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I've found that a group of KOL's and SOVA carriers can completely lock down a system, especially with embargo for stealing income and when they can get their instant manufacturing ability and remake all their squadrons instantly your strike craft dominate unless you were severely outnumber already.
It's Warhammer. Fuck common sense, the universe is built on awesome. Headshotting aliens from long range with a pistol is fucking badass hence its presence in the game.
I think that the general gist of it is that, individually, the KOL isn't terribly powerful until it gets to high level. The other two combat-focused capital ships can do a lot more damage in general because they're not so dependant on antimatter (or, rather, their antimatter management is good enough that they can dish out more pain in the long run). with a strong supporting fleet, yeah, the KOL is really damn hard to kill, but so is any other capital ship (provided you have the right kind of support) and can dish out more damage to boot.
Actually, what always struck me as retarded was the fact none of the capital ships, aside from the KOL, had any point defense weapons. Considering how small those weapon systems are, you should be able to fit them very easily on the hull. And the fact the KOL has flak guns but doesn't want to fire them without (presumably) directing power from its reactor into the guns first, all for a single burst, rather than just having them firing continuouly. Why aren't they just on all the time? I suppose it was for the sake of balance, so that a bunch of capital ships couldn't just defend themselves against everything, which honestly makes for better gameplay. It just irks me that people who have a way to safely use and store antimatter haven't figured out that relying on a specific class of frigate to defend everything against fighters and bombers is a rather bad idea. Or, in the KOL's case, firing only one large salvo in a large area around the ship, rather than actually aiming at anything and trying to shoot down specific targets.
#53
I really don't see how the Kol can be considered low damage. I mean, yeah, it has a worthless offensive ability, but in my experience it burns down hard targets a lot faster than the other Battleships, without bothering with abilities.
"Fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain."
-The Maestro Sartori, Imajica by Clive Barker
Without abilities it's pretty good yeah. But the Marza is nearly as good at burning stuff down and has good abilities. I still like making it though cause it looks cool.
Xbox Live/GFWL/Relic Online/Steam: Saberdark
#55
True, but the Marza can't tank as well... So it's a tradeoff.
@paladin: I'm in the process of writing a lnger reply, but a couple of quick figures:
Kol DPS, 23.1.
Vassari Battleship DPS, 26.
Marza DPS 46.5, (the missiles alone are 28.5).
The Kol really isn't that good in trms of DPS, it's just really tough to kill, but with so littile DPS thats meaningless.
(P.s. conventinol wisdom in PVP vs a Kol that isn't lv 5 or 6 is: ignore it, kill it's fleet, then deal with it after your done as it's irrelevent your fleet)
I don't know what i'm talking about, ignore me.
Thousands of years ago, Egyptians worshipped what would become our ordinary housecat. The cats have never forgotten this.
#57
Yeah, but it's always seemed to me that most ships can't actually concentrate their entire DPS on a single target... The Vasari's Battleship for instance will always be throwing shots off to the sides and rear even when it has a target order. The Kol on the other hand seems to be able to lay it's entire DPS on a single target in the forward arc...
In a large scale battle, the overall DPS matters more, but for early game focus fire the Kol wins from what I've seen...
@Paladin: Sadly those are the actual forward only values for each ship. One of the issues i've spotted now i've done this littile stats digging, (and that i'm adressing in greater detail in my bigger post), is that the Kol has most of it's Autocannon firepower in it's side and especially rear arcs. So a big chunk of it only gets to shoot when your running away, and another big chunk is only of use in fairly large battles where there's enough targets to keep both sides firing as well as the front. Even then though the others have an advantage over it, the Vassari actually has better side DPS, and the Marza is so far ahead that even with it's weak side guns it's still strolling away from the Kol, (never mind that this gives it's incendieary shells more stuff to work on for even more bonus DPS). Anyway you might get somthing in a few hours, depends how i feel, i've been up all night with a stomach bug and am going to attempt to get more sleep now. But it is nearly done, so as soon as i feel good enough to do the last couple of paragraphs you should get a more comlete breakdown.
