Comments - Takanya

It's okay, it's okay.
I understand where you're coming from.
I only just recently started playing RTSes against other players (I love a good comp stomp!)
In any case, I also understand that making something this huge is difficult and time-consuming, so I think I'll just take a day off to try editing unit stats myself and distribute those files to the group I play with.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, though. Still love the mod.

Will Dreadnoughts be making a comeback in the "expansion release"?

Edit: By the way, this release is the most wonderfully stable for us so far. Previous versions would often crash a couple hours in, but we have yet to crash even a single time on this.

1. Lore vs. gameplay would probably make more sense if this were a modification to a singleplayer story mode. However, this is a multiplayer game.

2. Rather than giving a player more incentive to move out of their comfort zone by giving them an advantage by doing so, this power difference is FORCING the player to try uncomfortable alternate strategies that are still not likely to work by giving the other party an unreasonable power advantage. The TEC player can build Novaliths and shoot the reps' planets, sure, but how is he supposed to build enough Novalith guns when the Reps are smashing all of his defenses and taking all of his planets (which he needs to build more guns)? The TEC player can only slightly out-produce the Alliance player, whose ships can easily crush all but the strongest of their TEC equivalents (except starbases). The Advent player can't out-culture the Norlamin player, nor can he beat him in direct combat (and the Norlamin cruisers will just steal his ships, anyway). The Vasari player can not fight the Replicator player, and his only option will be to use his mobility to retreat time and time again until he is eventually cornered at his homeworld (since his raid attempts were all crushed by the Replicator starbases and Orbital Thumpers). The fairest fight left is probably TEC vs. norlamin using Novalith spam, but that's pretty boring.

3. Your point on Replicator research is straight-up wrong, man. Reps most certainly do not "not gain much from upgrades". While they have an extremely slow start to research (this is probably what you were thinking about), they end the combat research trees with hugely stronger stats than everyone else in every category except speed (I assume the Vasari have them beat in mobility, anyway), and their support trees provide them with a very strong economy.

I probably sound like a total **** after all this. ****, the guy doesn't even have to do anything. It's his mod, not mine. But I believe the mod would benefit significantly from better balance, even if it's just a very slight nerf to the new guys or buff to the old guys.
Lastly, question time.
How would you suggest an Advent player beat a similarly-skilled Norlamin player? Or an Alliance/Norlamin player beat Replicators? Hell, even a Replicator BOT?

That doesn't really address the issue at all.
Sure, you can just turn a harder bot's difficulty down so that he stops fighting back, but that's not very fun.
And when we're talking about player versus player combat, the power difference becomes ten times more significant.

I'm not trying to attack you. I'm just pointing out that there's a pretty significant issue with balancing here. I love the new voices, and I've found that this newest release is the most stable one yet. However, I would like to be able to play Vasari without every match against my buddy (playing alliance/replicator) to be a mad struggle to fight even a small number of ships.
This mod is probably my favorite Sins mod to play and the content added is amazingly well-done, but these balance issues become more prevalent every time we try something new (increasing difficulty, more bots, different teams, different factions, etc.) and it's having a negative impact on the playing experience.

Sorry for the super long comments, but this has been bugging me for a while.

I've got a question.
Do you notice the power difference between the factions? Base factions have a fraction of the damage output and armor strength of the added factions, and even the new factions have terrible power disparities. I don't know why you do this or if you even notice it, but it's VERY easy to spot once you try each of the factions out.
A combined fleet of Norlamin and Alliance capital ships, starbases, and even titans has a hard time taking down even a small number of Replicator ships, and in my experience they are almost certain to lose a large number of their own ships during the fight.
The base factions have the same issue, but several times worse. You added incredibly strong new factions and it doesn't seem like you buffed the old guys to compensate at all. I can't expect a TEC player against an equally-skilled Replicator/Alliance player to win past the first ten to fifteen minutes.
I noticed you removed the Pirates this time. That's great, since they were clearly unfinished. And by "unfinished", I mean ridiculously overpowered. Each new faction you add seems to just get stronger and stronger. The pirate rebel titan could do over 1000 damage in a single weapon shot! Holy ****!

tl;dr balancing issues man
Sorry if this comes across as rude or impatient. I love the mod and love playing it, but it sucks when only a few factions are actually viable. It just feels like you don't even pay attention to the stat numbers when you make these things.

Balancing aside, I love the new voices.

No idea what I did, but the same installer that refused to work the last ten times suddenly decided to work this time.
I mean, it doesn't solve the mystery of why the hell it didn't work in the first place, but at least the installer isn't completely broken.

Having the exact same issue on W7 here. I've tried just about everything I could think of, and it always ends up doing the same amount of ****.