RedMaw, I don't know how/when it will become prevalent on ICO...I just know that among our group (Who contain the best players of Sins IMO) its already become a staple strategy, specially if your on the losing end. Its literally impossible to finish off a advent player doing this properly even in a 2v1. Gives your allies lots of time to do whatever they need while the enemy wastes time trying to kill you.

I agree with you that whatever changes they make to guardians, it needs to remain a strong unit. The -33% dmg shield is already good, repel is just broken . It needs to remain useful (which having a FIXED antimatter cost per use would do) but not broken.

The fact is, right now you can basically do the "bowling repel" strategy to split the enemy fleet, then use your units to fight a portion of the enemy fleet while your guardians keep the rest from coming to help. Divide and conquer, etc. A bit difficult to micro this, but should be doable.

Regarding Malice, I don't think it needs a nerf. Its powerful, yes, but by no means is it unstoppable if you do it right. Brilliance + malice might be a bit different and I wouldn't mind it if brilliance did not work with malice.

I have to acknowledge how powerful Distortion Field is, but you do have to bring a good number of subverters and use some micro to manage it. They go down pretty fast, and are also susceptible to antimatter draining, etc. I play Vasari a lot, and if I didn't have either Subverters or RA to count on, Vasari would be pretty screwed late game. Of course, on the rare game that I manage to get BOTH going, yeah, it does feel pretty insanely OP -- but I'm already winning by that point usually.

I really do feel Malice is kind of OP. Cleansing Brilliance does a lot of damage, but it is channeled and potentially interruptible. Volatile Nanites can potentially do tons of damage, but you have to use them in a situation where you have enough firepower to get the chain reaction going. Those are also both level 6 abilities. Malice can be used out of the starting gate, and is more powerful.

Finally, Repulsion just seems pretty ridiculous -- it pushes stuff so far away. Last night we had this huge fracas in a 3v3 where 3 or 4 of the players were using Repulsion, and ships were literally scattered all over the gravwell. It was like some kind of twisted fusion of paraplegic square-dancing and American Gladiator. The main thing I noticed was how abusable it is against AI controlled ships, because their target could literally end up 2/3 of the way across the gravwell, and they don't find a more logical target, they instead try to fly across the whole warzone. You have to constantly reset targets.

I've had enough of people like you who sit in matches and whine that I'm not playing the game the way you think I should be playing, whine that I'm using a 'cheap' or 'unfair' or 'unbalanced' strategy, or complain because I'm 'exploiting' a built in asset to my team, such as the Guardian's repulsion ability. People like you jump into an undefended planet that has a bunch of guardians sitting there and then piss and moan as your huge fleet gets kicked out to the edge of the gravity well while I stall for time to get a fleet there. I've had too many people jump up and quit on me because while I was conquering one of their planets they were trying to conquer mine, I pushed them away, they kept trying to attack, and I had stalled for enough time to bring that attack fleet back and put it to task defending a planet. I've read enough bitching about 'crowd control' abilities. I've also had enough of people like you who think it's alright to join just any random game with a clan buddy and work cooperatively to eliminate the other players before battling yourselves. You have no respect for the masses of people out there who have lives outside of video games. I'll take spending time up in the air flying a helicopter or wrestling with a cougar in a heartbeat as opposed to scheduled matches, ladders, clans, and all that business.

A fellow clanner of yours specifically stated that 'nobody uses them anyway' when referring to strike craft. That's an insanely stupid and misguided position when it comes to fighting someone who knows how to use Guardian repulsion to keep you at bay. When it's clear your LRM's or Sentinels can't hit the Guardians, you complain that there's a problem with repulsion instead of building the necessary units to counter repulsion. Strike craft suck? You're going to need them to go after a Guardian. Don't lecture me about how terrible strike craft are when they're immune to the effects of Guardian repulsion. You want the developers to add in a handicap so that you can win with your little strategy instead of adapting to what the enemy throws at you and realizing that even a poor unit, such as strike craft, have a purpose in this game. When you're not building strike craft you deserve to get your ass handed to you by Guardians pushing your forces all across the map. Advent strike craft are superb in swarms when paired with repulsion-wielding Guardians and Halcyons. On their own they're not that great. Commonly while you're being pushed away your vessels are not able to fire but they still get hit by strike craft. Now I'll agree that strike craft are useless for the Vasari and TEC. When you're faced with a Guardian, strike craft happen to be your best choice and commonly your only choice. Figure out how to fight back instead of running to the developer. Repulsion also excels at splitting up enemy forces thereby making it easier for those crappy strike craft to hit your flacks and defense vessels.

It seems to me that this forum has been inundated with people like you crying and complaining that this, that, and the other thing isn't balanced. You want everyone to play the game your way and everything to play out on your terms. You self-proclaimed 'competitive elite experts' want everyone, including the developer, playing the game the way you think it should be played. If something goes astray, you complain to the developers that it isn't balanced or is exploitable until they cave in to your bellyaching and do your bidding. You are the one that needs to get a clue. While you're fooling around with damage charts and defining a strategy that works only under specific conditions, there are people out there grasping at ways to throw a monkey wrench into your operation. Obviously you played someone that was successful at it given the need to create this thread to address a problem that only you felt was bad enough to go cry about. Of course, getting outplayed or out-thought by your enemy isn't something you're fond of, especially considering that 'cheating' comment you, or someone with 'hunt' in the name, gave to me back around the time of the developer online event thing a couple weeks ago all because I kept giving orders that put my ships out of your's ability to fire.

