The past has to be fixated upon if there is to be a successful community mod.  "Those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it."  I wince every time I hear someone suggesting that siege frigates should be seriously buffed, because I was around when the game first launched, and I know what uber-siege frigs of doom will do.  I've seen every patch of this game, from the "carriers rule" patch on through to the present one.  Past is prologue.  If you buff fighters too much, you'll get carriers of doom again.  If you buff Advent in every way possible again, you'll have a game where 90% of all players play Advent and Vasari doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell.

Fair point.  I wish you luck.

LOL.  Not that I want this to turn into a pissing contest, but I couldn't find anyone to take such a position during the last patch.  The overwhelming number of online players believed Vasari to be seriously underpowered.  Even tier 1 players like Cykur complained about a weak Vasari.  Advent was a nightmare for Vasari.  How soon people forget.

That's why I said that, in addition to caps being essentially invulnerable to frigs, frigs should also be essentially invulnerable to caps.  That way, it isn't "just about the caps."

If it isn't this way, then I don't see how you can ever mix caps with your fleet and have a reasonable expectation that they can do their job.  They will get focused, they will die, and they will therefore not do their job.

Advent need a better lategame econ tech also. I think they need a buff to alure of unity. TEC have Pervassive econ, and Vasari have Returning Armada. Advent have Alure of Unity, which is terrible in comparison.

If I may point something out:

According to the storyline, the Vasari are supposed to be the superpowerful warriors, on exodus, the TEC are the economic buffs, with a war-scarred past, and the Advent are the resource-drained hellbent empire.

Richter {^}

I understand where you are coming from, and I agree...but this is what I have a problem with...

Let's say right now the Vasari are OP...okay, now that is a problem, and it needs to be fixed...except that, some people are arguing "oh no, Vasari aren't OP now because they used to be underpowered"....opposition to nerfing the Vasari is heavily based on previous versions where they were weaker and the Advent were too dominant...this is a logical fallacy, and I'm getting tired of it...

I don't want siege frigate rampages or carrier based fleets...and I especially don't want a faction too dominate...that faction used to be Advent, and now it is Vasari...I'm looking to end the cycle of the game being unbalanced with patches and updates merely changing how it's unbalanced...

First, Incendiary Shells...

This ability does 3/4.5/6 DPS for 15s from the last time the target was hit by the Marza...

I'm trying to think of an ability to compare this one too, and I can't think of a good match...since the Marza is mostly shooting at one target and essentially doing extra DPS against it with this ability, my feeling was, compare it to nano-disassembler...

The nano ability on the space egg does 25 DPS...now, this is for a fixed period of time and costs antimatter while Incendiary shells is just passive...however, the nano ability goes straight to the hull and reduces armor...

The simplest thing to do is simply buff the DPS of incendiary shells, say, to 50/75/100...now, this is pretty powerful but it is mitigated by shields as far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong) and does nothing to affect it's targets armor (unlike nano disassembler)...incendiary shells only lasts 15s from the last shot...it is important to note that this ability does not stack...

Secondary affects could be added (reduced armor, goes through shields) but then the ability is being changed, not balanced...I'd like to hear some feedback on this, but I think a simple DPS increase might be best...

Now for PM swarm...I really think this ability is only going to come of its own if the max # of targets is removed...but, I could be wrong, and maybe this ability just needs to have this number raised....until I get a good feel on what to do with max # of targets, I don't know what DPS values to look for...feedback appreciated...

Now for Guidance....oh my...

Other than ultimates, reverie and shield regeneration are the only abilities I can think of that could really benefit from a reduced cooldown...even these two abilities are going to run out of antimatter pretty quick...ultimately (as everyone has noted) its antimatter, not cooldown time, that limits Advent abilities...

If guidance reduced the antimatter cost...well, now that might be worth it....lets just go with that thought for a minute, that guidance reduces antimatter costs by say, 40%....questions to answer:  should it be AoE or just affect one ship?  If it is AoE, should it affect caps?  If it is AoE, should it be active? Regardless of whether it affects cooldown or antimatter, would making it affect ultimate abilities make this more useful?  Would allowing the Advent ship to apply this ability on itself make it more useful?  I know there are some very creative ideas out there, but let's see if we can work with the current bonus (or something very similar like antimatter cost)...

