Some Capital Ship abilities I don't understand how to use or why you'd use them

Although I haven't played long enough to provide answers to any of your questions, I share many of your concerns about the purpose and clarity of the available weapons in the game.

It may well be possible to create a Mod for the game that does nothing but change the weapon names and descriptions to more clearly express what they do and why they do it.

When I'm commanding my cap-ships, it feels like I'm giving orders to powerful wizards with variety of magical spells at their disposal

I'm not sure about most of those however I think the Resurrection ability lets you pretty much give the levels of one destroyed cap ship to another. I think Guidance affects weapons cooldowns as well not to sure about that tho. Anima Tempest I seem to remember it fielding a few extra fighter craft / bombers and I think it lasts for the full cooldown time. Most of the disabling ability's also seem to disable the targets regeneration as well which can be useful depending on the target. Stabilize Phase space crew creates a temporary portal to the current sector I was kind of disappointed in it and thought it should have been a passive ability always in affect but whatever, Basically build a phase space node and travel to some far off system with the ship hit the button and you can travel through 1 lane instead of many to get to the system with the node this can be useful for bringing in reinforcements as well not sure but it will probably work between two of the ships as well

I can only answer the Advent ones well, so here goes...

Rapture's Vertigo has a small area of effect (smaller than Malice, for example) but in a clustered fleet battle can effect a good number of ships. It only lasts 25 seconds, but it's cooldown is just 20 seconds, so it's easy to chain hit enemies with. Vengeance can be a more useful ability for the Rapture though and will often consume the Antimatter needed.

Reverie is similar to the Ion Bolt, so yes. I'm not sure the exact amount of damage it takes to knock them out of it, but since you can't focus fire on it it usually does not seem to matter. Reverie is good for just taking a Capital out of the picture for a while, since it's low cooldown and duration makes it easy to chain hit an enemy with.

Guidance is not very useful early in a game, but really shows itself later in a game when the Level 6 abilities show up. Early in game you have small antimatter stores and most of your abilities are limited by that and not their cooldowns. But later in game, especially when level 6 ability show up, with cooldowns over a minute long when you have a surplus of Antimatter is when it matters. Being able to do Cleansing Brilliance once every 75 seconds isn't a great help, in a big battle that might be two uses if the Radiance survives that long. With Guidance you can chop that down a nice bit. Guidance would be much more useful if it were an Aura though and passive instead of needing to be triggered and paid for.

The Halcyon's Telekinetic Push is without a doubt worth 90 Antimatter for the simple reason that two of the four abilities of the Halcyon are passive, requiring no antimatter, and the only other ability that will drain the Halcyon's very healthy store is Anima Tempest, a level 6 ability. But even if you're worried about antimatter, it's useful for two reasons; at high levels it inflicts significant damage on all enemy craft in the area, but also flings enemy craft a good distance away from your ships and prevents them from doing damage while they're away. Due to the distance it knocks enemy strikecraft and low cooldown, the ability can often be ready again as the craft that were just knocked away recommence their attack. In conjunction with Guardian's Telekinetic Push this literally can clear an area of all enemies (or help you make a getaway). It's not an ability I chose if I'm not expecting a good number of strikecraft (which isn't too common because of how cost effective Flak is), since paying points to Concentrated Aura and Adept Drone Anima is usually more useful, but it can be good to have around depending on your situation.

Anima Tempest adds a significant number of additional craft to each of your fighter/bomber wings (7 to 8 craft each). Along with Adept Drone Anima with three points paid to it, you can have Fighter wings with literally 20 craft, and Bomber wings with a good 17 while this ability is deployed. It has a very long cool down, but since it's one of the few abilities that actually uses Antimatter of the Halcyon, usually good to deploy once battle begins.

