Should the illumminator be cheaper because of 1 primary beam bank?

It also has side banks as well. They are closer range weapons but can nasty at close range. If they get that far.

Eh... this is a tough one... on one hand, the front beam isn't nearly powerful enough. On another hand, though, the side beams, when in a crowd, can do some real damage, but you have to get the Illuminators into a crowd first... I'm kinda torn on this one...

In the early-mid game, the Illuminator's firepower/durability doesn't match its cost, but later in the game when you can be making 30+ of them, they will do extreme amounts of damage against enemy fleets if you can maneuver them properly.

Their very high but spread-out damage is both a strength and a weakness.

IMO they're fine the way they are.

The only real problem I have is that both the Javelis and Assailant are viciously effective capital ship killers, while the Illuminator is not.  This leaves Advent at a tactical disadvantage since its LRF isn't presenting the same kind of threat as its equivalents.  In terms of raw strength, it's fine as is, and personally I'd rather the capital ship killing power of the other LRF take a hit somehow to give more leeway to use capital ships effectively.

That and bombers.

Same/cheaper than assailant, and illuminator gets 3 beams.  Answer: no.

Plus Assailants need research to be made better/best. Base line Assailants are not as strong as Javelis'. Illuminators are better at crowd control while Assailants are better at single targets. Javelis' are about mid line after research.

Only in the very very very beginning. Even with the first two 10% shield negation Assailants can be significantly better than LRM... against large targets, at least.

One thing that isn't being taken into account is the amount of active player focus is required to make effective use of the illuminator as a warship vs the other ships. This focus is extremely valuable and you are constantly delegating this throughout the game.

To get effective illuminator damage you need to be angled specifically at your target and to maintain this damage you need 100% focus to deal with maneuvers.  the other two LRMs are easier to use and take less micromanagement overall, and the basics of their combat can be done in the empire tree on the left of the screen. 

This is not at all factored into the cost of illuminators and I believe that the developers should add the "ease of use" into the cost of the ship as well.  I enjoy the illuminator as a ship that requires you to earn your maximum damage output, but at the same time you are not as free to observe and manage other things, and it is much easier to be taken by surprise if you are currently fighting a large battle.  The problem is on paper the illuminator does a lot of damage from all of its banks.  The thing is the developers need to realize that this is "maximum optimum damage", and that in fact this damage rarely, if ever actually meets the actual on paper value of the illuminator when you take in account all the maneuvering fleets do to avoid facing this high illuminator dps.

I would say a small cost reduction in illuminators would be warranted, as having faced a pure, early fed illum rush as vasari against dead rat was still easily turned aside as they didn't have enough firepower to take out my starbase or really do anything to my fleet.  He should have been able to make himself an advantage with his 5k feed 10 min in.

I would say a reduction in price to 340 creds, 50 metal, and 40 crystal would be around the right size of a price reduction(or a smaller price change if more plan to be made), based upon my experience.  This would allow the advent to provide a more effective counter to other very strong racial fleet combos at a rate that is somewhat competative.

As it stands to counter with illums you need to distract your enemy into allowing you to gain time to build up a decent number of illums.  If the enemy presses the attack you will lose because your fleet won't have the firepower yet, and is a substantial weakness in the advent fleet.  The build up of illums is too slow and therefore the critical killing power is not achieved.  This can be said of any part of the advent fleet though, and having "one effective way to gain quick effective cap/starbase killing power" will cause advent to only spam illums again. 

This will not fix the racial weakness of the advent if this is the only fix being considered.

Advent need a multiple small tweak approach to solving their overall weakness, not a one major fix, imo.

assailants actually become cheaper then illums with their relatively inexpensive cost reduction at tier 3 in the imperial labs tree. 

considering vasari's economic advantage gaining early neutrals, the overall racial economic advantage becomes substantial, so much that long term the assailant is actually cheaper and more powerful then the illuminator.  Higgy showed me this reality when he matched his fleet with mine but had full upgrades on his kanraks.  he lost about 10% of his ships while I lost close to all of my illuminators in a very surprising and one sided battle.  Kanraks are a far better warship, imo.  They scare away enemy capitals very quickly, as only 14 of them are required to kill anything with speed.  illums aren't NEARLY so threatening, they are dangerous to fleets, but you can just retreat your fleet to avoid combat to your starbase grav well. 

I would venture a guess as to that is why you see very large fleets composed of entirely assailants in online multiplayer.

Remember that a vasari player already has the best starbase that at any time, relatively quickly, they can defend themselves with another "fleet" for a fraction of the cost.  With feed a vasari player can successfully maintain their suicide spot against two good opponents as well, because their starbase is so strong early on.  Vasari don't suffer from turtling nearly as much because they can grab neutrals easily.  In my opinion vasari is the race designed to turtle early and hold out for their stronger technology to win the war for them, and as I see it now they are quite an effective rushing race. 

Does anyone remember when the Illuminators were bugged and seriously OP? Now we hear whine about how UP they are.

I do remember when they were OP.  They did need a nerf.  they got one, sad thing is the game was playtested around that bug so the entire race has gone to heck.  I play vasari and feel sorry for advent players who play against me because I know all their possible tricks and there is nothing they can do to me.  I can stay high and dry knowing that my flavor of the year race will be OP for a long time.

