No their don't. Repulsion repulses everything hostile to you.

I did a test game against an unfair AI using Advent. I intentionally let it build up and waited for it come to me just to see what it is about Advent that's toughest to defeat.

You have to stop his Guardians. Remember that frigates and cruisers max their shield mitigation at 57%. Add on the 33% reduction the Guardian's shield ability gives, and the Advent player is getting an effective shield mitigation of 90%. That means a Kodiak that normally does 18 dps is now doing 1.8 dps. Under those conditions you might as well be shooting spitwads at him.

Solution here is to use Cobalts and focus fire LRMs from outside Repulsion range to destroy the Guardians first. If you're TEC, use Dunov's EMP charge to reduce his anti matter. Use Hoshikos Demolition Bots on his Destras / Illuminators while you're focusing on his Guardians.

I think a lot of the difficulty fighting Advent as TEC is that many TEC players are trying to fight Advent on their terms.

Many make much of the fact that TEC is strong early game but weaker late game. While this has some truth to it, your economic advantage can still gain you a lot late game, even on a large map.

Force the advent player to fight a war of attrition. Always have a bigger fleet and force your advent player to continually be upgrading his fleet capacity, which will hurt him more than you, even with a lot of planets. If the advent player has one epic fleet, force the player to be paranoid to commit it. Hit worlds far from his main fleet to make him respond. Even skip a planet or two and hit deeper in his colonies. Then when the main fleet is away push on the border colonies.

As TEC, you should be able to outbuild your advent player as well. Keep hurting the advent player and hit them from multiple directions. If the game goes really long, get your planet-killer gun and decimate his economy even more from long range. As TEC, you should be in the business of ruining your players economy by forcing it to the limit. Make him waste money on defenses, rebuilding planets, ships, etc.

If your strategy is a singular one where you amass one epic fleet and then charge at his epic fleet the results won't be so pretty... you're fighting on his terms now where he can take full advantage of his superior special abilities. A fleet without an economy can't do much, so the idea, at least for me, is to ruin that economy and keep his main fleet confused by using hit and run tactics of several smaller fleets.

If you are constantly attacking him, he won't be able to attack you. And even if he does, he takes 1 or 2 planets of yours at the risk of losing several of his core planets.

$$$ makes the world go-round, the same is true in sins. Use the power of your economy to outbuild your opponent and force him to go into an eco struggle with you. If he has an epic fleet that comes after, run from it. Heck, i've had an advent player chase a smaller fleet of mine through his home worlds as i proceeded to take his border worlds...

As TEC can't be drawn into just a limited micro player like the advent can, you must out MACRO them.

Great Post. +1

If Cap ships werent affected, that would be horrible. They would be ff'ed on with no support ships around. Repel would single out all cap ships. That's a horrible idea, i thought eX was a little smarter than that...

Don't be silly - that's where micro and forethought come in. When your caps get pushed around, you've essentially lost control of them. Even if being naked/exposed, it will still give you more options. Obviously, if they enemy has 30 illums and 4 guardians, it wouldn't be very smart to have your cap anywhere near that blob. If repulsion didn't affect caps, that obviously would change the way I throw my caps into the fight, wouldn't it?

Furthermore, as it is currently, a player with good micro can keep your ENTIRE fleet locked in the gravity well; caps included. You tell me which is worse, risking FF or being unable to do anything at all.

Just because YOU are not able to see why caps shouldn't be affected by repulsion doesn't mean it's a "horrible idea".

And we're not eX, we're X.

If it's late game, couldn't you and your team mates just build a couple of Novaliths each and just nuke all his planets. Won't stop income completely, but there's no defence for this and it would certainly put a stop to him advancing for a while.

When pushed out by repulsion, illums lose their ability to reach the capital ships. They must move into range of other units to hit capital ships.

I would MUCH rather have my caps pushed back than have them trapped near enemy frigates and hcs.

It's still a horrible idea.

when you're being repulsed, your fleet splits. When repulsing, it's very easy to repulse just after the illums fire a shot. In fact, you can just drive your illum/guardian blob around and spam repulse while doing it. As you do this, your illums will get off a number of shots then the enemy ships will go flying. If the Advent player is any good, he'll have multiple guardians and 2 illum blobs also with guardians (how I play repulse spam). The two illum blobs will bounce ships back and fourth between each other. The other guardians not in the blobs will keep ships from jumping. If your cap gets stick between my two paddles, I can assure you it's dead and there's nothing you can do about it.

