Shortlist simple easy 1.035 suggestions (or 1.04 ;/)

Published on March 15, 2008 By innociv In Sins of a Solar Empire

Well the game is rather.. messed up now.
This whole people accidently telling the enemy your plans because /a doesn't stick.
The lack of colors, you can't tell if someone said something to everyone or just you. While what you say will go "To allies: yada yada" everyone else just gets your name and text, so you have no idea if they accidently told that to the enemy or not, you have to ask if they ally chatted that.
Then there is the bad imbalance between races now from the new black market. The only time people play Vasari now is because they purposefully want to gimp themselves and know they'll win anyways, or because they haven't seen how much worse they are(which then the game starts and 20-30 minutes into it they say "my god vasari is horrible now..")

Are we going to have to wait until 1.04 to get these things fixed?.. 1.04 is supposed to have lots of new features and extras as I understand it, and thus it's not coming out next week or anything. Probly late next month, right? But can we wait and undure the game being so messed up until then in online play?..

I'm going to keep this simple without to many explainations so that it's not tl;dr:

Firstly.. Please bring back random amounts of extractors per planet like in the "Random Resources" setting in 1.02!

Black Market

How the Black Market works now is much better, but the prices are not. This whole tec and vasari imbalance is coming from cheap buy prices and even worse sell prices. The solution to this is simple.. adjust the Black Maret so buy pries tend to go higher and stay high, and sell prices be much higher too.
The 3:2 ratio was better than the one now
sellPrice 1.6(up from 0.8) buyPrice 2.4 would be good, IMO, and have booms happen twice as easy and the price go down slower after booms.

LRMS
TEC Jav LRM

1.03 cost. 275/45/25
Supply increased to 6.(up from 4)
Reduce range (it's at.. 11000.. now.. With Akkan it's 13000 or so. It should be getting 11000 WITH akkan, so start at 9250 or so)so that it doesn't outrange Gaurdian's Repel skill and so many other abilities without having Akkan(that'd be buffing akkan if using it made javs outrange some abilities. Tactics, and such).

Advent Illum

1.02 cost. 360/50/40 I believe it was
Supply increased to 7.(up from 6)

Vasari Assailant.

1.02 cost. 360/55/35
Supply increased to 8.(up from 6)

All LRMS

Medium Damage Vs. Very Heavy increased to 100%(up from 75%, this is what heavy cruisers and buildings have now.
Building armor changed to a new "Building" armor type. Medium damage vs. buildings 50%(down from 75% it had on Very Heavy) All other damage types vs. this building would be the same as Very Heavy's.
Medium Damage Vs. Cap armor to 50%.(down from 75%) At starting at 11/13 DPS, half that is still good dps against a cap ship. Illums have anti-cap damage, so they'd do the same, but each beam of theirs is only 5.2DPS against caps versus the current 9.75 of assailants. 50% would bring assailants down to 6.5 for caps, much better.
In short, LRMS damage increased vs HC's, lowered against buildings and caps.

Light Frigates
Vasari Skirmisher

Hull Regen increased to 1.5(up from 1.0)
Damage increased to 13 DPS(up from 10.5)
Range increased to 4250(up from 3500)
Increase hull to 800(up from 700). Reduce shields to 340(Down from 440). [More effect from hull upgrades, more effect from healing abilities when hull is gotten to sooner. It's self repair would happen sooner with hull getting attacked sooner.)
OR reduce its supply to 6, increase DPS to 11, reduce cost to 360/60/0(down from 400/70/0).

Siege Frigates

1.02 Cost or 30% increased DPS. (currently a siege cap costs LESS than 4 siege frigs, and the siege cap is as good as 6-8 siege frigs at bombarding planets, while obviously the siege cap is obviously much better at fighting too.)
1.03 Survivability

Carriers.

Currently well.. http://dstuff.l2wh.com/images/soase.png This shows well what I mean. Fighters are ONLY better against LRM's and bombers. Besides killing LRM's, you use bombers. This is rather.. or very odd to me. It would also make sense to me that if you had enough bombers you could overwhelm flaks (heavy armor) but this isn't the case. You need something like 7 carriers with bombers for every flak to overwhelm them. So as long as someone has just one flak which costs 1/2 as much for every 5 carriers, your heavy cruisers are safe.
This wouldn't be too much of an issue, but HC+Flak is a very strong combination. Bombers are their only really counter, but you only need 1 flak per 5 bomber squads to stop them. You can't use light frigs to kill their flaks because their HC's eat them.

