The Universe vs Terran calc

[Monroe]

I just ran some calcs using the current ship totals for the universe in an all out brawl as a race comparision. Since terrans are the largest percentage of the universe in terms on number of players I pitted the universe's Terran against each of the other races just to see in a race on race battle, given the distribution of ships in the universe today how would each of the races stack up against terran. I found the results rather interesting. Against caths the numbers are as expected, terrans own caths in terms of ship losses (duh) 24.5M in value lost verses 65.8M value lost for caths, now given the fact that the total value of terrans is 324M vs only 267.9M for cath this number makes sense. You can see the calc at:
http://bcalc.thrud.co.uk/index.php?loadfile=main39191
for as long as it remains active.

Against Xan the numbers are much more interesting. 122.5M fleet value lost for terrans vs. 111.2M value lost for Xan. This means Xans totally own terran, especially when you factor in the fact that the total universe fleet value for Xan is 246.3M vs the 324M for terrans.
http://bcalc.thrud.co.uk/index.php?loadfile=main90243

Against ziks the numbers are also interesting, terrans manage to kill an insane number of zik ships totalling 140M in value while only loosing 104.8M in terran value. Ziks do pretty much make up the difference in stolen ships BUT ziks out value Terrans 390.8M to 324M.
http://bcalc.thrud.co.uk/index.php?loadfile=main33873

Now as to what all this means I'm not really sure, but I did find it very interesting to look at, and there is some real interesting meaning about race balance burried in here somewhere, but I cba to figure it all out. I did want to get this data out there and see what people think, so fire away!

[Bubert Samson]

Good stuff, Im not going to try to sound smart by analyzing anything, but it is certainly a fun couple of battlecalcs.

[paolo]

Terran DE seems to be the best roidingfleet for them this round...

[Ultimate Newbie]

I wonder, regarding the comparison with Ziks; presumably the stats dont show how many ships of non-zik race are held by Ziks, as such Zik fleet value is actually much higher (and the prevelence of terran et al lower) than those numbers would suggest. Thus, whilst your comparison is interesting, i think that any data regarding Ziks is out of whack.

What i found surprising though is the number of Cath kill ships - they were doing alot more damage than i imagined.

[Monroe]

Yeah the cath roaches are nasty as all getout, rather overpowered this round I think. While you have a good point about zik values being relatively low given the fact that they have other races ships that wasn't the point of the exersize. This was looking just purely on what the universe on average thought were good ships, and what percentages of each ship was 'worthwhile' (assuming about 80% of the value of ships was owned by serious players) it is a pretty good indicator in my opinion of stats balance.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Monroe

Yeah the cath roaches are nasty as all getout, rather overpowered this round I think.

Overpowered??? If it wasn't for roaches being as they are, Cathaar CR would get slaughtered by Xan Spectres and Zik Pirates every single time they went on an attack.

Besides, the Roaches have only 32 damage efficiency (probably about right for a Cath kill-ship, certainly no less). Do you just hate Caths or something?

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by furball

Overpowered??? If it wasn't for roaches being as they are, Cathaar CR would get slaughtered by Xan Spectres and Zik Pirates every single time they went on an attack.

Besides, the Roaches have only 32 damage efficiency (probably about right for a Cath kill-ship, certainly no less). Do you just hate Caths or something?

The issue with roach is it multitasks a lot. It's zero-loss against one attack fleet, it's solid stuff for your own attack fleet, and it defends you against the prime fleet of the round. Granted, it's not scorpion. It's a solid key ship for cathaar.

What you want to look is:
Top10
Cathaar 5
Zikonian 5

Top100
Terran 11
Cathaar 18
Xandathrii 14
Zikonian 57

Cathaar still defines as a "winner race" - you either win or you suck. If you're looking for overpowered things, take a look at the ziks.


In top500, the zikonian produce is still 40%, even if just 27% of the planets are zikonian (in compared to terran 36%, cathaar 18%, xandathrii 19%, which hold 20%, 19%, 20% respectively).

[furball]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

The issue with roach is it multitasks a lot. It's zero-loss against one attack fleet, it's solid stuff for your own attack fleet, and it defends you against the prime fleet of the round. Granted, it's not scorpion. It's a solid key ship for cathaar.

I see what you mean. Whoever designed that Terran BS fleet deserves a stern telling-off, the faking opportunities for those Roaches must be huge.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by furball

I see what you mean. Whoever designed that Terran BS fleet deserves a stern telling-off, the faking opportunities for those Roaches must be huge.

Yeah you've hit the nail on the head, I think they should have made the syren target CR and it would have solved the problem for terrans in that they just get chewed to pieces by roaches. Just a thought, overall stats are good, just still not perfect.

[bwtmc]

Terran falls down a bit when it comes to targetting.

