Thanks... for some reason I was stuck on the Vasari Rebel's "Shared Network" research and totally missed/forgot the fact that the Phase Pact did that already.

So basically, you are annoyed, you have a hard time finishing Vorastra off, cause of its unrivaled mobility. Funny thing, that is not going to change with any nerfs to Maw, Desperation nor phase missiles. 

Additionally, just because its Titan is very capable when it comes to running away, it does not make the whole faction overpowered. And neither the Titan really. If it has to run away, the VL player is losing the battle. Titan which is somewhere else as the battle is, is good to you as no Titan at all.

So again, you are just annoyed you cant kill it and it keeps coming away. But all the Titans keep coming away, whether they manage to run away and survive or not. They simply get rebuilt. 

You know, even Vasari players have to deal with annoying things - like bunch of Ogrovs/Adjudicators killing your precious Orkulus under a minute,  when you have to build shitload of bombers to achieve the same thing. Or fighting 2 fully upgraded Argonevs with BRB in a gravwell full of mines. Or need to build media hubs on your planets to fend off Advent culture, losing precious logistic slots, when Advent players has the culture generated by the planets itself. Or having to be careful of not getting yourself wailed... all of that can be annoying as chasing teleporting titan. But i dont see anyone whining about that non-stop.

Yes, because when I get a titan's hull to 1000>, I like it dead, not to see it resurrected in a second because of it's serevuns ath the neighbouring grav well and start the fight again in a minute (not in 10 minutes when others rebuild their titans! ). Add the fact this ship has the most brutal raw firepower in the game (without using antimatter-consuming abilities), so yes, it bothers me if I have to "kill" it 3-4 times in 5-10 minutes while he kills my whole fleet without serious losses (obviously talking about when the Vorastra is with a supporting fleet). The concept is bad, why the hell give the most mobile ship the best DPS (front) and a very good passive ability (desperation)? It is nonsense, nothing should be the best in 2 different fields at once.. If something is mobile, it trades firepower for mobility, but when we look at Vorastra all we see is a jumping powerhouse that is extremely hard to destroy when handled by someone skilled. There is nothing like that in the game and it is very strange to me.. Maybe the Kultorask is something similar but you can eventually beat that monster if you successfully remove all fleet from vicinity and keep hitting it with bombers. I have never heard of good strategies about destroying a Vorastra, Timmaigh, you seem to play VL quite often, maybe you can give us (those who say Vorastra is almost invincible) some advice how to kill a high-level Vorastra? That would make me (and everyone I guess) understand your viewpoint and not think you are biased with Vasari..

So how to kill a high level Vorastra when it has a normal sized supporting fleet (I assume noone is as stupid to use it alone)? I want a direct answer to this Timmaigh, make us understand how this ship is at the same league as the other titans? (without kultorask of course, that thing is another question even if only we look at the AI using it..).

If I remember correctly there's a subtle difference between the two, I think the research lets all your allies you your phase nodes and you theirs, while the pact is only between the players with the phase pact. But yeah, that's how you can use them with only a Vasari Loyalist ally. 

Lol Timmy stop arguing, its a well known and accepted that vasari are grossly overpowered at "everything". Reminds of a line from the new Star Trek movie where captain dude asks the khaan whats hes better at? The anwser is same as above!.

P.S: If they added a phase missile nerf i would be happy with the state of vasari in 1.50. They will still be overpowered but what do you expect from the evil aliens!? Also really looking forward at making 50 vettes vs all those titan rushing bast....

There is a way to kill Vorastra.

Drain it of AM but that means your drain am ships need to survive long enough..... 

Latter part is the impossible when facing Vasari bombers, I guess my multiple Dunovs or Radiances will now stay alive long enough to drain the Vorastra AM to zero.. Meanwhile all my fleet is dying.

EDIT: NOT stay alive

OP updated for BETA 2 release.

what about the wormhole problem people where reporting. was it fixed?

also i was in the map editor and made a map with the 4 new planets that are going to be added. needless to says lots of phase lanes missing lol.

@ 

And why exactly should be anyone interested in what you like? And how that even concerns the balance? 

