MayallCommunion

Join Date 09/2011

+21

Regarding the Advent Balance

So i've been playing sins for what? A really long time I don't have much multiplayer experience but I think there is a lot of balancing that can go into making the advent competitive again. The current problem lies with the Advents early game, its pitiful and make LRM spamming them severely easy. But who can blame the other races the Advent's late game is terrifying(although I guess is corresponds with the early game).

Along with the LRM problem lies multiple other problems that make playing the Advent frustrating(such as economy) generally speaking resource focusing isn't worth it. You need to go through a lengthy research process to get the optimal 25% upgrade, but you sacrifice the credits and the TEC and Vasari can go up to 45% by placing three in there first planet. Resource focusing isnt worth it unless you have 3-4 extractors and the +25%.

Another problem is there Niche trait which is culture is no better then the other factions. The TEC for example have a very good economy Pervasive Economy. The Vasari have very good manipulation of phase space allowing them to have great mobility.

- The main problem is that the Advent have no good solid solution to early LRM spam you need to build 20 scouts to go into your mainstay army to fight off early aggression. Its frustrating to deal with, and 20 scouts do not scale well into the late game. I believe this has a solution as the Illuminator hands down is the best LRM in game, so conventional means will not work. So this is what I believe should be done, switch the Illuminator and the Drone Host Design on the tech tree, step two make refined framework tier 2(or keep it tier 1 this is up to debate by the community) and make the illuminator design require refined framework.

What this will do is make the advent require two Temples of Hostility to make the illuminator, however they have to spend time and money on the refined framework to acquire said research. This should give the Advent more flexibility early game. Also the Drone Host will come slightly later which I hypothesize will make the advents late game (slightly) weaker since they cannot get them as early(But as I said I dont have much multiplayer experience).

-The next problem we need to address is the economy problems, its hard to deny that resource focus is a giant sack of suck. You need tier 7 Temple of Harmony to get the research and even then its almost not worth it. I say reduce its research level to 6 and lower the price but keep the values the same. This should allow it to be teched to earlier and cheaper and hopefully it wont suffer from an overbuff.

Another solution I had come up with was switch the tech spots of the Selective Harvesting and Rich Ore Scrying as it will help keep the advents heavy crystal army easier to manage and afford(I mean come on the Vasari get both of theirs at the same time and the TEC can upgrade them both at tier 2).

-The last one I associate also with the Advents Super(useless) weapon. The advent is supposed to be the culture race, you would think so they get there culture earlier and have some neat stuff for it such as the eyes of the converted and wall of faith. But it has inherent problems that are also with the games mechanics as well. First lets discuss culture, if race A) builds there culture first it will force the other player to build culture eventually it will just be a stalemate because all races have the same culture gains. Its either that or the person who gets culture gets swamped because culture has almost no combat bonuses and that money you could of invested in ships was invested in culture.

I purpose a complete overhaul of the Culture system because in its current state, it is boring, unoriginal, and for the niche of the advent the other races preform almost indifferently when a ToC is placed on the field.

*New Culture - Your empires influence extends to the other empires territory, passively the will lose allegiance, your planets will gain allegiance. Any planets that have culture spreading from said planet has increased credit income, any planets in your enemies territory under your influence has decreased credit, ore, and crystal income.

This will open up towards an econ. oriented assault upon the enemies worlds as well as giving a slight buff towards yours. And I do understand that some might think the stats should not be econ related, however I disagree because lore wise it makes sense. Happier workers, better returns. Upset workers lesser returns. And I understand lore shouldent dictate everything however remember EVERYTHING in this game makes sense, why do the vasari have both mining upgrades in one? Because they are running from an enemy that we don't know of yet, they needed to effectively be able to mine in order to clear a system faster. Now getting away from that tangent, it still doesent fix the boredom factor so I think we should give all the culture producing structures a special ability.

*Temple of Communion

- Hysteric Omen - Advent Scryers send prophetic visions of doom to any enemy planets connected through the culture lines giving a random chance(Was thinking perhaps 25-50%) chance of having an enemy ship fall under advent control(would not effect capital ships(or perhaps it could through upgrades imagine the badassery)).

