Alliances: Wolfpack, Elysium and 1up. I have been also held officer positions in the alliances. The race that I normally play is either Cathaar or Xan (In PAX period) r10-r12 + r14 Cathaar. R13 + r15 Xandathrii. I feel that race wise these are the two that I look to play. I can play terran (have done so in speedgames, likewise with zik) but you know what they say stick to what you know.
Anyway in beta ive been playing Xandathrii. From what I can see I built a rather unique CO fleet with FI as backup. Whats great about this fleet is that I can roid Zikonians and Cathaars for free basically, whilst inflicting loses (which is also great). The fleet is quick and fast and has potential. Here are a few examples
Here im hitting a Zikonian
Here im hitting a Cathaar
Now as far as hitting caths and ziks, the xan co fleet kicks ass. In fact I love it, however if they get defence against me then I pretty much have to recall. My feeling is that while xan co rocks, if youre defended against you have to recall else losses will just be too high. For example Scorpions defending ingal with ziks assasins, could potentially be lethal.
My main worry about xan co is that you cant actually hit terran de or infact xan. Assuming that a terran has built a peg and a xan has built the tzen. This seems to be a worrying factor. However playing for the fact that tzens wont actually be defending against you alliance wise, I did a little discovering and built some vs when I gained some xan co incoming. The battle was interesting.
Xan CO vs Vshaark
What it shows is that like last round the vsh will be built purely for defence (it could double up in attack as well in theory) but its done not to actually do anything but to act as a deterent. But at the end of the day it does its job and killed a fair few co.
I havent tried fr, but I pretty much know the outcome. Once again xan fr looks rather good. It can kick ziks ass quite easily, the same with cath. Terran is no problems but once they start building bs, it will get quite interesting.Once again though its very difficult to roid xan.
I did a little bit of fun, and asked someone to hit me with a load of rogues, no real significance but heres the battle report.
Zik bs vs Xan bs
Also just a little battle between terran and xan.
Xan CO vs Terran
In conclusion I quite like xan at the moment. It as weaknesses but it also has strengths. Thats the way I think it should be, personally I think its quite balanced, although mass co could become a serious problem especially the fact that theres no eta 7 fi/co that can defend it against it before CO fires. So from what I can see xan co will most likely be running the universe with the lack of alliance defence against it. I can envisage mass vsh and harpy defence fleets flying around on the soul purpose of preventing a battle, because if the attacker lands it will be high losses for both the defender and the attacker.