If caps are unaffected by repulsion, your cap will be able to jump unfettered as well as, if you choose, attempt to do something useful (ie shut down a cap, try to kill a guardian, etc). Furthermore, if you are also Advent, you can counter with malice/brilliance.

The way it is now, against a repulsion fleet where the opponent isn't great = your fleet is stuck in the well.

Against an opponent who's good = your cap is dead.

With repulsion not affecting caps, you regain the ability to have your cap choose its battles AS WELL as run away. In other words, if repulsion doesn't affect cap = cap lives unless you made a bad decision with it.

Just because you lack the ability to micro your cap doesn't mean that repulsion should affect them as well.

To Adama

Repulsion as is makes no sense.

Tec is not "on par" or whatever with Advent mid/late game. It's not even close. For you to think that suggests a pretty poor understanding of the game mechanics. You can't just state things like "Tec should macro and build larger fleets." You're clearly not getting the point.

You realize, of course, that the difference in Tec and Advent economy is a SINGLE civil lab. That's it. The Tec economy "upgrades" are never worth getting. So the Advent economy lags behind by a tiny bit, and that's ALL.

Let's compare what Advent gets out of the deal:
Malice, which increases damage by at least 300% in longer fights, and scales better with fleet size.
Brilliance if the Rad hits 6, Malice + Brilliance wipes Tec fleets

vs.

Gauss, best in small fleets
Mazra Raze Planet best early game
and so forth.

Essentially, the Tec do better early, but mid/late game get completely eclipsed.

To add insult to injury, a few well placed guardians completely shuts down the Tec fleet.

As to the argument about repulsion and caps:

I think newb bashing has completely muddled your brain. I can easily place my guardians to throw enemy caps into the middle of my fleet, while tossing the rest of the opponent's fleet whereever the hell I want. I can also easily stop any phase jumping whatsoever. So as long as I have some sort of damage fleet, and a few guardians, all those caps are dead (the caps will survive if some subverters are there as protection, but that's an issue with disabling jump).

Clearly, if guardians kept their ridiculous ability on frigates, it would still be bad for the caps. Maybe not AS bad since the caps can just run away. BTW, how exactly do your frigates "protect" your capital ships? You must realize there are no "melee" units in this game. The most that frigates do is dps your opposing frigates while they dps your capital ship. LRMs kill each other far too slowly to stop ff on Caps. If repulsion DIDN'T work on caps, you also realize that you can run away from the LRF type frigates (YOUR BASE MOVE SPEED IS HIGHER). Again, your post shows a profound lack of understanding of game mechanics.

As previously stated, guardian repulse needs to be drastically changed.

Is there any response from IC on the repulsion issue?

nope.. they haven't. And 1.1 is far off I think.

I just haven't been playing since we've broke the game in so many aspects.

@innociv
I really hate to hear that, because ICO is getting to be a lonely place at times. I've just been hosting non advent games:(

Its a game like all others. Alot of games is not fair, You will allways find a race that is slitly stronger in some ways. I have played against advent player and won, and lost.
Its a large part of the game, and yes advent is harder to play against then vassari.
But i like a challange, I like to know that he has a advantage. But if i think about it i have a 50% win ratio against Advent players.

Everyones says that TEC is the weakest race mid/late game, I do not agree to that, I think TEC is the strongest, With the super weapon. Build 3-4 and you can nuke him back to stone age. Fleets? yes maybe a little weaker then the other races but name one race that can replace its ships faster then the TEC?



Thats not true, TEC has a 10X stronger eco then the Advent. thats why i win my games. How can u say that TEC eco upgrades is not worth taking? I like that my metal extractor can mine 30% more then before is that something bad?
And like refute (+1 karma for your post) says there are ways to beet a advent fleet late game, play a map 10 times with the same enemy and you will find a way to beet them. know your enemy.

Me my friends and I have been testing a Advant fleet against a TEC fleet and 70% of the times the advant wins head on. If you play smart as TEC that reduces to 40% so yes you can beet them... and when i play its strikecrafts that makes the diffrent belive me.

