TEC capital ship abilities are a pathetic *@#ing joke.

Uranium - 235

Join Date 09/2006

TEC capital ship abilities are a pathetic *@#ing joke.

-- Kol

Gauss - Sounds good, until you realize it's blocked by Shield Mitigation. In additon, the Kol has to ever-so-slowly turn to face the attacker to use it. One shot from the main laser array will send shield mitigation to at least 40-50%, the Gauss will almost never do more than half damage, meaning ONLY 400 at level 3. In addition, the antimatter cost of this ability is through the roof for how worthless it is. If you leave it on autocast, the Kol will drain its antimatter trying (and failing) to destroy just one ship.

Flak - This is without a doubt the most pathetic ability I've ever seen. If it were replaced with a button that would self-destruct the ship, I'd probably use it more. Seriously, I've probably destroyed one or two fighters with this (that were speedily replaced). I don't even purchase it any more, or even bother to turn it on auto activate. All it'll do is waste antimatter trying to destroy one fighter, and I'm pretty sure at level 3, it can't even destroy a fighter from 100% health.

Antimatter Shield - Wow, a semi-decent ability. The fact that it consumes more and more antimatter at higher levels is pretty sad though - I thought the point of higher levels was to make the ability better.

Finest Hour - A pretty good ability, as far as level 6's go, I suppose. There's better. It'd be nice if the Kol's perimeter guns did a bit more damage to make this more useful. I can't complain about it, except for the fact that it's one of only two non-shit abilities of the Kol.

-- Sova

Missile Batteries - They're a nice boon to an otherwise defenseless carrier. A decent choice.

Embargo - An ability that becomes more and more useless as the game goes on. Early game it can cripple the enemy and provide a huge boon to your own economy. Late-game it really doesnt' affect the enemy much (as they have many planets, losing one isn't too bad) and you won't notice much income (you can't see how MUCH you're bringing in, which is disappointing at any rate)

Heavy Strike Craft - Every race has something that makes their strikecraft better, and I'm pretty sure that the TEC have the worst strike craft by design. The shit part is that their 'improvement' is a capital ship ability, whereas the Advent are done by research (unsure about the Vasari), meaning ONLY Sova strikecraft get what is effectively a mild improvement. The end result is that it's a DECENT ability as far as the Sova's upgrades, it's really the ONLY ability that helps it do its job better, but in the big picture it's pretty stupid.

Heavy Manufacturing - Really? A level 6 ability that's designed around what? Helping my carrier just in case I'm a retard and got the swarms of strikecraft killed? Are you serious? Oh, my bad, it improves my planets somewhat too - give me a break. One of the most ridiculous level 6 abilities.

-- Akkan

Colonize - Whatever. Every faction has one of these.

Ion Bolt - Oh here we go. The second worst ability in the game, right in front of Flak. Sounds great doesn't it? Paralyze an enemy ship and get some real damage on it - oh what's that? At Level 3, it ONLY LASTS 7 SECONDS? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Hahhahahahahahh! The only reason it's better than the Flak ability is because it can disable a phase jump. Aside from that, this is a complete joke. For comparison, the Advent's "Reverie" ability does the exact same thing, consumes less antimatter, and lasts 4x longer.

Targetting Uplink - It sounds like a good passive ability, until you realize that the base accuracy of all ships is pretty damn high to begin with, and the bonus is pretty low. I've never noticed an improvement whatsoever with this.

Armistice - I've never found a good use for this except running away. This is like Heavy Manufacturing - an ability designed not to help the ship do its job, but to help you in case you're a schmuck and you're about to die. I'd rather NOT have abilities based around RETREATING, thank you. The only other purpose this could have is a temporary delay to bring in reinforcements, but if you're playing on a big map, chancese are this will be a minor boon, at best.

-- Dunov

Shield Restore - Wow, the first ability so far that is actually rather good. The Dunov itself is the only TEC capital ship worth a flying fuck. You can't diss Shield Restore, especially if there's two Dunov's.

EMP Charge - A 'decent' ability. It really doesn't do that much even at level 3, however. It's only really useful for burning Antimatter. The shield portion is pretty damn weak.

