[Game^]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I would go cathaar. A large corvette fleet coupled with scarabs, spiders, and scorpions for defensive measures. I'd probably ignore cruisers at large. Sounds a little eccentric, but avoids the stackability problems of tarantula and scorpion, and gives a very strong barrier against both xandathrii fleets, and helps against the zikonian one too. Battleships are zerolossed, so there's no need to worry about them. Scarabs are also strong enough to discourage some cruiser incomings, but the destroyers will be the hard part. There's good room to hit xandathrii and eitrades, and less fighter heavy terrans and less frigate heavy zikonians. With a big enough corvette bulk I can play chicken with cathaars too if necessary. I'd rely on the fast research to give me an early ETA advantage while keeping on the hulls research.

The option would be of course to lower the efficency of the CO ships slightly (~10%) and increase the CR ships slightly (~5%), so that a definative gap would be created between the two ships, would this affect your choices at all, and maybe make you consider CR more?

The alternative path would be terran. With no overlapping in the attack fleets, an overall build between destroyers and battleships with the fighter spiceup for alliance defences seems like a plausible option. The destroyers will be able to put some attrition to EMP counterparts and there's the option to play chicken with xandathrii (albeit less attractive one). The battleships will trample past eitrades and xandathrii, and wreck havoc amongst less destroyer heavy zikonians too. The real threat would be the thief, with the two EMP fleets potentially causing trouble with teamups. Anticipating easy roids I'd happily rush for destroyers and hog xandathrii defence fleets to block out thieves with.

Sounds ok?

For xandathrii, it's between a rock and a tough place. The bomber is really too weak to be a plausible addition against zikonians - thus rendering fighters less useful if there's any thieves around. You could build a bunch, and strive against either of the two EMPs, but it's better to have some tough target to hit too - and against pegasus you're down by 10%+ by default, so it's not such an attractive target either. Banshees would probably remain a fake/defensive asset, with the frigates forming the major chunk of the fleet, targetting mainly eitrades and zikonian. I'd probably eventually get buttraped - there's a high chance there'll be successful terrans around, and wyverns will just fart at my face, even if brokers were workable with, which they hardly are, with 110%+ efficiency and no real destroyer antibattleship to pair with except for other spectres. I'd take comfort of the fact that I'd be a lousy low-pod target and try chunk my way in for roids until zikonians steal harpies and eitrades gets butt****ed hard.

The bomber is weak to stop it completely mauling FR when defending against it. The spectre has both increase emp-res and armour, I dont really agree with the notion that BS will simply walk all over it, (ie 6k brokers roiding basically any Xan) I think it will take a large portion of your BS to actually roid them, rather than being able to send a small BS fleet each time.

Again if the emp eff of the Voyagers and Beetles (in-particular) was reduced, would Xan FI be more tempting?

I could also go zikonian, relying on the fact that they did the best job last round, and they're largely unchanged - granted, nightmares may hit you better, or not - but at least the corsair's now stronger. With the attractive option for cathaars to pull corvette heavy and abandon cruisers at large, I'd be even happier enough with my marauders probably getting less EMP blasts at them through round. The few things that would spell trouble are eitrades battleships - they're hopefully buttraped and have small fleets - and terran battleships, which I can't do much about. Spectre defences and scorpion defences work better for me though, so I'll hog some of those hopefully, or even steal a few scorps with some clever stunt I'm yet to come up. Of course, there's the chances of ingal farming drakes.

I think the important thing to note with Zik's is that yes while they do steal, they will find it difficult to plug that FR gap, and as such 90% of them should have a weakness ALL round, unlike previousily

I'd probably slit my wrists before going eitrades. On the other hand, I'm glad we don't need to call it wintrades anymore. Voyager is a poor man's beetle, and I don't really know what the vendor is, but at least it scores in the chicken games against the merchant. There's a definate need to resist the temptation to build any dealers, as they're just inferior - if there will be cruiser cathaars around, they're best dealt with by a pack of tycoons coupled with brokers. This saying, terrans will now run over you, the high chances are you'll see quite a few cathaar corvette incomings too, and nightmares will bust your rear too. Glad there's still the ability to piss more on xans. It's like the main food for both your attack fleets, with the corvettes having a distant possibility to attack zikonians, too. No, don't do that - attack them with brokers too.

Suggestions on what to change on the ETD's without dramatically changing everything?