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.

Now that would be a serious problem.

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.

Drexion, therein lies the rub, right? I wouldn't expect Ironclad to balance for a group of a couple dozen players out of their couple hundred thousand customers.

But you also have to acknowledge that in most games, the best players are essentially the trend setters/early adopters/lighthouses, whatever term you prefer. They tend to find what works, what works best, use it, abuse it and if it's effective, it trickles down to the rest of the player base. Most good tactics that work do end up with the masses unless they are too complicated or require a great deal of skill to begin with to execute. So in the end, making a change that appears to cater to them can be just preempting a larger problem before it spreads throughout the game. I know it sounds like I'm arguing against myself, but bare with me, if you will while I ramble a bit longer.

It seems like Ironclad listens to both the hardcore few and the larger player base, which can lead to some good, some bad and to some strange things. Like altering Returning Armada so it cannot significantly spawn ships past the fleet cap isn't something I'm sure the majority of the player base will even notice (or even really knew how to do). But then Siege Frigates got smacked with several nerfs that virtually no one who plays the game online would agree with that has resulted in them being weak, expensive and ineffective units. And who knows who they were listening to when increasing the price of the Drone Host to make it the most expensive of all the carriers when it was the cheapest.

I have no allusions about myself or my opinions. I'm a more casual player, I'm always trying to get better and learn new things, but I usually just play team games with whoever is around ICO or Free for Alls and such. And yea, I can do fine there, but I know there are a mess of people out there who if and when I cross paths with in a game, the best I can hope to do is make them bleed for their victory. I kill a lot of time on forums when I'm not playing, and post a bit, but so do a lot of people, some of which don't appear to really know much at all about the game and suggest bizarre, impractical or simply wrong advice. So my opinions aren't all that, I can't pretend to represent the vast majority of players (who don't even play online) or the small elite pool. So I don't expect to be listened to.

But I think Ironclad listens to you guys, even while listening to the larger player base at the same time (and trying to make changes to appeal to both) but that's why all suggestions should be made with care and be more moderate, multiple changes to single units for example can often be trouble, since predicting the outcome is so difficult.

This whole reply was pretty off topic, but just wanted to address that.

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.

It was apparently a very bugged skill in beta and I highly doubt it's working as intended right now. The fact that one repulsion can literally move your cap ship from one end of the grav well to almost the other is very very wrong. I'm pretty sure it should only push the units outside the range of repulsion and not to the point where they're no longer even in the battle.

Being able to completely stop 50+ HC's with 3-5 guardians is really wrong. Considering that carriers are basically one of the worst units in the game right now, it's terrible that you're forced to get them JUST to stop the guardians. Furthermore, if they pair their guardians with flak (which they should be doing), your bombers won't do squat.

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.

Lol i was waiting on when this would come up. Repulsion was already an I win button for Advent before they got boosted. So lets just hope they fix ti real soon of this game will become a real pain real fast. Only need 5 Temples of Hostility for Repulsion.

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.

Huntingx, why in the name of all holy god are you so hostile? Do you really think it's necessary to verbally assault anyone who disagrees with you? Whether or not you're right, acting like a complete ***hole isn't going to make anybody want to listen to you. Take a chill spill and stick to addressing the points people make, instead of just instigating childish flame-war crap that will serve only to disguise the real content in the thread. Just not necessary man. Not even close to necessary. You could've made every point that you've made in this thread without being rude.

On another note... It seems really odd to me that the counter to these specialty cruiser ships is supposed to be the shortest range frigate in the game? Like, seriously, the only unit that gets anti-heavy is the light frigate, which lacks the range, speed, and damage necessary to counter anything effectively without employing large numbers of an otherwise nearly useless ship? I think the problem isn't in the strength of the abilities per-se, but the uselessness of the counter-frigate. And, hey, oddly, the uselessness of the light frigate seems to come up in just about every discussion about game balance. Hrmm... A dramatic increase to the range of anti-matter draining/nuking abilities would go a -long- way towards balancing this whole thing out, and making the game more interesting as a whole.