Magnetize - Here's the irony of the TEC. Their main battleship has the most pathetic, shit ability in the entire game for destroying fighters, but this big, lumbering, nearly defenseless freighter is armed with the best anti-strikecraft weapon in the game. It not only does damage to enemy ships AND instantly destroy strikecraft, but you can target it at a DISTANCE (so it doesn't only ever hit that ONE fighter cruising past like Flak does), and it lasts quite a while.

Flux Field - Again, a great, solid ability. The Dunov has some of the greatest abilities, but it's a shame that they're all support abilities for OTHER ships, not itself, so even though you have Dunov's, you still have to rely on the other shit capitals.

-- Marza

Radiation Bomb - This is a first for the TEC, a capital ship with abilities that augment what its supposed to do, and do so well. Radiation Bomb isn't the greatest, at any rate, but it's a start for them. The DOT isn't mitigated, but I'm pretty sure the explosion is, so it's really not that lethal. It does last quite a while, but the blast is EXTREMELY small.

Raze Planet - An ability that sounds great until you realize that it's pretty worthless. Populations already die pretty fast, to a barrage, and even at level 3, taking a couple hundred HP off of a 5000 HP target is a sad joke. The cooldown is long, it's pretty much in-line with the other 90% of the TEC abilities, in that you could never use it and you'd never miss it.

Incendiary Rounds - Oh snap. No complaints here. Passive ability that adds a little more unmitigated damage is always nice. Why the TEC didn't think to equip their BATTLESHIP with something that doesn't totally suck is beyond me.

Missile Barrage - *sigh* What exactly is 150 MITIGATED damage going to do? To ANYTHING? It looks pretty, that's about it. I'm pretty sure I'll save the 150 antimatter (or however much it costs) and use Radiation Bomb instead, since it does damn-near the EXACT SAME THING.

--

Seriously, whoever designed these abilities needs to be shot out of a cannon into a wall.

Ion Bolt and Flak are without a doubt the two biggest jokes in line here - Ion Bolt especially since Reverie can be chain-cast almost indefinitely and wipe out a capital one-on-one, but Ion Bolt will just make your enemy laugh at what a worthless douchebag you are.

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Excerpts from post #18, by Carnston :

Originally Posted By PeskyFly [>>>] We don't know what the "Shields" in Sins are made of, so we can't tell if a magnetized projectile shot from a coilgun or railgun will actually do anything to them.

[Carnston >>>] They're likely some ultra-high-tech forcefields that we can barely understand from our current technological standpoint

On the topic of « shields », here is what PhD in Physics Lawrence Krauss says :

« Warping space has other advantages as well [besides faster-than-light space travel]. Clearly, if spacetime becomes strongly curved in front of [a spaceship], then any light ray [...such as a laser beam] will be deflected away from the ship. This is doubtless the [Einsteinian spacetime-geometry] principle behind deflector shields.

[...By manipulating, for example, « coherent graviton emission », a] coherent gravitational field is, in modern parlance, precisely what curves space [and what would protect a spaceship from attacking laser & particle beams]. »

Lawrence M. Krauss, The Physics of Star Trek, NY : BasicBooks, 1995, p. 57.

(The book has a foreword by Stephen Hawking ... so, it's not amateurish b.s.)

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Clearly, if spacetime becomes strongly curved in front of [a spaceship], then any light ray [...such as a laser beam] will be deflected away from the ship.

Bah. The ability to see the enemy is based on light going through that exact same curvature of space. If the light curves for you to see it, then a laser won't mind shooting right down that curve to hit its target.

That could suck for projectile weaponry, though.

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I think that's the point, though. Space curves around the ship. If space itself curves around a ship then a projectile would have to move through that curvature. Projectiles move through space too, whether that spaces is curved or not. But the idea would be to manipulate that curve so that the path of the object moving through the curved space would go around the ship creating that curve.

If space is curved around a ship and a weapon travels through space to reach its target then it must therefore travel through the space that has been curved. Now if the space in question has been curved in such a way as to create a path around a ship then that weapon will travel in that path, around the ship. This would apply to any projectile just as to a laser beam, as both travel through space. If phase missiles phase in and out of normal space, they would be the exception to this, as they could theoretically phase out of the curved area of space and back in once past it.

