TEC should be the economic faction, Advent the pure military with weak eco, Vasari is something unique like mobility and harassment, guerilla tactique as someone wrote before. But what do we have now? A Vasari that is both economic and both military power. It just doesn't feel right. Check Jingly's reply 350 and you can see something interesting. A vasari fleet is so powerful it can take on multiple players at once.. I have seen it many times that noone could defeat the only remaining VL player from the other team, the VL player destroyed half of the map (random large for a 5v5) while noone could defeat it alone, in 1v1 noone stands a chance. Well skilled players have to test it in 1.5 how changes work out, but it is ridiculous that Vasari has the military and economic strengths at the same time... They should have the second strongest fleet as they are retreating from their home systems, so why the hell should they be the strongest military power in the galaxy? Retreating but we have the time and power to enslave everyone as they don't stand a chance? Or wtf?

The decrease of Vasari bomber base damage should solve many problems along with a general phase missile block tech for the Advent (the one from culture is worthless, you rarely fight in your pure culture to get the full effect..), and would make the killing of Vorastra not a gambling of whether all my capital ships get destroyed before they reach the Vorastra y the Vasari bombers, maybe even risking the destruction of my own titan...

Timmaigh, try to play against Vasari bomber swarms, 50-100 wings will effortlessly kill any capital ship in a very short time, and your titan is likely to get killed before doing anything useful too, as only the Vorastra can escape bombers due to its speed, every other titan is slow for compensation of their brutal firepower, well this is not working for the VL.. The only difference between high level titans and the Vorastra that they can be killed.. My problem is not fully with the VL titan, the bigger problem is that it is a VL titan, not an advent titan or TEC. A VL late game fleet is cruel, in battles every player tries to get rid of the titan asap, but Vorastra will not die, and meanwhile your losses will be extreme (like your homeworld is stripped and you can do nothing about it, by the time you get there it's only a dead asteroid left), and if the VL player thinks he need to have a full late game fleet noone can defeat it alone.. Or 2 players at once.. And try to catch it before all your important planets are gone.. Oh, try to attack his empire, he doesn't give a f, as he has nothing to lose, and you will have fun for several long minutes with his Orkuli, as even with huge bomber swarms they last long.. and you will never be able to cause tremendous damage to his empire while he can destroy your ful economy without anything to worry about..

Maybe the Vorastra is fine in the 1.5, I don't know, haven't tried it, not many players go online with the 1.5 beta, and I don't often play Sins these times, but it hasn't changed that Vasari late game fleet is still unstoppable and unbalanced.

Well devs think PM Vasari bombers are ok, I don't know why, so it seems useless to waste time on discussing how OP phase missiles are, things are likely not to change in the future..

@ezeltje299 if the advent charecter is continuesly barraging you with that cannon. no its the most OP thing in the game no ammount of culture output will stop it. 

@ARESIV ive almost got the map complete to test all the eco together at ounce. just need someone who is good with VAS or advent/ the eco have to more or less be built the same for both sides to see which is best. i imagine pervasive economy coupled with a couple other thing will make TEC by far best in ECO

"

Induced Reverence takes 18 minutes to pay itself off, on a maxed out population terran planet.

also iif the advent have a crapton of culture like they should you cant just jump to the back and nom nom nom planet if u can cap them

"

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"

ya but most peopel think TEC are the best race. want proof? go to the sins homepage and on the right side of the sreen there is a poll for which race is the best in sins TEC are 50% of the vote. vas and advent roughly 25% each

also no. im not a hardcore vasari whore. i enjoy playing as advent loyalist and the TEC faction. i just dont want the vasari to be crippled into a pathetically useless race when there military is FAR superior  think about it. these guys have been running for 10k years sure. but their empire existed for a long time before that and the rolled other empires and brought them into slavery until something bit them in the ass and they had to run. mypoint is. these guys are FAR ADVANCED compared to the other races. so them being superior should be somewhat expected.

also as an argument for vas bomber fleet raping capital ships. advent carrier cap. and whatever that throw ability is called. not to mention pack fighters hardcore. tahts what i always do and it works out fine.

TEC actually are economic faction, Vasari economy might be better than that of Advent, but certainly nowhere near TEC one. Additionally, as you talk about lore and how things do not make sense with Vasari in regard to lore - the Vasari are actually meant to be a military faction, with a mobility upside that is. Do not know where this notion about Advent having strongest military comes from -  the Advent were meant to be the "culture" faction from the beginning.

