I don't see any threads about people rushing to Novaliths in multiplayer. That is to say, it isn't nearly as good as RA. So while the point about superweapons is correct, it doesn't hold up well when one 'superweapon' is significantly better than all the others (to say the least).

Go ahead and pit an RA rusher vs. a Novalith rusher and see what happens to see what I mean.

YES YES YES lets ALL make personal attacks now that we've run outa ammunition!

Key problems with RA:

1. it's all labs, not tech. Insurgency, Novaliths, Deliverance Engines, Pervasive Economy etc are made non-rushable by both the number of labs required and the time taken to research the preceding techs. The Kostura and Mass Transcendence are much easier to rush towards because they only need labs, and not preceding techs, but the Kostura also has an enormous setup cost per gun and MT is not as immediately useful in the 30-45min period (to say nothing of being stuck with Disciples as cap backup). RA sits between the two extremes - it needs lots of labs, but only 3 preceding techs, and the first of those (phase gates) is immediately very useful and allows a player to mount a very effective defensive game, even if they only have one military lab (for assailants). This makes it very easy to rush to if you have any assistance from anyone else at all.

2 RA is very powerful even with just 3 low level planets - a terran homeworld, an asteroid and a volcanic planet will let you produce an immense number of vessels and provide enough logistical and tactical slots to tech all the way to RA and build an immense fleet with phase gates. You need build no refineries or trade ports and can easily get away with a single military lab, since RA will give you Enforcers (and only 2 more mil. labs will give you regeneration and health buffs, making them extremely powerful).

3 it removes almost all unit production micro. An Advent or TEC player has to switch between battles and production to keep their numbers up, Phase Gates produce a good mix of units (probably better than most of the newbie users would build themselves!) automatically with no effort - someone who just queues up fleet cap techs need never even look at unit production until they've stabilised enough to build more military labs and get subverters, other than to destroy the occasional Transporter. Which brings us to:

4 as well as being an incredibly powerful unit production tech (LOTS of free units for 0 production effort), and an automatic research level-up to 5th tier military units with Enforcers, the civil path that takes you to RA also gives you massive economic techs - access to Enslaved Labour and Improved Salvaging. Even cheaper phase gates, and a huge incentive to kill off less useful but expensive units (eg. transporters) for a lot of money, further shifting you away from having to build any economic structures. With enough phase gates and no need to micro unit production, you have something that is practically more effective than Pervasive Economy for pushing upkeep-free money into your coffers.


So, ideally:

1 RA would have a longer tech path, and/or a longer time period required for research,

2 Phase Gates would take more tactical slots to produce, limiting their spammability with just a small number of worlds / low tac slot availability

3 The units produced would be more of a monoculture, less predictable, and possibly only give access to units you have the required military labs or research for

4 RA units would either have their scuttle ability removed (they're Vasari, but they're not, strictly speaking, YOUR units), have their salvage refund reduced, or have a sharper refund dropoff with fleet upkeep.

What do you mean, 'tree'? Improved Salvage (all you need to use RA as an economy boost) is a tier one tech with one level! Enslaved Labour also sits all by itself with no prerequisite techs. If you're racing to 10 imperial labs then you can pick them at any time.

As far as I know, all we have confirmation on in terms of 'rebalancing' is that RA will no longer allow a player to exceed their cap through the gates. Have you seen mention of anything else from IC?

It would probably help if you would condescend to explain some of these 'misconceptions' rather than, you know, simply being condescending.

I see A. but I don't see B.

I see Bubb9 but I don't see a person with IQ > 10.

But hey, I'm an open minded guy. Let play a 1v1 or 2v2 and post the replay up for all to see. If you beat me, I'm sure everyone will take your suggestions more seriously. But you won't beat me. You'll lose in some horribly epic manner, and everyone will laugh at you for the joke you are.

Of course, this open challenge is to any of the various morons in the thread. Have a beef? Think your theorycrafting is right? Play me a game. See what happens.

