stats

[The_Fish]

Looking at the current set up of planets, are we going to see some adjustment so that Zik and Cath get a bit of upgrading and/or Terrans getting some downgrading?

Admittedly a lot of people wont have chosen yet, but its quite clear a lot more people will be going terrans than zik or cath, unless the stats change.

[Makhil]

my guess is many terrans chose to hide their choice hoping they could say 'see, there's not 90% terran, so lets keep the stats as they are' and switch just before tick starts.

[Kal]

stats will probably change and will be announced before tick start

[Gerbie]

hmm that will be hard to analyse and change setting if it is going to happen shortly before tickstart

[General Martok]

Any statchange less than 4/5 days before tickstart is rediculous.... There was mroe than enough time for changes, so don't change them shortly before tickstart indeed. *

* I'm not saying they shouldn't be changed, but IF they are gonna change them, do it this weekend.....

[Guran]

Give Zikonians and Cathaar PDS.

[Nadar]

Lower eta for xan plz

[The Real Arfy]

higher initiative for pegasus or lower for pulsar!!!

[Zo0f]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

higher initiative for pegasus or lower for pulsar!!!

[Heartless]

The stats could indeed need some tweaking, but I don't think Terran need a downgrade of their firepower / armour nor a higher init for pegs.

What could be discussed, however, is a reduction or even remove of Terran's construction bonus and a slightly increased pricing for the destroyer class ships.

All in all those stats have quite some potential, you guys should simply come up with counter measures instead of blaming Terrans for being overpowered. As someone pointed out on the strategy forums (where this thread should belong to, btw) Terran are pretty weak against CR incomings. Furthermore CR/BS class fleets are ultimately underestimated from my point of view. They clearly lack the eta, but then again they are firing at the ships which target them and the only "real" eta advantaged def ship is EMP, thus no real danger.

[Makhil]

If the final changes are what you want, the only countermeasure is to choose Terran. Terran aren't weak vs CR, they're weak vsCO early in the round. CR pods come from Cat and Zik with no kill ships, and those CR target only Fi and Co = at worse terrans lose roids but kill loads of ships making it not really interesting for Zik and Cat.
If there is no serious work done on the stats people either will go terran or go for a free account.

[jerome]

Cathaar is a useless race.. you might as well be zik if you wanted to be cath heh.
Zik have a lower init, good enough resource efficiency, also share the Cr pod which is quite fun ;> and the said pod is almost of similar quality.

Suggestions would be to just make subverting into steal, and make the inits higher.. sorts everything out and also maybe think about giving Cath a fi/cr combo of pods, rather than fr/cr as with their current 2 fi as flak, they can be a strong roiding unit at the start as well as later on.

I kinda agree with the init changes as aforementioned by others about pulsar/pegasus, but as Heartless said, that may as well be sorted by a mere resource efficiency downgrade to the Terran De ships. This is due to the fact that, terran is already the best target for xan, and also it is expected that most of the uni will go terran so advantageous for xan. Also giving the xan fi-pod 15 armour than 12, will be a nice small change.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Makhil

If the final changes are what you want, the only countermeasure is to choose Terran. Terran aren't weak vs CR, they're weak vsCO early in the round. CR pods come from Cat and Zik with no kill ships, and those CR target only Fi and Co = at worse terrans lose roids but kill loads of ships making it not really interesting for Zik and Cat.
If there is no serious work done on the stats people either will go terran or go for a free account.

Then you are definately not intellectually gifted, sorry to say so.
Cat can actually roid Terran pretty easy. Just attack him with a decent combo of CatPod2 + Scorpion + Roach + Beetle. However, a slight increase of the EMP ship firepower (or a slight decrease of the ship cost) would be required in order to make such a fleet combo ultimately owning.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

Cathaar is a useless race.. you might as well be zik if you wanted to be cath heh.
Zik have a lower init, good enough resource efficiency, also share the Cr pod which is quite fun ;> and the said pod is almost of similar quality.

