[Ultimate Newbie]

In response to Gate's panicked message that he doesnt understand me, i'll try to be a bit more clear wrt post #22 in this thread.

Situation A; where cloaked ships do not show up on Unit scans but everyone starts with Unit scans. This is the position that I favour
Situation B; where cloaked ships do show up on Unit scans and everyone starts with Unit scans. This is the position that Gate favours.
Situation C; which is the current environment whereby cloaked ships to not show up on Unit scans, and no-one starts with Unit scans.

Gate's argument was that by moving from Situation C to situation A, there would be a significant advantage for Xans who would receive less incoming due to the fact that no-one can properly scan them and thus would prefer non-xan targets - less incoming means more early round roid income which is important to get a head start.

I rejected that argument, stating that I thought that methods that were currently used to attack Xans in Situation C would simply be used in the Situation A environment, which can serve to bypass some of the deficiencies in information required to take advantage of the Xan's assumed higher roidcount (given their supposed less incoming).

As such, i believed that there was a case for Situation A to be implemented as, acknowledging that it would provide Xans (and presumably Etd to a lesser extent) with an advantage, I argued that this advantage would be small and very limited in time; fair recompense for their massive 15%* reduction in research speed which is of particular importance at the start of the round.

However, the case of Situation B, which Gate advocates, would mean that Xans receive almost no benefit from their cloaking at all whatsoever, yet still suffer perhaps the worst racial "advantage" amongst all. I believed that this was not 'fair', given that my perception of the advantages between Situation C and A had already shrunk, and that Situation B essentially emasculated Xan to a point of no racial advantage at all except a large research penalty.

Further, i believe that the whole "but Xans dont need to research Ship Hulls 3" argument is complete tosh. Firstly, Xans who build anti BA ships (which their Cruisers typically are) will get less incoming than those who dont, and secondly the stats are a variable thing; next round they might have to research Ships 3 as a necessity. What happens then? I doubt that the scan tree would be altered to 'fix' this greater disparity.

Thus, Situation A is imo viable, and the fair outcome going forward.

*Remember, that this 15% is all encompassing; research labs, population settings and so on are only 85% as effective as all other races - its not just their base rate, the multiplier is attached at the end which thus reduces everything.