Xan

[khaos]

How does everything XAN will change for next round? I really hope they dont change cause they were a perfect race, and i really enjoyed playing with them.

Post your thoughts.

[A2]

The problem could be construed as them being too perfect, or being perfect where the other races were not. Stats will change a bit for next round although the exact changes aren't decided upon yet. Xan seems to have been quite powerful in this round, and so the new stats may seek to redress this a little by making the Xan racial abilities play some part and alter the balance of resources, or actual ship qualities. After all... there has been some time since r11 started - the other races have had a couple of thousand ticks to mull over and develop weapons to counter specifics. Ofc these counter weapons could fail miserably - only battle will tell (Planetarion: Round 12 plug)

[mist]

i was under the impression that part of the problem was an abundance of xan's best target and a lack of xan's best preditor, as well as any straightforward stats problems

this should probably be dealt with as a seperate issue

-mist

[khaos]

I think XAN rocked this round, there a very nice race, but how can they be changed, a ZIK or CAT could easily freeze or sub the XAN ships before they even do anything.

If XAN are so good how come 8/10 of the top players now in the havoc rounds are TER....

[Henck]

you say it right khaos, cath or zik can only sub/emp NOT kill so if they attack you they still can lose ships when a xan attacks a zik/cath/ter for free and not an other race could hit the other 3 for free, so there need to be a few tweaks so the races will be around 25% for next round witch would be best to play

[mist]

there need to be tweaks so that the race balance doesn't matter...

for example, make zik and terran good at attacking fi/co/fr based planets, and cath + xan good at attacking de/cr/bs based planets, or something. then the amount of each race matters less

-mist

[flikman]

Originally Posted by A2

only battle will tell (Planetarion: Round 12 plug)

I have uncovered the secret in A2's message. There will be a new ship called a plug, that stops xan fleets from launching by 'plugging them'.

[Almeida]

i won't search the problem at Xans beeing that strong; the main problem is, that Cat and Zik can't kill every ship class, Ziks for example could be attacked by Cat, Zik and Ter without the chance to kill a single ship without help from other races.
that is why not more than 15% play those races...
and if u can't kill an attacker he comes again and again and again...

[The Real Arfy]

Originally Posted by Henck

you say it right khaos, cath or zik can only sub/emp NOT kill so if they attack you they still can lose ships when a xan attacks a zik/cath/ter for free and not an other race could hit the other 3 for free, so there need to be a few tweaks so the races will be around 25% for next round witch would be best to play

Xans should take losses against cath/zik (unless FBs are sent to a zik) due to the fact that cath/zik can kill fi/fr. All other races have ships that can only be frozen or subverted, e.g. DE/CR

[Cooling]

Random races at startup \o/

Hell why dont we just make everything random, combat, roidloss even ranks.

That way everyone has a chance of winning!!one

[Almeida]

cooling... does your posting make any sense???
we just want balanced races.

[Gerbie]

Random races would make sense. It gives xan less targets and more enemies, thus making them weaker and making the game more balanced. But I don't think it was a realy serious suggestion.

[LocknLoad]

Originally Posted by A2

Stats will change a bit for next round although the exact changes aren't decided upon yet.

Yea they are waiting on Sid to decide that

[jerome]

fully agreed with mist - make races roidable based on ship classes rather than races. Thus, race balance will not be as much of an issue if there`s many of x race etc, but ofc - if many of x and y race go only with a certain fleet, there`ll be loopholes oncemore. But that will require much scanning+researchj to find out if that`s true en masse, thus a better way to base stats.

[MAdnRisKy]

Bring back Petru!

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by LocknLoad

Yea they are waiting on Sid to decide that

actually i'm doing them.

[khaos]

Xan's are very disadvantage when it comes to pods and structure killers.

[Hurragutten]

structure killers suck

[Blacknova]

Tbh I don't think there needs to be *significant* changes to the stats to balance the issues out.

The current set we have as a base function perfectly well, however there are some revisions which would help settle the issues involving the Xans apparent overpower :

Terran -

Hydra at init 3 (this is not overpowered, think about the ETA's and the roles that the ships serve and you'll understand why).

Dragon at init 4 and restored to BS / Anti-BS functionality (the vesuvius, whilst not exactly last rounds best ship, proved a useful Battleship deterrent, the Chimera is pretty much a non-starter, that would be better served being FR / Anti-DE or sth similar).

Xan :

Fireblade Damage down from 400 >> 300 (this is more of a stats tweak, 200 fireblades right now pretty much covers you against 90% of the universe's Xan FI fleets for the vast majority of the normal round, that needs to be revised otherwise Xans are effectively invulnerable to their own race the moment they have CR/BS)

Cathaar

An average increase in EMP damage capability across the board of some 20-25%, EMP is supposed to be efficient for a reason, the fact they don't kill anything, at this moment they simply are not, their Damage/Cost ratio has to be outright the best in the game to make them worth considering on a serious basis. I haven't played or defended too much against cath, so I can't say for certain what targetting revisions need to be made.

Zikonian

There are people who know the zik setup far better than I do, I've seen it in this round work extremely well, the primary issue being that with so few zik's playing in the universe they got too hammered too quickly to develop serious fleets for battle purposes. The only serious note that springs to mind is that Zik's need a more powerful anti FR killship than the corsair in it's current format, and that buccaneers need a massive boost in power to make Fireblade / FI combos from Xan attackers harder to push through.

Nova

[TAFKAJ]

blackie has a point there, put the hydra before the bombers and the xan will be less powerfull and the hydra can show its full potential. Also upgrade the cutters/roaches to lower the efficiency of terran easy DE attacks against Cat/Zik, by upgrading these ships and some other minor tweaks to Cat/Zik ships makes the stats more interesting and the willing of people to play cath or zik a bit more.
Or there have to be ship stats where we got a circle of ownage like terran >cath Cath> xan Xan > zik
Zik > terran . although this will be harder cause of the classbased 0wnage in that case

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

Terran -
Hydra at init 3 (this is not overpowered, think about the ETA's and the roles that the ships serve and you'll understand why).
Dragon at init 4 and restored to BS / Anti-BS functionality (the vesuvius, whilst not exactly last rounds best ship, proved a useful Battleship deterrent, the Chimera is pretty much a non-starter, that would be better served being FR / Anti-DE or sth similar).

nah, leave dragon as it is. hydra init 3 - hmm, reduce it's firepower to make up for this. Hydra is a pretty damn effective killer for a terran ship..

Xan :
Fireblade Damage down from 400 >> 300

200 fb is nothing you needed atleast 500:/ anyhow. 300 would likely make the fireblade WAY too inefficient for a xandathrii ship. 350 maybe?
Reduce vsh firepower a tad also. Which would make more xands go with less vsh and more lancers thus, making em prone to zik co and helps caths also as they can use scarabs to disable broads thus making fr an option etc

Cathaar:
An average increase in EMP damage capability across the board of some 20-25%, EMP is supposed to be efficient for a reason, the fact they don't kill anything, at this moment they simply are not, their Damage/Cost ratio has to be outright the best in the game to make them worth considering on a serious basis. I haven't played or defended too much against cath, so I can't say for certain what targetting revisions need to be made.

improve scorpions, roaches(yes even more.) and scarabs.

