VR: still banned

Played 1 game with them. Very strong but banned ..... no opinion on that yet. Teams were imbalanced

Still Snoop Dogg and D-R-E

the law of large numbers does not apply, my post is baselessly correct because I say so.

I still remember when the balance topic came up at release of Rebellion and people were strongly arguing against any fleet supply cost added to them because no other starbases do. I'd say once it straps on phase jumping engines and launches to a new grav well, it's no longer a starbase, it's a ship (or Titan wannabe) so it makes no sense that it doesn't cost fleet supply.

The 25% damage decrease for 60 seconds after a jump really isn't much of a nerf at all.  In other news, Wail of the Sacrifice (which should probably be completely removed from the game) wasn't nerfed either.

Not to mention eradica already best tit was buffed even more

Perhaps wail would be nerfed damage wise a little bit.  I'm still of the mind that terran/desert planets when sacrificed should still kill almost a whole enemy fleet.

With all these VL fleets roaming around, planets are in short supply.

Or perhaps the developers are improving the game, and maybe some unpopular early design decisions are being fixed, and true balance will come later.  I think the eradica lvl 6 ability only allows it to be better at what it already did, its not like it really gave it a new strong ability.  you don't approach the eradica with lots of close combat frigates.

Problem is that Wail is a very situational upgrade to punish those who decide to turtle right next to a terrain and desert planet. It can be easily avoided by finding alternate routes rather than the SB which can jump whereever it wants.

double post

Still think jumping SB should have -10%/-20% permanent damage AND ARMOR reduction (must be lighter to be able to jump). That'll make it more manageable (easier one notch below next-to-impossible to kill).

Also jumping SB should not be a magic across-the board tech i.e. once you research, every starbase has it. 

It should be a 3rd SB upgrade, after phase tunnel. In case the tech becomes a SB upgrade, it should be possible to make it cost 1 cap ship worth of fleet supply (1 captain, 50 crew). And it should.

I haven't played an ICO game yet, but yeah, I was expecting them to still be banned. I guess we need to complain louder that this little bandaid of a fix is no where close to solving the situation. Any pros want to challenge Ironclad to a game where the non-devs are all VR and own them without getting any fleet supply upgrades?

That's your opinion. The problem with Wail is that there is no consensus on if its even OP, unlike VR, let alone what to do about it. I don't know if any more discussion would help, but personally I agree with sareth that maybe reducing it to 15 damage per population would be good. Its not anywhere near as OP as jumping starbases right now IMO.

That would just encourage people to jump a starbase in, take the gravity well, then scuttle it and build a new one. Granted that would probably work, but that seems a bit silly of a solution to me.

To me, this is a minimum. I don't know if its sufficient, but until this change is made I think Starbase Mobilization will be OP. After that it might be possible to balance.

Wail doesn't belong in the game at all because it contradicts the entire point of the game--defending and attacking certain positions, building a fleet and winning fleet battles while dealing with static defenses.  If your opponent has Wail you can't attack because your fleet could get wailed to death when it's at the gravity well next to the planet you want to attack.  You can't defend anything next to a non-asteroid planet either because your fleet could get wailed to death.

Maybe there are various ways to counter it--sacrificial siege frigate runs, etc., but it still has such a huge impact on the potential game play that it just doesn't belong IMHO.

Perhaps what we need is a standard "competition mod" that would fix the VR jumping starbases and Wail.

Dirty - that argument could be used to justify removing Vasari phase stabilizer jumping - it ignores all the rules of the game in having to jump from 1 well to another in a row and breaks "rules" of mobility the other factions are stuck with. It allows them to ignore any static defenses/front line positions and jump instantly behind the front lines. This affects the gameplay 100X more than Wail and has been in the game for much longer. It just got enhanced in Rebellion with the VL Titan ability to spawn a phase node. So regardless of how strong Wail is or isn't, your argument that it breaks the rules doesn't fly imo.

A better way I think is to not attack with your whole fleet at once. Because the time to set up wail again is so long it makes player reluctant to use it on anything but a killing blow. If a good target doesn't appear, they'll either have to use it on a force small enough to replace or fail to use it at all.

