I agree this patch seems to have a heavy pro-Advent bent. As a mostly Vasari Alliance player it does seem like they're really getting the short end of the stick!!!
The TEC uses limited trade port slots to get bonus resources, and\or as an alternate to orbital mining.
Advent build Unity temples to gain special powers - recon, AoE DoT, AoE Slow etc. Current Advent Unity requirements are 2x3x(1+2+3)=36 points but the value varies significantly. A single point in Clairvoyance suffices for irregular recon while for 3x1 point you can basically keep 5 planets under permanent observation, assuming you have sufficient focus. Chastise tends to benefit more from 3x2 points going from 60 seconds of -15% speed & turn speed every 7 minutes to -45% every 90 seconds. With 3x2 points in Avatar you can keep one ship e.g. your titan, with permanent +30% energy weapon damage and +100 psi power. And with 3x3 points in Fury you get 45s of 40/s damage in a 4500 radius (9000 diameter) area with a 90 second cooldown. Then there's Conversion which is basically an Advent Novalith on steroids - 3x3 points means 150/s damage for 120 seconds which will wipe any world that isn't protected by a planetary shield - 10,000 HP + 100/s regen. Regen per second less damage per second leaves 50/s times 120 seconds worth of damage or 60% of a planetary shield. It requires 50% allegiance admittedly but Advent are supposed to be the culture specialists so that shouldn't really be a problem. Thus Advent can annihilate worlds without even sending a fleet in!
Vasari Phase Resonance feels both far more limited, and far far more expensive at 3x(1+2+3+4+5) = 45 points. At the base level you get what, 2 minutes of benefit after exiting a phase lane? Unlock phasic Strike (Tier 3) and you get another 2 minutes, and Resonance Master (Tier 4) extends this to a total of 6 minutes. Yes you can get the Tier 2 Resonance Amplifier Unlock (+200% Duration), but that requires resources - roughly akin to 3x Karrastra Destructors per item, and a ship slot. Late game Phase Resonance is great, assuming you can capture the roughly 25 planets you need to unlock everything, but on maps where you are restricted to 10, or less, you're forced to decide whether to prioritise speed, damage, or reduced antimatter costs and cooldowns, or ignore Phase Resonance entirely! Since it takes 30 seconds for a Lasurak Transporter to cross most of a tiny Dead Asteroid system, and note this is with a slight speed boost, and a full 60 seconds for a Jarrasul Evacuator to cross an Ice Field system, the basic buff vanishes very very quickly if you aren't simply transiting straight through a system, or exiting a phase lane straight into combat. If you enter a system with a large gravity well - and I'm not even meaning the planetary bonus\penalty kind, and the enemy fleet is on the opposite side, you can waste half the buff time just travelling to get to them, and the remainder will expire 3-10 salvos later depending on the weapon type - Heavy Wave Cannon or Beam versus Heavy Phase Missile. Late game you're less likely to be limited to 60 seconds of buffed combat, but it does mean it's borderline useless early game, and completely useless in anything other than offensive action - unless you go full turtle and can keep a defence force sitting in another system at the phase lane leading to your frontline system.
Advent Unity temple slots are also vastly more available than Phase Resonance slots. A quick look at the Replay of one match suggests an average of about 2.5 per planet to Phase Resonance's 1.5 per planet i.e. Vasari need more to unlock everything, but get less. It looks like Advent get 4x Unity temples for Desert and Barren worlds, 2 for Oceanic, 1 for Asteroid, 0 for Gas Giant, and 3 for other worlds. They also get up to 3 points per Mothership via the Unity Meditation ability which is a dump stat with Shield Regeneration and maybe Colonisation being the key abilities - the Jiskun Expeditionary Force's Level 1 Colony Seed Nanites turns any capital ship with a spare slot into the equivalent of an Akkan\Progenitor\Jarrasul with level 2 Colonise, or you can drag along a colony frigate. TEC do get an additional slot on some world types, but since Trade Port costs 2 orbital slots it's something of a trade off - more slots yes, but they have to sacrifice asteroid mining to get their Trade Ports, and Trade Ports cost more than asteroid mines. On the other hand once you've unlocked all your Unity powers, or Phase Resonance buffs, you don't need any more whereas you can just keep building Trade Ports to keep increasing the TEC's increasingly ridiculous economic advantage. And of course from what I've read it looks like the general consensus is Trade Ports are more profitable than asteroid mines even early game so if a TEC player can find the resources to build them rather than asteroid mines ...
