I'm giving up on one of my big secrets here so please read and think about it
So, as advent illum spamer fan, i always luved to send them alone crushing fleets until the horrible marza came
At first i cryed because my little illums died so fast, but then i realised, GOD! advent has big shields, advent has a great mothership advent has guardians!
So the tip is ^^ either you have a mothership with the lvl 3 of shield regeneration, or mothership with lvl 2 regeneration and guardians, but you NEED antimater, you'll see how fun it is to see a TEC send his marza alone on illum spam and send his missile barage ... all you have to do is to use shield regeneration (lvl 3) 2 times on your illums while the missile barrage is in progress and you'll see ... god my illums survived and they took 0 damage on hull and have full shield! (need to improve those shield a bit so the mother is more effective)
Thats awsome and then the marza goes down on a focus fire cuz he came alone and died alone
Now Advent fellas! To your illum spam and go crush marzas!!!!!!
(edit : the key to good advent fleets is generaly that, a good use of the shields, vasari has hulls, armor, phase missiles, EGG 6 and many fucking anoying stuffs, TEC has hoshikos, armor, hull, and marza, dunov, kol, ADVENT has fucking good SHIELDING, use it damnit, advent has halcyon with the energy weapon boost, the rapture, radiance with laser (almost as good as a marza if you use a malice stacked with it, advent has guardians, repultion, advent has the subjugator check the ability of this one, makes the ship on witch its used impossible to disable ... advent has revelation ... don't even need a scoot with that crap, advent has destra ... that crap goes over 33 dps fully upgraded with a halcyon, advent has illums who has 3 beam lasers (goes over 28 dps with halcyon and a fucking nice range ... advent has the steal ship ability with rapture, advent has disciple with steal antimater and give it back to ships, advent has repultion ... advent has culture with 2 labs ... eco start means culture almost faster then trade, advent can build structures faster for higher cost, advent has a pirate bounty boost, advent has some fucking good abilitys guyz, use them! and stop crying over vas OP or TEC marza OP, advent is the best! RIP if you don't believe me cuz i'll kick your ass so hard you'll end up facing your own anus.)
Matusow.... you get karma.... hitting a gaurdian w/vengeance could be powerful in pretty much any fight, I would think.
Also, if any of you think the radiance has no utility, what we need to know to resolve the argument is this: is there a stacking effect of increased weapon damage for SC combined w/ weapon damage research? If you've built a Rapture in the early game, by late game your SC's (assuming they stick close to the Rapture at all times) could be getting a 69% damage increase. For example: say a bomber does 34 damage. increase this by 30% (from beam damage research):
34 X 1.3 = 44.2
Now, if our Rapture applies it's damage bonus to this post-research value, the result would be:
44.2 X 1.3 = 57.46
On the other hand, if the Rapture's bonus damage were applied only to the base weapon damage (pre-research), the total weapon damage would look more like:
(34 X 1.3) + (34 X .3) = 54.4
This may not seem like a huge difference, but when you consider that advent squadrons consist of 7-9+ members (halcyon or hangar bays), a mere 5.5% difference could shift the outcome of a battle significantly. Also, assuming it were practical to pump out two halcyon carriers (at the same time a rapture and mothership), and get both carriers to level 6 as well as the Rapture's meditation ability to level 3 (+30% damage), it could be a game winner (if your opponent doesn't spam fighters/flak appropriately). Here's why: each level 6 halycon carrier has 4 squadrons, each with +3 members per squadron. As a side note, the best way to exploit this ability is to make them all bombers, i think, since you go from 7 to 10 bomber members as opposed to 9 - 12 fighters; using fighters gives a smaller percent increase of damage. Anyway, at level six the halcyons can release a swarm of 30 SC each, lasting for 75 seconds. That's an extra six members per squadron. That's eight bomber squadrons w/ 17.5 members each, or in other words, 20 standard bomber squadrons. But wait.... we have a rapture ability and research multiplying their base damage (pre-research) by either a factor of 1.6 or 1.69:
54.4 / 34 = 1.6
57.46 / 34 = 1.69
That's if you've done all your beam damage research. Do you see why this could become an issue to resolve? Add to that maybe another 20 - 30 other squadrons from drone hosts (if this halcyon/rapture combo was part of your strategy, you would almost certainly capitalize by building several drone hosts), and that extra 5.5% could become an issue in an argument where the Rapture's role is being scrutinized.
However, the only time that I could see this Mothership/Rapture and double Halcyon strategy being practical is if you have a reasonable resource pull (4-5 planets, not including asteroids), and have a single choke point as your only exposed node, with of course a starbase and upgraded defenses. If you couldn't see an immediate advantage in pushing out (in a team game, multiple opponents who might coordinate attacks on your overly exposed push) at the moment, you might dig in and decide to pump out up to 4-5 capital ships in order to capitalize on the XP stream from multiple opponents attacking you. I could see that being an excellent time to try this combo, as the Rapture meditation ability would be invaluable for boosting damage from defense-hosted drones (starbase and hangars), and later adding multiple Halcyons would help further capitalize on the SC strategy if you saw that your opponents weren't respecting (not enough flak/fighters) just how disgusting your SC cloud would be after an hour of feeding you XP. If you had the luxury of hiding say something like 10 - 15 hosts on an inner planet (if you had relatively competent teammates applying just enough pressure), waiting for the right moment to reveal them in a massive SC blitzkrieg, it might surprise your opponents.