If we have to go a completely different buff, my first pick would be an AoE effect on siege weapon cooldowns...

I'd like some thoughts on what direction to take this before working on the numbers...

My suggestion would be to decide what the ultimate gameplay model for capships will be before tweaking stats like incendiary shells, because the tweaks may end up being thrown in the garbage.  For instance, if it ends up being decided that capships will counter other capships, and they won't counter frigates, and neither will frigates counter capships, abilities like incendiary shells may have to be reworked so as to not counter frigates, and you will have wasted time.

At any rate, I know that some people like Darvin seem to be opposed to this model for caps.  Another idea that may achieve the same effect might be to severely lower the cost of capships.  The rationale for this would be, since they are going to be focused and killed without much of a chance of doing their job, make them less valuable and more commonplace, more along the lines of "glorified cruisers."  Then it doesn't matter so much if they get focused and killed - "there's more where that came from."  If this ends up being the ultimate route, I'm sure stats will have to be adjusted down for the caps (hit points, attack, etc), so again, you might be wasting time with discussions on adjusting of incendiary shells at this point (putting the cart before the horse).

I say host a discussion on what the ultimate gameplay mechanic for capships should look like.  THEN adjust them to your heart's content.

Hi guys,

I'm happy to see the work on this mod progressing.  I was following the thread, and I'd just started tweaking and testing some of the abilities on my own when you made the other thread.  I also have to state up front that I'm relatively new to Sins (been following the game but I haven't played through earlier builds so I don't know the balance history), and I haven't played online at all so I definitely don't have the experience with the way the game plays competitively (but I have >10yrs experience playing RTS online and delving into the math of unit balance, so I hope I'm not completely noobish..)

Anyway, I've been skeptical of some of the changes (starting with the Kol), and I've been meaning to post for a few days.. So, I'll share and please tell me if/how I'm off base.

 

I agree with everything discussed about the Kol and other ships in principle, but I'm not sure about two related trends with (mostly) Darvin's suggestions:

1) Buffing lvl 1 abilities to favor tri-skill builds

2) Reducing the gap between lvl 1 and lvl 3 skills (e.g. with GRG, Flak Burst, and some others).

These trends seem, to me, to be diminishing some of the strategy in going for a non-tri skill build, both because the lvl 1 abilities give such good returns for that first skill point, and because lvl 2 adds relatively little.  Maybe I'm missing something, but it's hard for me to imagine choosing lvl 2 Flak burst or GRG on the Kol over a tri-skill setup.  That's not ideal imo, because I think lvl 2 in any ability should be almost as good as gaining a new ability, with the trade-off being the classic choice of specialization vs versatility. I also think the condensed scaling for skills diminishes some of the value/glory of higher level caps.

Flak Burst:

With these changes, a level 1 Kol with FB can fire as often and hit just as many strike craft (i.e. in the same radius) as a lvl 5 Kol that has focused most of its points into FB.  The only gain for two extra levels is a modest 50% more dmg (40->60).  Significant, but not as rewarding as it should be imo.

I'm not sure about the actual numbers (as Seleuceia mentioned, it's hard to figure out the scaling for FB since the damage effectiveness scales differently for diff factions), but I think it would be better if you at least maintained some tiered advancement for the range, and probably for the cooldown or the AM cost too.

Gauss Rail Gun:

This ability always had a decent DPS because of its low cooldown, and since it was direct/instant damage at long-ish range, its value was in a strong alpha strike.  It was balanced (and gimped) by its disproportionately high AM cost for damage, especially when compared to other abilities that were either more tactically useful (e.g., Radiance's Det AM) or that did more damage over time, often to multiple targets (e.g., lower Dmg per AM than everything from missile batteries to the possibly OP'd nano disassemblers).