Increase bomber HP 50% higher.

Fighters do 1/4th the damage as bombers against everything but LRM's and scouts, basically. But with how low hp/shields/armor scouts are you might as well use bombers for those too as 8.22 vs 19.50 is good enough against them. This shows rather well how you should only use fighters vs. bombers and lrms. On the other dozen of the units, in any situation, use bombers.
NAME........DPS.....vs v-light...vs light...vs med...vs heavy...vs v-heavy...vs cap...vs bomber
FIGHTER.....9.75..........9.75......19.50.....2.44.......2.44.........2.44.....2.44........14.63
BOMBER......16.44.........8.22.......8.22.....8.22.......8.22........16.44....12.33.........1.64

I'd give fighters a new damage type to make them just as good against medium armor and heavy without buffing scouts.(even if fighters did 9dps vs. heavy armor, flaks kill them twice as fast, so it's effectively half. This new damage type should do 100% to medium, 100% heavy, over the 25% it does now, but the rest the same as AntiLight)
100% chance (up from 75%) to hit Bombers with this new damage type, this balances out the HP increase for Bombers with fighters attacking them. (effectively 33% increased damage against them vs. their 50% hp increase should work fine)

Numbers if Fighters got a new damage type that was same as AntiLight but 100% vs medium and heavy.
NAME........DPS.....vs v-light...vs light...vs med...vs heavy...vs v-heavy...vs cap...vs bomber
FIGHTER.....9.75..........9.75......19.50.....9.75.......9.75.........2.44.....2.44........14.63
BOMBER......16.44.........8.22.......8.22.....8.22.......8.22........16.44....12.33.........1.64
HOWEVER you must take into acount while they'd do SLIGHTLY more than the 8.22dps bombers do vs these, that the flaks will kill fighters about twice as fast as bombers especially with bombers getting a bigger HP increase to better survive flak, so bombers are better in situations against flak always, vs heavy and medium it depends on whether there is flak or not.
Also since abilities do damage vs. fighter typically(cap abilities) fighters are more suceptable to these, more to take into account with their balance.

Support Cruisers
Vasari Subverter

Increase supply cost to 9-11(up from 5)
Increase cost to 450/130/110(up from 400/80/80)
Increase cooldown on it's aoe disable to 70(up from 60)
Decrease duration on it's aoe disable to 25(down from 30)
If that isn't enough maybe it needs AOE range reduced aswell..

Vasari Overseer

Have it's health buff no longer require facing the target or greatly increase turn rate.

Buildings
Refineries

Increase their effectiveness, I'm not exactly sure how much.
Reduce cost to 1500/75/100(down from 1500/125/175) for vasari/tec's of course.. advent shares it with trade port.

Capital Ships

Remove the XP sharing so that two caps doesn't make you get half xp. Both caps should get the maximum xp. There is nothing overpowerd at ALL about rushing a 2nd cap, or using more than 2 caps, so why penalize they're xp rate? 2 caps might become viable with this change and the lrm nerf.

Mostly just simple entity editing except the black market and text thing. :3

Edited to include something about AntiMedium damage type, and Vasari skirmisher as no one uses them, they are highly regarded as far to expensive/not good enough.

Edited in suggestion to buff Refineries

Comments (Page 2)

apoc527

on Mar 15, 2008

I would tend to agree with innociv, simply because he seems to know what he's talking about. Whether or not he's a so-called "evil high level player" is irrelevant to me in this situation--the one thing that nobody can argue with is that "high level play" will break a game and determine what needs to be changed much better than casual play. So, I say bravo, innociv. Keep it up!

Thinking42Man

on Mar 15, 2008

I agree with all the suggestions made by the OP, great work man

I'd only like to add that the Black Market should be made more responsive to player purchasing (to discourage bulk purchasing), and that the highs and lows that occur due to this be more persistent, so the effects of heavy buying/selling are felt for enough minutes to have a considerable impact.

WindsweptStone

on Mar 15, 2008

Heavy Cruisers are probably the best LRM counter, I don't think making LRM's stronger versus them is the way to go, personally. LRMs are already the spam du jour, so making them better in any way, even if it's conjunction with changes against them seems like a dangerous idea that might just prolong the state of things until yet another patch. It's kind of sad that right now a T2 ship does almost everything you need in the game, making them weaker, more expensive and just generally less versatile seems like it might be a good way to go. The only things they don't do well is fight Heavy Cruisers (which come out way later than them) Flaks (which take forever to kill them), and Fighters (the units which harbor the Fighters the LRMs can quickly catch and eat). I think Heavy Cruisers vs LRMs are a good match right now, Heavy Cruisers are close range only, expensive and come out much later than LRMs, they should be able to put the hurt on once they get in range to do so, I figure.

