Proposal - All phase missiles do not penetrate Advent shields while in friendly culture

UnleashedElf:

I like your analysis and solution -- the Advent are, indeed, shafted by phase missiles, and the TEC-Advent matchup is pretty well balanced (from what I've seen), indicating the phase missiles (plus the Advent reliance on shields) are the culprit when it comes to the imbalance in the Advent-Vasari matchup.

I have a question, though: is it phase missiles or Vasari bombers that are the source of the trouble?

Advent Loyalists are my second-favorite race, and I have never had a problem versus Kanraks. If they're using a Kanrak-heavy composition, I can usually compensate by tech-switching to corvettes, which are a lower tier than flak frigates.

The problem appears to be Vasari bombers. Bombers, in general, dominate the metagame, which could be addressed somewhat if they buffed fighters; but Vasari bombers, specifically, ravage players. Why?

Pretty simple: phase missiles + bomber alpha strike = auto-win. Vasari bombers have similar DPS to other bombers, but they also have phase missiles, which bypass shields (and, more importantly, shield mitigation).

This prompts a follow-up question: to address the problem with Vasari bombers, do we drastically change Vasari bombers, or drastically change Advent culture? The former seems like the more direct solution.

In another thread, I saw someone suggest replacing Vasari bomber phase missiles with plasma wave cannons (the weapon used by Skarovas Enforcers). This is a solution that has a number of perks:

• We don't have to mess with phase missile penetration rate too much
• We don't have to adjust bomber DPS to find some sort of optimal number to compensate for phase missiles
• Lore-wise, it can be explained by the same shortage of materials that prompted the switch to pulse beams for fighters
• The plasma wave cannon upgrades are late in the tech tree
• It would look ****ing cool

What do you think?

They can't weaken vasari bombers because tec and advent have an anti-structure cruiser while they do not.

1. Either disabling phase missile penetration in Advent culture or swapping Vasari bomber phase missiles for plasma wave cannons would not seriously impair the Vasari except against Advent (owing to shielded structures) -- which, by the way, is how it's supposed to work in the late game -- Advent are more turtle-oriented than TEC and Vasari because of shielded structures and extra tactical slots
2. Vasari do, in fact, have an anti-structure unit -- it's called the Orkulus Starbase. Those big purple beams? They do anti-structure damage

To be fair most people just use bombers instead of antistructure cruisers (save some impatient TEC players), and their bombers do not bypass shields.

I'm not sure if I would agree with that. Advent defenses can be nasty but unlike the TEC the Advent do not have much strategic interest on playing defensively. They have the worst economy, and that means they have to be using their superior military to inflict higher loses on the enemy.

An interesting question.

Before Rebellion, LRF spam seemed to be the status quo. With Rebellion though, it seems that LRF spam is on the decline, with a greater emphasis on capital ship centric warfare (and Titans of course). Anyways, since then, I've found less LRF spam going on.

I'd have to agree with that assessment. Fighters I think need to be buffed against bombers. It would also be a good counter to bomber spam (from carriers and carrier capital ships).

To be honest, I'm not sure. Basically, if the Vasari lose some of the phase missile advantage, I'd consider the game balanced. TEC vs Vasari would be fine (TEC were never harmed too much by phase missiles, although they were at a drawback in late game), while Advent would be much more balanced.

That's worth looking into. Wave, flash beams, or anything else would be fine.

Imo, among the 3 changes needed are:

- Something to protect Advent vs Late game Vasari OR a nerf to Vasari bombers

- A buff to fighters to make them somewhat more effective vs bombers

- A taunting ability like on the Advent BB for the TEC Loyalist Titan and maybe a bit of a buff to either damage or dps for the TEC Loyalist Titan

Nerfing bombers by buffing fighters is a mistake - just sayin'.  If you play any 5s games, you will quickly realize that bomber spams last only temporarily because the best counter is a fighter spam.  Then what happens?  Everyone spams fighters instead of bombers, meaning that an overall buff to fighters would make bombers practically useless late game.  

One option I see in this is to give fighters a damage boost to bomber-specified targets.  But even now, a small group of fighters can take out a comparatively large group of bombers and keep them effectively suppressed, if given time.  Therefore, giving a fighter buff would again make bombers significantly inferior and essentially a waste of antimatter.  

With that said, I feel that the fighter/bomber issue is not the problem: it's phase missiles.  Since Advent is the shield-heaviest faction, it makes them extremely vulnerable to late game Vasari, as what has been discussed numerous times.  To me, the answer is quite simple: make late-game Advent shield tech provide amplified protection from phase missiles.  As of now, the late-game shield tech for Advent deals with mitigation, which is nice and all, but is simultaneously useless when the enemy's damage can simply pass through the shields entirely.  If the shield mitigation tech was edited to provide greater protection from phase missiles or another tech was added entirely (whether in a chain with shield tech or culture or a stand-alone research), then I would see that as a viable option.

People spam fighters because fighters counter corvettes and corvettes are immune to titan abilities, thus making fighters the only way to protect titans late game (barring, of course, RB or MB)...

Until corvettes became immune to titan abilities, bombers were in fact the single best choice for killing titans and SBs, and fighter spam was pretty ineffective (as it has been for the majority of sins history)...

If it weren't for corvettes, bombers would still be the dominant, de facto strategy and fighters simply an "in theory" counter that takes too long to work...I agree that fighters should not be buffed, but for different reasons...

