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Originally Posted by Tietäjä
It's simply because of the scarab efficiency, and the fact that scarabs prevent roaches from firing their stun blasts. This is what makes the difference. Let me elaborate. This is without podclasses but for sake of simplicity.
100 roaches fire at 300 shadows. A shadow has 66 E/R so a .34 chance of getting stunned, and 100 roaches have total 1900 stun blasts. So that's enough to stun (1900 * .34 =) 646 shadows. No shadows get to fire.
A defence fleet of 200 scarabs arrives. A scarab carries 3 stun guns, and a roach has E/R 87 so .13 chance of getting stunned. This means the scarabs with a total of 600 guns stun (600 * .13 =) 78 roaches. This leaves 22 roaches left to blast. Of these roaches, (300 / 500 =) .6 meaning 60% fire at shadows. This means, the shadows will take blasts from (22 * .6 =) 13.2 meaning 13 roaches. 13 roaches have 247 guns, hence stun (247 * .34 =) 83.98 rounded for 84 shadows. The rest of the shots are spread to scarabs, which have already fired so it makes no difference. Now, this leaves with 216 shadows blasting their guns at roaches, killing (total damage 6048, with roach armor 135) 44.8 thus 45 roaches.
The alternative defence fleet could compose of equal value worth shadows. A scarab is worth (240 + 285 + 240 =) 765 resources. A shadow is worth (200 * 3 =) 600 resources. Thus, for the resources invested in 200 scarabs, you could buy ([765 / 600] * 200 =) 255 shadows. This adds the total shadows in defence up to 555. The roaches are able to stun 646 shadows, so no shadows get to fire. In order for 216 shadows to get to shoot with shadow defences, you'd need 862 shadows in total, which'd require again 562 shadows for defences. This means quite a bit more resources (to be exact, 562 shadows is worth 337,200, while 200 scarabs is 153,000 - so more than twice).
I am aware the combat engine will toss the randoms around a bit with such low numbers. Feel free to add zeroes after, so the aggregate comes up with the average resources with a very low confidence interval. Alternatively, you could show how an amount of scarabs will stun all roaches. Now comes down to the claim that because of pod resistances some may survive. You can play with the maths indefinately, and realize, that if you use equally valuable fleets, the scarabs are always superior. This especially applies to team-up defences with a kill fleet. Now you'll expect me to prove this.
90 roaches and 10 hornets. 1/10 scarabs get to shoot at hornets. A hornet has E/R 90, so a .10 chance to get stunned. 100 shots are needed to stun all. Thus, 34 scarabs. Because of the flak, 34 is actually just one tenth of the scarabs actually needed. Hence, you need 34*10 = 340 scarabs to stun the whole fleet (again, about number crunching, you can add this to 90k/10k cruisers and 340k scarabs to come up with low confidence intervals for the randomization). 340 scarabs is worth 260,100.
For 260,100 you can afford (260,100 / 600) 433.5 = 434 shadows. 90 roaches with 19 guns each stun ([19 * 90] * .34 =) 581 shadows. Not a single shadow gets to fire.
For 260,100 you can afford (260,100 / [900+750+750] =) 108.375 rounded up for 109 chimera. With the given total of 1710 guns, and chimera E/R 93, thus a 0.07 chance to get stunned, the roaches stun (1710 * 0.07 =) 119.7 rounded for 120 chimera. Not a single chimera gets to fire.
Was there anything else you wanted to ask? Or can we agree that the scarab in fact has a very good place in the fleet design, and definately finds it's "spot" tactically in team up defences and alone defending the home cathaar, and get on with the conversation?
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I never said, well i never wanted to say that the scarab is useless. But as there aren't any teamup (within a cath fleet) anymore a cath will need even more of them to make them useful than it's used to be (i liked my r22 BW as defence against cath cr and i definatly don't want to say that making the BW a co kill ship is bad for cath, it's an huge upgrade)
for your example with the shadows, your're right, but you took the easy one as shadows have the lowest emp res and you the defending xan just have shadows but not a single nightmare or vampyre? additional the cath just attacked only with roaches? no tarantulas? no hornets?
so why didn't the defenders just organized some dragons,marauders or tycoons?
