The Advent have the best lrf, the best hc, the best support cruiser ability, and the best cap abilities (except for maybe MB).

What is drastically needed is more weapons and abilities that outrange repulse, either lower its range or increase the range of phase missles and the abilities that disrupt it.

Right now a battleball can take on ANYTHING, four vasari starbases (not sure if they were fully upgraded) around a star at the same time, took three minutes.

But IMO it isn't the Advent's advantages that make them so powerful, its that the other races' advantages DON'T WORK. TEC with a better eco and uber spam will just feed exp to advent capital ships as they eat the TEC fleet. Vasari have a (much weakened) subverter, but that can't get past repulse, they have phase missles on nearly every ship, but illums outrange them.

The advent ships are like the parts to a sports car, when you put them together you can leave everything in your dust.

If a battleball was taking on 4 vasari SB at one time, then they werent upgraded hardly at all or there were an enormous(150+) amount of illums.  A good sized battleball(40-50 illums) still has trouble with a halfway upgraded vasari SB.

There are many things that outrange illums and repulse.  Illums have the shortest range of the 3 lrf at 5500.  Repulse range is 7500.  Kanrak Assailants and Javelis LRMs both outrange repulse and illums.  Strike craft of course outrange repulse and illums.  The dunov has EMP charge which saps antimatter in an area of effect.  The range doesn't outrange repulse at 4500 but at level 2 the radius extends to 3000 which can hit the guardian with its area effect if you can hit an illum with it on the edge of range.  Also sometimes there is a small break in repulse if not timed well that you can get close to the guardian.  Subverters do not outrange repulse of course but its not the guardians you necessarily have to hit but the illums that will have to move closer because illums don't have the range of repulse with their weapons.  There are plenty of opportunities to neutralize with subverters and trust me illums DO get hit a lot of the time if they don't get the guardians at points too.  TEC have it rougher with repulse admittedly but they do still have options.

[_]-Greyfox

I wont argue too much with this but ive taken out a fully upgraded vasari SB with 50 illums, 5 gaurdians and a mothership, i ended up losing about 4 illums because with sheild bestowal and sheild regen my illums sheilds never went down.

Against 4 vasari SBs a battle ball would have problems unless they had 150+ illums with illusion (To eat up some of the banks of the SB) but the resources put into 4 fully upgraded SBs that stay in the grav well is huge so it would be a waste to get 4 that far when if your opponent went fleet he can take them out easily enough.

My biggest annoyence about repulse is that it is a teir 3 support ship with a teir 5 ability and it is far more powerful than any other support ship, even better than subs which are teir 5 with a teir 6 ability. repuse has no real counter and that is my beef with advent.

There were 35 destras under a lv. 3 energy amplification aura with maxed weapons research and the kinetic intensifier artifact, they were doing 40+ dps each. I don't remeber how many illums, but they were maxed with research too. Shield restore and shield projection kept the shields on all the ships up throughout the battle and perseverance from the subjugators kept the HCs healthy. There were also carriers with bombers.

I realize that destras aren't usually in a traditional battleball, but they kill everything so i include them.

There is almost no way to beat an advent fleet with brute force, and the other races largely lack any other way to do it.

I doubt we are talking about fully fully upgraded vas starbasses. With fully fully I mean the kind that has all the special research done at the end of the fortification tech tree and the normal mil tree upgrades. Why? Cause I've seen a single fully fully upgraded vasari starbase with with the right support eat the fleet you just mentioned.

Grtz,
Flipkik

So you are saying there are 35 destras, fully upgraded with artifact bonuses, God knows how many illums and supporting ships, caps and whatnot to take on 4 for all we know basic starbases all by themselves.  Did you expect the starbases to win vs what sounds to be a ginormous and well upgraded fleet?

[_]-Greyfox

Shield restore is at its strongest against starbases, because they attack multiple targets.  Usually when you use SR there are many targets that are at or near full shield capacity that won't benefit from it, but against a SB virtually everything gets healed.  Combined with guardians and enough antimatter, you can tank your way through a fully upgraded starbase with ease.  If you have multiple motherships, the Vasari starbase is virtually helpless because you'll be restoring shields faster than it can damage them.  I can see a late-game and mature Advent fleet tanking through four heavily upgraded starbases.  If you can't stop shield restore, the only way you're going to kill is with phase missiles.  If you don't have them heavily upgraded I could seriously see the Advent fleet taking negligible hull damage.

really i dont have a problem with late game advent fleets taking out SBs late game they are the best at taking them out because ogrovs for TEC are easy to kill and vasari well..... But it is fine like that because Advent have the hardest time taking out a SB early game, really against an advnet player you can build a SB in their grav well and if you have a fleet anywhere near the size of theirs you can win its probably the easiest way to take down advnet early game because they struggle against SBs.

As i keep saying Advent fleets and illums are not the main problem with balance Repulse is!!!

