advice on picking a race

[Jester]

I want to play inactively, I'm thinking Xan because last round they had good deterent fleets, plus good/decent attacking ships. Have stats changed too much for Xandathrii to be like that again?

Edit: oh yeah, and who is good for covert opping? I basically want to spend the round whoring XP by hitting larger planets at awkward times and covert opping people to be a pest.

PS. Anyone point me to the best description of how XP works? In particular how is it computed in an attack (per fleet, per attacking value vs defending value, per attacking value vs defending planet's value, per phase of moon squared?) And what is the point at which the formula caps (2x, 3x etc?)

[TheBerk]

try the manual

[jerome]

regarding the xp, last round, it was something like, 10 xp points for every roid you cap off a planet same value as you, and 5 xp pts for every roid you cap of a planet 1/2 value as you, etcetc.

go zikonian as a race choice btw, you`ll get roided in the end for sure by mass-cr or mass-bs though. i expect to see much anti-fr/fi about for xands to be any sort of 'xp growth abuse' race tbh.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

regarding the xp, last round, it was something like, 10 xp points for every roid you cap off a planet same value as you, and 5 xp pts for every roid you cap of a planet 1/2 value as you, etcetc.

Ahh. At what point do they cap it?

go zikonian as a race choice btw, you`ll get roided in the end for sure by mass-cr or mass-bs though. i expect to see much anti-fr/fi about for xands to be any sort of 'xp growth abuse' race tbh.

Is there a thread with advantages/disadvantages of each race, preferably not the crap that shows up on PD, but a decent thread with actual good players discussing it? Possibly on your alliance's private forum.

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Jester

Ahh. At what point do they cap it?

20 xp pts per roid is maximum you can earn*

Is there a thread with advantages/disadvantages of each race, preferably not the crap that shows up on PD, but a decent thread with actual good players discussing it? Possibly on your alliance's private forum.

None on pa forums probably, and id presume the answer to the other possibility is rather confidential.

[AzureWrath]

I assumed Jester was joking :\

[Jester]

You assumed wrong. Anyway, Strategy is way too dead lately. I intend to run the ship stats through my usual analysis crap, but I dunno if I'll have time to do that before the round actually starts. Plus I haven't had a planet in well over a year, so I actually am a newbie when it comes to the current form of PA.

jerome`: Am I correct in assuming that 20xp per roid is for attacking someone with value at 4x own?

Also, at0mic.c0w is an evil fascist. Much love *hug*

[Gerbie]

The formula is:
XP gained = (roids^1,5)*target_value/your_value
where target_value/your_value is maximized at 2
So if you steal 100 roids from someone twice your size you gain 100^1,5*2=2000 XP = 20 XP/roid
score=60*Xp+value, so 2k XP=120k score.

[jerome]

Originally Posted by Jester

jerome`: Am I correct in assuming that 20xp per roid is for attacking someone with value at 4x own?

nah, 2x.
1/2 value = 5xp per roid
1/1 value = 10xp per roid
2/1 value = 20xp per roid, etc.

(as gerbie stated in his formulae)

[Jester]

Ah, that makes sense. How is XP calculated for covert opping?

[furssie]

By how much the planet whine about it. :P

[Gerbie]

It's a fixed amount of Xp per mission, value does not influence this, the amount is different for different missions.

[G.K Zhukov]

Is there a difference on the races how well they do cov-op?

[Gerbie]

http://jpaweb01.planetarion.com/manu...0334461&page=2 <-- yes

[G.K Zhukov]

so Zik or Cath then.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Gerbie

It's a fixed amount of Xp per mission, value does not influence this, the amount is different for different missions.

What does influence this? And if the amount is different from mission to mission then surely it can't be fixed?

[TheBerk]

from a person that questions alliance HC experience, to then ask crap questions about the round and races....

i really expected better..

wtf are you playing at jester?

[jerome]

Alliance organization is still the same. Experience from the "old days", will be more than enough to get you by, however the game itself has changed considerably.

Do you not understand the difference ?

and what is so "wrong" at asking questions? learning the game is bad now?

[Jester]

Originally Posted by TheBerk

from a person that questions alliance HC experience, to then ask crap questions about the round and races....

URL please? Edit: Oh, you're from the ToF thread. I wasn't questioning your HC's experience, I was asking them what they considered experienced. I'm looking for an alliance that's doing reasonably well with actual new people, and not just people who've been around for ages.

i really expected better..

