Phase gates are awesome, but they are not even close to the same league as Jumping Starbases. They are an auxiliary feature, powerful but they do not help you win a fight directly. If you are outclassed militarily phase gates are not going to help you a whole lot, unless you are just trying to be annoying.

Even with a Kostura, the attacking fleet will get stuck at the planet they're attacking unless they have a Vorastra, level 6 Antorak (lol), or a Orky (which we'll probably see less often with the nerf) to create another node for them to get back. And if you really are that far a way, why not just finish your offensive? If he's mounting a major attack on your territory from behind your lines, that means his fleet isn't defending his territory. So do enough damage to his Empire while building up defenses around where he jumped in at and you'll either

A. Force him to jump back to defend his Empire

B. Win the game because you took his territory faster than he took yours or

C. Lose the game because he blitzed your territory faster than you could his.

In all these cases, whoever had the stronger military is likely to win, unless your Empire was so hollow he had virtually no resistance. In which case that is probably a strategic error on your part, as any player could have just bypassed your frontline defenses and done much the same thing.

That's not really what I was suggesting either. Once you get a superweapon construction warning from either a Vasari or TEC player I starbase my homeworld if it isn't already. Once he fires it I know what planet he's heading for, and can start building up defenses there or on the adjacent planets. They're just for stalling until you can attack something important enough to force your enemy to come back and destroy your fleet.

Also, I'd argue that says just as much if not more about Vasari bombers than phase gates.

To be honest most multiplayer games I've played are more or less decided before we see hundreds of bombers and Kosturas. The games that I've seen go that far the gates are only a huge deal for the Vasari Loyalists, and more because they like to play hard to get and just jump all over the map at the first sign of real resistance, rather than how much damage they do (and Maw of course, but that is a different issue).

But lets say I am wrong, and they do need to be nerfed. How exactly are we going to do that? The only way you could get the gates to only work every half an hour would be to give the gate ability a cooldown like the Antorak or the Orky, and having multiple gates would get around that restriction. It also wouldn't help in most cases with the Vorastra, since usually it only creates a gate when it needs to run across the gravity well, and the ability would of course be able to fire instantly the instant it spawns.

So you were winning but eventually lost to single VL player as only "god could stop him?"

Or did you win, but you could not enjoy the victory, cause he "ruined half the map" first?

Let me know when the "VASARI ARE OP" thread devolves into a "BUFF THE ANKYLON" thread...

Pretty much when facing the Vasari, it's a race to rush them out make sure they don't get to the late game.

We like to play a lot of 10 player FFA.  Vasari are so OP with the phase gates, roving starbases, and planet muncher that I am the only person that plays anything OTHER than Vasari.  I usually dominate all my opponents until some knucklehead gets the jumper, then it's gg.

I love the Advent.  I truly think that they can stop the Vasari.  I don't have spreadsheets, none of us are skilled players, and we just mess around and have fun.

But I digress.  Here, in my limited scope of endurance, are things that should be given in different forms to each player to fix the imbalances.

1) Moving starbases:  Let them all move.  VR can jump?  No worries.  You can research an ability that reduces enemy structures damage/health upon hitting your culture for Advent.  Terran can research a shockwave that will shutdown enemy starbases for X amount of time inside it's owned planets.

2)Kostura Cannon:  Eliminate the extra phase gate.  Allow it to keep it's ability to shut down planetary defenses (did you know it also destroys all fighters in the system?)

3)Give each race the ability to reproduce enemy tech once you capture ONE of the enemies' planets, as long as you hold it.  That would solve all balancing issues.

4)Phase gates:  30 minute global cooldown after using one.  Tech 8 ability to lower the time by 2 minutes for each of 3 upgrades.  Allow each opposing race a system defense that would block phase travel within 2 sectors.

5)For crying out loud, give each race some bomber defense like Vasari's hangar bay phase lock, whatever that is.  

6)Every race has a powerful superweapon except the lonely Advent. Nuclear cannons, planet defense shutdown, RAWR.  Culture gun.... squirtfail.  

"ADMIRAL!!!  THE TEC HAVE ASSAULTED THREE OF OUR PLANETS WITH NUKES!  Loss of life is total, we've lost the systems!"

"Lieutenant, return fire with the all powerful Culture guns!  Maybe we can get them to switch to our side in an hour or so!!!!"

/end rant

In my experience, the single greatest threat of the Vasari are their titans...even if you completely removed the kostura, Vasari would still be overpowered...to be fair, they have a variety of OP stuff (Orky, PMs, etc.), but their titans are the worst, especially the VL titan...

In most 5s games, VL are dominating with Orkies and titans long before kosturas or mature phase stabilizer networks are out...the kostura is simply icing on the cake that makes their inevitable victory come sooner rather than later...

Nerf the Vasari titans, consider nerfing Orky (obviously the VR one) and PMs...kostura and phase stabilizers do not need any nerfs...

FYI, I'd rather be advent when going against Vasari late game...it is true that Advent are very vulnerable to phase missiles, but the TEC titans are useless against Vasari fleets and Advent have repulse and mass disorientation, two very handy abilities when dealing with a powerful titan...

Ugh, I suppose I'll join the Zerg Horde and play Vasari.  If you cant beat them, join them.

You cant strip shit, if there is strong enough enemy culture. 

Too bad, it actually takes some time for them to counter it. Not to mention, you need certain critical number of caps to overthrow the effect of several culture centers on neighbouring planets - AFAIK it wont happen at all, if you dont have enough of caps, unless you remove those centers.

And that kinda matters, especially when this is all about, how you can easily strip the planet and 3 others before the defending fleet arrives.

The starbases/hangars protecting those culture centers will stop the Vasari player from dividing his fleet to attack more planets at once to deal with culture faster.

Additionally you assume he has big enough fleet to allow splitting it into several smaller groups.  Why should we not assume then, the defending player (TEC, Advent) in this case has a fleet of comparable size himself? And if that fleet is 10 jumps away, as you say, its clearly way more logical to force the Vasari player to retreat by not trying to move your fleet back home to provide protection, but attacking his territorry instead. As Goafan suggested in his post. OFC he may decide not to retreat, in which case it becomes a race, who can wipe enemy empire faster. 

While Vasari has an extreme advantage, he will be able to reclaim planets, you will only be able to get asteroid fields or dead asteroids back.. If he went capitalship heavy, he will surely be able to kill planets faster than you, and I often see many Vulkoras in VL repertoire to be more efficient in bombardment.