That is where Aresiv´s ratings fail BTW, he always rates the factions only when it comes to military and economy, but there are 3 factions and 3 categories! And based on that, it was meant to be TEC - economy, Advent - culture, Vasari - military.

The obvious issue there in order of importance the culture is in the last spot. This is at least how the players perceive the game IMHO, or in other words i guess it is more natural to people to take care of military and economy first an foremost, as they bring to you visible results of your actions. On other hand the culture is bit more abstract and majority of people prefer to win the game by power of their fleets, not power of their culture. I can understand that as i am the same way BTW.

Anyway, this IMHO leads to a situation, where even Advent players neglect the culture willingly and i think this discussion is a good testament to that. Why are we anyway talking always about how Advent stands no chance in battle of weapons against Vasari, when area of Advent expertise is a culture? Why are you not complaining that culture - the main supposed power of your fav faction -  is not good enough to make a difference instead? 

What i am trying to say now, perhaps we should be discussing the ways of making culture more relevant, thus buffing the Advent the way the faction was designed, instead of this constant whining about Vasari being OP.

The other thing, i read Jinglys post - 350. And he says following:

- that he thinks you exaggerate quite a bit - could not agree more here

- that he witnessed a game, where VL player took on 3 other players and almost won. Now 2 things are important here: that was just one game, surely you dont expect the game to be balanced based on anecdotal reference like that. Maybe the Grimm was way too good, maybe the other 3 players were not as decent as Jingly thinks. Anyway. what is more important here, is the little word "almost". Saying "almost won" at least to me implies that he in fact lost. And that was actually what i was asking about. I am not interested whether VL players can go and "almost" win in 1v3 situation regularly.

- that he played another game, where if i understood that correctly, the VL player - doci - alone against more players barely lost. Do i need to point out that "barely" losing is still losing? I dont play competitively, does the game hold stats on how many games you "almost won" and "barely lost"? I would not know.

 Maybe next time you get beaten by Vasari you may just say to yourself that you almost won. If thats the same to you as actual winning.

EDIT: Oh, and 50-100 wings of any kind of bombers, not just the Vasari ones, will kill any capital ship very quickly.

"- that he played another game, where if i understood that correctly, the VL player - doci - alone against more players barely lost. Do i need to point out that "barely" losing is still losing? I dont play competitively, does the game hold stats on how many games you "almost won" and "barely lost"? I would not know"

not to mention ITS DOCI WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HERE AND GRIMM. not ur run of the mill players.

Is it normal for the seekers, that i can't stop the "all auto-attacking" or is that a bug?

They do it because this way they can find and attack the mines.. Not the best but what can you do..?

too long to put the text in

VASARI, the looong millennia journey, uber technology etc etc. They can be strong, but I guess they should need to worry about their numbers, I don't think they could afford any losses and this could be their weakness, keeping the armada together with minimal losses. But in the game they can easily rebuild, a strong economy paired with a fleet that can defeat 2-3 times larger ones.. So their eco is not even used at 100% percent most of the times. Losing a capital ship? Who cares? See the point? They are running away from something, they should not play like the other races, they should have an inherent penalty of ship loss or maybe even more expensive ships. They almost have the economy of the TEC.. its no good, and their fleet is the best, rapes advent hard..

How do you know Jingly is right and I am exxaggerating quite a bit? You never played skilled games online and you don't have experience from games against VL.. All right I sometimes exxaggerated things, but the point is the important, Vasari is too strong. They should have a smaller fleet!! like 1500 commandpoints compared to the other races 2000. I don't think Vasari brought their full dark armada with them.. Most of it was lost I guess in the unknown event (still bullshit, couldnt they use cameras and internet??? wtf Vasari, they dont even know what destroyed their empire)

I laughed a lot when i read Advent is about culture (though I know they should be about it, but still..) You do know culture worth nothing, right? (though I always get culture with all races as soon i can, but it's my obsession to do, no real economic or military advantage from it)  the overall 10 percent income increase that doesn't affect trade ports.. And the brutally expensive and useless level8 allure of the unity? level8 and only increases 5-5%... OK AL has a good stuff, lev5 culture spread and 5-5% allegiance increase, thats good, but allure is bad, should be 10-10 percent, or lower on the tree, much lower.. The side effects of culture are wery weak for Advent, the mitigation that only makes Vasari stronger (more mitigation the more effective phase missiles are.... -.- ) only annoys TEC, but they can bear it I guess. The TEC and Vasari bonuses are both much better in my opinion, but still not much and it takes much time to get them.. Use culture for offensive???? How the hell? 1-2 enemy culture centers and maybe a capitalship there makes this impossible, even the deliverance engine is weak in this stuff, only need to put 1-2 culture centers around the map and see no problem..

