ucross wrote:Because it does nothing for you when just straight out attacking or defending an outpost, which is the majority of battles. It's not useless. I've used it quite effectively sometimes. It's just far more useless than many of the other specialists. For example: a helmsman blows it out of the water on offense.

i think some people has his own play style.

so if you like helmmans more why not. that helmman cant cut trough the nav so it has it own weakness but pirate cover that weakness.

pirate using need good placement to work and his is life safer when you got queen bounty sub or homming martry nearby when helmans cant do that.

ucross wrote:Because it does nothing for you when just straight out attacking or defending an outpost, which is the majority of battles. It's not useless. I've used it quite effectively sometimes. It's just far more useless than many of the other specialists. For example: a helmsman blows it out of the water on offense.

A helmsman isn't an offensive specialist though, and that's what I was comparing it to. There are only 5 unprompted offensive specialists, and generally I'd take the pirate over the other 4.

I dont seem to have a problem with any of these specialist's. I always find a way to counter any combo with what ever i have at the time... Except kings. Can't seem to figure that one out.

istop82 wrote:I dont seem to have a problem with any of these specialist's. I always find a way to counter any combo with what ever i have at the time... Except kings. Can't seem to figure that one out.

Dealing with kings is easy. You just need more kings. Problem solved.

v3xt wrote:A helmsman isn't an offensive specialist though...

? Helmsman is a top tier offensive specialist-- offense is it's primary role.

According to the wiki, the 5 offensive specialists are Pirate, Lieutenant, Infiltrator, Thief and Assassin. Helmsman is in the Other category, and while it is easily used offensively, it isn't an offensive specialist. When I said the Pirate was likely the best offensive specialist, I was talking about the 5 specialists that can be hired from the offensive slot. I wasn't discussing using other specialists in an offensive manner.

While I would agree that some balancing is needed, I don't like most of these ideas.

For example, the Tycoon is too strong right now, for sure. But just reducing his bonus takes a lot of flavor out of the game. At 20%, it just wouldn't feel like he was having a big impact. I'd much prefer to add a significant downside. Like, perhaps the increased rate of production means that you're getting inferior subs, so they travel 20% slower than standard sub speed. That would be a really interesting tradeoff.

chariot rider wrote:

istop82 wrote:I dont seem to have a problem with any of these specialist's. I always find a way to counter any combo with what ever i have at the time... Except kings. Can't seem to figure that one out.

Dealing with kings is easy. You just need more kings. Problem solved.

Or thieves. I like loading up on thieves and mobilizing them while my neighbors are waiting for their hypnos to be promotable. Only real setback is that the effect only works locally, so ya gotta have some speed or a navi to make sure your thieves see combat.

I love the diplomat. Diplomat + navigator and general or thief can be quite annoying. Also you can be much more aggressive with specialist without worrying as much .

Somebody might have already mentioned this, but you can't balance specialists who do different things, its like comparing oranges with apples. If everything were to be perfectly balanced you would only be able to have 2 (1 positive and 1 negating) specialists in the whole game. The only reason this game is interesting is because the specialists are not balanced, but they aren't TOO unbalanced either. I know many people think kings are OP and etc, but imo there are other specialists that are probably better in more situations (they are just underrated). If you've never had 4 tycoons or 4 generals you should really consider experiencing what it's like before you say 4 kings is OP. I have had all of the above, and I can say that 4 tycoons is practically always better than 4 kings (you just need to acquire the skill of managing electricity properly), and 4 generals is arguably better than 4 kings in domination and about equal to 4 kings in mining (and even more so with a diplomat). Seriously. You try it.

So my point is that, when created, want people to be disagreeing about which specialist has the best value, and at this rate I think the only reason it hasn't had this effect is because nobody ever tries out any of the other global stacks anymore (only king stacks). If you have I'm sure you'll agree its probably only slightly worse or arguably better than a king stack of the same size.

oh and its worked for me anyway because I think tycoon is the specialist with the best value. (Because you get + over 50% as opposed to +33% - 20 shield (thats just one of the reasons))