'Fixing' Cathaar

[Gate]

Firstly, sorry for the essay.

I know this will be quite unpopular, but as has been pointed out for ages now (particularly by people like jester), it seems that the mere basis of cathaar is somewhat flawed.

The argument is that cathaar is either a top 100 players' race, or it sucks. EMP means that if you are significantly larger than the majority of other people, you will be able to afford enough ships to stun the majority, or all of their ships. This means that your attacks are difficult to stop, and that you are either able to easily self cover, or are not an attractive target as you easily cut the enemy's cap. Take xand FI hitting cathaar this round; for most of the round you need an inordinate amount of FI to take a full cap.

On the other hand, if you are tripped up or are a small cath, you get raped over and over again. The moment there are a significant number of planets larger than you, they can hit you endlessly with, in a lot of cases (FI, CO, BS at least), the guarantee of no losses whatsoever. And when you attack, you are far more easily covered, people will happily send 10k banshees if 8k are stunned, though they wold be less keen if the attacking fleet was full of revenant and 8k were killed. I'd like to see a discussion on whether people agree if this should be changed, and if so, how... the ideas I've seen or considered are as follows:

Altering shipstats: the idea that a well balanced set of stats can help cathaar. I tried to help them this round via the scorpion and mantis, making them effectively immune to 4 out of 8 attack fleets. On the other hand, the scorpion is now an overpowered defence ship in alliance. Perhaps powerful 0-loss killships that are a class above their target could help caths. Eg. a DE->CO killship, giving caths a chance whilst not nerfing attacks.

Altering the ratio of EMP:Kill: this would not go down well with a lot of traditional (and perhaps top ranked) cathaar players. Instead of 6EMP and 3 kill ships, perhaps there should be something like 4 EMP and 5 killships, with teh EMP ships being the attack vessels. This would give cathaar their traditional attacks (which would fit in with their pacifist attitude), but a better way to defend their roids. Issues of balance and the need to make them unique (fast and deadly but armoured with paper, or slow and tough but armed with peashooters are already taken...) could make this an issue. Plus it would piss off cath players.

Giving EMP a kill percentage: this idea is that a certain proportion of ships that are stunned would be destroyed. If it were 10%, and you were to stun 10k phantoms, 1k would die (perhaps representing EMP knocking out life support and stuff like that). However, this would just make big caths even more terrifying, and small caths still vulnerable to simply being overpowered.

Reintroduction of braching tech tree: this is an idea I played with at one point. That instead of having a single race fleet, we should have 2-3 starter races. Each race should have 6 basic ships to research, perhaps one of each class, and one pod type. They would then have a further option of another research branch, which would be war, EMP or steal. However, EMP ships would be specific to each race. So you could start off with a war race (terran), and research EMP. This would give you less efficient EMP ships and less efficient war ships (say, basic terran ships would be about 50~ arm:cost). Whereas researching 'advanced war' would give you ships with arm:cost of 60 or 65. On the other hand, you start with a stealth race (equivalent to xand) and then research war, your war ships would have about 50 arm:cost ratio. Your choice of tree would also define your secondary pod type.

This would probably give you 3 starting races. War, stealth and science, equivalent to terran, xandathrii and zikonian.

'War' would be akin to current terran style & would probably begin with a DE pod type. Only with slightly less armour. They would be able to research 'advanced war', 'stealth', 'science' or 'nanotech'. Advanced war gives them very high armoured ships and, for example, a battleship pod. Stealth would give them higher init, higher damage, lower armoured ships that are cloaked (But not as fast or high damage as 'advanced stealth' ships from the stealth race). Science would give them access to some EMP and nanotech to some steal.

The same would be true for 'stealth' and 'science' races.

Any comments?

[XelNaga]

You nicely outlined the problem we see with Cathaar. Personally, I like the second solution most, but it doesn't look acceptable simply because it will remove a part of the race's identity.