Zikonian:
There are people who know the zik setup far better than I do, I've seen it in this round work extremely well, the primary issue being that with so few zik's playing in the universe they got too hammered too quickly to develop serious fleets for battle purposes. The only serious note that springs to mind is that Zik's need a more powerful anti FR killship than the corsair in it's current format, and that buccaneers need a massive boost in power to make Fireblade / FI combos from Xan attackers harder to push through.

leave ziks be imho. they are just fine. godknows if forest didn`t have 24/7 incs, he would`ve done much better last r (oh, and if he wasn`t such a tit in going for cr-fleet so early and not massing-fi/co) Ziks will be helped heavily by crappier fb's.


maybe with the changes i suggested to xan/cath/zik - terrans wont need that init 3 hydra. as xands would be hurt quite a bit by being rather roidable. Terrans can still roid caths and ziks for free, xands can roid terrans, ziks can roid xand and cath for very nice rates, caths can roid xands with scarabs/etc etc.


this reply was very hurried, so forgive me incase i`ve overlooked somethings

[Shaithess]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

Fireblade Damage down from 400 >> 300 (this is more of a stats tweak, 200 fireblades right now pretty much covers you against 90% of the universe's Xan FI fleets for the vast majority of the normal round, that needs to be revised otherwise Xans are effectively invulnerable to their own race the moment they have CR/BS)


Zikonian

There are people who know the zik setup far better than I do, I've seen it in this round work extremely well, the primary issue being that with so few zik's playing in the universe they got too hammered too quickly to develop serious fleets for battle purposes. The only serious note that springs to mind is that Zik's need a more powerful anti FR killship than the corsair in it's current format, and that buccaneers need a massive boost in power to make Fireblade / FI combos from Xan attackers harder to push through.

I kinda agree with the fireblade thing. Fireblades are a less targetted class than rogue, they fire quicker, they have same ini and were a far better trade in armour/power.

Subbing was far too weak against some ships IMO. I found the killships were fine (if rogues were a lil easy to kill, but it's understandable for a light CR), but cutters and pirates sucked, making it IMPOSSIBLE for a zik on their own to do well at all.

The corsair is a fantastic ship IMO, since the majority of the FR fleets were xan, they were nearly always killing more than their own value unless fireblades came involved. And as for fireblade power-reduction helping ziks that much more... I kinda doubt it, as when I got attacked, the guys were killing my 10-15k corsair with no problem, and could easily have killed another 5k.

The thing is that ziks are fine against the smaller shiptypes; xans lose muchos FI, and there's often no real point going fi/bomber/fireblade as opposed to fr/fireblade. Terrans lose ships to thiefs whilst ziks can't send thiefs or get them subbed to shoot each other. Both cat and xans have FR > FR ships, making the clipper a valuable ship too. However, against DE and CR they're hideously vulnerable and IMO, cutters and pirates need to be improved.

[flikman]

On the signup form the default selected race needs to be random, or universe based to ensure a relatively equal universe. I'm sure many new players, not knowing the races were terrans simply because its the default.

[JFK-NL]

xan is the perfect race againt a ter but vs other races there not so good thats my opinion and a xan vs xan gives many ship loss and terr vs xan is massive ship loss on the xan side

so why are they made to good?

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by JFK-NL

xan is the perfect race againt a ter but vs other races there not so good thats my opinion and a xan vs xan gives many ship loss and terr vs xan is massive ship loss on the xan side

so why are they made to good?

They are not made *too* good imo...

The Xan race is the only one I believe the team got *exactly* right (with the exception of the god awful sentinel). Every ship has a use somewhere, and the fleet is designed to force tactical choices from the player in balancing the need to protect his own roids, with the need to take other peoples (broadies and FB's had very limited offensive capability, but were amazingly useful in their intended role which was "home" defence).

----

Let's compare and contrast the Xan fleet with the one I chose last round, the Terran fleet, and my opinions on how the ships panned out:

Harpy - Serves zero purpose to the individual player, only good for alliance anti FI defence, and for mugging a few pulsars here and there. Can provide a somewhat limited alternative to the more efficent and more dangerous peg.

Phoenix - Anti DE, and absolutely necessary, unfortunately it sucks versus the Xan Lancer, and therefore is only really much help for anti Peg defence, although in that role it performs admirably.

Gryphon - Anti FR, also pretty necessary, swarms of these and nix have half a chance of deterring Xan attackers (although to do damage you incur massive losses), also effective vs. Cath FR raidfleets to some extent.

Centaur - Only any good vs. Terran CO, and massively susceptible to anything that targets FR (clippers attacking centaurs can give terran CO a REAL bad hairday).

Chimera - Competing with the sentinel for "most useless ship of R11" award. The offensive equivalent of a Vauxhall velox...

Pegasus - The all singing all dancing multipurpose DE which kicks FI into touch, actually works as a kind of deterrent vs Xan swarmfleets, and is also good for offensive raids both as a defence clearer (Peg + lancer Team = Nasty combo) and as flak for the Terrans primary pod. A total requirement.

Drake - Second only in the peg in terms of sheer usefulness, this ship was pivotal in alliance anti CR calls against Zik and Cath cruiser fleets, and due to the fact it "outruns" it's target class, gave OODLES of time to locate the required ships.

Hydra - Help... I mean... Really... A defensive ship that fires so far down the order as to be utterly useless in battle, and worse yet vulnerable to the Xan Bomber which ripped holes out of it, only helpful in vast numbers, and if you had the brass globes big enough to want to withstand the kind of damage the bombers would apply to you.

Dragon - If I wanted to kill CO, I'd send them email jokes, and hope they die laughing. The only purpose these things serve is to dissuade Terran CO bulldozer fleets by trying to make roids pricey, in terms of combat application, these things are almost as useless as the chimera.

----

In short, out of the entire terran fleet, you can effectively function purely on DE and CO, and get help in if either a Corvette or BS attack fleet pay a visit. That means out of NINE possible combat ships, most players could function adequately as a terran player with only four or five of those ships, the rest simply put "air" into the score.

Everything else is either a poor substitute (see harpies vs. pegs) or ineffective in it's intended role (see Hydra and Chimera).

I think in all fairness the Xan race is the only one I would leave *alone* as it is aside from slight stats tweaking.

@ Jerome : Assuming you weren't in for last round, I'd advise witholding opinion on the Vesuvius (what I believe the dragon *should* be). As a combat vessel it was useless granted, as a "I'm gonna make your Battleships go up in smoke and make this raid EXPENSIVE" ship it was ideal.

Hydra at init 3 makes sense, and you know why too

I've expended too much thought now, I shall go back to hiding in my cave.

Nova

[jerome]

nah, init 3 for Hydras doesn`t make sense. Might as well give bolts init 1 for vs viper then;)

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

nah, init 3 for Hydras doesn`t make sense. Might as well give bolts init 1 for vs viper then

I'll draw the picture then - Look at the comparative ETA's of the ships that it targets, and look at the ship itself. Hydras, like broadswords (their Xan counterpart) were not designated for defence outside of gal unless you happen to get extemely lucky and catch a JPG early.

[edit] In case this hasn't given you a big enough clue, it means that they are utterly inneffective in the purpose they serve Since they get mauled by what they target without being able to fire until some point well after the party is over and there is only cinzano left to drink...

Nova

[jerome]

yes, lets improve every single ship to be fully useful because that will make the universe totally balanced as every race will be equal to each other as every race will have a way to stop each another as that will create a wonderful universe in which noone can roid another unless it invovles total utter bashing!

the hydra is what it is meant to be, it does its job to invoke some strategy and demand alliance play to cover one`s ass, just like xandas need def if there is viper/hornet incoming or cath and zik if there is mass-de coming at them. Stating exactly what they are does not justify an init change, Nova. You simply view the purpose of the hydra alternatively to me, and wish terrans to have a stronghold against xands.

Let`s not forget - xandathrii is the only race which can roid terrans effectively. Terrans can roid cath/zik for free easily, and there will never be enough pulsars when de first come out thus this is equalized.