The Progenitor's Resurrection is an odd, apparently buggy ability, from all I can tell. It only applies to friendly ships, and it works correctly (or what I presume is correctly) it basically gives the experience of a friendly lost Capital to whatever Capital you select (even if the Progenitor was not with the Capital that died, or if the Capital died a little while ago). When it works right it allows Advent to use what's most important to it, the special abilities of it's ships, and makes the loss of a single ship to focus fire not the end of an Advent strategy. But it doesn't seem to work right all the time (sometimes will have no effect under the exact same conditions) and most enemies target the Progenitor first in battle because of Shield Restore and Malice, and the Progenitor cannot use it on itself. Some more talk on the Resurrection ability over yonder.

That covered the Advent questions, at least.

I'll take TEC.

Flak: At lvl 3 this does 60 damage. As to whether or not it's affected by mitigation is another story, but it has a wide range and two blast pretty much wipe out fighter/bomber squads. Employ the Akkan's targeting uplink ability to increase the %chance to hit (+15%). I usually employ multiple Kols in my fleet so Flak in this case is a devastating weapon.

Marza Radiation Bomb:At lvl 3 it will do 375 damage (unmitigated) to the intended target and cause damage over time to unintended nearby targets within range.

Missle Barrage: Simple AoE that will do 150 points of unmitigated damage to every ship within the range of its ability.

In general, any weapons or abilities that ignore shield mitigation are good. These weapons combined with Incindiary Shells makes the Marza a tremendously powerful vessel in any face to face confrontation.

Dunov Magnetize: Make enemy planes crash into their own ships. Not a big deal, but for a period of time, less strikecraft that you have to deal with along with serious damage to a Cap ship.

Hey A lot of your answers can be found in the entity files you can download from the sticky in the strategy forum. I'm by no means a good player, but I understand some of these things, so here we go:

Vertigo is AoE, aoe ranges are 2000/2500/3000. For comparison's sake, the Disciple has a fire range of 3500, so at level three the radius of the circle of Vertigo's AoE is only slightly smaller than that. That's a pretty big area.

Reverie is probably the most overpowered capital ship ability in the game right now, due to what I perceive of as a bug in 1.03: you cannot attack a ship under Reverie anymore. Even if you could, it's damn overpowered: its duration is much longer than its cooldown, and at level 3 it has an AM cost of 50, meaning that after the duration that much AM will have regenerated. This means you can keep an enemy's capital ship fixed in place for as long as you want to. This is a game-winning ability.

As far as I can tell, firing weapons counts as an ability for purposes of buffs, so yes, Guidance should increase dps.

Telekinetic push does deal quite some damage to ALL fighters in range. At level 3 it deals 40 points of damage, which is enough to kill an Advent fighter. This means if you have three advent fighter squads in your range, you will kill all 27 (!) fighters instantly. This will take your enemy forever to rebuild. On top of pushing strikecraft away from your carrier, it also badly slows them for 15 seconds, which is not a defensive aspect at all. Slowed fighters, if they end up in the range of flak frigates, are instantly killed. The fighters' great speed is their main survivability factor.

Anima Tempest creates 30 fighters. This is three squads and change. I GUESS it creates fighters, not bombers, but I'm not sure.

Resurrection lifts one of your capital ships to the level of any other capital ship you previously lost. Note that this is only useful if you had three or more caps. Example: Cap A is the progenitor. Cap B is some cap at level 5. Cap C is a freshly built cap at level 1. Cap B is destroyed. You cast resurrection on cap C and suddenly cap C is level 5. Note that I agree with you: this skill is nearly useless. It's way too contextual and as such useful only in very few situations which are not likely to occur in a serious competitive game. You can hardly plan to lose a capital ship...

Remember how I told you that telekinetic push is very strong at level 3 for inflicting 40 points of damage? Well, flak burst inflicts 30/45/60 points of damage. This means at level 3 it instakills every Advent strikecraft, all Tec fighters (not bombers, but those are seriously damaged, down to 40% of hp), and it seriously injures all Vasari strikecraft. In short, DO get this skill when you go against Advent (who have many WEAK strikecraft) and use your AM differently if you're going against Vasari.