Suggestions would be to just make subverting into steal, and make the inits higher.. sorts everything out and also maybe think about giving Cath a fi/cr combo of pods, rather than fr/cr as with their current 2 fi as flak, they can be a strong roiding unit at the start as well as later on.

I agree with the init changes as aforementioned by others about pulsar/pegasus, but as Heartless said, that may as well be sorted by a mere resource efficiency downgrade to the Terran De ships. Also giving the xan fi-pod 15 armour than 12, will be a nice small change.

First of all I disagree with the uselessness of EMP, it is still far more efficient than subverting + it doesn't disable you the option to still kill someone's fleet.

Secondly, I disagree with Cath having fi/cr as pod combo. The fr/cr combo is fine, the roach is a vital ship in the cath fleet and since you need to send multiple classes for efficient Cath attacks you could as well just for the fun of it hammer 250 fr pods into such a fleet (-> target needs to get covered against more pod classes simoultanously). Cath however won't be able to roid for free unless they attack an either damn small planet or someone with a really bad fleet composition. Still they can be played fairly decent.

About the Xan FI-pod armour increase suggestion ... I tend to disagree. Rather increase the armour on the pulsar, it is the backbone of the xan fi fleet but it has by far the worst armour per ressource (apart from a struct killer which is ... no comment).

[jerome]

If you increase the armour of the pulsar, then you will disregard the best thing about these stats, which is that no race has a real hold over the other. As pulsars, who are already quite capable vs the pegasus, although do die off in 1on1 resource costs, but do a lot of damage to make any attacks pointless, to be a bit overpowered, eh? But ofcourse, the amount of armour increase can always be regulated, and not too much in favour of xan ( as we all well know, how often people can go overboard on some small changes)

The cath fi/cr pod suggestion was just out of the top of my head, thus I put the 'maybe' bit in bold, as it wasn';t really that plausible.

Cathaar may still be effective, but their main reasoning to play them was always for their efficiency and their inits, you take one of that advantages away and give it to another race, who also have the bonus of using 'subverted' ships against them, you ruin a big part of people's reasoning to play as Cathaar. Oh, also, Xanda is almost as efficient in damage/cost as Caths heh, Caths were always a race, as you were able to disable your opposition before it could fire at you, even if it was bigger, but now, xans are capable of doing so, but killing instead at almost the same frequency, and ziks are capabling of disabling, albeit at a lesser efficiency but that is balanced in the fact that subverted ships also shoot, thus increasing the effect on a battle, caused by ziks.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

If you increase the armour of the pulsar, then you will disregard the best thing about these stats, which is that no race has a real hold over the other. As pulsars, who are already quite capable vs the pegasus, although do die off in 1on1 resource costs, but do a lot of damage to make any attacks pointless, to be a bit overpowered, eh? But ofcourse, the amount of armour increase can always be regulated, and not too much in favour of xan ( as we all well know, how often people can go overboard on some small changes)

I don't know where the pulsar would be overpowered in the end, the only race with a DE vs. FI ships are Terrans and an armour increase of the pulsar would basically just allow a somewhat interesting roiding of Terrans with a FI-pod fleet. The increase of the Pegasus cost would in the end lead to the same btw, since currently I would not attack a Terran with FI pod, the peg wins a defense match against Pulsars pretty nicely, while the Pulsar is not as strong when he defends against attacking Pegs (just because of the ressource ratios).

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

Cathaar may still be effective, but their main reasoning to play them was always for their efficiency and their inits, you take one of that advantages away and give it to another race, who also have the bonus of using 'subverted' ships against them, you ruin a big part of people's reasoning to play as Cathaar. Oh, also, Xanda is almost as efficient in damage/cost as Caths heh, Caths were always a race, as you were able to disable your opposition before it could fire at you, even if it was bigger, but now, xans are capable of doing so, but killing instead at almost the same frequency, and ziks are capabling of disabling, albeit at a lesser efficiency but that is balanced in the fact that subverted ships also shoot, thus increasing the effect on a battle, caused by ziks.

