Wow, that's a lot of Crystal. Advent's only real advantage early game was that they get the carrier earlier than anyone else and for cheaper because of their higher tier, more expensive LRM.

I'm really confused of the reasoning behind this. I guess it's to make carriers less viable and encourage Advent to get on the LRM bandwagon?

Wow. This is the biggest f*** up ever. Totally uncalled for. A major mistake.

IC, what could you possibly have been thinking?

Strike craft are already so fragile as to make them flak fodder, without making them exorbitantly expensive to even field in the first place.

Did IC get tired of trying to balance them so they just did this to suggest to everyone not to even try to use them?

Whats even worse is that only advent got their carrier price increased. I can say if it was applied to all three factions, but its only for advent oddly. Lets make ships cost the most for the faction who makes the least and is the least effective early in game. And has the least effective units. Makes perfect sense to me!

Perhaps it will keep the poor newbies I play from building carriers, which leads to their downfall

BTW, lazuraks are best carriers anyway lategame. Most durable fighters and bombers and more DPS.

Also small squads reinfore faster.

Dvent got the total shaft.. again

I was thinking before this patch that maybe Ironclad was moving to try to balance things so that TEC and Vasari use LRMs early game, while the Advent rely on Carriers. Afterall, Advent Drone Hosts were always the cheapest, and such a low tier, they were actually more practical units to field than the Illuminators (and they could even choose the Rapture Battlecruiser to further increase the Drone Hosts effectiveness). However Drone Hosts were still fairly ineffective due to the extremely cost effective flak of all the factions but it would be an interesting solution, and add some variety to the game as a whole, instead of the same old boring LRM spam to win.

And even with 1.04 I was thinking maybe this was the case, Illuminators were being improved, but also Strikecraft were being modified and more importantly, the speed of the LRMs could make it possible for the carriers to run from them. The only thing that needed to be addressed was just how great Flak is at it's job.

But now...I guess they want the only answer to be LRMs. The fun trick is Illuminators are still T3 and expensive, so Advent needs more military centers to reach them and spend more resources on them (something the Advent economy doesn't exactly excel at producing early game).

So now Drone Hosts become more expensive (as if they weren't useless enough before) and T3 Illuminators become the only option to try to survive the early game?

I guess Jinx was right about LRMs and this patch. Such a shame, there are so many interesting units and combinations in the game, but it seems that LRMs are the only solution that can actually win games.

Well, Advent can match the others mostly in Heavy Cruisers though, from my experience (with upgrades and the Halycon aura and such Destras can be beastly), so I don't view them so much of a balance issue besides from how boring they can be (although that replay of yours rushing them in like 12 minutes then being called a cheater was a wonderfully fun watch).

But really by the time Heavy Cruisers are on the stage in significant numbers most games I've played or seen, there are support cruisers, which at least in the case of Vasari can mass-stun Heavy Cruisers, and Advent's Guardian can keep them out of range. Heavy Cruiser spam is nasty, but since there are more toys on the field, it doesn't seem as bad to me, at least.

Early game, there's really nothing but LRMs in order to win games. The Light Frigates are food for the LRMs, since LRMs are effectively their hard counter. Flak have been reduced in effectiveness against LRMs, though I'm pretty sure you can still use them, Flaks are so inflexible compared to LRMs; they can't kill Capitals, Structures, or Light Frigates the way LRMs can, making them tactically, but not strategically viable. Going Capital heavy is suicide because of how strong the LRM damage type and how poor low level caps fair in battle against a number of smaller ships (even Light Frigates). And Carriers, well, everyone knows their story, expensive, easily countered by units half the cost, high tier (later tier, except for Advent but what does it matter now).

I love all the units and special abilities and potential variety that is possible in this game. But how strategic can the game be I wonder if most of the battles are so tactically stagnant. Sure, you have a vast empire and the potential for massive fleets, but what does it matter when two different ships can get nearly any job done by themselves.

Also, ICO appears to be back up.

I think the cost was increased to prevent Drone Host spamming, people cruising through a system with 50 squadrons and decimating things in a few seconds. Also, additional resource satellites means its easier to get crystal now. I say play the game for a while and see how things shake up.

Not sure what game you were playing. But the ones I play have players cruising through solar systems with swarms of cobalts and lrms destroying everything: Structures, cap ships and units. I've never seen a advent player run around with swarms of drones without getting rocked.

A little update for everyone. Even though the Drone Hosts prices have increased, its a bit balanced out due to the new black market AND the fact that extra crystal and metal resources are now present on planets. I've seen 4 metal extractors on a volcano planet, 4 crystal extractors on a ice planet and 3 extractors on a roid. So thats much better. No complains there.

Overall after playing the game, it feels a lot more tighter and balanced. Especially when you get Illums. Now I haven't ran into a cobalt+lrm rush yet. And thats perhaps because the black market changes prevent them from rushing out so early and providing a endless amount of unit replacements. So in the big picture I would say that this patch is the step in the right direction.

Well the idea with the drones was to micromanage them. With enough of them you could take out almost any unit in the game with a single pass of bombers. You aim for high profile targets like capital ships and/or specific structures that you want 'wacked'. After that you can pull them back as needed. They also make an easy defense for stars, since you can quickly position squadrons all around, and they move far faster than anything else.

Have you tried playing games with more than 1v1 or 2v2? LRMs make more sense in shorter games, but in bigger games, the surgical advantage of huge numbers of squadrons shouldn't be overlooked.

Unless I'm totally off my rocker in this case.

How about surgical strikes from Halcyon + Rapture's strike craft, backed up by Drones, and a few support frigates (in tight formation with the carriers to give their fighters the benefit of the caps abilities). Thats a lot of firepower.

If you get countered with a lot of flak you can dock the strike craft, as the flak won't do too much damage to capitals, which will be targeting flak to allow the fighters out again. I micro my fighters round the chasing flak to take out most of the LRM/siege frigates before docking them. While the flak is finished off, and while they're docked they can be switched to bombers to counter whatever's left (Use a few Illuminators to speed up taking the flak out).

With several micro'd groups of fighters big enough to take out LRM/siege ships in one pass they can cause a lot of damage very quickly.