Granted, the overlapping wail issue can be much worse if multiple high level planets are protecting each other. Definitely need lots of bombers and a Kostura in that case, or if it isn't that defended just caps and titan. I could see Wail only affecting neutral or enemy gravity wells or hitting friendly targets as well to try and deal with that, and both are possible without engine changes, so the devs might be more receptive to that than a total rework.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Any changes to wail or the Eradica should be VERY carefully considered.  The Advent Rebels are and always have been in a very odd position balance wise- Wail and the Eradica are a bit OP without a doubt- But here's the thing: they are also the only reason the Advent Rebels are competitive.

When it comes down to it, under the surface the Advent Rebels suffer from pretty much all the same issues that have made the advent loyals underpowered.  The chief differences has really been that the Advent Rebels have two absolute bombs(Wail & the Eradica) that more or less cover up their deficiencies.   Frankly if these two tools were actually perfectly balanced the Advent Rebels would not be competitive.  

All that said as I've said before I'm not principally against nerfing Eradica/Wail- No faction should be left leaning on a crutch forever.  But nerfs to these things should be handled with a light touch and ideally be accompanied by buffs to the less powerful advent rebel techs. 

What it really comes down to is while they possess somewhat OP tools, the faction overall isn't really OP.  Changes should focus on spreading out and redistributing their strength so that they don't need those OP tools to be competitive(of course accompanied by reasonable nerfs to those tools)- they should not be focused only on said nerfs.

That said when the time to nerf Wail does come, I'm not convinced reducing the damage is the way to go.  Reducing the damage y any reasonable cut will likely only really spare carriers from the Wail....and the last thing we need is MORE incentive to just mass carriers- That's just counterproductive tot he goal of having more viable types of late game frigates.  Honestly I'm of the opinion the key to countering Wail should lie in attacking the advent rebels on multiple fronts.

 One way this could be accomplished is by having Wail just affect a single adjacent targeted gravity well(rather then all adjacent).  This means an attack on two fronts will always require 2 wails to knock out.  It also removes potential for collateral damage to adjacent enemy planets when a wail is done chiefly to knock out a fleet in another well.

Goa's idea of having Wail just not hit your own adjacent gravity wells also has potential I think.

But anyway we digress from the main topic of the thread: the VR.  Honestly I'm really surprised that in the big save-breaking 1.04 update they didn't tie jumping starbases to a starbase upgrade.  People have pretty much been asking for that solution non-stop since the vasari were patched into beta.  It would be such a simple and elegant solution to the problem that fixes some of the fundamental issues of jumping starbases(and if need be would open the gate to having jump capable starbases use fleet supply as it would allow Vas rebels the option of creating jumpless no-supply conventional orkies as well).

Well perhaps stardock has a very well defined vision of they ability and are desperately seeking a way to making jumping in a full 8-upgrade starbase balance- Unfortunately I doubt that it's really possible to balance that though with how powerful fully upgraded orkies are.

The first day of Rebellion release I think Blair Fraser posted they at IC don't seem to think Starbase Mobilization is that over powered. I bet you anything they just thought this slap on the wrist would be good enough and get people to stop complaining. Of course its not because they really don't seem to get how broken this is. And unfortunately since they haven't posted hardly anything since then, I really don't know how we're suppose to convince them.

As odd as it sounds, the way the game is built its actually easier to set it up to not hit friendly planets than it is to make it target a single friendly planet. And in most cases I think the affect is about the same.

Ekko, you took the words right out of my mouth.

Wail of the sacrificed is currently the ONLY ability in the entire game that can allow an player to defend against the vasari phase jump nodes, or a kostura cross map jump to a players homeworld.  This counter needs to stay in the game, and it is very hard for an advent player under pressure to get wail.  Wail takes a lot of logistics slots, and advent are the most logistics limited race in the game.  I rarely get the opportunity for a serious game changing wail in most of my multiplayer games.  Personally, with all the other super abilities in the game, just one loss of a fleet doesn't end the game anymore.

Now, you can hold out and be deadly until your last dying breath.  Personally, I find that quite fun indeed.

You have to be on your toes a lot more facing advent rebels, so don't let them reach this point.

Even so, the vasari have the kostura advantage, and can disable all the gravity wells around the target planet with their superweapons (therefore preventing wail from being activated).

There you go, the big bad wail of the sacrifice counter.  It requires more thought and planning to counter a wail.  Its worth it to risk 30 corvettes to kill an enemy constructor to prevent construction of a temple of communion.  Its worth it to send in 50 corvettes (which are really fast) to try to snipe a temple of communion behind enemy lines in preparation for an assault.  If the fool wails to kill those corvettes, you are all good to go to warp in and kill your real target.