Alternatively, if strikecraft munitions/airframes were made out of something other than paper-mache, they might be able to fix this problem. But I think that's another discussion.

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.

Distortion field doesn't need a smaller AoE, it just needs to effect a max of 7 or 8 targets.



no it's not.. It was a problem when they DID.


Repel needs to be correctly balanced, not have the one and only counter be javs.
WHy should javs then be able to outrange it but not assailants or illums?
All 3 lrms have different ranges.


Like I said in my balance thread:
-Gaurdians repulsion is in a big pulse, it should drain AM in pulses. When you first click the button it should drain AM.
-Gaurdians should take damage when they lose Antimatter while it's active by 1.5 per. (So say it costs 50 antimatter, they take 75 damage. Any abilities that drain AM IE disciples, dunovs emp burst, kortul, disciples steal AM, ETC would deal damage.)
-Cobalts need their anti-abilities skill buffed in range at least so they can more easily reach gaurdians using repulsion.
-Subverters(after being properly balanced) and Subjugators need increased range on their disables to more easily shut down gaurdians.
-THEY SHOULDNT PUSH BACK CAPS.

I don't know if their disable should out range repulsion.. I do't think so. But at 4000 range it's impossible as repulsion is like 8000 or 10000 range. It should still take some effort.
Even if gaurdians push ships away 10000(at work, can't look it up now), Advents longest range ship is illums at 5520.

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.

I agree with what you said. It is true that there are a lot of ways to approach objectives in this game, and that's one of the biggest reasons I like the game. It promotes thinking on your toes and allows for a variety of options when it comes to combating your opponent. It just really irks me that some people don't want to do that nor use units that are an obvious counter. The Advent in particular allow for the best use of strategic play in my opinion. It also bugs me that it seems like the AI comes up with better ways to approach a given problem than what many players do. One of my friends tried to make me agree not to use Guardians because of the push thing rather than take my advice and build strike craft. He'd come in with a big fleet that had maybe one or two strike craft and expect to steamroll over a planet, but I'd just push him around all day long. It never crossed his mind to retreat and add more strike craft to his fleet nor did it cross his mind to start wiping out military research labs to prevent me from speedily replacing any Guardians he wiped out.

As for the strategy, as I said before, I'm not into the whole competitive thing and I mainly play the game for my own personal enjoyment and with a couple of friends. You can take that strategy and do what you want with it. It makes no difference to me if you can beat me or if I can beat you. To me, it's just as meaningless as these achievements, ranks, and stats everyone clamors after. They're literally fancy images linked to a true/false toggle or database fields with some numbers stuck in them. Beating _______ internet player really doesn't matter to me and it's compounded by the fact that _______ internet player is someone I've never met and probably will never meet. An achievement to me is that degree on my wall from college, the pilot license next to it, and my future aspirations for that helicopter license after I put my time in.

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!

Wow i'm glad we have idiots to cheer idiots on...

Repulse, in its current form, IS NOT a winning ability. IT IS A STALLING ABILITY.
A player can stall indefinitely with repulse, making the game come to a grinding halt. Anyone who argues otherwise has obviously never seen it abused.

Let me be crystal clear here: IF YOU DON'T THINK REPEL NEEDS REWORKING, YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN IT BEING USED PROPERLY (IMPROPERLY).

I think if AOE was decreased to allow all LRMs to reach guardians, while STRIKE CRAFT RECEIVED A MAJOR BUFF, that would be enough of an inherent nerf.

As for Subjugators, they need some serious direct nerfing.

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?

I love repulsion, but I have to agree that being able to throw cap ships around is kind of silly. It's also pretty silly that you can sit there and click it on and off over and over again and really make things messy and drag things on for your opponent.

Decreasing the range of which repulsion works to put them in range of LRM would make guardians worthless, especially to LRM spam with decent micro they wouldn't stand a chance and would never be useful. I say just limit how many times one guardian can repel and make it so cap ships are not effected by it. Still very effective.

And yes, I agree some of you guys need to pull your heads out of your asses and realize you're not god at this game, you don't know everything about this game, and when you come off as an arrogant prick, no one likes you.

