I am curious of what people think here. A few things bother me so far. Vasari sb is exetremly advantageous over others. First of all they can rush with these in the begining and if one gets built in one of your wells early on while you are dealing with his fleet then that planet is screwed unless you decisevily win and have a large fleet. This is extremely difficult with a player on equal grounds as you. Mostly due to the fact that it can move and build away then destroy everything in well or anything that tries to even fly thru. You need ALOT of carriers and time to kill a basic sb and is not feasable when you are fighting a fleet.
Other thing that bothers me is the other sb totally suck at defending the planet. I have only played as advent so Im speaking for them but I have found no way to defend the planet from skilled players with a sb. The sb itself is extremely powerful fully upgraded but skilled players dont attack them head on. First thing they do is kill your planet. I know they are gonna fix the gov ability and soon I hope so my planets stop dying but it takes a slot and vas dont even need it. It sounds like to me they will still be able to kill the planet and its income too. You cant do this when a vas sb in well. If this is your hw then it is most of your income gone. It just doesnt seem right. All sb should have a way to threaten anything attacking a planet.
Maybe give sb a satelite weapon system when you place it within a certian range of the planet. It deploys sats in orbit that shoot at anything within bombing range.
Laying mines inside an enemy fleet is a waste of resources, they won't explode until 30 seconds, and don't become invulnerable for 30 seconds. That means the enemy ships will blow up your mines as soon as they are deployed, even without any scouts to reveal them.
The starrbases arent meant to be even. The vasari dont have assault cruisers, so this is their only real structure attacker. And dont look at individual units for blancing issues, just how the whole picture fits together.
As I had mentioned in my previos post, if you are trying to kill a Vasari starbase, the best way to do it is with bombers. The Vasari SB has little defense against strikcraft other than if it upgrades for hangers. So if you just send in maybe about 15 bombers and some fighters to protect them, all you will need to do keep the carriers/crusiers moving around the planet and out of range for the SB.
I wouldn't miss the "offensive application" of a starbase. Building Starbases in hostile gravity wells and attacking with them seems silly to me.
You can build ships to attack with.
After successfuly <--- (mangled that word) defending my homeworld from 4 good sized vasari fleets with only my gauss turrets, mine spam and starbase, I think entrenchment has had it's desired effect (for me anyway) it makes it easy to defend and hard to attack, bringing some actual strategy into your game, so I think nerfing the vasari starbase just because it can move would be a huge waste, you might as well take 1/2 the TEC's gun power or screw the advent's mitigation and shielding. The game is nice and complicated, and I am not in favor of changing much at all about it.
Except for the minor fact that the Vasari SB is their anti-structure unit. Besides, the other SBs have wonderful mass killing abilities, it's just the Vasari's mass killing ability is moving.
Check his math -- if he's not right about how giving shield mitigation allows them to be effectively 3 to 4 times as strong as their counterparts, I'll be shocked. And given that the meteor ability lets the advent base take out anti-structure units at range, that's bad. Not disasterous balance wise (as expensive as it is, you can probably bypass the defenses, or just pick them apart at a distance using strikecraft), but still OP.
Astax I agree with you the sb are great by themselves I am only refering to the fact you can totally ignore a tec or advent sb and kill the planet. Watching your planet die helplessly is the only thing that I am refering to. How would you have felt if he ignored your sb and killed your planet and moved on(which is what i would do if I thought you had final protocol). Came back later with carriers and finished it off and all you could do is watch cause I killed your planet and you cant build or do anything but watch now.Noone really is saying much about this so I guess noone cares.Yes I feel vas are ment to be more offensive as they get all their ships faster and sb too.They also get early boost with neutrals for better rushing then other races.
He might be right, but I'm still not sure it presents a balance issue. For one thing, Advent don't get anti-strikecraft defenses (at least not as far as I can remember). Vasari get a phasic trap for their hangers, and TEC get flak cannons. I'm guessing the Advent starbase and associated defenses are more vulnerable to strikecraft, and thus they need the extra time that shield mitigation gives them. The shield stuff is what they get for NOT getting the other stuff.
Also, you have to look at the overall picture. The devs have stated that they balance "by race" not "by unit." Of course, that doesn't mean that they always get the balance right, but I'm still not convinced at this stage that there is an issue.
But my overall point is the hilarity of one guy posting about how OP the Vasari SB is, and the other guy posting about how OP the Advent one is. I suppose the only ones screwed in the end are the TEC, as they apparently don't get an OP SB. Maybe that's the solution, LOL. Just buff the TEC SB.
Without putting my opinion into this debate, I want to say one thing.
I play advent, and even I think the metoer ability can get sort of insane. Does it have a max # of targets? If so, I haven't seen it.For each ship you send, the damage of that ability scales. It's awesome.
Also, never actually seen the AI TEC detonate one of their bases. Anyone else?
Mindseye in future you will not be able to kill the planet, once they fix Auxilary Government.
