@Yarlen, we still have no news on the phase missiles, are you planning to change anything about them? These practically make late game Advent fleet suffer like hell against Vasari, not having any high-level capitalship after 2 seconds, or a titan exploded no matter if it's shields were still on, and maybe still powerful.. It would really make the game more balanced, as phase missile units have extreme advantage over their average racial counterparts (especially bombers) because they pass through shields. Vasari VS Advent is only fair in the very early game, but even there an Orkulus can stop Advent very easily..

Is it planned to be changed? or only in Sins2 if it is ever released..

Nope, no changes to phase missiles.

I am going to /sign that statement, as others have and will certainly continue to do so...

The Vasari vs. Advent matchup relative to the Vasari vs. TEC matchup is likely to be the single greatest balance issue after this patch, and it will be almost entirely because of phase missiles...as has been mentioned countless times, the base damage of Vasari bombers is too high...not only is this because they wield PMs, but also because in general higher HP units should have less DPS per fleet supply (as is the case for most things in the game)...

! ! !

/signed

I'm wondering, other than the addition of new modifiers and artifact changes, does 1.5 break total conversions? From the change logs, this doesn't appear to be the case, but that could be wrong.

I think Seleuceia is hitting on it.  The problem isn't Phase Missiles.  The problem is Vasari Bombers.  Phase Missiles on Assailants are fine.  Phase Missiles on capital ships are fine.  Phase Missiles on turrets are fine.  Even Phase Missiles on Orkies are fine.  The only problem is the Bombers.

I think I've seen mentioned before a 15%-20% nerf to Vasari bomber DPS.  IMO, this would really help to finish balancing out the Vasari (now that we are getting Maw and Jumping Orkie nerfs with 1.5).

A lot of skilled players, respected forum warriors, and members of the old guard have pushed or been pushing for a reduction to the base damage of Vasari bombers...IIRC the first person I saw bring it up was Darvin waaaay back in the day, and it wouldn't surprise me if someone else brought it up before him...

Of all the balance issues in sins, this is one of the oldest and most pervasive...it also is one that has some of the strongest consensus...I really don't think you're going to find too many people that think Vasari bombers are underpowered or even in line with the other SC....

Which begs the question...why is it still a problem 5 years later?

It's always been more exciting to point our fingers at crazy abilities and research like Wail and Maw. Who wants to make a thread and debate about a bunch of DPS numbers. We only ever did that for illuminators. 

How about something simpler for the vasari bombers, like say that the PM upgrades don't affect bombers?

That's something that is easy to implement and balance, I'd think.

/signed.

Vasari bombers continue to be a joke.   Every other phase missile unit in the game balances it's phase missiles by having about 30% less DPS per supply thyen the equivalent advent/TEC ships of the same class.  By contrast Vasari bombers have the second highest base DPS(Higher then TEC!) AND are the hardest to kill(most HP per bomber).

When it comes down to it, it's a simple numbers game.  Most weapon weapons gain +30-40% damage when fully upgraded. a 30% shield bypass chance by contrast is a 100% damage  average increase against a capship/titan with 70% shield mitigation.  This increase goes higher the more shield mitigation the tsrget ship has, up to +200% average damage against ships with 85% mitigation.

Not to mention, most of that damage is dealt directly to hull, making it even more effective- most ships targeted by vasari bombers die with thier shields still intact- meaning not only do they do more damage, but they don't have to do as much total damage.

All said, fully upgraded phase missiles easily kill capitalships & titans twice as fast as any other equally upgraded weapon type- and they do so while negating the usefulness of any shield mitigation bonuses or shield regen skills.

The Advent are hit hardest of course, but this is a general game balance problem that extends to every race and faction.  Even TEC are drastically affected by the fact that The vasari need substantially fewer bombers to hit "critical mass' then any other race.  Most factions need upwards of 80 wings to start killing Capitalships in 1-2 passes- Vasari only need 40-50.

That alone is a huge advantage being that bombers are such an enormous part of the late game.

Again, a 30% hit to Vasari bomber base DPS would be sufficient- after all all the other phase missile units are balanced by their inferior base DPS.

Anyway, now with my rant out of the way, I'd like to wrap up by saying that this patch as a whole looks absolutely phenomenal.   The patch tackles pretty much every major issue besides the Vasari Bomber problem- not to mentions includes a substantial buff to a very cool but previously inefficient strategic element(artifact discovery/control).  I'd like to stress that this patch has done nothing but exceed my expectation- while I may argue that phase missile changes will be necessary in the future, I don't consider the lack of them in this patch to in any way reduce how great this patch is.