Cathaar are not as efficient as in the past, I agree to that, but ultimately disagree with you on the "xans are capable of doing so" part. Xan have Init 3, and like it or not, they can kill a lot but they also suffer a lot. Just take a look at most common attack fleets and then at the targetting issues... as I said before, give the cath emp ships more firepower or less ressource cost. Still they are not completely out of the roid race or top spot race right now.

[jerome]

I meant the overpowerage for the Pulsar, taking into the suggestion for init lowering of Pulsar into account. Other than that, I agree with what you say about pulsars.

Regarding Caths, the point is, the reasons for people to choose them as a race haqve been cut down as all other 3 races are better options. I'd prefer a universe with more balanced numbers of each race, would you expect to see as many caths as terrans/ziks/xans ?

[Gerbie]

Cath currently make up only 12% of the universe. Many of those are cov op/scanplanets and people who just choose randomly. I don't think there's many people that currently play cath and actually think they can get a decent score with them.

[General Martok]

Cathaar players in the winning alliance (whatever alliance that will be) will get decent scores, I'm sure. But that's because they will get attacked relatively little, get defence relatively easy, etc. Cathaars in most other alliances will have not much of a chance indeed, though I'm sure a few individuals will do fine with them.

[Makhil]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Then you are definately not intellectually gifted, sorry to say so.
Cat can actually roid Terran pretty easy. Just attack him with a decent combo of CatPod2 + Scorpion + Roach + Beetle. However, a slight increase of the EMP ship firepower (or a slight decrease of the ship cost) would be required in order to make such a fleet combo ultimately owning.

That combo of 4 ships from 3 different class is more difficult to set up than the single shipclass roiding fleet Terrans can use, unless you play bashing style ofc. If you spend a similar amount of res on a roiding fleet, nothing compare to the Terran, that in my book is called 'unbalanced'.

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Cat can actually roid Terran pretty easy. Just attack him with a decent combo of CatPod2 + Scorpion + Roach + Beetle. However, a slight increase of the EMP ship firepower (or a slight decrease of the ship cost) would be required in order to make such a fleet combo ultimately owning.

You're kidding, right?
1. Terrans will have an abundance of Drakes as they double nicely as one of their primary attacking ships, and a defensive ship.
2. I can't believe you'd consider sending Cath FI (Beetles) at a Terran. Their pegs would rip through you. You'd also need enough to EMP all of his Gryphon and Phoenix - not likely.
3. The Roach will be ripped apart also by any Hydras and Gryphons (as it's unlikely you'd freeze them all with your Beetles, as a good chunk of them would be killed by Pegs).

[jerome]

Hydras are crap. Gryphons aren't all that, Terrans are only mediocre to Fr.

[Tomkat]

Still, with 2 anti-FR the Terran is more than likely going to be able to fend off a few roach.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by General Martok

Cathaar players in the winning alliance (whatever alliance that will be) will get decent scores, I'm sure. But that's because they will get attacked relatively little, get defence relatively easy, etc. Cathaars in most other alliances will have not much of a chance indeed, though I'm sure a few individuals will do fine with them.

Good morning Mr. Superbrain *g*
Actually every planet in the winning alliance should have a decent score in the end, independant from its race.

Originally Posted by TomKat

You're kidding, right?
1. Terrans will have an abundance of Drakes as they double nicely as one of their primary attacking ships, and a defensive ship.
2. I can't believe you'd consider sending Cath FI (Beetles) at a Terran. Their pegs would rip through you. You'd also need enough to EMP all of his Gryphon and Phoenix - not likely.
3. The Roach will be ripped apart also by any Hydras and Gryphons (as it's unlikely you'd freeze them all with your Beetles, as a good chunk of them would be killed by Pegs).

