Taking the Plunge: Balance on Vanilla Units

I like the Illuminator and the TEC Railgun idea.
Because Advent is my primary race to play, in dont know TEC very well.

At the beginning i thought "oh nice damage" as i have seen the illuminator stats...3 cannons, cool.
Then i have seen...stupid unit, y u no focus one unit? 3 Units at all, that means the enemy have to spread out so the illuminator can target with all his cannons. Focus fire would be real nice.

The Revelation Battlecruiser is not so interesting. to recharge your shield you can use your Mothership.
Advent units are very effective if you combine them.

Also causes nearby kinetic weapons to fire 40% faster
Why? you said it allready, you can use the Halycon instead.

Reverie sounds ok, but is it possible to disrupt other races planet raze abilitys? If yes: i have to say no to this idea.


The Railgun buff sounds interesting, the flak buff doesnt.
Flak is very effective at the moment.

Antorak Marauder
Phase out Hull:
Cooldown time 5 - 3 - 2
Duration 6 - 8 - 10

so...no to the damage upgrade...but i dont realy know, is it a dot?
if no: damage up would be ok

to shorten this:
There are some interesting ideas, but most of it sounds not so good.
you want to to Advents units do the same things with multiple ships (shield regeneration, rate of fire)
nah
Also the TEC Frigate idea sounds not that good. i think they are good balanced at the moment. Advent is the weakest of them, Vasari is the strongest i think.

I can tell you are a noob.

that said, you did a fairly good job picking out the weak units, and problems with the current balance. very nice. 

as far as light frigs and fighters, what happens if we nerf flack frigs instead?  COrvettes are now the anti-lrm, so... flack dont need to be anymore.

it would be nice if the tec and vasari LF did something against carriers though. 

Ceilo got a big buff recently with its designate target channeling turned off.  It needs microing, but its useful now.

kol is fine, but starved for antimatter... your adaptive force filed change... is... the tec's loyalist titan's ability...

that said, i would be totally ok if the speed debuff was scrapped, and instead given bypass shield mitigation.

Emp is fine on the donov, shield restore could really use a non-stacking over time effect. (like the overseer's +armor)

Illum recently got a 20% forward damage buff. (10% increase in dps).  A flack nerf will solve this suckers problems.

Destra... ruthlessness could maybe use some sort of buff... but how it stacks with malice... gotta be dam careful.

Domina: the not channeling really buffed this thing. wanna wait a bit to see if it needs further help.

radiance? meh. 

Reveleation: intresting idea on the clairvoyance.

your info for guidance is wrong? it currently gives 25% cooldown bonus for longer periods of time for more am. 

The am cost really should stay the same, and the bonus should actually get better per level.

Reverie does not need a buff.

Phaseout hull. ya, really should. it got an am cost nerf which really should be reverted as well.

Distory gravity. the biggest probem here is that ships refuse to move any faster than the slowest ship selected in the move command. AKA ships are retarded. Fixing this would really help.  Ships also not being retarded when phase jumping would fix the phase jumping issue. 

subversion does need help, but that seems a little on the powerful side.  dont know.

phase missle swarm does need help, but to lazy to do the math on that atm.

Noted. I'm considering revising that section.

Good detail.

-Your Subversion change seems way to strong. Game breaking early game. The Vasari DO NOT need a buff to their early game.

-None of your ideas can be relevant until well after rebellion is released - so the community can digest the new content.

-No comment on Solanus Adjudicator?

Also, you seem to be trying to fix ALL of the problems for each ship. You're missing the point that they have said problems for design reasons and balancing. All ships need to be flawed. Not all of the changes you mentioned apply to that of course, but a good number of them do.

 

 Dunov doesn't need any help IMO.  The addition of titans(and consequently greater focus upon cap-ship & titan fleets rather then massed frigates) has done a great deal to help the Dunov.

 I agree with most of this list, though I'd be careful about messing with Ruthlessness....sure it sucks, but destras currently have the best damage per cost of all heavy cruisers(in part because of the weapon speed boost on advent plasma research)

 no complaints here

 Not much to add here.  I'm at a complete loss as to how to address fighters.  Though honestly while they are countered to hard by flak, they aren't in as bad a place as most of the other ships you've listed.

