The devs have recognized this

Yarlen,

Does this mean that there's no hope for more emphasis on few-but-powerful for the Vasari in the future? I certainly respect your vision for the race, but I don't see where your vision of how the race broadly plays is incompatible with what many people have been asking for. A well-constructed Vasari fleet, resource-for-resource, shouldn't be able to stand up to its TEC counterpart -- nobody disagrees on that at this point, I think. We just think that the ship-for-ship difference in capability could stand to feel more pronounced, with corresponding increases in cost.

In the end, of course, it's your game and the final decision is yours. I just hope I've been able to clarify a bit what I (and apparently a few others) are asking for.

Ah, well, that's certainly fair enough. And I do understand that the Advent are a factor in the differentiation process that we don't have any information on yet.

(Blair's comment in the other thread is why I'm asking, actually. From his comments in this thread, Yarlen doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of that kind of change, and I'm wondering if they're still even considering it or if they've decided against it. )

I played a couple of games, small and medium maps this weekend, with Beta 4.

There weren't any bugs that I could find, but a couple of thematic issues and an AI flaw that should be addressed (I think).

Thematic:

The Vasari are supposed to be on the run from a god-like power and find the TEC as unorganized slave-fodder. However, in single player games the Vasari are fairly evenly matched with and often aligned with TEC players! This sort of thing makes sense for multi-player (non-AI) games, but does not jive at all with the storyline.

Also, as so many other players have already noted, the Vasari really aren't all that mighty. I was expecting something more akin to the way I felt in one of the early GC II scenarios where the Dread Lords' scout would whack my whole fleet single handedly and the only way to win against it was to sneak around the edge of the map or to overwhelm it with targets so that a few could make it past. Changing the game at this point may be a little difficult, so perhaps a tweak to the storyline is in order. (Note that playing with the Vasari isn't un-fun at all. It's just not what the storyline conditioned me to expect.)

AI: The AI is extending itself too fast. In both games the AI attacked a colony defended by a few gauss canons, which defended at least until I could get my fleet(s) there too. This led to many frigates lost by the AI and a torn up capital ship. Pressing the advantage led to the loss of the AI homeworld and fleet in no time - a medium sized map being cleared in under an hour. (Maybe thats not good, but it is for me. I am usually a conservative player.) Also, in one game there were 6 players on 3 teams. I left my flanks unattended (except for gauss/hangers) to pursue the AI player who had made the above mistake and fully expected to get assaulted by the neighber. All I ever had to deal with were a couple of scouts and a frigate or three!

I encountered a small bug:

I had built a vasari overseer and was experimenting with its slow phase ability.
When an enemy fleet jumped in i activated it and they dropped out of phase space half way there.
They then crawled towards the gravwell in sublight
Interestingly they were counted as units of the arriving gravwell, as my units left the gravwell to chase them down.

Didn´t reproduce that error, yet as it would´ve taken ages to get my ships back :/

If you ended that game then you should have a replay of it and you can send it in, provided they can't reproduce it themselves. Sounds like a pretty big bug, not a minor one

The New Economic System scares me...

Before a player with less planets could win by skill, if he could force the other player to waste/lose enough of his resources to balance it out, eventually the terms become equal as resources run out.

Now its infinite. Now there is no chance of that, and it makes come-backs harder not easier IMO, because the player with a lead in planets/mines is going to become more powerful at a much quicker rate than it used to. Can't we make this an option?

Inifinite Resources/Limited Resources As an option this has been done before in games.

The Dawn of War parallel doesn't work like you want it to. Every race in the game operates on the same core mechanics, the same resources, the same resource gathering method, the same research method. The specific techs they research are named differently in places, but often have a similar effect to the research for every other race.

Dawn of War races differentiate themselves on the following items:

1 - Resource cost to build
2 - Combat Strength/Weakness

The first is a balance of unit & building price versus power relative to other races. The balance of which resource to use more heavily per race is partially story justified, but it's just a method to increase or decrease relative cost.

The second is just shifting what sort of tactics one must use. The eldar, as Yarlen said above, do quick strikes due to their high damage, but very low health. Imperial Guard work through sheer numbers. Each race has a specialization essentially that differentiate how they work.

The Vasari have very powerful weapons (phase missiles... eesh) and then there's their manipulation of phase space. Phase Gates to travel to/from anywhere, plus the one cap ship that acts as a mobile gate, allowing you to reenforce a battle from anywhere in your empire make the Vasari play dramatically different in the mid/late game because of this. You're not safe necessarily because they have their fleets several jumps away from your front, they can get around that in a hurry.

But that is the mid/late game. And the Vasari haven't been fully balanced yet, and we haven't even seen the Advent in the game. So it looks like on the high-end, the races have strong differentiation in technology, but at the start are pretty similar. That's something that can probably be taken care of with the balancing of the tech tree (adjust costs and benefits to improvements).

TEC: Economic focus. Heavy armor. Big focus on ballistics over lasers. Planetary shields. They're the rough-and-ready faction. They don't excell at anything specifically in combat, but they're tough and can bounce back quickly because of their strong economy.

Vasari: Phase technology. Missiles that bypass shields, phase gates, mobile phase gates. Big focus on shields and high-end tech over traditional armor. Once their shields are down, they're in trouble. Technological superiority can give them a big lead in offensive moves early in the game because the TEC doesn't start improving shields until tier 2 or 3.

Advent: Who knows? Will we even see them in the public beta?

This is ment to be a beta but we have one race just thrown in at the end and the last race we are not even going to test at all.This is more like a pre purchase demo in reality.It is bad enough only having 3 races but to have more or less clones is very dissapointing,no matter how you try to spin it the Vasari are more or less the same as the TEC,ecomony,ships,etc.

And still no bloody fleets or formations in the game.

No, its a beta. Hence the increasing number of features, like



this still to come in a patch.



And the fact is they are very different from the TEC. Yes, the ships have the same (rough) roles. Your stuck with that from the get-go, really. Even in Starcraft that was true (to a degree). Marines -- Dragoons -- Hydralisks; Firebats -- Zerglings -- Zealots. Wraiths -- Scouts -- Mutalisks.

Fact is, the abilities and research make the difference between the two. And those differences are huge.

If Yarlen doesn't, I would like to hear it I'm not interested in starting another heated argument, but you don't give the impression of being someone who would rush into one, so perhaps we can have a rational discussion

I've read the lore, and I think the bigger problem isn't what it said, but rather what it left out. The lore itself is kinda vague, and it let people read into it what they thought it meant thus leading to the disappointment of many.

i kind curiouse what you are referring to, when you say radical ideas/changes



Thats what ive been interrested in since the beginning of the discussion, i wanna see less Vasari ship flying around compared to the TEC, and i dont mean removing some models from the game

THe square hangars on the Vasari Carrier feel very out of place to me. I feel like more models should replicate overlapping/concial sea shell designs. Which some models do very well.

At the very least those hangars need to be rounded a bit.