As far as people getting around your entrenched planets, that's aways a possibility, one that sohuld remain viable. In fact this possibility makes Vasari starbase ability to mvoe totally OK. You can always elect not to fight it, just go by catching some flak, and fight at the next world. But you better make sure your fleet is much stronger than your opponents, because jumping in with no antimatter and 70% hp you will die to an equal fleet.
Having had plaeyd a lot I find that Vasari starbase is pretty good tool early on, but I much prefer built up starbases of TEC and Advent for late game fighting. They have much better abilities when it comes to facing huge fleets.
Does not matter that they are stronger than their counterparts, you can't compare the game unit by unit building by building. Also assuming you have 20% mitigation on those buildings, that's only equivelant to +4 armor, not that outrageous. And there are plenty shield bypassing abilities, more so than armor bypassing ones.
I've never even seen an enemy starbase with Antimatter
I find Starbase balance quite interesting..
you have to take it from 2 points of view..
Single player - Where the AI will attack the Starbase. Its terrible behaviour. Ive seen AIs lose level 6 caps because they try to kill my Starbase instead of just go around it.
Multi player - Where players usually just avoid Starbases/kill his ally instead.
I agree with this except I find the aux gov repulsive and would much rather the sb be able to attack bombers.
Desolators with assault spec do a heck of a lot of extra damage to all structures - including starbases. Also, since starbases have shields (and therefore shield mitigation) the fact that their main attack has a chance to ignore all that makes them very powerful anti-starbase units.
A fully upgraded vasari sb (all weapon, all armour and one level of debris feild) can cripple and absolutely total huge fleets, In the current game im playing against hard ai i have one starbase that constantly kills off two enemy fleets combined
The problem is that SB's aren't intended strictly for planetary defense, or to stop bombing runs. Use the planetary shields research, same tree, thats supposed to stop (or at least delay) actual damage to the planet while your SB deals with the attacking fleet. Once the fleet is dealt with the fighter bays on the SB should be able to deal with any remaining seige frigs.
That's because AI is not too smart. I can kill a fully upgraded Vasari starbase using 40 bombers and take no losses what so ever.
You can just put the star base in the best position relative to the most likely direction of attack from incoming phase lanes... and then scootch the star base a little closer to the PLANET than you would think you probably should - and then it can defend the planet QUITE well. Especially when you support it with a good mix of tactical structures, and are ready to call in a fleet when needed.
Further more, you can deploy mines - intelligently - that will, as someone mentioned before "funnel" the enemy to your star base. And when that occurs? Try having a few mines right by your base, as well - they don't hurt friendly forces (although I think that they probably should, but that is neither here nor there, so to speak). Also... you can cover weakspots with tactical structures - they are really quite a lot better now.
Really the Vasari star base moving, isn't as much of an advantage as you think... it actually forces you to spread out your tactical defenses a bit more, because you can't make just one well fortified little point. That coupled with the fact that even the slowest ship in any fleet moves considerably faster than an Orkulus means that moving the damn thing can actually wind up hurting your position.
As for the Orkulus on assault? First, you have to get a builder there - which dies easily. Then, you have to deploy, and protect it during deployment - which is, almost impossible if the enemy has any decent number of bombers (omfg, fleet diversification? NO WAI!). Then, you have to upgrade it at least once, and most likely another couple of times to ensure that it's actually going to do well. And finally, you have to do the battle itself - in which time the grav well has probably be reinforced with an armada ready to rock and roll.
The TEC/Advent Star Bases have abilities that play to their strengths that more than balance grav well defense. Also, you REALLY need to look at the whole picture... The bases, and tactical structures, mines, ships, etc... all play together differently per faction. TEC/Advent Star Bases only don't own up to the Orkulus - if you play them as if they WERE an Orkulus!
L2Play people, thats what it really comes down to. You have to know your enemy, AND yourself to have any good measure of success (true story, ask the ancient dead chinese dude).
/thread
-Itharus
I assume you mean by kiting the starbase with carriers for about 20 minutes, because thats how long its gonna take 40 bombers to do anything, this thing has 30 armor at max upgrade, and it might even have shield and hull regen rates that outmatch a mere 40 bombers. thats not even counting debris vortex to gain thousands of HP instantly. And the enemy never brings any fleet to help. I say not likely.
Strikecraft can make a dent in a starbase, and thats about it, I doubt the enemy will give you the time to wittle their starbase down. you can train and then fly your entire fleet around the entire solar system and back before the starbase will 'need' any help. (ie losing shields)
I think he means 40 squadrons, bro.
Of coruse I mean 40 sqadrons, it's mroe than enough to kill a starbase ratehr quick. On top of that your debris vortex will do nothing as there is no debris to suck in.
Can't you (for the advent, at least) stop debris vortex from being effective with Detonate Anti-matter?
As a TEC player who plays ai hard...I should fear the Vasari, and Advent starbases when I see them, but 10 or more torpedo cruisers and BOOM. Something has to be done with the ai not supporting its own starbases.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
