That early in the game, the only TEC economic advantages for a frontliner are the akkan colonize ability and terran pop techs, which unlike Advent's have no desert pop tech prereq...frontliner is not getting trade that early, and Advent actually have advantage with culture...the "superior economy" you speak of is a mid and late game phenomenon...

But whatever, you probably didn't even read anything I wrote, just saw I had a long reply and instantly decided you'd just copypaste some troll stuff....can't wait for RiddleKing to tell me how much he hates me etc. etc....

 TEC, with development mandate and lots of eco upgrades, has an advantage in this.

I feel compelled to ask whether the corvettes were microed?  Microing corvettes is even more important against Illuminators then against other LRM frigates- they only have 1 "dead zone" where they cannot fire(behind them).  As a result the illuminators gain more from you not microing the corvetttes then other LRM frigates as without micro not only will the corvettes almost always be getting fired uppon, but if the corvettes spread out they actually increase their opponent's firepower by allowing individual illuminators to be firing 2-3 beams at a time.

 This is the crux of the problem in your thinking.  Too often in one game or another I've seen things unnecessarily nerfed for conceptual "consistency" reasons when they weren't causing balance problems.

 Yes, Illuminators are harder to counter then other LRMs- but they don't NEED to be hard-countered as hard due to their many other drawbacks(shorter range, inferior focusfire potential, they come out later in the game, and they lack the low cooldown firepower active abilities of the other two LRM frigates).

 Yes build speed is important, but keep in mind that illuminators come out at a later tier then any other early game frigate(T3).  This is huge for pacing and does a great deal to counterbalance their build speed.

heck-often by the time an advent player has illuminators in any really sizeable number the game is already entering the mid-game wherein corvettes begin waning in usefulness in general.

 I'll grant you the defense value point- but comparing cost:supply efficiency cross race is a dangerous pitfall.  TEC economy is substantially better then the advent(this is the reason all advent early frigates are more cost effective then other factions).

Honestly all things considered I suspect the TEC economy is more then capable of fielding an equal supply of gardas with the same economical burden the advent suffers fielding illuminators

 238 fleet supply beat 160 fleet supply? Really?

I get that you are saying build time and resource cost are important- they are, but not to the complete exclusion of fleet supply.   Fleet supply is the really only universal method of judging fleet size as different races have vasty different economies, ship unlock progressions, and build speeds.  The only common feature is fleet supply cap per incoem tac rate.

In particular it isn't really a fair comparison to compare the same resource cost of ships- The TEC have a far superior economy to the advent- to counterbalance this advent get early ships with a better potency:resource cost ratio.  At the same resource cost early game all else being equal the advent SHOULD have a bit of an upper hand because realistically the TEC have a lot more money to dump into their fleet.

 This is exactly what I'm talking about: yes illuminators may be  individually countered less hard, but once everything is put together it's reasonable.  With comparable supply the TEC force won- it's not unreasonable tod eal with advent vettes+illuminators so don't mess with it.

Not to mention cobalts come out a lot earlier then illuminators meaning the fleets realistically may not even be so even(the TEC may have a lead)

 Frankly the LF+Corv. vs. LRF+Flak tests IMO were rather poorly designed- Favoring resource costs over fleet supply, and allowing comparable numbers of illuminators in spite of illuminators coming out at T3 frankly are design decisions that give advent an edge over TEC.

But frankly demolition teams is stronger then any of the advent early AoE options.  not to mention two of the options are on the same capitalship(the discord), so only one will be skilled past rank 1 early game.

Also Malice doesn't really hit it's stride until mid game.  honestly though I think bringing capitalships into this is kind of silly- capitalship balance is the same as ever.

 If there was a capitalships effect directly tied to the matchup, such as one that widened beam-firing arcs, allowing illuminators to allow more beams to be utilized against the highly mobile corvettes I may think differently- but as it is, both sides contribute effects with rather predefined effects on the battle independent of ship class

 Build speed is certainly important, but frankly I think you are vastly underestimating the effect the Illuminator's T3 military requirement has on the pacing of producing this ship.  An extra tier means earlier tier ships have a good deal extra time to bolster their numbers before illums are even available.

Yes they are defintiely the toughest LRF to counter, but think of it this way: No one built Illums back when there WERE NO HARD COUNTERS TO LRM  FRIGATES BESIDES FIGHTERS(no corvettes).  Honestly Illums can be dealt with even without reliance on corvettes.   Their lack of early game presence, poor range, and lack of focusfire frankly means they don't NEED to be countered as hard by their dedicated early game counter as other LRM frigates

 And guess who that hurts the most? The LRM that can cause the most casualties before dying at present- which is the Illum.  Other LRMs have trouble bringing their firepower to bear on corvettes- the damage % is mostly irrelevant.