But I think cutting the AM cost by 2/3 was too drastic, both because it might be overpowered and because it changes it from an AM-hog alpha-strike ability to an almost-tactically-thoughtless machine gun that can be spammed for at least 60 seconds (i.e., 10 shots/3,000 damage) at even level 1.  This is especially true if AdapFf remains passive, since this means that a Kol without pressure from SC is a Kol free to spam GRG like crazy.  The low AM cost also just makes it a lot easier to use (e.g., most ships have abilities in the range of 60-150 AM, so it's hard to juggle demands and maximize utility for the ship in the first minutes of a battle, but a cheap ability with low cooldown makes it easy for the Kol to dump every last point of AM).

Contrary to what was mentioned above, the new GRG seems (to me) to help the Kol plow through early frigates much faster, letting it level up faster, and with full AM a low level Kol can spam GRG enough to dominate many other caps in early encounters.  Maybe that's a good thing, since it's the TEC Bship, but it does seem potent to me.

I like the weapon cooldown debuff (though I think it should probably scale as 10%, 15%, 20%), but I would personally prefer something that sticks closer to its original design, with a higher AM cost (maybe 60-80), and a much higher damage instead.  This would let the Kol do a lot of damage early, but higher cost abilities are harder to manage so if FB and AFf are also demanding AM, then the player has to make a satisfying tactical decision between dumping out DPS or using the two more defensive abilities.

Adaptive Forcefield:

As mentioned, I think I prefer this as an active ability because it makes the Kol more dynamic to use, with choices in every battle between offense and defense.  It's obviously very powerful as a passive buff (maybe too powerful as is?), but given the choice I'd prefer to see a more powerful AF as an active ability than a less powerful AF as a passive.  Even if it's only a token 15-25 AM cost, as Darvin mentioned, this competes with demand from Flak Burst and GRG.. It also means that opponents can drain the Kol's AM to prevent AF's use and make it more vulnerable.  That's just more fun imo.

Sorry to double post.. but that got long.

Some quicker comments:

-Radiance

Energy Absorption: 2/4/6 armor is a good buff. 

It might seem weird to give an Advent ship high armor (AdapFf would be better), but this is how IronClad made it and the armor helps offset phase missile vulnerability too, so it sort of makes sense for the shield-heavy Advent to have a uniquely well armored Bship.. As Darvin said: The problem with the AM regen is that it lacks good abilities to spend AM on, so..

Animosity:

Glad to see this working.  I think a very small regen bonus would be a good (cautious) way to offset the dmg and buff it slightly.  (e.g., 5 or 10 shield, hull, or both per second?)  If you wanted to go bigger, it could become a bigger regen boost (less than power surge though), with a slightly higher AM and cooldown cost.

Cleansing Brilliance:

Needs a boost imo. Kol's GRG is now 3,000 dmg over 60 seconds for 250 AM @lvl 1. This Ultimate is only 2k dmg (albeit with the nice radius) over 120 seconds for 150 AM.  Cautious fix = reduce cooldown to 100, or even 90?

-Rapture

Concentration Aura:

Does this need a buff? Something as simple as a range increase might be nice, just to make it extra easy to affect the carrier(s) in a grav well..

-Revelation

Guidance:

This may be better than I realize, but I feel like it would be more interesting and not quite so situational if it had a very small AM regen bonus as well. [edit: I missed Seleuc's comments on this above.. I think the siege-fire cooldown rate is a brilliant idea.. Very situational obviously, but it's something that advent needs.  If it was an AM regen bonus, then I'd suggest either a small radius or a very limited number of targets, just to play it safe.  Big changes in the form of brand new abilities will be harder to balance and make people suspicious of the mod..]

-Marza

Incendiary shells:

I *really* think this needs a non-dmg buff.  The Marza already has two other direct damage/area of effect attacks.  Buffing the damage over time doesn't work because the damage doesn't stack, so some other (small) debuff would really make this ability more interesting.  Again, I would suggest a cautious change, but a simple buff to the instant dmg seems uninspired to me..

-Sova

Heavy Strikecraft:

This seems like a fair change, but again, it would be nice to buff the TEC caps in ways other than brute force dmg, so..

