Re: R31 shipstats
 

They steal :S

Re: R31 shipstats
 

Re: R31 shipstats
 

Oh, I meant stealer, thanks for the correction.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

I Think 3 cloak and 3 emp is too much for Etd, they should have 2 steal, 2 cloak, 2 emp and the rest normal. I dont see the point of Etd if they have a full cloaked attack fleet. They should mix, emp/steal, cloak/normal in their attack fleets.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

I guess if you dont see the point of etd having several cloak and several steal u dont see a point in etd?
having it as a total hybrid with 1 or 2 cloak or steal is just weird, they are reduced to total inefficacy, r29 etds hardly stole anything with their pillager, making it pretty useless to steal anything, no point having 1 or 2k odds and sods.
Similarly unless u have a fully cloaked fleet the usefulness of the cloak is radically reduced, as essentially if u send a defence as a 0 fake while ur other un-cloaked bs are out attacking the fake becomes so obvious.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

someone, not necessarily gate answer why fr/de needs to be so bad at shooting up, I realise that this is mostly because of the extra tick to gain defence... but that does not seem to mean that you make fi/co fleets bad against attacking fr/de.
The thief (call it a bucc fs, dont confuse us!!) has an A/C of 500 and D/C 452, all well and good, fires simultaneously with marauder and after everything else. The destroyer is also a perfectly good ship, fires before the marauder, simultaneously with fireblade and after the wraith, has an A/C 578 and D/C 378 moreover its useful against xan and zik fr fleets. The Chimera and bomber on the other hand sux; fire after all cr/bs except Marauder, the Chim has A/C 600 and D/C 320, the bomber A/C 364 and D/C 485. What is worse is that while the terran can always go 100% fr so has flack he still gets slaughtered by something from each level - the pillager and destroyer on fr/de and phantom/rev with fi/co. The xans are similar but with even less reply against the destroyer and pillager, they dont even shoot against the cerberus and the broker... explain to me how anyone uses xan fr plz (fakes ftw eh?... heh, who can U fake on but cat)? and how it is fair to have some ships that do the same thing so much better than others?

*left out emp as its silly to be discussing when talking about inits but if you want to talk about them consider that there are now 2 cr/bs fleets with emp that will be firing down on the fr that is supposed to combat cr/bs and that unlike this round the fireblade is good at firing at fr/de.

btw do U each round try to make us think its different by having different names for ships that do the same thing?

Re: R31 shipstats
 

i am not gonna say anything, before isil is going to shoot me

i just know which race i will play

Re: R31 shipstats
 

A lot of people are assuming that all players will team up to make raids / defend though. Personally I think that deliberately making a race weak - as has been suggested with some of the Zik stat sets because they might team up, or they might 'get lucky' when stealing ships will put off a lot of players.

I joined this round very late, and have been growing slowly and surely. However as an Etd, I have only managed one successful landing as a solo player. None of my mates play here, and the gal I am in have ignored repeated requests from me to team up on a few raids. Today, while I was offline, I had 4 different waves of incomming, the largest of which had 70k ships. Now for most, they are small waves sure, but then I have only been playing for a fortnight, so for me they are sizable. A couple of the waves got decimated, 1 wave lost all attacking ships and got no roids / ships. But I lost a shed load of roads from the other two, 25% for each wave, and they had done their homework and sent the right kind of ships to give me a pasting. Now thats the nature of the game, I get that. But I did not get a single ship from ingal def, despite the fact that I have helped with ingal def every day.

So my point is, for people like me, with no friends playing, and in a gal that doesn't work together, having ship sets that are deliberately poor in case you team up has a negative impact on the game and makes it lose a huge amount of it's appeal. I notice several threads making suggestions about attracting and retaining players, well making stat sets where individual players can still be successful depending upon the level of their commitment, and limiting the numbers / effects of large alliances / team ups, will make the game far more enjoyable.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

Chulain, I think the shipstats have very little to do with the problem you're describing.

