@Megas: this sounds like a bug. I'll take a look.
The Afflictor's system is probably still too much against any of the high-tech sluggers, though. A Dominator can probably survive its shields going down for a moment, but something like an Aurora or a Paragon that needs to shield tank and has shields that take 10+ seconds to deploy will just die if it gets them switched off in the middle of a fight, especially if the fight involves enemy officers with Harpoons or torpedoes.
Harpoons aside (being a separate problem), this seems like it discourages single-ship deployments. Which is probably a step in the right direction, actually. I'd like the eventual skill revamp and possibly some other mechanics tweaks help take some more steps along that path. And, again, if something like the Paragon lets the Afflictor get within 500 units and it feel safe enough to unphase, that's probably a sign that the Paragon is being surrounded and overwhelmed. If it's not, I mean, half a second of downtime and re-raising in the right direction isn't *that* bad.
If you're trying to duel an enemy Onslaught and it's got an Afflictor buddy to trip you up at all the wrong times, you're going to have a bad day - but that's exactly the point of the Afflictor in that scenario. It's meant to be a powerful
support ship (hence the system actually halving its own energy damage for a bit, so it can't combine with its own AM blaster shots quite so devastatingly).
The bigger problem is in small battles against something like a Hegemony patrol. You can't deploy a similarly sized force because your own frigates will probably just get murdered, while anything big enough not to lose in a straight fight is too slow to pressure them and may still need an escort to avoid getting tailpiped, so now to win the fight you have to heavily overdeploy and then wait for them to time out.
I see what you're saying, but I actually ran into this exact scenario while playtesting. My approach was to, in fact, deploy a comparable force, and then personally focus on keeping the phase ship busy. It was, as I remember, fun and a bit of a nailbiter, but doable. Although, iirc, I was piloting a Shade at the time, which was certainly helpful to being able to be where I needed to be. And multiple enemy phase ships would pose a bigger problem.
It does seem like a frigate kitted for speed might be able to do the job too, but surviving against an Afflictor can be tough - you'd really have to play off your allies to avoid getting chased down, while also not getting them killed.
Hmm. Will think on this some more. It might just be that the Quantum Disruptor could use a bit of a nerf in some way; it's very good in a wide range of situations. It's supposed to be better in a support role, but still useful in a 1-1 - but perhaps it's too useful there atm.
I want to keep an eye on it and see how things play out, without making a knee-jerk change, though.
Really, the new phase ships are approaching a power level where it might be advisable to start carrying around dedicated anti-phase platforms (if such a thing truly exists at the moment) just do deal with them, and I recall you said that you didn't want them to turn into an RPS mechanic where they own regular ships but then die to some specialized countership you have to lug around.
It's all a matter of degrees, right? Don't want the only counters to be hard counters, but if something has a hard counter but can also be countered with skillful play, then that becomes interesting.
I'm certainly not saying it's perfectly balanced at the moment, though, and very much appreciate the feedback!