The main problem is the allegiance I think. If it was +10 and +10 increase with culture for TEC and Vasari, and 20 or 30% for Advent, that would make a difference.. But if you compare the current form of culture you will see it never reaches the uberness of trade ports.. never.. But how can you make culture good for Advent? If Advent gets a much better economy TEC will have serious difficulties and there will be new type of complaining.. And Vasari will still steamroll Advent, just Advent will be able to replace losses better.. I say give advent +10 percent allegiance increase, and give them a research that makes them immune to phase missiles in their own culture... 100% immune! It is a brutal mistake from the developers they think Advent would let phase missiles penetrate their shields for decades without researching some countermeasures?????? lol seems legit, if you hit me once unexpected and start a fight, next time i will defend against your attack.. but here its like, oh, you have a nice weapon that penetrates our main defense? good for you, have a nice day. And Advent ships are slaughtered for decades by Vasari, only recently there is a tiny side effect of culture increase, that is completely useless as you never get full values at border words or enemy territory..

It seems like Timmaigh you have ideas to make culture actually useful for Advent, maybe it gets the developers attention if those are actually useful ideas, but how can we know? Lets hear them (I am tired of talking about Vasari OPness, lets talk about Advent instead)

Well, according to the lore Advent are supposed to be about culture, like it or not. Vasari are the militaristic faction of the three. I am not making that up. I am glad you had a good laugh.

And i am aware about culture not having the same importance as economy and military, did i not said it myself? However you tell me, how culture and in turn Advent as main "culture" faction being weak in any way or form concerns--- Vasari?

I did not really think about ways of buffing Advent culture, i did not really played Advent that much, i dont really know what their culture does beyond increasing shield mitigation and phase missiles block.... but why should it be my concern anyway? You like the Advent, you play them, you tell me....

For example you say that TEC and Vasari have better cultural bonuses than Advent, why not suggest giving those to Advent? I could certainly live without 15 percent increase to damage given by Vasari culture, i dont build culture until i am forced to or have money to burn anyway... and if Vasari weapons are so strong, they dont need this bonus anyway...while Advent could use it.

And believe me, i would be way more willing to give up this bonus than anything Vorastra/mobility related.

Disable the function with a right mouse click, like you can do it with all other ships?^^

My problem is that they don't stay out of reach of the enemy starbase or the defending plattforms, while in the meantime my fleet is attacking the enemy fleet. It's not that big problem, but it's annoying.

well devs wanted every race to have unique cultural bonuses.. A slight economic increase would be good, like with every culture upgrade some allegiance increase, with 10-20% max at the end, or making the culture center increase trade income by xx percent (it would be a good idea if not only 1-5% increase..)

The real problem is we can say anything, it would need so much testing and balancing devs won't make it happen, they don't want advent to be OP against TEC.. So culture will be as useless as it is (at least until sins2) and ruining Advent game experience..

Keep complaining about that then. You whined about Maw that long that you finally got your nerf.

BTW speaking of culture, how does it work, if you play locked teams and your teammate builds culture centers, thus spreading his culture over your planets as well (as you did not got culture yourself). Does his culture gives any bonuses to you, or is it just there to push enemy culture, but you get no other bonuses (allegiance and whatever affect ships)?

@Timmaigh  (stupid quoting didn't work well this time..)

Itss a really good question, I noticed you get your own bonus if you researched it and your ally is the same race as you (and has culture of course), but i cant confirm it works with other races culture.. Never really tested it, with AI ally it is me who has culture on most enemy fronts as I try to defend the AI if possible as he can't really defend worlds well even with fully upgraded starbases.. I would say NO YOU WONT GET CULTURE BONUS FROM OTHER RACES, but I am not 100% sure.. Maybe others will know it better thats why I capitalized those letters..