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

yes, lets improve every single ship to be fully useful because that will make the universe totally balanced as every race will be equal to each other as every race will have a way to stop each another as that will create a wonderful universe in which noone can roid another unless it invovles total utter bashing!

the hydra is what it is meant to be, it does its job to invoke some strategy and demand alliance play to cover one`s ass, just like xandas need def if there is viper/hornet incoming or cath and zik if there is mass-de coming at them. Stating exactly what they are does not justify an init change, Nova. You simply view the purpose of the hydra alternatively to me, and wish terrans to have a stronghold against xands.

Let`s not forget - xandathrii is the only race which can roid terrans effectively. Terrans can roid cath/zik for free easily, and there will never be enough pulsars when de first come out thus this is equalized.

Well, the Xan fleet *is* fully useful (bar the Sentinel), and yet it mananges to maintain some structural weak points as you just pointed out.

Remind me again, what was your point?

There has to be designed weaknesses in every race, that I don't disagree with, but having a race where nearly half the ships involved are useless or ineffective needs a massive revision.

Ultimately making the hydra init 3 is in itself a possibe solution to one issue, namely the the fact that Xans can roid for free pretty much on any given race bar their own. In all fairness I would prefer to have a ground up redesign of the terran setup to offer different strengths and weaknesses (if terran is supposed to be big ship for instance).

Edit : Zik's with cutters can pwn DE silly, and fairly efficiently I might add. Xans weakness is more the fact the cath fleet combo appears to have been designed with the exact intent of prying open Xan defences, even then sheer force of numbers can still stop a Cath attacker, losslessly.

Nova

[jerome]

No. No matter how efficient cutters/roaches are - they don`t kill and thus will be easily outflakked.

but having a race where nearly half the ships involved are useless or ineffective needs a massive revision.

ineffective killers, they are, but they are very well armoured - like the terran race had original designed to be

what your asking for is to basically go against the base of what the essence of the race is. Xandathriis cannot roid Ziks or caths for free, defenders are too well armoured and kill decently enough, and vipers are obviously fking good. Corsairs own xand fr eod for ziks. Spiders/Rogues also make fi-attacks worthless unless there arent enough of em.

Like i said Nova, your views of the base that the stats were made upon is 'wrong' or rather differs from mine. I don`t see the point of giving hydras init 3, it makes them too strong. If you give them that, then i would go terrans next round if i were to play, expecting a number of people to go non-terrans so less-nixes as def, and i have a big weapon vs xand fr and fi so virtually unroidable if i simply roid xands/ziks/caths with de-rushes at the start, and simply switch to co-rush when there`s too many pulsars about. Who would be able to stop me? drakes/hydras > cath, dragons/drakes(in numbers) > zik as they simply make attacks too costly if you build enough - like xandas and fireblades. I would`ve thought you had a more concise view of ships stats than this, Nova. Don`t be hasty in making terrans far superior than they need to be.

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

No. No matter how efficient cutters/roaches are - they don`t kill and thus will be easily outflakked.


ineffective killers, they are, but they are very well armoured - like the terran race had original designed to be

Armor counts for jack when you are unable to return fire, you should know this by now at least. Last round Terrans were as you describe, this round they are not, in all fairness, their weak combat efficiency in several areas rendered them dangerously vulnerable to *every* race in some way shape or form. The fact that half their fleet served zero purpose is just insult added to injury. Terrans only way of winning was to go by sheer brute force of numbers, no skill or finesse whatsoever, even for a "big ship" way that would be primitive.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

what your asking for is to basically go against the base of what the essence of the race is. Xandathriis cannot roid Ziks or caths for free, defenders are too well armoured and kill decently enough, and vipers are obviously fking good. Corsairs own xand fr eod for ziks. Spiders/Rogues also make fi-attacks worthless unless there arent enough of em.

Ziks could be cleaned out with ease provided you bothered to use Fireblades in an attacking capacity (novel thought for the day), since the corsairs could be mullered before they even fired, leaving only the clippers to worry about, and THAT only needed enough bombers and sabres to soak up the sub. Woo hoo, big deal....

Cath you had to go the FI route, and since most cath were woefully undersupplied for spiders all you were left with was scorps, equally as under used. Since Cath players quickly realised the sheer volume of Xan FI around made such defences useless on their own....

Use a little imagination jerome, I thought better of you than that

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

Like i said Nova, your views of the base that the stats were made upon is 'wrong' or rather differs from mine. I don`t see the point of giving hydras init 3, it makes them too strong. If you give them that, then i would go terrans next round if i were to play, expecting a number of people to go non-terrans so less-nixes as def, and i have a big weapon vs xand fr and fi so virtually unroidable if i simply roid xands/ziks/caths with de-rushes at the start, and simply switch to co-rush when there`s too many pulsars about. Who would be able to stop me? drakes/hydras > cath, dragons/drakes(in numbers) > zik as they simply make attacks too costly if you build enough - like xandas and fireblades. I would`ve thought you had a more concise view of ships stats than this, Nova. Don`t be hasty in making terrans far superior than they need to be.

Pegs are NOT a big weapon vs Xan FI... they are a passable weapon since you trade firepower with the primary FI used by Xan, the anti-DE pulsar, and losing your pegs would hurt a HELL of a lot more than the Xan losing his pulsar when it came to it (Xan can always find targets with poor anti FI, anti DE was focussed upon heavily because of the fact that terrans primary raidfleet was DE). CO was always vulnerable to vhsarrak, which Xans also kept in good supply. So really none of your points stand thus far in relation to attack and def balance...

Hydra if modified, in this situation would then trade with the bomber, and the bomber still wins that battle, however trading firepower means *gasp* the Xan player would incur losses. There's a terrifying thought

Drakes are a valid defensive tool, as I already pointed out. Dragons in a VERY limited way can be, but nowhere near as efficient or useful as other "defensive" ships in the same ETA category, and Hydras are just plain useless. Maybe not as useless as the chimera, but near enough.

My personal opinion is that Terran should get their "sluggers" back (the CR/anti-CR hades and the BS/anti-BS vesuvius), and that appropriate modifications should be made so that there are structural vulnerabilities (ships which target themselves are ideal zik fodder), but at the same time resolve the glaring omissions and redundancy in the fleets (this does apply to a lesser extent to Cath and Zik too).

Nova

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

Terrans only way of winning was to go by sheer brute force of numbers, no skill or finesse whatsoever, even for a "big ship" way that would be primitive.

like how terrans had been originally designed to be then, a flakker race. :)

Ziks could be cleaned out with ease provided you bothered to use Fireblades in an attacking capacity (novel thought for the day) yes and the zik builds a few ubbcaneers and your own fb kills attacking fi? *g* since the corsairs could be mullered before they even fired, leaving only the clippers to worry about, and THAT only needed enough bombers and sabres to soak up the sub. Woo hoo, big deal....

sending bs is a titful thing to do, especially as it gives an EXTRA HOUR to draw def ie. gryphons/bolts/arrows..

since most cath were woefully undersupplied for spiders

those were the bad caths, the caths with brains had 0 scorps but plenty of spiders, (hi mazz+db!).

Use a little imagination jerome, I thought better of you than that :p

your 'ideas' are hardly new nova, in theory you may see them working but in practice theres a lot more complications. Just because i messed around on irc to entertain myself doesn`t mean i didn`t play the game properly:(.

Pegs are NOT a big weapon vs Xan FI

....
no xand would attack a terran with a few good pegs home, why you are even starting to discuss this, dumfounds me.

terrans primary raidfleet was DE

no. there is no such thing as a primary raidfleet, each race is able to alternate raidfleets of his/her own accord depending on certain circumstances, terrans have always been able to roid with co as well as de - ever wondered why most our terrans in 1up had hundreds of thousands of co? not just to look pretty;).