A supply cost increase would help, but increasing your supply cap, especially early game, is very easy and not that costly, so even an increase of 2 or 3 probably won't have the desired effect. I like the idea of significantly weakening the LRMs (to make them long range units, not all around boxers) or maybe even play with giving them some kind of minimum range to encourage keeping them in the back of a mixed fleet, and not just the only unit you'll ever need.

I agree on the Black Market things, Booms should last longer and be much higher (a boom of 500/100 is nothing compared to how prices used to be, it being three times higher and staying that high would be a real help). It would have to be done carefully not to give Vasari too big an advantage, but right now TEC's credit advantage rules the day.

I wouldn't mind if Siege Frigates really were made of paper so long as their population cap was reduced a bit. Right now they just eat so much population cap that they're hard to justify, combined with their cost it's almost better to just do a capital ship for all it's flexibility. Making them glass cannons seems like a feasible solution so they can still be decent raiders but easy to counter so long as you have some kind of defense or ships in the area.

Someone mentioned research, which I think could also be addressed sometime, hopefully soon. Right now weapon research is just...very expensive for what you get. You have to pour a lot of credits, crystal and time into these techs, and they generally give just a 5% boost over the previous level. For the full level of research you often only have a 20-25% boost in effectiveness, and for the cost of all the research you could have just made a ton more ships. Weapons research right now seems just be a waste, it's better to increase your dps by adding more ships and researching new ships, rather than giving minuscule bonuses to the existing ones. Armor/Shielding research is similar in my opinion, but since those give bonuses in both the hitpoints and the regeneration rate, they're not quite as bad. The only one I don't mind are the TEC missile ones, because they're also a stepping stone to the Novalith, the others though lead you nowhere.

My opinions, in summation...

1. Lower hitpoints/armor of all LRMs, if possible play with the idea of a minimum range.
2. Increase the severity and duration of both booms and crashes in the black market, as well as the duration of the price increases that may occur that are less than booms or crashes.
3. Lower population cap and cost of Siege Frigates, significantly reduce their hitpoints.
4. Increase the bonuses obtained by researching passive military techs.

Hope at least a couple of those will be considered for the next patch...

innociv

on Mar 15, 2008

HC's, something that tears up your buildings EARLY GAME, and caps, shouldn't have their counter be HC's.
Also, increasing LRM damage vs. HC's isn't going to make them "super HC counterers!". It's just a 33% damage increase against them, that's not even going to make 2 of them able to take on a HC I don't believe. They'll only work in combination with other ships, which'll encourage people to use more mixed fleets instead of just HC spam.
At the same time, LRMS currently aren't BAD against HC's. It'll just be a minor buff as HC's don't have many counters, and even with 100% vs 75% damage it's not like they'll be a hard counter, or even soft counter, just better with support.

Wind, youre' right it's easy to increase supply cap early on, but it IS costly. Fleet upkeep reduces your credit income.
But like i mentioned with changing AntiMedium damage, that'd be nerfing them too. And making bombers and fighters better(albeit not better against lrms) i think will encourage people to actually build these to counter lrms with.

*IF* This doesn't balance them then i'd say reducing their hp/shields 15-30% wouldn't be a bad idea. But you never want to over-nerf things and water down the game. When possible it's best to buff something else to fix another thing being too good. If LRMS proove still being good then making them die easier would be good for the next patch afterwards.

Astax, in reference to vasari needing to upgrade fleet earlier. Yeah, that's the point. But you're right this is an issue for Vasari because Assailant is their ONLY decent early game unit. Skirmishers only become good with healing and health upgrades, but at that same time you could get enforcers. Sentinels aren't good until phase missile upgrades and charged missiles. Scouts are too expensive. Vasari's only early game option is making assailants and forgetting about skirmishers SO I updated it with proposed changes so skirmishers might become an option.

But if you look at it, really assailants get buffed. at javs at 4 supply and assailants at 6, tec can make 50% more javs with the same supply. This way they wouldn't, that was part of my intent as tec javs have always been the biggest problem while Vasari made assailants as it was their only option!

Sykonaut

on Mar 15, 2008

I throw my support in with this topic. This is what these type of topics should be, not "OMG NERFZ" and then no suggestions.

