I don't know man...I've been playing with that dem bot lock down and I have to say, I think hoshikos are the best cruiser now at any point in the game...

StatusIpod: 

*curtsy*

Many thanks for that info, I have searching and reading the forum to try and figure out what is a good balance for the Advent ships to make. 

Now I am trying to find two pieces of info:

1) If I leave my ships alone (not micromanage the battle) do they pick out the right targets?

2) If I micromanage the battle, what ships of the enemy (Tech, Vasarri) ships should I try to remove first.  My thoughts are for Tech-Robotics and Vasarri-Subverter). 

First get the 1.3 update. Its already available.

Its like this now: They increased the damage for the illuminator front beam bank. Which makes your crusuder equation a little more punished.

I'm going to advice u in this reply is to be a illum spammer. Don't listen to  the other guys  regarding crusaders. Its not about how big it is, its how u use it  )

When it comes to leaving your fleet alone to fight it out, crusaders aren't your best choice unless you research its ruthlessness ability which deals 1.5dps over time. It stacks up if you have a large fleet of crusaders . 

The best unit to let the fleet fight it out is non other than the unit thats haunting you: The illuminator. 

Its got side banks which means 50 or so illums when at close range with the enemy can target up to 150 targets or less. Thats nasty (its freaking star-trek federation phaser banks in all directions).

The reason why you see illuminators and halcyon carriers together is (as i have recently been reminded) the carrier has an ability to reduce the cool down time of the illuminator by up to 15% at level 3 and 22% by level 4. The effect of this is an increase in the actuall damage done by the beams within the reduced cool down time. Unlike any other weapon type beams don't miss targets like missiles. (Do u begin to see the nightmare of a swarm of  illums )

Most worst case scenario is illums, halycon and guardians pushing you away (as u were complaining). Best choice, drop the crusader tactic and make halycons, lots of illums and guardians. Upgrade there beam , shield , hull and armor and u have effectively created your own crusader type beam cruiserish ship.

If u r using illumminators its ok which ever target u pick.. they willl fire at everything at a closer range. There evil.  i can't say much for myself but killing the repair cruisers is always a smart thing to do but I can't tell who im shooting at when im using illums to be honest.

Kill subverters, then overseers, then assailants for the vasari

Tec: Hoshiko repair cruisers then Javelis long range missile frigate. 

 The most hilarious thing happened this morning. I was dancing a fleet of illums around vasari assailants and they kept turning trying to aim while being constantly zapped by beams from all directions. 

"Dancing in the stars"

Picking crusaders is like saying i want the big guns but its gonna cost me defensively. Picking illums is basically saying, i'm not gonna miss a single shot and ill drop 3 units for the price of 1. With a little armor upgrades and hull im a crusader myself and i can make multiple copies of myself to fool the enemy (illusion ability). 

Another way to look at it is say im alone with kate and shooting  her with my crusader.. Sure she will explode but eventually shes gonna get bored and won't at all cos for me its all about my crusader. When she stops exploding my only defense is u should explode baby, im a crusader! Then i return as an illuminator. I shoot kate from all directions, confusing her, never knowing what to expect, gone, back, gone.. shes so excited by the prospect of the probability that anything is possible.. and the fact illums don't miss is just as more satisfying for her and she explodes without regrets. I've got my main gun and a little extra touch from the sides. In my defense " you must have confused me for someone else but i can asure u love the new me today won't dissapoint"

They generally pick the targets their weapons are most effective against, within the local area. Heavy cruises target LRM, light frigates target flak or support/repair cruisers, LRM target LF, etc... but your ships won't move very far to engage a higher priority target. That is, if you have a LF and the enemy has a LF close to your ship and a flak 5 tactical squares away, your LF will target the close enemy LF even though it's more effective against the flak - because the flak is too far away. This is important for heavy cruisers, because often the enemy LRM will fire from far away enough that your heavy cruisers won't automatically move to attack them.