- Through Faith not Sight - Upon using the Temple of Communion sends out a burst of telepathic signals causing your culture spread to be unstoppable for 8 seconds. (I don't know if this would be a good ability if anyone has any comments on this please respond!)

*Broadcasting Center

- Victory Propaganda - Propaganda of victory is transmitted to all worlds under TEC control that are connected by culture giving them increased resolution in there empires strength causing them to build ships 25% faster.

*Media Hub

- Fearful Signaling - A signal forewarning the approaching enemies of the Vasari inspire fear in all systems connected by culture lines. Vasari in friendly territories move 40% faster, and enemy territories have a flat allegiance drop of 15%.

These are only part of the changes I would love to see to culture, it gives something new to the other races and improves game mechanics, and as an explanation for why the Advent have two abilities for the ToC is because I wanted the advents culture niche to be stronger then the other races. And please don't assume im trying to make the advent to strong, if there was going to be a nerf needed I just have not foresaw any yet.

Please comment and I hope you enjoy my ideas!

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I'd make a broader comment, but now I'm really tired, so I'll get to that later.

I agree with some of what you said in that post, Mayall. But I firmly believe the Kanrak is the best long range unit in the game.

Culture as it is sucks. It needs a complete overhaul.

Maybe make Advent late game less terrifying, and early game more powerful? Kinda balance it out, sorta? Not sure how you'd do that, but still.

Boost the economy. Namely the crystal mining.

Either get rid of or boost resource focus.

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Quoting JA_394,

reply 1

I'd make a broader comment, but now I'm really tired, so I'll get to that later.

I agree with some of what you said in that post, Mayall. But I firmly believe the Kanrak is the best long range unit in the game.

Culture as it is sucks. It needs a complete overhaul.

Maybe make Advent late game less terrifying, and early game more powerful? Kinda balance it out, sorta? Not sure how you'd do that, but still.

Boost the economy. Namely the crystal mining.

Either get rid of or boost resource focus.

Oh that is pretty much what I had in mind but just curious why you think Kanrak is the best doesent it only have 1 fire port while the illuminator has 3(I could be wrong)

Also I kinda figured making the late game less powerful would result naturally but maybe it could use some tweaks.

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GoaFan77

Join Date 10/2008

+629

Quoting JA_394,

reply 1

Maybe make Advent late game less terrifying, and early game more powerful? Kinda balance it out, sorta? Not sure how you'd do that, but still.

Really, is their late game even that terrifying now? Vasari has always had the best late game and the TEC has caught up a little bit. The only truly large advantage the Advent have late game IMO is spamable high level capitalships, which is considerable but doesn't quite compare to the Kostura, phase missiles, subverters etc.

Quoting MayallCommunion,

reply 2

Oh that is pretty much what I had in mind but just curious why you think Kanrak is the best doesent it only have 1 fire port while the illuminator has 3(I could be wrong)

One word: phase missiles. Also they are much easier to use as if the Illuminator wants to get its maximum DPS it has to be manually positioned to be able to hit a target with its three weapons. The damage they used to deal was so high this wasn't a huge issue, but now that they need to be firing all three beams to do higher total damage than the other two LRF its weakness it clearly exposed.

Further, I advise that the Devs add custom map sharing to Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.

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Phase Missile give Kanraks the advantage over Illuminators. And I'd rather have a fleet of Javelis' then Illums, too. Requires less mm, so I can focus on other things.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Spam Seekers, as you know. Damage per cost, Advent's early-game frigates are more effective in a general fleet combat situation than the frigates of the other factions. The problem is that it's more difficult to deal with large targets like starbases and capital ships.

But who can blame the other races the Advent's late game is terrifying(although I guess is corresponds with the early game).

It's not like the other factions ever use Refineries anyway... but yeah, in competitive games, both refineries and Resource Focus need to be buffed or they'll never be used.

I believe there is a good way to fix all of these problems, but not create an imbalance in the game(as we all know the Advent late game is amazing). So starting off with our first topic the LRM situation.