#59
Weird. Well, I admit that most of my impressions are outdated, since I've only played Diplomacy twice now.
Just woken up and am sitting down to finish the bigger peice, but yes it was the diplomacy patch that hurt the Kol hard, most of the other cap ships got a big buff in that patch and a lot of the changes where not back applied to originol sins and entrenchment, so you won't have felt them, (another example of this is carrier now outbuild the kill rate of a level1 and level 2 flak burst so it's not worth much till level 3 unless paired with flak frigates or a second Kol).
#61
I think the Kol always occupied a weird place. The gun is kinda poop, the forcefield only works if you're being targeted, and the flak burst is mostly useful in fleet engagements. Early gameplay always focused around building and killing frigates as your main damage/hp source so basically... they had no useful abilities early game. And late game the utility of everything but flak burst isn't very high.Just woken up and am sitting down to finish the bigger peice, but yes it was the diplomacy patch that hurt the Kol hard, most of the other cap ships got a big buff in that patch and a lot of the changes where not back applied to originol sins and entrenchment, so you won't have felt them, (another example of this is carrier now outbuild the kill rate of a level1 and level 2 flak burst so it's not worth much till level 3 unless paired with flak frigates or a second Kol).
I'll probably buy Rebellion but im worried by its apparent laser focus on adding lategame units. The Titans are sounding kind of like Krogoths or Vulcans from total annihilation - devastating, but how likely are you to get that deep into a game while maintaining close enough parity with your enemies for titans to have any meaningful gameplay purpose whatsoever? The game would have to be bogged down into a defensive stalemate, and the novalith canon etc. already exist as the stalemate breakers. So.... multi-star map stalemate breaker...? I guess.
Remember: you're a blogger. Pretense is your co-pilot.
Yeah it will be interesting to see how the Titans fit into the pacing of the game. Especially the MP pacing which is fast and aggressive, where turtling usually just gets you killed. The Titans are built in 4 phases each of which is announced to the opposing player(s) so if you're going for a Titan I can only imagine it's going to involve a more defensive style (or else you've completely dominated and the Titan is just the coup de grace): after you've expanded enough to get your economy going, have a large enough fleet to defend, and then probably have to pile on the static defenses of the planet where the Titan is being built. The announcement part reminds me of other strategy games (Age of Mythology building a Wonder or Titan was also announced). In other news, the beta starts today! And check out the updated graphics:
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/418857
Evolve or Die...I choose to evolve.
Steam: Ekko Tek
#63
They're also adding corvettes, which haven't been discussed much, but fit somewhere into the Frigate/Cruiser hierarchy. I'm hoping they serve as low cost jump-less planetary defenders. Pump them out of a local frigate factory and use them to intercept anti-structure ships, aggressively built starbases in your gravwell (I'm looking at you Vasari), and siege ships. Beefier hanger defenses in principle I suppose.
I love Sins, but never bothered to play it MP, does anyone happen to know if the Beta is Multiplayer only? I can't find info on that anywhere.
well I can't say with certainty about this one, both of the previous beta's were single and multiplayer.
#66
I can tell you for sure once the beta finishes downloading here.
EDIT: Yes, SP is in the beta. The beta is limited to both TEC factions currently.
Last edited by Mokino; 1st Mar 12 at 4:43 PM.
So what do corvettes do then?
p.s. paladin, i've nearly got that Kol reply done, been on another sins binge the last few days.
Meh, might as well wait until it comes out then. Thanks.EDIT: Yes, SP is in the beta. The beta is limited to both TEC factions currently.
#69
Just finished a game as TEC Loyalists, I'm liking the changes, but I'll wait to play a real game until some UI bugs get fixed (auto fleet formation is only working at 95%, double-click no longer works to select all ships of a type, and the new units have some problems figuring out how to properly target their weaponry). I'd love it if Steam made this easy and let me upload the various screenshots I took directly through Steam, but since Rebellion's beta is using the same mechanisms for NDA-covered titles I can't (to be clear, Rebellion's beta has no NDA). Here's a zip of them though.
