My view is that that the vasari scouts have the most kickass special ability in the game, so the fact that they are not as combat capable as their lookalikes in the other factions is not a big issue. As has been said countless times throughout this forum, factions are not balanced ship by ship. The Advent, as a whole are, ideally, no better than either of the others. To say that the three are balanced, except that the vasari scouts need a slight damage buff, is ludicrous. The devs have bigger fish to fry.

J, you're points are logical, and while I understand completely where you're coming from, there's one problem that you seem to discard. It's the fact that Vasari don't really have a good answer to Illums. TEC have the best scouts for doing damage (TEC Scouts do more damage to Illums than Illums do to them) and HC's for combat in the game. Either is their answer.

Advent has the toughest scout pound for pound, so there's their answer.

The problem is Vasari. The Vasari answer is odd. Their scouts aren't as strong as TEC or tough as Advent (I'm comparing 2 Vasari Scouts to 3 of the other races). They just don't quite match up. I'm saying the unit should be in general upped for combat purposes, namely, the long range frigate rush.

Assailants, although my favorite unit in the game, just don't stack up well against Illums. I've found ways to micro the Assailants to get prolonged life out of them, but it's not a winning battle for Vasari.

Vasari's best answer seems to be flak. Their scouts just don't do the job. The Assailants are ok if you get the jump on him and hit him with #'s before he has #'s, but if you don't have that edge, the Vasari just seem to be lacking.

I use assailants to take out the enemy cap (99% of the time a Mothership, other 1% is a Revalation, meaning you're playing Quar), and then switch to flak. Vasari flak get phase missiles so they actually work. Garda's and Advent flak work as well, but Vasari flak works best.

I just hate making a fleet of flak. Sure it'll beat back a fleet of Illums, but then you have.....a fleet of flak. A unit that get's 50% multipliers against anything with medium armor or up, and you can only aim the front guns. Yuck. I don't want that ever, but sadly, it seems to be the Vasari answer. Build a unit so tough the Illum can't tear it to shreds.

Oh, and flak DON'T get a 100% or bonus multiplier against Illums. They get a 75% multiplier, or more accurately, they do 25% less damage to Illums than their nominal attack value says, and you can only aim the front guns. Just yuck.

I take it none of you bothered to read this?

Koda0 (^)

The Vasari answer IMO, is their starbase...

They get it early - tier 2, it moves, it shreds, and yeah it's their OP unit.  And you can rush with it.

Points 1 to 4 are good and right on the mark.

But from the moment you start talking about rock paper scissors it breaks apart.

LRFs: Rock
Carriers: Paper
LF: Scissors
Flak: Match
HC: Brick

Rock beats Scissors and Match
Paper beats Rock and Brick (in theory)
Scissors beats Paper and Match
Match beats Paper
Brick beats Rock, Scissors, Match.

Adding support cruisers can change who beats who.

Problem is Rock for advent is so powerfull it nearly equals brick for the other races and Match is so damned effective againts paper that Rock has no real enemy especialy for advent.

True, true, everyone has their own version of things, and yours is more down to earth than mine... But also for Advent, their brick is as weak as scissors (at least, compared to TEC and Vasari "Brick") but that does little to balance things... but you completely (at least, it seems to me) ignored my "lecture" about balancing fleets... if you balance a fleet, only extreme spams would be able to effectively kill you... right? You are the more experienced player here, as I never play ICO.

Koda0 (^)

Lol Advent HC are mean as shit dude. In 1.01 when balance was near perfect since Carriers were real powerfull Drestas were always a serious menace. With their abilaty Ruthlesness combine with a Advent carrier those things are mean as shit. Add gardians and a progen and it you have a hard time killign them even with bombers on carriers. I for one avoided combat with those fleets until I had a satisfactory amount of hoshikos with demo-bots or I would lose.

My bad... the I never notice these things while playing against Ai... but I was reffering to one on one w/ an Enforcer of Kodiak in terms of strength...