Embargo:

As you guys discussed earlier, the Sova is already mostly a bruiser ship (among other TEC bruiser ships), so I think a small buff here might make the Sova more interesting.. even if Embargo is already pretty solid..

-Dunov

I like the changes made in v0.11, except they seem like too much to me.

Magnetize:

 should probably just get a small buff to AM cost (60?) and strike craft number if you guys think it needs it.

EMP:

I really don't know, but why not make some more cautious changes like cooldown = 40/35/30 ?

 

I don't have anything to say yet about the Vasari.. They seem like they (mostly) have a good set of cap ship abilities so I'm imagining this as (mostly) a balance mod to equalize TEC and (to a lesser extent) Advent caps to their Vasari counterparts.

Level 1 GRG sucks in its current implementation... given how drastically it was buffed from its current official state, that is actually shocking.  Like, this ability can't even clear militia effectively, it's that bad.  In any case, I wouldn't build anything other than a single-skill Kol in its current state.  The problem is that until you have Finest Hour, you just do not have the antimatter to fuel more than one ability.

Why spend valuable skill points in two abilities when you only have the antimatter reserves for one?  Even if you do juggle them a lot, you're still getting far less performance from either than a specialed Kol.  You're paying through the nose for that versatility, I feel it's still a poor deal.  


I'd agree with you completely.  Where we depart is how highly we value a new skill over an improvement to an existing skill.  The big risk I see with tri-skill builds is that you may create a jack of all trades that's good at none of them.  I feel right now a tri-skill Kol wouldn't even be useful until it hits level 6 (at which point ANY build will shine).  



The big problem we're having, especially with the Kol, is that these capital ships get more antimatter as they level up, so the skills naturally improve even without investing additional points.  It's very difficult to get a level 1 skill that's strong enough to shine at level 1 while still being a "minor" power for a high-level capital ship.

I'd actually compare this most to spellcasters in D&D (3rd edition).  In theory you could multi-class and become a fighter/wizard.  In practice, it doesn't work.  Even with a complex "prestige class" system that helps this scale to higher levels, it's still a clearly inferior choice.   




Actually, it doesn't play that way.  I found the antimatter was depleting and I had to carefully select my targets to conserve power for when I needed it most.  It wasn't until I had finest hour that I just set it on autocast and forgot about it.

Also, it doesn't deal 300 damage a shot, it deals 300 reduced by shield mitigation and armour, so usually it's hitting for 100 damage per shot.  Your 10 shots, costing you 250 antimatter and a minute of straight shooting, only did 1000 damage.



While it did beat a scrambling Skirantra if the Skirantra held still, it didn't beat a Sova with missile batteries and it didn't stand a chance against a big chunk of LRF.  It didn't really deal with militia that well, either.



Actually I found it so low I couldn't even feel its effects.  I'd probably raise its effect, and I'd be inclined to keep it the same at all levels.




Passive skill that boosts the damage of SC?  Fine as is.  Wouldn't take it further than enhanced AoE.



Agreed; I suggested a simple effect of antimatter damage over time (2/4/6 per second).  However, I'm sure you can come up with some other good debuffs.




The Dunov is all about its special abilities; it has no other purpose but to use them.  This is why I feel lower antimatter cost and faster cooldown is important to give these abilities staying power.  




Vasari were some of the most solid to begin with, and most of the abilities only needed tweaking.  I think that Phase Missile Swarm is showing a lot of promise now, while We've made adequate adjustment to the Jarrasul's colonize and seem to have fixed the scramble issue.  The only capital ship in this lineup that needs serious work is the Antorak, and I really don't know how to approach that guy...

HerrPinguin, thanks for your suggestions...I appreciate them and I think they are very good...you had a lot of ideas and touched on a lot of topics so forgive me if I accidentally fail to address something you brought up...

