Vasari Loyalist Titan

In all honesty, I'd be fine if the Vorastra could kill any other titan 1v1.  Lore-wise, it just makes sense.  Nerf the VL in other ways if necessary, but it really seems like the Vorastra should be the most powerful ship in the game hands-down.  Right now however, the Vorastra does not carry Phase Missiles.  Instead it carries Pulse Guns (don't fire forward), Pulse Beams (it's AA guns), Pulse Waves (unupgradable), and Phase Cannons (unupgradable).  The suggestion to change Pulse Waves to Wave Cannons (which the VL can get +70% damage on) or change Phase Cannons (as will be explained below) to damaging hull directly stems from the fact that instead of being powerful, the Vorastra may be the weakest titan in a fight.

To cause Phase Cannons to deal damage directly to hull would mandate then that you understand how much they effective damage they would be doing.  Against normal frigates, you'll be dealing 150% more damage than normal while against Advent Loyalists, you'll be dealing 733% more damage.  To compensate, you should obviously nerf the damage dealt by PC's from 148.75 damage per 8 seconds (18.59375 DPS) to something lower, say 40 damage every 8 seconds, so 5 DPS.  When multiplied by the ranges mentioned before (2.5x and 8.33x), you end up with from 12.5 against frigates to 41.667 DPS against Advent level 10 capitals in-culture with all Loyalist research.  Against normal capitals (65% mitigation), you're dealing 14.29 DPS.  Thus, under most circumstances, this would be "weaker," but against higher level capitals and titans (or against the AL) it would be stronger and would be IMO a decent tradeoff.

Was there a need for a new thread with the same name? 

Anyway, i agree on the first point absolutely, cooldown for Phase Stabilisers needs to be cut down drastically, as its IMHO the main ability of the Vorastra.

I would agree with the increased maneuverability of the Titan, shortly after performing the micro jump, not sure about those other increased AoE related things and in general, increased firepower. I would not mind added Phase Missiles though, keep the current weaponry and add few of those, issue solved.

Anyway, i do not mind, if the Titan is bit weaker as the likes of Ragnarov or Eradica (as long as the difference is not staggering). But the buff to the Phase Stabiliser ability cooldown is must. Because this Titan is not the ultimate offensive weapon like Ragnarov nor Fleet Supporter like Coronata or Ankylon, which is both fine by me, it needs to be able to summon new ships/replace the fallen ones to help it out in battle very fast, and for that, one Phase Stabiliser every 10 minutes at level 6,7? simply does not cut it. Bottom line, with such a long cooldown you do not really want to blow your planets, because you would not be able to replace fleets very fast...for that, you would need several stabilisers and for that, you would need...half an hour minimum. 

Additionally, please make the "Phase Stabiliser Spawn" targetable ability, it happened to me several times, it spawned right inside enemy minefield, which instantly blew and took half of its hullpoints and then enemy turrets finished it off within seconds! I want to have control over the placement, when i spawn it in enemy gravity well.   

1. Well a free structure that can summon reinforcements, grant access to your phase network and ignores all tactical slots shouldn't be easily spawned. I'm not saying the current values are the best but I think its best kept high so have to be careful with it until the third/fourth upgrades. As it its I'll probably just get the first version of this ability and only use it in emergencies.

2. I assure you the MP pros will find ways to make this thing amazing with micro, especially when combined with Maw. It probably won't need any buffs.

1.  And this is the issue. If you are supposed to go full mobile, it should not be like this. Either its emergency thing, in which case its purpose in most cases will be to delay inevitable (defeat), and for that it does not even have to be there. Or the devs want to encourage the players to go mobile, in which case they need to make it a viable choice. If you can build a decent fleet of your shipyards faster than spawn enough stabilisers to summon it, youre better off keeping your shipyards (and planets), forget about this ability and level Titans weapons instead.

EDIT: However, i could agree with the notion, you should be careful using it, until you level it. So perhaps the current cooldown values for lower levels could stay, but the fourth level should be IMHO cut to half. 

2.  As long, as its possible to instagib some nice amount of enemy ships in single blow, using careful micro indeed, i would agree. 

I'm sure they will, and maybe it doesnt need the damage buff. But without an amount of micro that is currently made prohibitive by the movement characterisitics and collision issues with the VLT (the biggest ship in the game) it will be very hard for anyone (and most of us are NOT mp pros) to use that combo effectively. So, if the damage buff is objectionable, I cant see why a reasonable and time limited buff to turn speed isnt called for. Besides, the Maw MPJ combo isnt effective until level 6 (not always easy to do, especially in the vas loyalist mobile fleet which is by necessity capital ship heavy) and currently the Maw doesnt quite work like its supposed to.

While I have used MPJ and TM before to wipe out enemy frigates, it's not nearly as powerful as the Kultorask IMO.  The Kultorask can drain/disable while TM just kills.  True, you get the resources, but it didn't ever strike me as all that useful.  I will say however that it is fun to feign retreat, wait for you to be pursued, and then jump behind the enemy fleet and devour all their frigates.