Now here's what I want to know: if lasers (i.e. light) is curved around a ship by its shields then you shouldn't be able to see that ship. It's the same principle behind cloaking devices in Star Trek. Shields of ships in SoaSE become black as they take damage, but if light was being bent around the ship then they would instead become translucent. That would lead me to believe there's some other kind of technology at work.

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Kol:

Gauss either needs to bypass mitigation or get a 2x dmg bonus.
Shields use a lot of antimatter like the gauss so instead of lowering the antimatter amount why not just raise the ships overall amount.

As for flak some people already gave good solution for fixing it.

Marza:

Radiation bomb need bigger blast radius.
Planet Raze is and awesome ability. I thought ti sucked to until i noticed that is was 80 planet damage and 10 population killed per hit. Meaning at lvl 1 you hit 2 time, a 3 you hit 4 times, and at 3 you hit 6 times. So at lvl 3 it 480 to planet.
Incendiary round no problems with them.
Missile barrage: What a joke what barrage? Hell i ain't even sure this ability work at all. From description it seems like it would deal damage to all ships including friendlies. I was unable to notice this. Also when placing the ship smack tab int he middle of enemy fleet i was also unable to notice any damage to enemy when the ability activated. I personally take the AoE of off this ability and make ti targetable that would deal 150 dmg per second to 1 ship for 15 seconds. Maybe 250 instead of 150 but you would need to check balance for that.

Dunov:
No real problems here EMP charge could cause more dmg to shield and drain more antimatter. Other then that it is fine.

Akkan:

Colonization: one small change. Lvl you get 1 extractor, Lvl2 you get 2 and lvl 3 you get 3.
Ion Bolt: Either double the duration time or cut antimatter cost by half.
Targeting uplink: Like said chance to hit is already very high thus pointless. Movign those point to Max range would be more worthwhile.
Armistice: It's fine the way it is making ti affect only enemy ships would make it overpowered.

Sova:
Missile batteries: Nice ability but what do you gain by makign it lvl 3 the duration, cooldown, antimatter cost are all the same as lvl 1. IS the batteries it's self better?
Embargo, Awesome skill.
Heavy Strike Craft: The bad part is that it only affect it's own fighters. I would make it affect the fighters of every host ship within a certain radius to the Sova.
Heavy Manufacturing: Very decent. But the effect to planet should be double and friendly host ships in the Sova's heavy strike craft range should replace strike craft 2x faster.

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I didn't realize raze planet hits multiple times. I guess the info card could use an update! that makes it a far more effective ability than I first thought.

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Oh no my capital ships don't all have a "I hit this button and all enemy ships die at once" button to win the game for me!

Sins is not all about the capitals. Most of the TEC abilities are useful (Ion Bolt for jump disabling etc). And (I think) that's exactly what they are supposed to be: Useful but not game-deciding.

Only Advent has to make up for their lack of LRM with game deciding capital ship abilities

About the Marza: Yes, bombing hits multiple times and makes planet razing great.
I tried the lvl6 in the middle of an enemy fleet and didn't notice any HP change on a few ships that were on the outer region of the ability circle. In the center I notices HP changes but that could also have been because of the ongoing battle and not because of the Marza ability ... Yes, devs should probably check for a bug there.

As for improving it: 300 AoE damage would be nice. Or make it Cleansing Brilliance like, but targeted with splash instead of a straight line ... three pulses with some AoE and 250 damage each or something like that.

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Ok, firstly its not imbalanced that TEC caps do not have great abilities since their army is the strongest. Second, you're just plain wrong about alot of the things you say:

- Kol Adaptive forcefield and lv6 are VERY GOOD abilities, the kol is one of the very few caps which is difficult to kill even with focus fire and out of those (kol,kortul,radiance) it is the most survivable.
- Sova Embargo is incredably strong early game, where you can shut down someone's eco while you build ships and kill them. Rapid manufacturing is pretty much the best carrier lv6 ability since squads die so fast.
- Dunov you didn't complain about much - good

- Akkan Colonize, Ion Bolt and Armistice are all useful abilities. Ion bolt can make it very difficult for an enemy cap to escape, and armistice is great if you need to retreat (and if you think you never need to do this, you're not playing good enough players). Targetting Uplink is also good since it increases the already-stupid range of the javelis LRM frigate.
- Marza Radiation Bomb and Raze Planet are both very useful abilities. Raze Planet is probably the best anti-planet ability you will realistically use (the revalation's lv6 is awesome... but it requires lv6 revalation

).