Honestly as long as corvettes win at equal supply I think the counter requirement is fuffilled- how "hard" a counter is can vary from faction to faction. Honestly not every ship of the same class needs to be countered equally hard- provided they have drawbacks in toher areas- which the Illum does.

Honestly I think your argument is primarily built on a series of tests in a  void that don't take into account a wide variety of in game influences.  SHips should be nerfed if they are causing a widely observed in game disruption of balance- not just because a few tests say they aren't countered as hard as other ships of the same class.  Tests should be run on things that people already have reason to believe is OP, not to be the entire reason something is OP.

Can advent fleets heavy on illuminators no be dealt with?  if the answer is "no" then nerfing the illuminator would just make a faction unnecessarily less viable for the sake of consistency, which is a bad idea.  

Anyway gotta run now, will be editing my post a bit later.

LRM and Assailants have no dead zones because they use missiles which can be fired in the opposite direction of a standard firing arc and they'll simply fly around the spawning ship to their target.  Illums fair best in this matchup because like flak vs SC, they finally are able to make use of their superior total DPS.

Honestly Sel, I think this is a decent idea, but I believe making it so Corvettes aren't obsolete once titans are built could be a better solution.

I didn't copy-paste the troll post. It was meant to be an analogy of sorts. I still want to see one of these mythical unicorn games of dominating illuminator spam. I can't speak for RK but I don't hate you at all. This is one of the few interesting threads on these forums right now. I just think you're completely wrong to be thinking this is a balance issue that needs correcting. You're cherry picking like mad the results, scenarios, objections, etc. that suit you and just theorycrafting walls of text without any real evidence (dev.exe magical battles in a vacuum don't count as they are completely out of context and many of the results don't support your argument anyway). Corvettes are still going to be seeing changes next patch anyway (like their own damage type) so probably better to see how that changes things up.

I don't really think he's cherry-picking.  I think he may be getting too heated about the subject, but that's probably more due to Riddle than anything else.

Fact is: Illuminators are more effective than their piers at surviving their hard counter.  Sel believes this is OP, others don't.

Fact is: Illuminators are not the same as TEC or Vasari LRFs to begin with so talking about balance using them as exact equivalents is flawed from the start. If they cost the same, required the same amount of labs, did the same frontal DPS, had the same early impact the other LRMs do, etc. then sure, we could talk about how it is unfair that they don't die as quickly to corvettes. There are many factional differences. Illuminators are one. I don't see any other players agreeing that this has somehow created an unfair overall advantage for the Advent.

And aside from the fact that they can target three targets simultaneously, what differences are there?  Higher DPS?  As I have said before, due to missiles on the others, the multiple banks isn't actually that much of an advantage if at all.

What significant difference are you seeing that is making them incomparable?

Wat? I've outlined the differences already. You really aren't making any sense with this post of yours. The tracking effect of missiles does not work vs. properly microed corvettes - it still needs to turn and face them in order to get a shot off. Multiple banks on the illums doesn't require any lost time in turning - this is an advantage and mostly why they fare better. Illums are worse at focus firing frontal targets since their damage output is divided. The other LRFs focus fire much better, which makes them more effective in other situations (like taking out capital ships, LFs, etc.), offsetting the fact that they die faster to corvettes than illums. Illums still get countered by corvettes, just not as well. TEC also can get a nice AOE damage upgrade with explosive warheads for their LRMs, making them even better against frontal targets. It's not rocket science! 

Missiles still have to obey the standard Sins fire arcs, just like all other weapons.  Fire arcs in Sins though cover the entire facing's hemisphere, not 90 degrees.  Combined with a long range frigate's range this means missiles appear to fire extremely off-bore since they can fire at a target at max range that's up to 90 degrees off-center, but change nothing about an LRF's weapons except swapping the missile for a bullet-type projectile and you'll see similar results.  For proof, micro an Akkan so a target is 45 degrees to port, and both the front and port weapons will be firing on it, and none of those are missiles.

Sorry, my mistake.  I was misinterpreting a particle effect which behaved differently than expected which I presumed to be due to one thing when it was in fact me not understanding the nature of the effect.  Sorry for the above posts which rely upon the assumption.

@Bilun, who's thoughtful response I appreciate greatly....