 Honestly I think the problem is more their survivability in later game fleet battles.  That said I don't think LFs should be touched- they may fall off into the late game, but their role in the early game is so pivotal I'm hesitant to mess with their general strength.

 What I was thinking would be good for the Cielo is to replace it's default ability(the small single target regen buff) with some sort of small scale multitarget damage reduction(think much smaller scale weaker version of the domina effect that only affects maybe 5-6 nearby frigates but has no channel).

With the appearance of titans, there's a lot more AoE damage flying around these days and the TEC have no way to mitigate it on a wide scale.  Thematically the idea was each Cielo command cruiser has an ability to take command of 5-6 nearby frigates, reducing all damage they take by 15-20% for up to 1 minute(ending early if the cielo dies or a frigate moves too far away from the cielo).

not as astrong as the domina's effect(that is one of the advent's main frigate selling points after all), but it would synergize with hoshikos and provide the TEC with some means of mitigating wide-scale AoE damage.

Honestly I think your Gauss change is way overboard.  even after for shield mitigation, Gauss Railgun can exceed the single target DPS of the vasari Evacuator's nano-dissembler- the problem is it drinks up too much AM to be spammed.  That said, I don't think anything that deals high immediate damage should ever ignore shield mitigation(especially when it already ignores armor).  Likewise I think jump-drives disabled is too strong of a mechanic to be on a damaging ability(and should be reserved for pure-utility skills).

I actually disagree with you a bit o the core problems: The Kol has 2 main problems IMO:

1). Too much of an AM hog.  In reality, Gauss railgun would easily allow Kol to match the single-target damage output of any other capital ship if it could be spamming it every cooldown.  As it is Kol has 3 active abilities, 2 of which are AM hogs.  At the very least I think one of Kol's abilities(likely adaptive forceshield) should become a passive(with soem stat reductions of course.  I also think it would be good to reduce the AM cost of Gauss a bit more and buff the effect of Flak burst, but give it a longer cooldown(stronger effect with longer cooldown will be less of a burden on AM)

2).  Flak burst doesn't fufill it's role.  This has 2 causes: it takes at least 2-3 flak bursts to get anything done(as it does nothing but damage and won't kill squads in a single burst), by which time massed bombers have already made capitalships dead.  THe second problem is that it's a fundamentally difficult ability to balance the damage of since each faction's strikecrafts have wildly different hull strengths.  If flak burst is balanced around advent bombers it will barely scratch vasari ones.  Likewise if it's balanced to be useful against vasari bombers it will annilate TEC/advent bombers.  Honestly I think it either needs some sort of utility secondary effect(such as a debuff), to deal damage equal to a % of each squad's maximum hull, or to flat out kill the nearest 2/3/4/5 squads when activated....somethingt hat guarantees a noticable effect and is equally strong against all 3 faction's bombers.

 Like I said, disagree here.  EMP burst is good against the vasari and AMAZING against the advent. Both EMP & the level 6 ability were made stronger by the presence of titans and the greater reliance on capitalships as a result.  Shield restore also has been improved by this shift in fleet composition.

 This suggestion would be way too strong.  17 DPS(actually in the beta it's 18 now) is too great  of an advantage over the other LRFs.

I think a more reasonable solution would be to either:

A).  Change the % of damage allocated to the main beam vs side beams from 9/4.5/4.5 DPS to 11/3.5/3.5 DPS or maybe even 12/3/3 DPS

or

B ). Drastically increase how wide the firing arc on the sidebeams is(perhaps to maybe 150-160 degrees, whcih would allow sidebeams to fire on any target 10-15 degrees off center on their respective sides). part of the problem is that it's too hard to make sure all of your illuminators are firing all 3 beams at all times, which means illuminators don't regularly get their full 18 DPS

Honestly I think B is the bestter solution, though in all honesty I could see both being implemented.

