Thoughts on balance and ship counters
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houghts on balance and ship counters
I have played all three races in MP game for 2 month and here are some thoughts on balance and ship counters.
Advent is the strongest faction by far for it have the strongest early and mid game, while it can transition to late game more smoothly. The main issue of advent is that their ships break ship counters. The notorious tempest is a missile ship not only counters PD, but also any ship below tier 3. if you test it you can find it can kill light frigate without a single loss if shift click to the back of it and then in front of it. They also perform very well against capital ship due to low cost, high health and have more dps to capital ship than typical light frigate. The shield burst + iconus guardian making almost all of their ship so tanky that nothing counters them. Illuminator buff is a mistake, there are no fleet composition can deal with illuminator + guardian now. It have effective shield is more than 2000 and will be able to shield burst in 40-50 second is sick, it can kill all target very fast, 20+dps with 400 pierce means it do more damage to anything below 400 durability which is better than a harcka or oppressor, and it still have 10dps against capital ship which is as much as you can get as non-capital ship can get. All the tech of advent is half priced compare to others and cost a lot less exotics. They also have the best refinery as the refining speed item can be mounted on any big planet with metal income. Their capital ship is the cheapest while having best performance in a small number due to the shield burst+guardian combo make them twice as tanky if they manage to shield burst once, and more than twice as tanky if it manage to shield burst more than once. Which is easy in a 5V5 capital ship fight. The economy of advent is also way too strong, their sanctuary spire give them whooping 50% income in planet, that is the same amount TEC can get for T3, their planetary mining is also the best even in T3, if you count culture then it is better than vasari no matter what tech level it is.
TEC have the problem of having the most expansive everything, except for capital ship is slightly cheaper than vasari. The economy of TEC really struggles early on because of the orbital structures and tech they have cost them twice as much as the advent, even after the orbital structure cost reduction their orbital structure is still the most expansive one. Trade system just cost too much to set up, a trade port take 1000 sec to repay itself is not viable in MP game, until T3 with the orbital structure cost reduction and the 25%trade boost to cut it down to 640 sec, it just not worth it. And as TEC have no better bonus on planet they will have weaker economy than advent without considering the expansive tech, structures and unit. The Gauss frigate cost way too much for a narrow usage unit. It perform worse than krank and illuminator when dealing with lower durability ship, similar performance against capital ship with krank and it cost twice as much as a krank, even close to a illuminator which not only better at dealing damage at all target but also twice as tanky. This cost efficiency make it worse than making capital ships such as kol. The tech tree for guass weapon is also weird, the damage buff is all in a capital ship item that cost 2 exotics. Look at the beams for vas and plasma for advent, they both have a nearly 50% dps increase in tech and a item give them 50%damage increase that cost 1 exotics. I don’t see why Gauss weapon need a special treatment.
Vasari have a rather balanced gamplay versus TEC, their ship is stronger but can’t deal with the flack burst TEC capital ship early on, they have a better late game fleet but their economy make sure they get there later. They don’t perform well against advent though. The guardian+ disciple+tempest crushes the krank+skirmisher, advent can pump out capital ship twice as much as vasari and once they have 3-4 halcyon they can fully block missiles, it just not gonna work.
