thank you very much Ryat, i'm glad all of my argumentation has not been lost on everyone. 

as i've said before, i have no issue with Missile Barrage being VERY GOOD. vaporizing 25 or 30 of your opponents frigates in 25 seconds is friggin awesome. if that level of power is too low for you, then i think you need to reconsider your idea of what game balance should be.

personally i'd go with a target cap of 24, which is slightly more consistent with other abilities in the game, but whatever the number should be ought to be the result of vigorous beta testing on a test server and not just whatever number I (or anyone else) thinks sounds good. 

The Dev's do not have to overhaul it transitive, this is the stuff that mods can be used for. Games that can be easily modified will do better then others because the Dev's don't have to do an endless amount of stuff, many of those thing can be done with a mod. And if the cap ships have to be super curisers they should have to be researched, now you till me why you should get capital ships right off the bat; you should not get the most powerful ships at the very start. Or you should make it so you have to research all cap ships except colonizers; make it so you have to work to get the better ships, why should you get the best ship in the game at the start but have to research weaker ships. 

Till me why it should be that way transitive. 

And of course the main point I have made is: Use your mind, it is your best weapon. Winning against what may very will be impossible odds is better then complaining about being defeated because of MB. If you are a good player your opponent would not have a Marza at level six.        

Once again, you're largely ignoring our arguments.  That response is completely and totally irrelevant with respect to what we've been saying.  This isn't about whether you can stop missile barrage or counter it.  We know it's beatable, and I don't know why people keep thinking we're saying otherwise.  The key point is that there is nothing else like it; why should the Marza's missile barrage be the sole exception out of every ability on every capital ship in the game?

We've also given several reasons why an "act now or lose" ability like missile barrage isn't necessarily good for gameplay.  While some people have addressed these issues, it remains something that very few people have actually talked about in their counter-argument.

It gets hard to take responses like your's seriously when they're just repeating the very points we rejected in our original posts in this thread.  To quote my original response on page 1:

now we're off the friggin deep end. user mods are not a good way to organize a multiplayer community, only the official developer can maintain and distribute a [mostly] bug free standard version of the game. 

for the love of God, lets try to actually talk about Sins of a Solar Empire. the game that we all paid Ironclad some money for. the version i play is Entrenchment 1.02. 

and the concern in single player (where mods can be used) is hardly that anyone keeps losing because the AI is using MB on them. its more like the players are using it on arbitrarily huge AI fleets and completely negating any semblance of strategy because the AI cannot even play around the overpowered I Win button. the only advantage the AI really has is brute force and economic cheating. Missile Barrage is a total negation of both of those and makes playing against the AI even more boring. its actually somewhat fun to play against them as Advent or Vasari, but with TEC its dull. the game is over as soon as the Marza hits level 6. 

and finally...

maybe some people have complained about losing to Missile Barrage, but i certainly haven't. sometimes i beat it and sometimes i lose to it. sometimes i use it and win with it, sometimes i use it and it gets countered. i like the game so i play it, regardless of Missile Barrage. that doesn't mean i don't have a sense of balance. the two things honestly have nothing to do with each other. i'm not complaining at all. i'm stating the obvious: Missile Barrage is an imbalanced ability. my sense of balance leads me to the position where I would enjoy Sins EVEN MORE if the game were more balanced. 

i don't even know why i'm still responding. now its gotten to the level of pathos. its obvious that those with good critical thinking skills have read the arguments in here and have gotten everything they're ever going to out of this thread. while others seem to not especially care what other people are saying and seem to be arguing against straw men who exist only in their own mind. 

I was referring to your desintegrate modifications, which would indeed be more damage and grant a healing bonus. I apologize for not specifying, I thought it would be a bit obvious. At any rate, thanks for making complete assumptions as to my playstyle. I do not "love" the Marza. I prefer balanced fleets made up of Akkans, Dunovs, and Kols, with a carrier fleet in reserve. Only until I get to end-game will I bust out some Marzas, if ever. I suggested, as have many others here, a simple slight reduction in power via a lengthening of the channeled duration. If one increases the time taken to do damage, then it is both easier to interrupt and it reduces damage taken if one interrupts.

