Mobile advent beam platforms

Go right ahead. We're not stopping you.

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Turrets already do quite large amounts of damage. Even as few as 3 or 4 (mobile) would probably be enough to prevent enemy capital ships from ever being able to bomb without being seriously hurt, and would probably also be enough to destroy a SB before it finishes building. This sort of thing would give the Advent an extremely powerful defensive ability IMO. The enemy would have to bomb or Ogrov the turrets ASAP or the turrets would be on their fleet like an Orkulus.

Advent are certainly in need of a buff. Is this it? I don't think so, but it would certainly be interesting to see how strategies would evolve if Advent had this sort of defensive ability.

A "warp to target " turret would be cool--like the Vasari cruiser.  Get to close and , "whoosh!" the turret flies over. 

Yes early game rushes would be difficult, but then early game rushes only serve to keep the community small by having new players get rolled by more experienced, efficient players.

Building turrets takes time and most of the time my constructors get destroyed quite early in the game from either a sova or skirantra.  Both TEC and vasari players have the luxury to go on the early attack.  You can build the starbase outside of the range of these turrets so that is not an issue really.  A properly countered early attack should penalize the attacker.

The advent need a strong defensive measure against a homeworld starbase 2 capital attack.  As it stands vasari can provide a relatively cheap(when compared to fleet) offensive weapon at any part of your empire by building a starbase "distraction".

Advent early game has an extraordinary difficulty gaining the killing power against vasari/TEC capitals and starbases.  Advent suffer from a severe weakness to early game bombing because of this weakness.

Building a couple turrets to counter would make this easy vasari trick have a cheap opposition.  The reason the advent need the cheapest and most effective defense would be because they have the worst economy.

For the vasari its all about neutrals, fight for those until you can't anymore.  Advent have a difficult time controlling neutrals quickly.  Especially while on the front lines where you have to spam everything.

Strategically, you don't attack an early game TEC homeworld with 2+ repair structures with an even fleet because those 2 are strong enough to turn the tide of the battle against you majorly(to the point that the TEC can just turtle up a quick economy and still have a viable defense against someone else who is spamming ships constantly).  Vasari have excellent cheap defenses as well, their turrets really tear into enemy ships and they can support a lot of defense with no tactical upgrades.  They also have a capital ship that is a tank that has an AOE heal making defense a snap(which amazingly, is one of the most built vasari capital ships).  Advent have almost no staying power with their capitals in enemy grav wells and therefore are weak on the attack.  This means that the enemy can spam fewer ships to effectively push your capital ship out of the grav well. So going head to head with an enemy who is bombing your HW while you bomb his means he has a distinct advantage.  That is why you must play defensively as advent and spam 24/7. 
An alternate to this strategy would be to provide effective defense structures to provide extra danger in the advent grav well that WILL have the ability to support the advent fleet enough to take out capital ships/starbases.

As this is a defensive measure the advent would remain balanced because their fleet would still have a weakness on the attack having no real early game healing ability.

So that is my final response, that the other races already DO have powerful deterrents for assault on their homeworlds.

I'm talking about multiplayer here, we don't run many mods for many reasons.  The only mod on multiplayer I ever see is distant stars and that is a rarity.  Having small "fix" mods isn't going to work for online play.

In single player this would only serve to buff the advent up, which from playing a scenario sol vs. orion 2.0 I found that it is almost impossible to set up a proper defense when facing 9 hard, allied computer opponents as advent.  As vasari, this defense is a snap and extremely easy to do and I ended up winning quite easily.  This was a great big numbers test to determine the resource efficiency of both races given an excellent starting location.  Surprise surprise, the vasari won by a long shot.  I never even had to micromanage anything, while as advent the only way in that scenario I could defeat the enemy was to send my fleet in and take some attrition losses.  Over time this adds up to become the deciding factor and eventual loss of the advent fleet.

That would be interesting...these turrets could leash within an area so they don't have the whole grav well.  I'm thinking 3  turrets to have the capability to cover the entire grav well (as opposed to 4-6 as it is now, excluding asteroids of course).

