Ah, thank you.  So, I suppose what exactly was making TEC so unstoppably spectacular early-game that they can grind the Advent eco to dust before it even takes root?

I was reading a similar thread suggesting this is from the Sova Embargo rush that has been occurring lately to which GoaFan proposed the idea of making home worlds immune to Embargo.

The Advent still certainly need a decent repair unit, as does the Revelation need use.  Come to think of it though, a defensive Clary on a friendly planet might help stop the aforementioned weakness of the Advent.

It really just sounds to me that the Vasari are decent until they finally unlock their entire bag of tricks at which point they start pounding everything in their path, the TEC are awesome early and good late, while the Advent suck early and are awesome later.

So really, what the TEC need would be a late-game buff to help them deal with late-game Advent power.  There's one researchable in particular that I've been eyeing for a while now, looking to see what I could do with it and I think I might know...

Industrial Juggenaut.  As it stands, it speeds up build times.  What if it also took down the upkeep cost of your fleet?  This would give TEC more of a fighting chance against Advent later while justifying the buffs to the Revelation/Domina.  Code as follows:

researchModifier
	modifierType "IncomePercLost"
	baseValue 0.000000
	perLevelValue -0.030000

researchModifier
	modifierType "ShipBuildRateAdjustment"
	baseValue 0.000000
	perLevelValue 0.166667

 That way, the TEC can more easily mass produce those units.  Sure, it's only nine percent, but that nine percent is going to make a huge difference once you but up against the higher fleet capacities (especially once you hit 2k and -75%), though I don't know how often MP games actually go that long lol.  From the sounds of it, not very.

Basically raw power.  Between 2-lab trade and the Akkan, they can build a shockingly powerful economy much faster than you.  On the military side they have a superb rushing capital ship in the Sova.  For frigates, the LRM, Garda, and Hoshiko are all top of their class, relatively easy to unlock, and dirt cheap.  The TEC is going to outnumber you with a balanced and potent fleet, have wicked combat capital ships, and be setting up for an overwhelming economic advantage while he's doing it.

Not really; culture doesn't have a military bonus until you've researched the appropriate techs, and in early-game these are just way too expensive.

Probably take a look at their capital ships.  Most TEC capital ships are horrible in the late-game and have little purpose.  Even missile barrage is crap against late-game Advent, and can actually lower your overall damage output because it will max out every enemy unit's mitigation but almost all of the damage it deals will be eaten by shield regeneration.

TEC needs abilities that let it disrupt Advent's elaborate combos.  The change to demo-bots was a great move on the part of the devs to help alleviate the problem by making this late-game ability more useable.  Focus on giving more late-game utility to TEC's capital ships that allow them to be meaningful.

I don't think that's the right direction to go.  TEC already has a superb economic game, and the problem is at a certain point it doesn't count for very much.

I don't so much mind the strong early / weak late dichotomy, but it's much too steep in the case of TEC and Advent.

Any TEC player worth their salt would have multiple dunovs to EMP down the advent battle ball(if they were facing an advent player the whole game).  1 akkan, 3+ dunovs make a great fleet.  The more dunovs you have, the less effective the ENTIRE advent fleet is. Dunovs also work well in TEC vs vasari and TEC vs TEC.  It also allows you to stand up to the attrition rates of other endgame fleets better with its sheild restore(note, i'm not saying its going to work long term).  Properly micro'd (and it isn't hard) the dunov can really save your ships HP so your hoshi's have time to heal up. 

What about bomber spam, advents strongest assault arm?  Make sure your dunovs get level 3 magnetize asap, and watch how quickly the fighter clouds disperse.  If they are fielding enough bombers to one shot a cap, you will need 3 kols to deal with the "swarm".  Magnetize in conjunction with flak will give you air superiority in the long term.  combined with emp, and you could prevent their strike craft replenishment from occurring by chasing down carriers with a few dunovs + hoshi snare ability. 

Also, another trick is positional alignment, keep a dunov with a few hoshi's in reserve, so if the advent try to repulse one and focus fire it down you will EMP the guardians incoming with the "threatened dunov" and then you will have a support ship coming in.  The more dunovs you have to EMP, the more you can counter this threat and the less effective the entire advent fleet will become.  late game, 3000 creds 400 metal and 250 crystal is a GREAT buy for the level of effectiveness a dunov brings to the field.

Dunovs can be a good opener in a close quarters advent showdown, But I would always recommend an akkan so your endgame fleet can run away effectively.  The weakness of late game dunov spam is that they need to be high level to be effective.  On that note, once they ARE of sufficient level (6+) You will have a serious fleet support ship that you will start winning battles with.