CO was always vulnerable to vhsarrak, which Xans also kept in good supply.

I think you would have found very few xands apart from likes of myself and xk8az who had a good number of vsh compared to pulsars so 'no'.

So really none of your points stand thus far in relation to attack and def balance...

you mean like how yours is totally based on how you perceived the stats working on the universe as how it was last round and not how it would have been had people not followed the crowd and gone mass-terrans, thus leaving xandas open to build more bombers/lancer than they would usually as there would have been more need to build ships to stop ziks & caths?

Hydra if modified, in this situation would then trade with the bomber, and the bomber still wins that battle, however trading firepower means *gasp* the Xan player would incur losses. There's a terrifying thought ;)

you are still ignoring the simple fact that - this would mean no race can roid terrans cheaply/for free - unlike ziks/caths - by terrans, xands - by caths/ziks(dependant on fleet formation)

You still haven`t given an actual reason to why you want the base of which the terran race was designed on to be changed, if you had played the speedround on saturday you would have noticed with a more or less equal % of races in uni, terrans have a damn good advantage. Why? to reiterate: because there isn`t enough xandathriis who can have enough time to focus on lancer/bombers to roid terrans freely as the significant number of ziks and caths force more % of ships being built in other departments.

So yeah.. hydras should keep their current init:)

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

lyour 'ideas' are hardly new nova, in theory you may see them working but in practice theres a lot more complications. Just because i messed around on irc to entertain myself doesn`t mean i didn`t play the game properly.

My ideas worked more often than not (both offensively and defensively). And with fairly good levels of success I might add, I am one of these people who tends to be better at providing ideas and insight to other people, than playing the game well myself. "Those who can, do... Those who can't, teach" , I am very firmly in the latter category.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

no xand would attack a terran with a few good pegs home, why you are even starting to discuss this, dumfounds me.

You're getting into the realms of acceptable losses, remembering that if you could dig up a nice fat terran who would only cost you 3-5k FI for 300 roids or more it was often worth the pain for the expected return it would provide. Most Terrans also attacked Xans with less than a viable amt of pulsars in exactly the same manner.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

no. there is no such thing as a primary raidfleet, each race is able to alternate raidfleets of his/her own accord depending on certain circumstances, terrans have always been able to roid with co as well as de - ever wondered why most our terrans in 1up had hundreds of thousands of co? not just to look pretty.

Most of those people who had the insane CO fleets couldn't use them efficiently once lancers became widespread, I wonder why? Maybe the concept of losing 20-30% of your CO on average before they even got to fire, not counting likely support from either in or out of gal made them extremely expensive paperweights. Most of those Terrans didn't have those levels of CO until people started screaming at them to counter the Terran DE raidfleets which were growing en masse, the ones who did were only able to hit targets weaker than themselves because anyone who was a comparitive size would be painful to attack mid to late round anyways.

And yes there is "such thing" as a primary raidfleet, whether you choose to believe it or not - Zik's primary raidfleet tended to be CR, Cath made BS/FR their weapon of choice, Terran used DE, and Xan went for DE/FR... The other option was usually considered "secondary" or "complimentary" in terms of providing options, but most players chose one and stuck with it to concentrate their offensive firepower into that one place.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

I think you would have found very few xands apart from likes of myself and xk8az who had a good number of vsh compared to pulsars so 'no'.

You weren't acting as MO for the majority of the round, and therefore you have little to no idea of the comparitive levels of vsharrak we had available, suffice to say more often than not I was able to stop fairly big fleets with a few Xan players each time, and they were not just you and sk8az.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

you mean like how yours is totally based on how you perceived the stats working on the universe as how it was last round and not how it would have been had people not followed the crowd and gone mass-terrans, thus leaving xandas open to build more bombers/lancer than they would usually as there would have been more need to build ships to stop ziks & caths?

And what pray tell would they need to stop Zik's and cath's hmm? Oh wait, that's right... BOMBERS!! LANCERS!! ARROWS!! BOLTTHROWERS!! BROADSWORDS!! Only the same damn ships they built this round anyways....

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

you are still ignoring the simple fact that - this would mean no race can roid terrans cheaply/for free - unlike ziks/caths - by terrans, xands - by caths/ziks(dependant on fleet formation)

No, you are ignoring the fact that Xans *can* and *have* raided both Ziks and Caths for free, and are able to do so with near impunity. Even with hydra in place as a possible deterrent, it would still be most likely comparitively cheap since most Terrans are unlikely to want to weaken their offensive capability. The intent of a well designed race is to force a player to make choices constantly and juggle the need for a good offence with the need for a good defence. I think pia has made you soft with all those multipurpose ships

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

You still haven`t given an actual reason to why you want the base of which the terran race was designed on to be changed, if you had played the speedround on saturday you would have noticed with a more or less equal % of races in uni, terrans have a damn good advantage. Why? to reiterate: because there isn`t enough xandathriis who can have enough time to focus on lancer/bombers to roid terrans freely as the significant number of ziks and caths force more % of ships being built in other departments.

So yeah.. hydras should keep their current init

The base of the terran race could be maintained and in doing so a lot of the "junk" ships could be completely reworked, and with very little difficulty. The speedround counts for very little in terms of determining likely race compisition, you should know this better than anyone, so any conclusions you try to draw from a speedround with modified stats are pretty meaningless.

Nova

[husitrusi]

Originally Posted by khaos

How does everything XAN will change for next round? I really hope they dont change cause they were a perfect race, and i really enjoyed playing with them.

Post your thoughts.

U bad boy!u play with lil xans,,shame on u!
xans were too powerfull this round ,and i mean thier flleet cost,so small,their init,damage.too much!teranswhere ok,ziks and cattards,,very very week!must add some destruction properties to thier ships,cos,ppl have been attacking them without even makeing a calculator!

Random rases suck!cos,imagine the deffence they could get from an alliance,cos,every one will have the same deffence ships for the same attack fleets,and i don't see any fun on getting rods once a month,or looseing all the fleet when landing on someone!

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

My ideas worked more often than not (both offensively and defensively). And with fairly good levels of success I might add, I am one of these people who tends to be better at providing ideas and insight to other people, than playing the game well myself. "Those who can, do... Those who can't, teach" , I am very firmly in the latter category.

roiding is simple, its just mixing different ships together. No player who claims to be decent should require any sort of 'insight', thus are you implying there are newbies in 1up? :(((

You're getting into the realms of acceptable losses

as were you.

Most of those people who had the insane CO fleets couldn't use them efficiently once lancers became widespread, I wonder why?

yes because lancers can defend against co out of gal (!) and even in-galthey are out most of the time anyway, and its shocking the amount of top gals who didnt realise what cross-deffing is:) and anyway why would any terran hit a xand with co...........

Maybe the concept of losing 20-30% of your CO on average before they even got to fire, not counting likely support from either in or out of gal made them extremely expensive paperweights.

which is why they didn`t hit xands.. please don`t tell me you hit xands with co last r, nova :/

Most of those Terrans didn't have those levels of CO until people started screaming at them to counter the Terran DE raidfleets which were growing en masse

The good terrans were the ones who had already prepared a co fleet so they could switch from early de-rush to co before there was more anti-co present, a skill needed in the game is realisation of when to switch raidfleets, you would find the best terrans ie. Linkie, Tis and Nubnought did this rather well.
the ones who did were only able to hit targets weaker than themselves because anyone who was a comparitive size would be painful to attack mid to late round anyways.