I specfically support chat function. =P

hydrocarbn

on Mar 15, 2008

Also, waiting on the fix to allow more pages to the factories, more than 5 capital ship slots, and more than 4 abilities.

It would also help if you defined the list of ships to be built in each factory in its .entity file rather than tying the EntityType to the type of factory in the PlayerX.entity file, that way we could add more factories rather than relying on the limit of two types we have now.

Drexion

on Mar 15, 2008

Thought i'd add my two cents. Overall I agree with most of innociv's suggestions. I know Cykur disagreed slightly with the bomber buff but I happen to think its necessary. Something is needed to make carriers more effective IMO, right now they have way too many counters (fast units to run them down, heck even HC kodiak, flaks, etc) and their not that effective.

Regarding Subverters, I half agree with Innociv

I agree they need some kind of nerf, I do think the numbers he listed may go *too far*. How about half the suggested increase and see how we do? hehe.

Cykur made a good point that this may be a bit too much, too fast. We definitely need the black market change and a few others, but perhaps we can "work toward" the other suggestions over time with smaller changes?

Cykur

on Mar 15, 2008

Sometimes you can't judge a ship on its own merits but on how it works with the race in question. Advent is like this, with the whole fleet being much greater than the sum of its parts. Go ahead and nerf subverters...I barely ever use em, I would sooner tech for RA than tech for Subverters and still get buried under a mountain of Kodiaks. With the exception of "epic sized" maps, I rarely see subverters get used.

ohiomike12

on Mar 15, 2008

Finally good to read a suggestion thread that doesn't result in name calling and rudeness.

kanesfury

on Mar 15, 2008

I agree with innociv also i think we should lower cost for some of the advent tech it costs way to much crystal for most tech

MegaVolt

on Mar 15, 2008

Great list, I agree with most of it and want to generally say that innociv seems to be a cool guy

Three things I'd change:

1) You are overdoing subverters. Yes, they are strong but over-nerfing things gets done really fast ... I'd go with a smaller nerf and if that isn't enough maybe another one later. Please don't make them really weak in one go.

2) About strike craft: There is an easier solution. Why not simply double all bombers HP and at the same time double fighter damage. Fighter vs bomber fights stay exactly the same, fighters get capable of really countering LRM (which they can't right now since LRM own carriers way too fast), bombers get an edge on flak and fighter dogfights get done faster. Maybe that would also be overdoing it ... so maybe 150% increase in bomber HP and fighter damage and see if it's enough first.

3) LRM. 8 Supply for the Vasari one is way too much, it is not that much stronger then the TEC one. 7 would be better. And I don't agree on the damage increase versus heavy cruisers. Those cruisers are the only way to kill LRM right now (since flak take way too long to do it) and they should not die to LRM fire so fast.

transitive

on Mar 15, 2008

i agree with many of these suggestions. there are a few points i would like to elaborate on with my own suggestions.

black market

the previous buy:sell price ratio (3:2) was better than the current one (3:1). essentially the new system is permanently a buyers market and favors massive credit income while severely punishing massive resource income. excess credits can ALWAYS be converted into something useful by using the market but excess resources can only be converted at an extremely inefficient rate. the extent to which this makes the TEC faction overpowered cannot be understated.

i would suggest the following changes that allow for the market to sometimes be a buyer's market (favoring credit income) and sometimes a seller's market (favoring resource income)

1. dramatically increase the frequency of market booms and market collapses, any large scale buying or selling (say >1000 resources at a time) should cause rapid change in prices.

2. during a boom (very high demand, lots of buyers/not many sellers) the sell price for the resource should increase at a fast rate until the boom is over, encouraging people to dump their stockpiles to raise cash. this would also allow shrewd players to build up large stashes of resources and wait for a boom before unloading for large profit. the buy price should remain unaffected though so as not to unfairly penalize players with a credit based economy. stable buy prices encourage liquidity, which is good for the game. there's nothing more frustrating then needing to buy a little bit of metal but you can't afford ANY because a boom just hit. a boom should be a good opportunity for people to profit by unloading their stashes but it shouldn't put a player into temporary paralysis.

3. during a collapse (very low demand, not many buyers/lots of sellers) the buy price should decrease quickly to encourage buyers to unload their credit surplus and snatch up resources at fire sale prices. this would allow shrewd players to buy up large stashes of resources at temporary low prices and either use them to stimulate production or save them for a boom that might come much later on. the sell price should not change at all during a collapse for the reasons mentioned above. the idea is to reward shrewd players but not to paralyze players who need to sell a small amount of resources to raise cash.

