[Bugsby]

There probably will be changes, but I think two things about this set of stats has really been overlooked. The first is that Ziks now fire before pods. This is huge. Before this, Ziks couldn't defend well against a value player, and couldn't defend at all against an XP player who was willing to crash. Previously, if someone were willing to lose the ships, they could get full cap on Zik (before the Zik started to build a diverse fleet, that is).

The second is that the big advantage to Ziks is diversity of fleets. I always found it a bit unbalanced that Zik players could gain value in ships as well as in roids on their attacks, and even though Ziks usually sit pretty low in the beginning while they build a fleet base, Ziks always have a tendency to surge late once they get a bit of momentum. This new set of rules removes that ability to gain value, but it keeps Ziks with their (IMO) main advantage, which is a diverse fleet. The way I saw it, the biggest advantage of the Zik Fi/Co fleet last round was that it had every fighter and corvette in the game in it, and was thus able to deal with EVERY ship that could target either Fi or Co. Besides massive numbers, there was no way to defend against it. And while the fleet sizes will be smaller this round, there will still be the diversity advantage.