 Still not convinced the Destra need it, but if ruthlessness were to be changed this is a fairly reasonable solution.  Well, may be necessary to make the effect not extend to starbases/titans as that would be a bit too nuts

 Too strong IMO, since perseverance also affects capitalships and has a long duration.  Honestly all I think needs to be changed is perseverance needs to be made omnidirectional.

 WOuld definitely help with the fact that Radiance doesn't have the beefyness to actually tank damage late game(though there are other ways to accomplish this).  

That said you haven't addressed Radiance's biggest problem: lack of early game firepower.  Battleships are in direct competition with carriers as they are "pure combat ships" without much in the way of support or utility(such as the ability to colonize).  At the moment carriers win hands down as most battleships(including radiance) simply don't have the firepower to compete with an extra 3-4 squads of strikecraft as an early game capitalship pick.

The problems with animosity & energy absorption armor are late game problems, but radiance's early game issues are as much if not more of a concern as the early game is when pure combat ships excel most(late game a large fleet make support/fleet synergy ships more attractive).

 Very interesting suggestions.  I definitely agree that guidance is the problem, and while I have done a great deal of brainstorming on how to fix it myself I hadn't thought of strikecraft build rate.

That said, I think the other issue with guidance is it is an AM hog and uses AM that would be better spent on Reverie. I think it would be good to turn Guidance itno some sort of passive, regardless of the specific effect therein.

You're mistaken about reverie though: it's widely considered to be the best disable in the game and the only reason to even consider building a revelation(though doing so is rarely a good idea all things considered).  Reverie needs absolutely no buffs.

Also one other issue with the revelation is how squishy it is.  This is mainly a problem because when it invariably gets focused and is forced to retreat any currently active instances of Reverie end prematurely if it gets to far away from the slumbering enemy.   This means the relative squishyness of the revelation means it's strongest tool will rarely get to see it's full effect against a smart opponent who will force the revelation to retreat or die.

I like the idea of increasing it's range, but 800 is too much.  Phase out Hull is a very powerful tactical tool.  Also I think it used to have 7000 range as was reduced.

 Too many effects IMO. Shutting down a planets economy, culture, and production is already on the strong side, and simultaneously shutting down the planet's chief tools to chase the Marauder out of the gravity well(orbital stuctures & production) is simply too much.

It would mean the only way to chase the thing away would be to commit a fleet, at which point it's mobility means you won't catch it anyway.

Adding an economic debuff may be a good idea, but your proposition is IMO way too mcuh for a single skill to do.

It's an interesting direction you're going, but the numbers sound way too high.  in 30 seconds w/ researches the desolater could easily be putting out something like 3k-4k damage to each target.  Way to strong of an AoE for a non-level 6 ability even with the 8 limit maximum.

Honestly I think the ability would be very strong without the inclusion of the weapon speed buff.  Just give it a long duration so it's up most of the time-heck it may even be too strong then.

But strong attack based AoEs are dangerous in general as they are high susceptible to synergy with other ship effects & research weapon upgrades, which makes them hard to balance- which honestly makes me think as far as capitalships are concerned they should be relegated to level 6 abilities.

That said I don't think the current version of this ability is inherently flawed.  The inclusion and efficiency of corvettes will likely mean any buff of this ability will make it an appealing tool.  In my opinion the biggest issue with the ability is too many parts of it scale to level, resulting in it sort of sucking hard until it hits rank 3-4.  I'd like to see the max targets fixed at 7-8 for all levels and the damage perhaps upped a bit(perhaps a bit of a AM cost reduction as well).  

All in all, while I may sound critical, kudos on the post.  You've clearly put a lot of thought into the matters and the formatting is beautiful.  While I may disagree with you on many points this is the sort of post I'd like to see more of on these forums.  Also I'm glad someone is finally pointing out the proverbial elephant in the room(classic ship balance) which has alrgely been skirted around and discussion only on a per-ship basis.

Lies! Shenanigans!

The problem is, corvettes are good against just about EVERYTHING, from what I hear (haven't played the beta, I'm waiting for release). The problem isn't countering LRM, the problem is light frigates not having a niche.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Designate Target was NEVER channeled, and people STILL never used it.

THAT could be problematic.

