Vasari Exodus impressions

I was very excited to try the new Vasari Exodus, I love the playstyle of the old VL faction! So I spent a few hours yesterday to get a feel of the new one.

Feels really good to me. The phase resonance mechanic for the Alliance felt a bit clunky to me, the new mobile resonance collector item really helped it click for me. Makes me want to roam around the galaxy to gather resonance - it's a cool incentive to be mobile.

I also really like the reworked abilities of the Vorastra. Jump and Maw is still great. Maw not being an ultimate anymore means, it can be less good, but also be the titan's absolute signature move. Desperation is simply good. Not the most exciting, but it turns the titan's underwhelming weaponry into something useful. The ultimate is exactly what I need for my army to become a mobile menace. Works great, feels great, makes me want to jump around the galaxy and munch on all the planets I can find.
I fell like 90 seconds duration is somewhat short. If your fleet is at the right end of the gravity well, it's absolutely enough, but I think it would be nice, if we had some time to move our fleet a little more to get there, have some more leeway. The cooldown is 180 sec currently (tooltip seems to be wrong) which is nice, but I'd rather have both duration and cooldown doubled.

Unless there's a bug going on, the Vorastra currently doesn't come with forward facing weaponry. That seems super clunky to me. It will totally turn to face its enemies, and then not be able to fire at any of them, because none of its weapons can shoot forward!
You can add a front facing wave weapon through items, and another front facing phase cannon at tier 5 (which looks awesome), but, but, still the Titan should be able to shoot things in front of it, when you get it, no?
Besides looking cool, the phase cannon seems bad to me. With full upgrades, the Wave weapon will deal more damage, and does not need the last tier of warfare research. I kind of expected it to have a lot of armor penetration - similar to the Kultorask's phase cannon, but it doesn't ... it still feels necessary to get, so you have more weapons to shoot stuff in front you with, and proc more desperation aoe.

I wish the focus on getting resources from destroying stuff was a little stronger for the Exodus. Especially if you want to enable planet-less play in late game. Maybe we can get a ship item for that? The cruiser that collects debris works well, so it's not super necessary. But to me, I would like to be able to not have to rely on them as the Exodus. Love the starting planet item, though. Useful and thematic!

Thank you for reading! Happy holidays!
I'll go and eat some ships! The Maw hungers!!! Om Nom Nom

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Timmaigh

Join Date 05/2009

+76

Another fellow VL lover, i mean Exodus lover, hehe. Man of culture, i see.

Agreed about the short cooldown on the kostura-like ability, 180 sec would be better.

The weapon shenanigans are down to lack of new model, all of that will be fixed with its addition.

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The Vorastra seems underwhelming. I was surprised at the lack of firepower the ship starts off with. The "maw" weapon, while interesting, is too situational. Having to aim your ship at a group of ships and wait for it to slowly turn to face the ones you want it to target is...clunky. I find myself just disabling the ability and rarely if ever using it.

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Yeah, its firepower is extremely underwhelming. But becomes ok-ish later on due to desperation.
I'm genuinely curious if that's by design. If it's just supposed to be bad at dealing damage, because it can just eat enemy fleets, is incredibly tanky, jumps around in the gravity well and allows your fleet to be anywhere you need it quickly.
The armor upgrades are ... out of this world! I actually really like that. I want my Vorastra to be tanky, I need its utility, I can get damage elsewhere.
Right now, it seems the TEC focus on health and Vasari focus on armor. Was that the case in Sins 1, as well?

I must disagree on the maw, however. If you get the xp research, your titan starts at level 2 with jump and maw, after the jump it'll face the same direction as before, so you can jump into the correct spot, immediately use maw, and usually eat enough ships for the enemy to run away. Additionally, you just gained enough resources to replace anything you might have lost during the fight.
To me it actually feels quite overpowered. If an enemy brings a fleet, I just see resources coming my way.

I agree, it's clunky, if you try to move and turn towards the enemy. For some reason the Vorastra pushes enemy ships away as it gets closer, which is not what I want. I want them close enough to eat!!

I'm also super curious if the aoe damage triggered by desperation is affected by hull armor? Does it inherit the armor piercing value of the weapon that triggered the aoe? Does it affect strike craft? Does the jump damage affect them?

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts clearly, it seems theres definitely some mixed feelings about how the titan turns and its weapons. We appreciate the feedback, glad that overall things seem to be moving in the right direction

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