This game has always, and will always, be a MULTIPLAYER game. I don't mean to 'scare you away' and I don't mean to be/sound offensive, but if you wish to play Solo, don't play Planetarion.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

I dont think its such a bad thing to wish that races could reasonably solo raid and I think all stats makers have that in mind too... its just very hard to do and make balanced

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This is an effect of it being the end of the round, ppl have their fleets correctly proportioned to defend and alot of the time defend with two fleets rather than attacking with 2 or 3 so there is more defence around.
Here you have a problem etd is a race that really (this round) needs a teamup partner at this stage of the round due to the way its ships target (broadsword firing at cr 1st makes it weak against fr, while the smuggler is pretty weak as an attack ship firing up), atm with Gate's stats this would not be so much of a problem.
Unfortunatly thats something you have to deal with ingal, if you had been helpful it then they should try to defend you, however as someone new and not being on they pobably simply forgot about you in the scramble to defend their own roids... again this is something that being in a gal longer should help solve.
I dont think anyone wants to make a stats set that is deliberately poor, or even a single race that is poor, every round we aim for and argue about what makes a balanced and playable set of stats and about how much should be changed. There are however differences in how races are played and etd and zik are probably two of the more difficult to play.
It is really difficult to make a stats set that will reflect level of commitment to the game and amount of time playing it. However we are already some way there. zik's are difficult to play and only really for experienced players because they fire last so are difficult to attack and defend with: you also want to be targeting the right steals and need to be online when attacked to make sure you build the right ships. Terrans on the other hand tend to have a fleet that is easy to roid with (in this round it was cr) and have very high armour so they can sit home and if you are not on when you get an attack land on you then hopefully unless you are being bashed you will absorb the attack and fire some shots back... the salvage bonus will mean that you can rebuild much of what was lost.

generally I agree with Patrikc that what you are discribing is not something the stats can really do something about. no matter what you do with a set of stats if they are balanced then they wont work for all levels of activity and experience... you just cant have a race that will work for inactives because they would be too easy to abuse by the experienced players. It is areas outside the stats like xp, salvage, galaxies and alliances that have to address this problem.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

You won't scare me away - I am far to old in the tooth for that. But I think you might be surprised how many people are playing as solo's here and if they all got up and left......


Yeah, I am aware of what you are saying, I have played in almost all of the previous rounds, missed the last couple due to computer problems and various things. Sometimes I play here with with my mates, sometimes not. I have previously played all the races except cathaar, my fav being zik, and I play them mostly. This is my first round with etd, and unfortunately I was so late in entering the round that I haven't had the oportunity to give them a good try. I have been in alliances many times and have a good feel for the game. I was more referring to things like the following from Morpheus....

The way I interpret this comment is that he is knowingly making Ziks poor to begin with because he thinks that they will get lucky later in the game, or that they will be able to team up with other players for a good combined fleet. But if you are unfortunate, like I have been this time then you might not, and end up having a really naff round.

I must say that I think that all races should have their unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Giving cathaar and terans steal ships is wrong, giving anyone other than cathaar emp is in my opinion wrong - except for etd having a hybrid mix, which is interesting. I just think that on balance each race should be able to stand up for itself without having to team up or rely on getting lucky.

In previous rounds it used to be that the game was best played with plenty of mates, but you could have still have a satisfying round even if you were in a naff gal or playing solo. Most of the time when I have played in an alliance, each player has targeted a single planet in the chosen gal for an attack. If there is a particularly big planet then maybe one or two would team up for that raid. But by having one or two waves of incomming on every single planet in a chosen gal, each of the planets is forced to either defend their roids or leg it to safety and there is usually very little ingal defence to worry about. As a solo the game style is very different, you have to plan each attack and the fleet composition exactly, any def can totally screw up your fleet, and you end up recalling most of your attacks.

I wasn't thinking about a race for inactives, I am on every day before work and throughout the evening, but my IT department has set the web marshal to block this site :( and I can't get round it. So it limits me during office hours. If someone is inactive - thats their own problem, but for a fairly active player - 1 defensive fleet and 2 ish attacks per night - it can be frustrating when most of them get recalled. Perhaps next round will be more interesting as I will be there from the begining.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

The game doesn't know if it's a single or multiplayer game though.

As such, the game mechanics are skewed since they've been progressively fiddled with in a manner to try to do both, but end up not doing either very well at all.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

good point i think, however finding "friends" in PA is pretty easy, if you play a full round from the start.
i am sure if you play the next round from tick0, you will find 1 or 2 ppl who you come along good with, and which may want to play with you in the future(bp?)
same for if you join an alliance, and i think thats the most important part with the current setup of PA, you need an alliance to do good, specially if your "alone" in a galaxy
and also in your alliance, i am sure you find some ppl which like you and who you like aswell.
You shouldnt be alone after 1-2 rounds of PA anymore (if you arent a total moron pissing everyone of (not implying you are))

however i agree that the setup of stats should allow more soloing
i am afraid though that this can be achieved in only two or three ways (i dont see any more then those)