It does not take 10 minute to build the Titan, thats needless exaggeration on your part. Additionally, Vorastras firepower is in line with all the other Titans, i believe the likes of Eradica and Coronata are even more powerful, when it comes to regular weapon output. 

Finally, what is so important about killing Vorastra anyway? You got your Maw/Desperation nerf, so it cant kill all your carriers anymore - therefore it should be actually possible to wear it down with bombers. The corvettes may help greatly too now, but i guess you dont like to build those too, so another annoyance, right? 

Anyway, the titan is still going to run and survive though, cause of the teleporting/phasegates - but so what? Either let it go and kill everything else, VL player cant win the game with Vorastra itself anyway... or follow it and finish it off. If it runs to next gravwell to get itself repaired, this should be pretty much doable... if it dropped phasegate and ran across the map and you cant follow it, just kill the gate and it wont be able to return right away... Maybe you never heard any good strategies about destroying Vorastra, cause the point of the game is not to destroy Vorastra, rather beat the other (VL in this case) player. And last time i checked, the VL players do not start the game with high-level titans and 200 bombers next to their homeworld. So they are certainly beatable.

I think you chose wrong game really. If it annoys you to play longer games and fight the Titan several time per such game, cause it can run, perhaps you should be playing something like StarCraft or CnC. You wont have to fight the same battles over and over there, as the games are pretty short and lot of times won by a very first battle. Certainly no rebuilding/running away there.

@Jingly Goo, SageWon et al> I am discussing this and wont give up, cause i want my opinion to be heard too. And i want it to be heard, cause i "fear" one thing: that all this whining is going to influence the devs, when they start working on SoaSE 2. And i do not want them to get rid of all the good stuff like fully mobile faction, teleporting and Maw, only cause the vocal PvP crowd here represented purely by bunch of Advent/TEC lovers considered those things annoying, so complained about them to no end. 

The sad truth is, if the design of the game was up to PvP players, all those things would probably not ingame, cause your lot want short fast games and titan which can run again and again clearly does not fit that mindset, does it? The game could be balanced and fun for you, but to me, it would be most likely dull as shit. I dont want that to happen and i want to be sure the devs are aware, there are actually people like me, who have different preferences than your lot and who likes the game to no end as it is. 

@Yarlen> thanks for fixing the specular stuff

Did i miss something?

I have never seen one of the new planets and each time i put one of them in a map, they don't get a phase line in the game to other planets.

Until now, i thought we would see them in june, when the dlc will be released, but now i'm worried, that i'm the only one who can't play with them^^

PS: The new vulcanic planet is sooo beautiful~ I really like the new design.

well this ship is a major war asset, and can be repaired almost asap, serevuns, not like the others that take frever to get back to ful health.

It seems this is useless trying to convince you about what everyone but Vasarifans agree about, and in my opinion not only one race should be preferred by the game, the Vasari is at the same level in the early game as the others, but that's all, the screwed rankings of races make Vasari the strongest (1st military and 2nd economy), expensive, strong ships that can be repaired immediately and losses can be rebuilt too, not mentioning Vasari nowhere needs as big fleet as the other races, in 1.1 a single Vorastra was enough with some serevuns or some fighter carriers against a huge fleet, fortunately that has been changed somewhat.. (desperation not working on corvettes).

Do you often play against Vasari players as nonvasari? It seems you never try.. and the only reason could be that you find the other races too weak.. this way you can't see reality, only from the Vasari side, and you will never realize how Vasari is unbalanced even with these changes.

The new planets are in an soon to be released DLC. This is just for the 1.5 patch that does not have the new planets in it. When the DLC released and you buy it the planets will appear.

Ah, thank you for the info.

As you have obviously seen the 1.5 release contains many new files related to the upcoming DLC. This does not mean the content is accessible even though.

Stardock made a huge concession to ICO players by supporting compatibility between all players despite the host. As there is a good percent of players on ICO (possibly 25% play PvP or PvAI)- this makes sense. As modders and map makers though, you'll need to be aware of which content is for vanilla only and which is for the DLC.

It won't be complicated once we get the full details, but until then it might be wise to wait on modding or map making for the Beta.

