are you playing online? or single player? or LAN against the AI or your friends?

Which really, and I know you know, this certainly I have said enough, is a doggone shame.

there is another thread about this...

herm... basicly... the mid-game vasari will hardly ever win a fair fight... so never give them a fair fight... and never fight fair.  Of all the races... the vasari are the only ones that can bypass shields... the only ones that can bypass PJIs... can sneak a starbase somewhere evil... (if only to distract the enemy from thier attacks on your territory... make the enemy use time to think (do i continue to attack? or do I lose the buildings on my homeworld/trade hub/whatever) if the enemy has anything less than 50 or so fleet supply on a neutral well... a vasari scout with antimatter will take that neutral before it dies... meaning he now has to take it again... and if the enemy has more than 50 fleet supply held up by nothing more than 3-9 fleet supply of scouts (one for each neutral)... well! i must say that thats a good deal.

be cunning... that is how you win.

That's not true, and I don't think anyone said that.  Certainly if there are no neutral extractors, Vasari is disadvantaged, but if there are lots of neutral extractors, you may even have an advantage.  Vasari's balance really comes down to the map's balance regarding neutral extractors.

I think it's already been stated that Vasari are weak in a straight fight, but are the best faction at fighting dirty.  Don't find yourself in an all-out field battle as Vasari, instead confound your opponent with a pressure game.  They are certainly the hardest race to play, but once you've got the hang of them they aren't weaker.

I don't know if you feel I'm off in la la land with my opinion, but really, I feel that these sound remarkably close to excuses for why the Vasari aren't as good at TEC or Advent.

I'm not sure how you can say Vasari Caps are better than TEC or Advent caps in the grand scheme. The Egg is a great cap, No one will argue otherwise, and yes, the Kortul just got debugged so it's not a bad cap anymore. The desolator is my personal favorite cap for Vasari because of how much seiging damage it does.

But then you have the Skirantra and the Marauder. Saying the marauder has a specialty role is being generous. To be honest if it wasn't for phase out hull being the only counter Vasari has for Missile Barrage, I'd be calling the capital ship special as in "special olympics". And the Skirantra. I'm not sure how to voice my opinion on this ship. The level 6 is lackluster (aim it at seige frigs is ur best use), and scramble bombers is still arguably the worst ability on a cap. The heallth could is nice, but when you consider that it will only heal hull, not shields, that means the only units it will heal are either almost dead and on their way out or are taking slight damage from another vasari's phase missiles.

End of the day I don't like Vasari. JJ had a gift for making them seem amazing, but if you watched his play, you realized he was absolutely relentless in going after neutrals. JJ had the experience to still be amazing when there weren't neutrals, but he became a helluva lot easier to handle when he didn't have neutrals.

So again. To sum it all up. Vasari are great if there are neutrals, suck if there aren't. I'd like a rebalancing of the neutrals and the Vasari reliance on them, but that's just me. I'm not god, never claimed to be, and accept that a lot of the ideas that run through my head probably won't make it into this game.

I'm not saying Vasari is hopeless, but let's say if I was off in some parallel universe where I could fight myself. Judging by how I play as Vasari and how I play when I'm Advent, I think the game would come down to how many neutrals the Vasari player could get his hands on. If that number is 0-2, then I believe the Vasari player is screwed.

This is why I was never happy with the neutral balance and still am not. I feel it makes Vasari a wildcard pick that can either smite or suck abysmally.

Lol. I've tried to defend those abilities in the past. I have old posts where I felt that way.

Here's the best way for me to express my feelings for the Marauder. I pick the colonizing cap regardless of race (I would pick the akkan even before 1.04 came out to change it up sometimes). This means that if I'm bringing out a second cap I need something that will bring a decent role with it.

It's hard to quantify impact on the battlefield, but I truely have a hard time justifing picking a Marauder over another Egg, a Devastator, a Desolator, or even a Skirantra. This is because at least in online matches it's so rare for a game to reach a point where the Maruader is really all that useful.

