Refineries were always really weak for what they did, now they're a waste of a hotkey and hardcoded slot for building.

It is my opinion that this thread has gotten off topic and my constructive criticism is that the black market is now and was before not realistic nor balanced and should have a limit and recharge for that limit, this would prevent the current state of affairs, but of course there'd have to be a max they can buy as well otherwise it would be just as unbalancing since the vsari gather metal and crystal so fast and realistic, but perhaps at random intervals the max could increase, and when the pirate base is destroyed it should decrease.

I apologize for any miss spelling or bad grammar, and with the way this thread has been would like to state this is not directed in a personal manner or meant to be offensive or insulting to anyone

(names from medieval total war 2 took along time to get someone the title Lord of Terror)

In an unrelated note, WiC pub-play wasn't 'ruined' by patches. It was still very, very possible - sure, you got stacked teams, but if you looked for servers with a spread of players it was fun. I'm rubbish at RTSs, I have no interest in APM etc, but WiC was a refreshing change. I was able to beat clanners at their own game, since WiC has little scope for 'best pathing'. The 'arty noob' problem is way more annoying than any patch issues.

I'm not a fan of the 1.006 nerfs to AA, however - they were driven solely by idiots on forums complaining about 'IMBA', when a complete novice could pick up the game and be defeating 2 HAA's with no losses to their choppers.

Back to Sins...

Javelins ARE NOT flying paper airplanets. It was tested and they still own cobalts.
So i have no idea what the dev's are talking about if they say LRM's got nerfed.

The Monk:

WiC is merely an example of the devs being retarded. Their ladder system was stupid and therefore, team stacking was normal. But, whatever, I played on the losing team simply because it was funny/competitive/challenging.

It really pains me, despite being such a great helper of the community your analysis on something so simple is off the mark by fathoms. You have not considered the flaws in the system itself. Again, refer to my post where I outline that competitive gaming is a tool for the developers and only those who are skilled enough can utilize it properly - when they do, it becomes an immense cash cow that lasts for possibly ten years.

Oh well.

=/

It was getting all personal so I stopped reading from the end of page 2 on.
Let me just clarify something first - I play for fun only. Yet I like competitive games and think the only way to improve is to play with someone at your skill level or better. My frist several games with 1.03 today were with Haeso and yet the game feels pretty different than what i got used to and my team /in 4v4 and 3v3/ was clearly less skilled compared to his, they were a heck of a fun games. So I think Haeso is a competent guy about this game, and instead of furiously defending the devs nad framing him as a whiner better try the game from his point of view. Like playing vassary vs tec on a small/medium map for instance. Anyway - you may bet that the devs would love someone as good as him to share his experience, especially when its up to more detailed and specific criticism. That spares them time and drives the game ahead. Do not get me wrong tho - I am not his lawyer, but I share most of his opinion about some of the changes in the new patch.
So here is my tuppence.
As a TEC player, after I picked myself up after the initial difference from what i got used to till then, it was an easy mode shopping cheap resources and constantly overwhelmed my much more aggresive attacker who built quite a big fleet much faster with me. Brought the fight in my space, but got exhausted from credits and couldn't pace up with the market and my economy. The market is not very flexible and after you are not able to speculate and actually profit from speculating on it, or prevent others from doing so, that drives the game back a bit in my opinion. Yet I like the fact everyone can buy cheap resources in the very start of the game tho. And the lower mining rate is something i like too /especially as a TEC player:)/. But after changing the mining rate for instance, you may want to adjust the market in a way that one of the races will not have such a big advantage before the others.
And the next thing I noticed and disliked is the uselessness of the siege frigates. Especially in early games when you do not have many cap ships that makes a siege of a planet pain in the ass and kills the flexibility of your fleet as long as your cap ship(s) need to spend a formidable amount of time just bombing planets. Which kill a big part of the fun and of any tactical advatage eventually. With that slow recource gathering and that fragile, expensive in any aspect, but not quite effective and reliable siege frigates planet sieges barely creeps. And constrains the game unnecessarily. So make siege frigates more affordable please. Or boost the planet bombing skills of the cap ships. Or Mazra's only even.
Thats it on first sight. As usual the truth is somewhere in the middle.

GAnelon

Dear god, enough. This happens with every game, balancing issues. Rome wasn't made in a day. There games out there that are 5 years old that still have balancing issue's, to insinuate a game a month or so old should be perfect is madness.

Give it time problems/balancing will be fixed and this wont be the first time a patch will be released fixing X but creating Y.

Sadly this is the reaction you get from teenagers with there extensive years of experience and wisdom

Where were you guys during the beta? A day and half, and already the patch has made the game unbalanced.....Seems people cry "unbalanced!" whenever a patch is released, particularly during the initial stages. Interesting phenomena. No offense to the disgruntled people, just my observations.

There's unbalanced and there's throwing balance out of the window. This one became pretty obvious about 30 minutes into the first 1.03 game.

For people bitching about LRM spam. That's the early game. That's it, stop whining about it. Obviously you know it's going to come, so do something about it. As advent i spam illuminators vs lrms and this patch makes it more feasible. The beginning of the game isn't supposed to be the end. If you're good, you'll make it to a point where you can build a mixed fleet, even on the smaller maps.

As for build order, the name itself just gives it a bad rep. I have never even used the term until i met Haeso ingame and he kept talking about "build order," and i realized i had one. Is it so bad to know what you need to do in the beginning?

- Colonizing Cap Ship
- 2 civic or 2 military depending on whether u have arctic/volcanic planets near
- Get the other 2 research centers, (or 3 since i play advent a lot)
- Start building LRM/Illuminators

After this point, it's time for some real strategy.
Adding Some Drone Hosts, Defense Vessels, etc.
Colonize until you can research Destra/Kodiak.
Build, fight, adapt, build, adapt, fight. Adapt, Win, fight, build, adapt.

As for the v1.03 Trade Changes, I've been yearning to play Tec more than Advent again lately, so until v1.04, it looks like I'll be using their overwhelming economy to my advantage once again.

The game set-up provides a way to balance the cash-black market resource issue a bit. In the setup process, make cash generation slow and mineral mining normal or fast. That helps.