Useless Units

I disagree, although you have a point.

If siege frigs were much less costly (supply point wise), wiping out planets would be too easy. Fleets in Sins move very slowly. A stack of fifteen to twenty siege frigs supported by eight anti-strikecraft frigs could be used to wipe half of the enemy's worlds before they had a chance to react and there wouldn't be any good defense against it (hangar craft would be demolished by flaks, missile platforms can be passed). I usually build two or three to make them follow my second fleet and kill the planets they may come upon, while my caps are being more useful elsewhere.

Colony frigs. I say this unit is fine, at least for Vasari. I, for one, dislike going Space Egg first. Many people do, but I don't simply because I think that it is too fragile as your flagship, as it has no self defense abilities (although a high level Egg has the best "useful-to-useless ability ratio" among the Vasari caps). Going with any of the five cap ships first should be a viable tactic, and a colony frigate is necessary for the other four. I like to begin with a Marauder, a Carrier (it is not so bad after all, if you understand the repair cloud's real purpose ) or the Kortul (Volatile Nanites and weapon jammin' ftw). I need that colony frig there. It's fine, if not as useful and bound to be seen in numbers as LRM frigs are.

Overseer. Now, what do you hit first in a huge fight? Cap ships, right? Simply because one enemy cap's ability can cause mayhem among your fleet unlike any other ships'. Vasari have no way of defending their caps, other than those cap ships' own abilities. Well, Overseers will make your cap survive a lot longer. Five Overseers can mitigate damage taken from a really big fleet's focus fire for half a minute or more. One Overseer is taking 125dps off your ship (250 HPs every two secs)! So I say it is useful, even if not for its second ability, which in turn IS meh (it only pisses off Vasari players who wanted to use stabiliser nodes to quickly intercept you from the other end of the system, but end up in phase space for 2 minutes instead of one). To actually kill your caps the enemy will have to intercept your Overseers first. But he also has to kill your subverters which just turned off half of his fleet.
If suddenly everything in the enemy fleet becomes your top priority target, you're screwed. Again, Overseers aren't to be used in spams, but they're cheap by themselves and are your only way of making your caps live longer, way longer. They are useful, although I typically experimented with returning armada recently and never had a supply point to spend on any ship, Overseers included.

Maybe 14 supply points is a little steep, perhaps 10 or 12 would be better.  However, people do build these in the online multiplayer game.  They do have a role and a use if used judiciously.

I've almost never seen the Overseers in online play.  As for the Advent...the colony ship is the only Advent (and TEC) ship that take neutral extractors, which is very, very important.  When I play Advent I build colony ships all the time for that very reason.  Also, if you want to colonize something and you don't have your Mothership around, it might make sense to build a colonizer for that purpose.

Yes...consider playing the game in online multiplayer (it's that Ironclad Online button).  You'll enjoy more intense games (since you can actually lose) and you won't get bored with having to fight a mindless and predictable AI.  You'll also get to have human teammates and to enjoy coordinating teamwork and chatting with other people.  So come join the online fun!

Honestly I wouldn't mind siege frigates going back to the way they were long ago with low supply costs.  If competitive online players can state why that would be a problem, go for it, but as for me who mostly plays offline, I really don't see it as a problem.

We went from a small minority whining that siege frigates were wiping them out to a place where they simply aren't built by me and I'd wager not built as much by the online folks.  Is there any real concern for cheap strategies that will wipe out other players with them?  If so, please explain.

In addition, I wouldn't mind seeing them back reasonably priced again because Entrenchment sounds like it will easily dispose of them if sent into a system by themselves.

I totally disagree.

depending on the size of your fleet I put out at least 30-60 of them and make them their own fleet.

then when the battle engages enemy fire usually concentrates on one of my capital ships.

manually put the nanite armor on the ship under fire makes it virtually indestructible regardless of the enemy's firepower!

a buddy and I tested this out with full research done and both 2300 fleet supply he had 4 skirantra carriers and 60 overseers + loads of firepower in his back.

I had 16 capital ships (3 of each + 1 kol) also with loads of firepower but no overseers.

then I engaged all my flett on one of his carriers and we let the battle begin...

after 15 min of fighting my fleet was gone and his carrier didn't even had a scratch on it.

sure I could concenrate fire on the smaller ships but when he's micromanaging it fast enough they will survive too with the overseers as backup.

and that works with smaller fleets too.

less overseers + less firepower = same result

Yep, Siege Frigs are a bit expensive now.  I personally almost never build them, but every now and then they are handy when you want to kill some worlds but don't want to commit a capital away from the front line.  The problem back in the days of low supply cost was people would make suicide planet gank fleets of siege frigs and fly them around and kill all your worlds faster than you could blow up the frigates.

Overseers are actually pretty handy, but I agree, they are almost always last on my list of ships to unlock and you kind of get used to playing without them since their influence is kind of subtle.  I have noticed just having a handful of them in your fleet is very helpful.

I build siege frigates in SP quite a bit, actually. I start attacking planets pretty early, and when you only have one capital ship bombing a planet takes way too long. A couple siege frigates and a trailing colony ship, and my fleet is freed up to storm the next one.