Yelling out that something is imbalanced, then yelling at those who suggest things other than making other caps "imba" is counterproductive. What I was asking was: do you want all races to have one "uber" cap like the Marza can be called, or do you want it scaled down slightly so that a future "cap-friendly" patch will bring other cap abilities up to par? Scaling it down is not a nerf, and it won't make MB useless: if one merely increases channel duration while lowering damage done per missile wave, I think a nice balance can be had.

Again, no need to yell at those who are trying to reach a compromise and call them Marza lovers. I was, after all, trying to contribute to the discussion.

For a while I've thought that the nano-dissassembler on the egg was a little OP, and should be nerfed a little.  Thing is, that might still be a "brainer," so I'd be a little careful about it.  For instance, if that ability is nerfed a little, would it require a slight buff to some other ability on some other capship?  I don't know.  However, nerfing the bejesus out of MB is a "no brainer."  It just stands out far and away above anything else as something that is ridiculously OP.

These are exactly my thoughts as well.  This is why I don't agree with the "buff all abilities on all caps" or "entirely rework all caps" or other ideas people have posed.  Just keep it as minimalistic, straightforward, incremental, and practical as possible.  (Not to reopen this can of worms, but this is also why I disagreed with the idea of rearranging the tech tree to adjust siege frigs - just not something I figured would/could ever happen from a practical aspect).

Some of us don't stare at the little icons going down the left hand side of the screen the entire game (a glance from time to time - sure).  Otherwise, what do I need all the pretty graphics for?  However, the real problem is that by the time your fleet lights up red, you can't get it out anyway.  This happened with me, it happened with the replays I looked at, and it happened to a guy I used MB on last night in a "test game" (it was a "real game" but I chose TEC and marza/MB as a "test").

This brings me to another point.  People keep saying the only problem is the "scale to infinity" or "number of targets" etc.  It's actually worse than that.  Another big problem is that it deals the damage too quickly for you to react.  Your ships evaporate before you can click on them and even attempt to pull them out.

"Reacting to counter" is a problem in itself.  For instance, in my game outlined in the original post, the only counter I had available was simply to run away with my whole fleet (even if he approached with a LONE Marza and no accompanying fleet) and let him have what he wanted - even if "what he wanted" was my home planet.  Someone will say that I should have had a counter prepared already - in the form of a second capship for instance.  But that would be wrong, because the sacrifice would have been to lose well over 3000 credits in illums which I successfully used to push him back from his attack.  Building a second cap (while he had to do nothing except continue cranking lrm) would have cost me the game, big-time.

Which brings me to the overriding point I've been making all along:  The threat posed by a Marza with missle barrage means that you have to plan your counter to it as your MAIN STRAT FOR THE ENTIRE GAME FROM THE MOMENT THE GAME STARTS (cap ship selection, etc).  But him?  He doesn't have to do jack crap except play how he normally plays, even if that simply means spamming lrms until the cows come home (like the game in my original post).  Basically, you have to revolve your entire game, your entire strategy, your entire everything around HIM, while he doesn't have to reciprocate.  What a position he's put you in from the outset.  This is why all the pro-Marza people screaming "you can  counter it, just have a second or third cap, just have tons of shield guardians to tank it, just have tons of hull upgrades BLAH BLAH" just don't have an argument.

Picard, what you wrote above is sensible and fair, but you still do not understand the very point of WHY MB is imbalanced and your previous post was a little different than you describe now.