This would give advent something unique about their turrets that would give their enemies pause on the assault. 

Many people know how broken the advent are on multiplayer.  I'm sure the devs do as well.  I write these topics about this because I know their strengths and weaknesses quite well.  I also write these topics to remind developers that they are not really finished balancing the game.

If you are content to say "advent are way underpowered but thats okay i don't play them", then you should also regard any victory against an advent player as hollow and without merit.  I think this hurts the game substantially in the multiplayer scene, and effective "unique" balancing would serve as to increase the diversity of game play while also addressing some abnormally severe weaknesses.  Pretty much as it stands, any early game capital ship can enjoy romping around the advent homeworld gravity well with little stopping it. 

To counter close quarters advent as TEC, you just spam sova. First sova out goes for embargo, the others get fighter upgrades of you arent' facing a halcyon with TK or missile turrets.  The third sova is the nail in the coffin.  This is against a full blown early game advent tier 0 spam.  Try to spam lums against that...Try to get the killing power you need and play it safe with defense vessels, try to do anything to that.  you won't be able to build many turrets as the constructors will be dead very quickly, and the sova will ensure that they will stay dead.  against skirantra it is much the same. 

Another way to improve advent defense is to increase the damage that disciples/scouts do.  But I am loathe to do so because Advent need more early game options.  Also developers have only nerfed that damage, so its not going to happen. So building some turrets that have greater effectiveness in planetary defense means that the advent can build a defensive turret that is well worth the investment.  I would take a 50%-100% increase in costs with this improved turret for the capability it provides. 

Remember turrets aren't used on the attack, they are used to protect your sanctified planets from attack.  They would still only serve as a strong defense to supplement your existing fleet.  By themselves they would still lose to a vasari starbase attack, although the vasari player would have to invest a bit more into the starbase to do so.  this evens the playing field a bit more.

That's why you should make sure you're scouting: if you see an enemy fleet or enemy caps/Migrator in the next gravity well over it's time to build turrets. (Or if you're on a planet that you're sure is going to be attacked pretty soon anyway,  build turrets anyway). If your turrets can move and you have 3 or 4 of them they should be able to wipe out the SB before it can do anything.

One current temporary defense is to have 2 Halcyons with ADA = 8 bomber squads (which players seem to often have anyway). If the enemy doesn't have 2 carriers -> their 6 SC slots filled up with fighters your bombers will do quite a lot of damage against a cap or a SB in progress of building.

Of course, if they're decent they'll probably have fighters to kill constructors, and would have fighters anyway if they scout ahead of time and see bombers...

Turrets already provide a decent defense against bombing on asteroids, but I get what you're saying. Still, turrets are quite durable (ESPECIALLY with Advent shield -> shield mitigation bonuses) and do a listed 40 DPS. With shield mitigation and the advantages of focus-fire, 3 mobile Advent turrets would probably be significantly stronger than an unupgraded Orkulus, and would cost far less (though could only be build in owned-planet gravity wells). For this to work I think there would have to be significant limitations on the turrets' mobility: for instance, perhaps it shouldn't have thrusters, but maybe could have an ability ("Telekinetic Warp" or something) with a CD of 40 or so allowing the turret to warp to any part of the gravity well, just like how a Subverter jumps instantly just before using Distortion Field.

This would make it ineffective for moving while destroying entire fleets like the Orkulus is good at, but would make a good defense against an Orkulus building or against capital ship(s) attempting to bomb your planet.

Once you have a decent amount of (cheap and fast) Disciples, they should be able to scare enemy capitals out of the gravity well pretty quickly... if the TEC enemy builds mainly only Sovas they'll be at a severe firepower disadvantage.

I was thinking recently that it would help if the Illum was reduced to a 2-military-lab requirement instead of 3... but the devs aren't likely to make such a change at this point in the development cycle.

Makes sense.

I like the idea just cause I think, for turrets, that they're on the heftier side of cost. The Advent could use the defensive measure to balance out their otherwise weak core fleet units.

All opinion.