Seige frigates could use a little tweaking.  I don't think making them cheaper is the answer.  Maybe they could be given a secondary role?  If made cheaper, they should definately be made softer so standard planet defenses could handle them before they were able to wipe out a whole bunch of worlds.  Thoughts?

I never used to build Overseers. Sure, their heal is only for a small 250 HP, and sure they only delay enemies phase jumps by half (should be twice, IMO), but heres the thing. That 250 HP is stackable. If my ship has 1000 HP and is down to 250, I can get 4 overseers to hit it with their ability and bring it up to 1250 HP with +2 armor. Then I can do it again. And again. Its spamable, which is nice. I definitely noticed a longevity increase whan I started to use them. Reintegration needs a bigger buff than Hardened Nanite Armor or whatever its called. 18 Hull per second is kind of paltry.

Siege Frigs... Useless really. To take out an enemy planet you need lots and they are so easily killed by strike craft its sad. Maybe Siege Frigs could fill a secondary role, because I would rather spend 14 supply on a HC or carrier than a siege frig that will die instantly anyways.

I personally think that the siege frigates should be made better bombers or perhaps give them an ability that deals heavy damage to tactical structures. Other than that though, it's hard to say that any of the units are useless. I always use colony frigates as any race.

I wish Siege Frigates were removed completely and replaced by a more interesting combat unit.

Capital Ships can handle the bombarding and they're about 100x more interesting to build than Siege frigs. The super high supply cost makes them even less appealing, no matter how effective it might be to send 5+ siege frigs to wipe out an asteroid before the enemy can react.

Overseers are great at keeping Cap ships alive under focus fire.

Dominas and Perseverance should be the counter for Vasari phase missiles but for some reason they're not. Their AI is bad and the amount of micro needed to make them useful is ridiculous. Perseverance could work like the Overseer's ability to be useful.

As drastic as this is, I find myself agreeing.  Capitals would gain the boon of becoming more important as well and their planet damage could always be raised to compensate.

Perseverance is a dual-purpose ability: In addition to repairing the unit being affected (at 25.0 hull/sec, its only outdone by the Skirantra and Repair Platforms), it also renders them invulnerable to being disabled. If a capital ship is being Persevered, and a Revelation Battlecruiser attempts to use Reverie on it, it will not be disabled. Rather, it will only be disabled when the Domina casting it is disabled itself or is destroyed. However, this ability can't be used well on a large scale, since the ability is channeling and on autocast, the Dominas seem to prefer to Persevere each other, if not that, Iconus Guardians, and if not that, capital ships. Only on the rare occasion do I see them use it on Illuminators.

It does not, however, increase phase missile block.

Keep seige frigates...

Some of only build one (or sometime a few) caps per fleet and get them up to Lvl10 (rather then 10 ships at lvls 4-7). So the seige frigates are great for knocking down a enemy planet.

If you don't like them - don't build them!!!

Interesting, i never thought of using overseers to protect capships from getting focus-fired. Good idea I'm surprised that non-TEC players actually bother with anything other than colonizer as their first capship.

Like many of you have agreed that Seige frigs are pointless, but i dont know what to do about. Reducing fleet supply to 10 would be good. 

Its pretty stupid for me not to have thought of protecting capships with Overseers already. Oh well. Cataclysm2000, the Skirantra Carrier's repair cloud is very useful. It helps keep strikecraft alive as well as focus-fired ships.

As for Overseers, as many and I said, their phase detection is meh, jump degradation is meh, but their nanite armor and low build cost makes them quite good, alas requiring the player's attention to work.

I've found that turning off auto attack for the overseers helps a fair bit - and I don't bother researching the other stuff.  If they have *nothing* else to do except hang around the back of the fleet and throw armour at damaged ships I see a nice jump in ships that survive tough fights, cap ships in particular without any micro.  Far more than enough to offset the loss of their laughable attack power.

Why would anyone build the TEC Akkan Battlecruiser for colonizing? It's terrible, especially in comparison to what you're giving up. In comparison to the Advent ship, which is useful in combat (albeit no longer utterly broken now that Malice is sensible) and has by FAR the best Colonize bonuses, it's the worst of the Motherships. The Vasari one is fairly good in combat since it can stun retreating ships and reduce armor, but it has a fairly pointless Colonize bonus too.

I really see no reason to get anything other than the Dunov as your first ship for TEC... unless you're playing some kind of stupid deathmatch mode where you only get one capital, and even then it's probably the best choice. Being able to refill ship shields about 4 times means you shouldn't lose ANY ships when taking planets early on. No other race can boast this without significant cost. By getting the Akkan, you're giving up one of the TEC's biggest strategic advantages for what, two extra Cobalts?

The question is why would anyone NOT get the colonize frigates for TEC? Or Vasari, to a lesser degree.

Siege frigates halve or quarter the time it takes to down planets when used properly. That doesn't make them any less annoying to deploy, or any less boring. I strongly agree that they should have some kind of secondary purpose. Maybe some way to help in combat so they're not just a clean up crew.

Overseers are the most pointless support unit. They're not worthless, but they're just really not up to par. Especially given the time and cost.

