PJI=Phase Jump Inhibitor

Advent- they lay "fighter" mines using their carrier cruiser (CC); these mines can home in on targets

Vasari- mines cannot move; "Sivuskras Ruiner" is the Vasari dedicated minelayer cruiser, it can deploy explosive mines (EMs) or gravity mines (GMs); GMs can act as "PJIs" since they slow down an enemy fleets movement.

The Advent&Vasari can deploy mines in neutral territory.

@Volt- haha! I have beaten you to it. Also, it is "Sivuskras" Ruiner; the Skarovas is the "Enforcer", which is the HC (Heavy Cruiser; for benefit of DorianGrayEternal if he doesn't already know what HC means).

That many ruiners could easily fly through your fleet, but the reason I said those numbers is unless the autocast works better for you, my Ruiners won't and I have to deploy the mines manually so I need more to work with allowing me to have enough after some die due to Illuminator side beams.  An improved AI on it would be nice, but anyways, you would not need as many against a Vasari or TEC opponent, but I was going worst case scenario with an Advent battle ball.  You'll lost most of your Ruiners, but you will deal very very heavy damage to his fleet, so I'd say its worth it if you are losing.

Ah, comboing it off with subverters.  Now THAT makes sense... actually, that's scary

If the designers made turrets moveable, in a limited fashion, they would be a hell of a lot more useful. 

Personally, I am finding myself wishing they had antimatter and a single ability that drained all of it and sent them on a circular or elliptical orbit from their initial stationary deploy point.  Then they'd get hits in as they circulated on their orbit and would be less susceptible to sniping, while becoming susceptible to exiting the defense hole on their orbit.  The antimatter needing to recharge to toggle back to 'return to original position', would seem to me, to balance out the equation.  Possibly I'd also say have them circulate on a timer, and fall back to original position when the duration expires.  Then they could swirl about in defense, if the player so elected.  Though I'd probably make the recharge timeout fairly long, so they'd be stationary for a while before able to go again.

Anyway, shrug.  Am new here, merely remarking. 

They're neat in concept, but short of using them a bit on the first few single player games, they're kind of presenting as weak sauce for multi.  Problematically, new players are naturally drawn to them, I think, like to big battleships, as a naturally understood cool intuitive concept, that then kind of fizzles in being not as effectual as one's initial expectations lead the novice to believe.  With all the bizarrely named ships and confusing initial abilities, turrets was clearly one of the first and more understandable concepts, and new players latch on to them.

-evoke

Wait, how many subs does he use?  

Dorian,

I play multiplayer all the time, and I'm not gonna just blow smoke up your ass.

Turrets actually have some viability now.  Some people are raving over the TEC turret, and that's fine, but if you like to play vasari, I promise you their turret upgrade kicks ass.  It stops all hull, shield, and antimatter regeneration for a LONG time (something like 10 minutes?).  It actually has a pretty major effect on something like a capship or an invading vasari starbase (those are the things you want to make sure to target with this thing).  You just have to be judacious with how to use turrets.  Don't just spam them everywhere.  If I know a planet is gonna be invaded, and I'm vasari, I sprinkle a couple of these things around where the phase jump will come in, to make sure at least 1 of them can't be avoided.  When the enemy arrives I make sure to manually target the turret or turrets onto his capships and invading starbase (if there is one).  All it takes is one hit, and that cap is gonna be crippled.  If you have a decent fleet defending, it means he has to retreat the caps that are affected fairly shortly in the battle, or he is gonna lose them.

Some will disagree, but I think mines are overpriced.  Plus, there is an exploit where you can avoid them with the Z axis.  I think these issues need to be fixed.

The other starbases are good, but again you don't just spam them mindlessly, and they have to have PROPER SUPPORT or they will die.  Just to give you an example, I was in a game a few weeks ago.  A guy I see online fairly reguarly named "Aquila" or something like that was on the losing side, and all his other teammates had been defeated.  He was Advent and invited us to all gang up on his super Advent starbase, and then he'd quit after the fireworks were over (he wasn't being a dick - he also said he'd quit if we didn't accept his challenge).  We accepted.  I myself had a maxed out vasari fleet.  My 2 teammates fleets were close to maxed out on slots, if not maxed out.  We jumped in with all our fleets at the same time and went for the starbase and focus-fired it together.  Surprisingly, we all lost everything.  He had repair, upgraded hangers, plus those synergizing advent turrets.  We thought that since we had such overwhelming late game fleets, we could mindlessly attack, but we couldn't.  Anyway, I definately see other starbases besides vasari used online in real games by "pro" types, so they are viable in the right situations.  Thing is, don't scream and whine if you leave an unupgraded starbase sitting there with no hanger or carrier protection, and it goes down to some bombers in 30 seconds.

As others have said, the vasari phasic trap hanger upgrade is excellent - I always get it if the situation calls for it and I have the labs and money and time to deploy it.  It is so good that if anything it is OP rather than UP (no, I'm not calling for a nerf!).  Try it.  Especially good at defending your vasari starbase from bombers.  If you have everything deployed right, your starbase will essentially be immune to bombers.

The flak turrets you want are now on TEC hangers, if you upgrade them.

By the way Dorian, I think I remember you from a long way back (not sure).  If you are who I think you are, CARRIER SPAM IS NO LONGER A PROBLEM.  Flak works now (on fighters), plus carrier speed was nerfed so they can't just kite around the edge of the grav well (other aspects of the carriers received nerfs too), and there was a substantial buff to LF so they can catch and kill the carriers.

Also, some capships (especially carriers) received substantial buffs!  They are quite fun to play now, and you actually see a heck of a lot more capships being built and used online now, and not just marza for TEC either (in fact, the dominant cap for TEC is now the sova, believe it or not).  Many of us are hoping the devs buff some of the other capships in the next patch.

The game plays quite differently than the last time you were here, so you'll have to get used to a few things.  Make sure to try out the new capships (sova is excellent now, kortul is a monster, akkan now has #1 colonize in the game).  Just to keep you from being blindsided online, watch out for the advent dual halcyon rush, watch out for seeker/disciple spam, and in general watch out for carrier capital ship spam (mostly advent).

If you need some practice games online just to try stuff out, send me a PM.

The Vasari turret upgrade is extremely deadly.  If you see Vasari turrets, steer clear and avoid letting your capital ships get hit.  It's nasty, simply nasty.  Fortunately, Vasari turrets don't get a range upgrade, so staying out of range is very viable most of the time.

Really?  That is completely silly if it's true

I still stand by the need to combine it with an Akkan with targeting uplink, but this comes as a big surprise to me otherwise.

i think because the TEC turret gets those damage upgrades (i.e. extra weapons) later in the game, thats why its nerfed to begin with... i agree with needign to compensate for the extra firepower, though i think the nerfed range IN THE BEGINNING of the game is the wrong way to go about it...

yeah, thats the only reason i can think of (besides silly lore considerations which are never taken into account if its inconvenient anyway) for giving the TEC turret less range... unless the devs wanted to force you to buy the upgrade... which sucks... and like i said, if the inital range nerf is to balance turrets later game, well, its a silly way to do it

Regardless, the strategy is propagating.  The other day I used it against a large mid-game fleet a hard AI was using for the first time just to see what would happen..  A 1000 FC fleet went away in a series of spectacular explosions.  The thing was, I had only deployed about 20 mines...  Of course, that ends up being 42000 damage, but still...  I was stunned by the effectiveness of it.  I really didn't know whether to be joyful or terrified..  You never expect it to work so well unless you see it happen first hand...