You guys completely took my post out of context. So let me just say that while Turchany is obviously exagerrating quite a bit, in essence hes correct. How correct is unknown until 1.5 hits and people are able to test the balance. Additionally i see vasari win 1v2 almost everytime and 1v3 quite often. I probably havent explained those 2 games above very well but the players in them were very decent. Im easily in top 10 players on ICO and have beaten Grimm or Doci before, not to boast or anything and have had same feedback from them.

When you see a lower skilled player just playing vasari abc and completely shutting down one of the best players around only cos hes vasari something isnt right. Its really common knowledge in mp games, some hosts dont allow more than 1 vasari per side, some skilled players dont even pick vasari cos its just too easy and breaks the game. As i said earlier *even* close games are those most fun! One thing i DO love about vasari is that new players find it a lot easier to get into the game as early orkies allow them to survive a lot longer than they would with other races and as a result learn and experience the game more.

After all that though i think the patch has gone a long way at overall balance and the only issue i can see is the phase missile damage on vasari. Advent do NOT need buffing anymore, culture is underated (could use cheaper culture uprades but not neccessary) and some advent ships are very powerful.

@Timmy I never wanted any skill/ability removed, just a damage nerf OR whats even better a smaller damage "boost" vs Advent.  To be honest game is nearly there imo ( might be wrong but 1.5 is lookin great) and perfect balance will never be achieved. Just look at starcraft 2, with all the millions ActiBlizzard steal from gullible WoW/Diablo3 population that game still isnt balanced and a lot of people are unhappy.

Sins is great and hopefully will stay that way for a long time. Just nerf PMs vs Advent please Yarlen!

EDIT: @ Timmy yes you get bonuses too and it is a lot more valuable than just to push enemy culture back. In Eco position i love sending sbs to my allies and gettting max culture on them. With enough upgrades (easy to get as eco) they wlll also be able to see through fog of war which is invaluable and underated in my opinion.

Thanks for your ansers guys! Just one more question: so you get the bonuses from your ally´s culture. But which bonuses do you actually get, yours or his? I mean, i am Vasari, he is TEC, his culture is over my empire, do i get the Vasari damage bonus from it, or the TEC bonus (which i guess is economy related?)

@Jingly> i did not took your post out of context. I simply separated and highlighted facts you stated in contrast to the parts which were just opinions and impressions. Obviously, except the Turchany related part

For example you say now, that you see Vasari win 1v3 quite often. But you gave examples where the exact opposite has happen, if by "almost win" and "barely lost" meant basically that the VL players lost. So your perception/impression of what is happening does not seem to match the examples/facts you provided. Why is that? If you see VL win quite often, why not give an example, where it actually really happened? Maybe cause it did not really happens that often, as you seem to think?

My point being, you cant balance the game based on impressions. 

BTW, by saying the culture is underrated, did you actually meant that it is not so worthless as people make it out to be? Cause it seems Turchany is going to disagree with you . I really cant say from my experience, as i tend to ignore it in SP, but if you meant it this way, it kinda supports my opinion that most players, even the Advent ones, cant really "appreciate" its benefits, as it gives less tangible results than economy or military, thus tend to underrate it quite a lot. 

Anyway, if you think the PM nerf could make the game finally balanced enough for the PvP community to be happy, i honestly hope that the devs hear you out.

Devs ignore requests on nerfing the base damage of Vasari bombers (so far)..

Culture has little benefits comapred to other things like trade or military. The side efefcts are good but you can easily and happily live without them.. Though an eco player can get an edge if he gets culture and the other teams eco dont (many times this was the cause I was better than the other team's eco player and won the game..) but maybe if I put trade instead of culture the results would have been the same.. Don't know.. btw I was Vasari one time in those games I mentioned before, and my impression is that Vasari can be as good eco as TEC (or even better, in that game I had 210 credit income lol, highest ever).. Back to advent culture, the mitigation can be good, makes the starbase even harder to destroy, but against Vasari it's not much of a help, and again I must say that you won't get full effect on border worlds, only 50-75% depending on the situation. The earlier culture center can be a big help early game, but think about it, you need high-pop planets to get as good increase as you would from a trade port and it needs time to go in effect, further the planet is, slower the allegiance increase.. The extraction increase is good, I can't relate it to the refineries as noone uses them online, and to trade ports as I am not a mathematican and cant exchange metal values to credits in my head so quickly.. But I guess still better to get trade ports everywhere, and if you consider your opponent is likely to get culture sometime, your economic edge is nullified, and other races will get the edge cause of their trade increase techs..