[Robsch]

I like cat although these terr gits outnumber me all the time, earlier on with de now with bs - still I like the freeze thing, so I just wanna give you a good advice:

dont mess around with the family! - cat-family that is

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Gate

I know this will be quite unpopular, but as has been pointed out for ages now (particularly by people like jester), it seems that the mere basis of cathaar is somewhat flawed.

I'd like to emphasize that this is only if you (like me) accept that it's bad/wrong to have a race that will dominate the highest ranks, but otherwise be close to unplayable due to the amount of incoming they receive.

If you don't think having a race like that is wrong, then you shouldn't be in favor of changing anything about Cath.

[Appocomaster]

Cathaar aren't the only race with problems.
I posted about this here. In general (though perhaps not this round with the Scorpion) Cathaar are weakest at keeping roids, followed by Terran, Zik and finally Xan.

Either Cathaar have the best attack fleets that keeps it going all round (like the recluse / xan saga) but can just about stop a fighter from stealing half it's roids, or it has decent 0 loss defence (e.g. the Scorpion) but suffers more when attacking. I think that this round, Gate and myself made the mistake of making sure Cathaar was nice and strong offensively while also strengthening them too much defensively.

Terran are in some ways more problematic - the majority of the top XP players (including myself!) are Terran. It's good for single players, who build pods and just attack regardless.

[Gary]

Originally Posted by Gate

Instead of 6EMP and 3 kill ships, perhaps there should be something like 4 EMP and 5 killships, with teh EMP ships being the attack vessels. This would give cathaar their traditional attacks (which would fit in with their pacifist attitude), but a better way to defend their roids. Issues of balance and the need to make them unique (fast and deadly but armoured with paper, or slow and tough but armed with peashooters are already taken...) could make this an issue. Plus it would piss off cath players.

I think this is the best solution. As a cathaar player (that akways vows to go zik the next roiund but never does) I like the idea of a pacifist expansionist attitude of all attacking ships being EMP, whilst underpowering cathaar defensive ships, but changing them to kill. Cathaar still wont be all that difficult to roid, but it would stop lower ranked cathaars from being easy pickings.

As for top players, tough. It would still be easy to get their roids, since their attack fleets would be all EMp, and in theory they'd still get the same level of defensive support from their alliances. All in all, this is the best solution, and I dont see this as fundamentally altering the view of traditional cathaars (of which I consider myself to be)

[bwtmc]

I figure the change in the score system pre-R17 has made the 'cathaar is either a top 100 value players' race, or it sucks' issue even more influential.

Having the race at all is very difficult when experienced players openly admit that it's very dependent on consistent defence all round and that it's 'flawed' for those behind on value - In the sense that it's not in most peoples' interests, that go cathaar, to go cathaar.

[bwtmc]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

I think that this round, Gate and myself made the mistake of making sure Cathaar was nice and strong offensively while also strengthening them too much defensively.

This is a big part of the problem. There's nothing even like balance with Cathaar. Certainly with value playing a much bigger part in the game it can't be 'fixed' at all with just better-than-average offensive ships. Wtih that (value) change comes the highlighting of all Cath's issues. It certainly should be adapted as Gate as put forward, if nothing else.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Banned

I'd like to emphasize that this is only if you (like me) accept that it's bad/wrong to have a race that will dominate the highest ranks, but otherwise be close to unplayable due to the amount of incoming they receive.

If you don't think having a race like that is wrong, then you shouldn't be in favor of changing anything about Cath.

I would tend to agree with this very much, but I fall on the other side of the camp then you Banned.

Part of what has made the emphasis on balanced stats such a topic of contention the last 6 or 7 rounds is the simplification of the combat system, which makes fleet optimization a lot easier. This, coupled with the small player base, where it is difficult to have a less than optimal fleet and still do well in the game due to the high percentage of other players who have optimized their fleets makes the stats balances or imbalances blatantly obvious. Given the current game stats as long as each race has weakness against other races that are difficult to overcome (which imo the stats people have managed to do the last couple of rounds) I feel that given the current combat engine this is about the best we can seriously hope for.