Trying to quote each individual part of what you said is going to be difficult given the nature of the device I am responding to you with, so I'm going to number my responses...the numbers will loosely correspond to "segments" of your post:

1.  The corvettes were microed somewhat, not nearly as much as flak...illuminators can essentially fire in all directions (side beams can shoot behind pretty well), so no matter where you put the corvettes, they are going to get shot at, there's really no "blind spot" you can hide them in......I suppose you could order the corvettes to hold position so that they wouldn't get hit by all the beams, but then your corvettes wouldn't be using their rear weapons and maybe not even all side weapons...

2.  Illuminators do have disadvantages, and I'm not unwilling to acknowledge those...in the early game, I don't find the focus firing to be as much of a problem, because players are less likely to use double cap starts and corvettes incline caps to retreat sooner than in diplomacy...I won't say it's irrelevant, but the lack of FFing is not something I find too problematic in the early game, I would rather have ships that perform better against fleets (which Illuminators do)...the only early game situation where I really hate having only illuminators is if Vasari SB your HW early game (then I'm very glad to have kanraks or LRMs)...

3.   In my experience, 3 military labs is no longer as much of a problem as it was in diplomacy, mainly because of moons now spawning next to the HW...I really don't find it that hard to get illuminators out early unless you didn't have both a moon and asteroid connected to your HW...recently I have tried to make early game fleets relying heavily on illuminators, and so far it has worked better than I would have expected...that is why I began this investigation, because intuitively I would have thought I'd be much better with disciple+corvette rushing...so far I have found illuminators to be great early game...you don't necessarily skip the disciple+corvette phase, but I've tried to get illuminators in as early as possible and so far it has worked, and I think a big reason is the build times...when under pressure, you simply can fleet faster with illuminators than if you went with other Advent builds...

4.  The early TEC economy is honestly not that much better than Advent...if you are a frontliner, you probably aren't getting trade early on so the earlier trade isn't much of an advantage...all the economic techs that help TEC, such as development mandate, the trade techs, pervasive economy, etc. come much later in the game...the only true early economic advantage I find for TEC in the early game is the akkan's colonize ability...the terran pop techs also is a slight advantage over Advent (who need desert pop tech as prereq) but that's about it early game...if anything, Advent have an advantage over TEC because they get culture at tier 2....it's really only the eco players that get to benefit early on from TEC economic advantages....

5.  In the early game, I think cost and construction times are more relevant than fleet supply...whether you have 1 fleet upgrade or 2, the upkeep is still low and if you are winning by having the better fleet, then the extra maintenance is a small price to pay...in any case, it doesn't matter, because if I had used fleet supply as the equalizer, you still are going to see the same relative differences in performance between Advent and TEC....LF's and corvettes may no longer beat out LRFs + flak, but the Advent will still lose by less than the TEC would in that given situation...I'll also again reiterate that I feel you are exagerating the early game economic advantages a TEC frontliner has...

6.  I think you misread what I wrote, as that battle did not involve illuminators at all....that battle was the only shining moment for TEC, and I mainly used it to show Sareth that LRMs+flak is not the best early game fleet for TEC...I have found in my experience that cobalts and corvettes is much more effective than LRMs and flak when going against either TEC or Advent...

7.  Again, I think cost is a much better equalizer than fleet supply in these cases, though obviously you don't agree with me on this point...using fleet supply as the equalizer grossly over exaggerates the power of flak and LRFs early game, which are more poweful but more expensive and time consuming to build...late game, I definitely agree that fleet supply is the better equalizer, but early game I feel it is not...my experience in MP tells me that cobalts and corvettes do rather well early game, much better than flak and LRMs...using cost as the equalizer yields results consistent with my experience in actual games, using fleet supply as the equalizer does not....

8.  Demolition teams is extremely powerful, but most TEC players are still leading with Akkans, and it's common for players to only go with one cap until they get their titan...while demolition teams is more powerful, you are far more likely to see malice or energy aura in play, both of which compliment illuminators nicely...despite their power, it's actually rare that I see Corsevs used anymore...perhaps its because all the good players now play VL, or perhaps it's because the utility of the Corsev wanes once titans come out and the goto fleet composition is bomber spam...

9.  I don't think the extra tier prevents illuminators from being involved in early game battles...it is a drawback, but I don't find it preventing me from getting illuminators early on if I need too...I think you are putting too much weight on the lab requirement, but I doubt I'll change your mind on the issue, it seems we've just had different experiences in MP...I do agree that illuminators were rarer in Diplomacy, but remember that Diplomacy didn't have moons (which allow you to go longer without getting 2 civ labs) and had much more powerful flak...Rebellion is much different, it has changed things, and I find illuminators to be much more viable early game with the Rebellion changes...

