Lums are FUBAR (Very broken) Part 2

Nice JJ.I dont need to watch reply I know your telling truth.Were these battles at point blank or from range?

This is pretty balanced and shows if you get rushed by a skilled vas there is not much room for error.

The difference from test 1 and 3 looks pretty good for just 20.The upgrades seem pretty powerful.

Test 4 and 5 are a bit crazy.

The only thing I dont like about these tests are lrf are not suppose to counter each other.While the lum is good at taking out numbers of ships kanrack is much better at killing sb and caps.

If Lums had to be nerfed I would vote for a 5-10% increase in resource cost.Might be enuf to give vas the edge on the rush.If they nerf the guns they should buff lums range cause its like half that of a kanrack.

Maybe an adjustment of 75% damage(for all) to lrf would help people to use thier counters more than lrf vs lrf battles too.

all test were done point blank in order to take full advantage of lums 3 beams. No micro just point blank.

JJ, could you also do a test with the Javelis?

Dont want Tec to cry

don't really see illums as overpowered in these tests. funny how no one was crieing nerf on illums until carriers got nerfed. remember that those damage upgrades don't stack as much as you'd think because of mitigation and it gets higher faster with the upgrades.

if carriers were unnerfed this would help minimize the spamming of illums. remember that they get deadly in mass numbers where the side beams become deadly.

HEH?

Did u see the 140 vs 100. Lums stilll wins

Im just curious, thats all.

I can't say I'm not surprised, but I didn't think the results would be THAT slanted. I think I'd like to see a test where each side has every possible upgrade up to tier 3.

I'm not trying to poke holes here, but you never see unupgraded fleets go up against unupgraded fleets. I'd just like to see Vas with 20% bypass, +2 armor, +25% health, or whatev their health upgrade gets, and +10% shields. Neutrals give Vasari a superior early game econ, so their fleet is upgraded more than the Advent Illuminator fleet.

I'd like a second test for the Illums. First without ups for illums against upped Assailants, second with upgrades. When I"m referring to upgrades, i mean all tier 3 upgrades. 

Also, it's worth noting microing takes away the side beams. I typically send in my Vasari fleet in two parts. If my opponent tries to move closer to one, i move them out and in the meantime the other half is taking pot shots at the Illums.

I'm not going to deny that Illums using all three beams are lethal and op, and I'm 100% in favor of a nerf, but it's still possible to micro to beat them.

I see the side beams as this: If you let him use them, that's on you. If you take them away, you put him at a disadvantage.

Ive just recently and successfully used scouts (TEC) to crush an advent player using lums in IC.

Two of those resulted in a pissed off opponent who just commented on me scout spamming and quit before i was even 3 jumps from his HW. lol

All three times i used timed explosives to knock out labs/ factoreis and repair bays, and all three times that sent him running..

YAY

i thank you Raging Amish

If you check the replay and you will see that all side beams dont fire all the time.  Your arguement about microing so that lums dont get a chance to use the side beams is a double edge sword so that advent play can micro their fleet so that side beams always fire and force the other guy to turn around, as their side beams cut their fleet down.

About the neutrals. Thats why I did 27 vs 20.  Vas will have a bigger fleet, but as you see that doesnt help.

I suggest you try one where you actually allow the Vasari to have the advatage of a closing fight.  Giving the Advent the advantage right off the bat skews the test in their favour already.  That's not something you want if you're trying to prove that they're overpowered.

True, but its hard to control both sides. I tried closing distance and basically advent will lose 1 or 2 lums more.

Hehe but let look at cost. Using a convert scale of 1 recourse equals 5 credits this si the cost of each unit in credits.

Lum 955
Assa 950
LRM 345

So I'll add to JJ's post.

Test 1 (no upgrades)

20 Assailants vs 20 Lums
19000 vs 19100 This represents only a 0.5% supperior investment in cost for Advent over Vasari

13 Lums survive
But it ends up giving Advent a 65% advantage over vasary.

Test 2 (no upgrades).  This is to account for 2 extra mil labs and higher cost of lum research.  Should only be 4 extra assailants.