The problem is: when I see a Kol pop Adaptive Forcefield, I just focus on something else... or laugh, since I usually have enough DPS to pound right through it anyway.

At least if it has a small AOE (small, yo! As in, half the size of the Marauder's Distort Gravity!), then it at least provides SOME benefit to your fleet.

I want all of the above. In fact, I'm going to order up a side of damage increase AND antimatter cost decrease.

Think about it: at level 1, the Gauss Rail Gun does 300 damage. The Disciple Light Frigate, has 450 shields and 425 health. Even if Gauss Rail Gun utterly ignores shield mitigation, it's only doing roughly 280 damage (armor values) per hit... it'll kill the Disciple in about four shots, bankrupting the Kol.

Ugh.

Or buff light frigates, so they can counter flak.

Good call.

Sorry, I was going by the wiki; I knew the thing had been buffed to be an AOE, but I didn't know about the decrease in the effect.

That said: there are so few abilities that HAVE a cooldown, that aren't limited by antimatter more than anything else, that this ability really needs to do MORE than just reduce cooldown. It needs to buff OTHER aspects of the Advent.

I'm for buffing kinetic weapon attack rate and strike craft manufacturing rate.  That would do it.

Remember: the Halcyon only buffs ENERGY weapons, NOT kinetic weapons, and Advent orbital bombardment weapons are kinetic.

I'll definitely add this bit to the OP.

I'm actually worried that it's not powerful enough -- remember, it's only active when the Marauder is in the system, just like Embargo.

Bilun,

Unfortunately, I don't have time to do a point-by-point reply. However, I have three general comments:

1. Thank you very much for your input! It's much appreciated; in fact, I'm giving you karma for it.
2. You were critical, yes, but your criticism was constructive, which is always welcome
3. Your ideas make a lot of sense, much moreso than mine.

I have one or two minor disagreements with you, but only one worth discussing: Subversion.

If you look carefully, Level 3 Embargo does the following:

1. Shuts down all tax income on a planet
2. Sends this money to you
3. Shuts down ship construction
4. Shuts down orbital construction
5. Prevents trade ships from leaving the system

Even if you implemented my Subversion suggestion to the letter, there would only be three major differences between the two abilities:

1. Embargo gives you money; Subversion does not
2. Subversion shuts down culture and planet upgrades, Embargo does not
3. Subversion achieves its full effect at level 1, increasing in duration with level; Embargo increases in both effectiveness and duration with level

TBH, I'm not sure the differences are sufficient to compensate for the Sova's immense early-game power due to fighters and missile platforms (who in their right mind gets a MARAUDER in the early game?).

Thats a very good point.  My original concern was not so much the magnitude of the effect but rather the dfficulty of countering it, as the effect would essentially disable most means of chasing away the Desolator.

That said I suppose that could be easily addressed via the duration(by simply not giving it 100% up time), so perhaps my judgement was a bit hasty.  Also if necessary, like embargo it could very well be made toy disable jump drives while being used- the would be the best way to ensure it remains counterable.

So in anycase, there would definitely be plenty of nobs to turn to balance counterability, so I retract my previous opinion

Your proposition would certainly add a great deal of usefulness to the marauder- I can imagine irritation of it harrying my borders already  

Some interesting points here.

The proposed Subversion buffs seem fine to me, especially since the ship is overall weaker than the Sova.

Frostflare's Vulkoras Phase Missile Swarm proposal is I think a better idea than the current implementation (especially because in this case, the phase missiles would actually have a chance to bypass shields) although doubling the rate of fire is probably unnecessary.

On another thread I saw a proposal suggesting that Animosity should be a target able ability that can be used on the Radiance itself or an any friendly frigate, cap ship, titan, SB or structure. This could make it a very powerful tool.

Also, I had an idea rather similar to something already suggested: the Illuminator could have a toggle able ability which shuts down the side beam emitters and channels that firepower through the central beam emitter instead.

The Corsev is the one ship most worthy of being discussed here and yet it hasn't as far as I know. However, I don't have any suggestions as to how to change it.

