Nobody Plays Advent Anymore!

The witches deserve to burn anyways.

-Loyal TEC player from day one.

You're just mad that they get more cosplayers of them then you generic nationalistic plutocrats.

Advent were never really my style even back in the days when they were OP.

But I love variety and would like to see them get some buffs. 

You obviously haven't seen -Ue_Carbon's TEC costume.

Its a dunov 

Advent capital ship fragility is a huge issue, particularly against phase missiles.  The illuminator cannot focus fire, so they're largely incapable of returning the favour.  Their economy is lackluster, their only outstanding civic tech is allure of the unity (which doesn't come into play until very late) and otherwise their only real option when economizing is to trade port spam.  They have no good way to take down starbases except brute force, which is utterly impractical unless your fleet is massive or the starbase is immature.  Their military openers are predictable and inflexible, though strong enough that they can perform adequately.

No one of these issues kills the Advent faction, but taken together they highly limit the faction. 

Newbies: should start with tec

good players: should go with vasari

Skilled players: can afford to use the advent.

I've decided to hold out for rebellion ever since i read this:

There's not a lot we can say about Rebellion right now.  I certainly do hope that there will be a fresh look at the game's balance, but that'll be discussion for when the beta rolls around and we actually get to see what they're cooking up for us.

while I certainly cannot speak for other players, I can give you my ([DT]Star Player's) reasons for ceasing to play the advent race.  I used to go random, but every time I went advent, I simply saw too many disadvantages:

first of all: capital ship fragility, they are basically just sitting ducks to any real phase missile based fleet (cough vasari).  By the time their shields are down, and they can finally be repaired by repair platforms, they have lost too much health anyways.

secondly: lack of competitive economy in relation to Vasari and especially to TEC.  There is a clear consensus among the skilled community that Advent has by far the weakest economy.

lastly: their main benefit, or specialty, is usually just irrelevant in games.  I don't really care if it takes me 2 or 3 labs to get culture up, I'd rather just kill my enemies if i was on the flank, and i'd have that third lab anyways if I was in the pocket.  TEC has great trade and many other benefits (hoshikos, lrms, embargo, where does the list end?), Vasari has great upsides too (neutral fighting, phase missiles, skirantra healing cloud, subverters, overseers, mobile starbases).  With this said, it is hard to identify enough things Advent has going for it, other then the obvious guardian/repulsion ability.

Advents real advantage has always been fleet synergy and military upgrades. Problem is it takes too many labs/research time to exploit even half of these in skilled games. Only way we can see these is if the game was truly balanced amongst units, which it probably never will be.

one solution is maybe to buff the research time upgrade on the harmony tree.

Ghost the buff is there " in the form of a research" hahahah the irony 

Its been such a long time since diplomacy was released and its so hard to believe the advent still need buffs. Is there something we are all missing that the developers clearly see? 

Edit:

Knowledge aggregation is only a 11% boost in research speed. Pointless really.

So, you're doubting that the Advent need buffs?

Maybe just make their stuff cheaper? Say, unit X costs 1000 Credits, 200 Metal, and 100 Crystal, reduce it to 750 Credits, 150 Metal, and 35 Crystal? That's what I do in my personal mods for the game. Gives the Advent a chance to field some kind of fleet capable of defending its planets.

Cheap spammable ships is TEC's specialty and it should stay that way IMO. I think Advent gameplay (like ship synergy) is what needs help, such as perhaps making the Domina more useful/cheaper, or making the Guardian with Repulsion easier to get and/or more effective.

Another suggestion I posted some time ago was that Advent's shields should be significantly stronger than they are now, like by a factor of 1/4 or something. Their ships (caps especially) are just less durable for their cost than other factions when you factor in armor effects.

The best way is to give them an ability that slows down the effect of phase missiles. Make it a midlevel research item or something to that effect.

Let's break these down 1 by one:

1-Fragile Cap Ships- The advent Cap ships are hampered by a disproportionate penalty to hull for the amount of shields gained relative to the other racial Cap ships. Example: Kol vs Radiance starting stats

Kol: 3000 Hull, 1250 Shields VS Radiance: 2200 Hull, 1750 Shields. Radiance looses 800 Hull but gains only 500 Shields. This is a double penalty because Shields only gain a benefit from Mitigation whereas Hull gains reduction in damage from both Armor & Mitigation.

Similar discrepancies occur in comparing all the other Cap ships, Advent consistently looses more hull than it gains in shields and the effect is multiplied by losing the benefit of armor.

I've advocated for larger mid-late game increases in mitigation to help balance Advent vs TEC as well as research to add Phase Missile Resistance to Cap Ships & the Guardians Shield Projection ability to balance Advent vs Vasari.