Also, sucky abilities do NOT mean that the capship sucks. For example, as TEC I pretty much always go kol, because it doesnt die. Try doing that with a dunov and you will probably lose it quickly or have to retreat it every 3 seconds. In short, TEC caps are pretty much fine - they certainly do not need a buff.

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I thought heavy manufacturing wasn't very useful either , but I found that you can use it to scuttle and instantly change your strike craft from bombers to fighters (or vice versa) if need be, so that's not too bad

. And the production speed increase for your planet is handy at times.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the tax rate listed on the planet what will be stolen by Embargo? It's a good ability before everyone is running around with huge fleets.

I basically agree with everything else. I just think capital ships need to either contribute less to mitigation or ignore a portion of it.

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Gauss cannons are in reality electromagnetic guns that blast particles at high velocities. (1)

I'm hoping the usage of Gauss in this game is a mistake, as any form of electro magnetism would disable devices and destroy. (2)

A gauss gun or any type of Gauss weapon/railgun should NOT be blocked by any form of technology, it should be able to disable technology. (3)

A coilgun or Gauss gun is a type of projectile accelerator that uses one or more electromagnetic coils to accelerate a magnetic projectile to high velocity. (4)

A coilgun uses magnetic dischage without contact. (5)

Granted the disacharge has no electric current, but a magnetic discharge nontheless shouldn't be stopped by technology. (6)

And a small gauss gun would only be able to take out small objects. (7)

But were talking gauss cannons on what is warships, 100's of miles long. These should at least be able to disable medium sized ships. (8)

...

It's simply a emp gun shooting plain magnetic particles. (9)

And why does it take huge amounts of antimatter, when it has no electric current running thru it? (10)

The simple fact that railguns have been the preferred method of choice by the Navy since the 70's shows which is the more destructive weapon. (11)

...

After thinking about it, considering how technically advanced the civilizations of Sins is, a Gauss gun is a complete and utter waste.

Even if it's magnetic, considering the amounts of computer tech, if it slams into a huge carrier it'll only take out 3-4 computer systems. (12)

(1) They don't blast 'particles' unless by 'particles' you mean macro-sized bullets. Then yes.

(2) I think perhaps you misunderstand that a Gauss canon does not have some kind of EMP surge associated with it. It is simply a device that uses magnets to accelerate a bullet instead of explosive high-pressure gases (like in a regular rifle).

(3) You have a strange use of the word 'technology'. A Gauss canon's projectile is basically a bullet so anything that won't block a bullet won't block a Guass canon.

(4) The projectile is not magnetic, the accelerators are magnetic. The projectile is just a conductor that is easily affected by a magnetic field.

(5) I'm not really sure what you even mean by this. There definitely IS contact somewhere, or the thing couldn't accelerate. The bullet, at the least, is in contact with the strong magnetic field.

(6) I feel that perhaps your wording could be a bit more precise here. I'm a physicist and have no clue what it is you're trying to convey.

(7) A bullet travelling at significant velocity would impact with the same energy as its mass in TNT (or even higher if the velocity is higher and so on). So I don't see why the arbitrary limit.

(8) A larger array of accelerators can put out a higher speed, yes, but there is no arbitrary 'bullet size determines damage rule' with relativistally-fast travellilng projectiles.

(9) It is definitely not an EMP gun, and it definitely does not shoot 'magnetic particles.' It fires ordinary macro-sized bullets just like any other gun.

(10) And how would you create a magnetic field that can be turned on and off at will without an electric current?

(11) The real reason is probably that they are cheaper to build for the velocities that the Navy is looking at. But this is another topic altogether.

(12) And you did this calculation how?

Let's try an easy calculation. We'll take a .5kg (rather large, yes) bullet and see how much energy it can do when fired at a significantly high velocity.

.5kg of TNT is at 2.092e6 J

Let's take our .5kg bullet and fire it at .5c (that's 50% the speed of light, that may or may not be practical in the future with these large war machines - we'll just try it).