27 Assailants vs 20 Lums
25650 vs 19100 This is an investment 34.2% supperior for Vasari over advent.

3 Lums survive
But Advent still wins with a 15% advantage.

Test 3 (Full Weapons upgrade on assailants 6 phase 2 damage. No upgrades on lums)

20 Assailants vs 20 Lums
Cost same as before + upgrades I wont bother Calculating it.

8 Lums survive
40% Advantage over Vasari for Advent

Test 4 (no upgrades)

100 Assailants vs 100 Lums
95000 vs 95500 Still 0.5% higher investment for Advent

65 Lums survive
65% Advantage for Advent (Ho look it scaled perfectly from test 1)

Test 5 (no upgrades)

140 Assailants vs 100 Lums
133000 vs 95500 so a 39.6% supperior investment by vasari over advent

13 Lums survive
Yet advent keeps a 13% advantage over Vasari. Test 2 was 15% so we can atribute the difference to unforcen variables. Still scales perfectly within the marging of error.

Button line The lum is OPed as it gives out ALOT more bang for the cost that any other unit.

What this means economicaly is that to just keep up with standar Advent econ TEC and Vasari need aditional ECON tool such as neutrals/trade ports/refineries/trade reserch just to keep upw ith advent. And that if advent gets any of the following then TEC and Vasari will not be able to keep up with the tide.

True JJ, Very true. I stop making Assailants once the other cap is dead. Then switch to flak. Only thing that seems to work for Vasari.

Ur welcome Derek06. I love the little suckers. They're fun to use and even more fun to use against someone who won't stop making Illums.

I have to say too, that I find the title of this thread needlessly inflammatory.  Calling something 'very broken' implies that the game cannot hold itself together while that thing still exists.  Nothing in this thread proves that the Illuminators are destroying the game.

You've mentioned that the Illuminator can handidly defeat the Assailant.  Your experiments do a decent job of showing that.  However, all that demonstrates to me is that there is a problem with the costing of the Assailant, which is (barely) more expensive, not with the Illuminator itself.  Either it needs to be cheaper, or the Illuminator needs to be more expensive.

Also, the examples against the Javelis are just not that credible.  20 Javelis (275 credits) vs 20 Illuminators (380 credits)?  Of course the Illuminators are going to wipe the floor with them.  That's what more expensive hardware does.  And as you get closer to taking cost into account (the 35 vs 20 is pretty much spot on in terms of credit vs credit), the Illuminators barely eek out a win.  And in the time it takes for the Advent to earn enough crystal to have 20 Illuminators, the TEC will have 44 Javelises (Javeli?).

And I guess that's what I really have a problem with.  In a vacuum, your tests have validity (as far as I can tell, you're numbers are pretty close to perfect), but in terms of an actual game, with dozens of variables and many more ship types to consider (no fleet battle in Sins is ever LRM vs LRM only), I don't think there is any cause to use the term 'very broken'.  'Imbalanced', maybe, but not broken.

If you want to see real overpowered, you should see what the test results would look like if the Illuminators were being actively micro'd to always be in motion so the Assailants or LRM's were constantly having to turn.

I agree, 'very broken' is inflammatory.  Forums are usually full of hyperbole to get attention.

As far as the "many variables" go, again, this tends to be in the Advent's favor.  As fleets gain ships, Advent gains very solid counters to the other ship types that can combat Illuminators.  Chiefly, HC's are countered by Repulse and Strikecraft are countered by Flak and Halcyon TK Push.  Both Illuminator counters can themselves be countered so effectively to render them almost useless.

In 1.05 the Subverter was effective at fighting Illuminator fleets.  TEC was screwed.  In 1.10, that responsibility moved to Strikecraft, but they themselves were declared OP and have since been nerfed.  The current Illuminator actually does 10% less damage than it did in 1.05, but it feels stronger because the counters have all been nerfed.

Exactly before they wasnt a problem since the counetr were powerfull enought to trash them. Now the counter ain't here no more and the supremacy of the lum is revealed.

So does this mean....

That one requires a ~%53 larger force of assailants to beat an illuminator fleet? That's what the math suggests.

Seems like its pretty OP to me, but I think to truly prove it as unbalanced you'll have to run tests comparing other ship types to show the margin of difference between illuminators and their counterparts (since illums are supposed to be stronger than the others) is much greater than that margin for any other ship type. Probably a safe bet to run such a test on HC since all races can research them at tier 5, and their costs aren't to dissimilar.