You aren't even reading anymore, you are just vaguely mashing that strange oblong board with clicky buttons in front of your monitor. You don't need 'allot' of systems to go RA, you need just your terran homeworld, an asteroid, and a volcanic world. In a team game you might as well leave terran/desert planets for your TEC teammate so they can feed you resources faster. As soon as RA is switched on you can equal, and occasionally leapfrog far ahead of players who have spent their time colonising, researching and building an economy.

I did a quick test. I did some of the adding of the units on paper, so if anyone spots an error say so, so I can go back and recalculate. This is with the second level of Returning Armada researched.

A Phase Gate costs 1,500 Credits, 200 Metal, and 300 Crystal on your homeworld. One all other worlds you have to develop Tactical Slots once to have enough, so the effective cost is 1950 Credits, 350 Metal, 375 Crystal.

The first group of ships that came to my homeworld (3 Enforcers, 1 Sentinel, 1 Assailant) had a worth of 3,065 Credits, 630 Metal, and 460 Crystal if I were to build these ships myself. Double the Credits cost, three times the Metal cost, and almost twice the Crystal cost of the gate. Up to two more gates for the additional cost could be supported at this world.

The next group came to my Asteroid (1 Transporter, 3 Assailants, 1 Sentinel, 1 Enforcer). Their total cost to build would have been 2,715 Credits, 505 Metal, and 370 Crystal. This batch paid for development and just 5 Crystal shy of paying for the gate too (the 800 or so credits though could easily be converted into 200 or so Crystal and make it up that way, if you wanted). One more gate, for the additional cost, could be supported at this world.

Next was my Ice world (2 Enforcers, 1 Transporter, 1 Assailant). The cost to build this group would have been 2,140 Credits, 485 Metal, and 360 Crystal. The Credits and Metal could cover the development cost, but Crystal was 15 shy and there wasn't a ton of Credits. You would have to sell off 100 of the Metal, and then buy 100 Crystal to even things out. Two more gates for the additional cost could be supported here.

I had one more planet, so just did a gate there for one more sample (4 Transporters). Their worth was 1,960 Credits, 440 Metal, and 380 Crystal, enough to pay directly for the game and the development. Two more gates could be supported at this world as well, for the additional cost.

This gave an average of 2,470 Credits, 430 Metal, and 392 Crystal worth of ships per gate per wave (1,235 Credits, 215 Metal and 196 Crystal if you just scuttled the wave).

All of the battle groups summoned though would have paid for themselves, either directly, or by selling and buying from the market, and arrived around 3 minutes after the gate's completion (an additional 5 minutes has to be tacked on for each additional wave). If you only wanted to scuttle, it would take roughly twice as long (so around 7 or 8 minutes for the next batch of ships to arrive).

The total teching to Dark Armada costs a pretty penny, 8,200 Credits, 1,550 Metal, and 2,425 Crystal by my counter (this includes the Phase Tunneling, Advanced Tunneling, and both levels of Returning Armada). It would take these four gates by themselves their third wave (around 12 to 15 minutes after completion) to pay for the research. If you want to throw in the costs of the labs as well, you have to wait for another wave.

This is all going on the presumption that use only 4 gates. If these four worlds are fully developed (up to 11 gates that would be) and we use the average from the first run of each gate, each time the gates all let lose a wave, it would 27,000 credits, 4,730 Metal, and 4,317 Crystal worth of units if you actually built them.

If you scuttle them just for resources, that would still leave you enough to pay for all of the research, the labs needed to do the research, and some of the development and gates, depending on the condition of the market. Wait for the second wave and you're well in the black.

And there will be a new wave every 5 minutes. With each planet you take, more room for more gates.

It's expensive to tech to, sure. But an amazing source for ships and resources that is literally unending. If you only do it with a few gates it takes a little while to justify it's cost, but once you start piling on the gates, it gets pretty crazy.

I know this all number crunching and hypothetical you could probably adjust the averages by a good 25% up or down (maybe more 4 samples seemed like a decent sample that wouldn't take too long, but 10 or 20 might narrow it down more). But I think it still helps explain why in practice Returning Armada is as good as it is.

And this reply shows how subjective the word "quick" can be, I guess.