Kinetic energy = Total energy - rest energy

so

= (mc^2)/sqrt(1-[v^2/c^2]) - mc^2

so [.5 (299,792,458)^2]

all divided by

sqrt(1 - (.5)^2)

minus

[.5 (299,792,458)^2]

comes out to ~6.952e15 J

In case that's a little too big to imagine, it's over 3 Billion times the energy of the same amount of TNT if used as explosive. That's about 1.6 Megatons. You have the energy of a nuclear warhead in the impact of a half of a kilogram bullet. (Keep in mind it was a rough 2 minute calculation using idealized conditions and so on to leave complications out. Corrections are welcome!)

Anyway, the whole point of this is that these weapons were designed to outdo the velocities attainable by pressurized gas, and there doesn't seem to be any fundamental stopping point for how arbitrarily fast you can accelerate something using these kinds of weapons. In the future in space, one would imagine we could control energies high enough to have weapons of these kinds of yields.

So your argument from realism doesn't work out.

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Now here's what I want to know: if lasers (i.e. light) is curved around a ship by its shields then you shouldn't be able to see that ship. It's the same principle behind cloaking devices in Star Trek. Shields of ships in SoaSE become black as they take damage, but if light was being bent around the ship then they would instead become translucent. That would lead me to believe there's some other kind of technology at work.

Actually just think of it as a SLIGHT bending of space - not enough to be noticeable to the naked eye, but enough to disrupt and dramatically weaken an energy-based weapon. A laser could go from a fine concentrated point to a broader foot-diameter 'blast' that will have dramatically less effect.

This doesn't explain ballistic protection, but it works for energy weapons.

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Just to let you know, Uranium - 235, we have the same problem in the Vasari camp. At least flck damage fighters, unlike our Jam weapons.

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Gotta disagree with the OP. Granted, TEC cap ship abilities are somewhat lack luster compared to Vasari and especially Advent. But the TEC, in return for weaker cap ship abilities, get stronger ships. TEC ships have far more staying power than Vasari or Advent vessels. My suggestion is to use the special abilities to build on that already considerable advantage.

I won a game two days ago by doing this. I played a 1v1. Had two capital ships: a Kol BB and a Dunov BC. With the Kol I spent my ability points on adaptive forcefield and gauss cannon. The Dunov I favored shield restore and magnetize.

I launched a major attack when my Kol had gotten to level 6 and had Finest Hour. My Dunov also had lvl 3 shield restore and lvl 2 magnetize. I ran my Kol out front to draw fire. Once her shields went down I had my robotics cruisers start fixing her hull, I activated adaptive forcefield, and finest hour. I also used the Dunov to start pumping shield energy back into it.

His entire fleet couldn't even scratch it. So while he was busy trying to beat down my Kol which just refused to be beat down, my LRMs and Kodiaks made dog meat out of the rest of his fleet. It was pretty impressive.

So I beg to differ that TEC abilities are useless. They are more limited, yes, but they can still provide a war winning advantage if you're smart about how you use them.

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If you somehow figure out a way to bend space like this (without, for example, plopping a planet or a large black hole into a spot), then it will not diffuse a beam of light, it will only change the trajectory. A highly focused beam will still be a highly focused beam except that it would veer out of the way slightly. And this method would be incredibly impractical in the first place even if we could do it.

To make a laser (we'll use this as an easy example) diverge from its path significantly enough that it would actually veer off and miss a target (we'll say veer off 60 degrees or so) would require an ENORMOUS bending of space. Even the gravitational field of our sun only bends light by (damned if I can remember this correctly) only 1/30th of a single degree. So you'd need a gravitational field or 'bending' of 1800 suns. Even with a (literally?) godlike amount of energy, this would be problematic.

As for ballistic protection, having 1800 suns of equivalent gravity (or anti-gravity... if you are 'bending up') would put a fine stop to them.

The only way we are going to get some kind of 'practical' force field system is probably using quantum effects to 'trap' energy pockets in a spatial area and then somehow direct those pockets around a ship or at least covering certain arcs. This is from our current understanding of physics (so to those living in the future, YMMV).