Corvettes are a mere 100/0/5. They can attack everything, including strike craft, but are so weak and fragile that they can't really kill anything unless swarmed by the dozens. This is unfortunate, as they're built like frigates, so to get that 50+ corvette swarm you need to do anything, you'll hear the same voice chirp when they're built over, and over, and over. They're somewhat of an anathema to the classic TEC combat style of thick armor, high health, and plenty of Hoshiko healing though, and with the way they die in droves they can be a great way to feed an opponent XP. I leveled an AI capship from 1 to 3 through the spam of CVs and didn't even come close to clearing the gravwell. With the capship and a dozen light frigates on hand, the group was one-shotting the corvettes if they focused on them one at a time. I can see these being useful if you find yourself without flak and in need of anti-strikecraft I suppose. That 10% phase jump time debuff can buy you an extra kill or two if the enemy tries to flee, not that even the easy AI I was using for testing found them worth fleeing from.
Speaking of capships, the new Corsev-class capship is very interesting. If you can't view the screenshots, it's primary focus is an ability that puts a heavy DOT on a target frigate or structure. If the target dies while the DOT is active, you heal the ship's shields and half its health, then get it for yourself. The cooldown is quite long so you won't be building a fleet this way, but if you've ever found yourself wanting a Guardian for your TEC fleet, there you go. It can also detonate a frigate of yours to deal decent aoe damage, more if the frigate was a stolen craft, and can get an aura that heals it every time a ship of yours dies nearby (again, more healing if it was stolen). It's ultimate is a 33% damage, speed, and shield regen buff to another capship. Damage and health are meh, so it's definitely a support capship (in case the ultimate didn't tip you off) and not a good first choice.
Also of note, capships can now level to 14, maybe higher. One more level of each ability including the ultimate, and there may be a third level to the ultimate.
The Titan, targeting derpiness notwithstanding, is a monster. I used mine to solo two lvl 3 Corsevs, a lvl 1 Kol, and a fully upgraded Starbase at once, killing them all with nothing but its self-healing ability and many, many guns. They level up just like capships but you can't buy levels and they get two ability points per level instead of one. They're also incredibly expensive, costing 10,500 credits and proportionally equal metal and crystal for the four required researches, the factory, and the Titan itself.
The Loyalist researches are all focused on making your ships and structures stronger in friendly gravwells, letting you build ships faster when defending, and making starbases and Novaliths cheap and numerous. Very late-game focused, with a VERY secure defensive front covering a tech climb to get out the titan that can shelter your fleet, then moving out under its protective abilities. Rebels are all about getting free ships from neutrals, pirates, and eventually a trickle of free ships at their capital. There are some maps where I can see that pirates-as-allies research being incredibly handy if the player hasn't cleared out some rear-access pirate nest yet.
I didn't get a chance to check out the Rebel titan yet; I'll see what he's like tomorrow.
#70
Yeah, I played the loyalists too (C'mon, two Starbases in every gravwell? Don't tell me you didn't want to give that a try). Their Titan really is a monstrous beast. And like everything else they have, it's stronger in your own gravwells. I don't even want to THINK about what a pain it would be to dig out a TEC loyalist faction from a system they'd managed to max out the fortifications on. My defense build is two Starbases, two repair bays, six hangers, a planetary shield, a phase inhibitor, and two gauss cannon turrets. That's 40 squadrons of strike craft if you max out the hangars on the Starbases. And with the Loyalist +30% damage buff and +4 armor buff for being in your own gravwell, plus their 30% defensive structure health buff...
If their Titan was there as well, I'm pretty sure the defenses could stand off a maxed out support cap fleet indefinitely without reinforcements.
Oh, Maktaka, did you notice what the Titan's level 2 ultimate does? -100% weapons cooldown for all enemies nearby, and +50% to all friendlies. Yes, for the duration of it's ultimate, it makes your ships stop firing.
Luckily, they seem to have beaten the AI code with a retard stick for this update, so I didn't have much trouble, but if it were playing like the Entrenchment AI I think I'd have been quite hard pressed.
