My understanding of the Advent Rebel ability, Wail of the Sacrificed, is that it does 20 damage for every point of population to all adjacent gravity wells. So, if a planet with a population of 180 is sacrificed (like an ice) it would do 3600 points of damage to all ships and structures in adjacent wells. That's worse than a missile barrage that affects the entire gravity well.
Is this ability overpowered? Should researching it be a Level 8 ability and should there perhaps be a monetary/resource cost to using it as it stands now?
After watching the replay, and how much damage it did even on an ice planet, I can see some potential for it to be abused in a stalemate situation like that. Perhaps they should make it more like the real big red button so that it damages allied ships as well, so it can't be abused quite as badly as in that match.
How is that abuse? He secured an Ice planet right next to the enemy homeworld and said enemy gave him tons of time to build up population. People are not used yet to the fact this kind of slacking will end up in your fleet getting busted, so it should be fine. (Also note the Ice planet was not yet at full population, if I recall correctly it was "only" at 100 pop)
From my understanding breaking up stalemates or enabling you to do a comeback is exactly what the ability should be doing.
Last but not least: It does damage to you. It kills your population and planet HP on one of your planets. If you screw up on the timing you could end up with an enemy taking over that world in its wounded state (i.e. if he used an Akkan to protect his fleet for whatever reason, or if you used the ability too late when trying to decimate a fleet jumping in on your world).
So what, he's supposed to give up his favorable position to attack head on a planet with a titan, starbase and superior fleet, rather than force the enemy to attack him where he's strongest? Also if he did attack, couldn't Quar just use wail of the sacrifice from the terran behind the ice for even more damage?
I thought it was intended to be a last resort defensive weapon, where you sacrifice the planet to kill an invading fleet, not use it to pin your oppoenent in an unwinnable situation.
Indeed, its high cost is what I thought would prevent it from being widely used. But in that situation that ice world was absolutely useless to Quar, his economy was good and unthreatened, and most of his income was probably from trade ports, so tax income doesn't mean much anyways. If wail also damaged his units, at least he'd have to with draw his fleet a ways first so they'd have time to prepare or possibly strike first to prevent the activation.
Also about the Akkan, another reason wail is so much better than say missile barrage or the red button is at least you have a warning that its coming. The only way you'd realize its been used is if it kills a capitalship. Both terran and sanches didn't even realize it until after the invasion fleet arrived. There would need to be some sort of video or audio warning that it was about to be used for armistice do do anything.
Ye like red button has a warning or something
If it was a last resort weapon it would damage a fleet at the gravitywell it was used in. Not only that, there would be no reason to also damage the structures in that well.
Sanchez was in quite a bad situation already. His empire pretty much was a line of pearls on a cord. If there was one situation where Wail was to be used effectively it was then an there. Had he managed to keep and hold that Ice planet some fourty minutes earlier it wouldn't have come to this situation, and even if the terran planet one jump farther had that ability as well it would have been less likely to have hit him that hard, given that he would had left his fleet on his homeworld like he did in the replay.
Also, if he had more experience facing players using Wail he might have anticipated that the enemy could use it on that planet and tried to keep his fleet divided on multiple planets as to keep the risk lower (which of course was pretty much useless in that particular game looking at the location of his lefotver planets).
His situation may have been favorable to hold out, however in that replay at that time he was already sitting with his back at the wall. Getting out there was dependant on getting help from his neighbors, but if I recall correctly his blue ally next to him quit some time before that stunt happened leavin him with AI supply only, and his other allies were forced to focus on their own enemies. In this stuation it was just a matter of time until he would have been beaten with regular means.
Edit: Well, red button autocasts when the starbase is almost dead. You could call this a "warning time", but I guess freaking out and retreating your fleet whenever you are close to killing a TEC starbase is a bit silly, and not always possible anyways.
Also Goa, Quar's (and I believe Lenin's) fleet was sitting at the ice planet when he triggered Wail, so the argument of it hitting friendly ships is kind of moot in this situation.
There is a particle animation a few seconds before its used. Not much but more than WotF.
Oh yes, that was practically a textbook situation to use it in. No where for Dirty to run.
Well prior to seeing this replay I thought it did affect the gravity well its in.
Yeah this is what it'll come down to. After this a lot more people are going to be trying it and know about it. Perhaps your right and the time to set it up is prohibitive in most situations. On the other hand I find it equally likely we'll start seeing a lot of rebel Advent players, even after the Vasari are added back.
Edit: screw it, forum multiquote fail.
