finest hour, same story - used once will never be used again , while the Kortul will keep his shield regen.

Oh damn, so there exists one ship in the game that is not rendered useless after 40 seconds of fighting with a Kortul. what a sucky ability this DS must be ;s.

Seriously though, I'm not sure if it completely negates DS. I'd have to check.

HOW:
I started a small random 1v1 game against an easy AI, Vasari vs Advent. I selected the cap factory to build a Kortul.
I saved, quit, and loaded the game... taking the seat as the advent player. I queued a Radiance.
and so on, with a dozen more save/loads I managed to arrange a fight in an empty gravwell between:

WHO:
Level 4 Kortul with 2 PS and 2 DS, autocasting PS
versus
Level 4 Radiance with 2 DA and 2 EAR, autocasting DA

WHAT:
Radiance immediately drained the Kortul, albeit merely scratching him (26 DPS should be uber, but it is severely mitigated and the Kortul's hull never went below 90% during the fight)
After the Kortul got drained of antimatter the fight was kinda even - DA didn't do much damage to Kortul and Kortul didn't regenerate shields with PS, having no AM. The Radiance's AM pool was going down very steadily though.
Finally, after slightly over one minute, Radiance's AM reserves got zeroed and WAS KEPT THERE BY KORTUL'S DS. Radiance never had a chance to cast DA again, so Kortul was free to chain PS, regaining 800+ shields every 35 seconds thereafter. 
Clearly, Kortul won the fight without a scratch.

So: DS > Absorptive Armor, at least with both on level 2. I don't feel like wasting another hour on testing it, but I expect it will be similiar on other levels.

I can send you a savegame that starts exactly at the beginning of the Kortul vs Radiance fight.

Ok, Now add HP/SH/Armor and DPS buffs from my list. After these changes situation will change "a little". I don't say I won't remove DS buff from list.

OK, I made some tests too. I still think Ability is little too situational, but I am not going to force my idea for all cost. Buff removed from list.

After DPS/HP/SH increase Marauders will be slightly less situational. Abilities buff may help too. Any idea of any further Marauder buff?

You don't seem to have anything on there about POH.  IMO, this is the biggest problem with the Antorak.  The other abilities are supposed to be nice additions, but POH is supposed to be the main thing, yet its not...  DS is better than POH, so you are left with a ship that is worthless.  It was suggested by N3 a few posts back that you could have it reduce mitigation by ~5 for a duration.  I would like to amend that to be -4% mitigation for 20/35/60 seconds.  This way, you could potentially get up to -12% mitigation which would increase damage output by ~50% for non-PM's.

Neh..  I'm not really a big fan of AM killing, but Idk, it might work.  I suppose though that doing so would definitely put it beyond the realm of DS which is good and more or less permanently neutralizes abilities.  You rush with an Antorak and suddenly that Progen/Halcyon combo they've got isn't so useful..  So it would be good.  I'm changing my original response, this is good and I like it, but...

You suggested knocking down enemy income.  I am against this.  It just sounds too much like Embargo.  Maybe though...  What if you made it so that all ships that were built not only took longer but only had say, 75% health when they were created?  That might do it..  

Or maybe have it so that All structures in the gravity well take 5/10/15 DPS?  It may not seem like much, but over time it would do something.  Send in your Antorak with Subversion and DG before a battle and start the passive DPS on enemy buildings before leaving only to return later.  It would also make the Antorak better at guerilla war as it would allow a small fleet to destroy structures more rapidly.  I don't know..  I just don't want a demi-embargo.

The DG buff IMO is good/bad.  The increased range means that you can finally use it on your entire fleet (good).  However, reducing the Grav Well range by that much might just mean that you could go anywhere at any time.  Maybe that would be good, but for retreats, it might be too good since you just shrunk the gravity well by 60% (including research).  That means far less transit time.  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad...  Idk..  Time would have to tell.

Anyways, to finish my sentence from earlier, the reason I don't know is that you just made one ability good.  Not uber mind you, but good.  The problem is, the other two as you suggested them are not going to provide incentive to get it.  DG is a nice thing, but it isn't an ability that you say to yourself at the start of the game, "I can't wait till I can roll out my Antorak with Distort Gravity!" *sarcasm...  You get it if you get an Antorak because its nice, but not a game changer (unless against a PJI).  

