Is Wail of the Sacrificed overpowered?

Wow... you're just now noticing this?

Guess the MP crowd likes their little toys, as well...

But seriously, does anyone else get a thrill out of the SFX for that? The faded shrieking, the whispering...

Sometimes I turn on the Dev, go to a Huge map, plant an Enduring Devotion Transcencia on it, Infinite Population to ON, build a shitload of Communion Temples, and enjoy.

It's highly situational. You actually need to have a high-population planet that has those 160 population in order to use it with full effect, and if you used it it takes ages for your planet to recuperate. On smaller planets like asteroids or moons it is a support ability at best.

It works best to soften up enemy fleets going for your backwards worlds or to prepare an attack, it is not a fully realized superweapon, so I don't see a problem with leaving it where it is and keeping it as-is.

It has the potential to be its fairly easily countered by the TEC to be honest. The people that have the most problems against this are the Advent and the Vasari maybe on release. I can see the Vasari using Kostura on their terran worlds(which are almost if ever adjacent to another high population world, as moon and asteroid damage is almost negligible). Offensively this ability is almost impossible to use as it requires a huge set up time to be used optimally. And usually if your fleet gets wiped its because you did not scout properly. Against the advent this becomes very tricky as their is no direct counter and there is no way to make this ability 'balanced' if you nerf this ability at all it will be useless. This ability also does technically have a monetary cost that comes with losing the world.

I called that this ability had the potential to be overpowered. I don't think it is however, it requires a huge set up time. And if someone let you get to max population on a terran or desert world that is their fault.

Missile barrage doesn't require you losing your planet to use, which a far longer effective cooldown time and cost than any other ability. You'll definitely need to be careful around Advent Rebel players late game, but just because it can wipe out your whole fleet is certain situations doesn't mean its OP if those situations are rare enough.

It's fine.

It is potentially devestating, but the cost is high and the counters are there.

Sacrificing a 300+ population will cost the advent player something like 9-10k credits over the next 40 minutes(and btw 40 minutes is how long it took to charge that full strength blast).

Moreover there are counters, a few things to keep in mind:

1) First off Wail doesn't damage units in the gravity well of the planet sacrificing population-only the wells adjacent to it.  So unless the enemy has 2 adjacent high pop worlds, if you can manage to get units to the high pop world(perhaps by approaching from a direction the advent player doesn't have vision if the planet is on a border),you've already avoided the biggest danger(as he will only be able to detonate the advacent smaller population worlds.

2).  If you don't have a method of achieving #1, don't commit your entire fleet to the attack- heck if the enemy doesn't have a fleet present on the high pop world, sending some siege frigates with a light escort to start killing the populace.  You can also try to "force the advent player's hand" by sending a smaller fleet just sfficient to force the player to blow Wail- it takes a very long time to regenerate population...once he wails once any reserve fleet can attack without worrying about another wail from that planet.  

3).  If you are TEC novalith cannons hard counter Wail

4).  If you are vasari you can use a kostura cannon to jump directly to the high population planet without moving through any of the adjacent gravity wells wail threatens

5).  Wail can additionally be delayed by sending something capable of disabling structures to the high pop world's gravity well- Subverters for the Vasari, Akkans for the TEC, and Radiance for the advent can all fill this role.  Bring some bombers along as well and you may be able to kill the tempel of communion before wail ever goes off.  Just delaying Wail can work wonders though- if there's a key battle going on in the adjacent well(the most likely time for  a wail), every second you buy gives your fleet in the adjacent well more time to build up shield mitigation

6).  Make sure to scout the Advent rebel's planets.  If you know the damage potential of Wail, it's not hard to determine which of your frigates are in danger of getting instantly blown up.  ANything not in that danger zone may be used to try to force the advent player's hand as discussed in #2

7). Use titans: they are an easy way to give even a small fleet the ability to force the advent player's hand.  Also they easily survive even the largest wail.

