Advent Proposals

The Solanus Adjudicator definitely needs some work.

The Illuminator Vessel won't be viable with that plan, because beam weapons are currently at tier 3 along side the Illuminator Vessel.

The Iconus Guardian shouldn't be put in the main fleet, because Shield Projection is a channeling ability, meaning it can be interrupted by issuing new orders.

Do you suggest reducing the 1st beam upgrade to 2 labs, or still get it at 3 labs?

That doesn't sound like such a bad idea.  I don't see any reason why Illuminators should continue to require 3 military labs unless they get buffed/un-nerfed.

As an Advent player, I disagree that the Illum needs any buffs.  The main problem of the Advent is their economy where their crystal heavy ship cost requires over 3 Civilian labs to even get trade ports or increased crystal mining.  If you start in an area with no Ice planets or neutral rescources, you're pretty much limited as the metal to crystal conversion is too steep. 

sorry, reduce beam to tier 2

I agree with CoBBQ, advent need SOME sort of early economic advantage.  I would think that a new low tier research technology that would enhance crystal production, or tweak it so that advent upgrades for crystal are more effective then any other race.

The illuminator still is a good ship when used properly, but allowing it to focus fire would be a great advantage.  Tech 4 illum upgrade to allow them to turn side beams off and do full damage through the front of the ship and have the capability of a true LRM.  This would give advent more options, and they would have to spend quite a bit to get it so they wouldn't be as effective rushing this tech.

I am a big time advent player, and advent is primarily my best and favorite race, i can win with them but i have to agree with this post 100%.  Advent is heavily reliable on crystal as a primary resource in its ships.  Not only that if your next to a tec player you really wont be able to out fleet them in an early game rush especially against a jav rush. The only thing worth tryin to counter a jav rush is going defense vessels, but then tec can go cobalts and its over cause the labs you need to get illums up to counter the cobalt makes you fall behind the tec player now some ppl would say just make disciples to counter the cobalts but thats retarded due to the fact that the other player already has a counter to that ship up and running with the javs and next thing you know as advent your on the defensive the rest of the game.  I'm not saying you can't survive against a tec rush as advent because you can survive but if your going against a skilled player it doesnt really matter how skilled you are your not going to beat them with out alot of feed or them being screwed with the map.  Now vas can stop tec with their sbs, and tec can stop vas sbs with the orgrovs but advent will be on the defensive if playing someone who knows what they are doing with either of those races.  Once a vas sb goes up the only option to advent is to go drones, but with the vas ability on the carrier bays to hold strike craft makes it impossible to beat a sb then unless you get Solanus Adjudicator building and you need to mass them to take out the vas drone bays.  So to counter a vas sbs basically advent need Solanus Adjudicator and drones and they lose over half the Solanus Adjudicator if the other play has half a mind.  so then when u hit the next planet you need to rebuild more for the next sb.  but tec only need to orgroves and ho's which are both cheap.  It kinda retarded how hard it is for advent to win any more.  I personlly think the idea of allowing Solanus Adjudicator to focuse on a target will resolve the problem with advent fighting vas.  As far as fixing being competative against tec as advent i'm not sure how to do that with out making advent OP again.  if you can get illums with 2 labs i think thatll bring back the illum spam and the only counters tec would have is scouts and defense vessels which is counterable by disciples and disciples are cheap and strong with cheap weapon upgrades which then will end up making advent OP'ed agaisnt tec and then tec players will be complaining because they will be on the defensive all the time.  But something def needs to change to give them a fairer fight.  Just my 2 cents.

ArchNemesis-[_]

The problem with advent has always been that there was too much to research to get a powerful advent fleet. e.g. it takes relatively ages just to get guardians.

Ilums can stay at tier 3 if beam techs can be fully upgraded with less research.

Well...now that illums have been officially buffed, I'm thinking they should be left alone for now until a lot of MP games have been played with them...

One thing I'd like to see is the Advent's metal and crystal technologies switched (crystal comes a tier earlier, metal comes a tier later)...

Honestly, I'd be wary of giving Advent a more powerful economy...Advent needs buffs to the adjudicator, domina subjugator, and needs some form of PM protection (either through shield techs or through shield projection are two solutions I'm okay with)...those things need to happen...

And if they did, Advent would have a much stronger mid and late game...which means the need for a better early economy wouldn't be as important...

Since military buffs to Advent need to occur anyway, I'd advocate seeing how those go before buffing Advent's economy...

A question: the Illuminator now does around 18.5 DPS if all banks fire. Comparatively, the Assailant does 13 and LRM does 11. Combined with the Halcyon's energy weapon cooldown and Guardians to repulse, does this make the Illuminator very strong in the mid-late game when you might have 75 of them in a fleet at a time (when the side beams together can destroy ships pretty quickly)? It of course can't completely focus-fire, but when ships are dying so quickly anyway due to such a large fleet, I think the increased overall DPS of the Illuminator more than makes up for it.

That said, in the early game when repair cruisers have time to repair ship hull for a time before the ship dies, the Illuminator's damage spread creates many more problems, and makes the frigate subpar, obviously. And, of course, fully upgraded Assailant phase missiles in the late game have even more raw firepower - but the Illum is still a quite strong mid-late game unit when you have a whole lot of them together, if you can maneuver them so all banks can fire.

Would this be an accurate assessment?

if you would have asked me were Illuminators a strong mid-late game unit about a couple of patches ago, I would have said yes, but now I feel having a balance of Illuminators and destras is important late game.