Yes, a frigate moves faster than the Vorastra turns.... ON CLOSE DISTANCE

When the Vorastra enters the gravity well... it is likely far away from your fleet. In which case its turn rate is more than enough to compensate for your fleet movement.

It was OP and if you would play not against AI but against a human enemy, you would realize that as well.

Thats because they are OP. Have been since first Beta. And now, since the devs - thankfully   - nerfed the INCREDIBLE OP things down to bearable levels, we can and should focus on the things that are just OP. And Phase Missiles are OP. Especially against Advent.

QFT

Wail is pretty much worthless now, the damage dealt does never justify going into 7 Harmony.... or sacrificing a planet for that matter.

How the new Wail values in Beta 2 will be in game remains to be seen. Although they sound good on paper so far.

Phase Missile bomber wings easily are better than any anti structure cruiser. Not only the do more effective damage and are harder to counter, but they also are MURDEROUS against many other things... while Anti Structure cruisers only work against structures.

There are 2 big flaws in your theory.

First of all... the Vasari are more powerful than the TEC military wise. So it would be actually

Vasari > TEC < Advent < Vasari

Or more obvious:

Military power ranking:

1. Vasari

2. Advent

3. TEC

Economic Power rating:

1. TEC

2. Vasari!!!!!

3. Advent

Advent vs TEC is 2. Military vs 3. Military.. which is mostly balanced by

TEC being 1. in Economy... and Advent being 3.

Now.... to the Vasari:

Second in Economy.... yes... Vasari Economy is much stronger than Advent economy..... BUT FIRST in military.....

1. in military + 2. in economy = STRONGER than 2. in military and 3. in economy.

Obvious, right?

And for Vasari vs Advent Late game... we dont speak about a minor advantage here... we speak about an execution of the Advent.

Second flaw:

The Advent are balanced against the TEC by economy alone..... TEC can fight a multi front line war, which will lower the advent synergies down to bearable levels and inflict losses that the Advent cannot afford to replace. TEC has the economy to accept a loss ratio of 2 : 1...... they will win in the end.

Against Vasari however, Advent have NOTHING. Vasari have a better military.... and will kill Advent ships easily in ratios up to 3 : 1.

However. Advent economy IS WAY MORE BAD than Vasari Economy.... yes... Advent looses 3 ships, Vasari loose 1. Advent has to spend more money on losses than vasari.... Vasari fleet can steamroll spam Advent like TEC..... but is even superior on even or lower numbers.

The Vasari can defeat the advent military wise and can outlast them economic wise. There is nothing Advent can do against a Vasari in late game.

A faction.... the Advent here...... that can only hope to defeat TEC in late game... is not balanced.

Or to put it simply:

Enemies in the field:

TEC

Vasari

Advent

Victory changes:

Choose TEC: Spam both Advent and Vasari - to some lesser extent - to death.

Choose Vasari: CRUSH Advent and defeat TEC...... you have enough military power to crush Advent and enough economic staying power to avoid being spammed to death by TEC.

Choose Advent: Defeat TEC with superior military..... but prepare for a hard fight as he will outnumber you 2 to 1. Forget ANY changes of defeating the Vasari..... if he makes it to late game... YOU ARE DEAD.

So why should anyone - from a competive standpoint - choose Advent?

I am fine with Vasari being second in military... but not first. They have the second best economy.... they cannot have first in military with this.

The main issue is, the vasari were meant as a more gurellia style faction.....unfortunatly.... they have all the DIRTY tricks AND the best military.... Vasari dont need to fight dirty to win..... but if they do... they are nearly unstoppable.  

They are an gurellia faction... with the firepower of a brute force faction..... and that is nuff said what makes them OP.

Imho Balancing should be like this:

TEC: Worst military... but tons of units..... and thick armor... we will spam you to death and outlast you.

Advent: Best military but pathetic eco...... not so much units but once in full synergy capable of inflicting losses on a terrible scale.

Vasari: Second best military, but NO MATCH for the Advent in brute power (currently they are). Vasari need to fight more of a gurellia warfare to succeed instead of skilllessly steamrolling everything.

I disagree. While being very powerful in full synergie they also highly depend on that synergie. Remove just a bit of this synergy, and Advent might breaks down like a cardhouse.

