Wait a tic. I made an entire mod based soley on balance! I guess it's fate that before I even touched the caps that I should be called on the cap in the game I use the least.

And by the way. Where do you tutor. I've got a cousin who could use your services.

Forums Go Boom!

Made a change here and there.

Reduced duration of Incendiary. The RoF of the Marza allows it to sustain a stack 3 or so.

Animosity is simply broken right now; it should do as it says it does already. As far as I'm concerned, it's a bug. I did have the cooldown mixed up, though. Mitigation is purely so it isn't a suicide button later on.

Reduced nano-nerf.

Distort Gravity: Destabilization negation (Say that five times fast!) is to accentuate the hit-and-run nature of the ship even more. Interference negation nerf is to both balance it out, and help keep an already situational structure from becoming less useful due to a single level 1 cap. On a side note, ship speed high messes with this ability rather severely. It ups max speed and acceleration by 60% without changing turn rate. That's why I stuck in the huge turn bonus.

Subversion: Duration is vanilla, actually. It also reads an impressive 0 damage and 0 population killed per second.

I tend to agree with you on the Revelation, RA. Thoughts, everybody else?

Repair Cloud: Dunno. Vasari repair capabilities are already extremely lackluster. There's the Overseer, and that's about it.

Point taken on Phase Out Hull. This also affects the proposal for Scramble Bombers, though. Strikecraft can only have AoE abilities, and I don't see that changing either. AoE interrupts on a highly mobile platform would get very powerful, very fast. Or end up useless. I'm not at all sure what numbers would be good there.

Disintegration is a really bad Cleansing Brilliance in vanilla. Your trade the AoE effect and 400 damage for a measly 187.5 hull heal. Not over time or periodic, just one time of 187.5.

Sorry I'm moving slowly on this stuff. Three birthdays in the family in less than a week. Also, it's a hundred degrees outside and I have a cold. I know they're not mutually exclusive, but it's like getting cut-off, and they give you the finger.

Oh yeah, and I'm grafting my own changes into the Mad Scientist mod. Making all the researched abilities into multi-level kind of thing.

This is still merely a Disruptive Strikes buff. Additional 12 dps over three targets won't change anything, neither will additional 4 shields per second (in the best scenario possible). That's about as much as your changes would do.

I'd rather suggest :
- weapon cooldown - stay at 25/50/75 ; let's not bullshit ourselves that this would serve any other purpose.
- shield regeneration - two options:
1] some really serious numbers, like 150/300/450%. Mind you, 450% is still going to give a whopping ~37 shields per second regeneration with 3/3 power surge, level 10 Kortul and maxxed shield upgrades! So it still would be MEHtastic.
2] change it to a flat 10/25/40 shields/second. Progenitor is still going to laugh, but whatever.

alternatively, you could take away the disruptive strikes synergy and give the Kortul a serious DPS bonus.
Instead of 25/50/75% weapon cooldown buff, the beam shots would get an ability to hit 1/2/4 extra targets (it could look somewhat like discharging missiles - graphics are ready). That would in turn cooperate with VN a little bit.

Ehh... i dunno. Whatever you do to this ability, it is almost GOOD when combined with DS because it would take away all AM from a cap ship quickly (when bug gets fixed), disabling its casting ability completely; and yet it is total shit for all the other aspects (64 dps over three targets and less than 20 shields/second regeneration... with 3/3 power surge and all shield upgrades on a level 10 battleship? poor joke... ).
I, for one, don't believe that a Vasari battleship should have 6 upgrade points all working towards simply disabling casting on an enemy ship. It is strong, but just doesn't have any... attraction to it. It should be done by one ability, the DS. Power surge may buff it a bit, but should also do something on its own for heaven's sake.
If Kortul really has to stay as a "no u don't" ship (no u don't use strike craft, no u don't use abilities, no u don't blob frigates...), then maybe power surge should give Kortul a "retaliates 20/40/60% damage back to the attackers". That way Kortul will add "no u don't shoot me" to it's awesome repertoire of "no u don'ts".

Hah. I accidentally undid the change. Redid it. Anyways, I'm loathe to kill an ability that can work without making it identical to something else.

Anyways, what do people think about Guidance and Rapid Manufacturing? I was kinda toying with the idea of slashing the buffed duration of RM and making it AoE. Although it would eat through Cruiser Carrier AM so fast...

@N3rull:

Well, there is always the option of causing PS to buff its DPS directly rather than just reduxing the CD.  That way you can leave the CD redux as is, don't OP DS, and get a nice, big self-damage buff.  It would have to be big, but you could do it.