The thing is that an orkulus can be built out of range of these turrets and therefore it would have time to upgrade.  If they are allowed to move throughout the entire grav well then the vasari would have a hard time sneaking a starbase construction in an advent grav well knowing that a few turrets could spell the doom of their starbase.  The vasari would have to support their fleet more.  It doesn't negate a starbase sneak, it just makes it easier to counter, which is fair imo.  That being said, when the orkulus is upgraded to the point where they want to attack the beam defense platforms will be able to concentrate more fire because they can move.  The balance here is that vs a fully upgraded orkulus this would give the advent defenses much more of a focus fire punch. 

A cooldown based approach would be a cool way to do this

Another idea would be give them a targetable ability that lets them warp to a friendly ship they target--it could act as a spotter to get the turret there--and back again later.

Some think that turrets are too powerful already. They cost as much as a (light) frigate but do 4x-6x the damage and Advent at least can have turrets with 5x+ the durability of a LF. With only a few turrets, a vastly superior offensive fleet can be held off by a relatively small defending fleet.

Such is the sentiment of Star Player, at least. We were on Point Blank and despite a huge fleet advantage (mainly Disciples) he was too cautious to engage my fleet of 2 caps, 12? illuminators, a couple flak, and 6 turrets defending.

I don't agree with him because if turrets were nerfed significantly they would probably never be used, but I thought I'd just throw the opinion out there.

I very rarely see turrets used in other MP games, and those who do build them often are usually complete noobs.

Advent turrets are very powerful once you get that upgrade that increases their damage and gives them shields next to each other. The only reason they aren't a bigger deal is because bombers can deal with them safely. If they could move at anything resembling combat speed I'm sure we'd see more Advent gravity wells filling their tactical slots with turrets.

It depends if the advent are under attack.  A gravity well full of turrets would be inexpensive if they still cost the same. 

An abuse of an upgrade without an increased cost would be negligent, which is why I was thinking a cost increase would need to occur.        

Try this.

enemy vasari starts building starbase on your hw.

You are smart enough to NOTICE this.

you havent built any turrets anywhere.

Because you have the recently buffed communal labor, you can build 3-4 turrets at a time, right around his starbase, at record speed.

You are also pumping out ships out of your frig factory.

If he has a carrier defending it, you prolly also have your own capital ship there as well.

Lets see how that works out.

Not if he's smart enough to warp in the Migrator slightly outside of the gravity well (out of range of turrets).

If turrets don't move, your only option (against a decent Vasari opponent) is to depend on your fleet.

Don't need to remind them... pretty that they are busy to balance Rebellion as we speak ( write )... Titan, new capitalship and new corvette class, it is a lot of new thing... pretty sure that we will have plenty of balance patch after Rebellion public release...

Vasari lose, as they should in this situation(assuming turret movement upgrade).  If the starbase is built outside of the turret range then the vasari might win as they can upgrade it safely until its very strong to go on the attack(assuming turret upgrade).  For fun they can warp in ruiners or overseers to make the SB killing task all but impossible. to whittle your fleet to nothing.  Once the SB has been upgraded enough it will become the dominant force in the gravity well and the advent would have lost.

Now without the turret movement upgrade, the vasari have a more substantial advantage.  What ships are you spamming? tier 0 won't be effective especially if he upgrades his weapons first.  If you spam lums you will be doing better but the fighters will be taking them out while the carrier attacks and the starbase will earn its cost by killing a comparable number of illuminators.  So it becomes more of a forced attrition fight where the advent actually are put at a disadvantage rushing to spend so much cash on a grav well.

the brazen act deserves an easy cheap counter.  Build a starbase for vasari isn't nearly the risk as it should be.

If it doesn't have a cheap counter, then the brazen act is actually a tactically significant move that will allow you to defeat your opponent.

If you reduced constructor cost of the other two races you would see THEM rushing starbases as well...lol.  If those star bases could move, even a little bit, imagine how much more even the playing field would be.  You would also have a much more interesting and dynamic fight for control of a gravity well then what currently exists.