... ...  Ugh...  I don't know where to begin...  I appreciate the effort, but trust me when I say balance suggestions have been given before and I have done my best to compile them into this: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/411950 

I assure you, I really do appreciate the effort you've put forward in the wall of text, but..  Umm..  There are some problems...

I'm going to be responding in blue.

Well, there you have it.  I long, drawn-out list of my responses to the components of your post.  I hope you realize here that I wasn't trying to be a jerk, it's just that some of the things you suggested were just plain OP.  Any new person joining the fight to get things more balanced is welcome to the ranks though.  Just reign in your enthusiasm a bit. 

Volt,

I appreciate the effort. In fact, I give you karma for it. I don't think you were being a jerk, either -- it's what's called "constructive criticism," and it's extraordinarily useful.

...unfortunately, you wasted all that effort, because I accounted for most of your concerns after Bilun joined the fray.

So come on back and weigh in on some of the new ideas.

Also: I should note that I play Vasari. I buffed the other two because I felt they don't pose a decent challenge.

I'll cut out that bit about Designate Target, though. I've just never seen it used unless the game had already been won. =(

I like a lot of the ideas here. Dev's should look at this.

The Illuminator is actually probably the best LRF in game. It actually does not need a buff since Corvettes have become the new opener.

The Destras Ruthlessness is very lack luster, it almost does nothing it helps only slightly against fighting against hoshikas a real buff would be to give this ability a stacking debuff that would. For every Destra around, all enemies receive a 5% debuff to all regeneration effects. This stacks up to 50%, so 10 Destras with Ruthlessness would nullify 50% of the regeneration. A very expensive and worthy investment.

The Domina: Yes, needs to be omnidirectional.

The Radiance: hardly needs a buff as stat wise it is very strong, its problem however lies in that it has no military niche. Its bad early game is made up by its late game. But there is no way for it to survive into the late game. Give it a role as a anti-corvette/fighter Capital Ship. Give it flak turrets, and I honestly would much rather see telekinetic push on the Radiance then the Halcyon, but I know alot of people do not like that idea.

The Revelation: I agree the ship is to squishy, its pretty much a gigantic siege ship, why does it not have alot of hull? As for Guidance its main problem is that most advent units do not need Cooldowns, either add something to the ability(an antimatter regeneration aura) or rework it. And the Clairvoyance buff would be very nice.

Edit: As of Patch 0.80, the Domina is omnidirectional.

Designate Target really is powerful.  It's just that it's late in the tech tree which is why you may not have seen it as much.

Let's take a look at your updated OP, shall we?

LF:

LF still need some sort of survivability, but idk how to get it.  Perhaps if LRF countered them slightly less hard they would actually exist past the very early game.

Kol:

I love Bilun's solution to Flak Burst in it's simple elegance, but I don't think it's feasible...  Flak Burst is the TEC's only answer to bomber spam, and doing this wouldn't help much unless you made it outright kill dozens of squads at it's maximum level, but that would be horrendously OP against anything except bomber spam.  I honestly think this is the only ability that should be left alone on it.

I agree as has been said many times before by myself and others that Adaptive Forcefield should be passive.  In Rebalanced Races, I did this and reports were that it drastically increased the usability of the Kol because it allowed AM to be redirected to damage output.

Illuminator:

I still disagree about allowing it's side beams to fire on it's primary target.  That's not the point of them.  The point is to bring down the health of random enemy ships while killing one particular target at a time.  Don't forget that the Illuminator is also the only one that hits it's enemies instantly as well.  This is more useful than you might believe.

Domina:

Not how I solved the issues, but certainly a viable method of doing so

Radiance:

I still disagree here.  As mentioned above, they fixed it.  It's no longer an idiot check.  You cannot retarget your ships as long as they are under the influence of Animosity.

Regarding EAA, hmm..  I like where you're going here, but IMO this solution won't work.  The Radiance doesn't have enough DPS for that to be useful.  Early in the game, it won't encounter enough DPS for it to max out and be useful and later in the game when it does encounter it, the Radiance's DPS doesn't matter anymore.

Revelation:

I'm not a fan of a passive Guidance, but that's just personal preference.