1) return to singletargeting and reduce the amount of ships

2) heavily reduce the amount of ships

3) remove 1 or 2 races

i tried with setting up stats, but them will turn out with the round progressing, that you will not be able to land solo on anyone (even with my try to remove all third and many second targets) as its simply too many ships/races involved

maybe in a 7 week round it wont happen that fast and massive, but it for sure does in a 10 week one, so when Pete decides to do another long round, he should have that in mind

well first of all, ppl playing solo, knowing not many other ppl, or having no alliance i dont think are the ones who should pick zik, as you will need defence, you will need defence calls to send your ships, and due to the late init, you will have to teamup to gain roids and ships (until you managed to steal loads of stuff at least)

the reasons i made zik so weak in your and others eyes, is that i think zik planets can turn out to be massive fortress planets, with some "luck" in stealing, and i see way too many zik fleets, that make me suspicious how they got more xan fi then i have (i am xan, and not the smallest around)

its imo the perfect cheater race, and with makin their initial stats "weak" it should keep many of those away from picking em.
This maybe isnt fair against everyone not cheating, but i would risk to annoy some zik players, just to prevent the universe from seeing a lot of "cheated" fleets.
Another point is that the current salvage rule and also the production hiding thing are two "Aces" for ziks. As you can hide all your value in production and hit small inactive planets to farm their ships while the big guys cant attack you and if someone does you can release your production steal all of the attacking ships + gain a lot back in salvage, if not all or more.(+ 1:1 bot planets are returning, who build impressive fleets :rolleyes: like 100000 beetle and no viper etc...., at least they dont build pods...)

those things make ziks strong, so imo the stats of zik should be the weakest of all races...

or your remove zik and etd entirely from the game and with em all steal ships
that would fix that issue also :)
cause farming roids isnt nearly as bad as farming the right ships

/me thinks i didnt make more friends with this post :D

Re: R31 shipstats
 

"Heh"

I`d shoot it down if I thought it was blatantly wrong, so just dont try to make any blatantly wrong comments.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

This sounds awful IMO. Reduce the amount of ships: if you reduce each race to 6 ships and have single targeting, then that's it. Every race has to build exactly the same ships (or leave a class completely untargeted). The only options are different ratios of ships. And I think that sucks.

I like multitargeting because it gives you options in how you build your fleet. Also stealing is fun, it should stay.

Having fewer races, or branched stats would be good though IMO.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

Xan needs a new Anti CR ship.... the peacekeeper just takes too long to build a nice sized fleet of..... this whole round Cr landed 2/3 of all attacks on me.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

I do believe that was absolutely the point.

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Agreed, keep emp/steal/cloack to the races where they belong and tweak down emp power.. otherwise the current round`s stats are okish

Re: R31 shipstats
 

Gate i dont like it either, i´d love to see many many diffrent ships and many many diffrent options to play the game
but (especially at the late stage of the round, which is pretty early in a long round) it will lead to no one able to land solo on anyone anymore

the question is though, if it should be that way, or if we want to change it

i find it rather bad, not to soloattack, cause i dislike teamups with ppl i dont know (pulling without notice, pulling cause of a "messy" jpg without having it calced, pulling though not everyone is reachable etc, not sending mails, not smsing etc etc etc...)
and even if you have one standard attack partner, in the late stage it hardly will be enough
also all those single players, without ally, without friends, without irc?, would be better off with stats allowing solos

i dont see a way to combine both things i want to have though (many diffrent options & soloing possible), not with the battle engine we are using at least

Edit: Reducing Salvage could be a start though :D

Re: R31 shipstats
 

that seems more like a problem with who you chose to play with, not the stats or game mechanics.

with single targetting people build 2 ships and xp whore all round. its boring. its attack 90% and defend 10%, and you think long rounds are boring.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

He's an Idea instead of doing the same old multitargets Fi/Co Fr/De Cr/Bs mix it up. Do Fi/De, or BS/Fi or Co/Cr things like that make people build more ships while still keeping the multitargeting. Another thing to do is to limit the fleets targeting like with Etd in R29, their Fr's couldnt target BS or Cr so they would have to attack with Widows which are De. IF you make people have to attack with 2 ship classes it makes the fleet more vulernable which make the player have to calculate his fleets better in order to attack safly.

While on the flip side it allows defending much easier if you are sending 2 ship types like with the Vshharrk and the Pulsar, Vshharrk's soak the emp and pulsars can fire with little to no threat.

One other thing that i have noticed about zik being week is they have less "buisness" ships. If you add more kill ships it will help "balance out" the fact that they steal ships. Like put a kill ship into every fleet.
ie: a Cr fleet that has a fr/de kill ship and a Cr/BS steal ship. and a Fr fleet that has a Cr/Bs kill ship and a Fr/De steal ship. something like that.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

I've tried to add some variety with, eg FI/DE or CR/FR targeting.