Radiation bomb does damage to unlimited targets, but the AoE range is not very large: 1200. It does the displayed damage only to the main target (125/250/375). To everything else in range it does damage every 2.5 seconds for 20 seconds. The amount of damage it inflicts is dependent on the level: 7/14/21, meaning that if a target stays within AoE range for the entire duration it takes between 56 and 168 points of damage. I'm a little worried about how their event model works: if the main ship dies before the duration is over, does the damage still proc? This I can't judge without looking at the actual source code.

Missile Barrage fires 20 missiles which hit for 150 damage each. The range is huge: 10000. That's a little less than the overpowered LRM range in 1.03. Remember this is the radius of a circle, so it's that range in all directions. I'm nearly certain that I'm reading something wrong here, because this would mean that ability does 3000 points of damage, and that just sounds wrong.

I'm not sure how magnetize works. If I'm reading this right, it pulls 8/12/16 strikecraft into a target for 25 damage each. I'm not sure what happens to the strikecraft afterwards, but if I read this right if a target manages to attract 16 strikecraft before the 10s duration runs out, that would be 400 points of damage (and maybe 16 strikecraft destroyed?) This is on par with most other damage dealing skills. Again, this seems like a useful skill to use against Advent who have so many strikecraft that your chance to attract the right amount before the duration runs out is highest.

Weapon Jam is pretty much the ultimate anti strikecraft ability from what I'm reading. I've yet to use it (I rarely have enemies going strikecraft against me), but from what I can see here it would enable you to deactivate enemy strikecraft in range indefinitely. Its cooldown is 15 seconds at all levels and the duration is 15/25/35 seconds.

Phase Out Hull is another VERY, VERY strong skill. You're overlooking the fact that it can be used on friendly capital ships. There is nothing better for improving your capital ships' survivability. Weapons already fired at the cap when you phase it out also just disappear, so it's a very good panic omg my capital ship is in trouble skill. At level 3 this makes your capital ship invulnerable for 10 seconds. Also, if you use the skill offensively, note that its duration is higher than that of Ion Bolt and that unlike Reverie it cannot be interrupted. Of course Reverie cannot be interrupted right now either, but I believe that to be a bug. I should probably post a thread about that.

Distort gravity is amazingly useful. There is no better get out of prison free card in the game. Whenever you find a battle turned against you, you use this skill to get away with minimal losses. When there's an enemy capital ship almost dead running away from your fleet, you use this skill to hunt it down before it can get to a repair bay. It's hard to think of a situation where this skill isn't incredibly useful.

Subversion I haven't used either, but if I'm reading it right this is essentially a better version of FarSight or whatever they called the Revelation Battlecruiser's spying ability ingame (internally they refer to many skills under the name of the original war3 skill ;P). I mean, its range is not infinite, but you spy for a longer time and you also slow down build speeds. In a 1v1 early rush scenario this can be game winning once more if you can pump those tier 1 ships out faster than your enemy.

Finally, stabilize phaaaaaaaaze space (oops ;P) simply transforms your capital into a phase gate. This means that ships from another system with a phase gate can jump IMMEDIATELY to your ship. This is the only skill of this kind in the game and can turn a lengthy campaign where you often have to wait for reinforcements to make their long way to you into a Blitzkrieg. Again, one of the most useful skills in the game.

As for the damage reverie should require to snap out of it, it's 200/400/600, but as I said that's currently bugged.

There's not a lot here that's not been covered, but I will add that Weapons Jam is extremely useful. Think about it: all (or most) of your ships within range of the ability are invulnerable to strike-craft. That's a pretty sweet deal.

Heh, well, I know for my first few games I didn't really even notice the strike craft, and they still are harder to spot than anything else

Thanks a lot everyone. Tons of tremendously useful info. I see I have a lot to learn still! I'll try to practice using these abilities more.

Resurrection:

This ability seems to work only if you build a capital ship of the same type as the one you lost.