#71
Guess I'll give some rebel impressions then (I couldn't pass on the pirate diplomacy options.)
The rebel titan is essentially a giant gun. Almost a mobile novalith in power though with point defence systems as well. Its first two active abilities are attacks (a powerful AOE, and an even more powerful hit from the main gun that decimates starbases.) I didn't get to try out the other skills yet.
As I said earlier, the rebels get diplomacy research that affects the pirates. It starts off as making them neutral to you outside of bounties (have fun hiding an invasion fleet in the pirate base's gravwell) and eventually leads to cheaper bounties and the ability to purchase mercenary ships outright (these seem a bit cheaper than the standard ships, but also have a bit higher hp and attack.)
Someone asked about corvettes. Corvettes are between cruisers and frigates and seem to mostly be direct combat craft. The rebel corvettes, at least, are fast moving heavy hitters. The main advantage corvettes have over cruisers is that the research to unlock them is in the first couple tiers so you can field them a lot earlier than the cruisers. They mostly make the tech tree more gradual (and are very helpful in harassing the enemy so they don't get a titan up.)
Speaking of titan construction, I'm really glad its balanced the way it is. Titans are extremely deadly but the cost to bring one out will cripple your empire in many ways compared to someone who chooses to tech up without one. They may need tweaking so that they're a bit weaker at lower levels than they are now, though, as they shouldn't be win buttons.
@Maktaka/Paladin: I haven't got this pre-ordered so i'm not in the beta yet, (get paid monthly and only found out about this when i first replied to this thread), so could one of you do me a favour? Go to your beta install folder and look for a folder titled eithier "GameInfo" or "Rebellion". If it's called Rebellion their should be a Folder titled "GameInfo" in thier. Now look for a file called "Gameplay.constants" in their. Copy that somwhere safe then open it with notepad and look for the accurracy values for composite damage, (i'm pretty sure the NDA stops you posting it in code tags).
If they haven't changed them, then ignore it's anti-strikcraft abklities, they're bad due to 10% accuracy. If that accurracy has gone up your looking at a LOT of potentiol there as bomber have light armour type and corvette get better multipliers vs that than flak. The downside is they have fighter armour type, which means flak is gonna chew them to peices. The biggest issue off the bat though is the horribad armour, currently a bomber squad is around a half again as hard to kill, and a squad of fighters about equal. If they had bomber like armour values then you'd be looking at somthuing a lot tougher to kill.
That said their phase slow is nice and is probably stacking, (which means like disruptive strikes cooldown change it can go upto huge values), and cap ships do only 1 quater damage against them, plus they do lots of bonus damage to LRM's too. Cost is also a factor here of course, if they're cheaper and quicker than scouts i can see them being really nasty there, otherwise not so much. That said their simply abaility to soak lots of flak damage cheaply open up fighters getting a meta level buff as there's less incoming for them.
#73
The Corvettes are interesting... They have every type of gun on them, so they can pretty much hurt anything. They also make strafing runs, rather than sitting static like frigates. Which means that focus fire isn't as effective against them as against normal units (Not to mention that focus fire is pointless against them, yeah, you'll pop one in one salvo, but who cares? One corvette is such a tiny portion of the fleet's damage output that it doesn't matter.
And they cost 1 support point, so if you have 50 supply cap, you can have 50 corvettes. They build in no time at all too. Towards the late mid game (Or early mid game if you're volume rushing) you're gonna have a system or two with 2-4 frigate factories in it anyway... I had a system with 4 frigate factories crank out 100 Corvettes in about 45 seconds.
They're handy little buggers.
That said... If you really want to kill strike craft, the Titan will do it better. That thing eats strike craft swarms as a light snack. Utterly destroys them. Shotgun flak bursts ftw.
