Vasari - DA/RA controversy

1)It's not really the free ships that are the problem, especially at that point in the game, but it's the fact that, combined with the Vasari ability to have around 300 extra supply at the end of their logistics research combined with the ability to constantly be receiving reinforcements for a maximized fleet that may be seen as unfair. Otherwise, it basically turns your phase gates into more factories. It's really not that big of a deal since people should have more than one factory (preforably one per front).

2) According to this logic, the Advent's Deliverance Engine is NOT a superweapon. Actually, it isn't. It's, at best, a support structure (though multiples could cause planets to flip occaisionally, it turns them neutral while the Novalith cannon blows the planet to pieces). Anyway, if everyone agrees that it's overpowered and needs to be banned, there's not much you can do about it.

3) Phase gates aren't overpowered. Vasari ships have almost extravagant supply costs, and you pay for your smaller fleet by being able to use gates to act as a quick reactionary force. They also take up some slots which means defenses will be even weaker, and they shorten supply routes, so less income from trade.

If they ban the Vasari's super-ability, then you should petition that they ban the other super-abilities, like the TEC's Pervasive Economy, and the Advent's ability that automatically levels up cap ships to level 4 without cost (and increases XP gain, which means their ships will, ship for ship, several levels above the others).

Always get this problem in multiplayer games

I think a lot of the problem stems because players focus on their 'pet' race to the exclusion of all others. One thing that can help is to add a house rule either preventing a player from picking the same race twice in a row, or else forcing random empire selection. Once they've 'played the field' a couple of times these kind of arguments tend to disappear, or at least have a more sound reasoning behind them.

Vasari ftw I love Vasari no one can make me stop using them.

You guys are welcome to ban whatever you want to ban in your LAN games, I suppose (shrug). And you personally are welcome to keep playing with people who tell you what you are allowed to do when you play the game - it's no skin off anybody else's nose. But personally I'd laugh my ass off if my opponent told me I wasn't allowed to build phase gates, research dark armada, etc. I mean, what kind of fool does he take me for? LOL! I wonder if he'd allow me to put a few rules down on him too?

I played a TON of games online as vasari. In every game where I teched up to dark armada, I lost.

One game I had 5 phase gates churning out returning fleet (2 on home world, 2 on an ajoining ice world, 1 on an ajoining asteroid), and my dark fleet had both levels of research complete. Lost.

In another game, me and my vasari teammate BOTH successfully teched up to dark armada. We lost.

I tried different things. Going straight to dark armada, ignoring everything else? Lost. Building a small fleet, and building 1 weapon research facility to get assailants, and THEN teching up to dark armada? Lost. Going a medium approach, spamming as many ships as I could up to the cap (researching 1 level ship cap beyond what you start with), doing some basic research, taking as many planets as I could, and THEN teching up to dark armada? Lost. Just a standard "boom" type strat where dark armada comes late game? Lost.

Some smart ass will probably respond with "you just suck at the game." Well, I'm not going to get into trading insults, and I'm not going to respond to a baseless charge. However, what I *WILL* say is, in my personal opinion dark armada / returning fleet ... whatever you want to call it... is NOT overpowered.

But that probably doesn't help you very much with your problem of playing with your friends on the LAN. I suppose I'd say 1) don't play with them, or 2) grow a backbone and two balls, and tell them to go to hell, LOL.

My 2 cents, anyway.

Look, if you let a Vasari rival get to RA, then really, it's your fault and you deserve to lose. Ok, that is probably oversimplifying things but... no, really, you deserve to lose.

i personally don't often play as vasari, but i noticed that if you do get the returning armada, you deserve to win, because that amount of resources with a balance army is very expensive. and i like how all the races have their own distinct advantages (military strength=vasari, economy=tec, culture=advent) and taking out returning armada would unbalance the factions, because vasari has a harder time with resources than the other two.

I personally love to use Vasari just for the phase stabilizers and dark armada, but i only bother to use it on maps where i have ally support and/or multiple stars to hide in while i tech up,as you said RA is a huge investment, and if someone knew how to scout efficiently, they'd notice you spamming viturska's labs and phase stabilizers and would stop you,if you power rush to RA,as i often do...my only defense is your patience and lack of an ability to effectively scout.

Anyways,if you remove Phase stabilizers and Returning armada,aswell as the kostura cannon what are you left with? Assailant blobs? Try telling them to play as tec with no trade routes,no kol's and no hangars/repair bays and see how they like it.

have you seen the size of some of the large/huge maps? When a vasari player is nestled between 2 or 3 allies in his system he's free to fast tech to dark armada within an hour

I played a 5v5 last night as Vasari, I took the 2 asteroids and 2 planets next to me, and fast teched to phase stabilizers/DA and put one stabilizer on each planet, that's 5 stabilizers. 15 minutes after recieving my first reinforcements I had the largest fleet in the game, and it was getting bigger by the minute. We obviously won that game due to my massive FREE force.

