I personally think that comparing individual titans  is a bit pointless. Each of the titans is designed to fit in with the personality of its particular race while still maintaining usefulness. Saying that the Ankylon is worse than the Ragnarov is only based on perspective, the Ankylon is designed to be a moving fortress with support capabilities (due to the TEC loyalists wanting to bunker down and defend their terrotory), while the Ragnarov is essentially a giant gun with engines(due to the TEC rebels wanting to lash out against the aliens). I believe that each titan is supposed to perform one specific role based on how each race is in the lore of the series. 

If I may add an opinion (do not have rebellion yet, waiting for a new machine to appear), for such a test to be entirely fair, you would need to conduct the test multiple times, preferably with different people conducting it on both sides. That way, differences in skill and micromanagement would skew the data less, and it would prove the overall strengths and weaknesses of both ships in various situations.

As for my tests, I ran both sides at the same time on 2 different computers usiang a LAN connection.  And there were no reinforcements during the fleet battle.  So skill difference wasn't a factor.  I've given up on this whole thing anyway.  People already have their opinions set about Titans, so I'm not wasting my time on this anymore.

-Twi /)

Yes.

But it is a moving fortress with poor firepower and poor fleet support abilities below level 6.

Group shield does not offer enough protection to make your fleet last any reasonable ammount of time longer.... large AEO will still rape it.

As the Ankylon itself is quite harmless - for a titan - people will instead trow everything at your fleet instead, raping it even faster.

Let me explain that again in detail.... say you attack and Advent.... and he has a Titan.... a lovely Eradica.... you will fire everything you have at that ship because it is an immensive threat to your survival... and only secondary fire on any other ship. This alone does help the other races tokeep the fleet alive... because they have a meatshield that will draw most of the fire on it.

Same for every other Titan..... but not the Ankylon. The Ankylon would be an awesome meatshield.... but it is no threat of its own and so is simple ignored.

As there is very little punishment for leaving it alone.

In all honesty, I would think the best way to better the Ankylon would be to give it some sort of taunt. Like the one Advent capital ship (cant remember its name right now). The thing is there to take a massive beating, but as everyone keeps stating, no one targets it. They just ignore it until the fleet and the planet is gone and then move on to kill it or chase it to the next planet and repeat the process.

And the idea of making its group shield a passive is a wonderful idea and a terrible idea IMHO. It is a good idea because then the Ankylon would better fit a role of a supporting ship in the fact it would always be protecting its fleet from at least some of the oncoming damage. A smart player will save those hard hitting abilities until after your group shield wears off. Best example here is a Ragnarov's Overdrive Snipe shot. Ouch. Just ouch.  However, in that same process, it is a terrible idea due to the fact as someone mentioned before, if the Ankylon was to get the best out of its firepower and its Disruption Matrix, it would need to be mingled in with the enemy. If you tell the Ankylon to attack someone, it will actually just naturally keep the target just within the matrix, almost making it useless. Without a bit of micromanaging, the ability gets really blech. No synergy between them at all.

Here is my opinion as to how the Ankylon should work. Albeit I have other ideas as well, but we can get to those some other time if someone is curious enough to ask.

Group Shield: For group shield, the range should actually be changed to the gravity well. Yes, I know this is a HUGE range, but it greatly increases the effectiveness of the Ankylon (allowing its group shield to also help your poor carriers far in the back). However, because of this range, the ability would need a bit of a drop on its total number value, though I don't think it should be too much. Maybe it could almost stay as what it is currently (since its not all super effective right now as is).

Disruption Matrix: This ability needs to be tweaked quite a bit IMHO. The damage of it is nice, but not really enough to make ships later on really flinch. Maybe a little higher levels. But since the Ankylon is a defensive ship, I say the ability should do a bit less damage (if any at all) and work more on scrambling enemy systems. Like giving a large negative to range and to hit chance for a little while as well as the ability freeze that it gives.

Furious Defense: Okay. This is where my taunt thing comes in handy. I love what Furious Defense does already (has saved my titan a few times when it actually was getting focused, most likely by someone who doesn't know better than to not focus it). It should keep its base abilities as it is (though maybe a little bit smaller) but whenever you are in a friendly gravity well, on top of the increase to the ability, it should force enemy ships to shoot at it for the duration of its ability. This would make the Ankylon fit its defensive support role WONDERFULLY! It would give it a defensive ability that could suddenly change the battle. Enemy fleet jumps in, they start attacking. You activate your ability and while they are all focusing on your highly survivable Ankylon, your fleet has a little bit of time to fight at full effectiveness. If this ability was integrated though, the CD might have to change a bit. Im not quite sure. It would need some testing first probably to find out.

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Now someone mentioned earlier about the TL's economy not fairing as well with the TR's economy. I do have to agree. Me and my friends were playing a game and we both play generally the same way (lots of trade ports and such) and I just couldn't get past his economy. He always seemed to have more available then me. Income wise, I cant quite remember who was doing better, but he almost always seemed in a better position, never in a crunch for resources.

There are probably multiple ways beyond my ideas to solve this, but this is just a couple.

A) Okay, to keep following the guide lines of only so many new techs per alliance, I vote that the Novalith extra tech for the TL should be removed. Unless you are using a Novalith rush strategy, its not super great of a research. I guess it could also let you get a little bit more defenses out too, but thats about it. In exchange for that, the TL should gain something to the Vasari's tech that reduces the cost of defensive structures. This would allow the TL to spend less of their money on the defenses of their planets.

B ) You could also do this instead. Give the TL a research that basically says this. A planet with fully upgraded Tech and with maxed out tech slots gets a small boost to income.