Subversion however really won't do that much I don't think the way you suggested.  It just kinda sits there.  Sure, on Point Blank, that ability would win you the game as you suggested it alone, but for everything else its not that big of a deal.  Embargo is good because you steal income.  This just lowers enemy income.  

It needs something to affect the planet/structures/build speed but I don't know what...  Affecting the enemy fleet is a bad idea.  That is not what this ability is about.  I guess another option would be to increase the AM cost of all abilities used by enemy structures.  That way their repair bays don't do so much and hangars will run out faster.

Aside from that, I agree with your changes...

Well, let's see...  I said earlier that I didn't like Income reductions, so that is out.  

I thought about that, but that is on your defensive turrets.  This is out.

Saving this for later.

I don't really want negative population growth..  Not really going to have much of an effect, and its doesn't seem to really fit with the the ship...

Disabling trade ports could be good, but I don't think many people put TP's on their border worlds.  Not a big fan of it.

No.  That is WAAAAAY too powerful.  Trapping enemy units in his own gravity well indefinitely is one nasty ability.  Maybe you could slow down phase jumps by say 200%/300%/400%?  That would be more reasonable, but we would need another opinion as to whether that would be OP as well.  It would help guerilla fighting though, so I like it.

Disabled defensive structures: This could be interesting.  I suggested increasing AM costs which would have a similar effect.  I think that would be better as it would mean fewer uses of the structure rather than outright deactivation.

Disabled research: I thought about this, but I decided against it in my previous post.  My reason is the same as above for TP's.  I don't think too many people put them on the front line.

So here are the options:

1. DoT to buildings
2. Increasing enemy ship PJ charge up time
3. Increase enemy structure AM costs.

I need someone to bounce ideas off of so I'm posting it even though I haven't narrowed it down any farther...

I would like to note however that when I am going with stuff, I am considering buffing its guerilla potential icing in a sense.  If you can get to the Kostura, sure.  But really the Antorak only becomes the ultimate guerilla fighter at level 6 due to its ability to go anywhere.  You have to go through other levels, so it needs some stuff to get it there.

Dunov Magnetise - does anyone find that a bit lackluster?  From my experience when you zap an enemy ship there is a maximum number of strikecraft that can actually be smashed into said ship.  End result, when there are a lot of strikecraft around, it lacks the sort of punch to help clear the skies.  Any in favour of making a radius around the magnetised ship from which 30/40/50% (random numbers) of strikecraft in that field will be smashed into the magnetised vessel? 

This would mean magnetise scales better with large numbers of strikecraft while still not being overkill to early game SC based fleets - but possibly being a decent counter to a carrier rush?  After all, where the Dunov sucks is early game, when shield restore doesn't have much to target, magnetise is "meh" versus carriers and EMP bomb really doesn't help against other capships, given the Dunov's poor firepower. 

The Dunov needs a way to effectively fight carrier caps and colony caps - to give it some sort of edge - so that it's an alternativce choice to a Sova or Akkan.  I would say the same for all the support caps.  We need to be able to choose any cap and still fight effectively an opponent, if we want to achive capship balance.  ANY capship should be a viable first choice.

Currently the carriers and colonisers are just about perfect (excluding a few niggles with the Egg), and we need to bring the others up to this level.

Meh, rambled, sorry bout that.  But you get my point, yeah?

@Electron: I can see where you are coming from.  While I have never observed it (I don't play as TEC), if it is as you say, then I would agree a buff would be in order.

@Runesia: Its forward beams still deal good damage though.  Detonate Antimatter is a great ability.  However, Animosity is crap in its current form.  The way that Arthanis suggested changing it, it is better, but I think there is room for improvement.

Also, different capitals have different ranges.  In fact, different weapons on the same ship can have different ranges, so its perfectly fine.

@Arthanis: About animosity..  I noticed that while you did buff it (and considerably I might add), you changed it a bit.  Over time, we have seen the decrease in the effectiveness of Advent synergies.  Ie Destra+Malice, CB+Malice, Animosity+Vengeance, etc.  I think that we need a way to bring back the A+V synergy.