As cath you have a rather huge amount of roaches thus drakes are a fairly small threat to your fleet. ... no wonder MISTU struggled with defense sometimes last round when you were the one doing it, you just once again shown your inability to think further then: "Pod is CR and FR. I can have one CR and one FR roiding fleet. Now which FR / CR would be the best flak?"

EDIT: I just noticed that you posted a comment while I was writing this post.
So, basically, a gryphon heavy Terran won't be able to hurt you (beetles should do a nice job there, flaked by scorpion and roach) so a serious concern is only what is your idea of how to play cath this round? As pointed out earlier, cathaar won't be able to roid for free anymore all too easily, thus aim for minimizing your losses when roiding. I am currently giving cath a serious thought of playing since they might not hurt you but their fleet backbone is multi-usable and roids are still relatively cheap to gain.

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by Heartless

... no wonder MISTU struggled with defense sometimes last round when you were the one doing it, you just once again shown your inability to think further then

No need to go onto personal insults Heartless, this isn't primary school.

And I'd say you spreading your attack fleet between 3 different types of ships is more foolish. You're guaranteed to take some losses then. Getting defence would be easy for that, as the officer running it could just kill off one of your types of ships and make it too expensive to land, even though the others remained relatively untouched.

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by Heartless

So, basically, a gryphon heavy Terran won't be able to hurt you (beetles should do a nice job there, flaked by scorpion and roach) .

Gryphons and Phoenix make up the core for Terran's anti-DE/FR. So they're like to have quite a few. They're both CO. You'd need to have enough beetles to freeze all of his CO, plus any defence he may get. You need 4 Beetles to freeze 1 gryphon and 1 phoenix. That's a helluva lot of beetles you'd need to own to freeze them all to stop them from hurting your Roaches.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

Gryphons and Phoenix make up the core for Terran's anti-DE/FR. So they're like to have quite a few. They're both CO. You'd need to have enough beetles to freeze all of his CO, plus any defence he may get. You need 4 Beetles to freeze 1 gryphon and 1 phoenix. That's a helluva lot of beetles you'd need to own to freeze them all to stop them from hurting your Roaches.

You don't go for stopping them from hurting you.
You go for minimizing the hurt you receive. I rather lose huge amounts of my beetles (which btw still fire before any kill ship, take a look at the init my friend) than losing the same amount of FR or even CR.
Apart from that, tell me how likely it is that a terran will exceed you on ALL those ship classes (unless he has a considerable higher income)? This reminds me a bit on last rounds zik discussions I followed, about the usefulness of Zik against Xan. I think especially last round has shown that races which seem to be pretty strong are far from strong. I haven't seen any top ranked xan last round, except for the ones inside the winning alliance, the rest got constantly roided fairly easily. This round will be more or less the same, you either can roid Terran or you cannot with your fleet, it purely depends upon you. The majority of Terran players will focus on CO/DE class ships, thus you can spare the scorpion ressources and produce more beetles/roaches + catpod2.
This does, however, not change the fact that cath would have a better chance with an increased EMP ship efficiency. I do after all not say Cath are owning, I just point out that they are far from being as worse as most people describe them.

Oh and I am sorry if you took it as a personal insult when I conclude things from stuff I have seen thus excuse me for commenting this.

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by Heartless

This does, however, not change the fact that cath would have a better chance with an increased EMP ship efficiency. I do after all not say Cath are owning, I just point out that they are far from being as worse as most people describe them.

It's because most people can't be bothered to think further than attacking with one ship type. Terrans are the obvious choice as they are (as Sid said in another thread) pretty standard. Whereas all the other races will have customisable fleets, it's likely the Terrans will be pretty consistent in ratios.

I don't think they'll own as much either. With that amount of DE flying around, people are going to invest more in their anti-DE, making life as a Terran very hard.