1] MB is imbalanced because it gives tec, and ONLY TEC, an admin's kick button that works on everybody that dares to stare out of the window for the wrong 10 seconds.
Maybe watching 10-sec porn scenes while playing Sins is something one deserves to immediately lose for, but Vasari and Advent SHOULD be able to execute the SAME level of punishment.
It is the very fundamental way MB works, not the numbers, that make it imbalanced.
It is a one-click ability that deals insane damage over a huge area regardless of your own fleet.

2] Your previous post sounded like "omg your abilities are so imba that it's childish". They weren't, they were something MB-like if you paid attention to numbers. And I NEVER wanted them in the game.

I wrote these crippled abilities only to show you how imba they would sound if they were somthing like MB. 
At the same time, MB is like it is and doesn't sound imba to most of the people posting here.

So, summing it up, I felt offended and retaliated.

As for your current proposal of increasing the MB's duration, it doesn't help the ability.
It just makes it more of a shit against players who happen to have akkan or any interrupter nearby, little less of a monster against those who don't and just about the same against others.

CONSTRUCTIVE PART:
If I were to find a fix to MB, I would suggest that it is not channeled, toned down, and that it relies on what fleet you have, just like Malice and Volatile Nans.

Suggestion:
Missile Barrage - Dreadnaught's crew push the Missile launching and energy supply systems to their limit by swarming the area with missiles in "lock on after launch" mode. Heat flashes from weapon impacts increase the chance for a missile to successfully lock on enemy ships in the vincinity. (or sth like that)
Duration: 20 seconds
Cooldown: 50/60 seconds
AM cost: 100/120
Effects:
- Range 7000/8000
- Movement Speed decreased 66%
- Damage 110 (per salvo each second, to any ship)
- Missile Hit chance 30%
- Every weapon impact on an enemy ship increases (Missile Barrage's) hit chance by 5% for 20 seconds in 1000 radius.
- Marza is considered firing weapons rather than using an ability (i.e. abilities disabled won't disable this, but a total blackout from reverie or phase out would work)

I think it would be cool like this.
- Without a fleet, a lone Marza wouldn't unlesh too much pain (20*110*30% = up to 660 damage uninterrupted) per activation.
- more spammable, less of a one-shot-knockout.
- not so easily interrupted, but more evadable (lesser range, speed decrease on marza and time to react before hit chance debuffs stack), so you don't have to blindly choose akkan/marauder/rad/rev when you know enemy is TEC
- with a decent, micromanaged fleet, a Marza could rack up like 1,5k -ish damage against a large portion of the enemy fleet with the stacking on-impact hit chance debuffs.

It would still be subject to balancing and tweaking numbers, but Mb described as above would no longer be imba in the terms I have mentioned - it wouldn't be I-win against people without Chuck Norris' reflexes when alone, wouldn't be total sh*t against good players, would be still very effective when used with a good fleet (just like Volatile Nans and Malice) and would actually reward players for choosing the more useless caps when they're feeling crazy ;p (As in - choosing a Marauder in a competitive game would stop MB while choosing akkan would not. Why is that good? Because akkan is a great cap ship with colonize and uplink and stuff, while marauder is generally shit in action-packed MP. Ever dared to count how many successful players used Marauder online in your presence? close to zero, I bet.)
It would be more balanced like that IMO.

Yes it is.  Again, the question I would ask is, "is this STILL too powerful for MB?"  What other special ability on a cap will vaporize 25 or 30 frigates?   I'm guessing someone will say "volatile nanites" or "cleansing brilliance," but to get even close to killing 25 or 30 frigs with those abilities would require a near act of divine intervention.  In the case of cleansing brilliance you'd have to have the opponent line up all his ships in a nice pretty row, keep them there while you aimed and set off CB, plus hit him with malice (a 2nd cap ability) to boot, right?  With volatile nanites, the ships have to be in a tight group, plus you have to deal some specified amount of damage to them with a bunch of assailants with charged missles, right?

