Cathaar

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Spritfire

We can't measure stats out from the top10...
Everyone in the top10 are flag planets who gets def day out and in. No mather what race they are.

So that would be wrong.

No terrans or eitrades or zikonians in t10?

[Mzyxptlk]

No. First zik is 14th, first ter is 18th, first etd is 91st.

[Tietäjä]

Yeah. This was the point I was trying to make, there is a racial discrimination involved to being a top10. Flag, fag, or not, you won't cope top10 without choosing a "winner race". (effectively proving the "no matter what race they are" argument invalid).

[Mzyxptlk]

The current overrepresentation of Cathaar, Xandathrii and Zikonian in the top100 doesn't necessarily prove those 3 races are the best ones, it just shows that a lot of good players have chosen them. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Look at it from the other way: if, with a not too unbalanced set of stats, 50% of all the top players pick Cathaar, then Cathaar will be overrepresented in the top50. But Cathaar can still be the worst race around. Likewise, this doesn't mean that (f.ex) Terran is a bad race, it just means the top players think Terran is a bad race. Basing your perception of the stats on the rankings alone is a dangerous way to go.

[isildurx]

etd is still kinda shit though

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

Basing your perception of the stats on the rankings alone is a dangerous way to go.

Basing your perception solely on the rankings is a dangerous way to go. Also, totally ignoring the rankings is a real sign of ignorance too. As Isildur said, it's fairly realistic to say, on basis of rankings, that eitrades is quite shit.

[Mzyxptlk]

Yes.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Basing your perception solely on the rankings is a dangerous way to go. Also, totally ignoring the rankings is a real sign of ignorance too. As Isildur said, it's fairly realistic to say, on basis of rankings, that eitrades is quite shit.

While I agree with this, it is also very hard to say how balanced the stats really are when the race choices this round are so out of balance. I assume Game designed the stats so that in a perfect world if each race got 20% of the player base they would balance each other nicely in terms of defensive options. With so few players choosing etd and terran however it is very difficult to say how the balance would be if the race selection by players had been balanced. If there were more ter/etd Xan would not be as strong, which may have made cath even better then they were this round, it's really hard to say. In addition because one ally has been able to completely run away with this round the race choices of that ally will heavily skew the top end of the rankings.

All in all this really just shows how complicated stats are, and therefore how any given non trivial set will end up doing is very difficult to clearly see before they have been tested in a regular round.

[isildurx]

But its clear in my opinion that etd is too weak, and something is wrong with cath, probably that theres is no 0 loss def to their co fleet.

[Mzyxptlk]

Aye. Next round should get an all-new set of stats imo.

[isildurx]

I totally agree, the universe truly is craving for a new set of shipstats.

[Monroe]

I also agree, the current rumor is that Appoco will do the stats, and that there may be some shifts in how the combat engine works (depending if appoco gets everything done in time or not). Regardless it is indeed time for a new set.

[Gary]

Any chance of Zikonians being able to steal without ships dieing? Perhaps weakening stealing power to offest the bad effects of farming? I mention farming, as Zikonians still find inactives to get ships from, regardless of what die/steal ratio is in place. I still do not understand why Zikonians are less fun to play atm, even though farming hasn't gone away as intended.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by GJN

Any chance of Zikonians being able to steal without ships dieing?

I seriously doubt it. I think the current formula is here to stay.

[Mzyxptlk]

It isn't just black and white, die or don't die. A compromise I've suggested before is changing the ratio at which ships die. Right now, if you steal 300k value, you lose 300k value*. Why not change that into losing 200k or 225k (2/3 and 3/4, respectively)? This way there's a reward for managing to steal people's ships, without essentially doubling someone's fleet in 1 landing.



* There are a few exceptions, but I'll ignore them for the sake of clarity.

[isildurx]

I also think that would be the best solution

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

It isn't just black and white, die or don't die. A compromise I've suggested before is changing the ratio at which ships die. Right now, if you steal 300k value, you lose 300k value*. Why not change that into losing 200k or 225k (2/3 and 3/4, respectively)? This way there's a reward for managing to steal people's ships, without essentially doubling someone's fleet in 1 landing.



* There are a few exceptions, but I'll ignore them for the sake of clarity.

Well this is really the topic of a whole new thread, but basically because of how the combat engine works ziks already have a huge advantage with their ability to build fleets to make them nearly impossible to hit except by overkill. Ziks have been able to do just fine all round long, and every round since the change to value balanced stealing. Even this round with cath being the most powerful race zik have turned out ok, if not dominant like it has in the past. A good player can still do very well as zik with a little luck stealing. Because of these factors I don't see any reason to go back to value positive stealing, it simply increases the already unfair advantage that ziks have.