A fair point...what to do about it?  Well, for starters, lets look at the HP of all the SC:

Vasari Bomber/Fighter = 140/85    TEC Bomber/Fighter = 100/60    Advent Bomber/Fighter = 75/40

Flak Burst 1:  One use is enough to kill an Advent fighter and severely gimp an Advent bomber or TEC fighter...two uses, and all three of those SC types will be destroyed...note that both Vasari SC are still alive, as well as the TEC bomber

Flak Burst 2:  One use isn't much better at lvl 2 than at lvl 1...even 2 uses isn't that much better, because hull regeneration means a TEC bomber will still survive if nothing else shoots at it...the main difference between level 2 and level 1 is that two uses will kill a Vasari fighter at lvl 2...

Flak Burst 3:  One use is a clean kill on an Advent or TEC fighter...two uses kills everything but a Vasari Bomber

So, you have a good point....flak burst 1 is pretty good, but flak burst 2 isn't really any better...there's a difference if you have anti-SC ships and fighters, but otherwise not much of a difference...I'm thinking lvl 2 and 3 need a little more of a boost to give the player an incentive to pick them...right now I'm thinking either reduced antimatter cost or reduced cooldown (makes double taps more viable)

As for GRG...shield mitigation does have to be taken into account, you can't leave that out...now, I originally was in favor of a more powerful/less frequent GRG, and maybe that is best...I do think this ability is a little too much of a spammable ability....I think you are right, it needs more shock value and less frequency...

So, what if all damage values are increased by 50%?  And, antimatter cost is changed from 25 to 40 or 45?

Adaptive forcefield...to be honest I'm not real set on making this passive either...I wanted to try it out, have a feel for how if affected things...with the other two abilities radically changed, it would have been hard to balance 3 active abilities...right now I'm most in favor of making it passive, but if an active ability will work out without killing antimatter, I'd prefer it...the thing is, battleships are considered very weak mostly because they suck at supporting their fleet...if the Kol has to use antimatter just to protect itself, then it can't support its fleet...yes, three active abilities provides a tough tactical decision, but I don't think that decision is "use adaptive forcefield or use flak burst"...I think the decision is "build a brick that can't do much but can't die, or build a vulnerable cap that at least is useful"...

Animosity....I like Darvin's idea of making the Radiance regenerate shields with animosity, but only when the ship is taking damage (similar to energy absorption)...

Cleansing brilliance...I really don't want to make this any more powerful (as in, do more damage)...with malice and multiple radiances, this could get exponentially more powerful real quick...however, I do like your suggestion of reducing the cooldown, and I think it is definitely something worth considering...

Guidance, I'm very iffy on...the biggest complaint with the revelation is that it does nothing to help siege planets...the Marza has one normal ability for this, the Vulkoras has 2...and the revelation has none...however, in order to give the revelation more siege power an ability would have to be changed on a conceptual level and I'm not a big fan of doing that unless there's no other choice...now, I do think Darvin made a good point, letting this ship use guidance on itself can be a huge problem since it also has reverie...

So, I'm thinking, have an antimatter regeneration or antimatter cost reduction as a second bonus, but it can't be used on itself...I'd like to try that...if antimatter cost reduction is too weak, then it can be changed to antimatter regeneration...I'm iffy on making this an AoE, because disciples can steal transfer antimatter, and you could end up with an advent fleet having like infinite antimatter....

Incendiary shells...a secondary non damage buff is probably the best bet....however, this ability seems to be broken, so I want to get it actually working first....let's get a baseline on how valuable that extra DPS is when this ability actually works properly...

Dunov is just going to require a lot of work and a lot of testing...I really think right now the best thing is just to reduce antimatter costs or cooldowns across the board, then test this thing and see how it does...then things can be tweaked...

Darvin...

GRG needs to be fined tuned some more...I think you are right, Kol is still too weak early on even with a passive ability and low antimatter costs...

One possibility is raising its base antimatter reserves and decreasing the bonus it gets with each level...

Another one is say, increasing the damage values of GRG by 50% but increasing the antimatter cost from 25 to 40 (a little over 50%)

Hmm.. well that's a lot to digest.  Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.

For the record, I was considering mitigation with GRG, but:

1) With its low cooldown and front-loaded dmg, it can be consistenly used as the opening shot vs frigates at low mitigation, which is why I felt (and observed in a quick game vs AI) that it was pretty powerful vs early militia.

