Cathaar - pls read before finalising ship stats

[WeaponX]

Ok first of all i want to say this was my first round of cath...i used to play usually xan in other rounds (2 rounds of pa played so far - and one was a prepax) and in other games...

I experienced that roiding went quite ok...even though i usually got some def fleets against me ( seems ppl love to defend vs cath´s - experienced that as dc aswell...if you add (cath cr or cath fr) ppl are more likely to pm you fleets - as they go for 0 ship loss salvage/steal)

thats also valid when it comes down to being attacked...i was top roid quite soon...and i would have beaten pdmaster easily when it comes down to roid count (had more total roinds in the end aswell)
pdmaster ( biggest in size at end of round)
Total Round Roids: 7,806
me:
Total Round Roids: 10,562

though i experienced 2 problems when being cath:

you get attacked very often...especially in this round as xp counts so much ppl seem to loved me for trying to gain nice xp and roids ofc...they don´t fear to attack you as you just freeze them...its 0 loss attacks for them if you don´t get defense which already leads to more incs than other races...this is quite some handicap - even more if i think about how often i had to keep big parts of my fleet home to save myself...and not even getting any reward for it (salvage)...you stunn like 2 mio value and don´t get anything for it...

it will depend a lot on how effective xp gonna be next round (tbh i didn´t try to calc the change in the formula...how big the difference between the gained xp is now) - + caths need to be very effective to make any sense to be chosen as race...

tbh i didn´t think i would enjoy the cath race so much ( I loved to send fr faked as cr and other way round quite often in the round...til they got fleetscans all) though if not much changes i will for sure not gonna pick cath again...as it was also one of the most tiresome rounds i have ever played nm which game (also including the round wins in other games where i put "enough" time into it too)...i think only a cath can guess how frustrating it was to get waved daily, i was the biggest cath followed by elviz...and there weren´t any other big cathaars...so pls pls if you want to save the race and don´t make it been chosen only by n00bs, take care of these points when doing the stats / adjusting

I felt also quite bad cause there were quite "some" def ships used on me (bit thx to Irvine there)

Thx i know long post might not even been read, or even considered by you Gate but i had to give it a try

WeaponX
10:4:9 this round

[themast]

cath stats needs to be upped a bit for rd 17

[Gate]

Originally Posted by WeaponX

though i experienced 2 problems when being cath:

you get attacked very often...especially in this round as xp counts so much ppl seem to loved me for trying to gain nice xp and roids ofc...they don´t fear to attack you as you just freeze them...its 0 loss attacks for them if you don´t get defense which already leads to more incs than other races...this is quite some handicap - even more if i think about how often i had to keep big parts of my fleet home to save myself...and not even getting any reward for it (salvage)...you stunn like 2 mio value and don´t get anything for it...

This has always been a huge problem for cath & is why they generally need good ally or gal support. Another problem is that, though you can toughen them up by pushing efficiencies of EMP ships right up (eg the black widow is 76 or so efficiency atm), you can't do this for attack ships as it could significantly overpower attack fleets...

The other consideration is that generally, stats are designed to make it so planets can not roid other planets of their race easily (ask jester, he'll go on about macroeconomies and stuff to explain it ). So my attempted solution has been to make caths immune to FR and CR through the scorpion and mantis, both of which are 0-loss defships. They're also immune to pure zik CR and xand FR because of these ships, and so with a little expenditure, you can stop 4 out of the 8 attack fleets from being able to hit you at all! (though CR/pirate fleets are a major issue)

Of the other bunch, a lot of roach can pretty much stop a DE fleet in its tracks. Compared to marauders, roach have more armour and deal more damage, whilst some beetles can be used to help tip things in your favour even more. The recluse is also a pretty important attack ship, and privateer armour is pretty low, so that it should be more difficult for ziks to hit caths en masse; instead of being able to split their fleet in 2 and hit terrans with it, they should, in most cases, require their entire fleet to hit a cath. Basically, I'm hoping my redesign has made caths significantly tougher to roid; or at least they are able to effectively stop several of the attack fleets in a manner similar to that seen r14 or 15. Caths are still going to need backup, but they should be so useful defence wise that alliances will be willing to make the sacrifice.

I hope :|



As for the 'free salvage from cath incs!', I've given their CR fleet a killship and removed zik flak for buccs, which should (hopefully), make defending with buccs significantly more difficult, as the target is more likely to run if they're getting slaughtered. Benneh and myself had a good mess around one beta, 2.5k roach proved quite capable of roiding ziks 4-5 times our value!