those 300 fr xan must have a much bigger cath friend, due to the fact that this cath has def ships from one of 3 def ships worth about 70% of one of 2 attack fleets of the xan
let's say our defending xan has 15k nightmares and 15k shadows (big numbers so that rounding isn't an issue) and the attacker sends 4,5k roaches, 4,5k tarantulas and 1k hornets
so we can add 10k scarabs or 3187 chims (which are very much and thus even unlikely compaired to the 10k cath cr and the 30k xan fr)
scarab battle:
10k scarabs (30k guns) shoot with 13,5k guns at roaches with 13,5k guns at tarantulas and with 3k guns at the hornets
1755 roaches 1755 tarantulas (well they have the same empres) and 300 hornets are frozen
now the missing 2745 roaches start freezing, noone cares about the scarabs or nightmares so only those 37,5% roaches (1029 roaches) are important
6647 shadows are frozen, the missing 8353 will have fun
they kill 809 tarantulas, 779 roaches and 137 hornets
563 hornets to steal roids
chimera battle
33187 defending fr
432 roaches fire at the chims freezing 574 chims
2033 roaches fire at the shadows freezing 13133 shadows
now 2613 chims kill 859 tarantulas, 827 roaches and 146 hornets
3641 taras, 3673 roaches and 854 hornets so 8168 cr still alive
1837 shadows kill 178 taras, 171 roaches and 30 hornets
so 1037 taras, 998 roaches and 176 hornets are killed
824 hornets can steal roids
in case the defending xan has less than 2252 roids the chims are better
if the defender has more than that those 2252 roids it all depends on the actual roid count and the bravery factor
and now please tell me which of our exaples is more likely to happen?
to repeat myself: I never wanted to say that scarabs are useless, but they aren't a "omg they are the best defense ship against class x, I must built them"
"omg they are the best defense ship against class x, I must built them" ships are BWs against etd co, harpies against xan fr and scorpions against ter and etd BS
There are some other zero loss defense ships around but these can't make the eta for alliance def
Cath got 2 of those ships which are useable against 3 attack fleets instead of 1 ship vs 1 attack fleet (r22 scorpion vs etd bs, the scorpion was useable against ter bs too but all those etd strictly banned the use of scorpions vs ter Bs as the scorpions might kill some of "their" precious ter bs)
So Cath will concentrate ever more on scorpions (and also on BWs) for def than last round.
To the whole thing i wanted to say about scarabs: they are useful anti Cr ships but we will see even less cath players with scarabs than last round
and to get back to the topic i will write up my second thought about Cath overall:
as I've stated before, cath co might be to powerful so maybe their power should be reduced
The BW shouldn't be the one which will be decreased the most as we might loose a good anti co ship here which might increase the power of co attack fleets(also the cath co attack fleet) again
the viper could have their emp efficientcy and armour per cost reduced (as the viper only has 2 guns, reducing the guns would be to much so we would need to increase the resource costs)
the emp efficientcy will lead to less frozen ingal nightmares and cutters and the reduced armour will lead to bigger looses for the attacking cath when there are BWs, nightmares or cutters defending
The reduced emp efficientcy won't automaticaly lead to defenseless cath vs Fr attacks as there are still roaches
similar changes could be done to the beetle but here we have to be careful as the beetles are the only anti fi ship cath has and due to the fact that banshees doesn't shoot before pegs anymore, cath and etd will become the primary target for xan fi
so maybe only the armour should be considered for a change
by the way we could also reduce the armor of the mosquito
the BW will still be powerful and will have alot of armor per resource but the other cath co would die like flies. Due to the fact that the BW is a "big" ship anyway it won't be targeted that much by it's opponents so it might even be possible to defend with BWs against cath co attacks
I would love to see some BW "shootouts"
With the loss of the ranger the scorpion clearly becomes anti BS ship #1
Ter Bs will kill all Bs targeting ships before they shoot except tarantulas and scorpions so this is a good attack fleet
Etd Bs will freeze the De and shoot after the Bs freezing/stealing cr
Etd got the weaker Bs fleet so we might change them a little bit
Tycoon shooting at investors after the investors had stolen some BS and suecided themselves completly (the damage of the investor is greather than the armor of broker and baliff and only slightly weaker than the armor of the tycoon)
So Tycoon won't even shoot at investors as there won't be any investors left (if the defenders sent to much investors it's their own fault)
I suggest that tycoons shoot before investors
As Etd will have a hard time to freeze all those drakes, spectres and pirates anyway we might give them an advantage against the scorpions
Let the investors (in case the etd send them with the BS) steal the scorpions before the scorpions shoot
my suggestion:
scorpions init 11 (so even spectres can take out scorpions)
investors init 10
tycoon init 9
Etd can now attack etd and have a small chance against scorpions
Other than that i think the Cath are "fine"
edited due to calc error