I wouldn't toss out your idea just yet, I think it could be properly balanced. If you cut down the the invincibility to say 10 seconds and had a high cooldown of say 60, it could work. I would even be willing to accept a limitation on the Cap ship like it can't move, it can attack and use abilities, just not move.

Like so many Advent Abilities, it needs severe re-working right alongside Guidance, Clairvoyance, Animosity, Vengeance and Malice.

Well, I'll just show what I've done with those abilities because in the mod I run in all my games against the AI (Rebalanced Races) that I made actually deals with all those and a few others:

Guidance: CD decrease improved from 25/25/25% to 25/30/35%

Clary: spawns culture from the target

Animosity: deals a DoT to affected units of 5/10/15 DPS

Vengeance: Increased to 75%/150%/225% because it has the problem of having to go through mitigation twice.

Malice: rebuffed to 15%/30%/45% with the standard unit cap.

I've thought about embargo and I think I have the answer that allows it to not be OP early game, but still useful late game.  Basically, I think it should be empire based and not planet based, and then reduce the embargo to levels around 10%-30%.  This way, it doesn't kill you early game, and as the game advances, it's value increases.  Perahps there would also be away to scale it based on the value of the planet compared to the total empire credit output, but that might get too complicated.  The one thing you don't want to happen though is somebody sit at a roid and get x% of your empire income, so obviously some planet value comparison would need to be made.

That MOD sounds interesting. Available anywhere?

Perhaps its value could be based in part on the number of enemy trade ships in the gravity well, while also moderately sucking from the planet's base tax income rate (20%-40%-60%? 15%-30%-45%?). Since Embargo denies civilian ships from leaving the gravity well while it's active, maybe the income those civilian ships are worth should be taken from the defender and given to the owner of the Sova. Or maybe the income they're worth should simply not be given to the defender, which would make a bit more sense since the trade ships aren't destroyed.

This would make Embargo not much use when when attacking an enemy head-on in the late-game (few if any trade ships on a front-line planet), but if you can manage to get the Sova behind enemy lines where trade ports/ships are more numerous, it could do significant economic damage and force the enemy to send part of their fleet after it.

However, this could become OP if cooldown times aren't modified as well: a single Sova with L3 Embargo would have a stacking effect if it can keep casting Embargo and keep all trade ships trapped, and could also survive for a while while being attacked if it's leveled up.

@Howdidyoudothat: Not a big fan of that simply because of the roid problem.  If you can find a way around that, I might reconsider..

@Wrath: I do kind of like where you're going with this...  IRL, embargoes block off trade from a location, but doesn't actually do anything in regards to stealing income unless someone tries to run the blockade and get's caught.  I guess it probably wouldn't work out so well in Sins, but I still think it would be a good idea for some other ship/ability...  Just not the Sova...

@Gamerlamb: I haven't published it as it's just for my own personal use.  I try to balance things as much as possible.  I just don't release them publicly because it's a constant project.

Aside from those listed above, I do stuff with the Domina, Ruthlessness, GRG, AF, Adjudicator (my version can target individual units if it so chooses, but it's not finished so it doesn't work just yet), Nano, GB, TA, and a bunch of other things.  Most are little tweaks here and there with a few things that have been overhauled.  Once I get it done to my satisfaction, I might publish it to the mod forum.  If you're actually that interested I'd send you a PM when I do, but I'm not promising anything in the immediate future...

Also, while we're on the subject of useless abilities...  Reverie.  Why the heck would this ever be used?  DAM deals damage and interrupts.  I really don't see why that would ever be useful.

Reverie works well if you are trying to stop a Cap from leaving the grav well and you have a ton of frigates behind you. Sure the damage cancels the ability, but with its low cool down its not hard to recast and stop the ship from leaving again. 

Its also nice to take one or two (or perhaps even more at higher levels) Caps out of the battle while you deal with something else like the healers or damage dealers. Can be great in an Advent mirror match to lock down those Progenitors and their pesky Shield Regen. or for blocking an Akkan's Amistice.

Can be a bit of a niche ability but certainly the most powerful on the Revelation currently. 

You're being sarcastic, right? Both of those can be quite useful, although DAM is more of a niche ability. (stopping Marza's missiles)

@Rowanlad: that makes sense, but it still seems weak IMHO.

@Wrath: I was being serious.  I've never seen the use of that thing.  If it didn't have the damage override, I'd be good, but it does.

Wow dont quite know what happened with that one...

In case anyone has trouble reading it:

It has a similar effect to Ion bolt if you choose to attack and override the ability with damage.

Or you can choose to leave the Cap/Support Cruiser/HC/Whatever locked down, stopping it from moving, attacking, using abilities etc. So in that sense its more flexible than Ion Bolt.

And at higher levels the long duration and low cool down allow for multiple units to be locked down if you wish.