Antorak:

I still agree with POH and still disagree with your solution to Distort Gravity.  If you ask me, it's fine.  Subversion, IMO, shouldn't be compared to Embargo.  They have very different uses and as such, trying to make it go vaguely in that direction is something I disagree with.

Skirantra:

It had never crossed my mind actually in the many times I've run through the list of abilities that MPA needed a buff, but I agree, I almost never touch this until the late-game because at that point, there's more SC and by extension, this aura is more useful.

And I absolutely agree with what you said about your suggestions lol.  They are most certainly OP.  Very much so.

What if EA converted energy damage to shield regeneration? Not a lot of it, maybe 10% max or so. That would make it sort of like a Kol, but not completely (still vulnerable to phase missiles for instance). It could also help a bit with survivability for animosity.

I like the suggestion for phase missile swarm. I always thought it was odd that phase missile research doesn't affect that ability. I think 30s is a tad too long though. Perhaps 10-15 seconds with a (slightly) reduced cooldown? It could force players to make a choice between quick enemy fleet destruction and quick planet destruction.

I like brainstorming threads like these. Keep the ideas rolling

Also, if any particularly good ideas come out of this, I'd be happy to add them to Rebalanced Raced.

...in that case, I suggest Animosity provide either sufficient damage reduction OR sufficient shield regeneration to make using the ability a reliable form of crowd control and not a death sentence.

THEN TAKE IT UP TO ELEVEN!

• Energy Absorptive Armor: In addition to its current effects, each incoming attack now causes the Radiance to do 25% more damage, to a maximum of +100/200/300/400% of its normal DPS.

My point is, it's a good idea, you just have to tweak the numbers a bit to get it to work.

I will, however, add to the OP that you can take one or the other of these suggestions.

I'm not either, but it's simple and it solves the problems. TBH, though, I think the ability itself could use some work -- the bonus it provides simply doesn't synergize with the rest of the Advent fleet, nor does it allow the Revelation to further perform as a bombardment vessel.

In my experience, Distort Gravity does what it's supposed to do only SOME of the time.  Other times, there are ships in your fleet that get caught outside its radius (i.e. the range is too short), and if you try to use it to speed up a phase jump, it just doesn't work.

I'll stick to my guns on this one, for the moment.

Ah, but they're currently almost identical. Both abilities reduce ship and structure build rates (by the same amount, no less); both abilities have almost the same duration; and both abilities are contingent upon the casting ship being in the system.

The problem? Embargo also steals income AND comes with a ship that is far superior in combat by comparison to the Marauder. =(

So, Subversion is currently like the neutered sibling of Embargo; it needs to be differentiated into more of an outright sabotage ability, in my humble opinion.

A passive ability that also restores shields with each attack? Slightly problematic. A flat mitigation rate would be better, but I don't want to go that far if I can help it. I'm trying to keep the ships differentiated as much as possible.

 I don't think that a buff to the lfs' special abilities would be a problem early game (maybe give the research 2 levels so the second level also adds shields/hull/armor, depending on the race?)

A good buff to the Cobalt's sabotage reactor might be in order, maybe so it affects carriers too somehow. (correct me if I'm wrong but building strikecraft doesn't count as an ability). 

Depending on the enemy fleet, I can feel justified spamming Disciples currently because steal antimatter is amazing.  I wouldn't complain about a buff to survivability though.

I can't comment on skirmishers.

I'll just go through what I did for Rebalanced Races for these..

Animosity/EAA: I made Animosity simply deal 7/14/21 DPS to all afflicted enemies so it would synergize with Malice which an Advent fleet is sure to have available, making it a more valuable fleet ability and come to think of it, simply buffing it's firepower won't do a whole lot unless you turn it into a nuke, but it already has Cleansing Brilliance so I'd like to avoid that..

Guidance: I just buffed the percentage..  I really had no idea how to fix it.  Maybe make it increase the range of abilities on the affected ship?  Idk if it's possible via modding, but that might be a better way..  Alternatively, I guess you could make it increase the target count or stacking amount on abilities..  That could make it one of the most valuable abilities in the Advent arsenal.