And yes there is "such thing" as a primary raidfleet, whether you choose to believe it or not - Zik's primary raidfleet tended to be CR

what the ****? zik co was magnificent, i had been preaching about them all round to the ziks in our alliance, some used them ie. TheRat (albeit of his own accord as he knew it anyway) and Forest who was a tad slow on the uptake though:/.

Cath made BS/FR their weapon of choice,
Terran used DE, and Xan went for DE/FR...

what are you talking about? cath cr/bs was heavily used. terran de - primary?? eh? yes, there was de-rush up until around tick 400 or so when people massed-co from that point on as anti-de was being too prominent, thus co wouldve become their primary raidfleet for a while. Xand fr/de? lol.. most xands had very capable fi-fleets, Nova. Why? because it is silly to have one primary raidfleet and much better to be able to hit 2 targets of near value to your own with 2 different raidlfeets which you have built with equivoical resource size, unless ofcourse like last round where there were lots of terrans so a bit more fr/de was useful.

but most players chose one and stuck with it to concentrate their offensive firepower into that one place.

No. To copy and paste what i typed just above: 'because it is silly to have one primary raidfleet and much better to be able to hit 2 targets of near value to your own with 2 different raidlfeets which you have built with equivoical resource size, unless ofcourse like last round where there were lots of terrans so a bit more fr/de was useful.' Limiting yourself to one raidfleet is just retarded, as you are cutting down on your range of targets a lot.

You weren't acting as MO for the majority of the round, and therefore you have little to no idea of the comparitive levels of vsharrak we had available

true, but unit scans give me enough information eh? you must know im bored often, since i have* no life, there had been coutnless occasions where i have unit scanned all of top50-10 planets (of which i could scan anyway) to see the sort of fleets they were using.

suffice to say more often than not I was able to stop fairly big fleets with a few Xan players each time, and they were not just you and sk8az.

i said vsh in proportions to pulsars, not the actual numbers of them, due to the fact that, mostr of our xands were rather big:) thus even with poor proportions they should have had some decent amount of vsh regardless.

And what pray tell would they need to stop Zik's and cath's hmm? Oh wait, that's right... BOMBERS!! LANCERS!! ARROWS!! BOLTTHROWERS!! BROADSWORDS!! Only the same damn ships they built this round anyways....

how did you manage to get lancers def out-of-gal to zik co ?:) and defending against cath cr-fr/bs with fr is rather silly unless you mass-flak them in def to get past the vipers to actually get a few scratches in. Remember Nova, just because 1up had big xands with lots of fr to give us the power to do that, doesn`t mean it's a resource-efficient decision MO- pov. Bolts? assuming its fr/bs - oh look. the roaches froze them all :o, broads? mazzelaar managed to roid a few times sacrifing his scarabs to freeze defending broads as he was able to cap mucho+gain nice amount of xp.

For everything you say in attack or defence fleet combination nova, there will always be a counter for it, that`s the beauty of these stats:)

No, you are ignoring the fact that Xans *can* and *have* raided both Ziks and Caths for free,

.... so what? any race 'can' roid another for free if they build a certain type of fleet

and are able to do so with near impunity.

unfair to say that, as once again, i must bring into the equation that xands were stronger than they wouldve been in a balanced universe thus able to build more ships etc, so able to flak through the idiots who didn`t build enough spiders/rogues for their roids. (ps 5k fi for 300 roids is a crap deal.) Oh btw, xands attacking with fi?!?? i thought you said, all xands were primarily r-de planets thus would surely have too little fi to flak through any decent cath/zik?;)

Even with hydra in place as a possible deterrent, it would still be most likely comparitively cheap since most Terrans are unlikely to want to weaken their offensive capability.

and this is differet from other races how? you think all xands wanted to build pulsars or broads or even fireblades?

The intent of a well designed race is to force a player to make choices constantly and juggle the need for a good offence with the need for a good defence.

Like all races do atm? *g*

I think pia has made you soft with all those multipurpose ships :p

I have been pushing for 1-ship targetting there for a while now, so 'no'.

The base of the terran race could be maintained and in doing so a lot of the "junk" ships could be completely reworked, and with very little difficulty.

how exactly would you do this? keep their flak level the same to keep the base and make them all effective killers so basically make them superb?:D Terrans are just fine.

The speedround counts for very little in terms of determining likely race compisition, you should know this better than anyone,so any conclusions you try to draw from a speedround with modified stats are pretty meaningless.

Not really, speedrounds can give you great insight if you are able to actually extrapolate what sort of fleets people would have used and what would happen etc. Much more useful than your conclusions on what are wrong with the stats by basing them on last round, which had no balance whatsoever in the universe race wise.

I don`t claim to be a stats-genius to the degree of people ie. Sid or Heartless, Sovvy, Sunnie, zakoff & Carnis etc. But i am able to draw pretty decent conclusions and well, in my eyes your just fighting a lost battle in this discussion Nova. But so am i in a sense, I`m sure though that xandas will be shitted on and terrans be made magnificently elite, as once again, people will follow the crowd. oh well:)

http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...9&postcount=21
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...99&postcount=1
2 posts on what should be done to the stats, in my opinion. What do you actually have against that? I mean, all your doing so far is trying to improve terrans even more, when obviously xandathrii won`t be as strong even if the stats remain the same next round as more people will go xand or zik/cath thus forcing xandathriis to divulge more of their resources on ships other than bombers/lancers so terrans will be much less under threat.

[Doorsdown]

Originally Posted by Almeida

and if u can't kill an attacker he comes again and again and again...

xans started to do that to ters with there lancers

[jerome]

One of the parts required to be successful at Planetarion is to have Alliances, one of the many things these magical things can do for you is that they should provide you with is defence.

[Zo0f]

No offence intended to anyone here, but you need to stop thinking along one line - stats. The way Xans dominated the round wasnt just because of stats. Thus to simply look at statistics for the problem is to completely miss the main problem alltogether.

Xans gained from two main things (as i see it):

1) Most of the universe chose Terran, far more than any other race. Partly due to rumours of people saying Terran were overpowered and great. Due to their great strength at the start of the round.

2) Their best mid-round target (Terran) is a fast starter (like the old Xan) this meant that the top100 was full of Terrans when the Xans started switching to Fr/De Fleets.

Together this means that not only did Xan have an abundance of targets, their targets were in very strong positions. This gave the Xan planets out there a great source of large roid heavy targets.

While Cath planets can easily roid Xan planets with Cr/Bs fleets. There simply wasnt enough to take advantage of the success of the Xan planets.

Therefore i suggest any stats changes at all, should focus on encouraging people to take Zik/Cath as a race, to balance out the spread of races in the universe. Thus not giving any single race the horrific advantage they were given this past round.

