I brushed up on advent by making guardians work by putting them in there own fleet and turning auto attack off. It was easy and they could be right next to the main fleet auto-casting shield projection while i manually cast the guardians which were idle. It worked wonders and i saw my fleet survival rate increase.
After countless games using this combination i came to love the guardian because it could really never cancel out of shield projection with this technique.
So i was like-why not the domina... Would i be the first to really make them work properly. So i made a third subfleet per main fleet with 4 domina's. They tailed behind the main fleets being located just within the shield bubble with auto-attack off and auto-cast on:
Result: they were just sitting there. They were facing the whole fleet and they didnt cast a single preserverance regen.
As my caps health slowly droped i had no choice but to manually activate perseverance.. so is that it? We have to manually do it? So disappointing that the auto-cast feature is a waste of time even when there facing the whole fleet.
Assumption: Being behind the main fleets i thought they would be facing there targets and pick any ship and repair it with auto-cast.
Conclusion:
I can't micro too much esp with an empty stomach. I'll have to stick to repair platforms ,vertigo and deceptive illusion as bonus to shield projection for defensive purposes.
It's a pretty open-ended question. Since the Guardian is defensive, the other support cruiser should be offensive (although I rather like the idea of seeing what 2 decent defensive Advent support cruisers would be like) (and the Domina when used is used almost exclusively for its defensive hull repair).
That said, I think the Advent really need some capability for hull repair other than going back to a friendly repair platform - but it can't be effective fleetwide hull repair like the Hoshiko because that's not the Advent's thing. The Perseverance ability is all right as it is IMO, on the Domina.
If its other ability is offensive like Suppression, it could be similar to Suppression except without the channeling requirement, which would make it halfway usable. That might be seen as a little too similar to Demolition Bots though. Perhaps its ability could apply some other debuff instead. Maybe it could channel (low duration) 70% speed/accel reduction on all frigates inside a medium radius or something. I'd really like to see what sort of strategies that would result in. Or it could vastly increase weapon cooldown on an enemy frigate/cap for a long period of time (fire and forget). Or, fitting in with Advent's specialty in shields, it could reduce a target's shield mitigation by a moderate amount (but that's very similar to a Subverter ability...). Or it could do that in combination with halting passive shield regen (effective on large targets).
Quite a few things could replace Suppression. The problem is not a lack of ideas I think, it's just that Suppression as is is just bad, for a multitude of reasons.
But see, there's the rub so to speak. Most of the support cruisers are not set as defense or offense strictly. The Guardian dispurses damage with Shield Projection but then breaks up enemy formations with repulsion so its really a hybrid (although I will argue later its more of a pure defense support cruiser). The Hoshiko repairs and disables, The Cielo Regen's Shields and directs focus fire, The Overseer Repairs and slows incoming fleets. I would say the Subvertor is really the only true single purpose cruiser as its abilities are purely offense based with no effect on the friendly fleet.
The first thing to decide is should the Domina be a hybrid or a pure offense or defense support cruiser. I would make the argument that the Guardian is in fact a pure defensive support cruiser as it is designed to absorb and prevent damage mainly. As such I would argue that the Domina should be a pure offensive support cruiser. So my ideas for an Advent "lore authentic" Offensive Support Cruiser and its abilities would be something like as follows:
Domina Cruiser:
Zealous Rage-
Targets Friendly Frigates, Cruisers & Capital Ships. Limit 5 Targets. Cannot Target Self.
AM Cost- 80, Cool Down 70, Duration 30.
"The Rage of the Unity is channeled into the nearby fleet driving the crews and the ships to the maximum of their abilities"
Increase Weapon Damage 10 %, Acceleration and Max Speed 10%, Armor +2.
Invoke Terror-
Targets Single, Enemy Frigates & Cruisers
AM Cost 80, Cool Down 5, Duration 20.
"The Minds of the enemy are flooded with images of fear and terror inducing them to stop all attacks and flee."
Disables Weapons, Abilities and Passive Regeneration. Boosts Max Speed & Acceleration 50%. (I like the secondary effect as it is basically along the lines of running away as FAST AS POSSIBLE but I am open to removing it from a balance standpoint.)