The problem with using Illuminators and repulse is that Illuminator require you to be in the middle of an enmies fleet  to take full advanatge of all its weapon systems. By using repulse, your effectively wasting an Illuminator main advantage of shoting three targets at once, to shooting mainly off it main weapon.

HOWEVER, if you use repulse wisely, you can split an enemies fleet into 2 or 3 different parts and even there cap ships too, making it easier to get into the central of the fleet and destroying them in small chunks at a time. Thats probably the best tactic to use, but you need to make sure that the guardians get into the central of there fleet to split them up, and then push them further back and concentrate on small sections of the fleet one at a time.

By doing this, you can keep the Illuminator shooting advtnage, while for exmaple, splitting a tec fleet from there hoshkios and vasari overseers or even advent capital ships from benefiting the fleet.

Any strategy depending on guardians is a very risky strategy indeed...

Against TEC, maybe not so much...but against Vasari I wouldn't do it...PMs will shred guardians and kanraks will always be able to outrange repulse...so no, simply having a bunch of illums hide behind repulse is not going to be better than a typical battleball with illums + destras....

U just simply can't spend all that much on frigates early game.. Its halcyons , civics and trade ports.. only use scouts to supplement halcyons to quickly colonize as many worlds and setup a trade chains. U need the credits.

Disciples can't survive assailants and carrier phase missile spam but they will be well off if more than 1 halcyon is in a fleet reducing weapon cool downs ,increasing there damage and also pushing bombers away and dealing damage.  Therefore you should be producing fighters to kill lrm and bombers.

The cool down from 1 halcyon affects the other so its the first ability i use. Helps the scouts deal more damage to siege and lrm frigates. 

I usually have as much as 3 or more halcyons ealry during colonising. Seems to work as i work my way up to repair platforms, then illums. <again u can only pull this off by scavenging every last penny for trade ports and halcyons and then scouts and desciples to back them up.  

Should u meet a starbase u can play cat and mouse with it, change production to bombers sting it to death. 

Halcyons is the only way to be safe early game. Prog is just suicide.  

From there on u r on your own. Either Guardians or Crusaders. Depends on which faction u dealing with..having both options is ok

that only works in single player, not mulitplayer

u c theres never any clear way to get up and running. U must colonise fast.. but then that depends on your surroundings. If u close to an enemy ofcourse u gonna be mass producing desciples and get repair platforms straight away. If u in a good spot, colonize and setup an economy. Chaos theory ( highly sensitive to initial conditions) a.k.a butterfly effect.

The Prog enables very rapid colonization, and also has a shield regeneration ability. Don't underestimate it: it's definitely not suicide unless you don't know how to use it.

And I don't think that building more than 1 Halcyon for the purposes of colonization is a good idea: the research, time, and early upkeep required doesn't sound very good to me. Having a few Halcyons to fight off enemy players, especially Vasari, is a good idea, but for colonization? Nahhh... if you're worried about fast initial colonization, use the Prog, and later use its Shield Regeneration to keep itself and your fleet alive.

Was playing with Advent again yesterday and after playing them for a few games, I can say, they are still broke.

Out of the 6 games I played with Advent, I was the only advent player in 5 games. And each player I asked said the same thing 'advent are broken' and I agree.

I honestly don't know what the problem is, but they are significantly weaker. The only way to actually win a game with Advent is getting a fleet bigger then the other guy, and playing Advent vs TEC, this is hard as TEC do have an economic advantage.

If Advent is having a big difficulty with TEC--the race they're supposed to match up best against--then they need a buff.  What about restoring the Progenitor's original colonization bonus of a 20-40-60% reduction in planetary upgrade costs?

There having trouble fighting the Vasari too. The problem with buffing the Progenitor is that online play has now become a carrier infested first capital ship. If you don't build a carrier capital ship, your technically screwed.

I think some testing needs to be done in order to find more about the problems facing advent at the moment.

People still build progs first, even as frontliners...carrier caps have their advantages but colony caps do too and a lot of MP guys will pick the colony cap as their first choice...this decision is guided more by personal preference and the map than which one is categorically better...

A buff to the progenitor's colonize ability would help...I don't know if its the best kind of help, but it would certainly help Advent in an area they're weak in, which is early economy...

I'll be honest, I haven't saw a progenitor as a first cap for about 12 games, and he got crushed by two carrier caps.

but it is a good idea

In a typical 5v5, Progen is limited to the eco spot.  In larger more spacious games you do have some leeway to use it.  With the Akkan colonize now a force to be reckoned with, I think the old Progen values are fine.

The biggest problem with colony capital ships is that sluggish move speed.  Most capital ships have a move speed of 525, which is just faster than LRF at 500.  Colony capital ships have a move speed of 475, so the LRF will always eventually close the distance no matter how direct your escape route.  I've long been a proponent of speed buffs for (non-carrier) capital ships, and I still feel it's the best approach to increase survivability.

Progen needs more HP and armor.  It doesn't do much DPS, so it should be beefier.

I would say that Advent caps in general could be beefier...

Indeed. 

Also I recall that originally Advent were conceptualized to have Desert Homeworlds.  In such a case the extra logistics required for teching would not be a problem.  However with 24 logistics at home, it is a bit of a problem :/  If advent had a desert home with 4 mines (2 crystal 2 metal) it would possibly synergize a lot better with the faction.