Koda0 (^)

Enforcer wins a 1v1

Yeah, but w/ the regen. ability on an enforcer, it would win 1v1 w/ ANY frigate (I dunno about a Lvl. 1 cap. ship though... that would be a shame if the Enforcer wins )

Good to know... hows about a Kodiak?

Koda0 (^)

Enforcer takes up 12 ship slots. Kodiak takes up 10. A fair fight would be 5 enforcers vs. 6 kodies

That's true... and that would be interesting to watch too... could I get a video of that please?

Koda0 (^)

No jsut no.

If early game rushing needs to be countered, then the correct method is to lower the cost of early game defences.  Hangars became much less effective compared to carriers when the carriers gained an additional squadron, and turrets have always been too expensive compared to frigates, since they are both short-ranged and immobile.

If the cost of hangars and turrets was lowered to as much as 50% they still couldn't be spammed because of the slot cap- and wouldn't be, as they're useless later on.  However players would be able to afford enough point defence early to make the rest of the defences valuable- even if the turrets are outranged, to take advantage of this they would have to be attacked before the other defences.  If the AI would just prioritise constructor ships, that would ameliorate the colony ship problem.

If scouts are improved it will just make the scout rush proper, aimed at the constructor ships, far more effective.  When the fastest ships in the game are improved rushing becomes easier not harder, perhaps the LRF could be slowed though. 

The game needs more counters and more variation in the coming expansions, rather than further nerfs.  Healthy gameplay allows for more than a single counter to a tactic.  Why are there counters to short range fire, and not to long range fire?  Also restricted tactical LOS, allowing the possibility of ambushes and more tactical play, would add variation.  What is the rationale for being unable to tell where planets are on the map, without sending a scout ship?  Phase lanes, ships and structures okay, but a scout ship that can't tell that it's jumping to a gas giant?  Yet all the ships can see all of a gravwell, even in a cloud or storm...

would anybody think with me that maybe scouts should be just structure destroyers instead?  instead of being effective against ships, maybe just make them effective against structures, to prevent the actual massing of LRF's?

I don't mean to discredit anyone's imput yet, BUT here's a moment of reality.

The only changes that are going to be made to this game are going to be simple changes. I don't know these developers, but I've watched how this game has changed since it came out. I played on a cracked copy on 1.02, came online on 1.03, and the rest is history. I've seen the patches.

Except for 1.1 on the original sins, where the Dev's OVERHAULED the game, the fact is they're not going to make radical changes to the game.

The most realistic changes are for a ships dps to be changed, or it's health/shields raised or lowered. These are simple and just take an arguement amongst the devs to decide what to do.

To fix Scouts, the easist thing to do is just mess with its stats. You could go into planetary defenses, but besides the occassional person who has to hole up because he's on a rush map and deep in enemy territory, there are few times when planetary defenses make sense. Turrets to clear mines so your fleet can go elsewhere. Repair bays for TEC cause they just kick ass. PJI to stop someone from just jumping around your planets.

There may be some grand solution out there, but keep it within the realm of reality. If it's gonna cost the company money to pay the devs to tweak a game that's already functional, keep the requests for change simple. Ironclad/Stardock is focusing on SOASE: Diplomacy. I'm sure they're paying attention to the game, they patch it enough now, but it's still a relative pain that a few issues have never been addressed.

Hence, me, the scouts, and arguement for using them against Illums.

The next expansion is to tweak this game, though.... and so is the expansion after that.  The pirates and diplomacy are to have a 'grand solution', I hope trade is included with that.  I'd like the content in the expansion to extend the abilities and options for existing ships.  Also, the last major patch change to the existing game was to ship speeds, not health or weapons, so it must be realistic to include at least speeds...? 

Planetary defences aren't used at all by the better players because they're far too expensive, its viewed as an indication of inexperience.  However this isn't intuitive, theres no reason why turrets should be too short-ranged to be useful unless against militia, hangars wildly over-priced, or trade ports effective against pirates.  Well-designed games are intuitive.  Early defences should protect against early rushes.