Im open to suggestions to change these but they were my first crack at some offensive support abilities that had the right feel of the Advent. Obviously I would be open to adjusting exact figures as balance requires as well.
I still really don't like the idea of leaving the Advent without some sort of mobile repair ability, for caps at least...
A valid concern for sure. I had an idea for a repair ability on the Domina that is more inline with the Advent "Fleet-wide" support paradigm as well.
Tranquility Aura
Targets all Friendly Ships & Structures within the radius. AM Cost 150, Cooldown 90, Duration 60. Range 6500.
"The surety of the Unity's cause floods the minds of all friendly ships in the area causing the crews to operate more efficiently."
5 Hull Repair/Sec. May stack 3x. Only Applies to the ships within the radius at the time of activation but ships that were in range and move out of range continue the effect.
I would keep this as a level 6 re-searchable ability so that it is a high cost high reward type of skill.
Why not an offensive power that heals? Stealing from a completely different genre:
Force Drain- Drains the force power from an enemy and uses it to replenish health.
So... how to work this into a Domina power?
Righteous name here: Rips the shields from targetted enemy ship. Nearby ships are enfused with the stolen power to assist in repairs. For every x points of shields drained, ships within the area are in-combat repair rate +y. Lasts z seconds
I'm thinking drain shields as the advent are masters of shields, so they should know about some shield vulnerabilities and ways to exploit them. The real question here is the variable ratios:
Auto-cast needs to be fixed to allow less micro and a more enjoyable game:
Autocast: Does not respond fast enough:
E.g Auto-Casting Shield Projection is delayed after another projection ends.
I can understand why projections don't stack and waste anti-matter running simultaneously but the next projection should kick in towards the end of the active one.
THERE IS NO INFORMATION IN THE MANUEL THAT SAYS IF U MOVE GUARDIANS WHEN THERE SHIELD PROJECTING THEY CANCEL THEM DOING SO.
With the lack of information on this matter iam pretty sure there some newbies out there who still build guardians in fleets and move them around during projection then only to realize it does next to nothing as a support cruiser.
Another thing the Devs should have done is delete the domina and gave the iconus a third ability: A self Hull Regen Ability: Self Perseverance (e.g a 15hp Regen)
It doesn't explain what channeling is in the manual?
Sigh.
It also doesnt give any direct information on shield projection, nor any other ship's power. All it says is: "The hull of the ship is weak, but the Guardian has an extremely powerfull shield generator, which can be projected outwards to protect nearby vessels." That gives you a rough idea of what it does, more details such as the durations, the effectiveness, whether it's channeled are all things that you have to read in details from within the game.
And we are talking about the Domina. Guardian is fine as is (although I'd kinda like repulse to do a bit of damage so that it's not solely a MM tool, but it's not necessary).
No feedback on my idea? It certainly makes Advent repair unique, I think.
Im down with it though I don't love the in-combat repair rate feature. I favor a flat increase approach with stacking limits and I would say that the repair be the main focus of the ability rather than the shield stealing.
Also, it would need target limits otherwise it would be OP as an uncapped fleetwide healer unless the healing effect was low.
My numbers would be as follows:
Target- Single Enemy Frigate, Cruiser or Cap Ship, Must have Shields.
Steal 100 Shield Pts. 5 friendly ships within 2500 range gain 5 HP/Sec for 15 Secs. May stack 3x.
I believe something along these lines would be balanced in my comparison with the Hoshi.
Can 'stacks' even be programmed? I know of nothing in the game that stacks (to be fair, I don't know if the next sentence can be programmed either). And I was kinda thinking that the heal is proportional to the amount of shields stolen.
That's a pretty big range you have there, isn't it (I guess the current range is 5000, so I could be wrong)? And that kinda makes me think a bit too... I mean, you could take the current Domina heal, and increase the range to the point where it can heal any ship in the grav well and suddenly the 'needs to face target' and channeling doesnt matter. The Domina sits back with the carriers. Theres still the autocast issue, and then theres the issue with multiple Dominas repairing 1 ship, but it would be a start.