Another issue that appears to be overlooked is that while the Vasari Alliance are supposed to be the diplomatic faction, that seems to be a purely early game benefit. The Vasari Alliance's Alliance Consulate grants +1 Influence, +36% recharge. The Alliance Xeno Settlement grants +1 Influence, +12% Recharge but is only buildable on Volcano or Ferrous planets. There's also the Vasari Administrative Uplink which grants +1 Influence, but increasing your influence cap doesn't change the recharge does it? (Still not sure how recharge calculations work) Oh!!! There's also the Alliance Embassy Unlock with +3 Influence, +18% Recharge. Have I ever built that? Given it's apparently restricted to City planets - not sure I've ever seen those, Desert planets - often only the homeworld of an Advent player, Oceanic planet - common but rarely in my area, Primordial planets - less common, and Terran planets - slightly more common than Desert planets but still rare ... Can we please have a Hoth Embassy option etc? 😁
The TEC get +15% recharge via Ice worlds' Ice Processing Facility, and now +3 Influence and +25% recharge via Oceanic worlds' Resort Complex. There's also +25% via the Tier 3 Ostentatious Displays tech. And the Tier 2 Media Conglomerate unlock both boosts culture, and grants +1 Influence per Broadcast Centre. There's also War Reporter but eh, who wastes the ship slot? Media Conglomerate + 1x Broadcast Centre per planet, plus the Ice Processing Facility - and Ice worlds are as common as Volcanic, mean the TEC has comparable Influence to the Vasari Alliance, and likely more given Trade Ports boost culture which generates influence.
Advent get the Telepathic Relay unlock at Tier 2 which offers +1 Influence, +10% recharge, +10% culture rate, and can either be built on every type of planet or close to it. While slightly weaker on paper than the the TEC options, those are locked to Ice or Oceanic worlds, or only increase the Influence, not the actual recharge rate - I'm still not clear on how that's calculated. And since Advent emphasise culture ... It's basically a Xeno Settlement that can be built on any planet rather than just Volcanic or Ferrous, and offers a culture rate boost, which spills over into bonus influence generation, rather than the population.
Per the midpoint in a recent match, an Advent player had 4x Telepathic Relays giving a +40% Generation Bonus from Infrastructure, and this is with half the planets having no item slots used, and the other half only having some slots used, while the Alliance was at +60% via 1x Ferrous homeworld with Alliance Consulate, 1x Volcanic world with Xeno Settlement, and no other possible worlds to build on. The Advent Generation Bonus from Culture however was ridiculous at +131% from 5x Temple of Communion in 5 different systems, with of course the 4x Telepathic Relays, and 1x Manifest Dominion - yes I get the +100% Culture Rate likely helped, but it's just ridiculous compared to the Alliance's +29% from 5x Xeno Relations Centres in 3 different systems. FWIW the Culture Rate was +48% prior to the capture of the Manifest Dominion world and took half an hour or so to rise - not quite sure why, suppression by surrounding enemy systems? To put it another way, it appears the Advent got more influence generation from culture than the Alliance with less culture generating infrastructure, and would have had more from infrastructure - almost double in fact, had Telepathic Relays been built in empty planetary slots!!! Should the Advent really have three times the influence generation capacity of the Alliance?
There's probably other points but this post is already more than long enough!!!
FWIW I do agree the diplomacy side of the game needs some TLC. If you don't get an ceasefire in the first few minutes of the game then it doesn't happen. SoaSE1 had somewhat more complex diplomacy, though to be fair that required an expansion, and other games are even more in depth.
Nope on the Titan proposal. 8 Slots is fine, but restricting it to 3 offense, 3 defence, 2 utility would be a pain! My standard loadout is the Kultorask Phase Missile Launchers when available (T5 now), 3x Weapon Boost - Beam Modulator + Wave Modulator + Phase Missile Augments, Enhanced Nano Emitters - probably utility, Gravity Stabilizer - speed enhancement so likely utility, and then a couple of other things that fit my fancy e.g. Aluxian Military Observers - More XP and maybe faster ability cooldowns, or the Weapon Symbiote or Kinetic Intensifier artifacts. So defensive options likely get ignored as killing power and speed is more important. Obviously YMMV.
It would be interesting if your T5 upgrade to 10 item slots suggestion was applied to Starbases.
Agree that an orphan unit finder - scouts, colony ships etc, could be very useful!