Repulse is the #1 issue with Advent, no question about that.

As I said, I've bounced around on the issue of illums, but I do agree that their stats are out of line with their cost currently.  So long as LRF are the bread and butter unit, illums are too strong.  If LRF become a less-used unit like the light frigate, then that would be another matter entirely.  Beyond that, I think the other two biggies are telekinetic push and shield restore.  So long as you have antimatter, these abilities are extraordinarily powerful and virtually impossible to counter.  Yes, shield restore can be cancelled, but unlike missile barrage the cooldown is in the order of seconds, not minutes.

I'd also agree that there's no problem with a late-game fleet tanking a Vasari starbase (or even four).  The Vasari starbases can move, so short of the endless kiting you can do with carriers you really don't have much option but to run into them head on.

Yes, at the very least repulse hsould have tis AM cost upped significantly and preferably a small range reduciton (say from 7500 to 6500) coupled with an increase in anti-support cruiser abilities. At the very VERY least capital ships should be able to out range repulse with their shutdowns.

Honestly, unless the coding of repulse changes to allow units to maintain their momentum, I think capital ships need to be immune to it.  Capital ships take forever and a day to get moving, and one nudge with repulse takes away all their momentum.  It's often a death sentence even if they're pushing you towards the edge of the gravity well.  Capital ships are easy enough to kill late game as it is, repulse is overkill.

I don't have a problem with guardian repulse being used to trap capital ships if you position them ahead of time to cut off escape, but the way the ability works right now you don't even need to bother positioning your guardians in a tactical position, you just need to nudge the cap in any direction and it's almost as bad as getting hit with ion bolt.

Capital ships are the only ships that are supposed to be able to disrupt other capital ships, but repulse can do it and do it well.

The only problem with making caps immune to it is that repulse could then be used to separate caps from their support during the battle and they would die just as fast. It would help if the caps were retreating though, its a double-edged sword.

Here is an idea, REMOVE repulse from the gardian and make it a capital ship ability... 

There are plenty of lame cap abilities that could be done without, and repulse has always seemed to be a capital ship ability to me.  It is simply too strong to be a simple frigate ability.

That's an idea

What else would go in the guardian's empty slot?

What cap ship ability would be removed?

It's a good idea SivCorp, it deserves some fleshing out

Funny thing is that, of all the races, Advent are the least in need of a Cap ship ability boost.

I would find a dozen abilities in the Vasari arsenal to trade for repulsion though ;D.

yeah,fuck it - NERF ILLUMS

//waiting for starcraft 2//

the problem is that Illums are not that big of a problem, repulse is. I know this because in playing against the AI which does not use Repluse I rape illums with little or no problems. And while admitted this is AI it doesn't take much to extrapulate to human tactics which while could cause me more problems it still would not be close to the problems that Repluse does cause. Therefore while a mild nerf to Illums would be nice it would be better to fix repulse because that is cause the bigger issue.

*joins in the waiting for starcraft2*

Anima Tempest on a Halcyon -- (good synergy with Halcyon)

Vertigo on Rapture (Does anyone use Vertigo??? Makes Rapture more attractive)

Guidance on Revelation (Makes Revelation more attractive...Guidance seems like an attractive power, but I have never "needed" it because most Advent abilities cycle pretty fast and are limited by Antimatter)

Actually, I am 100% in agreement that repulse should be made into a capital ship ability.  It does beg the question of what ability will be replaced, and what ability the guardian will get in return (it does need a second ability), but overall I don't think we'll ever get repulse balanced right on a cruiser.  Better to put it on a capital ship so we can actually justify it as a highly limited ability. 

Absolutely not for the Halcyon; it's already got two godly abilities.  While its other abilities are pathetic currently, adding repulse to the mix would be too much.

Vertigo is absolutely awesome, possibly one of the game's most underrated abilities.  It's actually the closest thing to an illum counter in the mirror match you can get. 

I think guidance is probably our top candidate here.  The Revelation is already the least used Advent capital ship, the ability itself is poor to begin with, it doesn't have any good comboes within the Advent faction.

They're not in the same obscene, gamebreaking range as repulse, but they're still too strong.  As I said, if LRF weren't the bread and butter unit the strength of the illuminator would be debatable, but currently they're just too strong and too cheap when compared to faction equivalents.  

The AI's army contains large numbers of light frigates and siege frigates, and rarely uses a mothership with shield restore.  The bottom line is that you can't judge the strength of a unit, particularly Advent units with their many synergies, based on how an AI uses them.

thank you that is why I said this

by the way the AI I play against constantly uses the SR its a pain in the butt

The AI picks its capital ships randomly (unless you've got a mod that makes it do otherwise), so it's only got a 1 in 5 chance of picking the mothership.  Ironically the best way to beat an AI mothership (presuming you can't simply kill/disable it) is to allow it to level up a bit so it learns malice.  It will then waste all its AM on malice leaving none for the more powerful shield restore.