Hi Timmy

I am not sure what you are asking exactly, but i think  you get the bonuses from the strong culture (colour line) that is affecting your space if you have 2 friendly cultures. I dont think you get both, just the strongest. I do know though that allied benefit from your culture and upgrades though.

As for VL thing im not saying that my opinion/impressions on it is a fact, just a general agreement between players who play multiplayer. Basically any game where a skilled player gets vasari in ECO or untroubled spot.

As for advent while i think advent, particularly loaylists, could do with more culture oriented gameplay i think its is fine as it is. It would be nice if the whole race revolved around culture, however advent have not been designed like that. You cant go and say that they need culture to be on the level with TEC trade and Vasari Military as they are already pretty balanced. Cheapest lfs, strong drone hosts, strong cap ships, strong titans, ilums are best lrm in game etc..

Timmy for president!. Or least Yarlen's sassistant...

Are you suggesting that culture centers should act like trade ports or be as beneficial as TEC trade ports? Because like Advent have their own trade ports. Some games you wont get the chance to go culture as advent, same way TEC cant go trade ports some games. Its an extra feature of the race that sometimes can be used to gain advantage.

By the way TEC have by a long long way the best ECO in the game. Advantage of VAsari eco is that they can easily fortify trade planets with orkies and use them to increase income as well as easily extend trade lines. Their trade is just basically super safe. Advent have the worst trade/eco as its intended and designed to be that way.

Main probelm is Advent trade network will always be inferior to TEC and Vasari ones (and guess what is the late game main income source..), and they don't have anything for compensation, and if you check the extraction increase, things get even worse, I don't see the reason why can't they have crystal extr incr like TEC have the metal one? level1-2-4 not 3-4-5 and for metal Advent has 2-3-4 now I think.. For 2 civilian labs TEC can increase metal twice, crystal once while Advent can only do metal once.. And it IS A SIGNIFICANT WEAKNESS, even when you are not eco, in skilled games I always research some extraction, but as Advent I can't really do anything as they are very expensive.. as TEC having all level1-2 extraction was every time a significant help even against better players than me.. TEC start is the same as Advent, outspamming the other with one ship type or 2, but the most important factor is that Advent cannot rebuild losses that fast due to their shitty eco even in the start.. I am sure you will argue with me, but believe me, that 27% metal and 13% crystal increase is a huge one after several minutes.. while advent has almost nothing at level2 research Culture is a thing, but at best that is a 10 percent increase and takes much time to apply everywhere...

Against Vasari Advent must rebuild, but from what??

You are making it sound like everything should be exactly the same for all races. You do realise that if advent were to get the techs abnd upgrades you are asking for, their military and culture power would have to be significantly reduced. Aggression is key for advent, they are not a sit back and build mass trade ports and upgrade extractors faction, even the lore supports it.

You only get what your faction has researched. You won't get ANY bonus from the allies research.

You only get the full bonus if the planet is 100% saturated with culture.

Can you clarify what you meant there as i cant make sense of it? Do allies not benefit from my culture research sitting in MY culture? Also your second sentence contradicts the first.

Noone asks every race to be the same, they should be equally good with their own stuff.. Like culture should be nearly as good as trade (but meanwhile Advent trade worths nothing because I don't think they are that much of a traders.. maybe temple of communions should generate some credits?), etc..

For the last sentence, how can they not sit back and fight effectively when basically Vasari massacres them? How can they be aggressive (and not foolishly) if all their ships are likely to be easily killed by Vasari while they can't effectively rebuild them like TEC?

Point made

Oh yeah, now i am confused . Need more clarification. So me being Vasari, sitting in allied TEC culture. I dont get the TEC cultural bonus - antimatter regen? - in this situation ever. But i can get my own Vasari cultural bonus - from their culture, although i need to have it researched first. Did i get it right?

How do i know the planet is fully saturated with the culture? Is that represented by allegiance? Or is it only if all the phase lanes connected to the gravity well in question are colored in my team color?

Does allied culture increase allegiance on my planets? Or for that do i need to have my own culture?

If every connected phase lane is allied colour.. Basically it never happens where it counts the most.. Enemy territory or frontline worlds, as the opponent will push your culture back and at best you will have an empty lane that decreases the bonus you get from culture.. 50% of all phase lanes means 50% of the current researched bonus.. Not very much huh? Don't expect much more from borderworlds, you would need hardcore culture production to have full culture there..