double post.............stupid forums went boom.

Allegiance, I understand your point about Phase Stabilizers, but you seem to be on a different subject than us.  Phase Stabilizers are a late game tech, and a pretty expensive one at that.

Skirmishers are your early game unit, which you often depend on to get you to late game, where you would be able to build Phase Stabilizers etc.

I don't mind Vasari having a small disadvantage in the LF department for balance reasons, but the difference seems far from small.  Because of the large command cost, the enemy team can literally have nearly 2 times as many Light Frigates as you in an early game battle, where you would have to upgrade your fleet capacity to match that.  The Light Frigate you get for your money definitely does not turn out to be equal in terms of usefulness and power to the other two races, and to such a large extent that you get a huge disadvantage early game.  Late game you also get hurt as well because you often rely on Light Frigates to take out certain unit types which I often see spammed (Flak Frigates, Carrier Cruisers, etc.) and which are extremely hard to deal with without them.  I'm not asking them to be made equal to the other two races, just worth their high cost in resources and fleet space.

Thats how it is supposed to be, but the Vasari are disadvantaged in EVERYTHING early game. Skirmisher is much weaker then other LFs. Assailant is much weaker then other LRFs. Navigator is the weakest scout. Sentinel is the weakest flak. Space Egg has by far the weakest colonise.

In the early game, the Vasari have NOTHING to their advantage. Not eco, not scouts, not LFs, not LRFs, not flak.

If skirmishers are meant to be pathetic, then why aren't assailants or flak or scouts super strong? A major disadvatage muct be balanced with a major advantage at the same stage in the game. Anything else is not balanced.

I find that I completely agree with this statement.  If you are weak from one aspect in your early game, you should be strong or at least mediocre in others.  Vasari somehow seems to be weak in all of their early game aspects, with few redeeming qualities, at least til mid-game. 

The only problem is that those redeeming qualities really don't outshine the other races, or really even make them dominant at that stage of the game.

To say that Vasari should get a horrible early game because of "Phase Stabilizers" is a terrible argument.  Phase Stabilizers are nice, but every race has their late-game advantages, except that the other two races have a much easier time getting there, which kind of defeats that argument in a balanced game.

Besides, Advent gets their incredible culture domination ability, TEC gets a global 3000 damage nuke, I mean its not like every race isn't without their late-game advantages, in my opinion they are all on par.  They certainly aren't inferior enough to Vasari to justify giving them such a crap early game.  I don't understand this balance decision.

how are their scouts weak? they are the only scout ship that can actually take control of nuetrals.........the Orky, is the only SB that can move, The only faction that can jump from one planet to another without an actual phase lane.  The only faction that can call in a albeit random fleet from no wheres by only paying for it, no waiting for all the ships to amass. And all I hear is how badass the Kortul and Jarrasul are. No ones going to be completely happy with the game, but i dont think that adding anything to the skirmishers is going to actually do anything useful. Someone else will just move on to the next thing they think is unbalanced and complain til that is redone, and before you know it, theres a need for a whole new rebalance of the majority of the game like this last one.

As in their combat capabilities, not in reference to their neutral-capturing capabilities.  They deal slightly more damage than other scouts, but not enough to overcome their greater cost.  Their health is about the same, despite being more expensive than the other scouts.

RA never ever gave you support units (no overseers or subverters).

True. Reintegration means skirmishers should do slightly less damage compared to the other races, but they lowerd the dps too much. Argueably the skirmisher should do 14 dps (as opposed to 10.5). I would say the happy middle ground to accomodate the skirmisher (as I've argued before) is 12.5. BUT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

No.  Not true!  They get LRFs (assailants) with ONE lab.  So build them, not the crappy skirmisher, or skip to Carriers (they have the most durable strikecraft).  They get the almighty Orkulus starbase with TWO labs!  This is really their ace in the hole.  This SB has an overpowering advantage over all else.  If needed, it can be used defensively early on, and in some cases effectively offensively.  As mentioned earlier, they get neutrals easily.  This can be a huge early economic advantage.  And they get decent eco upgrades with ONE lab.  And their low level Cap ships are good.  And...?  IMO, they are the best race for rushing. 