I find this "defense" of marza/MB by EadTes to be hillarious in that, in an attempt to defend marza/MB, he actually does the opposite.  The way to "defeat" his marza in this game was to not fight it.  In fact, it was to not fight it once it hit level 5, lest it go up to level 6!  This bears repeating:  his opponent had to quit fighting his marza once it hit level 5, just to prevent it from hitting level 6.

I highly recommend everyone read the quoted paragraph above a few times back to back, just to let the ramifications of what he said sink in, LOL.

(P.S.  I have a replay of Reborn myself (a player considered to be "skilled"), and he tried but failed to interrupt a missle barrage by JohnJames, and lost the game.  My collection of replays of pro players who have trouble countering the "easily counterable" (*cough*) missle barrage keeps growing and growing.)

Darvin3, transitive, the part about mods is more for the ones like Agent of Kharma who seem to think things that they have not been beaten by because they did not build a good fleet; " they ought to nerf the hell out of that crap, and nerf it good." What he thinks is not what I won't to see.

If he had not spammed a weak unit for the front lines in the first place and have used HIS MIND and kept an eye on the enemy fleet he could have won. That is the point I have been trying to drive home.

You have not made your argument about my research for cap ships. Darvin3 you must see what I mean here with that, make it so that it is at the end of the tech tree along with many other cap ships and their abilities. And transtitve  this has on this thread made us arch-enemys.

You do not think I have good critical thinking skills? I have seen many good ideas in this thread. It is the ones who seem to think it is a win the entire game instantly weapon I do not wishr t see win hee.e And I have played all sorts of RTS games from C&C one to C&C 3 KW; Rome Total War and RTW:Barbarian Invasion and GALCIV II and Star Wars Empire at War and it's expasion FOC and Black & White 2 and B&W 2 Battle of the Gods. And that is just the RTS games that I have played, I have a lot of Xbox games to. So I think that in this area I know many, many things. 

And this time till me why you should have all any cap ship at the start of the game when they are more powerful than normal curisers transtitve. Darvin3 you have to see what I mean at most on the researching of the capital ships, not only that but he seems to have not read all of my post, it seems to me he has avoided it. If you have enough time to prepare for it and take the time to plan your attack then you have a very good chance of wining. It would also (to me) make sense that you do not have a super ship and have to research a weaker ship and instead have the weaker ship and then research the cap ships. Any one else that sees what I mean would you please give me a hand here? 

And there is also the UDP and SB abilities which I have susuggested which would have many uses besides defeneding you from MB.   

Now its late and I am annoyed, if I find some spare time in the morning I will be back to see what you have, good night.

Could you please, for one minute, stop arguing for the sake of arguing and think about what's quoted below and comment, regadless of whether you think such change is needed or not.
I think that my idea keeps MB on top of the "biggest damage dealers in game" while not being imbalanced anymore at the same time.

Illums are considered "weak units?"  I find this hillarious.  In the past I have been flamed and criticized for the audacity to fight illums with assailants and lrm.  "That's a tier 3 unit!" people have screamed - it has more hit points than assailants or lrm, and fires with 3 beams instead of 1.  Now fast forward to my original post here.  I used tier 3 illums against a tier 2 lrm spam, and beat it twice.  Yet I am now criticized for "spamming a weak unit."  And the guy who spammed an even weaker unit (tier 2 lrm) isnt' criticized at all.

You know, sometimes my jaw just drops and my head just shakes when I read some of this crap.

Dude I had a game last night where a guy tried to missile barrage my fleet of illums, he couldnt even break shields lol.  Guardian + shield regen totally coutners it.  As a matter of fact it's easiest to coutner it with Advent.  I almsot felt bad :/

1) As I have stipulated numerous times, I haven't yet seen a way to snap my fingers and have shield guardians magically appear.  Now, if you can show me how that happens, I'll be glad to concede the point.

2) I had to flee with my progen because it was getting focus-fired.  No progen = no shield regen.