Yes, I have played Advent vs. Advent several times against both friends and AI. I've experienced the bouncing back and forth you mention. That's not a problem though--it's intentionally designed that way. Live with it and stop expecting the developer to bail you out when you get into a bind. Get creative with the positioning of your ships and strike craft and you will be successful. Those types of events normally come down to who can wield their Guardians best or who can sneak in Disciples fast enough and steal the antimatter of Guardians thus rendering them useless. Get creative with how your strike craft approach targets and help them line up to get the best shot against your enemy with the least amount of enemy fire exposure possible. While you're sitting there watching the action, I'm actively giving orders to ships and queuing up what gets attacked and when.

Indeed, its great that carriers can stop guardians...if flak didn't make carriers useless and carriers weren't bad in almost every other game situation , I might almost like that solution.

I agree, a single unit using an ability that throws a capital ship from one end of a grav well to the other definitely needs to be addressed.

At the very least, the devs can test it themselves and figure out if that is what they intended with the repulse ability.

If nothing else, its nice of you to give him strategy advice to help him to beat you.

With any RTS, there are 100's of strategies that can be employed. Limiting yourself to one, or one unit, etc is the mark of bad tactics, and frankly, a bad game. I'm happy that there is no one way to win.

As with any ship, strike craft do have their uses (that I've seen so far, I'm still fairly new). You should always work to combine forces because every RTS (hell, TBS for that matter) is a game of rock paper scissors. I know everyone seems to love the missle boats, but, it appears you came up with a way (or the developers did at least) to off set their advantage.

Good job expanding everyones horizons.

I forgot to add it shouldn't push back so quickly. It should be a constant push for a few seconds, so people will keep the ability on so you can hurt them with am drains.


It should be something like take 5-10 seconds to push back 8000 up to 10000 range, whatever it is.
Say 10 seconds.. drain 5 am/sec.
Push a constant amount as it's active, for up to that 10 seconds.
Take 1.5 damage for each am lost (both from the drain of using the ability, and when am is drained any other way as it's active.)
Deactivate after 10 seconds.

With it no longer effecting caps, each race has a cap that can hurt them bad. Dunov would devastate them with them taking 1.5dmg per am lost while it's active, in addition to draining so much shields in AoE.

With it taking longer to push, and if the anti-ability skills on frigates/cruisers getting more range(cobalts, subverters, subjugators) they'd be easier to counter.

ZJBDragon

Holy space bus Batman!
I must personally thank you for your comments.   I don't like balance discussions, not by a little bit, and you definetly said what I was thinking in reply#30! BIG probs for that!

And for all you whiners: GET THAT LIFE! I play games 3-4 hours a day, go to work as building engineer and still have time to meet my friends and stuff! Stick that to yer stupid "OP" LRM and smoke it!

I dunno. Just build 60 fighters instead of 80+ bombers like everyone inevitably does. If they shield carriers, who cares? you will have 60 fighter squadrens killing all the bombers (which is all the player will make in this case). Sure, so he builds 20 or so flak. 60+ fighters will overwhelm that. You will take out 2 or 3 carriers per fighter attack. Build a lot of heavy cruisers to make up for having no bombers, and build some flak of your own. They do destroy bombers somewhat, and they are great meat shields. Maybe 20 of your own. I don't suggest light frigs. He will inevitably guard his carrier ball with illums. Let the heavy cruisers kill the unguarded carriers once the bombers are all dead. Follow him when he jumps.

Someone tell me if that will work?

Hey cool down mon! I wasn't starting an intergalactic war here.
Damn, you guys get way too serious about these things sometimes.

I get your "crystal clear" point and, in some little degree, agree with you. But, I think that strikecraft are pretty effective even now if microed right (always do).
And about subjugators, they are pretty fragile so just bomber them to bits, works wonders with me. Microed bombers can take lots of them and guardians out of action before the fleets engage. Also, you should always manouver your fleet before and during the fight, don't just go assault the enemy face-face, that just won't work in certain situations. I always delay the slug-fest as long as possible to snipe as many critical race specific support ships as possible with bombers and fighters.
And about using guardians improperly, don't give the enemy a change to use them effectively or exploit the mistakes he makes. Spread your fleet a little to minimize the effect of repel. And if he sends guardians forth to kick you around just micro bombers and pick them off. This is the thing why strikecraft are important; They are the "snipers" of space. Clear as a liverpie.

"idiots to cheer idiots on" Ermmm.. was this supposed to insult me or what. In any case, pretty pathetic effort. We are all adults (I hope so   ) so this kind of crap is pretty much useless and just gives ye bad credit. Being faceless in the forums doesn't mean that you can insult others for having opinions. If you need to comment something, do it constructively. Like in real world, you know.

BTW. Thank you, Adama, for your great repack mod. Really respect the effort you modders and combiners put in this game.

So? Halve the range, and double the bounce, that way they still throw the enemies all over the place, but they have to get within average weapons range to do so..

maybe make them bounce incoming missiles too


I R teh greatest strategy in the universe, build whole fleet of lrm, destroy everything, me best, huh?

Dudes, would someone address the fighter heavy idea? A small number of flaks (25 or so) would not take out 60+ fighters...

I haven't really tested the fighters vs. guardians thing... so it might be viable, actually if some of you watch some of the replays of these "elite" players, you'll see that they dont ever touch any of the carriers so they never use strikecraft at all. Most of the time it's a race to see who can:

Small maps
1. Embargo first
2. Rush with LRM/Illums

Medium Maps
3. Rush to HC
4. Steps 2 and 3 + support

Large maps:
5. RA or Novalith.

Never once have I seen an "elite" player use strikecraft in any of these replays I've watched. Are they really that worthless or are the so called elite players just missing something?