I never use a Sova without a lot of support, the squads just get trashed otherwise. It needs a couple of extra squads to operate on its own.

As DirtySanchezz said, the problem is Embargo.

right, i see. But surely the amount of money you lose from taxes, your enemy loses more from the near certain death of his cap? the cap can't outrun disciples no matter how hard it tries.

As GoaFan mentions, it's far from certain death.  People don't use the Sova on its own, they use it in conjunction with the rest of their fleet.  One of the huge advantages a carrier has over a battleship is that it can spend the entire battle running away.  If you want to attack the carrier, your units will be weaving around and spending a lot of time just moving instead of attacking, all while getting savaged by the enemy's fleet.  The carriers can still use most of their firepower (which is in strike-craft form) and their special abilities, while a battleship must constantly face the enemy fleet in order to use its firepower and abilities.  This means that carriers are effectively far tougher in practice, while battleships are incredibly risky.

That is what i meant regarding skill to keep your cap alive. Run from enemy fleet and retreat + repair when HP gets low. If HWs are close enough embargo will handicap enemy to a point when you get all your resources that you spend on cap upgrades back and then some more. Also while he focuses to try to kill your cap which has to be priority unless he is feed from ally you whittle down fleet he build. 

Soon there comes a point when whatever he builds gets destroyed by your own fleet and you control his gravity well. 

Even stronger option is to have 2 sovas bot manually using embargo to keep him on 30% income permanently. 

Siddy!  You antisemitic son-of-a-bitch, it's good to see ya!

I've been seeing more and more early game Level 2 Embargo Sova rushes and I'm ready to agree that it's overpowered.  These sorts of things seem to be fads, and this one has now caught on and become standard operating procedure.  The Sova rush is really nothing new, but it seems to have become increasingly popular over the past couple weeks. It's almost a death sentence if you start out within 2 or 3 jumps of your opponent and it's very difficult to counter in the first 4 minutes of the game.  The amount of damage it does is totally devastating so early in the game.  If it happened 30 minutes in after you have some planets and fleet it wouldn't be so horrible, but it's just a killer when it happens in the first 4 minutes.  The best way to counter it seems to be to hit your opponent with your own Level 2 Embargo rush if you're TEC or to spam out lots of LRMs.

The problem is that if you're not Level 2 Embargoing your opponent yourself, you won't have the money to spam out as many LRMs as your opponent and will eventually go down.  Also, if your start is inferior relative to his (he has an extra or safe asteroid or whatever) you're probably just done for.  If you're Vasari you could put up an expensive starbase at your home if you can afford it (while being Level 2 Embargoed) but the Sova would just kite around the well with impunity and the money raised by the Level 2 Embargo would just be used to fund Orgrovs or Bombers to kill the starbase.

So what should be done to nerf it?  What if the Embargo ability were nerfed to 20-40-60% income theft (and not 30-70-100), perhaps with the duration being reduced to 25-50-75% of cooldown?

It's reached the point where I think TEC is now the most powerful race.  They have a devastating early-game Embargo, the best economic capability, cheap spammable disposable ships, the best repair bays, and by far the best starbase counters.  Until the Sova gets nerfed I'm probably done with Vasari unless the opposing team has only one TEC (and then hope I don't end up starting within a few jumps of it).  I'm not sure I can justify playing Vasari at all at this point.  Sins is about to become a TEC and Sovas only game.

Eqq compleetly rapes other caps early games, wtf are you smoking?

Seriously, if enemy starter cap is sova and you have scouted that, you should take measures to protect yourself against that. Sova is flimsy enough to be taken down by few assilants, eggs gravity torp + nanites in very short time. 

If you do let enemy sova on your HW while you are unprepared, you have no one else to blame but yourself.

Deal with it.

The neutrals weren't really close by and you had a safe asteroid and mine was between our homes, and my factories were on the opposite end of the gravity well from the roid (it takes a while for your cap or colony frig to get out to the roid).

Sentinels are anti-LRM, so it makes sense to build them against a TEC, especially one that has fighters on his carrier.  I made Assailants too.

Also, it's hard to pump out sufficient Assailants when getting embargoed.  2-3 early Level 2 Embargos in close quarters is enough to give a TEC a very significant advantage over a Vasari (who, remember, has expensive ships).  That also makes it difficult to spend the money/build time on scouts for fighting for neutrals.  An expensive starbase won't work because the TEC can just kite the Sova around the well and then us the Embargo proceeds to fund bomber spam or orgrovs.

I pretty much knew the outcome as soon as you did your first Level 2 Embargo in light of how close we were positioned.  In fact, before the game started, the only reason I went Vasari and not TEC myself is that you were the only TEC and I decided to gamble that we wouldn't start next to one another.  I knew the risks and lost that gamble.

I don't think any of this means that you're the second coming of JJ or that I'm the second coming of ELVIS WORSHIPPERS or Lepar, just that Embargo is very overpowered early in the game, especially in the first 3 minutes of it if you're 2 jumps away from your opponent's home.  In the game right before that one, I did Level 2 and Level 3 embargos on Tyr (who was Vasari and was focusing on Auqia but tried to defend with a starbase) with similarly devastating results to him although that was a little later in the game.  Unlike an actual noob (or even an overconfident pro), I can recognize when things are heading south and prepare to migrate with minimal losses, which I did.  If I made one mistake, it might be not getting a civic lab going earlier so that I could research the improved scuttle ability, although under the circumstances that probably wasn't possible.

Hopefully the overpowered Embargo ability will get addressed in the next patch.  I know that the Sova rush has been around for a long time, but I don't remember its becoming a big issue until the past several weeks.

With regards to Vasari, the nerfing of bomber damage against capital ships might be one factor leading to the increased prevalence of the Sova rush.  Were there any other changes in recent patches that buffed the Sova or would otherwise make it more practicable to do the rush?

(Good to see that you got your power back, I assume.)

You think so? I think I'd prefer to have 5 Enforcers than 6 Kodiaks, due to Reintegration.

The Vasari Overseer will keep capital ships alive in some crazy firefights, and that alone is well worth the effort of using them.  Dominas... well, they're the only way to even get hull repair in neutral or enemy gravity wells, and that's pretty much the only reason to use them.

Oh so much tec lovers. But im not talking about healing,  Only demobots had to be used while facing enymy and thats haw it should be again.