A quote from starplayer

on the first page.  Read it, because it truly is the answer you seek. lol

Oh and the garda flak frigate isn't nearly as good as the advent defense vessel.

Also, darvin you said

If you EMP down the battle ball so the advent don't even have shields, a lvl 6 marza will ice their fleet faster then you can say HOLY SHIT W/BBQSAUCE!!!.  As with all abilities, WHEN you use them is the most important aspect of the ability.  Also, the dunovs can keep the marza alive quite well with shield restore. take away the shields and the advent will be all but destroyed.  Then you focus their progenitors/halcyons down and their guardians won't have the AM or shields to do much mitigation or repulsion.  Their sucky engame healer will have to be micro'd like crazy just to heal a few of their ships(which is why advent players don't waste their time building them, since advent fleet already takes a lot of micro).  The advent player, if they are smart will attempt a retreat and use repulsion when it comes up to cover their retreat.  If you have already closed range on the advent fleet you use your demo bots to full effect and bleed his fleet and possibly take out that progen you've been focusing down.  Then you follow closely because your fleet hasn't used much AM thanks to Dunov lvl 6 ability rotation and then the advent fleet is truly screwed because they will be close to zero antimatter. 

Truly, advent need an endgame buff against the awesome TEC fleet. Good Shield mitigation doesn't mean you "win".

Just ran through a game with this and tried to use the Guided Dominas as much as possible.  It seemed to help, but then, it was only against the AI.

What do you mean exactly?  I was running the test in Dev though in case I ran into any errors, but I do know that's not what you mean...

What do I do about the Revelation's synergy with Guidance?  Give the Javelis's a Dunov or something?

Also, if I spawn them in the same place, it will give the Illuminators a significant advantage due to their side beams, whereas if I spawn them across a gravity well, the LRM will have the upper hand as the combat AI won't close the distance properly to make use of the side beams.

Regardless, I think I'm going to do the following tests until I hear from you advice regarding the capital:

• 40 Illums vs 60 LRM Far
• 40 Illums vs 60 LRM Near
• 40 Illums vs 60 LRM Near + 16 Healers
• 40 Illums vs 60 LRM Far +16 Healers
• 40 Illums vs 60 LRM Near + 16 Rebalanced Healers
• 40... Far + rebalanced healers

You don't necessarily need to make it an even fight.  Because we aren't accounting for micro and are leaving out many diverse unit types, this isn't an accurate test of a realistic TEC vs Advent battle.  Rather, we're trying to isolate the performance difference between changed and unchanged dominas. 

Compensating with a Dunov for TEC is fine.  We're really just looking for an arbitrary benchmark.

The numbers you've produced look good.  You may want to experiment with the cooldown of those abilities, since 60 is a bit much, but this really looks like the right direction.

That's a great suggestion lol I'll do that.

EDIT: actually that doesn't really work either since the HC take down the Dominas and Hoshis before each other, thus it doesn't do much.

I went back to using LRF and I just realized something I hadn't changed..  The Dominas still had NeedsToFaceTarget set to true..

Without Revelation help, there were 30 LRM left.  In a following test with level 3 Guidance, there were 24 left.  Regardless, now that I've actually got them as omnidirectional casters, they seem to be doing better.

I'm dropping the cooldown to 40 this time to see what happens.

Once again, it isn't having much of an impact due to the stupid autocast.  It really needs human testers...

And good news, I got my ICO Account reset, so now I'll be able to actually play online, so if someone is up for a test with actually decentish micro.  I'm not going to say I have the best micro, but still.  I know I'm better than autocast...  Honestly, the testing of this would be the first online game I've ever done, so you can expect my anti-AI micro to be sub-sub-sub par for ICO..

Regardless, now that they have an AM requirement of 30, a CD of 40, are not channeling, are omnidirectional, and have a unique form of stacking, they are certainly a viable unit.  Sure, they are outweighed by Hoshis due to their CD of 3 freaking seconds, making them able to respond at a moment's notice, but they are able to constantly keep other ships healing at at least 25 hull/second because their AM regenerated during that time is higher and the healing buff duration is 40 seconds.  This means that they will be using Suppression primarily with healing interspersed.  Even so, I think I'm going to adjust Suppr some.  This means that they will finally be able to function as Subjugators.  Yes, they heal, but their main function will lockdown which they will spend the majority of their time doing.

At this rate, the Domina might be a useful unit yet