Don't get me wrong, It's certainly strong, but fairly situational.  In all honesty once people get used to it I suspect the main use of Wail will be that it forces the opposition to play in a certain way(witholding the full force of their fleet) rather then because the actual damage will wipe out fleets often.  

actually.... wouldnt this just be adding another wail target directly to your kosutra? I'm pretty sure that is the worst possible move you can make.... unless it doesnt carry over the temporary phase lane?

That's a great question. I think that the game treats phase gates as exceptioshe as it doesn't shorten your trade routes when you build two phase nodes.Though if the game treated the Kostura planet asadjacent Wail would make a pretty cool counter. Hard to pull off the counter as you would have 90s and you wouldn't know it was coming. 

Doesn't Kostura also disable all non-SB orbital structures for 3 minutes(which prevents the temple of communion from activating Wail)?  The phase node only lasts 1.5 minutes.

Which make it an even stronger counter beign that it can be uses to simply shut down a world's ability to wail for 3 minutes regardless of whether a fleet is sent or not)so it can also be used to disable Wail while you attack an adjacent well.

yep, kostura will work, unless every world the advent player has is connected to, what. 4 worlds are all terran desert, or lice , in which case you could only kostura and disable 3 others...

so w/e.

but ya, novas and kosturas will preemptively counter... just gotta be careful.

(god that typo made me giggle like a preschooler... dammit)

If you need to move your fleet to that planet, know that your world has been scouted and still need to cross it you can also jump in your Akkan first, activate Armistice and then go through your world with your fleet immune to... everything.

Whip stop exagerating.

It wasnt WotS that poped you. My titan farted. Shit happens...sometimes

Panic on chat was epic. One of best ROFL moments in Rebellion beta.

Please tell me there's a recording.

I couldn't figure out WTF happened and my game wasn't set to auto-record.  (I've  never actually seen anyone  use Wail before, so I wanted to check out the replay.)  I was looking at another well, came back, and then my fleet was gone.  I figured it had to have been Wail.  Guess I need to spend more time playing around with the Advent Rebels so that I understand how that titan works.  If that titan was really able to take down my entire fleet like that, then that's probably the best titan in the game so far.

So, you're Don_John.  How were you able to reset your Games Played/Wins record so that you could smurf?  Did you really purchase multiple accounts or is Stardock's system just broken?

Well, its really good at taking down a mass of very weak units with Chastic Burst. Getting some defense upgrades in Armor really cuts it's damage down however. Chastic also pretty much can 1 shot corvettes at higher levels.

Rember this: Im the  ultimate smurfing mashine. Watch your back or u will be farted

Lets amuse the audience:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/75n8lw

I hope  u will have as much fun watching it as me and Mecha playing

Hey this was the game I tried to join yesterday!

Also you were not clever enough to stop me from knowing you were a smurf Quar;)

^ proof I know very little about Vasari or Japanese (guessing?)

well, you could station a Domina next to the temple... does Perseverance affect structures? and Would a SB with aux government mean that you sacrifice the populace but keep the planet? have to go around and test these things some day

So I just watched the replay, dat wail.

Aux govt. protects the planet from being destroyed by wail.

Advent rebel+ Vasari rebel=OP

Vasari builds Orculous with phase node on world in the back. Advent builds Transcendencia with enduring devotion. They find were the enemy fleet is stationed. Vasari fire Kostura cannon/ Send atorak marauder to create a second phase node. Advent use Wail to that planet sacrificing the population of a planet thats safe anyways dealing TONZ OF DAMAGE. Then they both send their fleets to that planet and wreck havoc uppon whatever is left of their enemies. Sounds like it needs a huge setup but its not really hard to pull it off.

10/10 would watch again.

Yes, that'd be a gamewinner. Two hours into the game.

BTW why didnt anyone  ask: is red button op?

and then the loyalist advent titan can be given access to a planet, repo'd, abandoned, then the vasari player takes it and scraps the planet and both leave. have fun with your dead world