Ideals, for fixing Returning Armada without " nerfing" the Vasari

lets hope that this will be the last RA fix post.

from Sins Forums

First off let me start, by saying that I am one of the people that like Returning Armada. But after a battle with a TEC faction I found that not even the TEC, could replace there ships, at the rate that I could with Returning Armada. The main problem is in large battle where everone, has maxed out there Fleet logistics (for both fleet supply and capital ship), and there for have a huge upkeep that does not scale, with the real amount of ships, in your fleet. This means that the Vasari play should win, as there free ships, do not have to pay for the upkeep.

So here is my ideal to fix this problem once and for all. Instead of free ship, which help to power up the fleet thougth numbers, I would make it so that Returning Armada, would powers up the ships that I already have. It can't be any thing, like increase fire power and hitpoint, by 15%.

Instead I have come up with a specail abilitie for the entire fleet.

I still use the same name, for the abilitie, in other words, it is still called Returning Armada. So here is how it works. Ever thime one of your capital ships, is destroyed. All of your ships abilities, double in power! This double in power last for a amount of time* the level of your capital ship, when it was destoryed. Thismake it so that your higher level, and

there for higher value capital ship have a bigger effect, then a new level 1 capital ship, of the same type.

So here is an example.

Lets say that you have a fleet with a capital ship, and an Serevun Overseer. Now let say that the capital ship is destroyed. Now ever time you use Reactive Nanite Armor, instead of an increase in hit point of 250 and an increase in armor of 2, you get an increase in hit points of 500 and armor by 4, forn a set amount of time. This abilitie does not stack, so if you destory 2 capital ships, at the same time, you dont' get an increase of 1000 and armor by 8. The time that it last for, is based on the levle of the capital ship. So lets say theat the time limit is 10 sec. This means that for a level 1 it would last for 10 sec, buit for a level 10 capital ship, it would last for 100 seconds.

Now it still balances out. TEC can still by there ships at a higher rate, then the other two factions. The Advent still can power up there capital ships faster and there for find them easyer to replace. And now the Vasari can turn a lose, into a real power up. The more you lose(in capital ship) as vasari, the more powerful your fleet, becomes.  

30,930 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Nah. A complete overhaul is the wrong way to go I think. Returning Armada is such a nice and unique ability, taking it out would be a shame.

As posted a while ago, leaving RA as it is but simply limiting the portal which can warp in ships to one per planet would be more then enough.
With only one instead of three active portals per planet the Vasari can still warp around the map like they are supposed to but they can't totally overwhelm their opponents with masses of ships - except if they have a HUGE empire, but then they are supposed to be able to overwhelm the enemy.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
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.














Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
. The main problem is in large battle where everone, has maxed out there Fleet logistics (for both fleet supply and capital ship), and there for have a huge upkeep that does not scale, with the real amount of ships, in your fleet.


If this is the problem why not take the obvious solution: scale the amount/power of ships you get from RA dependent on your fleet logistics.
Just like normal ship production depends on our resource income, RA should give you less ships the higher your upkeep is. And if you dont want to nerf RA too much you can increase the amount of ships on lower ship upkeep levels, as long as vasari get significantly less ships when fleet logistics is maxed out. just like anyone else does.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Simply having a global parameter that creates a "minimum" timer between ANY fleet injections should be enough to make it more balanced.

-- Retro
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Ok heres my 2 cents...

Basically RA has a limiter of 150* fleet points. At level 2 this is upgraded

* number being totally arbitary and subject to balancing.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
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.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Well i love playing Vasari and using Returning armada. i also dont think nothing should be changed because to get the returning armada u have to do soooo much research and also its costs alot of credits , metal and crystal. So i wouldnt mind if u lowered the costs to get Retruning armada including the cost of the phase stabilizers which cost way to much!  X-(  but other than that Returning armada is great cause after you upgrade all ur fleet logistics u will never ever have to worry about buying ships for the rest of that game if u have alot of phase stabilizers.   :) 
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
nerf hunters
Nerf herders actually. =P

Seems rather weird that the devs would change Malice and then completely forget about Returning Armada.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
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
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Well i love playing Vasari and using Returning armada. i also dont think nothing should be changed because to get the returning armada u have to do soooo much research and also its costs alot of credits , metal and crystal. So i wouldnt mind if u lowered the costs to get Retruning armada including the cost of the phase stabilizers which cost way to much!    but other than that Returning armada is great cause after you upgrade all ur fleet logistics u will never ever have to worry about buying ships for the rest of that game if u have alot of phase stabilizers.    


ever played against such a vasari lame player ? =) with advent or tec i doubt it
"a lot of research and a lot of costs" haha yes all other factions dont have to research and all their buildings and ships dont cost anything...
i bet u've bought the game - gone to the forum - searched for "whats imba" and now happy with bashing other players with absolutly no skill or tactics just rush RA+Fleetsupply lol..
even if you loose u can turn the game in a 3-5h attrition battle by just fortifying with absolutly no skill or brain necessary.. and thats very sad
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
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.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
First off I'm a newbie....


Second off I like RA...


Now, that being said i think in terms of balancing this ability, as suggested limit the gates to 1 per system, perhaps also increase the time it takes between reinforcements... However if this is done i would like to see it become cheaper, so that for smaller games this ability would become usefull, as lets face it it's rather a waste of time on small and sometimes medium maps...

Now I don't know what values these should be by, but this kind of balancing should be fair enough so that it's coming into play rather midgame for the smaller maps, and with those modifications you obviously wouldn't need to worry about small empires pumping out hordes of ships because they would now be limited on a planetary absis and if you let them get a large enough empire in the first place, chances are you would of already lost the game even without it...


All that said I'm more than fine for them to leave it as it is.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I really dont care if it is balanced. Its distasteful to fundamental principle of RTS games


Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
I really dont care if it is balanced. Its distasteful to fundamental principle of RTS games


And the fundamental principle of RTS is? One way to win? No diversity? No variety? Make the game about spamming tradeports and see who is better spammer? Genius of RA is that it's an alternate form of economy, one not dependent on many planets or many tradeports. I want more alternatives to the standard model, not less.

Yesterday some noob whined to me for 20 minutes as my RA ravaged his planets. He continued to type instead of retreating his capital ships, and he typed and typed and typed an essay. Claiming he had more planets, false, that he had better econ than me, also false (he had more credit income but my resoruce income was almost triple his), and that I didn't deserve to win somehow. Mind you this was a 6 person FFA game which HE hosted on "Ancient Gifts," a map that pretty much requires you to go for RA. And never mind that I picked my race to be Random and he was Vasari. Never mind that he was terrible at the game, even if he played well he would lose trying to make tradeports as Vasari. He railed against things in this game that are terrible and "distract" him from the building like RA and Pirates and , lol here, INSURGENCY! Of course I told him the game he was looking for is Sim City, in not so many kind words.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
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.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Astax,

Have you tried fiddling with your support cruisers at all? I find their auto-cast abilities work alot better if a) I turn off their auto-attack or b) they are grouped in fleets. Any thoughts?
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
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!