I went with the in-combat repair rate so that it affected big and little ships equally. Repairing 100 hp really helps a LF, but it hardly matters (unless you can keep doing it) to a capital. So, instead change their natural repair rate and they both benifit equally.
So, I guess my way would be:
Target- Single enemy frigate, cruiser, or captial ship.
Drain 10 Shield pts/Sec for 15 Secs. For every 25 pts drained, ships within 1500 range add +1 to their in-combat repair rate (Actually, I admit I have no idea how in-combat repair rate works so this could be completely wrong).
Incendiary Shells on the Marza Dreadnought stacks.
But its limit I think is affected by the duration of the passive ability, not by some coded limit of "limit stacking of 3 IS at once". And I'm not sure what overlapping IS would do, but it could inform you on what this Domina-shield ability thing might be able to do.
Yes, Marza has stack programming.
Not entirely sure which sentence you refer to but yes you can add a "musthaveshield" condition.
Hoshiko has a range of 3000 for Repair Drones. I made it slightly smaller to compensate for the AOE balance issue.
I see what you are saying but from a balance standpoint, no other repair ability in the game has that mechanic. My idea was to leverage the fleet support theme so often seen in Advent and to balance that with their Epic Shields which can already be recharged rather quickly with a pair of Progenitors.
I'm open to this sort of mechanic which probably feels more appropriate for true "Draining" type of ability.
I worry about game timing issue on this one.
All in all though, I think our discussion is on the verge of creating a very effective, needed and lore authentic ability that would go a LONG way toward Advent balancing.
It's an interesting ability and would probably be cool in some of the mods floating around here.
However, when it comes to fixing the Domina it's more likely we'll get an actual fix to the targetting versus a complete overhaul of what the abilities are or what it does.
I think once the targetting issues are resolved the Domina will become a much better asset in the fleet as it won't require tedious micro management in mid-late game fleets.
True, but we can dream can't we
Indeed, I won't diss you for dreaming
If you want to try the Domina how it "should" work... Download my SotF R5.1 (don't bother with the patches). Enable in this order.
SotF Race Advent R5SotF Race Tec R5SotF Race Vasari R5SotF Core R5
I have a "fixed" version of the Domina in this mod by tweaking how it targets and how channeling occurs. For the most part the original races are stock excluding the new Capital ships so it's a reasonable way to see how the Domina would work if fixed by stardock.
The meat of it is the ability now uses ApplyBuffToTarget versus ApplyTargettedBuffToSelf. This keeps multiple Domina's from targetting the same unit similar to repair bays or hoshikos. Then there are two series of callbacks. One to start the channelling on the Domina and one to cancel the effect on the target if the Domina stops channeling.
Try it out and see if it changes your opinion any on what should be fixed.
My meaning: I'm not sure you can program the repair rate to scale with the amount of shields drained, but seeing as how you said things can stack, I'm sure the repair rate could be a separate buff, and every 25 pts, a new buff is applied. This is starting to get complex
Good. That was my dastardly plan.
My question is: Does it still carry the 'disable immune' part of the original power?
I might just extract it from the rest of the mod to do an isolated test.
And ZombieRus5, I remember you had that idea a long time ago... yet:
I'm wondering what he meant, and since you say you cleared up the casting issue, I was wondering if you could take a stab at that quote? It sounds like they want to go in a different direction.
You remember somewhat incorrectly. The original idea was to preserve the ApplyTargettedBuffToSelf but add a buffTypeToQuery keyword in the ability.
The changes I made preserve both abilities on the Domina but just make them target correctly.
I tend to think outside the box. They said it was more involved than they first thought so I came up with an alternative solution since this statement.
Synchronized single target abilities autocasting is fixed in my build of Rebellion.
Blair, good to hear from you and glad to hear about the fix. By chance is there any joy being given to charged missiles?
thank you thank you
Sweet... So many posts with the Ironclad logo today! it's awesome.
Rebellion is going to be so cool. Thank you blair.
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