I have to thank advent for my learning curve though, playing the weakest race has made me quite effective in multiplayer.

As I recall the whiners were the ones that got the illum bug removed in the first place because they "proved" that it was doing more damage then it was supposed to. 

Whining generally seen as dishonorable and without merit or backing, and yet I see no conversation here that has anything close to whining.

yes except the period of vulnerability in the beginning of the game is so long that you can be successfully starbase rushed and defeated, or sova rushed so that you don't even come close to countering anything because you have no cash.  Who needs a middle game when you lose in the early game.

On a side note, I noticed two top-tier players facing each other as Advent a few days ago. It was a 2v2 so there was a reasonable amount of space - however, what perplexed me was that when it came time for those two Advent players to fight (25? 30? minutes in), they built Illuminators, and Illuminators only, and fought to the level of ~100 Illums each plus a couple capitals. The fighting went on for maybe 20 minutes in a single gravity well, with one of the players getting tons of feed and both continuously building more Illums - no other ships were built, not flak, not Crusaders, not fighters, even though all were viable (and counter LRF in general to varying degrees of effectiveness).

Are massed Illuminators really that preferable when facing other Advent players?

Yes, the advent who wins is the one with the most illuminators with the best upgrades.  You don't have time to get an effective number of destras, and he who gets enough illums to kill the enemies halcyon makes themselves have the combat edge.

So spam illums and more illums ftw!

You make it sound as if a critical mass of Crusaders is needed, but if fleets are already large enough I don't see how that would make a difference: I guess the problem is that the Crusader's raw damage power combined with its durability, cost, and build time simply isn't quite as worth it?

More the short attack range leaving it very vulnerable to Guardians and Subverters, and being countered quite hard by the bomber.  Very solid unit if you can micro it effectively and can avoid these things, and for smaller battles involving dozens rather than hundreds of ships it's a very dominant unit-type.

I would respond in addition to darvins post that the later the game goes, the more important time becomes, and therefore wasting time and resources on upgrading to destras puts your fleet at a temporary disadvantage and therefore your enemy might be able to get the upper hand during this period.  If you play it smart and force him to come to you its okay, but he will build up illums and your destras will have to be in HIGH numbers to really take out that many illums.  Over time yes you will have an attrition advantage if you manage to pull it off.  If you have the economy/factories to build a lot of ships quickly I would recommend sacrificing a significant enough portion of your illum fleet by charging it blatently into enemy territory. to buy you enough time to build up that big destra fleet.  naturally you will need halcyons to hold off the bombers, and to defend the halcyons you will need guardians, but over time a lot of destras will beat the crap out of the illums. too bad you cant just quickly build 50+ destras at a low cost in the endgame

When in doubt, waste the crap out of your enemies time.  Plan for the ruse not to work, but laugh if it actually does

Crap. I knew that...

In the particular game when I was looking at this Illum vs. Illum battle, real shots started being fired after the 30 minute mark or so, when massing numbers of Crusaders is pretty viable if you plan it out that way. But it does depend on not being attacked quickly, which is a risky gamble (especially against a good player).

But even so I forgot about Guardians rendering Crusaders somewhat harmless, at least while the Crusaders are defending. (I don't play Advent much, as you can see...)

I find this isn't as huge an issue on faster speed as it used to be when fast was the norm.  Certainly if you begin in a close proximity deathmatch scenario in a 5v5 it's dangerous, but in a more spacious scenario it's entirely possible to jump straight into destras and be ready for the first major fight.  In fact, on a random-small 1v1 this is a very straightforward and reliable opener.

/Threadjack

Why is it that people keep spamming LRFs in multiplayer?  It's almost as if people forgot that carriers were buffed a long time ago.  They are still a very valid counter to LRF spam, yet more and more all I see is people spam LRFs to counter LRFs.  There is a few of us that build flak to counter LRFs, but their numbers are few.

I, for one, never try to counter LRF with carriers because fighters die ridiculously easily to enemy flak. The fighter squads might kill a few LRF initially but once the enemy gets a few flak in the fray your carriers will be rendered mostly useless.

Or is that wrong?

No you are not wrong. But using flak and scout are still valid for anti LRF usage.

heavies too.

Anywho. 

Illums WERE buffed fairly recently. got a 20% increase in damage to the front bank iirc. (10% increase in dps overall).

Also, the guidiance change synergizes with illums rather nicely.

It depends on the situation and race.  Starting carriers are rendered relatively ineffective combat wise by starting with a few flak ships.  Considering that early game carriers vs advent aren't very effective because of the strength of advent defense vessels, the halcyon, and the effectiveness of the disciple spam, a carrier spam vs advent isn't a very intelligent decision for a player wanting to win.

Could have fooled me, i barely noticed a difference.  Side beam damage is arbitrary unless your opponent isn't micromanaging their fleet to avoid it.  This depends so much on positioning and player focus that top side beam dps is rarely achieved.  So any calculation involving this "ideal" side beam damage without taking this into account is really empty pen and paper word play.

And the Advent are, of course, the Masters of the SC.