Example: You have a level 5 Halycon and a Progenitor that has Resurrection. In a headed battle your enemy focus fires and kills the Halycon for what ever reason (usually because the ability that refresh energy weapons faster needs to die as soon as possible). So you build yourself a new Halycon and send it somewhere close to your Progenitor. Poof it gets leveled to 5 instantly.

Even worse if you build a second one and a third one and a forth one it will level all of them to 5... unless they fixed that bug because at the moment it is more like "Clone". But I have not had an occasion to try this recently so I have no idea if it still does this. Used to be just wrong in a long game.

There is probably a time limit to how long it can use this ability after a ship dies but I have never found it yet.

At levels 1 and 2, it's not too impressive, but at level 3 it's darned good. I usually take it instead of gauss cannon since I rarely used the gauss cannon (I save the anti matter for adaptive forcefield, which is the Kol's best ability, IMO, besides Finest Hour). The trick is to wait to use it until lots of enemy strikecraft are within it's blast radius. I've wiped out dozens of fighters with a single use before. In fact, since you get a smidgen of experience points for killing fighters, I found that using this ability with friendly, low level cap ships nearby is a good way to get them leveled up to lvl 4 or so pretty quickly. Especially if you're against Advent, who have lots of fighters in their squadrons but are individually weak.



This ability requires some finesse, IMO, to get the most results. The best time to use it is after enemy strikecraft have made a run at you and are heading back towards their ships. I try to use it on a particularly nasty capital ship because besides causing it's own fighters to ram into it, magnetize also disabled enemy capitals special abilities which can be quite a nice thing all by itself.

Its not the abilities that make a capital ship good or bad but how and when they are used.  The real thing holding some of the abilities and therefore ships back is the dumb autocast AI.  The best example of this is probly the Vasari Marauder. 

Phase Out Hull: Autocast AI uses this whenever a enemy comes within range regardless of what it is.  Also the short cool down often causes the AI to cast it on multiple foes draining antimater verry quickly.  When its just freazeing light frigates this ability is useless freezeing capital ships on the other hand can be useful at times.  All in all this is just far too situational for any AI it simply must be controlled manualy.

Distort Gravity: This is Used by the Autocast AI whenever the marauder moves makeing it a nearly constant antimatter drain.  Other than that this skill is actualy alright.  Turn it to autocast when your in enemy teritory and it will alow your fleet to speed about.  This is used mostly to facilitate a quick escape for a battered fleet or it can be used to catch and kill a damaged enemy ship before it can phase away.

Subversion: The AI only uses this if the Maruder gets close to an enemy planet is effect it to generaly slow down the econemy of that particular gravity well.  This isnt somethng the AI going to be useing efectvely due to the fact that the only time when the AI is going to get close enough to an enemy planet to use it it when its bombing said planet.  To use this one efetively you have to control it by hand.

Stabalize Phase Space:  By far the Marauders most powerful ability this one is hands on only the AI will never autocast it.  Basicly it turns the Marauder into a temporary Phase stabalizer at the cost of its wemons and mobility.  Moveing or shooting wil deactivate this ability prematurely.

So in summary the Marauder dosent nesisarily suck its the Autocast AI doing the sucking for it.  If one can micromanage this ship and contend with its antimatter hungry autocast tendencies it can actualy be fairly useful as a support vessle.

In case you didn't notice, this is posted at the top of the Strategy page: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/335807

There are good abilities and bad abilities, it is up to the player to see which abilities are good and which are bad. That's what separates good players from bad players

I'm just gonna jump in here and share that a level 6 Marza is easily one of the best caps if not the best cap in the game.  Take it off auto attack, disable all other skills, click stop and then click Missle Barrage.  It's best to do this when you have a fleet of hoshikos or repair bays handy since to get the full effect you have to stay put for 20 seconds.  Assuming that you're enemy is advent witha whole flock of illums and discs you get your cap in the middle, and pop it.   What you'll see is nothing short of fleet destruction.  Each tic of the MB will knock down shileds, then hull, then kill evey one of those ships.  It's erotic to watch, and against somone who didn't see it coming can end games cause 1 whole fleet is toast.

