Attack Times

[DarkHeart]

As a returning player, I've noticed incomings have got a lot later than when I used to play. And believe me this is a very good thing for the person with the incoming....to wake up at a reasonable hour (GMT) and nobody has passed the eta5 threshold is sex.

Keep on rolling em out late boys

side note - Is it that thereis more people playing that stay up late relative to the euro clock (aus / us etc )....or is that there is less european people playing?

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by Monroe

I've been watching what attack times allies choose to use and it's been an interested progression over the last couple of years. 4 years ago most attacks were launched 22:00 GMT, 2 years ago a lot of attacks were launched 3-4 GMT over the course of the last 4-5 rounds or so I've noticed it continue to shift forward, and now most attack seem to launch between 5-7 GMT, and I've seen some attacks launching as late as 12 GMT. While some of this shift is clearly because there is an advantage in landing last, I am beginning to wonder how long this slow shift will continue. Also I'm not sure the 'landing last is better' philosophy is entirely to blame for this shift. I wonder if some of the shift has to do with the changes to PA game demographics, or attack philosophies, or the simple change made to the game to allow prelaunches. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this slow shift, and if they have any better explanation as to why this is happening. I don't feel the shift is necessarily go or bad, but it'll be really funny (at least to me) on the day we've gone the whole 24 hour cycle are are back to launching attacks in the European evening.

I can't speak for the top players or alliances. But I will drop in my own opinions, just for the sake of discussion.

1. We've aimed for 1am/2am launches, and tried to do so en masse. We've only really been active in the last third of the round. Any semi organised grouping can go from nothing to some form of ranking by simple play.
The logic of the timeframe is that you hope to hit the magic ETA5 before people wake up. To maximise this, fleet weight should be CO/FI/FR

2. If you are small, there are lots of broken gals and inactives to hit.

3. We avoided the 'mega strike', massive rises in roids bring unwelcome visitors, you lose what you gained. Lots of people gain hundreds of roids, in flashy clever strikes, then have wolves at their door, and the rise in roids does not yet allow enough fleetbuilding to make solid use of roids in that way.

4. Our strikes boringly aimed to increase roid count *every* night, and secondary aim was make it a landing fleet every time, as far as possible. Flying fleets that get deffed wastes ETA, and leaks intelligence. Every hour should be gainfully used.

BS / CR ETA over 90 days = @98 Missions (x3 possible fleets =194).
FI/ CO ETA over 90 days = @154 Mission (x3 possible fleets =462)
FR/ DE ETA over 90 days = @120 missions (x3 possible fleets =360)
The race, and therefore alliance that has the right mixture, in pure, outright attacking terms has massive advantages over a whole round. (IMHO, if this remains as is now, with stats, TER is a very bad race and needs help next stat time... Being slow is one thing, being slow and having hundreds of less viable launches over 90 days is crippling)

By my rough reckoning, alliances should be using CO/FI for attacking as much as possible, in the hunt for roids, ships, xp, score. There is no difference in ships, fi/co have as many targets as any other ship type, this does not change. The only think that matters is successful landing through a whole round. Even if you don't, mixed C0/FI alliance fleets become the most available resource in an alliance fleets arsenal, short ETA's mean higher availability round the clock for both attack and defense.

5. Three fleet like crazy at every opportunity while small/medium, but keep to the smaller, more successful strikes that give a steady rise in roids. Especially if you keep fleet weight at FI/CO/FR/DE. You won't begin to register in other alliance eyes until you reach a certain size.

Downsides.
-----------

Our tactic is severed by late attacking committed by other alliances. By the time we wake, our ships are down to a few ticks to landing, you can be in position that your fleets are out of reach when those late attackers come.

Late attacking recovers/wins higher roids if you retal. (You pick up of others landings, they land first, giving you higher roid count).

Late attacks work against opponents already committed - leaving them a choice. Land your own attacks, but have the attackers take a higher share because they hit you after your landing, pull your attack and try and defend, even though half your ally will be asleep, or half way through an attack. Launching late against a committed alliance is a killer.

There is a downside though. If you run late, the risk is that galaxies in particular, wake up with more than ETA5 on INC and put up stern resistance. Any late raid on a galaxy therefore, should be more than the weight of the possible def - ie crushing. But even then, because the late raids land in daylight hours, the attackers get a very clear view of the play, and can always pull raids that get covered.