Distort Gravity: I didn't mess this ability.  It's not for use with large fleets and if your small fleets get out of it's radius, no offense, but micro your ships better.

Subversion: Yeah, it's similar, but it's going in different directions.  Embargo is "Ima rushin your homeworld with mah hoal fleet" whereas Subversion is "I just ignored your main fleet and jumped straight to your homeworld with a dozen ships."  See the difference?  Subversion is an flanking assault ability while Embargo is a direct-engagement attack ability.  For a rush, it's good to disable and steal income because they won't have much else to compensate for their income loss.  It seems to me like the Antorak ought to actually be useful in aiding in the destruction of enemy structures.  

The way that someone else suggested a while back (and I incorporated into RR) was causing it to deal damage to structures in the gravity well periodically.  The numbers I settled on were every 45/40/35 seconds, it would deal 200/300/400 damage to all structures in the gravity well, including starbases.  This may seem like a lot, but you have to consider that it's only 4.4/7.5/11.4 DPS which is largely compensated for by armor and passive regen.  The primary point is that it assists in the destruction of structures, allowing the player to assault the enemy's rear worlds more quickly.

EDIT for ninja:

The abilities aren't the problem and never have been.  LF are actually quite good.  It's just that players like LRF... A lot...  And LRF counters LF.

So I just has a thought on guidance.  Since The Revelation is supposed to be the advent heavy assault/seige ship and the Advent has always had trouble with hard targets such as starbases(destroying which is often part of taking a planet) what about reworking guidance into a skill designed to help the advent with assaults on heavy fortifications.

Perhaps a targeted damage buff similar to the Ceilo's Designate target but have it only be able to target structures?  Would also make some in-kit synergy as the Revelation could disable a defending capitalship or two with reverie, then improve it's fleet's ability to focusfire a pesky starbase or repair platform.  Wouldn't do much to improve Revelation's fleet synergy, but would make it a more valuable siege tool.

Alternatively a debuff to the structure might work just as well(perhaps a heavy offense debuff?) reducing the impact the targeted structure has on the battle.

But if there's one new tool I think the advent would really appreciate in a siege cap it's something for cracking hard targets as the advent have never really had an alternative to bombers like the TEC has ogrovs and the vasari have Orkies.

Anyway, tell me what you guys think, just struck me as an interesting vector should guidance get it's effect reworked.

The way the LRF hard-counters the LF is that their damage type gets some sort of bonus vs the armor type of the light frigate, correct? What if we went with Volt's suggestion and reduced that value slightly in some sort of a mod? We would have to see if that messed up any other ships/counters though...

And yeah, scratch my EA idea. Was kinda half-baked anyways. A bonus to mitigation might be good, but you still have that max cap to deal with (which under continued fire, the radiance would reach anyways). Perhaps there may be some value reaching the max mitigation cap sooner, but I'm not sure it would make much of a difference in a sustained fleet engagement.

The LRF-LF matchup is problematic for three reasons:

1. LRFs do somewhere between 25% to 50% extra damage to LFs (I forget exactly how much, but it's a lot) -- and they already do more DPS than LFs do
2. LRFs have long range (natch), so they're able to get in a couple of shots before the LFs even have a chance to fight back; this also makes it much easier for a group of LRFs to focus down individual targets -- their long range means they don't have to change position to do so
3. LFs do REDUCED damage to LRFs

This is an engagement stacked in favor of LRFs.

There's actually a thread devoted to this very issue here. My favorite suggestion is a late-game upgrade that modifies the LFs armor type to take less damage. Unfortunately, this won't help much in the early game, wherein they're countered by LRFs almost immediately.

LF deal 75% damage to LRF

LRF deal 150% damage to LF

LRF counter LF and should.  With corvettes, I'd be afraid to nerf LRF too much and if you nerf LF too much they'll be OP early on and lead to a lot of spam rushes.

I thought LRF did 133% to medium armor.

volt is reciting old data. It was lowered down to 133%... around the same patch LFs got a hp buff. (cant remember if they got a weapons buff or not)