It's overpowered and needs a serious nerf. I think a fair change would be if it only warped in ships that you had tech to make, and sent in about 3 ships max per stabiliser.

Alternatively,it could do what it's name suggests, only bring back ships you built,that were destroyed(but not capitals)

Have you seen the size of some of the small maps, where vasari have it rough?



I hardly see the point. You are describing an unbalanced scenario. I've played games where a TEC was nestled between allies and did nothing but focus on economy and give his his buddies huge sums of cash to play with. In fact, I saw a game where those allies then went on to crush a huge vasari with dark armada.



In other words, you want to make the tech useless, just like the PJI, LOL. Then nobody would play vasari, just like nobody builds PJIs.

Who on earth would choose to play vasari with a "seriously nerfed" dark armada? If you mega-nerfed that, would you be prepared to mega-buff them in other areas?

In all honesty, unless you get your friends to try playing Vasari (after which I suspect they may change their minds about the 'uberness' of RA), I'd seriously think about finding some new people to play with.

If you really have to play against them, insist that for every Vasari tech they 'ban', you're allowed to ban a tech of your choice from their races. See how the TEC players like having LRMs banned.

I've got mixed feelings about Dark fleet. on one side it ís very useful and certainly something to look forward too, but also too easily abuseable in team games where other players just have to feed the vasari a bit for a quick and painless tech to phase gates & dark fleet.

Also you can scuttle the ships you get from it for free money :V


My personal suggestions would be:

Returning Armada only spawns ships you actually have researched
RA ships can't be scuttled for money
Increased fleet cap lowers the number of ships you get so you cant just suicide your 2300 cap fleet and get it rebuilt for free every 5 minutes.

edit: Also only one phase stabilizer per system.

I've attacked Vasari players one hour into the game, they just got dark fleet going, and I slaughtered them terribly! 1 hour is what it takes to get returning armada working, 1 hour is enough time to attack a Vasari player on large, even huge map!

Fact about Returning Armada -> Your ships will not have abilities since you focused on imperial labs, your ships will not have support cruisers!

In a straight up fight a Vasari fleet without all military upgrades and abilities minus support cruisers gets destroyed!

If they even try to bring it up, make sure you mention the incredible imba levels of Pervasive Economy, Insurrection, Planet Shields and whatever else you can think of.

Actually, those ships really are free.. the gate cost is covered easily by the ammount of resources / money you save through the first summon, and after that, the second round - given you have 4-5 gates - easily compensates for any research you spent on. So basically after 15 minutes, you have the resource investment returned in forms of ships. In this aspect, building / researching the gate techs is like building a huge fleet, that only arrives some 15 minutes after you spent resources on it.

Once you got the gates, you basically do not have to spend on ships ever again, which means an extreme advantage to you..


First of all, the cost of returning armada, and more specifically the gates is nowhere near close to the cost of a superweapon. If it would be, it really wouldnt be THAT overpowered, tho it would still only be a matter of time before it brings its price back.

Then there is the fact, that RA is indeed a superweapon. It IS the ultimate superweapon if you ask me. Sure you can blast away worlds as TEC, use culture for the same as advent, but i just summon a kickass fleet and roll over both as vasari without wasting 8000 credits a piece on stupid guns that can eaisly be destroyed.

So your point pretty much dies there.. Despite of it being in the imperial tree, it is still a level8 technology and a badly balanced one at that.


Well, it is not the stabilizer nodes that are the problem. For that, 10 tac points and the price of the gates would be just fine. As a matter of fact, i do find it advantage enough already. It is the problem that the gates are the ultimate super weapon combo. Not only do they allow you travel from anywhere to anywhere inside your realm, but they also give you effectively unlimited - and free - reinforcements if used right. And THAT my friend is waaaaay overboard for 10 tac points, especially as i can easily have 3 of them (sometimes even 4) on a planet for less price than a superweapon gun would cost, allowing me to summon some 150 pt worth of ships every 5 minutes. As for the advantage of phase stabilized travel.. if you do not think that alone is a huge advantage for the vasari, then think again. I can effectively wage war on two or more fronts at once, using the marauders and the gate network to send ships back and forth the various fronts in a direct line. I can take a planet in 5 minutes, build a gate there in one, and be on the other end of my empire to defend against the buddy of the guy who i just took a planet from before he even gets close to doing any damage. That pretty much is an extremely powerful ability to me. You still make it sound like if it would be nothing.