It really depends. That's a very complicated question which is at the core of playing Sins well. But since you don't want to keep your fleet permanently locked up, destroying enemy Subverters often takes priority. Or, if both you and the enemy only have a small number of ships, destroying the enemy's repair cruisers first is usually a good idea. If the fleets are big enough that ships explode every 5 to 10 seconds, the repair cruisers usually don't get enough time to repair anything significant, so it's better to focus on the enemy's biggest damage-dealing ships like HC or LRM. If the enemy has a dangerous L6 capital ship and can't heal it very fast for whatever reason (not Vasari, or fleets deal so much damage they overpower repair abilities), it's often a good idea to have your better anti-capital units target it (bombers, LRM). If you have LF, they'll often auto-target flak: if there are any other decent targets for the LF, tell your LF to attack them instead, because flak frigates have tons of HP but do pretty low damage. You should generally always be manually targeting enemy ships, based on damage type effectiveness or very dangerous targets: auto-targeting has a bit of intelligence, but no more than that. You probably shouldn't attack carrier cruisers if the owner of the carriers has any intelligence, because they'll warp it out as soon as it takes a significant amount of damage - and even if you destroy it, its strikecraft will still be orbiting the gravity well for couple of minutes.

There are a whole lot of variables, including the composition of your own fleet, so it's difficult to completely answer the question.

There's no "one-size fits all" solution for fleet composition... it depends on what your enemy has / is building. LRM spam isn't a bad idea in general but isn't always the best strategy. The Illuminator has very high overall DPS though, which is great if you have a lot of them in combination with Guardians to push the enemy away and flak to cover fighters.

No, Ruthlessness doesn't stack. I just tested it out.

Ruthlessness I think is solely there to negate regeneration.  I mean, it does vast amounts of damage overall, but unless used with Malice, it's more or less worthless.  Now, if it stacked a few times or affected SC, then it would be very formidable.

Ruthlessness does vast amounts of damage overall???

Well, 1.5 DPS against 50 ships is 75 DPS (which is substantial), but it's negligible because it's healed because it's spread so thin.

It doesn't stack with itself, but it stacks with weapon damage, adding an extra bit of damage to ships that it is attacking.

gosh another ability that seems it should stack since its such a low dps but doesn't  Oh well illums it is then.

If it stacked it would be broken as heck.

Oh yeah...  Can you imagine what would happen if it stacked infinitely?  bring in 50 of the things and roll over entire fleets passively.  75 DPS to every ship in your entire fleet is going to hurt big time.  Or go late-game and suddenly you've got more than a hundred passive DPS that your enemy takes merely by coming in weapons range of your fleet.  Forget side beams.  This would pound fleets.  Now, if there was some sort of pattern where say the first one does 2 DPS, second one does 1, third does .5, etc, then I would be fine with infinite stacking because adding more does increase damage, but not to the point where it becomes a passive steamroller.  

Oh, and if it stacked, that's 75 DPS from all ships plus Malice...  Uh...  Can you say instagib to whatever gets malice'd?  30% spread from 24 targets let's say getting 75 DPS.  That's an additional 517.5 almost-passive DPS to 25 ships on top of the 75 the ships are already getting, meaning each ship takes 582.5 DPS using only 50 Destras and a level 5 Progenitor.  That kind of abuse outdoes a starbase's power against a single target.  Frigates would die within a few seconds, and you are seeing 24 ships pop at once.  It will shred anything in its path.  Also, important to note is that the Destras still do what is it.. 19 DPS?  so, that's an additional 950 DPS.  That would most certainly demolish a starbase (and anything else within range).

Basically, unlimited stacking of Ruthlessness=unbalanced broken shattered REALLY FREAKING BAD!

Under that setup Ruthlessness would never do even 4 DPS.... I don't think there should be a "cap" like that, nor should it stack linearly / indefinitely, but it should be made stronger than it is now.

Whatever.

I don't see any applicable uses unless it is flat-out broken.

Yeah, what I've done in the mod I'm making is just change it to 2 DPS and make it knock down mitigation by 1%.  I'm thinking of making a so-called "beserker" version, but as is, Ruthlessness is really a more or less useless ability in the grand scheme of battle...

I view this ability as part of Advent's synergy. Having Destras with Ruthlessness and a late game Illuminator fleet can do a lot to keep the side beam damage persistent on shields as targets are shifted.

I don't see much value to have Ruthlessness if your fleet is primarily Destras as FF dominates the game currently and the intent of this ability is to keep shields from regenerating during battle which isn't a concern with targets taking fire at that moment.

