Have a second fleet as back up to rush in. It takes time to develop a planet with enough population to do damage to your fleet. Once its used rush in a second fleet and start blowing up his stuff.

It takes 7 civ/culture (can't remember Advent exact name atm) labs to get Wail of the Sacrificed and really it's only full pop Ice, Terran, and Desert planets you need to worry about. In a normal game, unless the Advent player is in eco spot, he is not likely to be able to get it until late game. This is because he will've needed a fleet and at least 4 mil labs + Titan in order to compete and stay in the game up to that point. So by late game, frigate heavy fleets are already becoming semi-obsolete.

I find if good players know I have it, they simply send in Titan, Capital ships, and bomber heavy fleets - in fact that is what a lot of players get late game anyway, worried about wail or not. You can also just divide your fleet up and send it in in smaller amounts first. I wish I knew the numbers needed to kill carriers but I don't offhand - but generally even large pop planets won't kill carriers - it will severely damage them though so if he has a fleet ready to jump in and clean up you'll need to retreat.

I used to think wail was OP but now I'm not as sure because it is kinda situational and the meta game doesn't favour large fleets of frigates late game anyway (although that is mostly because of Titans and feeding Titans xp). It's one of the few things keeping Advent competitive with a stalemate breaker other just culture push late game since Deliverance Engine is so bad in comparison to the Novalith or Kostura/phase node jumping. I only really find good success with it now against players who are a little careless in not having awareness of where the high pop planets are and who still insist on large amounts of frigates late game.

TEC and Vasari both have strong counters for this ability. Even though starbases can prevent the loss of planets from bombardment, Novaliths can still kill the planet's population. With a low population, Wail is not a threat. Focus your Novalith's fire on planets with high population, based on the bath you're taking as you invade.

If you are Vasari, you can use the Kostura to either disable the temples used to cast the ability at planets adjacent to the planet you plan to attack. You can also use it to attack the planet directly, avoiding Wail damage unless there are multiple high-pop planets next to each other.

I'd say that the race least able to counter Wail is probably Advent.

I do agree that wail is situational since it is dependent on map...situational in that only most of the time it can be used to great effect rather than all the time..."wail overlapping" doesn't always occur, but it occurs enough...enough to make this ability extremely dangerous and definitely OP...

Higher populations can wipe carriers, making terrans and deserts extremely dangerous to any fleet composition...a full terran can even severely damage caps, allowing a moderate swarm of ships to follow up and kill them all...if the Advent have their fleet in the area to defend and have overlapping wail, there just is absolutely no counter other than novas or kosturas...you'd have to severely outnumber them and out do them in eco/production to break a group of planets overlapping eachother if you don't have superweapons to help you...

The novalith is a great counter against the wail.

The question is, should a superweapon be the counter against a culture center??

As I've said before Wail is probably overpowered(and frankly the Eradica probably is as well).

That said, I maintain changes should be handled very carefully.  The Advent Rebels are in a rather starnge place balance-wise.  They don't really have a strong foundation built on a large number of useful tech so much as they have two absolute bombs which make them competitive.

Under the surface they suffer from many of the same issues as the Advent Loyalists.  The Eradica and Wail just do a wonderful job of occluding those problems.  Frankly if the Eradica and Wail were perfectly balanced I doubt the Advent rebels would be competitive.

That said, I'm not saying they shouldn't be touched- no faction should be left relying on a proverbial crutch to compete forever. But changes should be handled very carefully and likely should IMO be accompanied by small buffs to the Advent Rebel's weaker underused tools.

Well said.  I'm glad people are realizing that you have to look at the competitiveness of the race as a whole when you make balance changes, instead of saying, "OMG OP TECH, NERF TO OBLIVION."

Yep. Why is Advent Rebel so much better than Advent Loyalist? Primarily because of Wail and the Eradica -- and think about how uncompetitive AL is compared to Vasari and TEC. I don't believe that either are overpowered at all because you have to look at how they work with the faction as a whole.

The thing I don't like at the moment is that there aren't many options. There is pretty much one optimal way of playing and only playing with AR, TR, or VL (VR would be included if they weren't banned online). I sometimes see players try a little innovation but it's really slight. It's kind of disappointing more really top players don't try experimenting more with some of the underpowered races and underused techs - maybe we'll see more of that with the new patch.  

I had actually opened up another spot on the Multiplayer forum about VR's permanent banishment from multiplayer and how I believe we should maybe reconsider (if not now, then after the new patch).

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/429741/page/1/#3210392

But I understand what Ekko_Tek is saying: online games are starting to get a bit boring.  The last game I played was a 5v5, 9 of the players were either VL or AR (the other one being AL), so we knew before the game started that there wasn't going to be a single planet left in the end (everything would be stripped).  TEC's only real advantage against these two factions is their Novalith, which is not only the most late game piece known to Sins but is also probably one of the easiest things to counter (a simple SB upgrade). 

70 population (Lava planet population) wail wipes early tec/advent fleet's.

Until late game - WotS is too op and cannot be countered.

Good thing Wail isn't a factor for early frigate fleets then...

Agreed, and well said.... one thing that I get sick of seeing... no offence to those that post these... lol.... is the constant, "OMG, I lost a game, must be such and such race or weapon or whatever is OP... fix it!"

Personally I love trying to beat an OP opponant, and several of the galaxy forge maps I've made I put myself at a bad disadvantage....  Why?  Simply to try and get myself out of it!  Try and come up with some new stradigy or something that will help me win in the end...  hell, to basically pretend I'm Luke frackin Skywalker trying to blow up a death star.... hehehe

Seriously, it is very easy to point at such and such race or superweapon or ability and say OP.... but are they, really?  Have you looked at them from every angle?   Have you seriously sat and thought out how to defeat it?  Or did you just rushed in head first and gotten your fleet annialated???

So I love abilities like "Wail"..... they make you think and plot and scheme before you attack!  hehehe.....

Actually it is for eco players...it's the best defense against a large corvette or LF raiding fleet, something that is especially dangerous if you are trying to get a titan with your first fleet upgrade...I've used volcanics to wipe out large contingents of corvettes trying to snipe my titan or just plain raising hell by killing structures and toying with construction frigates...

There is a hefty investment cost, but I'd say it is well worth it...especially for 3v3s or 4v4s, corvette/LF blitzes on eco players seems to be rather common....