The weapon changes on the VL titan stuck me as odd, didn't want to go adding the weapon types to the related research? Or is it just a quick-fix for now?

Speaking of which, I hope to god you remember to sort the VL titan's exhaust hardpoint in an up comming patch, lol.

Either way... Yay. Patch notes!

Just some comments on things that everyone wasn't talking about before (like nano-leech, corvettes, stripped to the core, etc.):

Hooray for the Strength of the Fallen range increase!  It'll be more use-able now without crazy micro.  The duration buff is icing on the cake.

The 5% increase on Reanimation/Resurrection was really needed too.  So hooray for that as well.

Looks like they're trying to make the Ragnarov titan have more viable builds than just "snipe, snipe more, keep sniping dammit".  I like that.

Also, it's great they gave Vorastra phase missles.  It needed the iconic Vasari weapon.

On paper, seems like they made good first step without breaking saves.  

Looking forward to seeing what the MP community says once they start using it.

Your vasari loyalist and rebel titans got nerfed. The tec rebel titan got nerfed lol and advent got buffed again- awesome.  [e digicons]:')[/e]

^ lol that smiley face is priceless 

How did the Vasari Loyalist titan get nerfed? The faction got nerfed with it taking longer to get stripped and shipboard labs, but the Vorastra got a DPS buff, now uses weapons that get buffed from research (including the Loyalists great wave bonuses), can fire on more ships at once and now gets XP from the maw. Plus all the dark fleet abilities got buffed so that will make its phase stabilizers more useful in combat... maybe.

SttC looks reasonable now, although I would have liked it better if they had made another 30% less effective but available earlier.

Vasari received a lot of love, the Rebel Titan got away on Nano-leech with a few scratches while the Orky continues to parade on everyones bones... The 30% Jump Destabilization scale down to 5-20% due to armor. Which is even less of a constraint if they do not effect themselves. But it's nice to begin with.

And the Ragnarov... bit excessive in my opinion. I can see what they were aiming for but at the end of the day that thing is built for high range high single target damage. Having a barrel-mounted shotgun on top of it is just bonus. Now it's they other way around... 

Anyone else find it odd that Phase Cannons got removed?  I mean, Sure, it's keeping the same particle effects, but still.. If you ask me, those have some awesome potential from a lore standpoint (not to mention, red balls of death just look cool).  They're still using the same particle effects, so perhaps this is just a temporary thing until they add them in as a new weapontype next patch (which I'd assume would break saves, hence why then and not now).

Phase Cannons would be awesome weapons if they had some sort of unique shield bypass component or something...  Maybe instead of bypassing shields and mitigation they shields and armor but still have to go through mitigation?  Idk..  Just the term "Phase Cannons" makes me want to keep them in the game very very badly...

As for the Ragnarov, it seems to me that it Snipe may have been over-nerfed.  Of course it looks like instead of bringing Unity Mass up to Snipe's level, they're bringing Snipe down to UM's level.  Explosive Shot IMO should go in the direction of non-damage debuffs so the Ragnarov can do at least a little more than make stuff go boom.  Right now, the only tactics it's capable of are..

"Is it dead yet?"

If YES: "Shoot new target."

If NO: "Fire again."

It's very one-dimensional right now..  Idk, maybe that's just me..

I agree with you completely. It seems like they overcommitted on the Ragnarov being less more than a BFG and now try to change it into a Swiss Army Knife. A Swiss Army Knife with the knife taken out, to be honest.  They could have increased the cooldown on Snipe for starters. That thing sports a gauss and a rail gun not an SMG... Or they could have reduced its HP and shields to make it more of a glass cannon.

 Apart from this making the Orkulus subject to standard(!) destabilization debuffs is just adding insult to injury. If it doesn't debuff itself it will rarely be even affected and if it does it will rarely even care.

I had modded it once to destabilize itself by 80% which sounds like much but boils down to 40% on full armor upgrades, and about 30% with armor research. The hull points are not removed but there is damage being applied to the hull equal to 30% of current hull points so armor DOES come into play. Since it still has full shields after jumping starting with 60% hull is less of a deal than one might think. I had to commit some serious firepower on that thing to prevent it from regenerating to 100% until its shields were depleted. Vasari are faring way better against it of course. But one can easily see that the 30% debuff is only cosmetics. 