One buff that might be nice is to increase the range. It's currently set slightly over the Destra's weapon range.

Another buff would be to disable passive shield regeneration (frigates only) while in it's current range I don't think this is a supported buff though currently.

You could just apply a highly negative shield regeneration rate, say -1000%. Would be almost the same thing.

I'm with the greater range increase...1.5 DPS ain't much but since Advent have malice this honestly isn't as awful as it is sometimes made out to be, especially when compared to the other HC abilities which aren't particularly great either......the real issue is that most ships won't get affected by it since the range is so small...

A more interesting debuff could work...shield mitigation penalty, damage reduction penalty, etc...but honestly I think raw damage is okay enough...

Kodiak/Skarovas have their abilities with the intent of stopping the target from running away.  Ruthlessness + Malice...

11.85 DPS.  A noticeable amount, but also only the power of a single frigate.  That will not win any battles any time soon.

Honestly, I've always wondered how this thing is supposed to actually work...  Is it to keep up the pressure while side beams fire wildly?

I still may end up making a beserker ability that would do something like disable shields and proceed to turn the plasma cannons into death machines.  After all, the main reason why ships can survive is mitigation, but if you made the thing deactivate its shields to overdrive its guns...  That would be really impressive to watch.  Probably...

deactivate shield regen

kill shields

increase speed by 30%

increase range by 20%

increase acceleration by 50%

increase weapon damage by 120%

Just throwing stuff out, but point is, ruthlessness really has always seemed kinda pointless to me...

Alone, no it will not...and alone I doubt the other two HC abilities would either...granted I think they are better than ruthlessness, but like many things in sins it is often a compilation of many smalll features that can lead to victory...

It's really the malice+ruthlessness combo where you can get some noticeable damage...if you do the math it is still not a whole lot but for an ability that will be spammed anyway you are essentially getting free damage...

A range increase would be a huge help...other than that, I think the biggest drawback is simply the cost of the tech...level 7 for this ability is just too expensive...

Yes, a whole frigate.  From your most damaging ship, you get half it's own damage dealt.  That's not a whole lot since battles are determined by FF.

3-4 more Crusaders would probably be much more worth the money than Ruthlessness.

ruthlessness is like spare 1p change that u tell the waiter to just keep it.

I'm going to quote your number of 11.85 DPS...personally when I do the math I'm getting 10.8 but either case it is somewhere around 11 DPS...

Let us grant the range increase to Ruthlessness that I'm advocating...make it 7000m or 8000m, and let's just assume that range is good enough to encompass most it not all of the enemy fleet (which is not unreasonable since your own destras will be spread out)...

11 DPS being done constantly to at least 24 ships (or more depending on number of progs) may not seem like a lot....however, as you noted FFing is big in sins and so most of those ships will be at a low shield mitigation (15%)...so, let's just underestimate that to be 9 DPS...in one minute that is 540 damage done to each of those 24 ships...add another minute, or add another prog, and you can quickly see how that damage can add up to quite a bit...couple minutes and many frigates will be killed outright despite not actually ever being fired at...this is not any different than how malice currently works...it spreads out damage to the point where you get a cascade effect because all the remaining enemy ships have really low health...

Obviously even with the range increase there are some limitations...you need to have a prog with malice, and preferably a level 5 so you can have malice level 3...but, the ability is still contributing in a meaningful way, and unlike the other two abilities it can affect structures which do not generally have shield mitigation (excluding Advent)...

Let us compare that to the Kodiak's or the Enforcer's abilities...

The Enforcer's ability has a range of 4000m...like ruthlessness, that is a very limiting number...also, this ability does nothing against structures...while slowing down ships may slow their retreat, the range on this ability inherently implies that the enemy ships are in weapons range...so, it is not preventing them from killing you by reducing damage or something...if you are losing, or the battle is really close, this ability is not going to do you any good...

The Kodiak ability, like the Enforcer's, is only useful for chasing fleeing ships...and like the Enforcer's ability, this ability is completely useless during a pitched battle...

