Argh. Last post was eaten, then thrown back up after I made this one.

AFAIK, any "disable abilities" ability will cancel the missile barrage when it is in progress and the antimatter will still be gone and the ability used.

I just tried this ability last night in a 3v3 multiplayer LAN game. My team ended up cornering the other team, so we all agreed to have a final showdown in the gravwell of a star. I managed to bring in my level 6 Marza.

I... I can't believe how powerful that ability is. I just slowly flew into the middle of the fleet battle (which looked like a rainbow) and used the missile barrage. It was like watching a Christmas tree light up when all my allied capital ships got a level up.

In terms of balance, I honestly haven't played enough of the other races to get all their capital ships to level 6 to see if they have an ability similar to this. I'm amazed. If this is the only ship that can do something like this, then I think it's seriously overpowered.

But... my God was it beautiful to watch

Good point. It certainly does help that the ability can be negated so long as we can see it coming--and if I do see an enemy level 6 Marza or higher, I will be looking at it a lot

However, I see there being a problem being that at least on my computer, you don't see anything quite bright and dazzling to indicate that missile barrage is being used, and that's a tremendous amount of micromanaging to constantly try to interrupt a potential missile barrage from being utilized in the absence of a visual alert. If anything it should have a "spin up" (graphical or otherwise) that everyone could notice so they can counter it, rather than sitting and waiting for what looks like a bunch of small missiles to start flying out--which you can only see if you zoom in enough to miss the rest of the game.

I'm just saying that having the counter to a fleet-finishing special ability is using extended periods of micromanaging seems rather silly.

And exactly how long is the window to counter it btw? I'm assuming in the 10-15 second range. Something like that?

The duration of the ability is 60 seconds. I believe it can be interrupted anytime once activated.

I never noticed that.

One level six Marza can not destroy a whole fleet. It can take down there sheilds though. If you have two lvl 6 Marzas now you have a fleet killer.

For the time being having two level 6 cap ships, you should have all of support/tactical units and a lot of heavy cruisers.

Make the missiles have a decent miss chance; that way it needs teaming up with an Akkan to reach full potential. (Especially if the akkan's range bonus also helps).

I haven't seen it at work yet, I've only used Marza's pre - 1.09. I'll give it a go and see what happens.

Tried a Marza. (1.09b). Only against pirates, the game was basically over by the time I got level 6, but yeah, it destroyed the entire pirate fleet at the pirate base on its own. In one barrage. (It jumped in first. Half the fleet was done by the time the rest of my fleet got there, so it could be it couldn't do ALL of them on its own, but it sure did a lot.).

It does seem a tad excessive. It didn't seem worthwhile before but this is a bit much.

Hum, this makes me even more sad that malice + cleansing brilliance is impractical, if not impossible post 1.05...

Ah well. Has anything happened to the mostly unstoppable repulse? I haven't updated yet (waiting to finish some older games with friends)

honestly, i believe that the ability is balanced nicely. Its easily interruptable, and every faction has an ability to stop the Marza. The TEC Dunov, Akkan, etc. And other factions have pretty powerful lv. 6 abilities as well. TEC is the weakest late game, and this provides a valuable buff to them.

The Subverter only targets frigs. The only Vasari ship that could counter the Marza is a Marauder. Which leads to my point.

The Radiance pwns. No Advent fleet doesnt have one.

The Akkan is a good support ship. No TEC fleet doesnt have one.

The Marauder is just about useless in combat. Nobody ever builds them. I dont want to build a paper-hulled cap just so I can disable one fleet-smiting ability from an actually good combat cap.

So what can we do? Swap Phase Out Hull and Gravity Warhead? I always thought Gravity Warhead fits the Marauder best, with all its speed manipulaiton. Give Disruptive Strikes a chance to disrupt the enemy's current action? Add ancillary benefits to Phase Out Hull to actually make the Marauder worth using in combat?

Yes, the Advent and Vasari had abilities that could shatter fleets. The thing is, the Advent and Vasari abilities werent one ability, buy synergies between two caps that used abilities that complemented eachother. What happened here is someone decided to go ahead and give Cleansing Brilliance and Malice or Volatile Nanites and Phase Missile Swarm to the same ship.