2) Even at the 50% average mitigation suggested by Darvin, lvl1 GRG still provides an extra (300/6*0.5) = 25 DPS.  That's much more than anything available to the Radiance or Kortul, and roughly comparable to the 25 DPS generated by the very powerful nano disassemblers ability from the Evacuator.. (though the Evacuator can do better than that if it spreads ND across multiple targets).

Anyway, I'm happy to defer to your judgement on that.  You guys have convinced me that this version of GRG is not as strong as I thought..

Still, I'd like to see something like AM cost in the 40-65 range, cooldown in 6-15, and damage in the 400-1200 range.

Rather than changing the core AM values for the ship, we could consider adjusting the non-ultimate abilities to use an escalating cost model, as is the case with some other cap ships.  If the AM cost of GRG and FB increased a bit as they were levelled, then that might let you increase their power and scale them appropriately for the AM boost that Finest Hour provides.

I still think FB should start with a small(er) radius that increases with levels though.  I prefer this even more than a damage scaling because increased range lets it hit more SC and project that anti-SC umbrella over a bigger part of the grav well.  At early levels, it makes sense for FB to be smaller as a mostly self-and-local-defense ability.  At lvl 3, when battles and SC numbers have probably grown, it makes sense for FB to come into its own as a larger scale deterrent vs carriers.

 

PS: I actually think a small regen boost with Animosity should come with or without damage.  The idea would be to make it an expensive and inefficient shield regen ability, but still an option for the Radiance to spend AM even if it's not in a position to be drawing targets..

Which is pretty much always.



I'd move more towards the cooldown approach.  We already have an immense problem with antimatter costs between low-level Kols and high-level Kols, and making abilities cost less antimatter at each level will just exascerbate the problem.



I'd rather tinker with Finest Hour and the antimatter costs of the abilities.  Finest Hour is what's really giving us a disconnect, even between level 5 and level 6.

There was one time in that game that I lost track of AM on my high-level Kol and had to wait a while to generate enough AM to use Finest Hour again, and I felt really gimped for that duration.  This tells me that even at high levels, Finest Hour is where our big problem is.

I'm leaning towards removing FH's antimatter regeneration and buffing its other effects, then rebalancing the antimatter costs of the Kol's abilities to better represent its needs at all levels.



I wasn't even able to clear a desert with medium-low militia counts, something that the Sova, Akkan and Marza have no problem with. For a tough battleship, this is unacceptable.



Nanos has three advantages here.  The first, as you mention, is that you can spread it across multiple targets.  The second is its performance per antimatter; you get ~8.3 damage per antimatter.  On the other hand, post-mitigation Kol gets ~6 damage per antimatter at 50% mitigation.  I'm beginning to think (based on looking at the numbers) that GRG is also reduced by armour.  If this is so, then the Kol probably has more ~4 damage per antimatter.  The third, and most important, is that nanos is shield bypass.  For LRM's and Krosovs, this means you get to ignore their shields entirely.  If you're willing to use two shots, you can do this to Kodiaks and Gardas.  Pretty significant.


I'm very happy with the Kol once it's level 6+, the problem as I mentioned is that it's still sub-performing at levels 1-4 and only adequate at level 5.  Capital ships that take so long to mature just aren't viable when I can get more performance out of a Sova immediately.  Initiative is worth a lot in this game, and we can't afford to raise a capital ship that doesn't perform at lower levels in most cases.




Make it hull regeneration; Advent, particularly early game, have trouble healing their hulls when on the offensive, so this would add more utility to the ability.  With the Progenitor available, shield regeneration may be redundant anyways.  I'd alsobe interested in adding some damage to this ability.  This would make it a very versatile ability, which is important when it's competing against detonate antimatter.

Okay...if flak burst has lower cooldowns at higher levels, then...well the original cooldown times were 12/10/8...we could go with that, or stick with 10s at lvl1 and go with 10/8/6....6s might be too fast though, I'm not sure...you are right though about reducing the antimatter cost, that would just make this isssue worse...