10.  That was the point of my proposed change, that it would affect all LRFs, but likely affect illuminators the most...you don't have to agree with my proposition, I just want it to be clear why I proposed it...

11.  Perhaps you missed it, but early I explained that if you go by equal fleet supply Illuminators actually beat Vasari corvettes...sure, Vasari Corvettes are the worst while TEC Corvettes are the best so you'd expect the Vasari corvettes to perform worse than TEC, but that they don't even beat illuminators is just bad...if you go by equal cost, then the Vasari Corvettes win but pitifully so for a unit that supposedly "hard counters" LRFs...

Anyway, I bring up this issue because I find in MP games that illuminators were very dominant...furthermore, I am disatisfied with the overall performance of corvettes, which had virtually no use late game despite countering 2 of the 3 most commonly spammed late game units...obviously most people don't think it is an issue, and perhaps its because I'm wrong and it isn't an issue...or perhaps it is an issue, but it's severely overshadowed by the OP Vasari or "bigger things" like the Eradica and wail...

And again with balling through all this bullshit, illums in my mind aren't even viable in games... the only time i ever build them is if i need a 4 fleet mix when the enemy is mixing his fleet well and they are there to beat a cobalt, lrfm, flak spam. 

I rarely see illums in play, and when do you play? i see you online maybe once a week... 

this thread is a useless source of number crunching and what ifs and maybes when in actual fact they are one of the most under used frigates in the game.

and you talk about game enders being over powered, they need to be to unlock a stale mate. 

geeze what is wrong with you guys..

oh and corvettes aren't obsolete, just not viable against aoe or a good fleet mix, using them to snipe things.. i use corvettes when attacking planets to make sure constructors are already dead.

Everything seems viable and potentially imbalanced when playing vs. noobs or weaker players. When I switch up from playing advent to TEC, I feel like I am swimming in credits. If the adjacent player isn't aggressive enough, I'll get out a token force to secure a frontline and then just sit back and tech to a Ragnarov in no time. I've found this surprisingly viable. Of course it helped that they were wasting their money building starbases so I see it more as something due to factors unique to certain games (starting position, opponent strength, who attacks who first) though rather than TEC eco or Ragnarovs should be nerfed for all games. It would be folly to call for nerfs unless many people are doing the same easily across various games and a pattern emerges.

I know that feeling.

But back to topic:

I felt compelled to test the "frightening" illuminators in battle.So I joined a MP game...

I only spammed illuminators... and supported them with a Coronata, guardians and all shield and beam upgrades...

Guess what?

They are WORTHLESS! 

Lets see why:

Ability to deal with hostile capital ships? Nope

Ability to deal with hostile Titans? Nope

Ability to deal with an unupgraded starbase? Nope

Superior against the average TEC fleet? Nope

They are descent against corvettes and you want to remove the only strength that they have left? Seriously?

Illuminators are not worthless, in a large endgame fleet a pack of 40 can be quite useful. Before that however, they wont get you anywhere.

They can be hard countered by many things, not just corvettes. I named those above.

BTW, my opponents were not exactly good.... rarely you will get the time to amass so many illuminators, let alone all those supporting ships and researches. With even fewer numbers of illuminators, you cant stop a single capital ship.

So do us all a favour and learn2play.

+1 finally someone seeing it my way :]

I think Seleuceia knows how to play, this is more just a case of faulty reasoning and stubbornness. Statistical differences taken in isolation from the whole game don't equal imbalances. Making a thread called "Devs, Illuminators should not be so good vs. corvettes" based on a statistical difference is like me making a thread called "Devs, TEC gets trade at tier2 but advent at tier3, please fix". This is also a simple statistical difference that allows TEC to get trade and a bigger econ up faster. There are dozens of statistical differences like this in terms of damage stats, shield strength, costs, tier requirements, etc. across the factions. Proving that one is too good and needs changing requires a lot more than just pointing out differences in numbers. The fact that he hasn't posted a replay illustrating his point is very revealing. The fact that no other MP players agree with his position is very revealing. Compare this with known imbalances like VR Starbases. You've got more of a consensus there with multiple reproducible examples across many games and many players and it shows an obvious difficult to beat imbalance. In the illuminator case there is no evidence at all that their statistical differences are any different than the dozens of other stat differences that give slight advantages across the factions.

@ ekko tek

About that starbase bit you were talking about, I faced a noob the other day that I scared off both his vasari titan AND his fully upgraded jump starbase with only 5 of my carriers.  Once i forced his lvl 1 titan to retreat, He figured he'd been whipped and did a full retreat.  Not bad for just 5 carriers with bombers.  This bought me about 30 minutes of reprieve from his attacks, giving me enough time to take out his ally while he sat around twiddling his thumbs.  Good times .