3) I will repeat that I saw you eat MB in the face while trying to interrupt it, and you seemed pretty pissed about it.  Now, it's not a crime to eat MB in the face, nor is it a crime to fail at interrupting it.  However, I think its a fair point for me to bring up since you keep popping up saying MB is such a non-issue.

And to set the record straight for all the TEC people who think I'm just picking on them, I don't think marza/MB is the only OP ship and ability out there.  Egg/nano is ridiculous, and I'm almost an exclusive vasari player.  Nano-dissassembler means that if you are playing an aggressive vasari player, you don't have a capship in the fight, period, because he will nano it and then FF with a bunch of assailants, and it's gone.  You have 2 choices with your cap.  1) Don't put your cap in the fight, which means it's not serving its purpose of supporting your fleet, or 2) Your cap dies to nano + FF, which means it's not serving its purpose of supporting your fleet.  You know how OP egg/nano is?  It's so OP that I honestly feel sorry for my opponent, and therefore DON'T USE IT unless either he's focusing my own cap trying to take it out (so at that juncture his is fair game), or he's fielding a marza trying to get level 6.  But as ridiculous as egg/nano is, marza/MB is just absurd.

So what you are saying when I get hit with missile barrage, because I don't come on the board and cry like a baby so it would be changed I am somehow supporting your argument that it is overpowered? You realize you make no logical sense. 

I may have been pissed in the heat of the moment, but that doesn't change the fact that unlike you, I was in a position to counter it.  I had ahead of time realized I would be facing this missile barrage, and I had planned accordingly.  Now where I failed is in execution.  Where you fail is at the point where you turn the game on apparently.  Because every game you seem to have results in some sort of whine-thread that goes on for pages.

I think you have just proven AoK's point. You should not have to plan ahead when facing a capital Ship, yet you do when facing a Marza? Think about this for a second, you dont have to plan ahead when facing other capital ships, do you? If your enemy is building an egg, are you gonna say: ok he's got an egg so I need a ______. But you do when facing the Marza, so he's got a Marza so I need a Radiance or an Akkan. See what I'm getting at. This is not a personnal attack on you, ok, its just that you have given a good proof of why Missile Barrage is imbalance.

Its a good suggestion and I can see a lot of effort went into making this, but all that is needed is a maximum number of targets. I dont know what would be an acceptable number, it could be 5 or 1000, who knows, but at least give MB a limit to the number of enemy ship it can target.

Nobody is interested in anecdotes of great online battles that unfortunately nobody here witnessed or actually cares for. Or someone's impressive ability to take a missile barrage like a real man (tm), which is an awfully useless contribution to the discussion.

#122 by dolynick and transitive's ideas in general are more interesting reads than the bickering that is going on right now, actually analyzing why Missile Barrage is so "popular" and how to keep it powerful while removing the ability to destroy whole fleets regardless of size.

I think debates about the Egg, or to be more specific the nano-assembler, demand their own thread.

If (as in big if) the Mazra was limited to a 24 or 30 ship cap in the MB ability would it be possible to exclude specific units? I'm thinking scouts. I'm asking if it's possible not opinions on the idea.

No.  My point was that even you, the all-mighty Astax, seem to have problems countering missle barrage.  That is what supports my argument.  Not whether you cry like a baby for this or that reason.

That's right.  Yet still you didn't.

Ah, now the personal attack - the hallmark of a failed argument.  I therefore rest my case.

As an aside, if you don't want to read "whine-threads that go on for pages," it really does beg the question as to why you in fact do it.  This is the 8th page, yet here you are reading and commenting away.  Now by all means, if you want to participate in a constructive discussion, do it.  But complaining about whining threads that go on for pages, while at the same time going out of your way to read each and every one of those pages, and comment on them, strikes me as a little... weird.

Here's a solution for you, Astax.  See, I'm a cry-baby whiner who fails the minute he turns the game on, and I make whiny threads that go on for pages.  So don't trouble yourself with reading any of my threads, or posting on them, either now or in the future, and I think you'll be far less troubled by me or what I think.  Sound reasonable?