As it stands now, there is no counter against RA i can think of, apart from teaming up against the vasari and beat him through sheer force. Even then, if you fail to coordinate your attacks well, he will just use the reinforcements he gets free evern 5 minutes to pulverize your forces and then go roll over you laughing.

The only chance you got is to strike him down when you see his gate network being built. Destroy his imperial labs - i do think that prevents the use of abilities requiring a certain level of research, but im not sure - and his gates first and foremost after you get into a system, so that he can't send reinforcements instantly to you. This might work on a medium map if you go on the offensive early on. Then again, after about an hour or so, the vasari will have RA and the gates up, and then you are pretty much toast. On larger maps .. lets just say on larger maps you just have no chance against a fully researched vasari.

So all in one, it is a fact that the armada is overpowered. I did doubt it myself at first - despite playing vasari all the time - but it turns out i was simply neglecting gate research. Lately i've been focusing on that, as there is no point in going for anything else first.

Its assailants, trade post - maybe colonizing techs if needed - then straight for the returning armada. Unless the opponent is really agressive / close to me.. i can easily have that up before the first major assault comes in.. and quite frankly by then it is too late for him. You just research your fleet cap while bulding more and more gates, and before long you will have a ridiculous ammount of ships every 5 minutes, with the ability to call more whenever some are destroyed.

Yea.. in the hands of a good vasari player, who got microing the gates down right, those are a game breaking tool. As funny as this looks, this comes from a vasari player. Sure they are nice to have, but hell.. i feel bad when i roll over the enemy with my maxed out point fleets when they are struggling to build enough ships to get somewhere even near half the pop cap. Its just not fun anymore. (it never was)

There are plenty of things they could do to the gates.
- Separate gates from the returning armada ability. Have a different - rather expensive - building for that, which costs a hellofa lot of tac points (for ex. 18 like the rest of the superweapons).
- Reduce the tac point cost of gates somewhat, so that you can fit both on a small world with the 25 tac limit (say make it 7 instead of 10)
- Limit both to 1/system, not that you would have a chance to have more with the above tac costs.
- The idea that you do not get money from armada summoned ships when scuttled is nice
- Also you should not get ships you do not have researched, at least not heaps of it. Last game i had 83 enforcers at the end, tho i never bothered researching them. Same for the 51 transporters.
- Increase recharge to be on par with superweapons. I do think that getting 50 pt worth of ships every 10 minutes for free would still be worth as much as getting a short at an enemy planet every 10 minutes, but it would be a lot more tactical and not just a cheap way to spam ships everywhere.

Additionally.
given some of the vasari traits (like extremely expensive ships points wise) it might be worth reviewing the overall game balance after this change, as from what i've seen.. vasari can pretty much either get the gates and win, or fail to get the gates and lose badly.. as it stands now. They are just outnumbered and outgunned without the gates, so for now they pretty much rely on them.

Thats just how i see it.

Well m8, sure they can be destroyed, but fact is.. if they got the gates up and the RA tech going, then you either destroy them quick, or they just stomp your fleet then go for your HW to take revenge. Destroy them quick is something i doubt you can do on a large map, unless you are sitting next to the vasari, with 3 of your team vs 2 of his in the system.

I do play medium maps mostly, 4 player games FFA, and even in 2v2 scenarios it really takes an agressive (and good) player to stomp you before it is too late. As a matter of fact, i've only seen TEC players do that.. i guess the TEC LRM rush is something i will have to work on to find a counter with the vasari. Static defenses are obviously not good against it, as they have superior range. Ships you send against them just die, since they have 1.5 ships for every one of yours

There are critical abilities in the military tree like Charged Missiles, Reintegration, Distortion Field, Inertial Field, and Interference that will be denied to a Returning Armada rusher.

What's more the non-upgraded free ships will not get the 25% Phase Missile shield-negation bonus, the 20% Phase Missile damage bonus, the 25% Wave Cannon damage bonus, the 24% Hull bonus, the 28% Repair bonus, the +4.5 Armor bonus, the 8% Speed bonus, and all the other things that the military tree unlocks.

By the time they research up the bonuses it will be late game anyway.



It'd be fine if RA only summons ships you have researched, the scuttle-disabling and the fleet cap connection.

But 1 Phase Stabilizer per system would be a severe nerf. The Vasari will lose their mobility bonus in huge star systems, even if they get a slight boost for interstellar travel. As it is, the Phase Stabilizers have a significant cost: 1500 cash + 200 metal + 300 crystal + 10 tactical slots. So even building a simple Phase Stabilizer connection between 2 planets would cost more than a capital ship and considerably weaken the planets' static defense array.