In both cases, neither ability helps you directly win a battle...they can help you capitalize on a battle you've already won, but only ruthlessness actually helps you win in the first place...in very unique situations these abilities may help you kill a fleeing cap that has taken damage (so, there is no implication that you've actually won), but in general it is actually advisable to focus on fleets before caps...and if you are choosing to focus on a cap, then you should have enough firepower to do it fairly quickly, again making both of these abilities not very useful....

In the end, none of the cruiser abilities are all that great...they all have a chance of tipping the scales in your favor, but all three have severe limitations, mainly their utility and their range...

However, a range increase to Ruthlessness would increase the effectiveness of it (since right now many ships often aren't in range)...and combined with malice, the damage that ruthlessness does is actually considerable...

The only issue with Ruthlessness other than its range is that it's a level 7 technology...like the overseer's abilities, while they may be somewhat useful in a particular situation, the tech cost simply does not justify the benefit...but, I'd say that applies to the other HC abilities as well...

My math: [1.5 DPS x (24-1) x .3] + 1.5 DPS

Your math: 1.5 DPS x 24 x .3

I do hate Inertial field.  I always have simply because its range is so small.  Intercept can at least be used to catch someone from across a gravity well.  IF requires that you be fighting them and they try to retreat.

Anyways, Ruthlessness as you said will not affect mitigation and for some reason rounded down.  While you are correct that mitigation will not go up as a result of this:

	shieldAbsorbGrowthPerDamage 0.001000
	shieldAbsorbDecayRate 0.012500

I am still wondering why you rounded down so far...  If it was just Destras, it wouldn't really matter, but 11.85 is very close to 12.5, so mitigation will go down painfully slowly for the opposing side meaning that all those stray side beam shots are now going to keep raising the mitigation level because it isn't decreasing very fast.  Mitigation will end up much higher than this in a real situation as a result, possibly maxing out.

But under ideal circumstances, the side beams wouldn't do much and thus the mitigation wouldn't raise.  Okay.  That means that you'll end up doing 604.35 damage.  That means that your average frigate will go down in just about two minutes.  This is not bad considering you didn't do anything to deserve that kill aside from have ships present.  Of course, you probably did have sidebeams going which would hike up mitigation.  If my math is correct, you need at least 30.36 total DPS to overcome the result of full mitigation.  11.85 DPS (ruth) + 4.2 DPS (sidebeam) is obviously going to be between 12.5 and 30.36, so the actual damage that you deal to them will be lower.  Also bear in mind that this assumes a constant stream of Malice to these 24 ships (the damage these ships take would actually be lower since mitigation increases instantly and does not average out because the damage is dealt as mitigation rises).  The rest will simply get 1.5 DPS, resulting in 76.5 damage per minute, which most ships will simply heal back.

I'm certainly not opposed to a range increase in Ruthlessness.  It would be welcomed by me, but I still don't see it as a big plus.  Yes, it helps out Malice a tad, but I typically just use Malice to pound other ships in the fleet as I FF a series of targets into oblivion.  It is certainly helpful for this, but it should be noted that Malice is not going to make this ability good.  Just less mediocre.  Now, if ruthlessness did something like passively damage SC at 1.5 DPS, now THAT would be something worth using.  Of course, HC are supposed to be weak to them, so that's a bad idea.

My point is, this ability simply lacks power.  It fails to do respectable damage by itself and does very little when combined with a capital ship ability overall.  True, it's like having an extra frigate fire on each of those targets, but unless you have a large number of extra frigates firing on them, they will still be within the 12-30 range, meaning mitigation will max out and damage will be reduced, but it will not be enough to compensate.

Ruthlessness needs some other plus to it IMO.  It simply does not do enough damage to be worth anything.  Respectable damage requires a series of circumstances you will not normally find.  If it were low in the tech tree, I'd say, what the heck, free damage, but given how high it is, it is anything but free.  The only way to make it cost-effective is to make it more powerful which quickly makes it insanely overpowered.  As a result, I suggest adding some other functionality.  In my mod, I have decided to make a Beserker ability, though it is in addition to Ruthlessness (and ruth is actually a prerequisite).  I think I'm just going buff the standard abilities and then add my own for all the races (though I may not buff TEC because Intercept actually is good).  I just can't see how this could be a good ability given its incredibly low power, reliance on others to be noticed, and high place in the tech tree.