It's difficult in a lot of cases though. For example, I did it with the zik FI/CO ships, made one hit CO/FR and the other FI/DE. But it nerfed them quite a bit - if they built CR then they needed anti FI and anti CO and therefore had to split resources between 2 ships. If they built frigs they needed anti FR and DE and had to go for 2 ships again.

I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing, though.


I've also looked at out of class attack ships (xands with FI/CO, etds with CR/BS, ziks with FR/DE etc).


By Sunday or Monday I'll have a new set up that should be useable for beta-ing.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

keep up the good work Gate :)

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Gate: please don't allow any uber meta class defenses please. i.e. fi/co targetting bs/cr gives what, 3 ticks to get defense instead of the already 2 ticks? would lead to a mostly fi/co universe because of the impossibility of landing higher eta attacks.

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Im pretty sure he would never do that..

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It really depends how you balance it. A FI with BS as T1 may be too much, but a Fi with CO as T1, FR as T2 and BS as T3 why not...
In fact I'd like to see stats where all the ships have T3 ALL. I don't see why a DE couldn't fire at any ship (with different levels of effectiveness ofc).

And what if all the ships have : T1 their metaclass, T2 the meta class below, T3 the meta class above (a BS would have T1 CR/BS, T2 FR/DE, T3 FI/CO)

Re: R31 shipstats
 

And your are supposed to fake how?

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Don't worry, that's in my list of absolutely never do ever. I still remember the r13 corsair monstrosity!

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What are you planning on changing for the next set? Is there anything in particular you would like feedback on?

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i love how we have some people advocating for t3 being removed, and others trying to get t3 all put on ships :(

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don´t think that will help with the issue of soloattacking...
it´ll just make it worse

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In round 29 when we had the mantis able to target fi/Co it wasnt that broken because of the little impact that it caused. It was only gal defense, and its effectivness was really low. So i wouldnt be adverse to something like that happening again. But i am strongly against fi/co that can target Cr/BS unless it goes to xan in which case i could prolly be ok with it.

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Are you ****ing joking here? Cloaked defence that you have 3 ticks to collect?

Re: R31 shipstats
 

Like JBG said, I hope the xand FI/CO attacking CR/BS was a joke :p

In previous rounds massed bomber (or their equivalent... the xand FR or DE that shoots CR/BS) have ruined CR/BS fleets completely because there's 2 ticks to get them and you can fake endlessly. Having 3 ticks would be HORRIBLE!

I want to avoid CR/BS targeting FI/CO too. Except perhaps an EMP ship, but generally i'm gonna try and avoid it.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

xan fi/co still too strong, low init/cloak and ofc low eta

something needs to give!

lo isil/jbg o/

Re: R31 shipstats
 

Realistically any ship should be able to have a chance to attack any ship. In the real world, MTB's can and do launch attacks against Cruisers and there have even been attacks against Aircraft Carriers. They have very little chance admittedly, but they could still get lucky, or overwhelm with numbers. Surely giving all ships eiither unrestricted firing or grouping on meta class would be more realistic, eg FI/CO have light as T1, medium as T2 and heavy as T3, enough damage against T1 to cripple or destroy, damage against T2 lowered and requiring say 5 to 1 odds, and against T3 say 15 to 1 odds - IE 15 fighters to take down 1 cruiser.

Keep damage the same - all FI have 'x' damage etc regardless of race. Return to race specific items -
Ter = high armor, slight increas in damage, but slower.
Cat = standard armor but emp is fastest, and more effective than standard guns.
Xand = weaker armor but cloaked and faster.
Zik = Steal ships have better armour than all except Ter, and don't die after capturing enemy ships.
Xtd = Hybrid mix, norm ships as per Ter, emp as Cat, cloak as Xand etc.

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Yeah well xan fi\co is obviously very good, and should be looked at. Just dont nerf them again :(

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believe it or not, this is wrong. warships have armour designed to be impervious to certain class of weapons. for example the armoured carriers of the WW2 royal navy and current US navy were designed to deny any chance of certain calibers of shells and bombs penetrating their hulls. MTB (motor torpedo boats) arnt a fair example, they are small ships BUT they carry very heavy arms. I was a Navy Officer and so had to learn this stuff.

to say small ships CAN damage capital ships given correct armaments would be true and examples can be given from real life. to say any ship can attack any ship is wrong.

but back to the point, good stats make the game more playable and add depth and width to players games this round, having co/fi class bs/cr killers is a bad idea (unless they are cath emp) imho.

Re: R31 shipstats
 

I disagree. FI\CO targetting CR\BS is bad. EOD