So i just had a thought.  Once again on the idea of making revelation help the advent against sieging hard targets such as starbases:

 

What if we kept the same basic concept of the current guidance, but chanced the +25% ability cooldown rate to "nearby allies have the range of their weapon systems increased by 25%"

 

This would be a useful stat in general, and more to the point, being able to potentially outrange a starbase's weapon systems would be a tremendous boone in minimizing losses while killing said starbase.

 

It wouldn't really negate starbases as Guidance has a relatively small up time at lower ranks(what is it? 20 seconds out of 50 at rank 1?).  Moreover this wouldn't rquire any significant programming/reworking of the ability- it would simply change the stat it grants into something more useful for laying siege to heavy fortifications.

 

 

Hmmm, well it may be a bit lackluster compared to the Akkan's targetting uplink, but that could be easily addressed by either buffing the effect or adding a secondar effect.

 

well, that's why it might be good to make it an activated ability, but my aim was that it wouldn't be overpowered because your basically making up for the fact that some of your banks arent firing. This was sort of an idea of mine to fix adjudicators as well, an ability that would just switch them from single target, 5x the power, 5x the cooldown to the standard multitarget... but then TEC anti-module doesnt have an ability, so this didnt seem fair...

putting it on the Revelation makes the capital ship more useful, and synergizes with other units as well. And it would make for one hell of a siege fleet. imagine Revelation + starfish + a few corvettes coming in and actually being a dominating force. heck, might actually throw in some siege frigates as well. could potentially wipe a system clean very efficiently.

or (in keeping with what i was suggesting, because your suggestion would just help illuminators in practice i think) increase the firing arc on all banks by 25%. Now more ships can fire all their weapons, not just fire them sooner. Just increasing the range wont do anything effectively for advent since they have to be surrounded for there weapons and powers to be effective... and most of the time your surrounded, weapon range is not an issue. how does an increased firing arc help? well, whenever your not in the ideal setup, you can be more effective. Also, if you have to focus fire (maybe there's hoshikos or something that you have to take out), you can't concentrate everything you have on the targets you most desire, but this helps with that.

Another thing they should fix about the Revelation is the upper gun turrets which never shoot. I have been complaining about that for the past 2 years but yarlen didn't seem to care much about it. I fixed the guns (and some other non-firing turrets on other ships) in a minimod that I made, but it still bothers me that it just doesn't get implemented in the "real" game.

why dont they fire?

Because the dev's put the bank damage to zero... Same story with the laser turret banks on the Radiance (they used to fire forward as well, at least in Vanilla they did) and a bunch of other ships. The Progenitor is also messed up (one of its sides doesn't use the plasma gunturret).

OMG

Is there an employee who intentionally sabotages the advent?

It's a goddamned conspiracy I you.

I bet phase missiles were his idea. 

..  That's really dumb...  They should fix that..

 

Back to the idea that Sith had though, idk..  If you made starfish for instance able to focus all abilities on one single target, it would positively nuke starbases.  The DPS would absolutely demolish everything in it's path...  You'd have to have the ability cause all subordinate banks/bank targets that are focused on the primary target to do reduced damage, else it would be horrendously OP when you apply it to the Adjudicator, Illuminator, or an allied Orkulus.  I'm thinking that all redirected banks would have to deal, say 30%/45%/60%/75%.

Even that could be too powerful.  A Revelation+Adjudicators would become the ultimate bunker buster.  Adjudicator's maximum DPS of 75, which against starbases, would be 150, more than three times that of an Orgov!  If you don't restrict that, you'll have a horrendously OP combo that will split TEC Loyalists like an egg.

or it would have a limit on the number of affected banks...

So it thought I'd dredge this thread up to discuss the recent buffs.

 

Personally while a step in the right direction I suspect they don't really change anything.

 

The lower ranks of Guidance weren't touched, and since Pretty much everyone is going to still skill up Reverie first, that means there probably won't be a difference from before until revelation reaches level 7 or 8.

 

Not taking the obligatory 1 rank in clairvoyance could make guidance *slightly* stronger then before(30% cooldown rate rather then 25%), but that doesn't feel worth givign up the instant scouting potential of clairvoyance to me.

A slightly better method might be to skill Reverie to rank 3 for the AM cost reduction the start skilling guidance.

 

That said It hink there are still a few core unaddressed issues with guidance:

 

1). AM cost.  Guidance costs A LOT of AM.  At higher ranks(the ranks yo uneed to reach to actually ntoice the recent buff), casting guidance once means casting Reverie two less times before running out of AM- that's huge.  2 Reveries is a colossal difference.  Honestly between reverie beign spammable and Guidance costing a a ton of AM I think in general the revelation is too much of an AM hog.