Compared to the Dunov or the Rapture, I really struggle to see where the abilities on the Marauder bring more than an Egg or a Devastator. The only time I really feel the need for a Marauder is when I need to stop an enemy from using a channeling ability (best two examples are shield regeneration and missile barrage). Other than that, I'm just too hard pressed to justify actually gettin a marauder.

I've mentioned this in another thread, but I always thought that Vasari were the best. Certainly they are the best defenders of the 3 with phase stabilizers and mobile starbases and whatever the ability is called that their hangers get that freezes all the strikecraft for a lengthy time. What do the other races have that comes close to comparing to phase stabilizers? And the bigger the solar system the more potentially effective they are.

I think their biggest weakness is the lack of any shield restoring abilities, with the exception of the Kortuls personal sheild restore. The Kortul is really amazing though, it has double and triple the fire power of any of the other vasari cap ships minus the abilities, and with its self healing ability it can end a fight against pirates in better shape then it was going into the fight, which is really awsome.

 Fully upgraded and researched I think the Kortul has about 180dps while the next best I think is the Desolator with no more then 90dps (minus abilities), the rest are all a fair bit lower then that still. So if the enemy has abilities to counter the use of your own cap ships abilities then your Kortul will easily be the equivelant of 2 or 3 cap ships by comparison.

You didn't adress the major benefit of phase stabilizers for being able to always be within one phase jump of any planet that is being attacked. That alone is huge because you basicly make it so you have no back door for the enemy to attack from. And the mobile starbases means you don't have to wait for the enemy to come to you (or worse, attack you from a distance or with just strikecraft), because you can bring it to the enemy. And while you are bringing the starbase to the enemy you can negate their strike craft from bringing you down along the way with the hanger ability. And at this point in the fight you aren't producing SC because they are already built so there is no competing for AM at the hanger.

The Kortul being able to self repair and do so much more dps with out any need for AM reserves means even if it does go down as fast as any other cap, it will atleast be able to take out more before it dies.

Man, you guys are totally bumming me out about my preferred race. When I get a free weekend, I need to get online and see how badly I fail (and i will) to see what you are talking about. Compstomping is super easy with Vasari... and probably all of the races it seems.

I never said people can't be good with Vasari. Assailants have always been my favorite frigate just because of how good they are at assassinating caps.

I think I have a good way to express my feelings towards vasari. Try playing Maelstrom, a fairly popular preset map. There are no neutrals on that map. Try playing against people of comparable skill and I think you'll see that Vasari gets hindered by not having neutrals?

Do I think Vasari can't win without neutrals? Not necessarily, but having the worst combat scout, worst light frig (yes even with reintegration), worst LRF (in terms of health these things are very weak, although DPS can be upped pretty early), worst flak (in terms of DPS yep, 1 advent flak frigate does more damage than one vasari frigate, and vasari flak takes up 1 more ship slot. WTF!), and a questionable HC. I have not done testing of the enforcer since the patch, so I can't comment on it.

In big 4v4//5v5 matches, yes, your team needs a vasari, at least one. You need to fight for the neutrals. But I wish it wasn't that way. I'd rather pick Vasari for badassery. Not to make a cocky statement, but I know the Vasari inside and out in terms of ship stats, techs, and abilities, but for strategy look to JJ. The fact that he agrees with me really should cement that something's up and needs a slight fixing.

One last thing while it's on my mind. I don't think the balance is off to far. It's not like Vasari completely sucks compared to TEC/Advent. I'd just put Advent/TEC one slight notch above Vasari.

I don't play Vasari for all of the reasons I've mentioned.  I'll just stress that this is my opinion. It's what experience has taught me. I'm well aware of people who will swear by the Vasari, and I do find the Vasari race to be interesting to play. I find the other two races to be overall more successsful, at least in terms of my play.

So again. It's just my opinion. You don't have to listen to me, but I've put my opinion out there.

so maybe the take away point here is that Vasari are great at support. Is that a good thing? I dunno, but i'm probably not going to switch races at this point.