my opinion of this beta

While I haven't played the most recent version, the pirates felt way easier for me. You can use them as capitalship/titan XP fodder quite easily.

And what exactly are you calling a gimmick? The Advent have a lot of abilities dealing with psychic powers and mind control, its hard to know what you're taking about.

Well I find it cheap that the Tec can ally itself with the Pirates, so i can't place bounties on them anymore, and the AI likes to issue missions to pirates constantly, so that my planets get harassed all the time. by the way, is it just me or does the AI focus a lot more on culture than in pre-Diplomacy Sins? They tend to build a lot of culture structures.

Well I don't see the point of mind controlling enemy ships, such as in the late game in my situation, i have to fend off enemy Titans accompanied by enemy Cap ships, so I don't see the point/get the oppertunity to go and find enemy frigates to control, since i need the Titan in battle, And even if I get some enemy frigates? What do I do with them?

Edit: how does the enemy AI level their Titan so quickly? I destroyed one a few moments ago and after a few minutes of recieving the message that they've built a new one, I see it being level 3~5 already.

The AI doesn't assign missions to pirates as far as I know. However in a 1on1 you're the only pirate target left so the raids will visit you every 12 or so minutes.

The current AI is very broken, only in 1 out of 10 games it builds frigates lategame. The ability is very useful in a game versus actual human opponents as it increases your numbers while you decrease theirs.

What do you do with the frigates? You use them as reinforcements, obviously. Expecially stuff like Hoshikos are nice to have around, but Kodiaks or LRMs are, too (researches your enemy invested in them are kept when you take them over as far as I know).

The Titan is built at the same level it has been destroyed. So if you killed a level 3 Titan it comes back level 3. Also higher level AIs can buy Titan levels like you can buy capship levels it seems. (They can also buy more levels on their capships, but that's old stuff).

Titans don't lose levels when they are destroyed. Its been complained about, but really losing a titan isn't a big deal if you're defenses aren't breached already and you have the resources to rebuild it.

Capturing ships can be quite useful, but you're right currently titans, capitalships and corvettes are the key units. Hopefully that will be balanced out more as both advent titans do best with fleet support.

Really the pirates aren't very important. The AI thing is an issue but as a human player you probably shouldn't be issuing any bounties, they aren't a good use of money.

Two words: Repair Platforms.

Enjoy the free pirate kills.

I'm really considering quitting this game, as of now, I contantly get harassed by pirate fleets over 40 ships per fleet, I get enemy titan with 6 capital ships attacking my planet, and I have 2 or 3 repair platforms. I can kill hard enemies easily on Diplomacy here, but the way Rebellion Beta throws enemies at me is ridiculous. I'm losing planets because i cant defend from pirates and enemy fleets which seems to level way faster than i do.

Let's see. You spam Illuminator vessels, other than Repair bays you only seem to build hangar bays, from the looks of it that lone starbase on that space junk isn't upgraded at all and your empire is overextended all over the place, no holding chokepoints to build up fleet, no choosing planets that are close together and can easily be defended with one smaller fleet.

No wonder you lose. I wipe the floor with hard AIs.

uhm that starbase is actually upgraded. I don't know why it doesn't show on the map. All planets I had, did have fully upgraded starbases, hangar bays, 2 or 3 repair bays. Still Im getting pirates even i have 0 bounty on me and the enemy had more, and I even get attacked 3 times within 12 minutes by different pirate fleets.

You're right about the empire though, I shouldn't have taken the desert and volcanic on the right, and I should've taken the Desert left of the magnetic cloud.

Why have you not built beam turrets with synergy then? Hangars aren't designed to be getting hit in the face, this should be common sense.

I have yet to see a pirate force that can defeat a web of beam turrets, 3 repair platforms, 2 hangars and a Trancencia with Disorientate and Meteor Strike.

I've yet to see one go throw 3 turrets, 2 repair platforms, 1 hangar bay and a trade port... it just takes a while.

Yes well, I find it more amusing to watch 40 man pirate fleets get blown up in less than a minute, but that's me.

I shall have another run later this, week armed with your advice, hopefully I'll do better, thanks All!

Small followup question: Is the culture from Advent Loyalist really more powerful than other factions? Mapbe I've played the faction the wrong way, but the AI seems just to build a lot of culture centers to stall my culture. Tec Rebels get pirate allegiance, and a very powerful Titan, Tec Loyalist a very good defensive Titan and the ability to dig in well. All that Advent Loyalist get is culture and mind control?

That seems a little unbalanced to me since culture can be stalled and I don't really know how to put the mind control thing to good use.

Advent Loyalist culture spreads faster and they get a crapton more buffs when they're fighting in said culture.

I think the total buffs are something like +10% Shield Mitigation(More?), +20% Phase Missile Block, +25% Damage.

Throw in a deliverence engine shot on the planet you're fighting at and you get another +25% Damage.

That is a big empire. At that point of the game, seeing other players be pretty much active, i would say, you have too many planets, its actually to your detriment, because no way you can defend that (unless you are Vasari with phase stabilisers). 

There seems to be no pattern to what planets did you choose to colonise, it seems pretty random, with many loose ends. No wonder you find it difficult. 

Oh good I'm not the only one who builds my defenses that way. Three repair platforms seems to be a magic number.

Is it a bad thing to add a couple antimatter regeneration bays later in the game? (Advent rebel here, they also give me shields)

A few odd things happened in that game:

My advent loyalist titan recieved hull damage while still having plenty of shieldpoints left. There were no Corvettes involved in that battle. What's are other ships/abilities which can bypass shields?

Also when selecting the titan to attack an enemy structure/vessel, instead of a red line it displays the green arrow.

Either the structure became invincible, or your Titan planned to use one of its abilities on it. From your other posts I take it you're playing Advent Loyalist, so you're using the Coronata, it was probably going to blast that structure into atomic dust with Unity Mass.

I see, im still not really convinced about culture, though, I have two planets having 3 and 2 culture structures, while the enemy who has 2 planets both connected to my planets with only 2 on the one and 1 structure on the other, and yet his culture isnt dropping.

If it's the Advent, remember that their culture is stronger than yours but also that they are 40% more resistant to your culture.

Even as Tec or Vasari you can push back the culture from two or three culture centers with just one of your own. Well you cannot push it back, but you are able to keep your allegiance from dropping.

Also, the more phase lines you have going away from your planet the less "power" your culture has when trying to push onto another planet, as the culture distributes equally to all outgoing lanes. This means in your case with the 3 culture centers each enemy planet only recieves the "power" of 1.5 culture centers.

I hope I explained that right, that's how I picked it up in another thread.

i was playing a game before the last patch and i notice ALOT of pirates flying around alot more then i normally see. i was playing on w/e sector (cant spell it lol) i was playing as the TEC loyalist and i saw my ally getting hit with a mass about of pirates went right through its upgraded sb. i think it was the ai post missions to the pirates but im not sure

The AI can post pirate missions; players can always disable pirates in the Game Options if they find them too difficult.

Yeah thats right, if the culture spread is being cut in half by only 2 lanes out.  If there are more lanes out, then its less.

ElRobino, look at your planet info cards to see how much culture you are attacking with.  It has to be more than he is defending with (ie: the total culture before it leaves that planet).

Also see this other thread.

Thanks guys, that culture information is certainly helpful. So if i understand correctly its best to build a few communion centers at planets which has fewest phase lanes.

Edit: I have a planet with 78.0 culture, then I captured another one next to it and the culture remains at 2.5 at the new planet? shouldn't 78 be divided by 3?