Originally Posted by Heartless

Oh and I am sorry if you took it as a personal insult when I conclude things from stuff I have seen thus excuse me for commenting this.

It's ok, I wasn't a defence officer in MISTU anyway. I ran a few if noone else was around, but that was it :P

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

It's because most people can't be bothered to think further than attacking with one ship type. Terrans are the obvious choice as they are (as Sid said in another thread) pretty standard. Whereas all the other races will have customisable fleets, it's likely the Terrans will be pretty consistent in ratios.

I don't think they'll own as much either. With that amount of DE flying around, people are going to invest more in their anti-DE, making life as a Terran very hard.

So then, where's the problem with cath?

[The_Fish]

40% Terrans, only 12% Cath, played stats makers .

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

40% Terrans, only 12% Cath, played stats makers .

Agreed. The stats changes were utterly useless. Ter/Xan are still on the well done side while zik and cath suffer from certain weaknesses... cat/zik will have a hard round when anti-cr ships should be available. And with the terran drake there should be quite a few.

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by Heartless

So then, where's the problem with cath?

the problem with cathaar is that their emp is crap. Meaning you need like 90% of your fleet to attack if you want to hit a decent target without getting to high losses compared to the other races which can roid with 1 shipclass only... and ofcourse that is a smart thing to do no :/

[Chika]

yea. when most of uni mayjorly chooses one race, there is obviously a flaw in the stats. Obviously. No way to even argue it. All races shud be damn near even with a key strength and weakness. Terran have a very inexpensive DE it is cheaper than the cath FR ffs. Plus, anti DE for every race except for Cath is crap. And xan anti DE really is a slap in the face with same init as pegs. and ziks anti DE my god. 3 to 1 and the most expensive CO in the game. These stats are hugely battered. And the sad part about it is, what's done is done. there is nothing we can do about it now, nor even before. People have been saying Terran were over powered since beta. PRIVATE beta.

[The_Fish]

I remember arguing with Sid in pm in private beta about how crap Cath were, he said they were playable. Well, not many think so. shame.

[Wandows]

well in theory any race is playable .... its obvious thought that some are way better to play then others atm

[Gerbie]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

I remember arguing with Sid in pm in private beta about how crap Cath were, he said they were playable. Well, not many think so. shame.

Cath are great... if you are a scanner.

[The_Fish]

and just to confirm it, the top cath planet atm is rank 95. Played Sid.

[Synthetic_Sid]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

and just to confirm it, the top cath planet atm is rank 95. Played Sid.

Top planets at the moment has basically NOTHING to do with ship stats - terrans are always going to dominate early rankings because of their fast construction time (which is STILL faster than manual says). Or would you care to explain how ship stats could affect rankings prior to protection even ending? That has to be one of the most ludicrous comments I've ever seen.


The terran construction bonus is something I wanted removed. I'd also liked to have seen rather more substantial changes to shipstats after the public beta than occurred - but I had zero input into the changes that actually happened.

Xan will be the strongest race this round - as the universe is full of their best mid to late round target: terrans.

[Makhil]

Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid

Xan will be the strongest race this round - as the universe is full of their best mid to late round target: terrans.

and mid round is about to start

[jerome]

it is? its not even tick 200

[Quazi Starbucks]

not even tick 100 let alone 200

tick 200 is where I expect things to get interesting

[Achilles]

Originally Posted by Heartless

So then, where's the problem with cath?

If you can't see how weak cath are with these stats then you have a myopia no amount of debate can cure.

Originally Posted by The_Fish

40% Terrans, only 12% Cath, played stats makers .

The simple solution here is not to play cathaar. It should be remembered that the stats are the same for everyone, and everyone could choose who to play right up to tickstart. 4 balanced races is a luxury, not a necessity. At all.

Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid

Xan will be the strongest race this round - as the universe is full of their best mid to late round target: terrans.

Care to place a healthy wager on the #1 planet being Terran at the end? Though I agree that xan will occupy the majority of the Top100.