- The main problem is that the Advent have no good solid solution to early LRM spam you need to build 20 scouts to go into your mainstay army to fight off early aggression. Its frustrating to deal with, and 20 scouts do not scale well into the late game. I believe this has a solution as the Illuminator hands down is the best LRM in game, so conventional means will not work. So this is what I believe should be done, switch the Illuminator and the Drone Host Design on the tech tree, step two make refined framework tier 2(or keep it tier 1 this is up to debate by the community) and make the illuminator design require refined framework.

What this will do is make the advent require two Temples of Hostility to make the illuminator, however they have to spend time and money on the refined framework to acquire said research. This should give the Advent more flexibility early game. Also the Drone Host will come slightly later which I hypothesize will make the advents late game (slightly) weaker since they cannot get them as early(But as I said I dont have much multiplayer experience).

I personally think it would be best simply to move Illuminators down to tier 2 with no other modifications. It was a rebalancing idea I was thinking of posting a little while back but never got around to it. Just move it down to tier 2 and modify nothing else: Advent will be able to open with Illums and won't be underpowering early-game.

I'm just going to repost what I said about this earlier...

Maybe one way to buff the Deliverance Engine would be for it to raise the max allegiance of a planet by some large number (like 50%) for a long period of time, like 15 minutes. Maybe it could also reduce the max allegiance of an enemy planet by 20% or so, which (combined with a longer culture-spread rate and time) would have a decent chance of overthrowing an outlying enemy planet unless the enemy has 2 or more culture stations on the planet already. The problem is that currently, the Deliverance Engine is close to useless, even in noncompetitive games against the AI.

A slight increase "to trade, damage deatl, population growth, etc, and a slight reduction in build time" would be one way to help culture but it's a bit overly broad and general IMO. I think it would make sense if all factions received some part of their cultural advantages by default, without special research: so, TEC ships would gain .8 AM/sec or something before having to carry out the expensive cultural upgrades.

I also don't like the all-or-nothing aspect of culture wars - currently, either one empire controls a gravity well with culture and receives all of its advantages, or doesn't. Most people just deal with culture by building maybe one culture station near the center of their empire and one near or on their front lines, and then forget about it - if we want culture to be more significant, maybe it could be changed to be a gradual advantage for one faction. For instance, if there are two phase lanes from a gravity well and empire A has culture controlling the entirety of one lane and half of the other lane, ships in the gravity well would receive a combat bonus of 75% of the maximum. And if empire B has culture controlling the other half of that lane, their ships in that gravity well would receive a bonus of 25% or something. This would provide a much greater incentive for a player to build multiple culture stations for the purposes of affecting gameplay effectiveness. Combined with cultural-advantages-by-default, building culture stations could become more significant than an afterthought to be dealt with once and forgotten about.

In competitive games players rarely have the time or funds to research cultural upgrades. Often they're lucky to even have access to the logistics slots necessary to research cultural upgrades.

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Boost the Solanus while you're at it.

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Culture:

Maxes allegiance, boosting income from planet population and extractors on owned planets

Grants bonuses from researched techs while in culture; this can be significant also consider that while in your culture the enemy wont have his bounus

Can prevent enemy colonization of planets

If you are observant it will help you scout for enemy cap ships; and if advent you can get a tech to see planets where you have culture

Can kill enemy planets and reduce thier income if they don't spend money on culture

Deliverance engine:

Economic advantage: nil

Can enable (or speed up) colonization of planets where the enemy has too much culture for you to colonize

Can help kill planets with culture better by focus firing culture

Boosts damage of allied ships in the well by 25% for a few min

Helps your ships get culture bounus and removes the enemies bonus

Can prevent the enemy from colonizing a planet by culture spamming it

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Alright I think we have all come to an agreement that Culture needs to be redesigned or changed and hopefully Stardock keeps tabs on these forum post. Lets get to our next topic perhaps and that is the poor economy (and what about the Allure of the Unity research does anyone feel as though it could use a buff?

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Advent's econ is all right as is IMO, it works basically the same as TEC's except for requiring 3 civic labs for trade instead of 2. (that and late-game Pervasive)

Advent needs to be made a little stronger but I think the place for that is ship improvements rather than anything else.

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Well the thing is that its not that it is bad its just compared to the other races its not good. The Vasari have there Metal/Crystal extraction in one. Although they do get ports/refineries late thats not generally a problem as they have efficiency with there Metal/Crystal and credits arnt to difficult to come by.