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I don't think you are right with what you siad JamesP81. TEC ships have the strongest hull point and armor, while Advent have more powerful shields. But the Vasari have on some level better designed ships and abilities. The Kortul Devastator comes to mind.

It has to abilities that work well together, which are power surge and disruptive strike. And instead of just having a main weapon system in front, supported by secondary weapons on the side, It has a main weapon in front supported by it secondaty weapons, with it sides are covered by another set of main weapons(2 of them, one for each side).

But It should be noted that the Vasari battleships is best for large groups, based on design and abilities, while TEC is for destorying other capital ships.

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My opinion is that the TEC have the worst capital ships, but I think you underrate Armistice and Ion Bolt. The bolt has a ridiculously low cooldown, so you can prevent multiple ships from escaping. Armistice is good for splitting the enemy fleets in half but requires some fancy flying. And yeah the Kol's gauss cannon does suck

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Re: Railguns

These weapons possess enormous destructive potential. A present day APFSDS fired at approximately 1.6km/sec (about as good as it gets for standard chemical propellants) will enter and exit a main battle tank. A railgun designed to be used in the vacum of space would be able to realistically propel 120mm rounds to 12-14km/sec. At these velocities a hit to any spacefaring vessel would be catastrophic. Relativistic velocities aren't even neccessary. From what I understand, if one employed the correct materials and was able to reach a velocity of approximately 160km/sec the projectile upon impact would undergo fusion resulting in the total annihilation of the target.
What is puzzling is that a spacefaring race like the TEC would even employ powder/liquid propellant based autocannons in space combat. Every one of their cannons should be of the railgun variety or at the very least light gas to make them viable space weapons.

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Oh noez the faction with the most powerful economy doesn't also have the most powerful everything else!! Everyone run and hide, Uranium discovered *gasp* BALANCE!!!!!!

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Oh noez the faction with the most powerful economy doesn't also have the most powerful everything else!! Everyone run and hide, Uranium discovered *gasp* BALANCE!!!!!!

I'm still looking for the victory condition where having money wins you the game.

"Balance" hahaha shut the hell up. 90% of the game is still fleet combat, moron.

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"90% of the game is still fleet combat, moron."

And having lots of money lets you build really big fleets.

For those of you interested in how deadly coilguns/mass drivers would be in actual space combat, check out www.adastragames.com.

Specifically, Attack Vector.

Nasty is...an understatement.

BTW, CassieDad? Modern gunpowder includes the oxident with it, so you can shoot regular guns in space with little difficulty, the rounds will fire. You just have to spaceproof the weapon so it doesn't freeze/jam, etc. And using regular gunpowder for your autocannons DOES have some advantages; you don't need large amounts of power to fire the rounds, for one thing.

Basically, the TEC modified all their space asteroid mining gear for combat use, so this is why they use lasers, slug guns, and missiles. I like the idea that compared to their opponents they are fairly 'low-tech', but still competitive...

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Uranium is pretty much spot on with his OP. Arguing in fanboy fashion every one of his points doesn't change anything. He has every right to post the truth, and I wouldn't be so glib as to assume the devs don't read these posts or don't pay attention to them. The bottom line is this game got caught up in being "4x" and "on an awesome scale" and lost focus on the details. TEC cap ship abilities suck, period. I also don't think it is the OP's responsibility to come up with fixes to problems that shouldn't be in the final game. His post is what I like to call "feedback".

This issue isn't anything new however, and we should all be used to this by now. The human or "starter" races always suck in multiplayer games. In C&C the GDI suck, in Warcraft the humans suck, in Civilization the Americans suck and so on. Why they do this can only be assumed, and I assume it is because the human/starter race is always the first one you learn with so they try to make it as easy to play as possible.

All of us like the game and want to see it improved - so let's not jump all over this guy for pointing out things we've all though about. I think we should support his post and hope that the devs pay attention and make some much needed changes.