While I agree that enemy ships should not be controllable by the user, I do not like your idea of increasing mitigation.  I understand why.  You wanted to make the Radiance more hard to kill.  However, I think something better would be a focused vengeance.  Perhaps rather than just redirecting it, you channel 100%/150%/200% of incoming damage at an enemy target.  For clarification, let's say that your enemy is blasting you with 1000 DPS.  This does not prevent you from taking damage, but it does mean that for the duration, rather than just you taking 1000 DPS, animosity's primary target would receive up to 2000 DPS.  So you still take damage and can still die, but you are far more likely to take the enemy down with you.  This way, you can get an Animosity+Malice+Vengeance combo going.  I'll define it:

Animosity: The core of the synergy.  Causes enemy ships to target it and deals heavy damage to a singular target based upon the damage it takes.

Vengeance: Thanks to the forced targeting of one ship, Vengeance becomes more useful and you can reflect 200% of dealt damage back to each attacker.

Malice: By propagating damage, you can spread the pain.

So, here is an example using 24 HC's whose DPS adds up to ~500 when going against this synergy.  First off, Animosity kicks in.  Your Radiance deals 1000 DPS to one of the HC's.  Then, Vengeance stacks on top of that and deals 40 DPS to each HC.  After that, Malice activates and propagates 30% of all damage.  Here are the equations used:

DPS=.3*A+.3*23*V+V (for the bulk of the HC's)

DPS=.3*24*V+A (for the unit targeted by Animosity)

A is the DPS of Animosity and V is the DPS of Vengeance.  Since we know these, we can calculate:

628 DPS for most of the HC's.

1288 DPS for the HC targeted by Animosity.

This yields a maximum DPS output of this combo of 15732 DPS spread over 24 ships which means an average of 655.5 DPS.  That may seem like a lot, but that is assuming the best possible conditions.  Its like Malice+CB.  It can theoretically deal on the realm of about 6000 DPS to the target and 2000 DPS to everything in between, but its not ever going to happen.

Maybe its just me, but one of the things the Advent had was a ton of Synergies.  They had the Holy Trinity which slowly just kinda decomposed into a duo with the Radiance left by the wayside.  Upping Animosity in the above way (or a related way) ought to bring the Radiance back into use for something other than killing enemy AM.

Also, you can veto this if you like, but I personally hate how much the Progenitor got nerfed.  It not only went down from infinite targets to 24, but only propagates 43% of what it used to (it was 70% and is now 30%).  It just isn't what it once was.  I would suggest a buff to Malice.  In another thread, I suggested having the ship cap at a static 40, but the propagation would be 25%/35%/45%.  That would make it far better than it currently is while still not making it the omnipotently OP ability it once was.  Don't get me wrong, it needed a nerf (and badly), but I think the devs went to far.

I reckon that the Antorak's subversion should greatly increase the build times of all enemy SC in the same grav-well. This will mean that subversion would become very useful to use in almost any battle with the enemy.

Update:

- Volatile nanites further buff

- Incendiary sheels: damage rate reworked to give constant damage increase at all levels instead of large increase at level one and small prgression at level 2 and 3.

- Subversion: buff rebalanced. No longer reduce income, but build speed reduction is improved and now affect Stricecrafts in entire Gravity well

-Phase Out hull - buff rebalanced to give constant effect progression

@ Runesia:

I gave 10DPS buff to each battleships front weapons - it will fix many problems

I think the best way to go for the Kol's GRG would be to have it ignore shield mitigation.

We can't buff its damage to insanity (like some suggest to ~1800) cause if a player keeps his fleet off the GRG target it would have constant 15% mitigation, so the Kol could keep pounding on it for 1800*(0.85) minus armor, which would mean way over 1000 damage every ten seconds or so. That's most caps out of here in 30 seconds with GrG only. Bah, players would turn off Kol's autoattack and use GrG only in small Cap vs Cap fights! That would be crazy, something like 100DPS nanos.

My idea for GRG would be 250/400/550 damage with ~10 sec cooldown, 50 AM cost and ignores shield mitigation.