Ziks, a non viable option?

[K_Ks]

Hey just been looking at the changes to the game over the last 10 or so rounds where i haven't played.

Seems like the stats are pretty balanced from these rounds apart from the fact the game machanics and changes implemented make zik very under powered.

The changes over the history that i can remember are
- Ziks now die in a 1:1 value ratio when stealing.
Fair enought this makes them a little OP, however they were weaker and still fired last taking casualties anyway. Much more fun was had trying to work out to crash half your fleet to cap some ships on the other end.

- Scans now show what factories are in use and how many resources you build.
Ok, self cover to steal a nice fleet. Not going to happen.

- Base fleets can now hide and not take part in combat.
Err? why? this makes trapping peoples fleet impossible. Alliances used to use this on people 3 fleeting to get them to recall one attack in order for them to save the base fleet.

The only viable way of playing is skill less and team ups required. Having someone land on you kill half your fleet, the other half capture them wiping this half of your fleet out and then being vulnerable to the ship class that landed on you? So you lose significant numbers of ships defending then lose the rest and retain the value of the capping ships..


So, in order to make next round a little more fun and skill full why not go back to how ziks used to be. My only thought on this would be make them weaker offensively and remove 1:1 value when capping ships. This would be evened out by their high fire order causing ships to be lost, and the surviving ships would cap a lesser number.

[Mzyxptlk]

Zik are fine.

[Makhil]

I'm playing zik this round and find nothing really wrong with them.
I don't think the "going back" option is a solution to any problem.
Yes I'm surprised by the result of a zik on zik battle rogue vs pirate like that: http://game.planetarion.com/bcalc.pl?id=asnj2229gc3djcy the more rogue you have in attack the more you lose vs the same amount of pirates... weird.

If we had to change something to ziks I would opt for something new like using the Pods technology for their steal ships... so the stolen ships would be added directly to the home fleet (not returning with the attack fleet).

[Mzyxptlk]

Known issue. Sun_Tzu made a thread about it at some point.

[isildurx]

I don't get why ziks 'normal' ships don't cost the same amount of m\c\e anymore. it's stupid in my opinion.