EDIT: Since this issue is going to be addressed in the next patch (see above) consider my explanations more or less obsolete...^^ 

The reason they changed the weapon types was because the Vasari titans suffered from having too many weapon types without research available to buff them. The other titans mainly had just their antifighter weapons and the Ragnarov's railgun. The Vorastra had half of its weapons unresearchable. And honestly I don't think we need more near useless weapon techs so I agree with it.

I thought the whole point of the TEC was that they are one dimensional.

The changes to Vasari Loyalist are important. I think it remains to be seen if they're enough but perhaps they will be. For comparison, the TEC who get Pervasive Economy effectively can fleet to enormous size. But getting all of those upgrades are expensive and time-consuming. If the Vasari Level 8 for STTC is equally expensive and time-consuming, there could possibly be reasonable match between TEC and Vasari Loyalist, though that would have to be battle tested for sure. 

For the other races, the Advent Rebels still have the awesome Eradica titan.

The Advent Loyalists, as pointed out in several good articles on the forum, really have nothing going for them. I have tried several times to get enthusiastic about "culture killing" enemies but it's really hard to get that going in a reasonable way. Perhaps the ability to do this kind of strategic culture battling could get buffed. What if the titan were able to export 5 culture/sec and raise the maximum planet conversion rate from 0.07%/sec to 0.14%/sec?

Vasari Rebels are close to being fixed once the starbase gets sorted. It still think the best idea is that it should only be able to starbase into owned systems and into enemy systems in which Vasari have top culture, which is very tough for that race.

Hey yarlen, would you perchance have any comments on the future of culture   and/or any upcoming changes in upcoming patches?

It's a core mechanic to the Advent Loyalists which continues to not really be viable despite their enormous bonuses.  Obviously it's going to a difficult issue to address(it has a rocky history in sins in general).  Something about the game constants makes it too easy to defend against culture pushes- as a result culture techs are usually worthless as they aren't necessary to defend against culture in a cost effective manner and they are too small to allow a cost-effective culture attack.

While certainly there are much higher priorities, I'm curious on what stardock's thoughts are on the current problems with culture and how they may be addressed in the future as even the more outspoken members of the forums in terms of balance suggestions are often at a loss as to what to suggest to fix culture.

Anyway, that aside patch looks look superb, and I'm also really liking what is being said about 1.04.   I'm extremely pleased with the way just about much every problem has been addressed(would have liked a bit more on jumping orkies, but can't expect everything in one patch ).  Also props to stardock for deciding to go through the effort to give corvettes their own damage type in 1.04- best course of action by far.

There was a podcast with Blair Fraser and that Chris guy who is mysteriously is in charge of Rebellion for Stardock on some strategy game website. I don't remember which one it was but one of them said the Advent Loyalists was his favorite faction, and the guys interviewing him really weren't pros at the game and even had trouble with culture (though this was either due that odd Global Unity bug that some people keep finding or she was mistaken that simply taking out a planet with Novaliths stops culture). One of them even said something like he was disappointed MP players weren't using the loyalists culture as a counter to SttC.

Point is, I don't think they fully realize how much base culture sucks against real people, and that its all to easy to repel it with capitalships, which the Vasari Loyalists are naturally going to have a lot of. In my mod I did double the conversion rate to 0.14%, gave some basic ship bonuses in culture without research and made each culture upgrade increase max allegiance a bit, which made it certainly economically effective and can even kill players who get to caught up in attacking to defend against it, but even with all that it can certainly be completely countered as an effective weapon by a player who knows what he's doing and for far less resources than it took to create the culture push.

In short, I think if they made culture more useful across the board then the Advent Loyalists bonuses would start to make a difference (though they still don't have anything like strip and Starbase mobilization), but I'm not sure they realize its lacking, since it hasn't been changed despite years of saying this (not even a buff to the Deliverance engine).