Outstanding job!

Don't you mean most HP per squadron? Vasari bomber squads have the fewest number of strikecraft in the game, of course each individual bomber is the most durable.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/383347

Nope- Vasari bombers actually have the smallest base hull per squadron(not by much though).  total base squad hull are 140*3=420 for Vasari  100*5=500 for TEC and 75*7=525 for Advent. (considering available hull/armour upgrades TEC bomber squads probably have the most total damge sustainable)

But the fact that it's concentrated on few ships is a substantial advantage  that more the outweighs the lwoer total squadron hull.  First off anti-SC AoEs such as TK push and Flak burst hit each strikecraft individually- meaning their damage is 65% more effective against TEC squads and 133% more effective against Advent squads then Vasari squads.

Additionally having individual fighters have more HP means Vasari squads can sustain more shots before actually losing and DPS.  An advent squad only needs 75 damage focused in one place to start losing members of the squad and thus start losing DPS.  Even assuming perfect focusfire, the breakpoints in loss of DPS are significantly farther apart for the VAsari then other factions, meaning a given squadron tends to deal more total damage before being destroyed.

This resistance isn't a problem by it's self- but if AoE were as effective against Vasari Bomber as it is against, say advent bombers, It would be much more possible to wipe out a VAsari Bomber Swarm before it's phase missiles cause significant damage- as it is, their squads not only have the most damage, but are the hardest to actually impose DPS losses upon.

It is an advantage, but I do not think to the degree that it needs to factor in calculations. If they have less HP overall than I think that is a fair trade off, it is clearly the damage that is the problem. 

That said, I believe Vasari bombers also have more armor than other strikecraft. Did you factor that in as well?

I guess only Vasari fans are OK with this idea (both Vasari factions are no doubt the strongest in Rebellion, although have to check this remains the same after the 1.5 changes). Everyone who is playing on a higher level than a noob sees the difference between a Vasari bomber swarm and any other one (killing a capital ship easily with less squadrons than other race, dominating the field when having large numbers of bombers without having to worry about losing them fast). I still don't understand why is it OK to have two factions be overpowered when only a simple base damage change (maybe 20% as others mentioned before) could really make the situation better. Vasari bombers are very hard to kill because of their high hull and armor due to their low numbers, pair it up with shield negation and you have the overpowered Vasari bomber spam that is hardly killed by anything in the game. Try anti-strikecraft AoE-s, they just laugh at you, they only scratch bombers, try fighters and you will lose everything important before Vasari bombers are getting decimated. Flak frigates are also useless, they only scratch Vasari bombers.

This is not a good news

The other changes are awesome! , though it is a bit sad one of the most important and oldest issues still remain unchanged.

To be fair, the Vasari already got a lot of the nerfs in this patch. Perhaps they did not want to take drastic action on phase missiles until seeing how the balance was with all the Rebellion problems fixed.

No I had not- I had totally forgotten Vasari Bombers have 5 armour.  That's a pretty substantial increase to survivability.

There is still and will always be a discrepancy between the Vasari vs. Advent matchup and the Vasari vs. TEC matchup....even if the Vasari were the weakest faction, they still would then be much weaker to TEC than to Advent....it is in this way that the balance issue at hand is honestly independent of Vasari's overall strength...

To be fair, nerfing Vasari bombers is not necessarily the only way to remedy the problem...but it is by far the biggest problem with the Vasari faction after this patch...

I would be willing to increase the number of Vasari SC per squadron so that squadron HP increases but individual SC HP decreases...this would go to great lengths in keeping their SC competitive in fighter vs. bomber or corvette vs. bomber circumstances, but they would at least be vulnerable to cap AoEs just like the other 2 SC...

Hey Yarlen,

I'm finding things both in steams achievement list and other sources online for new achievements and planet types that aren't in game.  Such as Oceanic and Ferrus planets.  I've also found a reference to industrialization such as the Drill Baby Drill achievement for fully industrializing a Ferrus planet.  And there's another achievement for holding 10 different planet types at the same time, but the game currently only has 7 planet types.  Terran, Desert, Volcanic, Ice, Asteroid (either good or dead not sure they're considered separate types), and Rogue planetoid.  Is this update coming with extra features and content not already listed above.  And if not, when might we expect features added to the game that I'm finding referenced several places online.

It's not part of the update, but you'll find out more tomorrow.

Cool, thanks for the quick reply.

Here's a quick screen capture of the updated volcanic planet.

Impressive work!

THAT'S AWESOME! I hope other planets will look as fancy as this