger the larger the fleets, since the Vasari player is free to use his resources on select units and what is most likely a severely lacking economy. There's just something wrong fighting large fleets appearing independently of their owner's economy. It feels like I'm playing against a badly written AI.

I don't know, they cost 1500 credits and 200-400 metal and crystal I think. Not what I call inexpensive. I think the problem with increasing the cost of phase gates is that it makes them less usefull for their own purposes, which is quickly moving between planets. Perhaps after creating a phase gate, there should be an additional fee to upgrade it to support Returning Armada? What this fee would be, I don't know, it could be the cost of allowing a phase gate to work at such extreme distances(where is that fleet coming from again?).

This would leave basic phase gates usefull just being used as phase gates, but make the loss of Returning-Armada-enabled phase gates have more of an impact, because after rebuilding the phase gate itself more resources would have to be put into getting it back into the Returning Armada free-ship-network.

A Phase Gate with L2 Returning Armada generates an average of 2364 credits, 471 metal & 326 crystal worth of ships every 5 minutes.
That's 7.88 credits/s, 1.57 metal/s & 1.09 crystal/s.
That ship production ignores fleet upkeep penalities so with the maximum fleet upkeep penalities, that's equivalent to 31.52 credits/s, 6.28 metal/s & 4.36 crystal/s of income PER PHASE GATE.
A trade port generates... 2-3 credits/s for half a Phase Gate's cost?

@CptSiddy: Maybe if you're thinking of a typical small / med galaxy 1v1, that's true.

But there's not a good counter on large maps, especially those where you are in a different star system.

Also, try to counter if the Vasari is teamed up with a TEC player that's feeding him planets and resources. Heh.


RA is not to be beaten, its to be nerfed! Scuttling has to go (how about a self-destruct with a small loss to planet happiness instead?), as well ships generated through RA should have less firepower while taking up same amount of fleet cap. It would still be an extremely powerful fleet ability, instantly being able to produce tons of reinforcements for free... but not a decisive advantage over everyone not having it.