Yeah corvettes fill a nice niche as a sort of militia you can quickly rally to spam defend your gravity well. I'm loving the abilities and audio-visual effects for the Titans. Never really played much TEC in Trinity but the Loyalists may have won me over. I can't help noticing though how archetypically symbolic the design of both TEC titans are in their,um, respective ways...offense, defense, male, female, healing, damaging, you know. I'm curious if the other factions' Titans are going to be so clear cut yin-yang that way or not.
#75
Well, the TEC factions are split explicitly on a Defensive/Offensive basis... The Loyalists have gotten tired of war and have turned into isolationists, focusing simply on defending what's theirs. The Rebels are xenophobes who want to burn the mutant, the heretic, the... Oh sorry. Um, anyway, the other factions are split on different issues, so I think their Titans will probably reflect that.
Ok, question, how are you guys finding the titans?
I've been reading up on the rebellion subforum, and pretty much all the discushion is saying their ludicruslly OP due to their combination of power and rushability. But meaningful discushion seems to be proceeding slowly over there. They're not as tightly moderated as round here and the trolls and the "I'm right becuase i say so" types are getting in the way a lot, (credit to those that are having an actual discushion mind), so i'm wondering what the relic dolts have to say on the issue?
#77
They're not that bad. I mean, yeah, they're deadly, but they're not as rushable as all that. They cost an arm, a leg, your firstborn, their weight in gold, and the stuff in the briefcase from Pulp Fiction to get, and any enemy player who hears you're starting production early should be able to frigate rush you into oblivion by investing the same amount of resources into frigates instead of Titan research/production, so unless you're already dominating or the enemy is a complete passive turtle...
@Paladin: Players are talking about rushing to them in 7 minutes flat from game start, and many are pulling 15 minute ones apprently, i don't call that costly or particuarlly counterable by frigate rushing somone, it would take you that long to build up a fleet to do it, let alone reach the target. There's also complaints that it's even worse in games with teams as one player allways gets fed to the point where the research and build times are the limit, not the rescource income.
#79
The resource cost of one of those things, including research and factory costs, would buy you a fleet of hundreds of frigates. If you're letting them sandbag that much resources, you had already lost.
If a player in a team game is getting fed that much, it's a fundamental problem with the game, not a problem with titans.
I'm well aware you could build a hundred frigates with the costs, it's a Tech 4 tech with 4 stages which works out at about 10K Credits + appropriatte metal and crystal costs. The question is, Given you want to colonise planets and generally spend things on stuff other than ships, and given how early it is, can you actually build 100 frigates. Light frigates build at 2 a minute with one frigate yard, so unless you focus on building several frigate factorys ASAP and getting enough income to actually match your opponnent in his titan expenditures on top your simply not going to get 100 frigates, your loking at 15-30 total per yard and then the titan is strolling around.The resource cost of one of those things, including research and factory costs, would buy you a fleet of hundreds of frigates. If you're letting them sandbag that much resources, you had already lost.
EDIT: here;s a thread talking about it, (Seems to be the most constructive on there), Should explain their complaint better than me trying to argue their case for them:
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com...age/1/#replies
Last edited by Carl; 4th Mar 12 at 4:52 PM.
#81
For someone to get the resources together for a titan that fast, they have to have spent nothing on ships, ever. And have done a pure economic boom, taking several planets but leaving them wholly undefended.
If you can't exploit that...
That said, I think the build time on the titan itself could stand to be a bit longer.
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Also... If you see an enemy player tooling around with just a Dunov as his first ship... Destroy him NOW. Throw everything at him and don't stop, no matter what it costs. He is almost certainly the guy going for an early Titan. Titan + Dunov is unstoppable.
However, I should also point out that while a Titan is in fact all that and a bag of chips, they are not invincible juggernauts when they are first built. A multi-cap fleet should be able to bring a newly built Titan down. It's only when they start levelling up that they become unstoppable.
I got my Titan to level 7 and maxed out (I think... it's conceivable that its abilities can go up to rank 5 I guess) its passive armor upgrade ability... I sent it into the last enemy's final stronghold by itself. It took down his level 1 titan, a max level Starbase, the maximum possible number of railgun turrets, and his last few capital ships, by itself, and all at once.