Removing the antimatter regen from FH is actually a good idea...so it that is removed, I'm thinking, then what?  I don't know if FH needs to be buffed, if it pretty strong as is (even without antimatter regen)....I'd go for reducing its own antimatter cost before buffing any other element of the ability...

GRG (without antimatter regen from FH) probably then can be buffed overall...

Right now, we have it at 300/450/600, antimatter cost of 25...what if it was 600/800/1000 and antimatter cost of 40?  That is a 60% increase in antimatter and a 100%/77.8%/66.7% increase in damage...at lvl 3, it is close to the same damage per antimatter ratio....however, lvl 1 is more powerful relative to lvl 2 and 3...

As for animosity, I think this ability should regenerate shields or hull on a 1:1 ratio with damage...essentially, this means it takes no damage, but doesn't really regenerate any HP either while the ability is active...shields will always benefit the ship but won't protect against phase missiles...hull won't benefit the ship if it still has shields, but also will protect from phase missiles...I'm leaning towards hull, though that isn't a very Advent sort of advantage (not that armor from energy absorption is)...

I was thinking more along the lines of boosting the Kol's health regeneration bonus during FH.  Nothing big, just something small to compensate for the nerf.

Sounds good, though I think I'd still increase the potency of the debuffs a bit.

 

As far as animosity goes, I'm thinking we should make it an all-purpose mix.  The "focus fire" effect is a double-edged sword to begin with, so I think we need to load it with multiple secondary effects.  I'm thinking a combination of passive damage dealing and regeneration.

Personally I don't know if I'd actually use finest hour without the antimatter regeneration buff, so I think a moderate hull repair buff would needed, not a small one. After all, it has to have an effect worth taking antimatter from flak burst or GRG.

True... the antimatter cost of FH itself becomes an issue without the regeneration aspect... that's actually going to be a big challenge...

The 180 second cooldown on FH means that it can be run continuously without the regen, but as GoaFan says, continuous use of FH would leave a Kol with very little AM for anything else (after the first salvos of FB/GRG that drain its initial reserves).

So instead of cutting the regen for FH completely, why not cut it from +5/s to +3/s?  At +5 it gives a massive 300 AM, almost completely refilling the Kol at lvl 6.  +3/s would give 180 AM, enough for a Flak Burst and a few GRG shots in the following 120 seconds before FH was ready to fire again.  If we want to make up for this small nerf, then we could give a very small boost to the hull regen.. I also think a DPS buff on the Autocannon splash might be nice since that would add a lot to the Kol's utility in larger battles.. but I'm not sure if/how that should be changed.

 

As for FB:

I *still* think it would be better to adjust range as it levels.  So why not combine a few of the suggested changes?

AM = 100/100/100, Dmg = 40/50/65, Range = 3000, 3600, 3600, Cooldown = 10, 9, 8

This gives lvl 2 and lvl 3 a bit more of a boost, and if we want to go even bigger than we could also scale the AM cost to increase a bit (Even a small increase like 105/110 counts because it adds up on double taps and it will cut into the use of GRG).

GRG:

Since we're worried about balancing this between low and high(er) levels, I suggest we scale AM cost and cooldown so it becomes more expensive to use as FH becomes available. 

AM = 40/45/50, Dmg = 600/850/1100, Cooldown = 12/8/6, Target wpn cooldown = 15%/20%/25% (10s duration, speed stays at -50%)

That gives the same effective DPS as Darvin's previous 300dmg, 25 AM GRG @ lvl1, but now the dmg is more concentrated and the DPS per AM is higher.  The AM increase in price is quite low, but combined with the deceasing cooldown this GRG will burn through AM at higher levels.

The lvl 2 and lvl 3 dmg might seem high, but they compare pretty well with the Kortul's power surge imo..

PSurge Shield regen = 500/875/1350 for 60 AM, or ~8.3/14.6/22.5 regen per AM

Assuming the average 0.5 mitigation, GRG inflicts 300/425/550 dmg, or ~7.5/9.4/11 dmg per AM. 

GRG seems to drop off, but that's because GRG has a much higher rate of fire and the shock of all that front-loaded DPS could become overpowered if we're not careful. 