But giving it a retaliatory ability would just be vengeance all over again.  I mean unless you threw in something with DS where it auto-reflects 20-40% of all damage received... I wouldn't want to see PS disappear...  I like the idea of PS, its just that it isn't working the way it needs to.  

For this reason, you should have it directly buff the DPS by say 75/138/200% while also reduxing the CD by 75%.  This way, you get a boost of 200% DPS to begin with, and then on top of that, you get +75%.  Now, you are dealing 350%, which is a boost of 225 DPS at level 1.  That would be good...

Throw in your idea of a hard regen amount, and you've got something good.  Let's say 10/20/30 for the sake of simplicity.

End result:

+350% damage buff

30 SPS

DS is 75% more effective

The point is, this ability would turn the Kortul into the battleship it ought to be.  Once you flip on PS, you can assume that the enemy will not want to be around.  At level 10, you are dealing about 140 DPS by default, so with PS, you are dishing out 630 DPS.  That is a buff that increases DPS by 490 DPS for 30 seconds.  now, 60% of that is going forward, so... 294 DPS for 30 sec which totals to more than 8000.  I'll say that this is certainly poweful, so you may want to nerf my values a bit, but also realize that this is level 10, and when was the last time you saw a level 10 capital?

I think that Power Surge should deal splash damage like the Kol's Finest Hour. A simple DPS boost is pointless on a cap ship. Also, it should recharge shields at 30/60/120 shield points per second.

Disruptive Strikes should have a chance to interrupt chanelled abilities.

Similiar to my suggested change. Sounds good, but more original than mine.

I've never bothered with these abilities so I don't know. I've heard that Rapid Manufacturing should affect all friendly SC in the grav-well. Guidance sounds meh, but I don't really know.

I have a slight problem with buffing Kortul's firepower by a lot without any other effects. The problem is that the Kortul deals only 60% damage to its main target and the other 40% goes towards some two other random targets that may or may not happen to be present to the left and right of Kortul. I would want some... reliability added to this ability. It just feels like a nerfed PMS. My main problem with PMS is that it sends the missiles randomly. Two PM salvos go towards your preferable targets and the other five fly towards some totally random ships that are going to regenerate that damage before you target them with the rest of the fleet. 
I would either expect the power surge to project the firepower as a truly AOE effect (splash damage on the main target or some kind of extra targets for beams) or a serious buff against its main target above all else (maybe sidebeams could ricochet towards the kortul's main target... dunno... it would definately look cool).

I also like the general idea behind power surge. It has that nasty RAAAAAGHH!!!!!! feeling about it. Like a wizard shapeshifting into a dragon. Like Goku popping up SSJ. Like A10 blasting its afterburners and going on rampage with its 7-barrel 30mm Avenger Gatling gun (I know it doesn't have afterburners, but whatever). 
Only that it doesn't really work now, except for looking cool.

  ... man, calm down. 120 shields per second is like having two overseers patching up the ship all the time. I do believe 18 shields/second (the current value of having 3/3 PS on L10 Kortul with shield ups done) is total bullshit, but 120 shields/sec?
On the other hand, though, the Kol can easily shrug off way more than 120 DPS with Adaptive Forcefield. So it's not that bad after all.

Yet another idea - how about giving Power Surge an ability to transfer 8/16/24% of incoming weapon damage to the Kortul's main target. The lore would be something like the Kortul utilizing the energy from incoming blows to empower its forward weapons systems.
Not quite vengeance all over again, but would be a nice synergy with VN. Wanna kill me? I'll use it to kill you better. It would fit the general "passiveness" of Kortul (the "no u don't"-s).

someeethiiiing ;s

Well, still, you deal 8000 damage to JUST the forward target over that time...  And for the record, Kortuls (unless I am drastically mistaken), deal 138 with full upgrades as opposed to what you said.  Each time, the DPS goes up by 10%.  Try it yourself, it ends at around 115 normally and then you get a DPS boost from upgrades.

Next, given the ability to heal that much, a Kortul can bring itself back to full shields in less than a minute.  To overpower PS, you would have to be dealing 360 DPS, which means that even an entire fleet would have some trouble brining it down.  Although I do like the idea of reflecting damage to the primary target, I don't know...  We are sticking quite a few buffs on this thing...

I still say that upping DPS by 200% directly is the best option.  yes, 40% could potentially get wasted, but once you get this thing turned on, just fly towards the enemy fleet and start blasting away.  Each side would now deal about 200% more than it normally would, while the front is dealing 8k to some unfortunate target.  Its not MB, but its still a VERY nasty ability.

I just think that if we give it a bunch of weird buffs like splitter beams/bouncing beams/other, that we will just end with a very strange ship that no one really understands how to use.  Just get the DPS boost and be done with it.

