ADrive seems to have gone down...
Anyone else think the rebels a little overpowering, or am I just that bad?
You're that bad, but it's very easy to fix.
Rebellion strength. Romulans have the strongest rebel fleet, 440-460 fleet points, at ~5.5 minute intervals.
This is a resource expenditure of about 35 credits per second and the accompanying resources, for each enemy faction. So yes, the rebel fleets are huge
Point 1, rebel fleets lack stat upgrades. At the point in the game in which you see rebel fleets, they should be roughly 30% across the board in stats. Fewer hull points, shields, and weapon damage. Stat additions are multiplicative in nature. A 30% increase to the durability of a ship as well as the damage output leads to a ship that deals 70% more damage.
Point 2, they lack unlocked abilities. In the case of the Romulans, the main spawns are H'veik's, V18's and V30's. All three of these ships have research locked self repair,. cloaking, and offensive abilities that greatly increase their damage output and durability.
Point 3, they aren't player directed, and will even attack the spawning player if a concerted attack with them is attempted.
Taking their status as a level 8 technology, they're minor nuisances for equally developed military technology.
With half the fleet points in frigates, you can take them down casualty free, unsupported by tactical structures.
With ten logistics in an unsupported cluster of turrets(which they will run themselves into regardless of the other more opportune targets in well, you can also take them down, occasionally casualty free. Ones supported by shielding and repair are a guaranteed result. Fifteen are a guaranteed result too, that's only the first tactical upgrade.
A single starbase with moderately upgraded weapons and defenses wont pay them any mind either.
I don't find them to present a difficulty. I actually had them stronger at one point, so they were an actual threat to wells with defensive structures. The AI was too stupid to handle more than two of them at the same time though. So, I nerfed them down to their current level. Federation rebels are the only ones with siege capability, and they're significantly weaker threats. This is thanks to a 300-320 point fleet size, with roughly a quarter of it going into Constellation Class frigates that run up to the planet and die all by themselves to even a single weapon platform.
Diplomacy pirates can do significant damage in a well with max tactical slots and a fully upgraded starbase. Romulan rebels just took seven fleets to drop a cluster of ten turrets around a frigate factory that wasn't repairing for the first two fights. In that time frame, I made enough resources to fully upgrade and defend half a dozen planets just sitting there with my home planet.
Try building up light defense in each well, choke point reliance is bad for you anyway. It leads to an irretrievable situation when you lose it. Building up starbases with culture, trade and ship building, that's even a profitable move. You can get really loaded with a good starbase enhanced economy that frees up logistics you would have put into ship production and culture while enhancing your trade output.