LRMS

return their range to 1.02 levels, they didn't need a range boost. as it is now only other LRMs and fighter squadrons can engage LRMs.

Siege Frigates

are massively expensive and hardly do anything at all. they're just a cleanup crew to kill a planet a bit faster after you've already destroyed everything in the system. if these ships are to earn their spot in the main battlefleet they need to do alot more damage, such that you can critically wound a colony before your enemy can destroy all your siege. either that or their ship-to-ship weaponry should be much more effective so they are more versatile.

Light Frigates

these have a very bad dynamic in the current LRM dominated warfare. LRMs are usually accompanied by Flaks to protect them from fighters (which destroy LRMs very efficiently). The only thing that destroys Flaks efficiently are Light Frigates but these are torn to pieces by the LRMs before the Light Frigates can do enough damage to the Flaks to matter. Light Frigs need to either take a bit less damage from LRMs or need to do ALOT more damage to Flaks (which are naturally more durable then most frigates anyway).

the big balance problem as it stands right now is that it seems clear that LRM + Flak > Carrier (with fighters) + Light Frigate. LRM+Flak is cheaper and available at a lower point on the tech tree. Carrier+Light (a mid-game combo) should compete better if not totally trump the early game combo of LRM+Flak.

innociv

on Mar 15, 2008

I really don't think what I suggested for Subverters is "too far".

They are more than TWICE as good as all the other races 2nd support cruiser, yet costs almost the same as the Subjugator. Really, they're more like 3-4x as good. So is it too much of a stretch to have them cost. They're so good we've just been hiding how good they are from people, telling each other not to inform people about them.

But i'll break it down:

Advent Subjugator:
400$/80m/80c 5 supply
550 hull, 300 shields
Good heal(must face), disables debuffs.
Disable for 40 seconds. 40 second cooldown. (so 1 can chain on 1 unit. Essentially 1 of these will counter a SINGLE HC, other support cruiser, as they can chain disable it.)

Vasari Subverter
400/80/80 5 supply(I've suggested changing this to 450/120/110, 9-11 supply)
600 hull, 300 shields.
Reduce target mitigation 10%, 25% increased phase missile penetration.
Disable for 30 seconds, 60 second cooldown. It's aoe is about a big as an asteroid I'd say, big enough to usually disable 10 loose ships, but i've seen 30 ships that where stacked disabled by one. (So 2 of them will disable 10 units minimum generally, so that's basically disabling FIVE more for the same cost and just 1 more supply!)

Just for cost reference:
Iconus Gaurdian
525/110/120 7 supply.
So is it really so drastic to make the Subverter be 450/120/110 9-11 supply?

Right now subverters is the only thing keeping Vasari alive as a race with how hard the eco is nerfed. But in 1.02 they were very overpowered. And part of this suggestion was to change the market so prices will tend to be around how they were in 1.02, much much higher selling and higher buying prices.

I wonder really if it was intended to even make Subverters AOE disable? The description makes it sound like it's single target only such as Subjugators. Intended or not, I and others like the aoe disable. I'd rather it keep the aoe disable and be balanced out with nerfs to it's cost, supply, and take 3 of them to chain aoe rather than just 2(at 30/60 duration/cooldown two can chain disable, if it's 25/70 it'll take 3)

Yes subverters have the disadvantage of having to melee the target to do it's disable, which puts it up close so it can die easier, but again, this is a very powerful unit. It's already disabled 10-30 units for 30 seconds(25 under my suggestion), even if you lose a bunch before more disables you've had a big headstart on them where your ships haven't been taking damage and yours have.
So you lose some subverters, you've destroyed a bunch of their fleet. Even if you just kill one HC without losing one of your own with a subverter, it has made it's cost back to you!

Now yes you can't compare unit to unit. Vasari needs this good support unit to counter late game advent, or tons of kodiaks. That's why i've suggested making the Subverter just twice as good as the 2nd best support cruiser, instead of 3x-4x better.
It'd still be the best, just not overpowered. And they are overpowered. Yes I love their overpowered goodness myself, but i'm not going to like it when everyone is playing vasari just for this unit and using them against me all the time. It will remain powerful with what i've suggested, just not TOO powerful

Reason behind high supply is that that won't hurt someone just making a few of them. But if you make 30 so you can completely lock someone up, that's 330 supply if they take 11. You could fill up that supply with alot of damage dealing units and units with better tanking, or not drain your fleet cap earlier.