[isildurx]

Stealing is really really hard, except if your small and attack inactive planets. Im one of the biggest ziks and ive hardly stolen ships all round.

[Mzyxptlk]

True, Zikonian planets seem to be doing fine this round, as well as during most (if not all) other rounds I've played Planetarion (for reference, that'd be r19 onwards, plus r16). The fact that the removal of 0loss stealing appears to have had no effect on that can mean 2 things:
1) 0loss stealing is not that big an advantage at all, in which case we can safely (either partly or wholly) reintroduce it to push up the number of fleetcatches.
2) Zikonian stats have improved so as to provide a sheer advantage in the stats, to make up for the loss of 0loss stealing, in which case nerfing Zikonians by a certain degree while simulaneously reintroducing 0loss stealing should keep the shipstats balanced while pushing up the number of fleetcatches.

I think fleetcatches are a good thing, because "skilled" alliances and players will use them to get an upperhand during war times. Few things are as demotivating to an alliance than seeing their top planet(s) get vaporised.

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Monroe

I also agree, the current rumor is that Appoco will do the stats, and that there may be some shifts in how the combat engine works (depending if appoco gets everything done in time or not).

for the sake of the game, let's hope he doesn't have everything done in time

[isildurx]

Surely they cant be worse than the stats of last three rounds.

[Tietäjä]

I hear Monroe has made a return to building ship statistics.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I hear Monroe has made a return to building ship statistics.

Nope, Appoco is doing the stats.

[isildurx]

So we ended up with:

11 ter in t100 - 29 in t200
25 cath in t100 - 42 in t200
32 xan in t100 - 65 in t200
31 zik in 100 - 57 in t200
1 etd in t100 - 7 in t200


Guess overall ziks and cath were fairly balanced, however in imo cath were a little strong offensively and zik a little weak. Xan was overall alittle overpowered(probably due to so little bs around). Terran were a little underpowered, possibly due to the phoenix not being a FI as so many wanted.
Etd were plain out shit, although not as shit as the ranks would suggest as prolly fvery few good players went them.

[furball]

Cath are your classic top 10 race, and that was categorically proven this round.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by furball

Cath are your classic top 10 race, and that was categorically proven this round.

In fact, it's not quite that exact. 42 cathaars in top200 does mean that 17 cathaars ranked in between 100 and 200. That's just three short of 20%, and cathaars at those ranks are "theoretically" cannon fodder. Let's say, cathaar being a top10 race might count, but the lessers of the race didn't get squashed as "predictable". This might have to do with the alliance setup, though.

What remains on paper, as the "real issue", is the predicted and shortage of eitrades and terran.

[Mzyxptlk]

6 short, actually, when you use the percentage of Cathaar planets instead of 20% (cath planets / total planets * 100 ~ 23)

[Zotnam]

Meh, if you look at the first post of the thread (where both veil and I were top10), only one of those planets have made a decent rank at the end of the round. While cathaars in the winning alliance surely have a nice time, being fairly big and on the losing side was absolutely horrible and nothing I wish to ever try again.

We had 4-5 big terrans in ally, all of which would easily have ended top50 if the round had gone differently so I don't think they are underpowered as a race, just very few exi/vs players chose this race. I mean the top terran player in the end was fcrew? Don't think it was his ally keeping him up that high tbh, and if you look at Alki's planet you'd see their real potential in a winning ally. Terran was for me throughout the round unroidable, I WISH they had made phoenix fi tbh, as fr they were unstoppable.

Ziks, seemed to do fairly well when hiding stuff in prod and you still had a decent chance without being on the winning side. Our top zik players had an easier time of hanging on to their roids than our caths for sure. Again another race it was impossible to roid all round due to either stole bw's or mass cutters.

Xans were lovely at the start, also xan fr were lovely to get inc as it didnt take many harpies to get them to recall, I think 90% of my inc this round were xan fi though, when I was top10 2-3 xans teamed per wave, later in the round they came one at a time instead. Managed to scare some away with faked wraiths, but my beetles were nearly always needed for attacking so if they had kept it going and news scanned instead of recalling eta 6 constantly I would have lost way more roids.

Attacked 1 etd, had inc from 1 etd, had 0 etd in ally, can't say much based on that little knowlegde.

As cath I found my targets well limited, at the start I was roiding xans fairly well but in the end they had more fi than I could block even with 30% of my fleet value being beetles. I covered all other classes well with no holes in my fleet and could have used 4 fleets to defend most nights. Got most of my roids from retals when I knew the target had fleets out already, rather than from normal attacking.