Its true that its not a game winner in any sense, but still quite decent (there are definitely a lot more abilities that need work). The real problem with Reverie is that its on an otherwise useless Cap. The reworked Guidance that you are testing in your mod will actually help Reverie slightly as we may see more Revelations on the field as a result

Reverie can turn an enemy capital ship from a dangerous ability-user into a useless brick for the duration of the battle and even longer, if Reverie is L3 (which it should be if you're using the Revelation, the other abilities aren't worth prioritizing). Doesn't that sound useful?

If an enemy fleet is retreating and you have a lot of antimatter left on your Revelation, use Reverie on an enemy cap, turn your fleet's auto-attack off, and manually attack the remaining retreating enemies. Once they're gone you can focus on killing the enemy cap, which you should be able to do relatively easily if you have a good-sized fleet. Keeping auto-attack off, maneuver your fleet so all ships are well within firing range of the enemy cap. Order all your ships to fire at once. Once the enemy cap becomes active again and starts picking up speed to retreat, tell your units to stop attacking and then use Reverie again. Repeat. If you have a good sized fleet you should be able to do a whole lot of damage with each round of this and the enemy cap will die relatively quickly.

Iv had Cruel AIs with 3 Revelations shut down all of my caps late game and pick them off one by one long after the frigates have slunk home. Obviously having 3 Revelations is not viable in Multi-player but an AI with a lot of cash can make good use of them

K.  Well, after I complained about the apparent uselessness of them, I did something like POH to them where it can now be used on a friendly capital to increase regen, and I could also make that ship un-targettable.  Currently, it just reaims all enemy ships at the beginning, but if I do it as a periodic action, by the end of the duration, you would have recovered 120 hull, 200 shields, and about 60 AM on top of what the ship regenerates on it's own during that time.  So, I guess I should remove this and possibly do a little something to DAM so it's not so niche instead?

I've still tried thinking about this but I end up not thinking of a way to do it that is simple and elegant and that makes sense.  Perhaps most simply is to modify embargo to be specific to trade and refinery ships and leave it at that.

What do you mean exactly?

IMO embargo is just OK as long as you cannot get LVL2 of it 2 min into the game.

LVL 1 (40%) embargo rush is totally manageable and not so hard to counter. Embargo problem massively escalates because at least on MP people (me as well) upgrade their cap to LVL 3 and go for LVL 2 embargo.

Combined with 4 strike craft that you get with LVL 3 sova you can reasonably easily defend against 2 carrier cap strategy enemy is most likely to go for.

If he goes for 1 cap + lrms he just doesn't have enough time to research and build enough of them to make a serious threat before you embargo him enough that you can bring your own LRMs or some other force. 

I think easiest solution would be either to raise price of purchasing LVLs, make them take longer to complete or my favourite to make cap ship immovable while LVLs are upgrading. Or perhaps some combination of above. 

2 lvl purchase is an investment of nearly another cap ship or 10 LRMs. If you embargo at 70% that investment becomes profitable after cca 3 embargoes on enemy HW. Once you give time guy that is going to get embargoed to actually build enough forces that he can defend IMO people will stop LVL2 embargo rush since it won't pay out. 

you know, you could increase the level required..  Increase it by one level.  That would make it more difficult to get it early on...  It's not ideal, but...

I think the fix should be something which doesn't require making the Sova an exception to all the other caps (of requiring the Sova to be level 4 to get level 2 Embargo).

lol hence why I said "not ideal."  I know it would be exceptionally bizarre, but still.  It is an option, so I went ahead and said it.  I think it would fix the problem, but people would complain that Embargo doesn't work anymore.

I think the ideal way to tame it is for it to take a percentage of empire wide income with a modifier for how far you are away from the enemy homeworld so that it will do little to rush with but be much more viable in late game and give a logical bonus for the closer you are to a homeworld.

I would propose something like the following while keeping the effects on construction facilities the same:

Lvl 1- Steal 10% of enemy empire credit income, -1% for every phase jump away from enemy homeworld.

Lvl 2- Steal 20% of enemy empire credit income, -1% for every phase jump away from enemy homeworld.

Lvl 3- Steal 30% of enemy empire credit income, -1% for every phase jump away from enemy homeworld.

The enemy homeworld penalty would keep this from being overpowered with someone using Embargo on a chokepoint world that isn't anywhere close to the actual enemy empire. At the same time, when you get to the higher levels even stealing 20% after penalties at lvl 3 of a huge empire could be 25-50 Credits/second or even much more if used against a TEC player with pervasive.

Sounds good to me.

That's actually a pretty decent way to do it.  I don't know if I'm for it, but I'm not fully against it.  For now, consider me a critic, but one that could probably be swayed pretty easily.

Problem with that is that it sounds a bit more difficult to code. Things like Embargo lvl 2 requiring level 4 or reducing its tax income effect in exchange for actually stopping trade can be done without changing the game engine. My favorite idea of just letting homeworks bet a reduce buff would be a minor engine change (just one or two new constraints really). This would be a pretty major change because abilities lack any way to affect things empire wide nor can they updating buff effects. It would be nice if it gets done but at this point I think we should just be hoping it does get fixed.