Eadtaes, your math is good, but if you're going to calculate investments you need to include the research cost and cost for labs to accurately represent the investments made by either side. I'd like to see your numbers with that cost added in.

The reason I asked about the Javelis, is I was curious to see how much more Econ a TEC player would have to have to pump out the needed Javelis to null X ammount of Illums.

Its well known, that Javelis will get destroyed easy by lllums, but my question was to see how badly, you repeated all the same test replacing Assailants with Javelis. Sure as a TEC player you suppose to be able to outproduce your enemy but I have found that rather hard(with my push into playing with the better players) with out a large feed. And that not to say the Advent are not having a massive feed also. I would like to know IF I decided to fight rock with rock for whatever reason, what my odds are just like we now know the basic odds with the Assailants vs Illums fight.

That cost is very small compared tot eh cost of building the ships. As well as that cost will only matter durring the first battle and will matter lest and lest as the game goes on. So for that reason I skip including the cost of labs and reseach since it's a marginal factor. Not to mention that Advent gets to buy those labs for free almost fromt he savings they get by colonising worlds with their Progenitor. Witvh gives them the only real early game econ advanatge.

Here is a quote of myself from the first part fo this thread. IT details the early game econ.

So for a quick look Labs cost 1450 credits a teir 3 reseach cost 2175.

So if advent colonised 1 roid and 1 volcanic/ice world and they upgrade them to lvl 2 with lvl 1 colonise they get saving of 315 + 315 + 410 = 1040 alost a free lab and if they colonise a 4th world with lvl2 colonisation they save 1040 + 630 + 820 = 2490. So aproximately 1¾ of labs are free and they can get that extra 4th planet for extra income more easyly then TEC or Vasary witch only helps them in the early game econ futher.

TEC used to have an econ advantage early game but that was taken away when they made terran worlds give the same credit income to all. Before TEC got 16 Vasari 14 and Advetn 12 if I remember right and not it's 14 for everyone. So nerf TEC buff Advent is waht it did. It also nerfed Vasari even if they were unchanged since it make advent more easily capable of competign againts Vasari. So in truth NERF TEC AND VASARI and BUFF ADVENT.

make assilants 30% cheaper, problem sovled.

Aha!  Although I was a bit bummed about the Illuminator nerf in 1.10, I really couldn't argue against it...it needed to be done.  I didn't play another game until 1.16 and wondered why Illuminators still felt really powerful...as if nothing really changed.  This makes alot of sense.

-Gil102

Will not. Then assailants would be balanced towards lums but now TEC Javs would be unable to compete againt booth Lums and Assailants. Lum pricing need to go up to main train balance or if you cut assaialnts price by 30% you need to so for Javs as well. Not to mention that a price reduction on LRFs will do nothign to help solve the LRF spaming issue we have and the fact that are better for everything over LFs witch si also somehtign we are trying to change.

It is kind of a tricky problem because if you make Assailants and Javelis much tougher or cheaper, they could become OP in some area where they are not fighting Illuminators.  Also, nobody wants the ships to be carbon copies of each other.

The problem is not necessarily about equality between a class of ships.  It is about having viable counters at all stages of the game.  Unfortunately, because Advent can effectively defend themselves from the counters, we get all this grief and pain about trying to make the ships compare to each other more.  The current balance of the game makes Long Range Frigates the most effective workhorse, and therefore they need to be able to fight each other on an even footing or one side feels extremely disadvantaged.

Indeed. Witch is why 1.01 entrenhcment remains the best this game has ever been even if lums were much mroe powerfull then then now. If they woudl returnt carriers to what they were in 1.01 this discusion would stop and be pointelss. However sicne IC is stuburn about not going back and prefer to continue their current path this diccusion is needed since I am already feedup with 1.03 that is a bt better then 1.02 but for from sufficient.

1.01 95% satifaction from the game.

1.02 Satisfaction droped below 50%.

1.03 Satisfaction raised above 50% for a bit then quickly droped back below 50%.

Buttom line as far as I am persornaly concerned

1.02 and 1.03 FAIL
1.01 SUCCES

I'm waitting and growing eager for 1.04