Consider the DPS assuming the 0.5 mitigation: 25/53.1/91.6

That's quite high @lvl 3, but at 50 AM the Kol will only be able to fire 6-8 times, so not even for a full minute.

However, if it seemed too strong then I suggest we scale the AM a bit more (40/47/55 ?), or the cooldown less (12/10/8 ?)

I am concerned about the power of GRG versus targets with low or no mitigation though.  And using AM to balance this ability seems like it might become ridiculous with Flux Field.. so bumping the cooldown up a bit might be best.

 

PS: I still think Cleansing Brilliance deserves a buff. Compare to the Marzas 3000 dmg striking infinite targets in a radius of 10,000, and the 2,000 damage CB, which is also a pain to aim, seems less than brilliant.

I'm just not sure of how to deal with the Kol right now, and I don't have the time or energy to brainstorm.  I think the idea of just reducing the antimatter regeneration of finest hour so it covers its own cost is a good idea, but beyond that I'm reserved.

Totally agree with you for cleansing brilliance.  This ability needs serious help.  It was once quite powerful due to a synergy with malice, but with malice capped it basically requires this combo just to match what other capital ships are doing.

Yes, this doesn't seem right to me.. Every* other Ultimate is effective alone so you're not forced to combo certain caps together. (*except Flux Field, but that works well with a lot of different types of ships).

I'm not sure about CB though.. I don't want to overbuff it, but since it works a lot like GRG (i.e. reduced by mitigation and armor and absorbed by shields), I can't resist comparing it to GRG.  And with the buffs for GRG CB doesn't seem like a proper Ultimate.  Reducing the cooldown would help.  And since I find it difficult to use/aim at times, I've wondered if it might work to add some sort of buff that temporarily increases the turn rate of the Radiance.

I don't know if it would be possible, but I think it might be kind of cool to see the Radiance suddenly turn on a dime and blast away with its mega-beam.  Players might even find a use for it as a way to quickly spin the ship.

Flux Field combos off with anything that uses antimatter.  Completely different than an ability that's dependent on one very specific combo to even be worthwhile.

 

While I think increasing the turn rate of all battleships would be an interesting idea (worked well for LF...) there's no way you can attach it to this ability.  The problem is that the ability only activates after you've acquired the target, so there's no way (at least AFAIK) to add a buff before the ability is activated.  One possible fix is to make it target a location rather than a unit, and then it just does its area of effect damage.  This would make it much easier to acquire your target and start firing (it's virtually impossible to acquire a moving target currently).

Update on Incendiary Shells...I changed the onReapplyDuplicateType "PrioritizeNewBuffs" to "PrioritizeOldBuffs"...ability works perfectly now and actually "sticks" so that the damage is done for the full duration....since this ability actually works now, I'd like to ask for some ideas on what to do here....

One route is, simply increase the DPS...a typical capital ship dishes out about 50 DPS at level 1, and increases by about 6-8% per level....so, something like Power Surge (25%/50%/75% decrease to weapon cooldown, or increase to DPS) is going to be doing 12-25 extra DPS per level, and it regenerates shields (though its not continuous and requires antimatter)...with this is mind, I think incendiary shells needs to be doing about 10-12 extra DPS per level...so, 10/20/30 or 12/24/36...

Another route is a secondary effect...I personally am in favor of a slight armor reduction....

Suggestions appreciated...

dont weaken vasari in all areas, just streagthen advent in some aresa like lrm

 

Actually I think we might just want to see how stacking the buff works in practice. If it works anything like the Kortul's disruptive strikes (and it should IMO), we could see the buff stacking many times over. So even at level one we might see 40 damage/second (if briefly) just with incendiary shells, which is probably good enough. If in practice it doesn't work that way, we can try adding extra buffs (I agree with the armor reduction btw if it is necessary, as I don't think the TEC have an ability that does that).

I tried testing incendiary shells with an infinite stacking limit and I got a minidump...I tried again with an "infinite" stacking limit (AKA as 1,000,000) and it doesn't stack...I think the stacking limit only affects multiple Marza's using this ability...I'll work on this, see if I can get it to stack...