If scouts are made more powerful rushing tactics using them would become more effective, and there is no 'defensive rush'.  Also, the combat balance over the neutral extractors would be altered.  I'm not sure that scouts would be necessary against a simple illuminator spammer, and they would be ineffective when illuminators are made simply to be the core of a fleet.  Your suggested illuminator nerf might be enough on its own, if it is justified. 

You haven't included with your recommendations a comment you made earlier that LRFs could be less effective against capitals, which semed useful.  An increased antimatter cost for Repulsion would also help some, but wasn't the focus of the thread to be on the early game?

Out of curiosity, does it matter what the scouts were intended for? They happen to be useful for this, so why not use them? Stop arguing about what they were intended for, and discuss the pros/cons. To be truthful, I haven't played much recently, but Hamish makes sense so far.

Fair point, Amish. However, do you not think that if vas scouts held up against illums, they would just be too good? Some people are already yelling to nerf the others (misguidedly, imo). Plus, this would make vasari the only faction whose crew extractor unit could actually defend neutrals.

Also, I think the Vasari (or Adv/TEC) do have a good early game strategy vs. an illum rush, it's just not what most people like because it doesn't involve taking on his fleet directly.

I think the whole point of the Vasari scout is it's supposed to be good at getting neutrals, so I wouldn't be bothered by the fact that the unit would actually be able to defend a neutral. It'd force a TEC or Advent to bring a carrier to get rid of the thing.

Vasari have the worst Scout, worst light frigate, worst starting long range frigate, and the worst HC. Their advantage is they can buy upgrades out the wazoo thanks to neutrals and their resource increase research in the econ tree. They also get Assailants at tier 1.

IF you look at the total stats for 2 Vas Navigators vs. 3 TEC Scouts or 3 Advent Seekrs, my point is they just don't compare. Seekers are WAY tougher, almost twice the combined health/shields total. TEC scouts do almost 50% more damage AND are still tougher than Vas scouts by 50% in total health/shields. It's a big disadvantage to Vasari.

JJ has pointed out that the Assailant isn't ur option against Illums, which is unfortunate. Rock vs Rock should normally be managable (just not my method of choice), but Assailant vs. Illum is pebble vs. boulder.

Vasari Scouts don't work either. I've tried. They just don't hold their ground. The only Vasari answer I've seen for early game is flak. It works because flak get phase missiles. I like to make Assailants, take out the enemy cap, then refill the ranks of lost Assailants with flak. It's sad that this is how it has to be, but the Illuminator needs to be fixed, and the fact is Assailants and Scouts for the Vasari just don't quite get it done.

They can pull it off in early game where the Illum is hard to churn out with a small econ, but in late games with massed Illums, good luck.

Oh, and I'm a little concerned about the Enforcer vs. Illums. One Vasari HC enforcer against two upped Illuminators. Which do you think would win? I don't know, but it scares me to think of the result. If Illums win that battle then you KNOW Illums are in a desperate need of a fix.

Right, but that tells me that the problem is with illums, not with the scouts.

Also, I think it's fine that the vasari fleet is generally weaker than an advent fleet that is comparable in supply. Vasari are about hit and run, dividing up enemy fleets, lots of resources, and monsterous star bases that eat advent fleets for breakfast.

what about putting a slight armor and damage to light armor nerf on the Illum (slightly weaker, but still the same dps for most ships)?  maybe a damage to light armor buff on the Vasari scout as well, which would keep it a relatively weak ship, but also make it able to defeat Illums easier.

The thing with damage types is that if you chnage it for one weapon on 1 ship you change it for all weapons on all ship using that weapon type. So the change to lums would also affect the otehr LRFs and in the end that change wouldn'T have changed much of anything. In fact I think such a change would only advantage lums further by making their superior HP have a bigger impact on the game.

Why not give Vasari scouts Phase Missiles instead of their dual lasers? At least they would be able to increase their damage output against Illuminators with a phase upgrade, and make the costs actually worth it.