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.

First, it should be determined that the strategy has no viable counter. I think 60+ fighters plus a cruiser heavy fleet will take them. Plus, a lot of people spam bombers, so that might be a good general strategy. Hopefully, you will have enough cruisers of your own to take out his. And if you don't and if you see he went cruiser heavy as well (meaning he has less bombers), then retreat and switch some fighters to bombers.

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?

Typical. When you can't win the debate you turn to insults just as HuntingX did. You're just another person looking for a handicap because you don't want to counter Guardians properly nor take the time to understand how to use them. This is made clearly obvious by your calling repulsion a 'stalling ability'. It is much MUCH more than that. It's an offensive and defensive ability that can be used in many ways rather than simply stalling a foe. Stalling gets you and your opponent no where. Here, I'll enlighten you to the values of repulsion too since you haven't figured this out on your own yet:

When used offensively, repulsion can be used to divide and conquer your enemy's fleet. You can literally resize an enemy fleet with careful pushing so that your forces take on ships that you select. When opposing ships are moved your fleet must also reposition themselves to target them. This is why simply stalling is no use offensively because nobody scores hits when everyone is moving out of firing range. If you move some enemy ships and concentrate your fire on those who were not repulsed, then divide and conquer can have devastating effects on your enemy regardless of how big your own fleet is. A smaller Advent fleet can take on a bigger opposing fleet with ease when someone really knows what they're doing with the repulsion ability.

When used defensively it is true that repulse can stall things. However, when used properly it can mean the difference between your entire fleet escaping a battle as opposed to a couple of ships. Say, for instance, that you're playing Advent and go attack an enemy planet with a phase jump inhibitor. You attack, the enemy fleet shows up, you engaged in battle against it, you're clearly outmatched and need to retreat, but you weren't successful at hitting the PJI. You order your ships to retreat and here's where the magic of the guardian comes in. You can use them to prevent your fleeing ships from being fired on by keeping opposing units away, including capital ships with disabling abilities such as ion bolt. This results in the loss of the last guardian as opposed to the bulk of your forces getting slaughtered by that 700% charge up delay. Additionally, say you just conquered a new planet and orbiting assets are under construction. Your fleet can leave for another task if the planet is defended by guardians. For TEC and Vasari you need to have an eye on that helpless planet until you build it up. For Advent, those guardians can push around enemy units and delay their attack plans or outright prevent them long enough for that fleet of yours to come back and defend. You also can do major damage to enemy ships if hanger bays are present as defenses while opponents are getting repulsed. However, this requires careful micromanagement.

Now from someone who has to face a guardian, this all can be pretty upsetting and/or annoying as you've and others have demonstrated with your choice of words. Let me remind you that strike craft are immune to the repulsion effects of the guardian and can pass right through the repulsion area of effect. Furthermore, repulsion has a circular effect radius and a limited amount of time it can be used. Both your ships and your opponent's ships have trouble firing at each other when one's being repulsed due to the engagement ranges of their weapons. You're being pushed around but if the one doing the pushing is doing so just to stall then nobody is scoring hits on each other. Also, if you surround that guardian it'll be in for a world of hurt after its repulsion shuts off. If the Advent player is sitting there actively micromanaging what the guardian(s) is doing, this leaves them wide open for an attack on another front. To micromanage guardians in multiple battles is hard to do and commonly opens things up for mistakes. Try using diversionary assaults if you don't want to use strike craft.

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

Have you been playing against the unfair AI too? The AI in Sins, particularly on the Advent side, loves to have lots of carrier cruisers. I definitely agree with what you're saying.

Fighters respawn for free after a short period of time. If you're running around with a high level Sova, then they can respawn instantly when abilities are used. The less mobile and expensive flack/defense/subverter ships would actually be facing somewhere between 70 and 90 fighters instead of just the 60 when you take into consideration the free respawning. Furthermore, the only way to stop respawning is to take out the carriers themselves and it's impossible to know which carriers are respawning strike craft and which ones already have their strike craft deployed. People underestimate the strength of massed strike craft especially when a capital ship carrier is present.

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?