In online games, advent rebel have a significant advantage against all the other factions. I am not saying they are strictly over powered. What I am saying is wail of sacrifice is unbalanced because it gives a potential advantage to the Advent Rebel.
For clarifications, wail is only effective when used on ice, desert, or terran planets. It deals 20 damage for every population sacrificed on that planet. Wail is effectively instant and only strikes all adjacent gravity wells. The planet is then lost and must be recolonized.
The most common strategy to counter wail is destroying the temple of community. This can be accomplished by two ways. Either you send your entire fleet in to destroy the temple or you send a small fleet in to destroy the temple.
First, lets look at sending the entire fleet. If there is two high population planets next to each other, you cannot send your entire fleet because you risk the other planet wailing you. If you need to move across a large gravity well or star bases and jump inhibitors, then you cannot send your entire fleet. Any attentive enemy will kill a large portion of your fleet if you attempt to run into the safety of the wailing gravity well.
Using a smaller fleet is less risky and more versatile. A small fleet will have to run behind line to destroy the temple. If the temple is undefended (no enemy fleet and no starbase next to the temple) then you can successfully destroy the temple. This leaves you with roughly 20 to 30 seconds before he can build another temple. So you kill his fabricators as well. Now, if your opponent is stupid enough to leave the temple undefended or leave his main fleet to far away to protect the temple, then you can successfully stop a wail. If your opponent is smart and defends a temple with a starbase or fleet. Then you cannot stop the wail. (Please note that a fleet only need to be one full jump or two small jumps away to successfully defend a temple from a small fleet)
Another way is to split your fleet into 2 or 3 equal quantities (still large enough to be deadly yet not small enough to be easily picked apart). A wail that kills 33 to 50% of your fleet is a significant lose. A fleet at 33% to 50% strength cannot engage a massed fleet. Any decent player will use this advantage to at kill some of your fleet while his fleet mops up whats left.
Another commonly proposed counter is super weapons. The novalith and Kostura can counter wail. Super weapons cannot counter a mid game wail because of the economic cost. Super weapons are only traditionally applied to stalemate games and are rarely ever seen in aggressive games. Super weapons can also be denied by destroying labs or by sending in a small fleets to destroy the expensive weapon. An advent rebel player will easily obtain wail before super weapons are deployed. Super weapons require a large investment which will also leave your factions with a smaller fleet than your opponent. Super weapons are not a effective or reliable counter to wail.
Some people say you should just kill the planets population. Siege frigate move to slow and are to weak to destroy a planets population. They will be easily focused and killed. Novaliths were mentioned above. Siege capital ships are the only effective strategy to destroy population at a reasonable rate. Capital ship spam is not an effective strategy in competitive play and one or two siege capital ships can be easily focused and killed by mass frigate or mass strike craft.
Wail also has an untapped potential when used on noon or volcano planets. 50 pop x 20 damage = 1000 damage. While this will not kill an entire fleet, it will drastically weaken a fleet enough for a smaller/weaker fleet to engage and win. Most of the time this does not pose a problem on the front lines where you have star-bases and repair installations. If you are behind enemy lines killing economy planets, a weakened fleet can be chased and killed. In this case, you need to deal enough economic damage to compensate for the lose of the fleet.
Additionally, some people say that wail is situation and I agree. Only when there is significant high population planets does wail carry a game. Although it is common for there to be high population planets scattered around the map (typically within 2 jumps of each other). Each area around a high population planet becomes a zone where your faction safely move. Wail is also traditionally a defensive move, meaning that when you are losing (thus on the defense) wail has more opportunities to be utilized. Even though wail does not always apply, it still carries weight many if not most games.
Lastly, even a single successful wail can lose a game all together (or at least your 1v1 battle in the 5v5 game). The opportunity for a one shot victory eliminates traditional strategy. If a player successfully wails, he wins, If he cannot wail, then the game returns to its original status where small strategic advantages are built up over time to win a game. From my opinion, one shot victories effectively ruin the point of a strategy game.
I am not saying wail is directly over powered. I am not saying wail cannot be countered. I am saying that wail potentially gives Advent Rebel a significant advantage over all the other factions. For the sake of balance and competitive play, Advent Rebel should be banned.
Kyo
