You just gave a perfectly good argument for why the game *ISN'T* balanced, ha ha!  Anything done in multiplayer can be done in single player as well, you just don't NEED to because you can beat the AI spamming any old unit you want, including skirmishers.

If what you say here is true:

then that is an oversight by the devs, and it is a bona-fide imbalance.

how can you say the ship itself is weak when it is undiputably the STRONGEST on the list?  Only its fleet cost is unbalanced.  The ship isn't weak, it's just easy to outnumber them.  You're trying to compare a bear to a pack of wolves here, and not sounding very intelligent in the process.  as i've stated before, here and in other posts, the ship is only easily beaten because people try to use it incorrectly.  Being able to use the same tactics with all 3 races would make the game redundant, and your choice of race would become purely aesthetic.

allegience86, i fully agree with your last post.  People are repurposing units and becoming irritaded when it blows up in their faces.

A bear will very handily break 3-4 wolves apart. I've seen it. Awesome video.

A skirmisher... not so much. Hell, it's not even the alpha wolf let alone a bear.

Edit: No one is repurposing the LF's, they are complaining about the LF's (skirmisher's, actually) capability to perform it's intended role.

Are you capable at all of any mathematical reasoning whatsoever?  If not, I suggest you don't post on topics like this, because it is you who doesn't sound very intelligent in the process.

The ship isn't "undisputably the strongest on the list."  That is your lack of an ability in mathematical reasoning and logic leading you to the wrong conclusion on this, and perhaps many other things as well.  It is undisputably the WEAKEST on the list.

A simple example, which I'm guessing won't matter a hill of beans to you:

tank for faction A costs 1 resource, has 1 hull point, and does 1 dps.  tank for faction B costs 10 resources, has 5 hull points, and does 5 dps.  Which is the stronger tank?

"Tank for faction B is the strongest tank," you are no doubt saying.  The correct answer is that the tank for faction A is the strongest.  If you can't see that, I'll leave it to others to try to help you out.

What he means is that one Skirmisher is better than one Disciple.  He has yet to make any discernable argument that this has any relevence.  If the biggest unit was the strongest unit, we'd all be massing capital ships.  No, it's the most cost-effective unit that forms the basis of fleets.

Yes, you've stated it before, and you were wrong before, just as you are now.  You are also being somewhat absurd.  Pros who would slaughter you in a game so fast it would be ridiculous can't figure out how to use the ship correctly, but somehow you can lecture to all of us that you know how to use the ship correctly?  I'd tone down the hot air a notch, and approach the discussion with a little more humilty.  I mean, how can we take you seriously?

I don't think that anyone here is advocating making all races the same.

Who here has repurposed anything?  Do you even know what you are saying, or do you just like to babble aimlessly?

Bingo.

Thing is, this isn't rocket science to figure out.  It's incredibly basic stuff that you'd think would be obvious to a 3rd or 4th grader.

Why wouldn't the Vasari put the biggest possible guns on their ships? They had to fight and crush enemy civilisations to build their empire not just pirates. Putting a big gun and armour on a supertanker doesn't all of a sudden make it superior to purpose built warships.

The skirmisher blows. Its expensive per unit, its abilities are "too little too late" and it doesn't have a viable back up until...well late. I think those are the facts. I think most of us are agreed on this.

The purpose of them is to get them up in numbers that will let you use them. And yes, I can get assailants up pretty fast, but then I am splitting income on two ships i cant afford in the early stages of the game. And by the time I have anything resembling a combat fleet, I have drone hosts attacking me.

Reintigration comes later, as do enforcers (much too late) and neither have phase missles... just crappy and strange weapons that dont work (wave cannons arent very good without a lot of research).

So really the time the vas are the weakest is the beginning, and the end. So esentially we have to sit out of a fight, build up really fast in the middle, smash everything at once and win the game before anyone else can produce heavy units, or carrier cruisers.

Yes people play as vasari, and people win (even on MP), but I bet you its generally pros playing medium to bad players. Sorry I am not that competent.

Quoted for the massively annoying truth.

Kharma...........who the fuck are you to say i havent played online............typical MP players. think your shit doesnt stink and you know everything. Im tired of debating. Plain and simple if this was that big of an issue, the Devs would have either fixed or they would have spoken on. And they havent. SOOOO for all you crybabies. keep crying just remember it wont get you anywheres. Everytime a debate comes up its MP THIS AND MP THAT. Guess what, your the minority. get used to it. The Devs arent going to focus on you and they arent going to shed a tear everytime you guys whine about how uneffective a unit is when you stress it. Its just a game, not real life. Stop expecting the Devs to jump at your every demand you got your balance. Either enjoy the game or move on.