On top of that, as previously mentioned, if you have a Radiance (instead of a second halcyon) pulling aggro from up to 24 targets, the Rapture can simultaneously buff damage on SC (passive ability, no antimatter required! you have to kill that motherfucker to end it!) and deal up to 200% damage to all 24 targets that are currently forced to attack the Radiance. This makes the Radiance become sort of a bomb rather than a cap ship, but the payoff is 24+ ships that will disappear before the Radiance heads for the coffers. Then Resurrect his crew (awesome mothership ability, almost as badass as the TEC Akkan's Armistice) into another Radiance, and he's back to kill more (fuckin Cylons).
Well i never use the mothership ability for the simple reason that ... i take it lvl 10 ^^'
Sacrifice a cap ship even if i can keep his lvl on an other is a waste to me
I'm currently trying to make an invincible fleet ^^ and it works well with a lower cost then any vas or tec fleet i can face at the point of the game i have it up, meaning i have better tech boosts
The fleet in itself is very simple to make, a ratio of 1 guardian (with repultion as fast as you can) for 3 illum and 3 disciple (antimater steal) add 2 motherships, 1 radiance and 1 halcyon to that, and make as much drones as you need to have an equal air fight, i usualy go for 10 or 15, 20 if carrier spammer.
most of the time i have a 15 drone, 12 guardian 40 illum 40 disciple, 2 progen 1 halcy 1 rady all lvl 3 min
My strat is simple, 2 guardian using shield, 4 using repultion, when antimater down, leave those regenerate antimater and switch to the other guardians. Make sure your progenitors always have enough to use a shield regen
With that kind of a fleet you can face a kodiak hoshiko spam without even using repultion, your illums will have as much firepower as the kodiaks, and will resist even better then them, shielding rocks the hoshiko will be useless because disciple drain the antimater and give it back to cap or guardian, thats an easy strat and you'll kick off anything if you boosted enough hull shield and weapon techs. specialy shield and beam researches, and don't forget laser.
If you face 60 kodiak with 40 hoshiko i bet you'll win but you'll need a lot of micro so the guardian and cap abilitys don't go to waste, its a fleet that survives with micro if you afk while fighting say bye bye to fleet.
Now if you face a vas enforcer spamer with overseers the strat is the same and you'll win. But! if the vas has subverters, focus 8 guardians on repultion, and make sure he dosen't get close to you and take down the subv who get a lucky shot to disable your fleet with caps and fightrs as a priority target, if he locks your fleet its game over, but 8 guard shouldnt let him a chance.
That fleet is to be used carefully, stand position, and make them jump together, position it with radiance front line, illums and disciple behind, and halcyon progen rear guard. if you need to move, send a guardian alone repulse the fleet facing you further, then move.
owned >.>
missle barrage is nice... high damage... n such but easily counterd by ion-bolt "etc" to interrupt its casting, would be a waste of 150 antimatter and cooldown for the marza that way
Since when are missiles affected by shield strength? I have never noticed shielding to help vs. missles. And therefore Guardians would be useless vs. missiles or missile barrage. The whole purpose of missiles is to bypass shielding which is why lrms kill caps so much faster than similar damage yields on other types of frigates, - because they ignore shielding. It is why Advent cap ships are so weak and die so quickly to focus fire from missiles and missile barrages.
not sure where you got the idea that all missiles ignore shielding, Starhaus. they most certainly do not.
missiles are the same as any other weapon for the most part. the only exception are Vasari Phase Missiles which can be improved by a research tech to effectively reduce a certain percentage of shield mitigation (depending on how much research you've done).
TEC missiles have no shield penetrating upgrades of any kind though so its a moot point with regards to the Marza. shields apply to marza damage. period.
I've always thought one marza wasn't much of a threat since it takes quite a while for all salvos to fire. Just at a glance, I would think it would become a major problem in a large game, where multiple players could get multiple marzas.
.... the main point of my post is that when you face a marza 6 in a game for the first time ... you don't have your revelation ready ... and probably don't have the eco behind to quickly make one ...
Progenitor lvl 5 or 6 with lvl 3 shield regen means you don't even need an other cap, witch is a save of 3000 400 250 + the 1200 0 75 for second cap ...
If the dude you face goes for a missile in illums or anything else just focus fire his ass, let him fire all he wants and just spam shield regen, you won't loose a fucking ship and his marza will probably go down if you have enough fire power of course.
If you wanna make a second cap that badly don't waste it on revelation, make a fucking Halcyon (or a radiance)
[edit] oh and btw Vas phase missile do not reduce shield mitigation, and missile barage on illums with a shield regen counter means the hole fleet in the AOE will have a nice high shield mitigation for a while without taking a single damage.
Vasari phase missles do not reduce mitigation. With research the phase missles have a chance to completely ignore shields and mitigation doing damage directly to hull. TEC have no such luck though. Their missles and such get mitigated.
[_]-Greyfox
I think the max % phase missiles have to skip shields is 30% with the 25% boost of the subv witch goes to 55% chance to skip (but only on single target for the 25% boost)
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