But that's because it was level 7 and the armor upgrade meant it could regenerate faster than they could hurt it. With 21k hull points and 13k shield points... Well, it was no contest. But notice that his Titan was there and my Titan crushed that too... Level 1 Titans are vulnerable still.
Thing is paladin on anything but the smallest maps your not even going to reach your opponnent in that time frame, (and yes it involes a colony capital as a start and nothing else apparently), and even on fast setting, how are you supposed to get any kind of fleet together in time to do anything given hiow long you need to get ships together. ou might be ale to ruch to him if there's no militia in the way, but if you don;t bring enough firepower your not going to kill his titan yard before he gets it built.
I'm curious, what type of start do you use? As i know the MP standard to keep games from taking hours is everything to fastest except culture and quick start. Thats basiclly about a third of the total rescources needed, plus a capital yard and a 290 pop terran planet with 2 metal and 1 crystal extractor, plus 2 scouts. It's pretty easy sounding under those circumstances as the scouts let you get a clear bead on where to expand and where to avoid and the better base resources and income are a huge leg up. I think the planets worth somthing like 2 metal, 1 crystal and about 20 creds a second. Without any other planets thats pretty close to the required amount of rescources in 7 minutes. So 15 is certianlly possibble. Especially if they scuttle the frig yard for extra's.
#83
You can ignore militias. They won't do any serious damage to a fleet that just runs through the gravwell and jumps out the other side. Getting to your opponent is no problem really. Rushing an enemy inside 7 minutes is pretty trivial, and really you should be at least raiding enemies by that point in the game.
I play with everything on normal speed... I think balancing for fast+quick start would be a major error. And even on normal speeds I wouldn't feel it was that hard to show up on my opponent's doorstep with a fleet capable of burning his homeworld down inside 7 minutes, let alone 15. Since he's playing with nothing but a colonizer cap ship (Or a Dunov and a colonizer frigate, going for max pwnage when he gets the Titan built because the Dunov can restore the Titan's shields...) then I know I can just go straight to his homeworld, ignore the militias in between, and burn him down because he doesn't have a fleet.
I'm not saying they're perfect as they are, I'm just saying they're not unstoppable, unbeatable doom if someone rushes them.
What I think they should do with them... The cost is fine, but they should spread out the research items across the tiers so that you have to have the full 8 or 9 military labs to do the final research. Double or triple the time it takes to actually build the Titan, and have the game issue a global warning to every other player every time you start or finish one of the researches, start and finish the Titan shipyard, and start and finish the Titan construction.
Honestly, just needing the full set of labs would be a major speedbump, you need a bunch of gravwells just to have the logistics slots for that.
Except you don't know that until you scout him, and even on fixed maps your not going to know his strategy for at least 2 minutes. Tha gives you 5 minutes to build a fleet and get it over there through a half a dozen grav wells. Even on fast ship speeds thats not a quick proposition. The gist if it seems to be tha no one can get a fleet together in time because at the end of the day you just don't have the time.
I also think it may be (no one's mentioned this but a thought), that people also want to be prepared in case he dosen't titan rush. Committing all thsoe rescources to mass producing frigates out the door is going to cripple your own economic expanshion. If he dosen't titan rush it's game over.
As for quick start and fast. It's a factor that can't be avoided IMHO. I don't use it in my SP games normally, but a few experiments shows that it knocks nearly half an hour off the time to my "midgame", (your efinition may vary), despite it's much more minor bonusus than other games "quick start" modes. Thats a lot of time to add onto an MP game really, and more than many may be willing to put up with outside of LAN parties and games with freinds. For the serious MP community using it is going to be a basic fact to keep the game quickly playable.
#85
You don't have to frigate rush to kill him if he's done the Titan rush. The forces you would normally have at 7 minutes into the game should be more than enough to deal with an undefended homeworld, and even a newborn titan if you fail to take down the shipyard in time. You should have a second capital ship and a bunch of siege frigates for raiding by then. That's all you'd need. Honestly, on fast production and resource speeds, with quickstart, you should have 3 capital ships and quite a force of escorts by that point in the game.