2- Economic Disadvantage- This one is a bit more difficult, I have had some thoughts of a radical change that could be made or a series of subtle changes. My Radical change idea is to make Resource Focus simply an unlocked passive ability that is added to the Advent Trade Port so you continue to receive trade income while at the same time receiving the benefits of resource focus. I would balance this by making the original research and the subsequent increases to Resource Focus more expensive. I believe this 1 single change could go a LONG way toward improving Advent economy.

Alternatively- a series of overall cost reductions to research and trade ports along with moving Allure from tier 8 down to I think Tier 7 or even 6 would also help substantially with Advent's Economic woes. Perhaps allow 2 Tiers of Allure, the 1st 2 upgrades at Tier 6 and 2 more upgrades at Tier 8. I might find 2 extra lab slots to raise overall Max Allegiance on every planet to +20%.

3-Next: the Illum..... I know of a simple solution, I am not certain it is easy to program but essentially the Illum problem lies in the fact that it cannot focus fire as its beams spread its high potential damage across 3 targets. Very effective against massed soft targets, not so much against a few hard targets.

Illum DPS is 17 which is the highest of all the LRM's. However, divide that by 3 and you get 5.67 per target. This means that when focusing fire, it takes 2 Illums to equal 1 Javelis and almost 3 to equal 1 Kanrak. I would apply a damage buff to the Illum damage output when it is firing on a single target. Now to make up for the fact that it can theoretically target 3 ships, the damage buff should not make the single target fire equal to the other ships. 50% bonus vs a single target would mean the 5.67 DPS becomes 8.5. Still not as high as the 11 Javelis or 14 Kanrak, but much more respectable in fulfilling the needs of a LRM. I think those numbers feel about right and for me this solution is very lore compatible as it makes sense that the damage output of a single firing of an energy weapon would be greater than firing 3 shots from the same power source.

4- Channeling: To me Channeling is not really the key problem with Subjugator abilities IMO. I believe the must face target requirement and range are more of the issues. If you could eliminate the requirement to face the target and extend the range to somewhere in the 8,000-10,000 area, I think the subjugator could be a respectable little healing ship. It's main purpose would be sitting around and healing things inside of the battle-ball. The reason I say extend the range is this helps to balance channeling as your ship will constantly be stopping and starting to channel which really kills the move speed.

Anywho, these are my thoughts. Take them or leave them but I think they would do well to help Advent without making them OP.

In the spirit of throwing out ideas again

I would start with a few small tweaks to advent that still fit in their current research structure.

1. Increase Advents shield research from 5% to 7.5% per level which would result in a final 45% gain in shields and shield restoral over the current 30% max.

2. Add 2.5% of allegiance for each level of culture research resulting in 15% increase of allegiance on planets and up to 25% max allegiance in culture with Allure of the Unity.

3. Decrease illuminator from 6 supply to 5 supply and make no other changes.

4. No changes to the Domina except to fix it's targetting. You get a similar result of multiple Domina's casting on the same target even if you pull off the needs to face target. Then see how it performs before removing needs to face target.

5. Add a research cost decrease of 5% per level on Knowledge Aggregation resulting in a max 15% decrease. I'd be ok with moving up one tier so you just can't spam this with one research lab, plus the cost would increase slightly at tier 2.

PM defense is a good one.

Also, I think the Advent simply need stronger shields. The mitigation upgrades come only when they're researched and when you're lucky enough to be fighting in friendly culture. I think either the Advent need stronger base shields (by 1/4th or so: like 1000 -> 1250 for all ships), or higher shield research benefits (instead of +5% -> +10% for the first level, something like +8% -> +16% and so on). Or both.

The Resource Focus buff would be a plus, but increasing its costs wouldn't be a good idea IMO. Structure resource economy is rarely if ever used anyway, in competitive games. If anything, I'd like to see your passive Resource Focus idea, combined with a reduction in cost (in needed civic labs, maybe).

If Resource Focus were made to be a viable thing to research, even in competitive games, that would be quite nice for Advent.

Not exactly. The front beam does 50% of total Illum DPS: the side beams each do 25%. Against a large target like a starbase, or 1v1 with another faction's LRF, Illuminators will be in trouble, but they are capable of some focus fire - just not enough to be all that effective.

I think it generally makes good sense to calculate DPS in terms of DPS per supply rather than DPS per frigate.

Of course, Advent's is still significantly lower against single targets, and significantly higher against multiple targets (except if the enemy is Vasari with upgraded Assailants and is targeting your caps/SB, in which their DPS is even greater I think).

I'm all right with the Illuminator being as it is, combat-wise. The underlying problem is the Advent's vulnerability to early-game enemy Orkuluses. Carpetbomb had a thread on this a while back. While that is an issue which should be somehow addressed I don't think that Illuminators are the problem that needs fixing.