That's nice dear, go be arrogant somewhere else.

wtf are you playing at jester?

I haven't played in a while, I didn't see any threads about this on Strat already. I figured others would benefit from this type of thread as well. The general level of newbie help in the PA community is pretty crap, but I figured I'd get some proper replies. I've chosen race based in part on what I've read here, in part on a quick look at the stats and partly on discussions with my galmates.

Fact is that I haven't followed the ingame structure too closely since round 9.5, when I last had a planet. I've been keeping up on developments that directly affected the ways an alliance would play, but individual planet stuff didn't interest me.

I'm sorry if that doesn't conform to you wonderfully high standards of behavior.

[MAdnRisKy]

oh NOW you want to talk about stats?!?!?!


pfffffft!

(run your calcs, send me the info, I'll write up some little spiel and pm it back)

[Jester]

I'm a proponent of open discussions, so I'll run them and post here.

[Jester]

I'm hearing some talk of each race having a specific prey. Something about Zik being designed to hit Xan, Xan to hit something, something to hit something else, and something else to hit Zik.

If so, I might want to be something else, as there will be plenty of Zik to hit. Plus the somethings will all be busy getting owned by Xan.

[Gerbie]

Terran hit Cath, Cath hit Zik, Zik hit Xan, Xan hit Terran.

[Jester]

Thanks. Cath definitely seems tempting now. But damn EMP sucks.

[Stifler]

cath can also hit xan quite successfully with roach/scorp/cr-pod with tula against expected def and could also add guardians to kill the FR as well as block

edit: since they have such shite anti DE (defender shooting after drake) you need to make sure you can get anti DE def from ally/gal

[Jester]

What's really annoying me about Zik atm is that they don't have eta 7 stuff that hit DE, forcing one to go for BS later which is crap.

[G.K Zhukov]

Is it posible to build anything to better ones chances of succes? (cov-oping wise)

[Nology]

Zik can hit Terran with a mixture of Clipper/BS but in the end the Zik BS are just the end all to any race (save Cath with lots of BW) when it comes to attacking. They can seriously rip through things and hurt races (especially with Rogues, Cutlass and Corsair(at times with this ship)).

[Jester]

Not aside from setting your engineers to first priority on stealth (which regenerates your stealth rating more quickly.)

[Stifler]

Originally Posted by Jester

Not aside from setting your engineers to first priority on stealth (which regenerates your stealth rating more quickly.)

having 30% security centres and 1st eng on security will make you invincible to covert ops, cant remember if sec centres affect stealth or just alert thou

[Gerbie]

Originally Posted by Stifler

having 30% security centres and 1st eng on security will make you invincible to covert ops, cant remember if sec centres affect stealth or just alert thou

According to the manual it's just alert level.

[Stifler]

thought so but wasnt 100%

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Nology

Zik can hit Terran with a mixture of Clipper/BS but in the end the Zik BS are just the end all to any race (save Cath with lots of BW) when it comes to attacking. They can seriously rip through things and hurt races (especially with Rogues, Cutlass and Corsair(at times with this ship)).

Max eta attack though, and there are going to be plenty of DE targetting around to handle those pesky Terrans.

[jerome]

without going into too much detail;
terr can roid cath+terr
caths can roid xands+zik
xand can roid terr+outflak zik/cath pre-rogs/guards
ziks can roid xands+terr

[MAdnRisKy]

Cat CR also good against cat and ZIk since the anti cr ships are only emp / steal, so it's just outflaking, and adding guardians again is only emped / subbed by the two races, and stops most prevelant cr / bs defence that being FR (excvepting the widows of course).

Appart from the fact (as you rightly point out) that emp blows, cat have now (since changes) some really nice combos, but until they get BS they're gonna die to FI attacks horribly, which means that both xan, and zik (well, mebbe tulas would hold off the co pods...) get a free reign on them early


However, here's a third option...

Terran have a very nice FR fleet against top heavy players, VERY nice infact with the init firing before all worries, save emp or stealing (ie not a worry since none of the FR hit fr )
Infact although the dragoon does seem to be mega hard, there's a good case for building nothing but FI FR and DE with the terrans. which means you have 2 nice roiding fleets and one ally def fleet (harpies, pld ship well it was until they robbed it's init) / self defence. harpies may fire later, but if they're all you have home, then against xan it comes down to them versus sents numbers, with the advantage you are firing at the pods (and the disadvantage you're not firing at the sents). basically you can muller 3 out of 4 (you can hit other terrans too - go for those with lowish drake numbers with your FR - ) and are wide open to xan. So it depends on how many people are going to go xan....