 

2).  Only a few ships in the advent arsenal really make good use of added cooldown rate.  The main ones that come to mind are: Revelation it's self(make keep more enemy cap ships simultaneously reveried- though this synergy is reduced by the AM problems discussed above), Radiance(low cooldown level 6 ability, DA is very spammable and strong), Discord(2 debuffs with durations shorter then cooldowns), Disciples(steal AM).  The cooldown rate boost is a bit useful on Halcyon, but not great, and is near-useless on the progenitor.  It WOULD be great on the Rapture if vengeance didn't suck, but as it stands is only really useful on the rapture for increasing the spammability of the already low cooldown domination. It's ok Domina Subjugaters(2 High cooldown abilities, but they run of of AM pretty quick if allowed to spam)

 So looking back at the list of synergies: 2 of the capital ships it synergizes with are UP(it's self and radiance), one dies too fast to be used very heavily in late game fleet battles(disciple), a few other ships it's ok on(in most cases works with just one of their abilities).  In general the only broadly useful ship which guidance has great synergy with is the discord.

3).  This is more a problem with the Revelation in general, but it's squishyness keeps it from really making the most of reverie: if it's force to flee, reverie ends prematurely as soon as it gets more then 8000 distance away from any slumbering enemy.

 

 

 

Honestly what I'd like to see done to further balance Revelation is as follows:

 

-Reduce the AM cost of guidance substantially and have AM cost not increase with rank to address #1

-Add some sort of self-only survivability bonus to guidance to address #3

 

#2 would probably resolve it's self long run if some of the ships/abilities which guidance synergizes with but are UP got buffed(so long term #2 may resolve it'self due to other parts of the long term balancing process).  The most notable example of this are that Guidance would have a lot more strong synergies If the radiance battleship and vengeance from the rapture were stronger(especially if radiance were made stronger by buffing the long cooldown animosity which would benefit significantly from guidance if it were any good).

 

SO honestly I think I'd like to see something along the lines of:

 

Guidance:  AM cost reduced to 75-80 at all ranks, additionally for the duration Revelation takes 10/15/20/25% reduced damage.

 

That would give revelation a much needed boost to survivability, and may be a large enough AM reduction to justify actually casting guidance rather then just saving AM for reverie(sacrificing a single reverie for a fleet wide cooldown boost feels more appropriate then sacrificing two).  Honestly I doubt 75-80 AM will pose an issue- even at those values in the advent arsenal the Discord's fracture probably have a larger widescale impact on battles for a smaller AM cost(being how relatively few advent ships benefit greatly from increased cooldown rate).

 

 

 

Did the radiance every shoot laser weapons foward?  none of my spreadsheets or gameinfos have foward firing laser banks....

 

Do you have a game info with radiance with foward firing lasers?

 

My gameinfo iwth progen has the plasma on both left and right... :-/

Nope not any official file at least. They changed it (I assume by accident) a long time ago. Only the very first versions of Vanilla had the Radiance and Revelation using all of their turrets.

Just put a number at the front bank of the ship (just mod that entity file) and see what looks like. The hardpoints are already there (on the Revelation as well)...

I thought of something..  Consider for a moment the way in which Guidance works.  It is an infinite target AoE.  What if this ability wasn't meant for capitals; after all, wouldn't then it be targetable?  What do we have left?  Frigates and Starbases.  What frigates have abilities?

Disciple Vessel: Steal Antimatter & Transfer Antimatter

For an ability that already has a very low cooldown (10 seconds), this isn't going to be much help.

Iconus Guardian: Shield Projection & Repulse

SP won't benefit obviously as it's CD is only 20 seconds while it's duration is 30.  The same applies to Repulse

Domina Subjugator: Perseverance & Suppression

While Perseverance doesn't benefit, Suppression has a CD of 60 and a duration of 40, which means that Guidance could make this constant.

Illuminator Vessel: Deceptive Illusion

An ability with a CD of 180 and a duration of 120 that forces currently attacking forces to retarget randomly and causes the original Illuminator when targeted during the duration to have a 60% of forcing the attacker to retarget, thus increasing the survivability of the Illuminator by 160%.  As a 40% reduction in CD's, that is enough to drastically reduce the intermittent time, where two Revelations could make Illuminators be able to constantly keep up the Illusion, allowing a significant portion of your DPS to have greatly increased durability.

Transcencia Starbase: Mass Disorientation & Meteor Storm

MD has a cooldown of 105 and a duration of 60.  Guidance could also be very helpful here.

 

I'm just saying that perhaps things like Deceptive Illusion and Mass Disorientation are the sort of abilities that this is designed around.

I guess if there's a really good choke point, that might make sense to station a Revelation at your SB with some other backup, stacking guidance and reverie; If you get pushed enough there, you could get it up to a high enough level for hysteria, which would be quite useful.

However, I'd think this too rare of a situation.