Except for the fact that obviously the devs miss things. If they didn't they wouldnt create patches and hotfixes. They also wouldn't read the forums to see what we, the players, see is wrong or is great. They know we love the game, they also know that in general we are playing more often than they can are able to.

There is always room for improvement. MP or SP.

accept. SP doesnt see this issue, only MP, and the only people crying, are MP players. which is nothing new, this whole forum is littered with MP threads about how they want everything to be about MP.

The big issues for SP and MP may have some overlap, but in general the top priorities for one game mode are not the same as the other.  While coarse game balance is important to everyone, fine game balance is more important to MP.  The AI has enough weaknesses and shortcomings that by the time you're advanced enough to start nit-picking details you can crush it with two arms tied behind your back, so those fine details are rather moot.  For us in multiplayer, a few fine details are the difference between being overrun or surviving the first 20 minutes of the game.

Just because fine-tune balance is a multiplayer issue doesn't mean we're crying that everything should be about MP.  All to the contrary, I'm very active in proposing improvements to the AI which would primarily benefit singleplayer.  You don't see multiplayer gamers coming around telling you that you're being a selfish SP gamer for wanting a better AI.  No, we all have our own priorities and favoured game-type, and we express that here on the forums.

Except that it's also littered with people pointing out SP things: AI being the biggest. And bugs affect everyone regardless, which the devs listen to us about.

The fact that YOU don't think its important for... whatever reason, doesn't mean that the people who DO play this game by competing against something harder than a kicked puppy don't have a valid point. In fact, they have a more valid point because the game mechanics and programming are going through an actual test drive.

You don't find out how well something works by testing against something that is easy and doesnt care.

if you're all basing your strength and weakness on the number of supply point, then say that.  the way these have all been written you're just saying it's weak and expecting everyone to read your mind.

and yes, EVERYONE in MP is repurposing units.  spamming itself is repurposing because you're just trying to focus on one ship type to beat your opponent instead of actually coming up with a decent strategy that benefits from all your units.

ex.  an army of snipers may sound like a good idea, but they're worthless against a tank brigade.  for that you need tanks of your own. 

So really what you are saying is that everyone knew what we were talking about except you. And if there is any unit in.the.game. that had a purpose in being spammed  it is your "basic assault ship".

Which means that in the beginning of the game when you can only build one ship to defend or attack in any reasonable amount it is going to be your BASIC ASSAULT FRIGATE. Which, shockingly, is what we have been talking about for 5 effing pages.

Your analogy is trite, stupid and inaccurate.

Goooooozzzfrahbah.

Anger is bad. Go to your happy place.

You either haven't played online, or you are stupid.  I gave you the benefit of the doubt and presumed that you simply haven't played online.

I will say again that I am not formally on the record as asking for a buff to skirmishers.  In fact, I have not voted in the thread on buffing skirmishers in the next patch.  My interest here was simply in pointing out your (and others') faulty logic, faulty mathematics, and non-factual statements.  By all means, have whatever opinions you might want to have.  But you can't ever have your own facts.

To me, the issue of the weak skirmisher is not a new issue.  It's actually an ancient issue that jumped out at me the very first time I played the game.  I guess it just popped up as an issue to others recently because of changes made in the last patch.

What happened in the last patch was that the light frigates got buffed, so what used to be a niche that you could get by without is now a core unit (as it should be), and the issue of the skirmisher's relative weakness compared to the other two has become glaring. 

In 20/20 hindsight, we should have seen this coming; all the light frigates got stronger and lo and behold the faction with the worst light frigate (by a considerable margin) got the short end of the stick.

So to be clear, you're all bitching about the supply cost of the Skirmisher, or the DPS.  One needs to be fixed to keep it in a sustained fight, i agree.  And since none of you are willing to accept any of the hit and run strategies i've posted (Here, or on the other anti-vasari post i'm in on) then the only way to fix it would be:

A.) Raise the DPS to 12.5, as Amish suggested in another post, or

B.) Decrease supply 1 point

Both at once would, i think make the ship far too powerful for a light frigate.  I do understand the Skirmisher is made as an assault ship, and is the best candidate for spamming.  I got this post and "Is it just me or do the vasari suck" mixed up, with their arguments for LRF spam. 