[MAdnRisKy]

Still really liking the improved xan cloaking now (improved to me, since I'm new to pax)

[jerome]

spiders are wonderful because of their init. Slightly bad how they are absolutely gobshit in terms of efficiency though *g*

[Jester]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

until they get BS they're gonna die to FI attacks horribly, which means that both xan, and zik (well, mebbe tulas would hold off the co pods...)

CR and BS are same research/construction now. And can be had pretty damn early by Cath.

[Melesse]

But they're still so expensive it's gonna be awhile before significant numbers of them ever show up. Unless you concentrate on them to the detriment of other ships.

Melesse

[General Martok]

Originally Posted by Melesse

But they're still so expensive it's gonna be awhile before significant numbers of them ever show up. Unless you concentrate on them to the detriment of other ships.

Melesse

Seen this rounds shipcosts? About 40% of last round. Numbers will be high, but so will the fighters then ofc, same costs/roid roughly. But battlereports will look nicer, 2 or 3x as much losses in numbers this round

[Melesse]

I reiterate - But they're still so expensive it's gonna be awhile before significant numbers of them ever show up. Instead of tick 500, it'll be tick 400...even longer for the average player. Plenty of time to take lots and lots of roids from them. For the people in the top couple hundred, yea, it'll be pretty fast, but that's not the majority.

Melesse

[Ultimate Newbie]

But that's just like every other round - there are strategies and fleets that can be executed by extremely active and/or well connected players that would be disasterous for even the largely active player. Similarly, fleets that work well for inactive players would not be suitable for active players. There is, and except in R4 with Spids/Pods/Phoenix, there has never been one ultimate fleet for everyone who plays this game.

So going Cathaar with Battleships will work for a select group of players. If you are not very well connected and/or extremely active, i would strongly suggest not using them. If you are active and connected, then i dont see what the problem is - those players tend to do very well regardless

[MAdnRisKy]

the neat thing about CR and BS which is being missed, is that previously eta was a problem... now with the anti cr bs being all FR DE and above the eta is still only a -1 tick window for defence, instead of -2 as with the old style PA CO ships which could hit CR (or sents or whatever). Hence whilst CR BS fleets seem to old school players (like me) at first glance just a bad idea on principal, they're no different in actuallity from an FR or a DE fleet in terms of time for defence to react.

Of course FI CO pods, go from -1 to 0 which is a complete bitch, defence takes as long as attack, (not withstanding the alliance -1) provided you attack in a short range. Hence until the later game stages when all close targets are exhausted, xan and zik have a huge advantage on the eta front, and it is making zik VERY tempting as they have a limited end game strat too with the huge BS fleets (tho tbh I'd stick to just raping xan, cutlass thief combo looks just dangerous, the cutlass working TWICE, once in drawing vsh fire away from the pods, then again in using the vsh to beat up on either silly sents hanging around, or more likely on beetle defence. Of course if they're daft enough to leave pulsars there... then it's goodbye to the pegs and more likely lancers that might hang around - if zik get too good xan are going to have to waste score on perfectly useless lancers just to act as personal zik deterrants, which will make their roiding fleets all the weaker)

now if zik and xan get the flying start because of the eta advantage then zik are going to have an abundant source of targets, and if xan get pummled, then terran have no real opposition.

So there you go, i'd expect the top 10 to be mostly terran and zik, but I;m sure just due to depth of numbers there'll be some xan in there.....

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Stifler

cath can also hit xan quite successfully with roach/scorp/cr-pod with tula against expected def and could also add guardians to kill the FR as well as block

Well, as always Cathaar can get attacked by anyone with enough ships to shake up the EMP weapons, so in a way Caths are a free-for-all .

So yeah, Xans can hit smaller caths right back. heh

[Colt]

i thought it was 13% sec centres, not 30%??

[General Martok]

Security Centre
These Security Facilities help against hostile Covert Operations, raising your normal alert level. This is achieved through having 30% of your buildings as Security Centres.
Total immunity from covert operations is possible with 30% of your buildings as security centres and engineering priority 1 as Security

I believe this was already the case in R11.