Unless something changes on all 'fast'. I'm playing normal. See for yourself - you're wrong. I know, I've seen it and I've checked it. The only chance that I'm wrong is if Kortul's infocard lies, but then - neither of us can tell anything.

I have checked the Kortul's DPS at level 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8.
At level 1 the infocard showed 48 total dps (all damage types summed up). I know it rounds to even numbers so it is partially incorrect, but keep reading.
At level 2 the infocard states 49 total dps.
At level 3 the infocard states 53 total dps.
At level 4 the infocard states 57 total dps.
At level 8 the infocard states 78 total dps.

These numbers don't stick to an exponential growth (DPS*(1.1^x)), and frankly exponential growth is not used in Soase AFAIK.
I'm not gonna shit numbers at you cause nobody cares - facts are: no, Kortul's DPS is not 138. It's not even 100. And I doubt it gets beyond 90.
Unless the infocard lies.
And if the infocard lies, then I can put my 500 hours of experience, playing exclusively Vasari, that Kortul does NOT deal any 8000 extra damage or any such number and DEFINATELY not to the forward target alone.
And NO I do NOT always start with the EGG like all of you, cause I friggin' hate this stupid zeppelin. I don't care that I'm shooting my own ass of by doing it, I just hate doing things that everybody else do. That's how I found out Vulkoras bugs, that's how I found out Orky bugs. And that's how I can honestly say the Kortul's dps is NOT even a 3-digit number.
With upgrades it may be 120-ish, but damn... do you really have to make the retardedly expensive Wave upgrades, the otherwise useless beam upgrades and the tier-1-to-tier-8 phase missile upgrade line to squeeze that 0.75x120= 90 DPS from Power surge??? Spread over three targets, two of which completely random that may not even be there to get shot at?

Come on >.> . Everybody agrees PMS is far from awesome (everybody who REALLY paid any attention to how it works in battle, not people fantacizing over the numbers alone) and PMS theoretically does 600*7/15 = 280 DPS . That DPS is on level 5 without a shitload of cash spent on upgrades.
Take disintegration and use it on a ship. You will see that it does NOT deal uber damage. That 1600 may look juicy on the infocard, but even a blindman will see that even a COBALT survives this shit.

Please, for once start a game with a stupid AI, select a Kortul instead of that retarded EGG and pay attention to the numbers and health bars.
You will see that

Power Surge

is

shit

.

I'm saying that increasing DPS by 350% (200 from DPS, 75 from CD) would yield more than 8500.  By the way, it was actually closer to 9 thousand.  So, let's say that with max upgrades, it deals 120.  That still means 8500 damage to 1 target over 30 seconds. The total damage dealt in that time would be about 16000.  That is still a VERY big number.

How is 7500 damage to a single target not powerful?  Answer me that.

And what was the point of the meaningless ranting about the Egg and Vulk?  There was no point in that.  For the record, when I play, I do tend to get an egg first, but after that, I don't ever get another one.  I get it to colonize, not its combat ability even though it is a cap slayer.  In other words, I don't spam Eggs like many Vasari players do...

And did you not notice how I've suggested BUFFING the thing?  I wanted to increase damage and/or make bypass shields.

7000 damage over 30 seconds. Let's think.

Slightly OP.
But I like it.

I still hate those sidebeams leeching on Kortul's firepower. I like it how they look (pulse beams are one of the more cool looking weapons around, particularly the EGG ones), but in terms of combat effectiveness, they're just shit. Their targets are just random, switch too often as the battle progresses. They're only useful against rebels in the first five minutes of the game.

Ehhh. Maybe we could just leave the offensive bonus as is and bump its defensive capability.
If flat 120 shields/second is too much (I suppose it might be), then maybe one could just give the PS a boost of +3/5/7% to max shield mitigation? How's that?
At level 1/3 it would mean roughly 9% damage reduction.
On a level 10 Kortul with 3/3 PS it would mean 28% damage reduction.
Or maybe +3/6/9% .

Does anyone recall any max shield mitigation (positive) buffs except Advent culture? Cause I can't remember any. It would be quite original, effective and would fit the Kortul.

@N3rull:

Ahh..  Okay...

And the 7000D/30sec is for the forward weapons alone.  That was also an estimation.  The total damage dealt over that time would be around 17000.  So 7000 to one target over that time isn't all that unreasonable.  I mean, if its that big of a deal, run.  If not heal.

Ok, maybe I went overboard slightly with shield recharge, but the Kortul should be comparable to the Kol, thats all.

Nice idea. Overall, there are just so many different ways to fix then Kortul. Volt, your DPS suggestion sounds good. Maybe too good.