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Someone bashed ION BOLT? Is this some kind of joke? Ion Bolt is awesome. Sure, the stun time isn't that great, but honestly, when are you really using these things? Generally when your opponent is running away, anyway. Ion Bolt has a very acceptable range, very acceptable refire time, and cancels phase jump charge-up, so you just peg him with it as he tries to warp out and keep on whomping on him. What does it matter if he manages to recover shortly and even fire a few pitiful shots back at you? The moment he tries to warp out, you can peg him with it as he tries to run off. Reverie can do a similar job, but the Advent version is mounted on a ship which is otherwise useless. As someone else pointed out, the Akkan target uplink gives a RANGE BONUS. I remind you that he who shoots first, shoots last.

Ion Bolt: A-. Target uplink: C+.

Flak: Okay, not great. Better than "Jam Weapons", which doesn't actually prevent enemy strike craft from firing, since they've likely already shot you getting into range to be jammed, though. Not everything can be a winner, I suppose. I give it a D+.

Shield Restore: Hey, instant +several hundred shields to one target, who is probably already at max mitigation and will be taking far reduced damage, making those points last? Hey, why not? A+ here.

Embargo: C. It's not a great ability, and quickly loses value as the game wears on, but in the beginning, getting this into range over the enemy's one planet = game over. With no income, he can't do anything and is utterly boned. Powerful rush ability if you can keep the ship from going down in flames, but due to the obvious difficulty involved, eh. All in all, the Sova is not one of the TEC's stronger ships, given the craptacularity of TEC strikecraft, but hey, you can't have everything.

Radiation Bomb: Eh, it does a decent enough job. It's not exceptional, but what's not to like? B+.

Raze Planet: D-. Let's face it, it isn't that great. Yes, it destroys planets decently, but honestly, what's the planet gonna do, shoot back? Make funny faces at you? Because you already embargoed it, it's not like it does anything USEFUL, seeing as it already gives you all of its income. And the lingering radiation mostly just keeps you from colonizing it immediately after you kill it. Bleh.

All in all, TEC cap abilities are, even by the original poster's admission, largely acceptable. The weakness of TEC ships is most assuredly not in their list of special abilities, which, while not awe-inspiring to any real degree, are more than adequate and compare favorably to those of the other races.

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Zellio, your forgetting about the enormous amount of kinetic energy that a railgun the size of a several kilometer ship would transfer to anything it hit. Shields or no shields it would do severe damage especially if it was shooting a high density metal like depleted uranium. And as far as the Gause gun having possible EMP capabilities; that would be pointless. NASA and the U.S. Military can, with current technology, shield their electronics reasonably well. Otherwise the space station would suffer from constant system crashes from all the solar radiation flying around up in space. Several centuries in the future with all the technological advances that would entail would make an EMP weapon extremely pointless.

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Maybe you should play Advent if you want the best cap ship abilities. I play mainly Vasari and TEC, and I don't have any problems winning with either of them. The ships have 4 abilities for variety and versatility, not every ability is meant to be as powerful as every other.

Many of the abilities you said were bad are better than what you think they are....

Guess what, Ion Bolt is really deadly if someone is trying to get away from your fleet. Armistice is great if YOU are trying to get away from their fleet and to fight at a better location. The Kol's Flak is very handy if there is a lot of strikecraft and you are short on flak, but NO it isn't meant to counter an entire fleet of carriers by itself -- you also have to micro it, you can't let it run on autocast. Marza's raze planet is awesome -- in multiplay you can sometimes burn a small world down before your opponent can counter your offense.

Everyone agrees TEC has the weakest cap ship abilities, but they are not as bad as you make them sound.

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Raze planet does 80 damage - 10 pop, but it also hits 2/4/6 times. It's not so shabby an ability, for replacing 2/4/5 siege ships in your fleet.

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While he is right that many of the abilities could use buffing, the fact is every single ship has a useful ability or three, and most of the abilities don't suck.

Raze Planet: D-. Let's face it, it isn't that great. Yes, it destroys planets decently, but honestly, what's the planet gonna do, shoot back? Make funny faces at you? Because you already embargoed it, it's not like it does anything USEFUL, seeing as it already gives you all of its income. And the lingering radiation mostly just keeps you from colonizing it immediately after you kill it. Bleh.

A) you might not have a Sova in orbit to embargo with... and even if you do have a sova, it might not have embargo!

Killing things faster means you get your own colony up there quicker... or can get the heck out of dodge quicker if your enemy has a counter attack in the works.

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