Not meaning to pick on you Jule, but I got to admit, that I get tired of these whining threads.

Bah! A further night of unnecessary losses to these supposedly 'nerfed' illuminators.  Had the Marza been 'nerfed' like that, illuminators wouldn't survive a barrage to have their shields reboosted.

I am convinced that what is wrong with the game, apart from a balance patch that has left the game badly bugged, is the lack of an elite warlords lobby, where matters such as the bristle of whiskers can be discussed.  Put some fire into the new bods, let's have online achivements as well, don't want to molly them, noone wants to fight for hours to become an intergalactic care assistant.  Pah!

That said- and rightly so- if there is imbalance it will not be solved by a modest change to the weapons of skirmishers.  All light frigates are more or less useless.   They cost too much and also take up more cap than the LRF, which destroy them.  I still find the cap costs of light frigates to be inexplicable- LRF are higher tech units which should by their nature consume more supply.  If all light frigates were reduced one supply point, skirmishers could be reduced two- with a slight weapons boost.  Even then a cost reduction of 20% would be needed to make light frigates viable, rather than just a surprise for isolated carriers.  Even a few LRF have enough of a range advantage to stop these units performing any other role.   

More general balance is very dependent on the map, as we began to explore in another thread.  All-planet single star maps, while present in the set maps shouldn't be considered the norm?  With enough neutrals and on the multistar maps there is far more balance.  On my maps I have a mix of planets and neutrals that I consider optimal, but some of the other custom maps have almost no neutrals?

However, if the nerfs to the subverters and the returning fleets hadn't been so heavy, balance wouldn't have been an issue.  It would seem simplest to revert most of the nerfs?  The returning ships should be free- otherwise they are useless in a crisis.  Perhaps an increased cooldown, or smaller fleets?  As it is the tech is a complicated drawback if you are winning, and far too expensive to set up if you are losing.  

How about another 'balance patch' where the original Marzas and subverters are 'nerfed' like the illuminators have been?  Enough!  Where is the hotfix for the bug?!

Okay, I forgot about that.

However, how can access to SBs with 2 labs and easy access to neutrals justify a much weaker colonise bonus, overpriced scouts, extremely underpowered LFs, assailants that are much less cost effective then other LRFs and overpriced flak?

Bottom line is since skirmishers suck, vasari have no easy way of killing carriers/flak/support cruisers until enforcers. You can argue labs and advantages til the cows come home, but Vasari are weak without a good counter to those units. Orkulus? Not gonna kill those carriers, and theyll keep coming back. Assailants? Scout spam, flak spam, carrier spam, and your skirms are not going to deliver. Sure Vasari get those things earlier than the other races, but they'll have to tech up to tier 5 in order to take on fleets of tier 2,3,and 4 units.

When you're countering with lfs, you want them to be able to KILL things, I mean actually do some damage to that carrier/flak fleet, so that when he starts rolling out LRFs to compensate, hes already taken some nasty losses. But as it stands, Skirms cant deal the kinda damage needed, so when those LRFs come along and start picking them off, you havent done any major damage.

RAs proposed +2 dps would make a huge difference.

Personally I'd have them do the most DPS of a light frig and not have reintegration, but thats probably to much to ask for.

Sad thing is, I cant think of 1 vasari unit that is (cost aside) significantly BETTER than its TEC or Advent counterparts. I mean Advent have lums and carriers, TEC have hoshis and kodies, what do the Vasari have? Orkies? Yeah theyre tough, but they arent units, you can't make a fleet of them. Subverters? Maybe, if you're good at micro, but good luck rolling those out quickly. I say give em a unit they can be proud of.

Look for Skirms later this week on the New PSCF