Some may see it as flaw, that Vasari ships mostly support only themselves.... but actually it is a strenght. Advent fleet loosing 2 capitalships? Battle performance for Advent goes down 50 %. Vasari fleet loosing 2 Capital ships? Battle performance for Vasari going down by 10 %.

Guess who wins.

Especially with Phase Missile bombers..... yes... those again..... Advent dont have any capitalships after a minute or so.... because they DIE INSTANTLY against even a mid sized bomber swarm.

The reality is, that the Phase Missile in their current form make the Advent obsolete in late game. They are so incredible OP, that any other of the - good changes - for Vasari wont be enough to give the Advent a fighting change.

As long as Vasari can destroy a level 10 Advent Titan in under a minute!

As long, as high level capships die within seconds....

As long as this is true... the Advent will be no match for the Vasari.

Now... buffing the Advent economy is a terrible idea. It would make Advent OP against TEC.

So the only way to reasonably balance this, is to remove the military superiority of the Vasari.

Or nerf the Vasari economy down to levels that will make any Advent player rich in comparsion. But that idea has several more flaws.

Actually the Coronate is very powerful..... it just happens to be weak against bomber swarms, which happen to be the prefferred late game tactic. Add that none of its abilitys does large ammounts of damage to frigate swarms and you have the issue.

The Coronate with a large fleet of illuminators is awesome.... Illuminators destroy the enemy fleet while the Coronata deal with the hard targets (Starbase, Titan, Capitalship) the illuminators suck against.

It isnt as easy as bomber spam though.

You said it yourself... fear of losing...... fear of losing against an enemy that DOES EVERYTHING IMPORTANT BETTER THAN THE ADVENT.

As for trying... believe me..... I got my ass handed often enough by Vasari..... and I handed enough Advent their ass AS Vasari. A while ago.... me.... 50 games.... Vasari.... other guy... 120 games.... Advent....

Guess who won?

ME

And not by skill... for sure.

I also have a theory about you....

You love Vasari.... and you love them because they are OP.

And so you cannot stand any nerfs to them, because it might force you to rely on skill instead of dirty OP tricks of the faction.

Yes.... if the Advent shields had a high PM block value outside of culture (mind you, the current in culture block is worthless) things would change.

I really think... or rather hope, that Phase Missiles were meant by the developers as more like a bonus. The basic idea being, that by the time you drop shields you have already done SOME hull damage.

In their current implementation and power levels however, it is not an uncommon sight to see Advent ships die with over 10000 shield points remaining. That cannot be allowed for obvious balancing reasons. Phase missiles are not a bonus... they dont slightly mitigate shields... they pass right trough them.... making shields OBSOLETE. And Advent relying 90 % on shields to survive become obsolete, too.

Excellent idea. At least if your am draining ships happen to

• survive
• catch up

also the later has been become easier, now that Maw no longer instagibs entire fleets.

Why should anyone care for the opinion of you... a player that is clearly not interested in game balancing at all, but only in keeping your beloved OP factions, OP.

It does take a considerable time to rebuild a titan at higher levels.

And for the OFFICIAL RECORD:

The Vorastra has the HIGHEST FIREPOWER OF ALL TITANS. WITHOUT ABILITYS. IT DOES OUTGUN THE RAGNAROV. ALL ITS WEAPONS ARE FORWARD, SO IT CAN USE THAT FIREPOWER TO FULL EFFECT.

Now.... the firepower of the Vorastra is not the issue..... as in fleet battles it pales in comparsion. It was Maw and Desperation that made it unbeatable.

It is great that you like Vasari they way they are. Everyone has his favourite faction. But your fun comes at the expense of the fun for the TEC and the Advent players. Being slaughted by Vasari is not fun, nor helping to the game and future releases.

I am quite fine with Vasari having dirty tricks... but if they have those.... they need to take a stepdown in raw military power. Right now they have both....... and that breaks game balancing and makes it

NOT FUN

to play TEC or Advent against them.

Nobody likes to lose.... that a fact.... but to go down fighting and standing a change..... that is much better than the execution like gameplay that is happening at the moment in late game.