And that's whether you're expecting a Titan rush or not.
Also, TEC has a cheap early research that lets them put sensors on planets to maintain vision in a gravwell after the scout has left... Use it?
I think it's too early to tell if they are OP or not yet - we need the other races and their Titans in the game to see how they compare - we need the announcement that the enemy is building a Titan to actually work first so we know to rush them if they are going for an early fast Titan. But first impression is that they are a little on the OP side. I don't think the game speed matters all that much as that only affects whether you can keep up an optimal micro/macro pace with it - quickstart enabled means someone going for a fast Titan won't need to capture quite as many planets/resources beforehand. I'm curious what Titan-less composition will take down a level 1 Titan - I haven't read of anyone labbing it. Some of the capital ship abiliites would be useful (shutting down Titan abilities for example, increasing damage received, etc.) so maybe 2 caps, a dozen bomber squadrons, and a mix of 50 heavy cruisers/LRMs? The AI seems to have suffered a stroke in beta - I guess it hasn't been tuned for the new game yet - so vs. AI games even on unfair/cruel are not much of a challenge and I haven't had a chance to get into a MP game yet.
#87
Honestly, if I were going to rush the enemy's Titan factory, I'd rather go in with a pure capital ship fleet. They're vulnerable at level 1, maybe level 2 or 3, after that they're pretty unstoppable. I don't want to bring a bunch of frigates and be feeding it experience. Which means that if I'm anticipating the enemy might go for the early Titan rush I need to adjust my early build slightly, since I usually like carriers, but strike craft are pretty much just free experience for a Titan.
Seriously, the Titans have rape flak guns. My titan was able, with just its own two fighter squadrons and its flak guns, to completely wipe out and shut down a fully upgraded station's 14 strike squadrons. I just sat at the edge of the system for a while eating the strike craft as it remade them. Free exp! Granted, it's only 3xp for a fighter kill and 4xp for a bomber kill, but that really adds up fast at low levels where you only need a few hundred xp. So bringing carriers would be bad unless you can bring like 20+ strike squadrons.
@Logic Bomb: Somone took a pair of cap ships, a 100LRM's, (approx), and 30ish repair cruisers up against a loyalist titan and it ate them for breakfast. didn' even take hull damage apparently. Though i'd love a lab, maybe you and paladin could get together. Thats the crux of the issue ATM. Everyones claiming that the bulk of stuff that you can resonablly have by the time a titn shows is unable to chew him up.
@Paladin: Not at that stage of the game you won't. These rushes are pure rushes, as i allready showed you with the maths you cannot physichlly get even close to a hundred frigates by that point unless you build your entire strategy around mass producing huge volumes of frigates ASAP. And the idea of adding a second cap ship is just not happening. You need somthign like 4.6K credits and abiout a 500 Metal and 350 crystal. Thats a good chunk of the total titan costs right there. A third is even more expensive. For that you can virtually have a titan, research and all. A hundred frigates plus the factories needed to produce them in the required timeframe is virtually a titan as well cost wise.
EDIT: You posted while i was typing. A pure cap fleet might actually have a chance, especially a Vassari battleship based one. Power surge + disruptive strikes would be brutal to a titan because it's so much EHP plus damage pls antimatter drain that the titans down to basic weapons and facing a much tougher target. Might not work against the advent titan wioth it's death beam. But should be good otherwise.
Also. Somones got the other titans in game, and screenshotted their stats:
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/419462
One of the vassari one at level one is defintlly capble of one shotting a frigate fleet. I mean 15 seconds of 35 DPS hull drain with no migations plus an 800 point burst. Thats just brutal to frigates and nasty to cruisers. Depending on scaling at upper levels that could one shot everything that isn't a cap ship and rip chunks out of those.