Of course, most people now are wary of what a lvl 6 Marza can do and are building ships that can cut off Missile Barrage (Akkan/Ion Bolt, Radiance/Detonate AM, Revelation/Reverie, Marauder/Phase Out Hull).

I'd also like to point out that Phase Out Hull causes the affected ship to "forget" its orders, on top of cutting off any channeling abilities.

 

 

I <3 Marza's.  Took out 45+ illums last night in one swipe with missle barrage.  The trick is as you say, click stop, make sure auto everything is off, and then sit back and laugh.

I've never use Rapture's  Domination ability.  What do you all think about it?  Does it permanently take control of the enemy frigrate, and if so, what are some good priority targets?  I'm thinking carriers b/c they piss me off, and HCs.

Hiya. I'll answer your questions for whichever ships I have enough experience with to have a decent opinion. Some of the ships I just never use very much (Rapture and Revelation for example) so I won't comment on those.

 

 

TK Push is very good. For one thing its the only ability the ship has that uses anti-matter, so who cares how much it costs? Second is that you have to realize the tactical effect that it has. it creates a clear zone in a radius around your Halcyon where it will be almost impossible for enemy strikes to attack you. they get repelled and damaged which makes them easy targets for your own fighter squads. it will keep your cap ships safe from bombers and your illuminators safe from fighters. at level 3 it does enough damage to seriously cripple enemy squads. 

 

Anima Tempest is fine. Its not one of the more awesome level 6 cap abilities but it works very well. What it does is instantly create a large amount of bomber drones (i think 30 of them or something) and distribute them evenly amongst your existing bomber squads. or if you didn't have any bomber squads it just makes them for you. basically you get 75 seconds of really powerful bomber strikes out of it. 

 

not ineffective at all. in fact its probably better than the Rail Gun. Rail Gun is most effective against structures (since they have no shield mitigation). Against enemy cap ships you get better performance by just spending the AM on reactive shielding and outlasting them. Flak Burst on the other hand absolutely murders enemy squadrons. every time they get near the Kol they'll take a huge amount of damage. The skies will be totally clear in just a minute or two. If you've got 2 Kol's together a Simultaneous level 3 Flak Burst will insta-gib any squadron in the game. You'll be immune to strike craft as long as the Kols have antimatter. 

 

 

Missile Barrage is an obscenely overpowered ability. It channels pulses of 150 damage to EVERY target within range once per second for 20 seconds. If a target stays in range for the full 20 seconds it will have taken 3000 damage (before mitigation of course). Thats EACH target. If 10 targets stay in for the full 20 seconds you'll have dealt a total of 30,000 damage. Its much more powerful than you even imagine it to be. Its a fleet destroyer and probably the single most powerful combat ability in the TEC faction. 

 

for the Radiation Bomb, its just a basic direct damae ability. Only the primary target takes the big hit. The nearby targets just take the smallish amount of Damage Over Time that lingers after the big hit. Its still pretty good though, better damage output than Incendiary Shells. 

 

I find Magnetize to be the 2nd best ability on the Dunov. Shield Restore is kinda bad in my opinion because it just causes enemies to target the Dunov instead of the ship being restored. This is the opposite of what you wanted since the Dunov has the lower armor and hull than other TEC cap ships. 

 

EMP Charge is the best ability on a Dunov and its absolutely devasting. CAn totally cripple fleets of support cruisers, including carrier cruisers which can't rebuild lost strike-craft without Anti-Matter. Magnetize is just a defensive ability if you're overwhelmed by enemy strike craft. Its not the greatest but its got its uses, if your timing is good you can really severely damage an enemy cap with it and wipe out almost all of his squadrons. 

 

 

you're right about this one. Jam Weapons is pretty lackluster. Power Surge and Disruptive Strikes are both awesome and I max those every time before getting even a single point in Jam Weapons. 