[Nadar]

Zo0f is 100% right.. Too many people fooled themselves into the Terranice cockpit, for every Xan's joy

[jerome]

Summary of changes 'needed' imo:
terrans - none
cath - scarabs - +2 damage, roaches +5 damage, scorpions +5 damage (to entice more cath to go for scorps rather than spiders thus giving xands a chance to outflak and an oppurtunity to get free roids) Tarants -15 damage.
xand - vsh - price upto 1050 of each rather than 1000, lower res efficiency a tad to give more space to zik co
Fireblades - leave them be, as i just realised, xands will just plain suck if fireblades are made any shittier etc esp. in a zik/cath strong uni, same goes for bombers/lancers etc.
ziks - none

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

roiding is simple, its just mixing different ships together. No player who claims to be decent should require any sort of 'insight', thus are you implying there are newbies in 1up? ((

We had newbies in 1up, whether you actually bothered to look to find out which ones they were is debatable

[quote=_ryzekiel_]yes because lancers can defend against co out of gal (!) and even in-galthey are out most of the time anyway, and its shocking the amount of top gals who didnt realise what cross-deffing is and anyway why would any terran hit a xand with co........... [quote=_ryzekiel_]

Don't try to change the argument, you were saying Zik and Cath could raid Xan for free, I proved otherwise, eod.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

what the ****? zik co was magnificent, i had been preaching about them all round to the ziks in our alliance, some used them ie. TheRat (albeit of his own accord as he knew it anyway) and Forest who was a tad slow on the uptake though:/.

mmm, quite... btw, what did the most successful attacks on people from Ziks tend to involve? that's right... CR... Even where lancers can't be used due to ETA constraints, vhsarrak were in plentiful supply for anti CO.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

what are you talking about? cath cr/bs was heavily used. terran de - primary?? eh? yes, there was de-rush up until around tick 400 or so when people massed-co from that point on as anti-de was being too prominent, thus co wouldve become their primary raidfleet for a while. Xand fr/de? lol.. most xands had very capable fi-fleets, Nova. Why? because it is silly to have one primary raidfleet and much better to be able to hit 2 targets of near value to your own with 2 different raidlfeets which you have built with equivoical resource size, unless ofcourse like last round where there were lots of terrans so a bit more fr/de was useful.

Again, the vast majority of our defcalls were for Lancer / FR pod combinations, as you were well aware, the moment fireblades came out FI calls dried out almost completely. FI then became primary use in anti Lancer defence (oh how pulsars worked those times) and in anti CO terran raids, which explained the sudden glut of vsh that was around.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

No. To copy and paste what i typed just above: 'because it is silly to have one primary raidfleet and much better to be able to hit 2 targets of near value to your own with 2 different raidlfeets which you have built with equivoical resource size, unless ofcourse like last round where there were lots of terrans so a bit more fr/de was useful.' Limiting yourself to one raidfleet is just retarded, as you are cutting down on your range of targets a lot.

I point to several examples last round of the single "bulldozer" fleet working and working well, and you know why too... Roids mean jack, if you can concentrate your firepower into once class, you can hit above your value for more XP.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

how did you manage to get lancers def out-of-gal to zik co ? and defending against cath cr-fr/bs with fr is rather silly unless you mass-flak them in def to get past the vipers to actually get a few scratches in. Remember Nova, just because 1up had big xands with lots of fr to give us the power to do that, doesn`t mean it's a resource-efficient decision MO- pov. Bolts? assuming its fr/bs - oh look. the roaches froze them all , broads? mazzelaar managed to roid a few times sacrifing his scarabs to freeze defending broads as he was able to cap mucho+gain nice amount of xp.

Yes, and in sacrificing the scarabs guess what turned up at his door less than a week later to raid the hell out of him hmmmm? Granted he keeps the XP, but that's not much help when CR arrives en masse to deplete your resources. Given the abundance of Xan in our alliance, the right decision was to use bolts where possible to outflak the roach EMP, alternate solutions involved gryphons or broadies nuking the FR element, essentially as long as you could get at the pods EMP was pretty much dead in the water anyways.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

unfair to say that, as once again, i must bring into the equation that xands were stronger than they wouldve been in a balanced universe thus able to build more ships etc, so able to flak through the idiots who didn`t build enough spiders/rogues for their roids. (ps 5k fi for 300 roids is a crap deal.)

hardly that crap a deal, run it through the bcalc Xans strength came from their versatility and strategic depth, they always had at least one or two DECENT options available to counter potential threats from EVERY other race, even including their own. The moment fireblades were in place suddenly their achilles heel magically disappeared.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

and this is differet from other races how? you think all xands wanted to build pulsars or broads or even fireblades?

No, they were forced to make a *decision* and use their brains, which you hardly needed to do with Terrans, and not as much with EMP, Zik appeared to require a balanced well thought out fleet, but with so few Zik on the face of the earth we can't really say that can we?

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

how exactly would you do this? keep their flak level the same to keep the base and make them all effective killers so basically make them superb? Terrans are just fine.
Not really, speedrounds can give you great insight if you are able to actually extrapolate what sort of fleets people would have used and what would happen etc. Much more useful than your conclusions on what are wrong with the stats by basing them on last round, which had no balance whatsoever in the universe race wise.

As I pointed out above, the best way for terrans to go would be back to the r 10.5 style, where the ships targetted their own class, and whilst were poor killers, were very difficult in comparison to kill.

Replace the Hydra and the Dragon with last rounds Terran CR/BS "sluggers", make the chimera do something a little more productive, remove some of the inefficient redundancy and you'd have a race which adheres to it's "values" whilst at the same time forcing intelligent play from the people involved.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

2...I mean, all your doing so far is trying to improve terrans even more, when obviously xandathrii won`t be as strong even if the stats remain the same next round as more people will go xand or zik/cath thus forcing xandathriis to divulge more of their resources on ships other than bombers/lancers so terrans will be much less under threat.

I am suggesting correcting some obvious "flaws" in the stats as opposed to structural weaknesses, I percieve the FR/BS threat posed by Cath to Xan as a structural weakness, since in all other cases that weakness is not visible or relevant, it's a very specific fleet combo that works to pry open the defence, and not without a significant level of risk (hello arrowheads). There was no guarantee that such a raid would be free before the get go, and the inherent slowness of BS made defence of all sorts viable.

Whereas the problem with the Xan FR/DE attacking Terran CO / CR was pretty apparent from the get go, and there was a much lower element of risk involved since there were only a couple of genuine options to actually stop said attacking fleet without taking heavy losses in process (if you bother to cast your mind back the moment such calls came in we were limited to either taking losses on arrows, or trying to rouse the few Zik players we had to get clippers into play).

Terrans should have a structural weakness to "fast" ships, and should not be efficient killers, however, I do think they should have the ability to soak up punishment (sth they cannot do at present) and have the "last word" in an engagement (last round proved that concept pretty well, the other races would do the fighting and Terrans could get through taking moderate losses, and then when they got round to firing, things tended to die quite a bit, maybe not efficiently, but they did die).

Poor race design is where you can get through a round needing only half the ships to operate at near full capacity, good race design offers multiple viable options and forces a balance to be struck, encouraging intelligent, tactical play.

Btw, love your suggestions for giving Xan even more options for free roids Nice move

Nova

[Zo0f]

You are trying to fix problems that dont exist. I didnt see any Terrans complaining when nearly the entire top100 was Terran early on in the round.

You need to take into account the effect such a large amount of Xans had on the Terran population this round. Terran isnt a weak race, is isnt a bad race. It just happens that Xan are strong against it. So what? Cath are strong against Xan. The problem was almost solely to do with the amount of people taking each race.

The way the stats are made needs 25% of people to take each race or there will be an inbalance. So, we need to encourage people to take Cath/Zik without overpowering them or change the stats completely.

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

We had newbies in 1up, whether you actually bothered to look to find out which ones they were is debatable :p

heh

mmm, quite... btw, what did the most successful attacks on people from Ziks tend to involve? that's right... CR... Even where lancers can't be used due to ETA constraints, vhsarrak were in plentiful supply for anti CO.

No. Zik co was magnificent. Cr sucks :/

Again, the vast majority of our defcalls were for Lancer / FR pod combinations, as you were well aware, the moment fireblades came out FI calls dried out almost completely. FI then became primary use in anti Lancer defence (oh how pulsars worked those times) and in anti CO terran raids, which explained the sudden glut of vsh that was around.

there was plenty of anti-fi calls for other alliances, trust me :)

I point to several examples last round of the single "bulldozer" fleet working and working well, and you know why too... Roids mean jack, if you can concentrate your firepower into once class, you can hit above your value for more XP.