#89
Carl, I realize those are equivalent cost forces, that's why I was using them as examples. There's no reason you can't have dumped equal resources into something other than a titan, as he's dumped into his titan. And you should be rushing someone, every game, always. So it would be pretty normal to have 3 capital ships and a bunch of siege frigates at the 15 minute mark. It'd be pretty normal to have two capitals and a bunch of siege frigates at the 7 minute mark. If you see someone's making a titan, just throw your whole siege frigate fleet at their homeworld. You can probably eliminate him from the game before he can really get his titan rush working properly.
Again, I'm not saying they don't need some balancing in how fast they research and build, I'm just saying it's not an unbeatable strategy.
Ask IgnusDei about it. He designed the Rebel Titan.Originally Posted by Logic_Bomb
The thread was deleted.
Last edited by the_living_god; 6th Mar 12 at 7:51 PM.
#91
Well, the new beta today now includes the Advent. Impressions later.
#92
Oooooh... must try!
Though, what I really want to get my hands on is the Vasari.
I think you'll like the advent
#94
I've just always been a Vasari fan. Those phase missiles...
I think with the vassarim loyalists it's going to be the wave canno you love more
#96
Keep in mind Paladin, it looks like the Vasari fighter uses beam weapons now rather than phase missiles (based on watching the artifact planet defenders). So you'll only be able to boost your bombers, anti-strikecraft frigates, long range frigates, and your capital ships with a single research now. So, you know, certainly not enough to build a complete combat force out of anymore.
Stinking Vasari rabble rabble.
#97
Argh, nooooo... I love my missile using fighters. I'm sure it's just a glitch... After all, the planet defense forces don't generally align with the actual faction ships.
They're correct paladin,l they're using the actual rebel titan and vassari stuff there. They use pulse beams now. The corvettes use pulseguns, (well last tiem i checked them they where using TEC lasers, but the code says they'll be pulse guns eventually). Your also going to love the new cap ship
I need to experiment with more Tec vs. Advent balance. Cause at the moment advent seems a lot weaker. In Trinity they were generally considered the weakest of the three but could hold their own if you really knew how to leverage their strengths and the proper synergies between ships was much more important. You could generally get at least as good or slightly better results with less effort using Tec or Vasari. Now, with the new abilities and Titans so far, I think Tec has the advantage still. Truce Amongst Rogues is a really cool new mechanic for the Tec Rebels and Loyalists getting cheap Novalith cannons and twin starbases gives them enormous staying power. They also have other techs that buff them when fighting in their own grav wells. Once they dig in, they will be the toughest to uproot. Then their Titans just seem much much better than the Advent ones. The Advent ones seem to be slightly better at support but I'm worried they just aren't going to have the staying power the Tec ones do. I feel like they aren't worth their cost atm but this is still an early impression. All the new research stuff for them is in the Civ tree really - I especially like the culture changes for the Loyalist - with Global Unity their planets transmit culture without the need for temples and temples if you build them stack the planetary rate by about 3x. The culture research also has phase missile mitigation tagging along which is great as Advent, being very shield dependent, suffered most vs. phase missiles. So far I like the Loyalist versions of each the best for my playstyle. Couple major bugs (disappearing ships and some crash related stuff) still but I'm really enjoying it.
@Logic Bomb: The thing is the TEC titans have the weakest anti-fleet capabilities of all the titans, (including vassari ones). Thus in the current enviroment where no one actually uses fleets agauinst titans because titans are so inasnely overpowered vs them the non-TeC titans rather suffer. In a fleet vs fleet enviroment both advent titans bring some seriouslly nasty abilities. The rebel is especially bad, a maxed chaustic blast does an enormous amount of AoE damage over a big area, and with the wasy the rebel techs work, not only can a freindly ship tha dies make the titan do more damage via reduced cooldown, but it can be ressurected to die again for another buff, plus those AoE blasts ripping through your fleet at are going to be cuasing huge chunks of your fleet to die, then come back on his side. Add on the ultimate kicking in, (which forces your ships to attack the supporting fleet and with a revelaion on hand give it a 4 second AoE coldown), and it's possibble for him to not only anhiallatte your flee as he dies, but finsih with mre ships than he started with due to all yours that have been rssurrected.
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