There are just some players that are just too OP.

@ teun's post below this one:

You probably have, i'm Carpetbomb on ICO.

Seleuceia can be thick at sometimes but we are not going to hold it against him. He has the belief he can just throw a number at us like how defense vessels are 5% more expensive than Illums without even considering advents economy in terms of metal and crystal extraction at that particular time...

This number throwing is the result of extensive use of dev.exe and has a results he believes he can spawn 20 illums and 40 Corvettes and get a win ratio in a real game. Once again i urge you to collect all your variables because once you do that then you will become godlike at this game.

In the planning stage of a business plan you can't just throw out a number like 56% market share out of a 2 or 3 variables.

So you considered price, build time and win ratio? so what!?

What about breaking down price into Cash, Metal, Crystal and analyze those figures against their rate of change, how much cash are you making, how much metal you are making and how much crystal is available at that particular time period. This is called the Cash flow statement and has resulted in many businesses going bankrupt.

You then move on from the price you have to the black market data where in the case of metal and crystal shortages then what needs to be bought and at what cash value. What you will find is advents crystal economy is lacking in the early game and as a result of purchasing crystal from the black market you end up with a more expensive unit to field.

The strength of the economy and its particular time period is determined by the market and geography: the price of colonization (planet, asteroid, Moon), the distance traveled to get to these places and the time it takes to clear away the militia and the length of a trade network. As you can see playing on random maps makes it impossible to determine just how many illums you can produce. If your not thinking like this then it is the reason why modders suck more than the average pro players through abusive dev.exe data.

Colonization can then be broken down to how many extractors, economic bonus from cap colinizerm the unde-rdeveloptment cost and any structure build time bonuses. This is further influenced by culture.

Pro Players determine that illums are best produced during the period where the crystal extraction rate is the same or more than metal.

You cannot and should not assume 20 illums vs 40 corvettes is a realistic Scenario: This number can be skewed to 12 illums vs 75 corvettes.

Seleuceia i urge you to dig a hole once again, bury yourself and think about what to post with more data in hand because once again you sound silly because its all about financials and market projections for me so i know what units to make early game and when to include illums or even carriers and crusaders. All of this is possible with financial and market details that can be anaylsed down to the micro and dps data.

Wow, you only built illuminators and didn't couple them with flak or bombers...100% of any unit isn't going to get you very far, seems like you just wasted a game...

I shall defer to the OP:

I already have shown that 100% illuminators can lose if properly countered, you haven't shown anything more than I have...the issue is not that 100% illuminators can't be dealt with, it's that illuminators coupled with defense vessels is a tough nut to crack, certainly stronger than the other LRF + flak combos and coupled with stronger AoE combos...

Is it true that LRMs and Kanraks are better at FFing?  Yes...but it's just plain silly to claim you can't ever kill titans or capital ships with them...illuminators still do more damage against caps/titans than disciples (about 16% more) even though only part of the Illuminator DPS is frontal, and I've killed caps and titans solely with LFs before...if you can do it with LFs, you can certainly do it with illuminators...

Calm down guys...

I have been following this thread since it was made and I am astounded that it has gone on this long. 3 pages and 73 replies? About the fine details of how illuminators are better than Kanraks and LRMs?

Even if we look at it from Seleuceia's point of view, it is still a teeny tiny balancing issue.

If we look at it from RiddleKing's point of view, there is no problem and the illuminators are fine as is.

Regarding Seleuceia's "issue" that Defense Vessels and Illuminators are a tough nut to crack, remember that this is the Advent we are talking about here. Of course they will be harder than TEC or Vasari because their fleets are based around synergy. TEC and Vasari have better economies, so they do not have as much synergy in their fleet composition.

But I will not blab about counters and frontal DPS and how the illuminator has a shorter range but more firepower on the sides or any of that stuff because it has all been said already. Just wanted to throw my two cents in.

the issue at hand is selecuceia is a silly noob whose too stubborn to admit his wrong. He goes on about everything from illums being cheaper in fleet supply(6) vs 4 of the defense vessel to now assuming we will even build a mixed defense vessel and illum fleet in the beginning of the game. Why to god all mighty will we build illums to counter corvettes as opposed to the cheaper defense vessel? Hes a very silly boy.

When did I ever say Illuminators counter corvettes?  I didn't...I also never said anywhere that Illuminators should be the first unit you should build....