Well i've played rebel Advent from the beginning of Beta 2. You cannot go full military and get wail. If they have wail they were either in the eco position or they had already had the game won to be able to have an army and use wail. Yes it is strong, but like others had said. Dirty had already lost that match.
Nicely done qu4r
I didn't notice him losing the ice planet ownership at all though when using Wail - unless he quickly re-colonized it before I noticed...
His starbase with enduring devotion prevented it from being lost, though it set the health and population to zero.
Lol I didnt know it spreads trough phase lanes. Until that moment quars team was destined to loose since his other flank was collapsing fast.
It is a bit op because 1 high population planet can defend all neighbouring planets against any serious assoult. If vail would spread only trough ovners culture it would be different matter.
Combination of SB with culture upgrades and vail ....I think i would be ok with those prerequisites....
Another option could be that you see it coming trough phase lanes same as ships only a bit faster...
it has warning. Its effect. If you watch sb u see rb activation effect which gives u time for armstice.
Assuming you have the Akkan, assuming you are TEC at all. The RED button is far worse than wail when it comes to balance. Take care of Red button than take care of Wail. The Advent need a way to stop the effectiveness of Wail. The Vasari and the TEC both will/do have ways to do this. Also having it spread through culture would make it much worse, just saying.
This is an idea that I had thought of myself, it would give a decent time to react.
The red button is hardly ever useful. Bombers are already the most common way to beat starbases, and the red button does nothing against them. If you get blown up by one, you actively took a risk by getting in close to attack it. With wail as this showed just defending your homeworld can be suicidal with it, and your opponent has full control of when to activate it if he has a nearby planet with decent population.
The TEC loyalist can now build two starbases both can cover the single entrance(positioned assumed) on both sides of a gravity well. This makes it almost impossible to approach certain planets from any angle without losing your entire fleet.
tl;dr: Red button is bullshit.
Ah thanks - but in this scenario, assuming you have a colony cap or colony frigate handy, wouldn't saving the resource/research costs and starbase slot and just re-colonizing be more cost effective? Enduring devotion seems better suited to preventing enemy colonization rather than preventing loss of the planet with Wail- since health and pop go to zero anyway. It's a minor point but I don't see any advantage to getting Enduring devotion specifically for this situation alone.
Well, the cost of the three planet upgrades, plus the avoided underdevelopment penalties, is probably close to that of a starbase upgrade anyways. On terrans it would certainly be better to get enduring devotion, and if at the particular planet you already had logistics or planet health upgrades it would certainly be better. Also at that point Quar had a good economy going so I doubt he cared about efficiency too much.
Amazing!!! First time I've seen Wail of the Sacrificed used and on top of that, it was executed brilliantly. I'll have to be more careful from now on, this certainly makes things quite interesting. In all seriousness though, even if the Wail hadn't been used, DirtySanchezz and Terran were in a bad spot. It was inevitable. Hard luck there, DirtySanchezz. But hey, at least you tried and you just need to learn from your mistakes.
If you see tec starbase prior experience taught me you need to be ready for RB. If not you get blown up especially when playing skilled games on mp. So if you do not have counter or dont want to risk it destroy it from afar.
On another note Tec has sort of a counter to vail already. It cost a lot and if not loyalist considering research. It is called novalith. Problem is you have to constantly barrage planet to keep population down.
ok, so... for those who claim it to be overpowered... If there was a warning or something that would have given Dirty and the .com guy a chance to get their fleet out of the way... what good would wail be?
laying such a trap is the whole point of the ability. now, if you feel it was overpowered, I could understand an argument for lowering the population to damage ratio, but a warning makes the whole thing useless.
so is wail. you have to go through alot of research, wait for your population to get high enough on a world next door to a massive enemy fleet. To be honest, it seemed to me that Dirty and the other guy had enough forces to move in and do some real damage to Qu4r and Mecha, but they chose to instead sit there, leaving themselves vulnerable to such an attack.
Not really. I had 30 kodiaks+support, which countered their fleets, and ragna on the way. Quar had a titan. Even if Quar didn't use Wail, Dirty would lose HW as soon as our titans regrouped.
I brought up a warning because someone suggested using armistice to counter it. But that only works if its possible to tell when its about to be used. Now maybe if you happen to be looking at the planet where its present there might be a small period where you see the particle effect(not sure if there is a gap), but you'd need to have a scout in that gravity well looking at the planet the moment it was used. And even in that case it would be hard to select you Akkan fast enough.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