If as gate suggested in his opening post, there is a change in the combat system (either through a different take on research, or a change in the combat engine) then potentially things can change. But without either of these changes imho the current situation is about the best we can hope for. So rather then wasting lots of time debating the best stats, it would be more productive to focus on how we can modify the combat system of the game to lead to a more diverse set of fleet options that can lead a player to a top spot in this game.

[Thex]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

I think that this round, Gate and myself made the mistake of making sure Cathaar was nice and strong offensively while also strengthening them too much defensively.

I noticed this in the beta and recommended several people to go Cath (I went cath myself). Several others that participated mentioned the same thing. It goes without saying that a beta should pick up these things if they are so obvious.

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

Terran are in some ways more problematic - the majority of the top XP players (including myself!) are Terran. It's good for single players, who build pods and just attack regardless.

Personally I wouldn't call that problematic. The ulitmate balance is a single race, but we don't want that. Also PA needs to let people play the way they want to. Obviously having different races means it's difficult to balance, but remember that there will always be one race that is stronger than others, the best you can hope is that it's not too unbalanced. Like you say it's good for single players - so no need to call that problematic.

Overall can anyone seriously say that the single reason for them not performing well was because of the race they chose? Agreed, that in general you can see that a particular race may have more of the T100 covered, but there are just too many factors to being a T100 player than just race.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Thex

I noticed this in the beta and recommended several people to go Cath (I went cath myself). Several others that participated mentioned the same thing. It goes without saying that a beta should pick up these things if they are so obvious.

I said that to gate after spending an hour playing the beta

Personally I think maybe some people lack direction when it comes to races. An informative summary of each race and their general pattern and likely targets and probable areas of weakness would help newer players decide on the race best fitting them and how best to start off using it.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

I said that to gate after spending an hour playing the beta

And I got exactly hte opposite reaction from other cool people. Jester and furball for starters. :|

I don't think I completely overpowered cathaar. I think 0 loss killships are still the sensible way to go if cath maintain 6 EMP/3 killships, as otherwise they can suffer from serious rapings from all angles...

But perhaps I did make it too easy to defend larger caths. As an aside, caths are now third on avg roids and just 3k ahead of xand on average value. If anything it appears I overpowered ziks :/

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Gate

And I got exactly hte opposite reaction from other cool people. Jester and furball for starters. :|

I don't think Cathaar are too good this round. While the current number 1 is unlikely to be passed, no other Cathaar's rank is certain. A messy war can easily put hostile Cath in the top10 out of it.

Sure, you had to be Cath to win this round, but this isn't anything new. It's been true for every round since 12 that I haven't made stats.

Let's keep this thread on topic, we have another thread on strat to deal with this round's stat balance. Here we're talking about the problems inherent with Cathaar. Relating this round's Cathaar stats to the problems, I think we can safely say that better defensive ships for Cath isn't a solution.

[Zeke]

What about making all cat ships emp and init 1?
They cannot focus on all ships and u just have to send enough to kill/steal them or at least get roids when he runs...
ocf the stats shouldn't be too easy to abuse, i.e. not such a high firepower, well it has to be tested...

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Zeke

What about making all cat ships emp and init 1?
They cannot focus on all ships and u just have to send enough to kill/steal them or at least get roids when he runs...
ocf the stats shouldn't be too easy to abuse, i.e. not such a high firepower, well it has to be tested...

I think you're missing the key point here. A large part of the problem is that the bulk of their ships are EMP. They are utterly unable to defend themselves against overpowering attackers. If they get ahead on roids early on they can buy enough ships to cover themselves against attacks. Once attack fleets start growing past what one can cover by spending in one go, you're going to need to get defense. At this point people looking for targets see big fat free roids signs. They don't care if they can't max cap, they know they're not going to lose ships unless you get defense. This means you're going to be picked more on raids. You're going to have random incoming on the odd chance of getting through defense.

Your solution doesn't address this at all.

[Cannon_Fodder]

The tech tree choice might be an interesting route, but only if there was extensive private testing before it was ever used for a proper round.