These are some nice numbers... RA pays of really quickly.
What about making the gates starting with 0 antimatter? That would give opponents more time to react.
Whats the total cost of all research and gates, id like know and see how far i can get with it to build up a "Rush" army. Hope you dont mind figuring that out, you have all the numbers allready.

Which leads me to something that i didnt like in one of Vanechkas arguments.
Something is OP if the counter is not to let the opponent get to it.. Well from some point of view this might be true. But that makes it kinda more like a oppinion not really a fact. Taking down a opponent is a acceptable counter in my opponion. If you cannot take down your opponent because the game would not support this strategy THEN its a fact in my eyes. But that is something i dont see proven yet.

Your english grammar is better than that of most of us in the United States. In fact, until you mentioned it, I had no idea English was not your first language.

I knew that! Well, apparently I didn't... Most Danes are actually pretty good at English since it's mandatory and taught (!) from the third grade. Then there's the fact that we don't synchronize the large amounts of English languaged TV shows (except kids' shows) to Danish but rather use subtitles. That simple fact actually gives us a pretty substantial advantage when it comes to English over, say, Germans. I'm just glad I'm not trying to brush up on my French, 6 years of it in school and I still can't ask for anything else than a beer... But enough off topic.

ups

Sure, it's a wishy washy term, but since I've been confronted by too many with the argument that since they've beat a Returning Armada-focused Vasari player, it isn't unbalanced, I thought I might take some kind of precaution against having to face it again. However theoretic that precaution, and everything else I'm going to say, might be



Most of what you're saying is pure logic. With regards to the settings of a particular game, they naturally affect the effect RA has implicitly. By nature, it gets easier to engage the enemy the smaller the map is, which is part of the reason why there's consensus that rushing RA isn't a viable strategy, but that's mainly due to the fact that people associate rushing RA with getting it up and running as soon as it's humanly possible.

However, an intelligent Vasari player, should realize that the best approach to winning isn't to attempt to get Returning Armada as quickly as possible, but rather to ensure his survival long enough that he can research and employ RA as the tiebreaker it is. It's all about striking a delicate balance between being able to fend off the enemy, while constantly setting resources aside with the aim of rushing to get RA up and running as soon as it's sensibly possible.

If we're looking at another wishy washy and ideal situation in which resources and skill level for both players are equal, a sensible defense is the best way to go for the Vasari player unless the map is relatively large. Troy wasn't inpenetrable nor are any Sins defense, but by utilizing repair platforms and other defensive structures, you can keep the kill ratio distinctively in your favor and thereby gain the economical breathing room required to go RA. Another advantage the defender holds is that his reinforcements by nature arrive far faster than the attacker's. But naturally, you still have to adjust your fleet composition, so it's as effective as possible against the enemy's. If you haven't gathered the intelligence to discover the incoming scout fleet while it was under construction and reacted accordingly, you don't deserve to win

Wow, we're really getting finicky in our discussion, but it is interesting.

My point wasn't wasn't to limit sensible RA rushes to intelligent players, but rather to redefine what's an RA rush under the given circumstances. Nor was it my point at any time to indicated that I wasn't discussing equal skills in theoretical terms. The skill level of opposing players is something that will always dilute discussions on balance and that's why I've sought to make the discussion more theoretical in nature (it's probably getting too theoretical now...). So naturally, unless you, due to some unbelievable circumstances, are playing against someone with the exact same skill level as you, the delicate balance is an illusion. Maybe if I rearticulate and say that it's an ideal balance you should seek to maintain at all times as the Vasari, it becomes more edible? Thereby I'm not saying that you should draw out a game against an clearly inferior player until you have RA...

When you argue that the Vasari player should take to the offensive after gaining superiority by taking advantage of the benefits provided to the defensive fleet, it's important to remember that these benefits also apply the other way around. So if we're in that very, very theoretical situation that the two players are of equal skill (or even if their skill levels only approximate eachothers) the other player should most likely be able to beat back the assault by exploiting the same benifits. If he does, you've at least bought yourself some time. If not, isn't it noteworthy that even the subliminal presence of Returning Armada can be decisive by forcing the other races to attack on unfavourable terms?