While that sounds interesting and would certainly make the Subjugator significantly more viable,  I think quick and effective fleet-wide hull repair is a TEC thing with Hoshikos, and is not something that other factions' (offensive) fleets should have. Then again, it's more important for Advent to become more balanced again, and for the Subjugator to be usable for its research cost.

Hivemind.

I noticed a very similar problem with the Hoshiko and Dunov in a test I was doing earlier today, I'm not sure if it's something that the abilities are supposed to allow to happen...

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/413239/get;301880

weaknesses at tier 4 onwards in the harmony tree are a pain. I don't doubt that advent economy is weak.

Having an advent/ally is by far more beneficial than one might imagine. I don't think its the kind of race that plays well alone. Its envoy vessel is very important.

At tier 3 u get trade ports and at tier 4 to the end) (Diplomacy/understanding tree u get:

* Research Pact that increases the speed of research on top of the 11% and reduces the cost of research as well.

*Antimatter Pact: Increases the anti-matter cap and anit-matter regen

*Beam Pact: Improves the power of beam weapons (illums start with 20dps instead of 17 and are at 25/27dps with energy amplification aura at 22% from the halcyon. Max dps is 31 for illums and defense vessels with upgrades and the aura.

*Shield Pact: Improves shield cap, mitigation, and regen for factions that sign the pact with each other. (starting mitigation is at 17%  when idle.)

An advent player who is at an econ spot during multip-player should send  missionary vessels and get these pacts running at some point to primary benefit other advent players. Same goes for tec with armor pact, resource pact ,ship construction pact and trade pacts. The synergy with these pacts goes a great way forward  to helping them. Military comes first for me but being at a safe spot on the map wouldn't hurt getting relations up for the pacts.

The missionary vessel? I don't get it. It's a colony frigate. What can it do, other than move slowly, capture extractors occasionally, and get mown down by Vasari scouts in neutral wells?

Most of the faction pacts are nice, including Advent's, indeed.

Unfortunately, in competitive games, there's rarely enough financial freedom and time to get pacts I wouldn't rate the Advent's pacts as greater than those of the other factions...

If anything, I think the best faction for the pocket is Vasari. Although it takes a minute or two or three longer to get trade ports than the other factions, they get the neutrals much faster to compensate. However, more important is that if a skilled Vasari player isn't taken out quickly and is allowed to expand (like when in the eco slot), very often times they grow and research to a point at which they become unstoppable, what with Subverters, minelayers, Overseers/Orkulus combo, Phasic Trap, and Phase Missiles.

Vasari can also send very useful Migrators/Orkuluses to defending allies, which can mean the difference between losing and holding out indefinitely - this can also be used offensively in coordination with allies, or even alone while the enemy is fighting on some other flank (forcing them to retreat to the world your Orkulus is now building on). On the flank, this is rarely possible against a decent player (at least in the early-mid game), because they'll be continually pressuring you with their fleet. An Advent or TEC player in the pocket has no comparative effective support ability.

On the sides a Vasari player can of course still be quite effective, but in the pocket they can become unstoppable in a way unlike the other two factions.

 mmh, think i mixed up envoys and missionary vessels (and why didnt you correct me-call yourself team players ).

All you say is true apart from the situation when the map starts and there not in that spot due to random events. Its pretty obvious vasari is a one man army..the powerhouse of any team . The most op race in the game gets priority.

Yeah, as an advent player, I felt especially vulnerable to starbases, and had no real [good] counter.  Similar in nature to Illums, Starfish need to be able to effectively focus fire, or something else.

I agree Star, with each of your points, especially that culture as it stands now is just irrelevant.

Gamerlamb, Thanks, some very good clarifications.  Its true that it is a double penalty.  That Advent Capital ships don't have enough extra sheild to compensate for less hull, and are further hampered by less damage reduction from shield's mitigation alone compared to hull's dual mitigation and armor damage reduction.

Yeah, I also like the idea of Resource Focus working along with trade, giving the bonus of both refinery & trade.  Or at least add some researchable cargo hold increases (+10% trade), like each of the other races have.  Its well known that right now, Resourse Focus (or Advent Refineries) are absolutely worthless.

Zombies, I like your ideas.  Yes increase shields somehow. (Perhaps add hanger Shield Bestowal to Cap ships.)  And increasing allegiance gains would be a good way to buff Advent economy.

I like this idea as an alternative econ boost for Advent. It makes sense with their Lore as well, wouldn't a massive pseudo-hivemind have greater allegiance than a society of individuals?

I was referring to the late stage Shield upgrade "Raised Shield Harmonics" not the mitigation upgrades from Culture bonus.

Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps what is needed then is an additional researchable ability which gives a temporary buff when firing a single beam? I'm really very open to ideas though I am against just a blanket buff to their DPS.