@klentrogen
The only difference between TEC and Advent eco. Is one research structure.750\100\80
If that makes TEC eco. 10x better back it up with some numbers. An Advent player worth his weight is stacking his trade ports. You add their strong culture to that and their eco is just as good. Sounds as if you haven't played someone moderately good with the Advent. Time will expose more of the op repulsion. As more players learn to use the abilities. Yes I'm still winning games vs. Advent, but they haven't learned how to mico efficiently yet.(i.e. still new)

Many of TEC's economic advantages come from their numerous upgrades to metal/crystal gathering rates. Also, they have upgrades to their population. Once I get several upgrades into my economic section, I can severely cut back the amount of crystal I may need to buy, while my opponets are still wasting credits on them.

I've read a few people stating that the eco upgrades aren't that great, which surprises me. To me, they are the most important upgrades.

@Refute
The Advent don't have any eco upgrades? hmmm.......So the Advent just don't upgrade the eco....Aww man I can't even keep a strait face while typing this trash. If your backing up Klentrogen show me numbers.

I hope they dont go to much down the road of major micromanagement to work around any bugged abilitys, I like the fact I can concentrate on fleet composition and timing of attacks and the ai is good enough to know what abilities to use for the most part. (I know there are exceptions but when Ive amassed 5 or 6 fleets to hit and run targets I dont want to have to be needing to trigger countless abilities per fleet when the ai should have decent situational awareness anyway , making me able to keep an eye on everything, not just micromanagement to the point of getting bogged down with just that, its a fine balance and it doesnt take a rocket scientist to know that)

Thats why this is one of the few strats I rate as great because I can focus more on how to fight as opposed to galactical system to system button clicking (Perhaps a bad way to describe but what the heck lol)

I agree with pretty much everything Hunting said except the late civ tree eco techs being worthless to TEC, This simply isnt true if a game gets to that point researching those techs and the +4 logistics slot/black market bonus techs puts TEC at a DECISIVE eco advantage in late game. Advent doesnt have a single tech that boosts raw credit gain, except the max allegiance bonus, and they definetly cant plant an additional trade port at every planet, nor get a very nice black market advantage and manage their econ at any point in time due to black market gain.

I know hunting plays alot of smaller games and these techs are fairly pointless to research in smaller games but on larger maps they make enormous differences.

I read this post and thought about it for a day. Anyone try to use guass defense platforms stacked with multiple repair stations? Give them a range boost and park your fleet behind them, guardians will think twice before walking into 75+ dps.

Is it me or the defense cannons and repair stations under used. Cant laugh at 3000+ hps, 20 dps for a cheap 250 credits and 1 tac slot. Oh yea, armor rating of 12? Fully upgraded repair station gives a hefty 40 hp's/sec. Stack 3 repairs together, can crash 1 station either, especailly with another one repairing it and 3-5 guass cannons shredding your fleet trying to get to it.

My ideal defense fleet is about 10 flaks, 5 hc's an akkon and a dunov, paired with an asteroid 25 tac slots fitted with 5 guass cannons, 3 repair stations, 1 pji and 2 hangers. If you want more attack craft, buy carriers. A regular planet you can add to that of course, but with 3 repair stations, a dunov and an akkon, you should be able to withstand monster attacks for a long period of time.

my that doesnt really work against players who have their Z axis mapped. Just warp in ABOVE the defensive radius and your screwed.

how do you map the z axis?

I second this question. I was not aware it was possible.

If so, please share this secret!

If IC would just get rid of repulse, I'd be dancing and singing praises in their names. Everything else about fighting the advent is fine.

However, in a game where managing the position and ranks of your massive fleets is key to winning, a fast-firing ability (that's not even on a cap ship, no less!) that completely eliminates the opponent's ability to do any of it is sheer broken.

Until that day, though, I also refuse to allow Advent in my games.

As an advent player, I agree that repulsion is OP, I also would like to note that, if it blocks strike craft (I have not tested this) then there is nothing that the advent can use to hit a guard when it has repulsion active (being that the range of illums is inside the repulsion range, particularly frustrating). This IMO is a problem. While it is powerful against TEC and Vasari, they can at least hit it with their LRFs.

Oh, and the z axis control was removed in 1.05