Now this might seem like a bit too much overhaul and work for Ironclad , but frankly is their fault for introducing an ability that is so way out of tune from the basic concept of Sins. For something so out of tune ,it needs alot more dev attention to make sure that its balanced. Offcourse they can just nerf it out of existance so that it only becomes useful "for kicks" , "for nothing else to do" or "against AI where anything can work" just like other unique abilities like the kostra , insurgency , deliverance...etc.

Just imagine if those things were intially overpowered...we might actually want kostras, insurgs and deliverance thats re-balanced and useful in the game . Tho as it is ,im happy seeing them being non-existant ,and only used to subject beaten-down enemies to "ironic-deaths". Maybe RA deserves the same fate.

Simply having a global parameter that creates a "minimum" timer between ANY fleet injections should be enough to make it more balanced.

-- Retro

How about if RA provided ships unique to RA? Returning Armada may be potentially pulling ships stranded in the middle of nowhere. These ships may have been away from support for so long that they have to cannibalize internal systems to stay afloat. The ships designs may be more useful in deep space where it may have to fend for itself for several, dozens, maybe hundreds of years, but both its design and age causes it to suffer compared to a modern warship fresh off the assembly line.

Basically, have RA produce ships that are weaker than average.

nerf hunters

limitation on phase stabilizers 1per Planet
increase spawn time of RA maybe double it
increase antimatter costs for Jumps + RA for phase stabilizer so u can use RA _or_ JUMP
not both of it at the same time..
cooldown on phase stabilizer after a RA event so u cant use the gate for about 1 minute or 2..

= fixed

Everyone in this thread fails but MegaVolt. His solution would not bee too far off the wall.

But you all fail to grasp the real problem as is. The original design of the game assumed that you will need to use support vessels in order to win. Limiting RA to non support ships would make it balanced in such an environment.

The real problem is 1 of 2 things. 1) Either the support vessels are not powerful enough to be needed for victory. If victory can be achieved without them, why bother right? or 2) People simply don't use support vessels vs RA enough, hence it wins because it has more ships.

It's hard to judge weather the case is #1 or #2. It is even hard for me. While I have slaughtered thousands of ships in 1 game vs RA using Advent and taking fewer than 100 losses, I found it hard to manage such a perfect fleet. While my opponents were content to just throw ships at me blindly, being that they are free, I was glued to the fleet micromanaging every move to make sure my ships stayed in perfect formation to minimize losses. All my abilities were off autocast, and I had to do everything manual.

I would then call it balanced outright if it were not for the fact that I could only micro one fleet at one location effectively, while the enemy, if they were smart enough, could flood all my planets with small fleets making it impossible for me to counter all of them. So I am still in the undecided limbo. But I believe that making the unit AI for support ships more intelligent might make RA less of a sure win. Stuff like Demolition robots, Distortion Field and Repel need to be a bit better on autocast in order to make combating RA easier.

I find Demolition bots to be the most worthless on autocast. Other abilities like Designate Target and Perseverance are not good on autocast either. Designate Target targets stuff that's not taking damage (Maybe make it target only stuff with topped off shield mitigation!). And Suppression just gets your subjugators killed! They leave the defensive repel/shield projectino bubbles in order to suppress some far off target. Add to it the horrors of support cruisers with autoattack ability left on! They go off to fire at targets that the ships they are meant to support are not targeting, spitting the fleet and not using their abilities! And there are plenty of abilities that remain forward facing where they need to be 360 degrees, like reactive nanites.

So in conclusion the best way to balance RA is to start with the support cruisers. Once those are in top shape we will see people use them, and then we can start looking at how much do we need to limit RA.

I really dont care if it is balanced. Its distasteful to fundamental principle of RTS games

as is per gate RA is very underwhelming, it is only when there are stacked gates that it is a problem. any of the combo, limit to 1 gate per planet, nerf antimatter, etc would make to completely pointless to ever use. honestly, one gate per planet, as RA is, would prob be an over-nerf IMHO.

i forget who it was, but someone suggested and increased cost per extra gate, scaling up the cost per gate at a particular planet when building multiples. i think this is a good fix which is best of both worlds. if you let someone build 3 gates per planet, you deserved to get stomped. if they moved to a one gate per planet model, i think they need to carefully consider if the amount summoned per gate needs to be un-nerfed.

another nerf i am in favor of (i play visari 100%) is limiting the ships summoned to ones researched on the tech tree. prob, to work properly, should substitute skirmishers (the crappiest most fleet intensive visari unit) if the unit/s it picked is/are not researched. this would also prevent people from getting hc's when not researched, and prevent people from getting only skirmishers lrms and hcs, which i think would also be overpowering.

all that said, i like the ability, but think it does need some tweeking. the thing that the people who are screaming for the nerf to death do not want to admit is that it is insanely expensive to get online. nerf it too much and it will be as useful as long range jumps on a one star map.

Yes I too thought about not using autoattack. But rather than not using auto attack I prefer to micro them when possible. The extra dps may not be much, but it's still dps! I would rather they not have guns like carriers, that way I wouldn't feel like I'm wasting something! Also I usually group my ships into fleets by type. This makes it a lot easier to manage. And never fleet your ships with a capital ship! They do really stupid things like sitting around while your Cap is bombing a planet, instead of killing the buildings!