Also, you don't always have to build your fleet up next to the enemy gravity well.

In fact, good players try to hide fleet production as much as possible, so that they can gain the element of surprise when their fleet warps in.  Effective hiding means your fleet is in a hard to scout area.  usually this means you aren't going to have your fleet in a risky front lines position where your fleet could be ganked by a wail.

I wish there was more communication from them on their vision and plan for balance. How much do MP balance concerns factor in vs. fun SP gameplay where things aren't nerfed too much? If they really felt that VR SB were not OP at release then I have to conclude that they don't know how to play all that well. This isn't a knock on them - most devs are easily beat by MP guys in RTS games. Most RTS games rely on important balance feedback from their MP community and even have balance playtesters employed who can play the game at a decent level. I'm curious how StarClad's process works and why they listen to some things and not others. It would be nice just to hear their thoughts and reasons for some of the decisions so far and where they are going with it...

to be fair ekko,

I called how OP the vasari factions were going to be before the beta came out.  It was quite a popular thread.

The devs were informed.  The more information we received just asserted precisely how OP they were actually going to be.

-carpetbombadamus

I remember. With the shorter Vasari beta testing it was probably inevitable.

Listen to some of the podcasts they did on Rebellion release too... one of them actually suggest Advent Loyalists culture was a legitimate counter to Vasari Loyalist strip rushing. Which might in theory, if the VL didn't have a ton of capitalships, which are perhaps too good at dealing with culture, plus it's general weakness. You might get some idea of what they are thinking, but it seems they really do not check to see how viable these things are in a competitive situation.

An advent eco has no problem getting wail quickly...and unlike the the TEC, AL, and VL, the AR eco player can easily defend many of their planets without having to fleet up....LF and/or Corvette rushes can easily be stopped dead in their tracks by wailing even moon/volcanic combos...at that point in the game, having to replace that large of a fleet is a huge setback, and it is an awesome protection that no other faction has while ecoing...

Wail may not be viable for frontliners but it is easily viable for eco players (easier to get than SttC or SB mobilization) and unless they have awful planets, it generally makes them immune to any rush...a determined attack with caps/titans and/or carriers will still be effective to a point, but by then the eco player has already gotten to feed a lot, get their titan, and in general prepare for fleeting up...

FYI, a double tap of wail from two high pop planets can wipe low level caps...

Hardly relevant....on some maps, the only way to get to an AR world is to put your fleet within "wail range"...and in some cases, triads or quads of planets can't be attacked (or even approached) because of overlapping "wail ranges"...at some point, your ships are going to have to actually attack, and right now the only true counter to wail is superweapons...shield bestowal and an SB can make sniping culture centers extremely difficult late game, your "50 corvette rush" strategy really only works if no defending fleet is close by and the other player completely neglected defenses...

Seleucia, the perfect defense requires a lot of resources.

Yes, if you have been unable to thwart your opponent so they have full tactical slot defenses, a large fleet, wail, lots of economy, starbases at every world, and a titan, you are pretty much screwed vs. the advent rebels.  This means that your strategy failed.  There is still hope however, as they have to actually beat you.  So you can use your bag of cheap tricks to really try to blow the crap out of the advent fleet.  If I remember correctly titans are quite resilient and can take out defenses pretty well, and can even withstand super strong weapons like wail.  So once you kill the advent rebel fleet using your bag of tricks, you can kill the advent rebel defenses with your titan of choice.

Luckily, most games (like 80-90%), wail won't even come up.  There are a lot of random situations that have to occur.

Sometimes wail is extremely strong positionally(not so common).  Other times wail is impractical because you are under far to much pressure to even go that route (quite common).

Now when it starts to become the mid game, things start to change.  Some noobs might be dead, someone might have made a big mistake.

The thing is, every faction has their super ability.  Without wail of the sacrificed, the advent rebels are really a gimp faction.

Anyways, this thread is about why the vasari rebels are still banned.  Wail of the sacrificed is a good topic for another thread.

I think that's what it comes down to. It's a shame they dropped the idea of doing a beta for 1.04 - we could've at least had a chance at some more changes.

Well, if the star base jumping is research based, why not include a reduction in the SB's number of targets per bank in the research item? This would be a very clear reduction in total firepower, while at the same time leaving it's focus fire/other stats unaffected. It would also be a very easy change to make.