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[Flying Birdy]

I hadn't used any phase ships before. Started a new game with the current version with the idea of making a stealth phase fleet. The first ship I tried was a Harbinger and I don't even know what it's supposed to do other than waste supplies. It just constantly goes in and out of phase when it's not near any ships, meaning most battles it never makes it into combat and just causes the battles to take longer because of the slow motion effect. When it does get into battle, it just sits there and eats damage and dies. It can't 1v1 a ship half its size.

It's not really an AI viable ship - Harbinger too under armored to effectively kill ships out of phase. It's really a ship for player pilots to cheese with. Reaper Harbinger is one of the best builds - I cheesed the redacted fights easily using 5 suiciding reaper harbingers in 0.95. Haven't tested it yet in 95.1 tthough.

[Chronosfear]

...
spoiler for the galatia academy questline below

Spoiler

The once challenging mercenary phase fleet from the academy blacksite questline now feels like nothing more than a single 2x4 lego piece on the floor. It'll maybe leave a slight indent on your foot an hurt a bit, but ultimately nothing life threatening like the game makes it out to be.
And thats not even touching the fact that the ziggurat becomes a literal snail. its not some big bad to be scared of, just acts like any ol tiny frigate and will suicide itself into your capital ships just about as soon as the fight starts

[close]

..

Yep that went from certain death if unprepared to just another big battle. I was suprised how easy I won, since i didtnt read to much in the patchnotes this time.
I think the nerv at least for AI is a bit to hard and as a player I don't like phaseships very much.
But the Ziggurat gained some usesfulness, since its fleet buff (I think how it works now is new) and the removal of the "everyone knows who you are!" debuff

But as a player beeing phased with reduced speed feels slower than flying an Onslaught with disabled engines. (Only piloted the Ziggurat)
A fix could be that the time diliation adepts to lost speed at the same ratio the spd is reduced so its still "x1"

[prav]

I do like that phase ships are getting into more direct fire exchanges, but I'm far from convinced about their overall performance - the phase ships that still find a use seem to do so in spite of their phase cloak, not because of it.

Mod-side my phase fighters are getting some large buffs just to maintain their previous level of performance.

[intrinsic_parity]

I mean, phasing is still the most OP defense in the game, making you completely invulnerable. You just need to play carefully and plan ahead with venting to avoid getting caught out. Use phase in short bursts to avoid particularly dangerous damage, and use you armor to handle lighter damage (speaking about doom anyway).

IMO phase is almost completely non-viable for the AI now, but the player is much better at the required thinking ahead to make it work. On the last patch, AI doom would get 60-70% of the output of a human pilot. Now it's more like 20%, and feels like a massive waste of DP IMO. I also briefly tried an AI shade on this patch, but it really didn't seem to do much.

[Megas]

I just tried AI Harbinger, but it still tries to get behind the enemy and ends up failing spectacularly.  AI is still stuck in assassin mode when it should try to brawl more.

[prav]

Brawling Harbingers quickly become dead Harbingers. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[Megas]

Brawling Harbingers quickly become dead Harbingers. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Player controlled Harbinger can brawl smaller things provided it has armored up sufficiently.  Having an Ion Pulser also helps.  AI just cannot brawl with it.  The progressive slowing kills the assassin routine the AI keeps trying but failing to do.  Without armor ups, Harbinger is dead weight.  Harbinger was all about Quantum Disruptor before, but it cannot rely on that now.

[FenMuir]

Phase ships seem like trash now.
I think the nerf may have broken them.

The question becomes "Why would I use [Insert Frigate Phase Ship] instead of a tempest?" Before that was because of massive burst damage and survivability. Now? I can't really think of a reason. It seems that Phase Ships are probably more reliant on massive amounts of capacitors, missiles, and expanded missile racks instead of anti-matter blasters, which was the phase ship small weapon of choice.

The hard-counter to phase ships isn't fighters anymore. It is ships of the same size class or lower, which is silly.

[TaLaR]

The question becomes "Why would I use [Insert Frigate Phase Ship] instead of a tempest?"

That's why:

Spoiler

[close]

Player piloted Afflictor can delete a Paragon/Radiant with ease. A Tempest can't even remotely threaten either.
Technically, previous patch, but this still applies. Only taking a bit more time, phase ships got slower after all.

[Timid]

very clean 360 noscope

[Megas]

Maybe it is time to come full circle and bring back no cooldown cloaks from 0.7.1 and earlier so ships can flicker cloak and brawl (like they used to) until max flux.  Keep the time shift for faster PPT countdown and weapon reload, but lower speed to offset time shift mobility speed up.

[SCC]

That's what Phase Anchor does.

[FenMuir]

That's why:

Spoiler

[close]

Player piloted Afflictor can delete a Paragon/Radiant with ease. A Tempest can't even remotely threaten either.
Technically, previous patch, but this still applies. Only taking a bit more time, phase ships got slower after all.

That's nice. I don't care what a player can do with them at or near the skill cap when the AI will be controlling the majority of your ships.
I think someone stated that they almost (or did) take down a paragon with a hound or something.

The AI was already a little rough with phase ships, and now giving one to the AI is basically throwing the ship away. The AI doesn't know what to do with it, so combat phase ships are utter trash as of 0.95.1a-RC5.

The AI flying a tempest is capable of much, much more than pretty much any frigate phase ship right now. A destroyer equivalent for Harbingers. A cruiser equivalent for Dooms. To cap it all off, people say their encounters with even the more powerful Ziggurat the AI uses when encountered in the story is now embarrassingly easy. I'd expect a capital class to rip it to shreds.

The devs nerfed phase ships out of viability. I don't even think I use them in my fleet anymore. Next patch will probably make them better.

It's funny, really, since in the lore they're utterly terrifying to fight. They're like stormtroopers. The most dangerous thing ever—Come on, really!

[intrinsic_parity]

I mean, deploying one player piloted 8OP frigate to assassinate the enemy capital ships in two passes is definitely OP AF. I don't do it simply because it's super cheesy and not fun for me, but I'm pretty sure it's the 'optimal' way to do things if you really wanted to minimize risk of losing ships and minimize supplies for deployment.

[TaLaR]

Afflictor is 10 DP now, but otherwise, yeah, it's the most OP thing in the game. AI still is not aware of shield bypass tactics, so fails at both piloting phase frigates and countering them.

Technically it's very easy to nerf - just remove or make AMB incompatible with phase (longer pre-charge, etc). But what's the fun in that? I'd rather prefer phase balanced with assassin playstyle in mind (and currently it's definitely not).