Ad

[Monroe]

AD, thanks for posting your comments, they are very insightful on how a smallish ally thinks about attack times. Fundamentally from an attack perspective it is better to get roided before you roid then the reverse because you loose less total roids. This has been the interesting part about CT's strategy this round is they have realized this and so chosen to pick an attack time that falls after pretty much every one else has launched. So what happens (if your watching the ally rankings) is they go way down in roids and usually loose a couple of spots in the ally ranks, then a couple of hours later jump back up at or near the top. If this strategy works (which is yet to be seen) I would expect other allies would for r23 push their attack times back to counter this effect. This is where some of my basis for the original thought in the thread comes from, because the next logical step would be for CT to push things back even further to stay launching last until we've completed the full 24 hour cycle. This leads me to suppose that there is no fixed optimal attack time, and that it is only relative attack times that matter. So as long as you attack a couple of hours after your opponents you will have the advantage regardless of what actual hour of the day that happens to be.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by Monroe

AD, thanks for posting your comments, they are very insightful on how a smallish ally thinks about attack times. Fundamentally from an attack perspective it is better to get roided before you roid then the reverse because you loose less total roids. This has been the interesting part about CT's strategy this round is they have realized this and so chosen to pick an attack time that falls after pretty much every one else has launched. So what happens (if your watching the ally rankings) is they go way down in roids and usually loose a couple of spots in the ally ranks, then a couple of hours later jump back up at or near the top. If this strategy works (which is yet to be seen) I would expect other allies would for r23 push their attack times back to counter this effect. This is where some of my basis for the original thought in the thread comes from, because the next logical step would be for CT to push things back even further to stay launching last until we've completed the full 24 hour cycle. This leads me to suppose that there is no fixed optimal attack time, and that it is only relative attack times that matter. So as long as you attack a couple of hours after your opponents you will have the advantage regardless of what actual hour of the day that happens to be.

The one caveat I see in all the above is that if it comes off, you gain. If you get it wrong, you've lost your roids, and you lose all that fleet time/ETA.

Also, I believe that the game has shifted. Main def comes from in gal, if you can't def your roids, don't bother, just go raiding, with 3 fleets (assuming you are smaller in all cases, Gal, Player, Ally), because there is only so much you can do when undersized in comparison to opponents.

ZU was hit by several waves this week (hence our dented rating in the ally charts), all by overmatched opponents. The only option has been to go attacking at every opportunity. Also, since we started late round, our fleet weight has moved heavier, and we have indeed lost ETAs and availability through heavier fleets (DE/CR/BS)

One last thing. I believe a 90 day round favours XAN significantly.

[qebab]

In response to the original post I would say that it depends a lot on what sort of attack it is. If it is a fullscale war, I would launch constantly to tire members and officers in the other alliance, and break their morale. In pia fleetcatches were often used to demolish large planets, which ruined morale further, especially if they were used on officers and these subsequently went inactive. Something I'd like to try once is to concentrate fire on a relatively smallish group of hostile players (Officers if possible) for 3-4 days, give them no pause and see if they could break.

Yet again, in pia, not pa, my galaxy was waved constantly for more than 45 hours. Pia has 30 minute ticks. It took me 3-4 days to recover from exhaustion and I lost the will to play shortly after. Morale and stamina is more important than roids in a war situation, and good alliances will take that into account. Morale can't be regained as easily as roids, and not everyone can ignore exhaustion and keep going when they're tired beyond belief.

If you aim to win a war, attacktimes matter less than volume of fleets launched. If you're simply after roidgains, you want to land after the attackers on your players land, and you want to launch when alliances are starting to run out of defense fleets.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by qebab

In response to the original post I would say that it depends a lot on what sort of attack it is. If it is a fullscale war, I would launch constantly to tire members and officers in the other alliance, and break their morale.

I think the original post was assuming fullscale war, or at least that's the hint I've gotten from Conspiracy High Command posting on the alliance discussions side. Still, on a full scale war too, you probably want to have some landmark launch, at least when you start hitting!

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by qebab

If you aim to win a war, attacktimes matter less than volume of fleets launched. If you're simply after roidgains, you want to land after the attackers on your players land, and you want to launch when alliances are starting to run out of defense fleets.

I would tend to agree with this, which would tend to validate my initial thought (that optimal attack times are relative not fixed). In winning in the end it comes down more to the number of fleets launched then any other single factor. Obviously ally politics, timing of attacks, race distribution can all come into play in determining success, but in the end the key factor is almost always the will to keep fighting. One key point on this is I can't recall a single instance (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) of an ally being in the top spot for a significant period of time, then loosing it, and still coming back to win the round. It seems the player base (or at least those at the top of the food chain) has a strong tendency to simply give up and not push through the tough times in order to gain long term victory.

[furball]

I've split off the posts on Terran, the thread was becoming too unwieldy.