The TEC however get to recieve Metal/Crystal at level 1 and level 2 and recieve trade ports at level 3. However, trade ports/refineries both are upgradeable. The TEC also have embargo and prevasive economy.

The Advent have to wait till tier 3 to harvest Crystals, and tier 2 to harvest ore. They do not get an upgrade for there trade ports. Instead they get Resource Focus which makes the Port turn into a refinery, which means you have to sacrifice trading for resource focusing(which doesen't even give that much in the first place).

Sure on the outside the Advent have a good set up but competatively it is leagues behind both race.

P.S: I also think that Allure of the Unity should have SOME incentive for upgrading it, it just doesent compete with Pervasive Economy. How is +10% allegience going to help you in any way?

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+10% Allegiance give you +10% tax income, I think. Its useful on Terran planets that normally have a 50-60% Allegiance cap.

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I actually wasnt aware of that, I have only played the game for a few weeks(well I picked it back up a few weeks ago).

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I'll go check that file and see what it does...

Yeah. +.5 Allegiance per upgrade. That rounds to 10.

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As for illuminator... It could use a little help, but making it appear earlier is not the answer here, I think. The LRFs are in 3 different spots for the different races to be the starting divergence in fleet strategies. It should be kept where it is. I would suggest making the carrier cruisers more plentiful in the early advent fleets. These could be used to stop LRF spams and is counterable with flak. Right now, carrier cruisers are tier 2, but are priced like HCs, and generally come out in force around the same time as HCs. I think if advent differed here, it could work. This could also make starts other than the Halcyon feesible (maybe a Rapture for the aura?).

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there are several reasons most people don't get light carriers early game:

your capital ships already have strikecraft and dont use antimatter to build them

everyone has access to lf which will easily counter carriers early game if you know you need them

the combat zone can easily be 2-3 non colonized planets long making speed more important then *range*

they cost alot

it takes time to build strikecraft once the carreirs are built

strikecraft are a good source of xp

advent strike craft is particularly vulnerable to aoe antistrikecraft abilities

once they run out of antimatter either from jumping alot stolen/destroyed antimatter or feeding xp they are a waste of fleet supply till they sit around for awhile

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Quoting SithLordAJ,

reply 14

Wait, wait, wait.... culture already affects income. Allegiance increases or decreases your income rates and extractor rates. If you want to better the advent early game economy, I'd say that simply making culture more accessible is the way to do it. Maybe some sort of research that makes your capital planet generate culture on its own. No culture center needed. Call it "Seat of the Unity" or something.

As for illuminator... It could use a little help, but making it appear earlier is not the answer here, I think. The LRFs are in 3 different spots for the different races to be the starting divergence in fleet strategies. It should be kept where it is. I would suggest making the carrier cruisers more plentiful in the early advent fleets. These could be used to stop LRF spams and is counterable with flak. Right now, carrier cruisers are tier 2, but are priced like HCs, and generally come out in force around the same time as HCs. I think if advent differed here, it could work. This could also make starts other than the Halcyon feesible (maybe a Rapture for the aura?).

Culture doesent effect your income as it doesn't increase your allegiance, and only decreases allegiance of enemy planets if its spread to that planet. The only problem with that is that culture is easily countered and for being the 'culture' race. The advent have nothing truly special, ex. TEC's insurgency is ALWAYS active regardless of if there are culture lines or not.

And I think you underestimate the timing difference. That could be a whole minute of not building Illuminator's while your enemy is building LRM's. Don't discredit small things because they in fact do make a difference.

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Quoting MayallCommunion,

reply 16

Culture doesent effect your income as it doesn't increase your allegiance

Huh? Yes it does. Planets start out at 10% below their max allegiance before culture is researched and stations are built... then once culture starts spreading your planet allegiance rises and you get more tax/extractor income.

A problem might be that 10% more tax/extractor income is not very significant, especially when compared to the cost of a culture station and to a trade port.

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I have Vanilla only so, I don't believe it does that for me. At least its never done that for me. Or maybe i've never noticed it :/

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Quoting MayallCommunion,

reply 18

I have Vanilla only so, I don't believe it does that for me. At least its never done that for me. Or maybe i've never noticed it :/

Just started up my Vanilla.