Returning Armada doesn't bring back destroyed ships. It brings in reinforcements from the Dark Fleet Veerr - the military of the main Vasari Empire. The Vasari that is normally present in the game is the puny Exodus Fleet, filled with the greatest cowards in the entire Vasari race, running from some unknown 'danger'.

Junsurak Sentinel with Charged Missiles and the Phase Missile tech branch researched as far as you have resources to do so. The Vasari's last armor tech also gives an 8% speed boost, so the Sentinels will be able to close the speed gap with TEC Javelis LRMs.

Or else their's the Kortul Devastator's Level 6 special ability, Volatile Nanites, that can start a chain explosion to blast a large group of LRMs as shown in some replay posted somewhere in this forum.

You realize you are alking about various high level techs and high level capitals to counter something merely costing 4 pop points and eaisly spammed from the beginning of the game, right?

Sure once i get the tech up to speed, not much is a threat to the vasari, but early game they are ridiculously vulnerable, as they are outnumbered, and outgunned as i just said.

1.5 times the number of ships you have, even if all of them are weaker than yours, they still have a lot more firepower / overall hp, not to mention the range difference.

With proper microing you do have a fighting chance against them, if the enemy is not microing his fleet, but someone taking the LRM rush might very well do that.

Then again, i do believe that there is no impossible tasks, just incompetent people, so there surely is a way to counter this tactic.. i just have to find it.

I think the sentinels might be able to pull the task off even without the phasic missiles. Tho im not so sure its economically viable. Would have to compare the prices / survivalability of the two. I guess i just have to field test it tonight.

I really should play other races more.. know thy enemy as they say.

I play Vasari at the exclusion of all else and i gotta say I did get RA several times but found it lacking. Especially if i had to get the fleets together and then mass them for assault. I just build the gates so i can move around quicker ala stargate. NEways, if u still run into peeps telling u not use the gates tell them not use the roboic drones and the economic buff of the tec and the other 2 found in Advent

My point dies? My planets might die, sure i can have a massive fleet but 2 NovCans firing at my rear planets working towards the front (not mentioning the fact that the last time i played with them, the other guy had 5) so as I'm fighting through his Fleet which is the same size as mine whilst its being constantly being reinforced with little REAL financial impact on him on top of the spamming of base defence (which is fair enough) my planets, the ones with the unholy gates, will be dying, me reinforcements will dwindle and lo' and behold, despite the use of RA, a defeat will be known.

Sadly, this typically represents the arguments going on at the moment, point Vs counter-point Vs a further counter-point. People can argue until they are blue in the face, RA is not a superweapon (i will freely admit it needs a little more balancing):



fairly spot on i would say. But i still hold that it's not a SW and that restricting it and phase gates would end the game as you would have a legit. claim to restriciting TEC trade heavily and doing something equally as nasty to the advent.

Even if you have returning armada...your max supply is still gunna be 2000 (correct me if I'm wrong.) and if not an explanation is that Vasari frigates cost more supply than the other races' frigates.

vasari fleet cap is 2300

Its selective perception.
If you lose a few times to a certain strategy it will be considered stronger by you.
If you use a similar strategy yourself you know all the effort, the possible weaknesses and sacrifices needed to successfully pull it off the very same strategy might not be as strong in your perception anymore.

There are countless threads calling countless things overpowered and demanding a nerf.
With a few dozen games played (even with a few hundred) a single player cannot really decide if something is nerf-worthy or not.

So you shouldn't rant about people calling for a nerf, you should try to encourage a well mannered discussion where people exchange their experiences on the receiving and delivering end of returning armada.

If you freely admit you almost exclusively play Vasari, can you really say that your opinion is absolutely objective on the topic of a high end Vasari tech?

I also find it odd that you ban super weapons in your games (which in my humble opinion are not that strong considering their costs and weaknesses), but dont accept that other people might have problems with another powerful ability (overpowered or not).

Sentinels are a basic Level 2 tech. The Phase Missiles and Charged Missiles are optional.

Sentinels are 5 supply points while Illuminators are 6 supply points and Javelis LRMs are 4 supply points. What's more Javelis LRMs are also Level 2 tech and Illuminators are Level 3. The only thing is that Javelis ships are amazingly cheap zerglings while Sentinels are not. The Advent Illuminator, though, costs almost as much as the Sentinel when you factor in the metal and crystal costs.

So Sentinels can outnumber AND outgun Illuminators and they can take down Javelis LRMs too once they enter firing range. They also provide a meatshield barrier at the same time, so carriers can hang back and launch their fighters to accelerate the progress made by the flaks.