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Unread 22 Nov 2017, 12:31   #28
Mzyxptlk
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Join Date: Aug 2005
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Re: The new base eta feature

In my opinion, Fi/Co has long been overpowered by the combined advantages of fewer potential alliance defense ships (increasing the odds of landing attacks), shorter research time (resulting in earlier attacks and more time to spend on other research), and low ETA (giving more attacks per round).

Compare that with Cr/Bs. They takes 6 times as long to research as Fi/Co. They can be sent less often than Fi/Co (assuming a landing, once every 20 ticks instead of once every 16). And they can be defended against by 4 classes at alliance ETA, to 2 for Fi/Co. Often (but not always), classes don't fire at themselves, skewing matters even more, to 3 def classes vs 1 def class.

Fr/De is in the middle, though closer to Cr/Bs than Fi/Co. They take 3 times as long to research as Fi/Co, but only half as long as Cr/Bs. They launch every 18 ticks. They share the worst-drawback of Cr/Bs, though, which is that they can be defended against by 4 (or 3) classes.

Given that, I think it's reasonable to hurt Fi/Co a bit by making most anti-Fi/Co ships able to defend at Fi/Co ETA.

Does this make the game more defensive, in isolation? I'd say yes: more potential defense ships means the game becomes more defensive. The stats should be carefully balanced to counter-act that change, because Simtarion is no fun. I don't think the change necessarily means balance is now totally 100% impossible, though. Lots of changes have made the game more or less defensive, but we've always been able to compensate for that (though not always as willing as I would've liked).

Personally, if balancing the metaclasses was the only reason this change was made (and it might not have been), I would've preferred to see a different approach: invert metaclass ETAs. Cr/Bs ETA 8, Fi/Co ETA 10. That way, the slowest ships take the least time to research, and vice versa. Alternatively, invert the research tree, Cr/Bs first, Fi/Co last. It's a much more elegant solution, because it doesn't add anything, just changes something that already exists. Admittedly it's not a complete fix, because the fastest metaclass will still only face half or a third of the potential defense ships than the other two, and better ETA is more important than shorter research time.
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Last edited by Mzyxptlk; 22 Nov 2017 at 18:28. Reason: Half, not a quarter,
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