Phase Out Hull has a very short cooldown time. You can use it to lock down multiple ships if you want, which is pretty unique for a disabling ability. 

 

Distort Gravity is the best ability on the Marauder in my opinion. It allows it to very quickly run through enemy territory, taking a small escort along with it. If you're bold you can use this to take some carriers loaded down with bombers to an important economic world and nuke all his structures before he can get defenders there. Its high risk though. 

 

Subversion is meh. It can support the behind-enemy-lines economic disruption plan pretty well, but I still don't like it. Its not even close to as good as the Sova's Embargo. 

 

Stabilize Phase Space causes the Marauder to act like a Phase Node itself. The idea behind this ability is that you use Distort Gravity to run the Marauder deep into enemy territory, then Stabilize and send a big invasion fleet that you had waiting. Another very tricky, high risk strategy that can be devasting if used properly but is somewhat unreliable. 

 

 

aahhh

Descriptions of abilities and ship qualities are very vague unless you read the full info card and even in some cases that's  not clear enough. I wish instead of saying "Strong against none" it said something like "Support Ship - Repair & maintenance". That is actually useful information that I can understand and go yep I may need a couple of those ships at first glance. Similar changes with abilities would also go a long way for casual and new players that don't have time to play the game all the time and memorise everything. I wish I still had my grey cells that could remember anything and everything I did when I was 10 years younger but sadly those times have passed...

Bump:

I was exploring Advent and the Revelation battlecruiser. Reading about reverie I thought "wow you could hit a cap with it and deal about 900 DPS before it could do anything." I excitedly cast it and oh, guess what, you can't focus fire.

LAME...LAME... LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good GOD these measly little abilities on most cap ships are getting REALLY annoying. So reverie is basiclly armistice but on only one ship. I know, I know , there's probably a good use for it but not without micromanaging the hell out of it.

Could we give some of the OTHER cap ships some teeth!!!! Maybe we would see something else besides Eggs, Marzas, or Progens in MP. No wait. That's not an accurate statement. You do see some of the other cap ships in MP. They're usually fielded by the LOSING team. Seriously though! What cap ship would you pick to COUNTER the 3 I just mentioned. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

<crickets chirping>

/rant

Radiance will straight up own Egg.  So will Kortul, if you get disruptive strike 2 and the buff lvl 1 aiblity.

I'm still realtively new to Sins so can't speak for Vasari and Advent, but my thoughts on the TEC specials:

Flak is actually fairly good if youre getting mobbed by fighters, though maybe it could use slightly more range and a bit more intelligent autocast (seems to shoot it off as soon as one squadron is in range even if there's 20 more right behind them).  It might make more sense to put it on one of the other ships though (swap Magnetize and Flak maybe?) so Kol can focus on DDing big stuff and one of the support caps can manage fighter swarms.

Missile barrage is okay, but IMO the damage is too low per target to really do anything.  Even if it does 150 dmg to everything in range, that's not really enough to actually hurt anything to the point it won't have recharged all that damage by the time your fleet gets around to shooting it.  Maybe it's good if you have a whole lot of Marza's shooting them off at once, but so are 50 bomber wings from a fleet of Sovas...  Dirty bomb is fairly good if only for the fact it has some nice direct dmg to go along with the area DOT, and the DOT seems to be able to cancel out shield regen (something I've not noticed with barrage).  Plus it opens the door to all sorts of terrible jokes.

Magnetize doesn't seem to do anything.  It should maybe be swapped out with Flak Burst to have an antifighter option that actually works.

What the tool tip DOESN'T tell you, is that Missile barrage does 150 damage to all targets in range TWENTY times. Once every 1.25 seconds, over 25 seconds.

Magnetize will kill up to 8/12/16 strike craft each use, dealing 25 damage per craft sucked in. That's not much to advent, but the vasari hate it.

From the reference data files...

BuffMissileBarrageFiring.entity

BuffMissileBarrageHit.entity :