This was what my home planet's allegiance says:

If you build a culture station there it would eventually increase to an allegiance of 110% and you would get more income from both taxes and extractors.

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Quoting MayallCommunion,

reply 16

I think I estimate it just fine. My point was that if it was earlier in the tree, all 3 races would be going for them and we'd have more of a LRF spam issue than we currently have. I think the idea behind putting the illuminator at tier 3 was to spread out the appearance of LRF for the different races to help reduce the LRF spam by enforcing diversity.

Also, bringing Illuminators into the game early will make the Advent's economic woes much more apparent, as they are kind of expensive. And besides all that, Illuminators only really shine when massed and against a large number of forces, so they can use their sidebeams.

Besides what I mentioned my above post, could increase speed of allegence gain on planets you control. This would give you the allegiance bonus sooner.

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Quoting SithLordAJ,

reply 20

Quoting MayallCommunion, reply 16
And I think you underestimate the timing difference. That could be a whole minute of not building Illuminator's while your enemy is building LRM's. Don't discredit small things because they in fact do make a difference.

I think I estimate it just fine. My point was that if it was earlier in the tree, all 3 races would be going for them and we'd have more of a LRF spam issue than we currently have. I think the idea behind putting the illuminator at tier 3 was to spread out the appearance of LRF for the different races to help reduce the LRF spam by enforcing diversity.

Also, bringing Illuminators into the game early will make the Advent's economic woes much more apparent, as they are kind of expensive. And besides all that, Illuminators only really shine when massed and against a large number of forces, so they can use their sidebeams.

Besides what I mentioned my above post, could increase speed of allegence gain on planets you control. This would give you the allegiance bonus sooner.

I suppose I can see your point, in my opinion they need to do something about the LRM situation. But what could be done (perhaps nerfing ALL lrm's potency to the standard frigate(by a small amount?)

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Quoting MayallCommunion,

reply 21

I suppose I can see your point, in my opinion they need to do something about the LRM situation. But what could be done (perhaps nerfing ALL lrm's potency to the standard frigate(by a small amount?)

A suggestion I posted a while back was to buff the LF so that it would do a lot more damage to capital ships (70 or 75% or so instead of 50%). Decent anti-cap damage and great speed would mean that a lot more LF would be built in early-game for attacking and chasing enemy caps. At the moment people seem to build 0 LF, which is probably a design/balance flaw. Especially in 5s, players need more diversity options early-game.

This would also be a significant buff to the Advent due to their already superior and useful Disciple. It might be enough to push them into great competitive territory with the other races.

We need SOME viable multiplayer strategy other than "LRF then more LRF".

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Quoting Wrath89,

reply 22

Quoting MayallCommunion, reply 21I suppose I can see your point, in my opinion they need to do something about the LRM situation. But what could be done (perhaps nerfing ALL lrm's potency to the standard frigate(by a small amount?)

A suggestion I posted a while back was to buff the LF so that it would do a lot more damage to capital ships (70 or 75% or so instead of 50%). Decent anti-cap damage and great speed would mean that a lot more LF would be built in early-game for attacking and chasing enemy caps. At the moment people seem to build 0 LF, which is probably a design/balance flaw. Especially in 5s, players need more diversity options early-game.

This would also be a significant buff to the Advent due to their already superior and useful Disciple. It might be enough to push them into great competitive territory with the other races.

We need SOME viable multiplayer strategy other than "LRF then more LRF".

Reasonable, either that or remove LRM's im not to 100% sure on this one haha.

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Quoting MayallCommunion,

reply 23

Reasonable, either that or remove LRM's im not to 100% sure on this one haha.

LRM = TEC exclusive LRF

LRF = general long-range frigate

LRF spam is the problem

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Quoting Wrath89,

reply 24

Quoting MayallCommunion,
reply 23
Reasonable, either that or remove LRM's im not to 100% sure on this one haha.

LRM = TEC exclusive LRF

LRF = general long-range frigate

LRF spam is the problem

Thats what I meant
No really! Thanks for clearing that up though.

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