That said, it's still a level 6 ability by which time, people will likely have focused more of their fleet power in capitals, rendering it less effective.  At least Dissever attacks capitals.  If TM could at least damage capitals, it might be better off. Not to mention until then, you're stuck with a titan with very lackluster damage output.  I decided to test things and even the Coronata survived longer against a pirate base than the Vorastra at level 1.

One more thing i like to add, if you feel, that the Vorastra is underpowered fire-power wise, and there is nothing to balance it, perhaps instead of increasing the output of its cannons doubling the number of its fighter squadrons would do the trick. Its mobile base after all and its big, its bound to house shitload of fighters/bombers.

I feel like larger numbers of SC is an Advent thing though...  I'd be fine with doing that to the Coronata, but not the Vorastra..

Ok, look, we get it. You don't think the Advent titans are strong enough. We understand that, thank you for your contribution. It was tested, and they said you were wrong. We are still in a beta though so feel free to continue to piss and moan about it.

Right now, the Vasari titan is actually weaker then the Advent titan, so not sure what you are reaching for. I agree with most everything above simply because the dev's want the loyalists to feel like they can pack up and move at a moments notice and rely completely on their fleet for everything. Right now, i'm not feeling it because my titan in the lower levels doesn't feel real titan-ish. Titans are supposed to be strong or at least strong enough to justify a massive resource cost. I can't even upgrade one of my weapons on this ship, that doesn't feel very strong enough. My main 'trick card' ability doesn't feel very meaty to me. I get the ability to drop a phase node every 12 minutes, and this is supposed to hot drop ships onto my position when I do this.

Now consider the fact that my fleet is LITERALLY a mobile homeworld and i'm supposed to eat worlds along the way for resources, and that doesn't feel very useful. In fact, it actually makes me feel as if playing how lore would dictate the race to act it's not effective at ALL to eat worlds. I can't make a supply line if I eat worlds, and eatting them will only give me deadspace behind me. The only counter to that that I could see would be making a supply line of starbases behind me with phase nodes on them.

Advent and TDC are supposed to NEED that supply line of structures and defenses behind you, i'm Vasari loyalist, and by the description you would assume I don't either.

Oh and PS: Before everyone says some bullcrap about how i'm being to the Advent whiners above and why i'm picking them out it's this.

Every thread i've read that has had to do with the Vasari titan or the Vasari as a whole has been people complaining the Advent didn't get it, so why should they. Guess what? We're not on the Advent end of the beta anymore, we're on a whole totally different race that is played 100% different then the Advent. But on that note, the Advent are not the baseline for every other race in the game. Please stop using "Well the Advent can't do that." as a justification for what everyone else can do. With that said, if you have beef with what the Advent can and can not do feel free to post somewhere about it. But PLEASE stop going to every bloody thread about the Vasari and complaining about how you think the Advent should have got this and this and this.

Dude, what the heck?  Where did the anger even come from?  Who tested the Coronata with a few extra SC?  Beyond that, I don't ever remember seeing your name before.  Checking previous posts by you brings up one bug thread.

I never said the Vorastra wasn't weak.  I was one of the first to say it was underpowered compared to other titans.  In fact, I would say that the Vorastra is weaker than the Coronata and definitely the Eradica, so I'm not sure what you're reaching for.  All I was saying was that lots of SC is an Advent thing, not a Vasari thing, so it doesn't seem like the feel would be right for the VL titan.

Also, why would you want a supply line as VL?  VL isn't supposed to have one once they go mobile.

EDIT due to raging ninja:

I wasn't even whining.  I was just saying that if that buff went to a titan, logic would dictate that more SC would be an Advent thing.

On top of that, just because we've entered a new stage of beta doesn't mean at all that previous things were balanced.  I don't know where you got that idea, but whatever.

In the mean time, take a chill pill.

The titan is subpar by any standard even by Quar's and he is one of the most avid Vasari players around.

There isn't a big enough incentive to pack up and eat your worlds. Maybe you can go raiding and remove worlds from your emenies to kill their economy but I wouldn't just go fully mobile.

The titan isn't strong enough to go off alone and at least have a decent chance of survival nor does it have the firepower to fight back. And the fact that you're capital ship heavy means leveling takes forever on this thing.

It definitely lacks offensive punch.  Every other titan has some major damaging ability, except this one.  The unupgradable weapons don't help either.  As suggested, having the teleport do damage on arrival would help a bit.  And of course fixing the ultimate so it works as advertised.

As for the gates cooldown, you have to be VERY careful with this one.  The reinforcements are free.  Once you get some up, you can just crap out free fleets all day complete with cap ships.  If you can get them up too quickly, the loyalists will just snowball too hard lategame as you cannot hurt their economy if they went fully mobile; and the loyalists have the option to pretty much ignore most of their tech trees and just pile on the weapons and defences.  I will agree the current low level cooldowns are a little bit too high though.  Maybe shave off a 200-250 second cooldown from each level and try that out.