The reason you don't hear "nerf subverter!" threads is because it's unknown how good it is to many people. The description sounds like it's single-target disable, thus it looks worse than Subjugator. It takes using them on a group and being observant to see it's aoe and extremely powerful.

MAYBE I'm overdoing it with them. Maybe just changing the ability duration to 25 and cooldown to 70 would be enough. But they definitely aren't balanced how they are now. (or well, were in 1.02 where Vasari had more stuff going for them.)

Stormhawk4107

on Mar 15, 2008

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but for certain achievements like Union Buster where you have to kill X of a thing to get it, id love to see that info displayed somewhere so you can tell how far you have to go.

Otherwise I love the 1.03 patch and the ideas presented here by innociv and most others.

innociv

on Mar 15, 2008

To person a bit bove about black market, yes basically what I was saying is we need prices more like 3:2 not he horrendous 3:1 we have now (which has hurt vasari so bad)

Great list, I agree with most of it and want to generally say that innociv seems to be a cool guy Three things I'd change:
1) You are overdoing subverters. Yes, they are strong but over-nerfing things gets done really fast ... I'd go with a smaller nerf and if that isn't enough maybe another one later. Please don't make them really weak in one go.

2) About strike craft: There is an easier solution. Why not simply double all bombers HP and at the same time double fighter damage. Fighter vs bomber fights stay exactly the same, fighters get capable of really countering LRM (which they can't right now since LRM own carriers way too fast), bombers get an edge on flak and fighter dogfights get done faster. Maybe that would also be overdoing it ... so maybe 150% increase in bomber HP and fighter damage and see if it's enough first.

3) LRM. 8 Supply for the Vasari one is way too much, it is not that much stronger then the TEC one. 7 would be better. And I don't agree on the damage increase versus heavy cruisers. Those cruisers are the only way to kill LRM right now (since flak take way too long to do it) and they should not die to LRM fire so fast.

1. Maybe.. I still think they'd be great and i'd use them with what I suggested. I played Vasari in 1.02 after all(but now it's like playing with a limp). Just changing the duration/cooldown is maybe enough.

2. I thought about the bombers and fighters thing A LOT, and a 50% increase in bomber hp and a new damage type for fighters I'm pretty sure is the only way to go. No other damage types would work. Changing AntiLight itself would imbalance scouts vs. light frigs a bit. So Fighters need their own damage type.
Doubling Bomber HP would make fighters not do well enough against them. +50% is enough.

3. Assailants are better than javs late game. MUCH better. Look at it as Assailant vs. Jav now.
Before Jav was 4 supply, 11dps, assialant was 6 supply and 13 dps. For 50%!! more supply assailant only got less than 20% more dps!
Now with 6 for jav, 8 for assailant, the assailant is 33% more supply for 20% more dps. More equal now.
It's a 2 increase to supply for assailants and 1 for illum.. I believe it'll cut down on the spam well.
Look at it this way too, Javs got their supply increased by 50% while assailants only get theirs increased by 33%
Supply wise, assailants have been made more equal to javs this way, as jav spam has been the biggest problem. Vasari only made assailants because they're other options weren't that good.

And a reason why assailant spam is prevalant, like i said, is Vasari has no other early game options. Skirmishers cost 7! supply, while assailants are 1 less! Why would you use Skirmishers, people have asked themselves to get an obvious answere.
My proposed buff to Skirmishers might give Vasari another option and not be REQUIRED to get 1 mil lab make assailants at the start.
Even if your enemy makes flaks, it's painful to make light frigs for them.

Also as I mentioned before, a 33% damage increase(100% instead of 75%) against HC is NOT going to make them very strong against HC's. They will still be worse than bombers (when not supported by lots of flak), support cruisers, and heavy cruisers. So they'll be the 4th best to counter. They are 4th currently, but they are a distant 4th.
2 LRMS are about equal in cost to 1 HC, but even with them getting a 33% damage boost 10 LRMS is not going to kill 5 HC's.
But if you keep Buildings and HC's both having the same armor type, and make AntiMedium do 50% against both in order to nerf LRM damage vs. buildings(which badly needs to be done!), then it's going to make that 4th best unit against HC's be worse. This would be buffing HC's as it's one less thing that does decent against them, and there aren't many things that currently do decent against them.
Wouldn't call LRM's a counter to HC's but they are "a unit that does decent against".

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