[furball]

I am in favour of re-branching the tech tree. But I wouldn't use it to fix Cathaar - I'm a great lover of the purity of the Cathaar race. Everyone moaned about distributing stealing in Round 14, and I can't imagine giving everyone access to EMP would work out well either. Races 'work'. We just need to refine them.

I believe that we can solve Cathaar via ship stat manipulation. However, it requires abstract conceptualisation that we've only used for Zik so far when learning the lessons of Round 13. Cathaar need a similar approach.

[jerome]

i'd like the tech tree option back too but that's probably more because i'm frankly bored as hell and that'd provide something else for me to conquer.

if we're going to stick to the current race system then i think whoever has the effort to make the stats should just mould them to a case where each race can still be pegged down by more than 1 race but still isn't able to attract all sorts of incoming easily.

what i'm thinking of involves these guidelines:
a/ xand & ter are able to roid each other with 1 of their fleet class and able to defend against the other.
b/ cath and zik are able to roid each other without losses ie whatever class zik pods are cath only has emp ships for, and zik only have steal ships vs cath pods.
c/ ter & xand can roid both cath and zik with both fleets but the xand lower-class fleet can be easily frozen, but not killed, the xand higher class pod fleet is able to roid caths but at a price - ie the scorp has the same init as a xand fr that hit's de but it's got an awful dmg/cost, similarly the ter de(or whatever) can roid but also at an even smaller price due to their armour, same init and shit dmg/cost scenario applies but with a different ship. for ziks the same scenario as now should still work.
d/ zik should be able to roid+steal terrans with their bigger class pod by having a reasonably stronger arm/ccost than the terrans defensive dmg/cost, cath should be able to roid terrans with both fleets but they need to involve another ship class to do it, cath roiding xand scenario should be similar to now except the recluse weaker and the tarantula stronger.
e/ self-roiding wise, every race should be able to roid each other with one fleet and provide a def vs the other.

i literally just wrote that off the top of my head in the last 10 minutes so forgive any blatant blanks or anything, but i think it should give the gist of it away.

[Anonymous Hero]

Looking at the stats for tick 1070, for the players ranked by score between ranks 101 and 1000 (filters out the fattest planets and removes the majority of noob planets, both of which tend to skew data a lot):

+------+----------+--------------+--------------+------------+
| race | count(*) | avg(score)   | avg(value)   | avg(xp)    |
+------+----------+--------------+--------------+------------+
| Cat  |      186 | 1514157.3387 |  877135.0269 | 12740.4462 |
| Ter  |      147 | 1516369.1497 |  807323.5714 | 14180.9116 |
| Xan  |      273 | 1591895.0403 | 1062391.7436 | 10590.0659 |
| Zik  |      294 | 1640703.7143 | 1170610.0068 |  9401.8741 |
+------+----------+--------------+--------------+------------+

Note: Always take statistics with a huge pinch of salt, they can usually be skewed many different ways to support different arguments.

Do Cathaar and Terrans need tweaking up a bit, or do Xan/Zik need tweaking down?

[XelNaga]

Yeah, obviously Cathaar needs to become even stronger

I think you missed the point of the thread. It's not about tweaking up and down, it's about _balancing_. That's a huge difference. Obviously the really big Cathaar are close to untouchable, while smaller Cathaars are easy prey. That was the point. If you make them stronger, you will only amplify the imbalance, as it is not a matter of too strong or too weak.

And it's not really hard to be top 1000, even as new player, so you really can't take Terran into account, as most new players choose Terran.

[Shyne]

I dislike the branching tech tree for a similar reason to why I dislike multiple ship targetting - it adds complexity without solving the problem.

I actually don't believe Cat is fundamentally flawed - it is the nature of all races that another race overpowers them - the fact that you cant kill 3 classes of ships is the trade off for having the most 'damaging' ships - EMP is very strong (BW for example).

Oh, and I think this round's set of stats is one of the best of recent rounds ! I hope Gate is consulted for next round's stats.