Take your own advice Volt.

JUST because I don't post every day, every minute in every thread on this forums doesn't mean I don't stay here. I don't post unless I have something to add that contributes to a beta test, therefore you will more then likely only ever see me put information down for bugs. But my point stands, if you have an Advent bug then make a thread about it and put it there. I am truely sick and tired of people coming into threads for other races and throwing around ignorant threads such as - Oh this should have gone to the Advent or what not.

I play Advent, it's my main race, but whenever we move to a new stage I back burner them to try out the new race and try to break the game. That's what a beta test is there for no matter what game you are playing, to break the game with the new addition items. If you break the game, you then tell the Dev's ok this is how I broke it, or this is what I found that is broke. People who come in here with a woe is me attitude for their favored race tend to get under my skin because the direction you want the race to go and the way the dev's want it to go are two different things. This isn't a kickstarter, it's a beta and game that a company is building on their own. It is your job to find out how they messed up, and i'm truely tired of reading past mountains of people who are pouring buckets about some thing they wanted but didn't get put in. No, it's not in this thread nor am I specifically saying this is the only thread doing it but go through the forums, take a look at a few of the threads. People ARE doing it, and I came here to beta test, not listen to the opinions of people who haven't a damn clue how game balance works.

If my only having one post prior to this one is your justification to say that my opinion is worthless, then I honestly pity you. Your forum post count is not your level of being taken seriously.

Cecil, I'm just going to PM you a response.

This is more or less what I felt when I first tried playing as them.  I don't see any real advantage to going planetless aside from being annoying.  Sure, you could scuttle a bunch of planets for money on the border to create a no-mans land where enemy forces would have to travel and in the process lose their AM, but ultimately, you'll want to keeps some worlds under your control, else you're just an annoyance for enemy forces.  Maybe there should be some researchable that gives you some bonus if you scuttle all your planets and go completely mobile.  Other than that, I don't see a whole lot of use...

Scuttling planets is good if you want to completely destroy a person's economy.

All you need to do is bombard and colonize and then scuttle. They lose a vital spot in their trade route and you get 5,000 to 20,000 credits + some number of resources as an added bonus to either give to your allies or build your own economy and fleet heck 1 terrain, ice, desert, or volc will pay for your own titan.

Vasari Loyalists will probably be the ultimate raiding race against eco players.

He never said that, don't put words in his mouth.

Regardless, massed strike craft is just one of the Advent's racial traits, ie. they have 3 squads per carrier cruiser vs. 2 for the other races, more fighters/bombers per squad than the other races, a carrier capital that can have an enormous amount of strike craft, even by carrier capital standards thanks to ADA, their mines are strike craft, their starbase can have twenty squads, etc.

That's why Volt said that massed strike craft would be something more suited to the Coronata than the Vorastra. It has nothing to do with "the Advent didn't get it!"

Haze, the issue with Cecil is somewhat off-topic, so I'm trying to settle it via PM.  We'll see how it goes.. 

I was referring to scuttling your own planets.  Clearly wiping out enemy ones is a good idea, but I was referring to wiping out your own.

Are they? It does not list the price, but i do not think they are free. 

@Cecil> Your post was proverbial kicking into open doors   

Normal reinforcements are free, but capitals still cost money and resources.

In such case, i can understand why the cooldown is so high. Werent the reinforcements 2500 credits in one of the previous betas?

I would probably prefer, if it cost those 2500, money are not the issue after all, but you could spawn the stabilisers more often.

The Jump Gates are currently free due to the fact that it's bugged. The Stab's say Dark Fleet Combat and Support fleets are free, when in fact they cost a pretty penny to pt out. The only reason they are free is that when you click them the resources aren't taken for the ships you produce, when they are in fact supposed to. Still, the Dark Fleet is very useful in bad situations where things go up shit creek quickly.

Edit : I have in fact tested the fleet costs on support and combat as well as capitol. The amount does not show up when you hover over it, but if you try to purchase them with zero balance in your cash, it will tell you what you need. Still, even when you do click it, the money doesn't go away but there is a price to it.

Oh, thanks, now that makes sense.

It would be nice if there were some skill synergy. Micro Phase Jump should temporarily increase the effectiveness of Desperation. Having a phase stabilizer in the gravity well should decrease the cooldown and increase the range of Micro Phase Jump.

It would also be nice if Deploy Phase Stabilizer doesn't just create regular Phase Stabilizers. Level 2 should create a Phase Stabilizer with a repair or recharge shields/anti-matter ability. Level 3 creates one that spreads culture. Level 4 creates one that let you choose the type of ship that gets called through Dark Fleet.

I disagree with the additional buffs to DPS, but causing Desperation to be more powerful would be fine by me.  That would be one weird buff chain though...  One passive affecting another...