Is RA useless now, or am I doing something wrong?

from Sins Forums

I tinkered with RA against the computer.  I beat the computer back to his homeworld then just built about six of the gateway thingies.  For starters, it took a whole lot of resources to get to that point, and even more to build the gateways, but I finally got them going.

First thing I notice is that they don't just have ships start coming in, you have to pay for them each time, and they ain't cheap.  Having six of the gateways is a waste because I can't afford to spend the money to "summon" on all of them.  Next thing I notice is that the best fleet I see is maybe two heavy cruisers, a light carrier, and a frigate or two.  The worst is maybe one light carrier or just a few frigates.  The fleet composition varies widely and sometimes is complete crap.

After about thirty minutes of doing nothing but trying to put all my energy into RA (after it's up and running), I got a crap fleet.  I spend the next thirty minutes spending the same money to build a fleet manually and I have a much better fleet.  WTF?

I figure I have to be doing something wrong because there's no way spending all that cash to even get there still underperforms just building your fleet manually.

Can someone tell me how RA is supposed to work in the latest version of the game?  I have entrenchment if that matters.  I'd like some details as to what a typical summoned fleet looks like for you and how much it costs because I was spending more money to summon the fleet than the value of the fleet that was showing up.  I'm not talking scuttle value, I'm talking the value to buy the ships from scratch.  In my experience, RA is completely useless and a net loss in resources.

 

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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

You have to make sure you have plenty of fleet slots available.  I learned that the hard way.  I activated it and got nothing, but it still charged me!  Because I had already filled my fleet supply, and hadn't upgraded it recently. 

If I recall correctly, you get about 40-50 fleet supply with each activation, at about 40-50% of cost.  Yeah, the highest tech ships you get are HCs and Carriers - no Overseers or Subverters.  But the beauty of RA, is that you get those ships even if haven't completed the research for them.  It is possible to have a pretty strong diverse fleet with NO military labs (or research)!

Oh, and level 2 RA is much better than level 1.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

RA used to be an overpowered ability before it was nerfed to its current form with the release of v1.1 (late 2008).  Before v1.1, back in v1.01 to 1.05, all you needed was to do the research and build the phase gates and then the free ships would just pour in.  You didn't have to pay to activate it.  (Sometimes it could get annoying because it would eat up your fleet supply and you'd have to scuttle ships if, say, you wanted to build another capital ship or Subverters or Overseers.)  If you built 12-15 of them you could soon have 2300 fleet supply worth of ships (and a 75% tax).  The danger for Vasari going RA was that if the opposition somehow got into their backfield and started knocking out the phase gates, the Vasari could be left with a 75% tax (little income because of maximized fleet supply) and no way to be able to afford to rebuild the very expensive phase gates.

It was one of the core reasons why people played Vasari and it was fun.  In online multiplayer games against human opponents (the real Sins game) people would type out stuff like, "I have Returning Armada, the game is over."  It was great for Vasari players who started off in the "eco" slot (between allies and away from opponents) or on huge maps such as multistar maps where there was lots of room for expansion.  People would tell their teammates, "I am going RA" or "Feed me so I can get RA up."

The original RA was overpowered, but the current version is just too nerfed and too expensive to be viable.  In fact, people rarely do it in online multiplayer now.  I don't even think about it when I play Vasari today.  It's just a nostalgic relic from the past.  Another factor is that there are just better things for the Vasari to spend their money on today such as starbases (in Entrenchment) and most importantly, the new and improved Kostura cannon.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

It should be free.  The fleet sizes should be reduced to the financial advantage of the tech, but it should be free.  It involves enough micro even if it becomes free!  The imbalance was caused by the tech being too generous, not because it was free.  Smaller fleets wouldn't create the same issues.  As an expensive game-winning tech it leaves much to be desired in its current form.  The economic techs of the other factions don't need any effort after being researched. 

Advent's Resource Focus might merit another look at the same time.  If it straightforwardly turns trade ports into refineries then thats good to very good, but does the effect extend outside a single grav well?     

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Free Returning Armada sounds like something insanely OP...

Cost reduction sounds better.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

advent's ressource focus doesnt effect outside the well where it is

 

 

RA needs to be buffed yea its basicly useless now, you need a lot to get it rolling, even if its still viable cost wise, the fact is that by the time you get to RA if you didn't feed or get rushed, then you'll still need loads of time to get a decent fleet to fight with, and a decent econ to keep ra going (witch makes RA longer to get) and if you want a stronger fleet then the other have then you'll need even more economy as you raise your logistic ...

 

 

its basicly not viable since vasari fleet isn't powerfull enough to begin with (that is without subverters or overseers witch are left out of ra) and worst of all you NEED MIL LABS to get enough hull armor and weapon upgrades to actually have a decent fleet ...

 

not a viable option ^^

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

So will the first level of Resource Focus ever pay for itself, if you have to switch the trade ports off to use it?  Can you stack it with only one trade port switched off?

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Resource Focus is virtually never worth it. You would make more credits per second if you left it as a Trade Port than the credit value of the extra resource extraction rate, save for the extreme cases of very high alleigance and 4 extractors.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

yes, you can stack but its very difficult to get anywhere