To be honest, I'm not even entirely sure the issue is a lack of PM blocking for Advent...I have not personally done the tests but some interesting experiments were done that suggested PMs actually did more damage (or bypassed more shields? hard to say) when the target had a higher proportion of shields...this is of course counter to the conventional understanding that PMs simply have a chance to bypass shield mitigation independent of how many shields the target has...

I'm not convinced those tests were correct...I'm also not convinced they were incorrect...but if they are correct, I'd rather see that fixed first before affecting PMs in another way...

Barring that, I agree that having the shield mitigation tech also grant PM blocking (independent of culture) would be the best way to go...

I don't remember seeing that, but you don't need more internal damage calculation weirdness to figure the Advent get hurt more by phase missiles. They (and the Vasari Rebels) are the only ones who get techs to boost their shield mitigation, at the expense of weaker armor techs. As PMs ignore their boosted shield mitigation, they would definitely suffer more late game.

Also, just anecdotally I'm sure most people have noticed advent ships dying with most of their shields still up in Advent versus Vasari battles when progens are around.

Of course, this doesn't tell you how much harder the Advent are hit, but I don't think the conventional wisdom has the wrong conclusion.

@Seleucia,

In my experience, phase missile ownage against Advent is attributed to two factors:

1. Advent ships tend to have overall fewer health points than other factions and less armor (therefore less damage mitigation -- if I recall correctly, every armor point reduces damage to the hull by 5%, yes?)
2. Phase missiles ignore shield mitigation, meaning that in addition to bypassing hulls, they're ALSO doing full damage -- meaning that when they bypass shields, they are doing 2-3x normal damage to the hull compared to other weapons hitting the target

As a result of the above, this means that by the time conventional weapons are done chewing through the shields, there's already a substantial chunk removed from the (already weak) hulls. It's less about outright killing the Advent ships than it is the significantly reduced time-to-kill.

TLDR: Weak hulls + eating away at hulls without mitigation = Advent lose

Of course they do...I also don't care, as asymmetrical balance is a part of this game...

The issue is not that Advent are disadvantaged, it is the degree of the disadvantage...I hope no one here is arguing that PMs should affect Advent and TEC perfectly equally...

I wish I remember who did the tests, but I don't (I brought them up in part because I was hoping someone else would remember them)...like I said, I won't attest they are accurate nor inaccurate as I honestly don't know...but, if they are accurate, I would rather see that issue fixed before doing anything else to PMs...

Because, if PMs do more damage based off of how much shields you have (which should be strictly irrelevant) then we all understand PMs wrongly and fiddling with shield mitigation and PM blocking is a very yankety way of solving the problem...

No one disagrees with those observations....but those observations don't prove exactly how PMs work....we think PMs simply bypass shield mitigation some of the time, but some evidence suggests otherwise...

PMs could easily be programmed to do more damage based on the ratio of max shields vs. max hull in addition to bypassing shields sometimes...they could also be programmed to bypass shields more frequently based on the shield to max ratio...I'm not saying they are programmed that way, but if they were it'd be very hard to tell since the end result would be the same -- Advent ships die faster...

It was Pbhead and the result was simply as shield mitigation rises PM effectiveness increases dramatically.

And 5% PM damage means 5% of the damage bypasses both shields and shield mitigation. It's not a chance to bypass, they flat bypass.

When shield mitigation is at 60% that 5% PM is still hitting hull/armor at 5%. When mitigation is at 70% that 5% is still hitting hull/armor. The increase in the percent of damage was in comparison to an unupgraded phase missile (i.e. no bypass).

That's not the thread, it was something more recent...

The OP did tests that suggested PMs behaved differently depending on the amount of shields (or ratio of shields to HP, idk)...we are talking things like ships with 1000 hull and 200 shields faring better against PMs with 100% bypass than ships with 1000 hull and 1000 shields...his experiments had absolutely nothing to do with shield mitigation...

I don't remember the details...I just know that if the OP was right, PMs do not work like anyone used to think...

Btw I have no idea what your last 2 paragraphs mean...I'm not sure it really matters, as on average whether 5% of the missiles completely bypass or whether 5% of each missile bypasses, the end result is the same....

This sounds like a question for either the modding community or the devs.

To wit: how the heck DO phase missiles work?

I was under the impression that it was sorta binary -- either they bypass shields and do [damage * armor] to hulls, untouched by shield mitigation... or they are treated as any normal weapon.

Yeah I was under that impression too.

Like say if we have 50% penetration then:

50% of missiles do direct damage to hull, no mitigation

50% are mitigated

Pretty sure its the former (haven't we had this discussion Zombie before? :p). It could have a subtle effect actually due to the pesky way probability works in practice and that it may have an impact on how much shield mitigation increases, but yes switching to one way or the other is unlikely to make phase missiles much less devastating.

Well that's what I thought...as do, I think, nearly everyone...but then the voices tell me other things and well, I get confused...

What I do know is this...PMs have been complained about forever, the same solutions have been proposed, and nothing has changed...

They really didn't get complained about THAT much until after they fixed the Illuminator. 

Which was forever ago...don't you know how long forever is?  Its ever long....times four...

Aura ability for Advent that projects phase blocking... not hard to get the little advent utility shield projection to provide 7.5% phase missile blocking and stack it 4 times for 30% shield impenetrability. keep with advent needed solidarity and diverse fleet. 

cya in a 6 months when rebellion enters another beta round to fix stuff.