Planetarion Forums

-Blue Moon- · 14 Dec 2006, 14:07

i was wondering if this would be something people may be interested in...

Xan cloaking was quite good this round, but a little frustrating as many would agree because of the huge importance placed upon milscans as every ship was cloaked...

how about we change the way cloaking is done so that all ships in the Xan race are 'Norm' asides from their 'roiding' ships...

If they have a CO and a FR pod, then all CO and FR ships are cloaked (excluding the pods as per usual) and everything else will show up on galaxy status/overview?

I think it'd make it more fun because itd give the cloaked ships that element of surprise in attack (which is what cloaking was all about right?), but allow regular players to use unit scans for attack and defence purposes. It also gives players a heads-up if players are using Norm ships added to a cloaked fleet - and opens up a range of attack faking techniques with players faking attack fleets with uncloaked ships....

It may even eliminate some amounts of fake defence from Xans (not to a complete degree as they would still be able to send 0 ships in defence except for capital ships, as i couldnt imagine xan geting a cr/bs roider) - but to a point of if the only ship that could hurt you is a CO and the defence is not cloaked it will give you an indicator whether to land or not.....

Sneaky/advanced players could even use this element in the game to HIDE cloaked ships in 'fake' defence fleets -- it would certainly bring about a whole new element to XAN

Interested? :-)

-tux

-Blue Moon- · 16 Dec 2006, 00:04

i know this suggestion isnt the most interesting, but how about some feedback pls? ;-)

Monroe · 16 Dec 2006, 01:02

I liked the way xans worked this round, I don't see any real reason to change it.

Appocomaster · 16 Dec 2006, 03:27

I think one of the things highlighted was that military scans and xan cloak is currently highly linked, and military scans really make it more predictable.
One option would be perhaps moving it so that fleet (and unit) scans showed cloaked ships and we ditched mil scans? xan would still be cloaked on galaxy / overview screens, so would still have a big advantage. It'd remove the predictability though!

Bugsby · 16 Dec 2006, 15:09

On the manner of Xan cloak, I had one big problem with it throughout the round. I'd get hit - as Terran - several times by Xan fleets. Milscan would show something like this:

Fleet 1
Shadow 5000
Nightmare 15000
Vampyre 1000
Phantom 100000
Banshee 50000

Fleet 2
Shadow 1
Wraith 10000
Spirit 15000
Illusion 1000

Fleet 3
Shadow 1
Illusion 1000

There is no way to tell which is which if the FA scan doesn't go through - and it often did not go through. I'd have to defend against both a strong CO fleet and a strong FR fleet at the same time, keeping in mind that I can't just defend against one. For instance, if I get enough nixes around to stop Fleet 2 and I'm actually getting hit by Fleet 1, I lose everything. If I get some fighter anti-CO from the ally to stop Fleet 2, and I'm actually getting hit by Fleet 1, I lose everything. The most effective way I found to defend against this combo was to get wraiths, beetles, and nixes. But getting all three of those is tough, and the defense won't be successful without all three.

So in the end I have to just run my fleets and Fleet 3 walks in and gets full cap on me.

That's not fair. It's not just a "surprise" element for Xan cloak - complete uncertainty about what fleet is headed your way makes Xan at least twice as hard to effectively defend against.

Amycus · 17 Dec 2006, 00:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bugsby

That's not fair. It's not just a "surprise" element for Xan cloak - complete uncertainty about what fleet is headed your way makes Xan at least twice as hard to effectively defend against.

The problem there isn't the fact that xan is cloaked, but more to do with the way attacking is currently.

ComradeRob · 17 Dec 2006, 09:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bugsby

That's not fair. It's not just a "surprise" element for Xan cloak - complete uncertainty about what fleet is headed your way makes Xan at least twice as hard to effectively defend against.

That possibility existed under the old (r18-) cloaking system. The difference is that mil scans make you more aware of the possibility that your first and most obvious assumption about the type of incoming might be wrong. There's certainly nothing new about this tactic - something very similar was used in rounds 8 and 9.

It is normally possible to guess with reasonable accuracy which of the possible fleets is incoming and to defend against that possibility. Of course, this relies partly on skilled judgement and the willingness to gamble on one's own judgement, both things which the game should be rewarding.

Xan ships are generally quite weak and are easily deterred by defence, so it's not even that hard to cover against more than one possible type of incoming. Furthermore, you'd need to have a bad fleet composition to be equally vulnerable to both a CO fleet and a FI/FR fleet.

Bugsby · 17 Dec 2006, 10:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

It is normally possible to guess with reasonable accuracy which of the possible fleets is incoming and to defend against that possibility. Of course, this relies partly on skilled judgement and the willingness to gamble on one's own judgement, both things which the game should be rewarding.

You might be able to make SOME guess, but in cases like the one I described the guess isn't really all that easy. And as for gambling on one's own judgment, that's desirable sometimes. But for some people, any gamble is undesirable. If I'm playing for value (like I did last round) and got the incs I mentioned above, I just can't afford to keep my ships around if I'm not covered. I might THINK I guessed right, but if I'm wrong and lose a good chunk of my value for just 100 XP and some salvage - in addition to the lost roids - it's not worth it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

Xan ships are generally quite weak and are easily deterred by defence, so it's not even that hard to cover against more than one possible type of incoming. Furthermore, you'd need to have a bad fleet composition to be equally vulnerable to both a CO fleet and a FI/FR fleet.

Sure Xan are weak, but they come in huge numbers and they fire first, so it's not all that easy to knock out enough of them. As for bad fleet composition, there is no good fleet composition to deal with both FI/FR and CO. If it's CO coming for me, I need to have nixes at home, since nixes are my only anti-CO. But if I get that wrong and its actually FI/FR coming my way, I CANT leave my nixes at home because they will get shot to death by tens of thousands of phantoms. The only thing that can help me is beetles. If I get enough beetles from my ally to knock out all the phantoms in a FI/FR fleet, I can keep my nixes at home and then begin to worry about the possibility of a FI/FR fleet. If I can't find enough beetles (which I often couldn't), and am playing for value (which I was), I would HAVE to run my nixes at seeing these incs. And then the small CO fleet walks right in while my nixes are running and gets full cap with no resistance. Sure, I could have left my nixes at home. But if I had guessed wrong, my nixes would all have died without firing a shot. That's just unacceptable.