Hitting two targets with 2 different raidfleets is more productive for both roids and xp. 'roids mean jack?' lol? :/

Yes, and in sacrificing the scarabs guess what turned up at his door less than a week later to raid the hell out of him hmmmm?

in a week he would have built those scarabs back by those extra roids :)

Xans strength came from their versatility and strategic depth, they always had at least one or two DECENT options available to counter potential threats from EVERY other race, even including their own.

and no other race can?

The moment fireblades were in place suddenly their achilles heel magically disappeared.

maybe you didn`t realise over 5k of my 9k roids were from roiding xands with fi? :) fireblades didn`t save them did it? fireblades, as dragons, need to be massed to be of any use.

No, they were forced to make a *decision* and use their brains, which you hardly needed to do with Terrans, and not as much with EMP, Zik appeared to require a balanced well thought out fleet, but with so few Zik on the face of the earth we can't really say that can we?

i don`t even know what you mean here, expand please.

As I pointed out above, the best way for terrans to go would be back to the r 10.5 style, where the ships targetted their own class, and whilst were poor killers, were very difficult in comparison to kill.

Replace the Hydra and the Dragon with last rounds Terran CR/BS "sluggers", make the chimera do something a little more productive, remove some of the inefficient redundancy and you'd have a race which adheres to it's "values" whilst at the same time forcing intelligent play from the people involved.

significant yet unnecessary changes to a race`s fleet will require balancing and tweaking for other races, which is silly especially when it`s not needed and much simpler/sensible to just try the changes i have suggested.

the inherent slowness of BS made defence of all sorts viable.

yet you seem to think cr is godly :/

Whereas the problem with the Xan FR/DE attacking Terran CO / CR was pretty apparent from the get go, and there was a much lower element of risk involved since there were only a couple of genuine options to actually stop said attacking fleet without taking heavy losses in process (if you bother to cast your mind back the moment such calls came in we were limited to either taking losses on arrows, or trying to rouse the few Zik players we had to get clippers into play).

Pulsars Pulsars Pulsars. No xand would let his lancers die, defending is more about making losses extremely too high to land on, rather than kill all attacking ships when there`s a flurry of def calls;)

Terrans should have a structural weakness to "fast" ships

why?

I do think they should have the ability to soak up punishment (sth they cannot do at present)

what the **** are you talking about? ofc they can atm. Look at the stats, their armour to cost ratio is excellent. :/

Poor race design is where you can get through a round needing only half the ships to operate at near full capacity, good race design offers multiple viable options and forces a balance to be struck, encouraging intelligent, tactical play.

Btw, love your suggestions for giving Xan even more options for free roids ;) Nice move :p

if you can`t see how it would be for xandas in a real balanced universe, i doubt this discussion is getting anywhere;)

[rshih]

jerome our fi launchs soaked up a ****load of enemy def :-d. Launching/relaunching like 5 times a day until we would get thru o_O

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by rshih

jerome our fi launchs soaked up a ****load of enemy def :-d. Launching/relaunching like 5 times a day until we would get thru o_O

Meaning sucess there was from persistence, and not as Jerome keeps harping on about, the FI's apparent speed advantage....

*Sigh*

This is not pia... ETA's count for a lot less, last round they counted for borderline nothing at all.

I've been sitting playing around with the targetting grids, I think it's actually not too difficult to preserve the "structural" weakness Terrans are kinda expected to have, whilst at the same time keeping their feel.

However, there does need to be some kind of way of making the lancer / bomber combo less of an "i-win" button. No other race has a combo which is so borderline impossible to defend against in large numbers without taking massive losses on the defenders side (in fact the only viable defence which makes for a valid solution would involve Zik clippers, there are "partial" solutions which can be arranged such as pulsars to shoot out the lancers, but to stop the pods and the other FR from applying a bad hair day to whatever was in their way... clippers are about it)

Efficiencies and ETA count for less than you seem to believe here, sometimes it really just is all about the numbers

Nova

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

Meaning sucess there was from persistence, and not as Jerome keeps harping on about, the FI's apparent speed advantage....

*Sigh*

This is not pia... ETA's count for a lot less, last round they counted for borderline nothing at all.

I have tried my hardest to keep off from insults nova but this is just ridiculous.....first you place very little importance to resource efficiency and now your downplaying the value of eta ???? not to mention how to draw your conclusions from just pure numbers and not actual cost efficiency..
No offence mate, but your rather clueless evidently when it comes to the topic of roiding..

I've been sitting playing around with the targetting grids, I think it's actually not too difficult to preserve the "structural" weakness Terrans are kinda expected to have, whilst at the same time keeping their feel.

Or. You could just leave them be. You know,if you don`t like the 'structure' of terrans and like the way xandas involve 'tactical intelligence' - GO ****ING XANDA THEN. There is nothing wrong with terrans, the stats in itself are balanced apart from the mere fact that caths and zikos will never be as appealing to many players because of the simple fact they do not kill (as much).

However, there does need to be some kind of way of making the lancer / bomber combo less of an "i-win" button.

No there doesn`t. Your insistence in believing xands are almighty based on just last round just proves your ignorance amongst so many other things.

No other race has a combo which is so borderline impossible to defend against in large numbers without taking massive losses on the defenders side

PULSARS
CORSAIRS
CLIPPERS
ROACHES
....
Don`t base last round`s lacking of caths/ziks to try and make a statistical point here. Any moron can forsee more caths next round anyhow.

(in fact the only viable defence which makes for a valid solution would involve Zik clippers, there are "partial" solutions which can be arranged such as pulsars to shoot out the lancers, but to stop the pods and the other FR from applying a bad hair day to whatever was in their way... clippers are about it)

...................
defending in this sort of PA is about making the roids far less worth (inclusive of xp+roids gained) not killing everything ffs. only noob alliances or alliances with LOTs of def source can afford to go the 'kill everything route'. You are the one who is spoilt Nova. You seem to believe after MO-ing for 1up, the world will always be perfect and you will always receive mass-numbers of def, when you realise that this is not the case, YOU HAVE TO BE EFFICIENT WITH YOUR RESOURCES SO YOU DON`T WASTE YOUR ALREADY STRETCHED ALLIANCE`S FLEETS.

Efficiencies and ETA count for less than you seem to believe here, sometimes it really just is all about the numbers :p

LOL.
My dear nova, this discussion is just embarrassing, your views on the military aspects has seriously, shocked me. I held you in such higher respects. I`ve always thought of DC`ing as a piss-easy job as it was always simple to me, all you needed was commitment and a basic feel for the stats, clearly you do think so too, except you apparently do not understand how the game works in a such non-wtfpwned universe for MO`s and players to efficiently use fleets.


ps. about me and rshih recalling/resending 5 times etc, that was only because rshih was a noob and kept bugging me to launch at like 9pm game time, we got through when we SHOCKINGLY launched later at night. You know, when people sleep and thus miss the chance to def because all it takes is to oversleep or sleep for one hour to get a good lot of incs through:)

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

I have tried my hardest to keep off from insults nova but this is just ridiculous.....first you place very little importance to resource efficiency and now your downplaying the value of eta ???? not to mention how to draw your conclusions from just pure numbers and not actual cost efficiency..
No offence mate, but your rather clueless evidently when it comes to the topic of roiding..

You didn't play last round for example, so you really do have literally no clue as to what your saying

Even this round, ETA was *massively* simplified in comparison to the older style games where class was not a guaranteed indicator of incoming time. I am saying in this environment ETA is pretty much a "low priority" concern provided you bother to do the TT researches. This is simple statement of fact, not opinion, not discussion, this is the truth based on how this game works.