Given the cost of a Vasari SB, I don't think it deserves to have "an easy cheap counter". The cost for a SB is quite significant. It shouldn't be *very* difficult to counter, but it should take some effort and you should know what you're doing. Currently it seems too difficult, at least for the defending Advent. It should be possible for a good Advent player to defend against a good Vasari player, at least in the beginning of the game - this is the crux of the problem.

I should have said "cheaper" counter.  As it stands any counter to the vasari starbase in the early game advent is going to cost more then the starbase itself, which is where the difficulty lies.

Perhaps rather than countering the starbase by buffing the defenders why not address the issue at hand which is that Vasari can field a starbase much more cheaply and efficiently in the early game since it deploys from the migrator and only needs 2 Mil Labs. Why not simply move the starbase construction up the research tree to at least be equal to the other races? Right now Orky is 2 Mil Labs but Tran & Argo are 3 Mil Labs. I see no justification besides blatant fan-boy-ism to allow Vas SB construction so early especially since they already get Kanrak at 1 Mil Lab.

The Vasari was the weakest race when that was implemented, the Starbase was one of the few early game advantages they could rely on. Its unbalancing now but at the time it certainly wasn't "fanboyism".

Further, I advise that the Devs add custom map sharing to Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.

Well I actually address this issue in my statements above.  I discuss substantially increasing the vasari colonizer cost, so that it is more on par(still cheaper, but not by much) with the other races.  In this way the initial cost of building a vasari starbase goes up, their endgame fleet mitigation tactic (by bringing in a couple of these spaced around the grav well that at any time could make a starbase and therefore turn the tide of the battle) would also be nerfed.  The vasari fleet already is very potent without this "target hopping" advantage they can bring to the fight, so it is truly necessary from a balancing perspective.  Either that, or make it more viable for other races to provide the same tactic to the fight.  This would sure increase the dynamics of a fight!

With this increase in cost it would mean the vasari would be far more wary of building early starbase rushes, and they would be more penalized for WHERE and WHEN they place them.  Later on they would still be a viable tactic as their economy would be better.

I see your point but I don't think the cost side is prohibitive enough in my opinion, thats why I advocate moving it up in the research tree because you not only have the added cost of the extra Mil lab to make it happen but the logistical cost as well. In the early game, Log slots aren't always as easy to get as just straight money which is why I think my approach would be more balancing. This is purely my opinion however.

If the advent are having trouble dealing with Vasari Starbases around their homeworld.

Why not just allow the Advent to use their constructors to quicken the building of their own Starbases?  Conversely, they need to sacrifice the constructor but the Starbase builds faster because of it.  That way fighters don't just wreck the constructor while it's helping?

The problem I foresee with any fix, is that it may lead to a consequence unforeseen that make the Advent too powerful.  Or it becomes a one-trick solution to one specific strategy, and is useless when that specific strategy isn't used against them.

Perhaps the Advent should have a CD activated ability on their Temples of Communion that slow down the construction process of all enemy ships in the gravity well.  That way, fighters / bombers rebuild even slower, starbases build slower, etc....

The turrets could be made to have a different helpful ability.  Say, allowing the turret to charge an allies shield by firing on the ally; thus making the Advent fleet more resilient to attack; and giving the opponent a real reason to assault a stationary turret.

The Advent starbase, once built, is very often just a nearly harmless target for Vasari bombers. It can't move: once the Orkulus is built the Advent SB will probably do exactly 0 damage to anything.

(We're talking about competitive multiplayer games, not games against the AI.)

Even if the Advent can speed up the construction of their starbases, their starbases will still be somewhat useless.

Another thing to keep in mind: if an Advent is trying to defend against an Orkulus for whatever insane reason with a Transcencia, once the Transcencia is built it'll stay in place and will be an expensive brick, which is a waste of funds. If the defending player counters with a fleet and is able to counter with a fleet the player will then be able to move on and attack other enemy planets with that fleet. Whereas the player who spent all his/her funds on the starbase wouldn't have enough funds for a decent fleet and would probably be boxed in on their homeworld.

The Advent base needs to be able to microphase!

A constructor is easily taken out by an enemy carrier, so you will find that this support won't do much to help the situation.