It's worth noting that fleet specialisation and high etas mean that a lot of the ships in the calcs above aren't seen in many real battles.

[robban1]

no the key ship this round is the roach as it is used both in attacks and in def vs 2 races and its damn good for an cath killship then they have the bw for the job

as an result the stats suck this round

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by robban1

no the key ship this round is the roach as it is used both in attacks and in def vs 2 races and its damn good for an cath killship then they have the bw for the job

as an result the stats suck this round

I wouldn't go so far as to say the stats suck, but the roach is definitely the ship with the greatest advantage this round. Cath CR target everything that target them, which is a very strong advantage that no other race has. I don't think the targeting is necessarily wrong, but I would have made syrens target CR, because right now syrens are pretty much redundant anyway.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Monroe

I wouldn't go so far as to say the stats suck, but the roach is definitely the ship with the greatest advantage this round. Cath CR target everything that target them, which is a very strong advantage that no other race has. I don't think the targeting is necessarily wrong, but I would have made syrens target CR, because right now syrens are pretty much redundant anyway.

What? The statistics aren't bad enough to suck? Come on, get a grip. Half the top100 isn't zikonian because steal is absolutely overpowered, but because ziks are given excellent targetting and semistrong ratings in addition to the obvious strength of stealing ability.

Yeah, and some genius gave them cutter and brigand. Gawd that was smart.

Would you like me to discuss the terran bs/de and xandathrii? Or maybe we can talk about frigates a little? Great stuff.

[wielklem]

hmm seems lch needs to start playing again monroe has to much time on his hands ever since we quit playing nice stuff do monroe and keizari is right about ziks beeing to strong thats the major isue with the stats this round, but dont feel bad there is something wrong with stats every round

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Monroe

Cath CR target everything that target them, which is a very strong advantage that no other race has.

Cat CR do not target Scarab, which fire before them. Okay so they don't kill them and Ziks can't really take advantage of them but there they are.

From a purely tagetting point of view, Ter BS only have to worry about Roach, Zik BS only Dragons and Xan FI actually do target all anti-FI.

[Monroe]

On this note I've been working on a quantitative method of dealing with initiative in the hopes of helping to balance the stats. A large part of the difficulty of balancing the stats is there really is no good way of quantitizing how initiative affects changes in the stats and so as a stat maker its really hard to see how a specific set of stats will do without seeing what the players do with it.

[Tietäjä]

No. It's very easy to see zikonian was overpowered to the fifth layer of Dante's inferno. You didn't really need to be ****ing Newton to get that right. The question usually comes down to if you care whether or not it goes that way. "Testing" is probably the magic key in getting those stats (not right but) better.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Monroe

On this note I've been working on a quantitative method of dealing with initiative in the hopes of helping to balance the stats.

I'd love to see how you try this.

A huge part of stats design is making rough guesses for the strength and speed of ships based on theory of how you reckon the round will play out: things like what attack fleet people will concentrate on most, what ships people will build, how races will perform at different parts of the round and simply the overall roid 'economy' of the game at any one point.

IMO, qualitative judgement plays a huge part in stats design and it can't easily be replaced by quantitative calculation (although ofc, I used that a lot for balancing things too), but being a bit of a logical bloke I'd like to see you have a try.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Well, i suppose one way of doing it 'quantitatively' would be something along the lines of; you have 1 mil resources. Design an optimal Terran attacking fleet combo. Xan Defender has 800k resources, design optimal defensive fleet. Assess outcome as a proportion, eg 1 resource of terran kills 1.4 resources of Xan. Adjust initiative of Terran ship 1, to firing before its counter. Re-calc optimal fleets; observe differences in damage ratio (eg, from 1.4 to 1.8). Then, adjust Xan Ship 2 initiative to before terran ship 3, etc etc etc.

It would be extremely arduous, and the results that you get back wouldnt be all that meaningful. however, if you did compare them, you'd prolly notice iniative levels that are really unbalanced with those that are more balanced, and thus you might be able to iron out some of the more radical problems.

Mind you, common sense seems to work for me :\.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

It would be extremely arduous, and the results that you get back wouldnt be all that meaningful. however, if you did compare them, you'd prolly notice iniative levels that are really unbalanced with those that are more balanced, and thus you might be able to iron out some of the more radical problems.

Mind you, common sense seems to work for me :\.

I just poke at it with a stick until it all falls roughly into place

[Dom32]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

Cat CR do not target Scarab, which fire before them. Okay so they don't kill them and Ziks can't really take advantage of them but there they are.

From a purely tagetting point of view, Ter BS only have to worry about Roach, Zik BS only Dragons and Xan FI actually do target all anti-FI.

Surely the zik bs have to deal with roaches as well to be honest as they first first and kill their ships which is quite a big issue i would have thought.

[-=Chronic=-]

imo ziks are the supreme overall race this rnd