As for my analogy, if you can't explain to everyone WHY it is trite, stupid, and inaccurate, then shut the hell up about it.  Simply replying with an insult is childish and only serves to discredit whatever you have to say.

People are complaining about an imbalanced (weak) skirmisher.  I will elaborate in more detail further down.

If you can get a Tyr, a Cykur, a JJ, or a RagingAmish (or other similar pro-type) to agree with you that yes, yae-verily, your "strategies" are viable and will allow a pro to win games vs. other pros, then we might accept what you have to say.  My guess is, a Tyr, a Cykur, a JJ, or a RagingAmish type would tell you that you are wrong.

If you want to prove that you are right, there is a very simple thing you can do.  Challenge any of the following names to a dual online, where you pick vasari and they pick another race:  Tyr, Cykur, JJ, RagingAmish, Berzerker, etc.  Does that sound simple and fair enough?  Come on, show us how these brilliant hit and run strategems are supposed to work in practice.  Show us how to correctly use the skirmisher.  We're all ears.

Now, as far as what people are "bitching about."  Darvin3 can probably elaborate on this better than I can, because at the moment I cannot play online because my connection is too laggy and people won't play with me.  But from what I understand, this is what happened:

1) The last patch buffed light frigates (and maybe scouts?  can someone confirm?).

2) The vasari skirmisher was always weak, but the buff to all the light frigates made it, on a comparative basis, even more weak when compared to the others than it was before.

Now, why does this matter?  Again, hopefully Darvin3 can elaborate, but picture a scenario where you as a vasari start next to an advent player.  He viciously scout/disciple rushes you.  If you counter with skirmishers, his disciples murder them.  If you counter with scouts, his combination of scouts and disciples murder your scouts.  If you drop a military lab and counter with assailants, he murders your assailants with scouts.  What are you supposed to do?

This is why your and the other guy's responses of "it's only a problem in multiplayer" or "quit repurposing units" (or, I guess "use hit and run tactics" or "use reintegration") just don't make sense at best, and are dumb/counterproductive at worst.  If you chose vasari and the other guy is scout/disciple rushing you, what are you supposed to do?  Send him a text message in game saying "quit repurposing units!"  Or perhaps "this isn't a problem in single player, so stop doing that!"  Or maybe "Hey!  Lay off about 10 mintues so I can get reintegration!"

As far as your advice on employing strategems such as "hit and run" to counter a scout/disciple rush, let me ask you a question.  Do you truly think that a player like Tyr, JJ, RagingAmish, Cykur, whoever, hasn't thought of such a strategem or hasn't tried it?  They either 1) thought of it but rejected it as a bad strategy, 2) they tried it and it doesn't work, or 3) even THEY lack the skill to pull it off correctly, which means it would be even more impossible to pull off for the rest of us (including you).

The reason why none of this is a problem in single player is because the AI will never scout/disciple rush you.  But the unit imbalance is still there regardless.

We're complaining about the ratio of the two.  The DPS of a Skirmisher is 10.5, and it costs 7 command points.  That gets you a measly 1.5 dps/command.  By comparison, Cobalts give you 1.9 and Disciples give you a whopping 2.125.  This is what we're saying is out of line.  RA's proposal of 12.5 dps would bring Skirmishers up to 1.78, which would still leave it the weakest of all light frigates, but at least not by a ridiculous margin.

More or less nailed it.  Scouts weren't buffed, but they were already pretty strong to begin with.  The light frigates got buffed and went from niche support units to core combat units. 

Prior to the patch, the early game was a rush to get to higher tech units (usually LRF, flak, and carrier).  Light frigates were nothing more than early-game filler that sometimes had a support role later on.  Vasari, with assailants available with 1 lab, needed their light frigates even less than most factions, so their relative weakness wasn't a big deal. 

The patch changed things; it made the light frigate strong enough to be a mainstay combat unit.  As a result, Skirmishers and other light frigates are no longer early-game filler before you have your labs up.  They are real units that we're depending on to provide solid performance in a battle.

I got a bit carried away, but  you used snipes v. tanks as an example of spamming one unit.

except that snipers are lrfs. the LF (skirm) is your basic infantryman, of which, any military has more of than tanks. Regardless, I lost my temper and that WAS childish, so sorry. I of course sill politely disagree

52500, thank you for remaining civil.

as for my analogy, i didn't elaborate enough for it to make any sense and i didn't fully think it through before i put it down.

I offer a cease fire.