[MrL_JaKiri]

BATTLESHIPS V TARANTULAS


The most complete, thorough article that you will read ANYWHERE about these 2 ships. I would advise everyone to read this before making their choice if you are even remotely serious about planetarion.


This is around the time that everyone has to make the hardest decision in Planetarion this round. “Do I go for Battleships or Tarantulas?”

Well, ive been wondering all round what one to go for, so yesterday I actually sat down for quite a long time, analysing the stats.

Here is what I came up with (NOTE, there is a LOT of theory and number crunching contained within this article. If you are just wanting a quick answer what is best, then this guide is not for you. This guide is aimed at the more experienced player, who is prepared to analyse stats heavily. However, there is nothing in here too advanced for a newer player who is prepared to think hard, as I have explained all the theory I used)

For the purpose of this article, I am going to be using the term Resource Cost(RC). This is the cost in resources used to produce the ship. Also, I will be rounding values off. This rounding is not significant enough to affect any of the conclusions, so all values can be treated as absolute.

I will also assume that everyone chose Jumpgates over military scans. If you never, then I can only offer you my pity.



BATTLESHIPS

The first thing to not about battleships is their awesome destructive potential. However, they are also fairly expensive. 1 battleship has a RC of 74000. This makes them as expensive as roughly 10 War Frigates (This comparison will be based on War Frigates, as they are the only other reasonably powerful ship with the same target class as Battleships)

Now, lets look at some battle stats :-

10 War Frigates will kill 10 Interceptors a tick, 11.5 Spiders, 5 Daggers, or 1.8 Astropods.

1 Battleship will kill 20 Interceptors, 25 Spiders, 10 Daggers or 3.4 Astropods.

Therefore, Battleships are TWICE as powerful as the equivalent value of War Frigates. This makes them ship that does the most damage per unit of cost in the entire game. However, there are 2 problems with Battleships

1) The travel time. The extra 1 hour is CRUCIAL. Giving your target an extra hour to get defence can cause your fleet to take significantly more casualties than it would otherwise. If you plan on quick roid raids, then you can forget about using battleships. And, since you will have a lot of resources tied down in your Battleships, you are likely to have a lot less war frigates than a Tarantula player. Therefore, your fleet may be too weak to travel without its Battleships, on 8 hour ETA. This makes roiding a significant problem
2) Fuel cost. Eonium is going to be scare later on, due to the incredible difficulty of stealing E roids. 1 Battleship has TWICE the fuel cost of 10 war frigates. I don’t know just how significant this will be, as im not sure just how scare E will be.

3) Battleships die FAR too easily. It is too easy to look at the table, see the 200 armour and assume that they are indestructible. In reality, this could not be further from the truth.

Battleships are targeted by Destroyers and Ion Turrets. Lets look at how many of each kill a Battleship

13 Destroyers (RC-208000)
20 Ion Turrets (RC-190000)

Now, compare this to the 10 War Frigates :-

12 War Cruisers (RC-312000)
54 Plasma Turrets (RC-324000)

Therefore, Battleships die almost TWICE as easily as the equivalent value of War Frigates.



In conclusion, Battleships have ENORMOUS damage potential. However, the fact that they die so easily, coupled with the speed, makes them very impractical. Yes, they are AMAZING at killing ships, but the question you have to ask is “Do I even want to kill ships?”. Strange as it may sound, roughly 90% of the attack you will make are for roids alone. Killing the enemy fleet is pointless, as it reduces their score, thus limiting the amount of pods you are able to send and still get your 20%. Also, the ease which Battleships die means that you will lose more score on a roid raid than you would sending frigates alone. This makes Battleships almost totally useless for attacking.

They seem to be a good defensive ship stat wise. However, the 9hr ETA means that they are likely to miss the first tick of any battle. This limits their effectiveness as a defensive ships

Throw in the HUGE fuel cost as well, and it becomes clear that battleships are very impractical in almost all circumstances. Yes, in isolation with a quick glance they look awesome, but compared to the 10 War Frigates, they are always going to come of second best.



TARANTULAS

First, the generic value – 1 Tarantula has an RC of 18500. However, it takes 16000 crystal to produce. This ENORMOUS amount of crystal required to build one is a fairly massive blow against them already. To make up for this huge expenditure, they had better be incredibly good indeed. So are they?

Well, in one word, Yes. Lets look at the stats.

1 Tarantula freezes :-

2.5 War Frigates (RC-17500)
2 War Cruisers (RC-52000)
2.3 Destroyers (RC-37000)
0.6 Battleships (RC-44500)

The only thing to say about this is… WOW. Even assuming they are going to be targeting War Frigates most of the time, they still freeze their own value of SC. As they will be hitting destroyers, cruisers and Battleships as well, it is not unreasonable to say that a Tarantula will freeze an amount of ships with a valued greater. This value alone means nothing, so I will compare it to some other ships.

Battleship – kills approx 1/3 of its cost per tick
War Frigates – kills approx 1/6 of its cost per tick

Most other ships kill with a ratio of about 1/6 of the cost. Therefore, Tarantulas are INCREDIBLY useful in combat, being the only ship in planetarion that can neutralize ships with a RC value greater than its own. I would have no problems whatsoever with basing my fleet solely around Tarantulas, if it wasn’t for one thing.


They die FAR too easily to Ghosts (yes, even more easily than battleships). And Ion Turrets.

1 Tarantula is killed by :-

7.4 Ghosts (RC-59200)
7.1 Plasma Turrets (RC-42500)


Battleships are killed by 2.5x their RC. Most other ships are killed by 4x. their SC/RC. Tarantulas are killed by about 2.5x their RC as well. However, to have to remember that 90% of a Tarantula’s cost is crystal. As crystal is a lot rarer than metal, it is INCREDIBLY inefficient to have a ship that is almost pure crystal to die at the same rate as one that is almost pure metal.



In conclusion, Tarantulas are EXCELLENT. Most ppl will be operating on a metal-crystal ratio of about 2.5/3 to 1. As most ships cost about 4x as much metal as crystal, there is going to be a LOT of excess crystal lying around. There is no better way to spend this than on Tarantulas.

When you are out roiding, the objective is to lose as little ships as possible. The amazing efficiency of the Tarantula means that they can shut down entire fleets of war frigates with ease. However, if your target has a significant amount of Ghosts or Plasma Turrets, your Tarantulas will die easily. Therefore, it is important to scan, and make sure you pick targets without these. Mass fleets of Tarantulas aren’t going to kill much, but they are going to get you the roids that you need to build your War Frigate/War Cruiser fleets. The fact that they are made mainly from left over crystal means that building large fleets of them will not significantly affect your War Frigate production.

Basically, Tarantulas are superior to Battleships in every single way. Most inexperienced players will go for Battleships as they “HAVE 80 GUNS AND DON’T DIE!!!!!!!!1112”. I hope that this article has dispelled this Battleship myth.


Nodrog 2000