C) Or better yet (to make their lovable starbases actually a bit of a threat economically) Make it to where each planet with a starbase gets like a 10% increase to their tax income. 20% if there is two of them there. I figure that the starbases is one of the major advantages the TL have so this would allow them to get a better return out of those starbases for how much they put into them. And players wouldn't want a TL to get too many starbases or else his economy can get pretty high. A note that I said tax income. Not ALL income (so not on trade or mining).

D) Lastly, you could give them something that gives the planet a large increase to tax income anytime the planet has been successfully defended from an enemy attack. This one would be a bit harder to really work into the game, because the game would have to know what is considered an 'attack'. Of course a full scale invasion is an attack, but would a capital ship with 100 supply worth of cruisers also be an attack or not? This option I don't personally like, but it could work.

Of all the three options above, I personally like C the best. Mainly because I do love having both of the starbases up whenever I can, though I could definitely see where A could also make a difference, but only really early game. I dont think it would have as much of an impact late game which is probably about where the economy boost is needed. At least I think so (my games tend to drag on since Im a turtling idiot).

If anyone has opinions to what I said, feel free to tell me. I wont be offended.

EDIT: Stupid B ). Putting those two together makes a smiley XP. An

EDIT 2: Seperated B into B and C.

EDIT 3: Changed race in A to alliance.

While it's been done before; any enemy ship that comes into the grav well and is either destroyed or hyperspaces to another planet is considered an "attack".

Yeah, but making this be considered an attack would almost mean (in AI games guaranteed) that your planets would almost ALWAYS be under the bonus which would make the ability too overpowered. Thats why I figure the game would have to actually learn a true definition of an attack and not just a random Light Frigate that jumped into and out of my gravity well. Maybe like a set number of Fleet Supply worth of ships or something along those lines.

Making group shield a passive would actually make it op, unless you drastically lower the values.

The reasons group shield is rather weak currently:

• Relative short duration
• Low values

This results that only things that were quite durable to begin with last reasonably longer. Like starbases, high level capships and since 1.1 even your Titan.

However, if you make it a passive, it would be always active. If you ever have seen how a mere 33% damage reduction by the Iconus Guardian make an Advent fleet last much longer (as long as nobody is using PhaseMissiles) you begin to understand that a flatout damage reduction is very powerful.

It is mostly a duration problem imho.

taken from the Wiki:

Group Shield

Ability type : Active

Antimatter cost : 60

Cooldown time : 90 -> 80 -> 70 -> 60

Range : 4000

Duration : 30 -> 35 -> 40 -> 45

Damage reduction : 18% -> 33% -> 54% -> 82%

Disruption Matrix:

Ability type : Active

Antimatter cost : 90

Cooldown time : 45

Range : 6000

Duration : 5 -> 8 -> 11 -> 15

Abilities disabled

Damage taken/sec : 40 -> 50 -> 60 -> 70

Assuming you want to protect your fleet from large damaging AOEs that can be disabled by Disruption Matrix and if you perfectly time Disruption Matrix and Group shield that leaves your fleet with the following protection duration in total:

Group Shield Level 1 + Disruption Matrix Level 1: Weak protection for 35 seconds

Group Shield Level 2 + Disruption Matrix Level 2: Medium protection for 43 seconds

Group Shield Level 3 + Disruption Matrix Level 3: Acceptable protection for 51 seconds

Group Shield Level 4 + Disruption Matrix Level 4: Good protection for 60 seconds

Whenever that time has ended, your fleet is very vulnerable.

This does result in a rather poor overal combat performance. Basically your fleet dies maybe half a minute later than without group shield and disruption matrix. Things like Chastic Bursts or Scattershot are quite capable of killing your fleet in the time where it is not protected. The Maw is not affected by Group shield.... and those 15 seconds at best are not going to save anything.

More than any other Titan the Ankylon does depend on having antimatter. A single Kortul is quite capable of permanently shutting your level 10 Ankylon down. All other Titans at least have a lot of firepower or passive abilities that are not affected, allowing them to destroy or at least scare of said Kortul. 

Disabling all - active - abilities is a very powerful ability. The main problem is the very short duration. It is rarely battle deciding if the enemy Titan cannot use its abilities for at best 15 seconds. The disable part of the ability is just meh..... Vasari have a TURRET that disables ALL active abilities for 5 MINUTES!

I like this idea a lot! The Ankylon is the god of tankiness, but nobody ever shoots directly at the thing until everything else is dead.

The problem is that TEC Rebels can expand more agressivly, giving them an economic edge. While TEC Loyalists need to lean on fewer planets and they have nothing to compensate for it. Then there is the issue that TEC Rebel defense has 95 % of the effectivness of the TEC Loyalists defense.

I suggested in the past that TEC Loyalists get an additional level of development mandate as compensation.

No, that not a good idea. The Novalith is the TEC Loyalists core identiy..... and its flaws have been nicely solved with a recent patch.

A cost reduction of defensive structures is pretty much worthless, as nobody uses them to larger extent anyway.

The idea of making starbases affect tax is nice. However it would probably take forever to pay itself off on anything but a terran planet.

I really think that along other changes the TEC Loyalist starbases need a juice advantage over the TEC Rebel starbases. Twin Fortresses alone is wonderful in theory, but in reality the things that counter one starbase counter two starbases just as well. They are still very expensive, way to expensive for a thing that usually can be avoided by the enemy.

Possible solutions would be

• Give the TEC Loyalist Starbase good anti strike craft abilities. Lets face it, bomber spam is the preferred solution to any hard target nowadays.
• Give the TEC Loyalist a good range increase or
• Give it some other unique ability that makes flattening it a lot more troublesome.