The reason the frigates weren't used is because they started with 0 antimatter.  Plus, the Akkan's weapon range extension is far from useless.

Ah yes, I forgot the 0 antimatter thing. I'm glad they fixed that.

The weapon range aura on the Akkan is more of a theoretical bonus than a fixed one, since it gives you a lower chance of screwing up. It's useful, I'm sure, but it's still not worth taking the ship.

There are a few things I'd like to add to this discussion as well.

1) Siege Frigates - Build 5 and keep them in hiding until the enemy engages your fleet. Then send them off on a little reconassiance to a different planet 1 or 2 jump behind the fight. The enemy fleet will have a few options:

• Flee the fight to defend sieged planet
• Activate a reserve fleet
• Lose a planet that wasn't part of their plan.

Now of course you can argue a lot of other things - but the suprise of having a planet under siege especially 1 or 2 jumps from the main fight deeper in his territory more often than not will distract him or her long enough to make a mistake. If they try to flee to defend the other planet, they aren't shooting. If they activate a reserve fleet the cats out of the bag and you might want to consider retreating before you lose the bulk of your fleet, and third they lost a plnaet that suddently give sthem no defensive bonus and you can keep pushing deeper knowing that their fleet is still tied up.

2) Colony Ships

I generalyl play vasari now, I started with TEC but didn't like the style. I never build the Jarrasul first because the Kortul is in my opinion better. I usually end up with 2-3 colony frigates to do the dirty work - yes it takes longer but early on i need to kill ships not colonize planets. Once I've got a stable section of space I usualyl decommision 2 of them and use caps instead. Unlike the other races there are bonuses for decommisioning things so I am not afraid to get rid of things that have served their purpose but are takign up space now. Same with tructures. If a planet is no longer on the edge of space, I don't need 3 frigate factories there, especially with phase gates. I'd rather throw up some labs or trade ports.

3) I don't build the Oversers until late game where there are some huge fleets flying around. But with micromanaging as others haev stated, you can pretty much make your caps last 2-3x longer than without them. Between Overseers and the Marauders Phase Out Hull I can usually trick a player to sending everythign they have at 1 cap ship and then phase out and then repair all the damage which really pisses them off and almost always costs them 5% of their fleet. While they wasted all their firepower on a phased out and repaired ship, my fleet toook out repair ships and frigates.

I don't build a lot of strike craft mostly because with phae out I find that they can be mitigated very quickly. If they attack a target thats invulnerable their DPS is wasted and teh flaks get free kills.

A Vasari player should always make a space egg first. The kortul is better in combat yes, but the space egg is unmatched in seiging power and anticapship combat.

Yes siege frigates CAN do this but they are way too vulnerable to strikecraft from hangers etc. also my point it that they are not worth the fleet supply.

If you plan on nothing, the Egg is a good choice. Grants mildly faster expansion and has a moderate effect on any fight you enter. Its drawback is a lack of survivability boosters and vulnerability (weakest cap of all, smallest HP and SP progression and weak armor), as well as any anti-mass abilities.

If you plan on being aggressive or the map is big, Kortul is fine. Will clear surrounding planets of neutrals much faster than Jarrasul, making up for its lack of Colonize ability. It also much tougher and is an extremely adaptable ship - it can counter carrier spammers by maxing Jam Weapons, it can counter LRM spams with Volatile Nanites. With Surge and Disruptive Strikes it can well fight any other cap ship by reducing it to a tough antimatterless frigate in seconds.

If the map is small and you are a berserker, the Vulkoras is very good. At level 4 it becomes a planet killer with 2/3 Assault Spec (with the bug fixed it rocks ass), while 2/3 PMS can keep small enemy groups at bay with some support. He is best if you plan on rushing the enemy's economy by quickly disabling his asteroids and/or orbital structures, which Vulk excels at. It really is just another well viable strategy.

Only the Skirantra and the Marauder seem to me that they aren't as good for the beginning, although Skirantra is almost the obvious choice if you go into carriers, while Marauder at level 5 is capable of keeping an enemy cap phased out for two minutes straight, giving you a crapload of time to eliminate the rest of his fleet.

The AI uses siege frigates rather well, so they are kinda needed in the game. Myself, I seldom use them as they have to come in after the first wave of my attack.

As for the Akkan, it does have Targeting Uplink, for range and weapons fire. It is a decent support ship and allows a player to send in a capital ship for colonizing instead of the rather weak frigate. Furthermore, Ion Bolt combined with the Dunov's Magnetize gives the TEC the capability to disable targets ... a very useful thing. One thing to note, the TEC fleet is more diversified on that issue since disabling is in 2 different units instead of a single ship.

The Dunov is ok, but a lvl 10 Kol is far better than a lvl 10 Dunov in combat, imo. And the first ship built usually gets the most xp.

Lastly, just a note, Vasari are not my style. Everyone is different I guess.

I didn't say it was a guarantee, but a lot of times you can get lucky and at least distract them long enough to make a mistake that costs them the fleet or force them to retreat. At the expense of a few ships I'll take that risk, especially if its a choke point.