How can anyone say that each race has something OP? Comparing anything to Marza it's like a joke. There isn't ANYTHING as OP in Advent (I don't play Vasari very often) army, as MB. If I am right Advent is about it's great Caps, but the point is, that in order to get close to the damaging potential of Marza you have to perfectly execute several abilities of a few caps. Ilums, carriers? Yeah, they are great, but you still can fight against them and they won't destroy your whole army in seconds.

Nerf Marza, or give some love to Caps in general! My 0.02€.

It's my impression that targetting is more or less random.  Sure you build a bunch of scouts as chaff and hope that they're the ones that taken out randomly by MB.  You fail to see the problem with that as a counterargument to capping the target limit.

It would mean that Missile Barrage was still overpowered.

How?  Simple.  I'll explain:

1)  If you took the time to build 24 scouts, in hopes that they'd be the ones chewed up by MB then you had to do something special just to mitigate one ability while I did nothing.  I have a free advantage and you, apparenly, would have to spend resources just to survive it.  At least, that seems to be what you are suggesting by that strategy.

2)  If you took the time to build 24 scouts hoping they'd be what MB destroys then I have even more of an advantage over you.  While you were building those 24 scouts and spending 4800 credits and 48 supply slots what would stop me from building 10 (or so) more Cobalts?  The cost would be roughly equal.  Even if your strategy worked and MB killed only your scouts, the rest of my fleet is still at an advantage as I'd have 10 more LF to hammer away at you with.

Suggesting that you can build chaff to nullify a target capped Missile Barrage is not a valid counterargument.  Well, at least not a good one that makes any logical sense.

-dolynick

When I said "weak" I meant as a front line unit Ilums are not good for an all-out attack alone, instead of charging ahead you could have taken time to reinforce your fleet. Ilums are weak in the area of hull and armor, you could have set a trap for that Marza, you could have sent a scout ahead to see if your enemy was ready with their own trap.

Now once I see transtitves reply to my agrument against my counter abilities and then my cap ship research I'm leaveing this thread. I welcome any one else to point out flaws in either of those.    

Are you talking about launching several missles?

I'm picturing something like a huge missle called thermo-nuke or something... just one shot that works like a giant rad-bomb...it's a cool idea! (but then it has 2 things that works the same way, just ones smaller.)

I believe he means pick a target and then that target and everything in an arbitrary radius around that target gets bombarded with salvos similar to how it already works.  The difference being that it's now more focused in a smaller area that you get to effectively choose through targetting.

In theory you could even expand on that scenario.  For each salvo you could have MB pick an arbitrary number of targets (5 or 10 or something) and then bombard everything in a small radius around those targets.  Essentially 5 or 10 small AoE effects every 1.25 seconds instead of one huge one.  There are also some potential problems with scenario as well but it could be done and could reduce the "hit entire fleet" issue.

-dolynick

The logic for Missile Barrage is flawed.  It's an emergency, the crew just shove missiles out- and yet they are all guided in even numbers to every target in a huge radius...?  However many missiles are sent out is dependent on the number of targets in that radius... how is that rational?  I agree, there has to be a limit to the number of targets.

To make the power closer to the description, there should also be some limiting effect from the missile launch.  Have 32 as the maximum number of missiles per wave the crew can physically launch, and the radius should be the seeking radius for the warhead rather than the entire range of the missile, perhaps 5 km radius around a selected target or point up to 5 km away?  That would make the ability both more logical and easier to avoid if you can't interrupt it, perhaps because the relevant cap has been destroyed.  It would still be very powerful.

Also, if Shield Regeneration were swapped with Clairvoyance and Disassembler with Subversion, that would reduce the popularity of the colony capships for the other factions, without affecting the factions overall.  And the swapped abilities make at least as much sense.