There are 3 races in this game. You love one of them. At best that gives you 33 % of the playerbase. The other 66 % (TEC/Advent), dont they have a right to enjoyment of the game, too?

If the price for making 2/3 of the playerbase happy, is the annoyance of at best 1/3 of the playerbase, it is the right choice.

Although, in reality, most Vasari players understand and agree that the faction needs some nerfs (Altough they may disagree about the hardness of those nerfs) . So you likely will piss of only 5 - 10 % of the playerbase.... while pleasing 90 % -  95 % of the rest. That an easy call.

Uhm, is it intended to have this many terran planets? Might have been (un)lucky but it sure as hell was first time i've ever seen THAT many terran planets. You didn't accidently make the missing planets into terran planets if they can't find the new planets(missing the DLC)?

edit: There were also like 2 non-homeworld terrans out of screen
edit2: This was on medium-large-random 

because:

Also, at the end of that match my friend and I did a 1 v 1 fight(complete fleets) and apparently 4 kols+30 flaks can stop a wave of ~100 bombers. sadly, after the first wave my titan still got raped, and, had he kept his distance he would have won the fight by simply using nothing but bombers because the Kol's flak and normal flaks still dont stand a chance against any bombers that are spammed.(He was advent, and his titan got raped by my 4 starbases and capital fleet(since my titan was already down before it could fire it's second snipe shot...), keeping my support out of his chastic burst range)

I can happily report that hard AI seems to be back to its old itself. Did not build titan this time, but was sending waves of frigates and cruisers after me non-stop. Clearly had money to burn this time around. 

@Aresiv> several things...

Ogrovs pretty much = vasari bombers, when it comes to dealing with Starbases. The main difference is, you can use bombers against ships as well, but.... i had fully upgraded Orkulus with a frontal shield deflector killed today by 10-12 Ogrovs under a single minute. Now can 20-25 wings of vasari bombers (10-12 carriers) destroy fully upgraded Argonev under a minute? Somehow i doubt it.

The other thing - frigates being faster than Vorastra close range. But thats exactly where you use the Maw. Its pointless that you can do some positioning pre-MPJ, as the frigates can move that second you perform the jump and try activating the Maw enough for that pre jump positioning ending up worthless....

BTW you can instakill more frigates now with Dissever than with the Maw. But whatever, the nerf has been done, its pointless to discuss it any further. I am fairly content with 30 targets anyway-

and here is the last thing - you are wrong about me. First of all, i dont play on ICO, just SP and against friends via hamachi obviously. I like Vasari (Loyalists) the most, that is true - but i stated my motivation in my previous post. It has nothing to do with me wanting Vasari being OP, i just do not want them to be stripped of their cool stuff. Be it in Rebellion or more importantly in future Sins game.

And if you look at my discussion with Turchany, my issue is not your call for nerfing phase missiles per se. I dont really care about that. My issue is Turchany´s complaining about Vorastra being too powerful and hard to kill, even now it both Maw and Desperation were nerfed. I would hazard a guess this complaining would continue even if the phase missiles were nerfed eventually, cause guess what? It would probably not affect Vorastra that much. Most importantly, it will still be equally hard to kill...

So do you see my point? I dont mind Vasari being balanced by phase missile nerfs. But you dont want them just to be balanced, you want them to be convenient to play against. Thats why Turchany bitches about Vorastra running away. Its inconvenient for him to chase it. But that is what i like about them, their mobility, their ability to run away...and do not want THAT changed. This goes beyond balance, this deals with the basic idea of the whole faction. 

What are the new bonuses for the AIs, because Unfair was already pretty tricky. Does this mean that Hard will be in between what Hard and Unfair were before, a balance between too easy and too hard? I always found the step from Hard to Unfair rather drastic. 

I played random huge and had 70 % all planets terran ...

Generate a few maps with the in-game map designer and it is very apparent that terrans are heavily biased...

I can only assume that the devs have programmed the game to generate a terran whenever the GSD asks for a DLC planet to generate....probably just a temporary fix to the phase lane bug....

Seems like an ideal time to get that 6000 population achievement! 

lol, apparently so.