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

Or. You could just leave them be. You know,if you don`t like the 'structure' of terrans and like the way xandas involve 'tactical intelligence' - GO ****ING XANDA THEN. There is nothing wrong with terrans, the stats in itself are balanced apart from the mere fact that caths and zikos will never be as appealing to many players because of the simple fact they do not kill (as much).

All of those issues can be resolved in various ways, as opposed to your somewhat limited idea of a "solution"

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

Don`t base last round`s lacking of caths/ziks to try and make a statistical point here. Any moron can forsee more caths next round anyhow.

And why not? It's verifiable evidence, unlike your "hypothetical situations"...

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

defending in this sort of PA is about making the roids far less worth (inclusive of xp+roids gained) not killing everything ffs. only noob alliances or alliances with LOTs of def source can afford to go the 'kill everything route'. You are the one who is spoilt Nova. You seem to believe after MO-ing for 1up, the world will always be perfect and you will always receive mass-numbers of def, when you realise that this is not the case, YOU HAVE TO BE EFFICIENT WITH YOUR RESOURCES SO YOU DON`T WASTE YOUR ALREADY STRETCHED ALLIANCE`S FLEETS.

Dense... either that or you actually have no idea on how the whole MO thing works You seem to have even less clue about me, which I am genuinely surprised about given some of the magic tricks I had to pull in pia during the round I actually bothered playing for WP. Oh wait, I am not a known name to you so my opinion can't count for much in your eyes

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

My dear nova, this discussion is just embarrassing, your views on the military aspects has seriously, shocked me. I held you in such higher respects. I`ve always thought of DC`ing as a piss-easy job as it was always simple to me, all you needed was commitment and a basic feel for the stats, clearly you do think so too, except you apparently do not understand how the game works in a such non-wtfpwned universe for MO`s and players to efficiently use fleets.

Hrm... I didn't see you stepping up to the plate when we could have really used your "leet" skills... or are you one of these armchair jockeys who automatically assumes their right even when later evidence proves otherwise?

in reference to Rshih : He was a lot less stupid than you appear to be, in launching early he made sure that anti FI got thoroughly drained before he went on his real attack. Obviously this concept of "defleeching" never figures into your magical "I can hit whatever I want because I'm so amazingly skilled" universe

Jerome, pull your head out of whatever crevice it's been inserted into and try to look at the game objectively as opposed to "I do well in pia and here, so the game's can't be *that* much different). They are, and the fundamental concepts are very different due to the way combat is resolved. None of this agility or guns missing based on accuracy, just pure damage and armor, with classes and initiative making up the remaining stats of note. This is not pia, efficiencies are looked at a lot differently, just because you are a good roider (and tbh anyone who played Xan this round should have done comparitively well, oh wait, they did, look at the top 100) doesn't mean to say you're mystically the authority on everything.

Nova

[Zo0f]

Blacknova: You seem to have a very one sided and warped view on Planetarion (as jerome` has said).

As i was 2nd quite a lot of the round i think i was pretty good (2nd on value/score/xp/roids) with my race (Xan) and roiding. Simply a lot of the stuff you have to say about Xan is simple drivel. As jerome` suggested try playing them.

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

You didn't play last round for example, so you really do have literally no clue as to what your saying :)

where did r10.5 have anything to fo with what i said ?

Even this round, ETA was *massively* simplified in comparison to the older style games where class was not a guaranteed indicator of incoming time. I am saying in this environment ETA is pretty much a "low priority" concern provided you bother to do the TT researches. This is simple statement of fact, not opinion, not discussion, this is the truth based on how this game works.

did you ever think that some ziks and xands went for tt-4 asap after hct 3 or 4 straight so they defo got free roids for quite a while ? there isn`t even a point in discussing this is you don`t understand the importance of eta in a semi-random uni.

All of those issues can be resolved in various ways, as opposed to your somewhat limited idea of a "solution" :p

there are no issues. you want to basically change a race completely to make them more what you want them to be, why don`t you just play as the race you want another one to be instead ?

And why not? It's verifiable evidence, unlike your "hypothetical situations"...

lol. I won`t bother saying anything more in this case then.

Dense... either that or you actually have no idea on how the whole MO thing works :p

Well. Put it this way, go back to every round of pa where there has been a real war, tell me if the alliances who had good defence systems then used my or your kind of dc-methods.

You seem to have even less clue about me, which I am genuinely surprised about given some of the magic tricks I had to pull in pia during the round I actually bothered playing for WP. Oh wait, I am not a known name to you so my opinion can't count for much in your eyes ;)

i`m hardly the sort of guy who believes top alliance(s) contain all the best players etc.

Hrm... I didn't see you stepping up to the plate when we could have really used your "leet" skills... or are you one of these armchair jockeys who automatically assumes their right even when later evidence proves otherwise?

I rejected several bugs from people ie. achilles to MO permanently, because 1] I have Mo`d too many times in my 'career' and do not have the effort to do so anymore, this may make me selfish in a way, sue me. However, i don`t see what this 'later' evidence is that proves me 'wrong' ?

in reference to Rshih : He was a lot less stupid than you appear to be, in launching early he made sure that anti FI got thoroughly drained before he went on his real attack. Obviously this concept of "defleeching" never figures into your magical "I can hit whatever I want because I'm so amazingly skilled" universe ;)

where are you drawing this conclusions from ? rshih launched that early because he was a hopeful little git who wished we`d get lucky once (which we did) not because of this drawing def plan, which is hardly original regardless. You obviously have no clue how i roid (ironically how you say

Jerome, pull your head out of whatever crevice it's been inserted into and try to look at the game objectively as opposed to "I do well in pia and here, so the game's can't be *that* much different).

where did i say that ? wtf are you talking about ?

They are, and the fundamental concepts are very different due to the way combat is resolved. None of this agility or guns missing based on accuracy, just pure damage and armor, with classes and initiative making up the remaining stats of note.

really ?! didn`t notice.
[quote[This is not pia[/quote]
thanks, i needed to know that !

efficiencies are looked at a lot differently

Yes, they are all the more important. Pia can use multi-targetting ships, thus efficiency is not as important.

just because you are a good roider (and tbh anyone who played Xan this round should have done comparitively well, oh wait, they did, look at the top 100) doesn't mean to say you're mystically the authority on everything.

who said anything about that ? why do you insistently make assumptions about me boasting of my successes ? sure iboast now and then, most of the time it`s just to annoy people and rub things in. Not to use in statistical debates. don`t put words in my mouth. especially as to use a tool to demean me whilst you are clearly (in what? everyone`s? eyes apart from yourself) losing at this debate as your just plain ignorant and wrong :/

ps. unlike most xands, i didn`t have a] top gal b] def apart from 2 occasions as i never bothered to report my inc after tick 500 or so as 1up had too much inc anyway most of the time, thus i lost a lot of roids (3k+) and yet ended top5(~) with roids. I`d say i`m a bit 'different' in ideas (innovative?) to the common xand. Most follow the fr/de crowd, i went fi. etc. yes, i am proud of my roiding 'abilities' (i call it common sense:D) [/boastetc]

[General Martok]

Blacknova, no offence but did I read you were MO for 1up this round? OMG how the fck could 1up have won then.... I can't count the xan FR/DE defcalls I covered with pulsars alone, no xan's gonna loose his lancers for a few roids. Not all alliances can send enough ships for 100% kill, or even 100% podclass kill. It's a matter of making it expensive enough, like Jerome` said.

In general, after reading all posts: you are WRONG and Jerome` and Z00f are RIGHT.

In short: I'd love to see you do DC work in a loosing alliance... You wouldn't cover half the defcalls.