Discussion on PA stat direction and its implications

[MAdnRisKy]

I can't remember the last time I made a thread....

Anyway, I was reading about xan being newb fighter swarmers and I got to thinking. "yeah i know xan are very hard to attack with, because it's very difficult to hit anyone of a high value unlike other races", but none the less it is true that attacking with xan is a case of "put all FI in slot 1, add Co to taste, send". Which made me think "well hell, that makes xan seem a bit poo". Until of course you look at other races. And apart from zik, it's "put pod and flak class ships into slot 1, add same eta ships to taste, send". It's true of terran, it's true of cat it's true of xan. And it's been this way for a while.

I don't always remember it being this way, and yes i'm fully aware that there are still tactics which can be employed to spice things up a little, but by enlarge what ya got is what ya got. And the only reason zik is any different is because of fakes.

Now i know this was a concious decision to reduce complexity, but I for one, do miss it...

I just wondered how other people felt on the subject

[noah02]

Only choices I have to make nowadays is nixes against terrans with Battleships(which I have never done yet but seems like a good idea) and syren with battleships on xans.
Not much to do otherwise.

[Jester]

I don't quite see how putting a second class in with the first one is that much more 'complex'. The example that comes to mind is Cath FI/CO this round, or Cath DE/CR in r12. But really, lobbing all of class X and Y doesn't add much in terms of difficulty or depth.

[Ultimate Newbie]

I want an opportunity to test a 10 class 16 type per race set of ship stats.

That would be great for the complexity :\

[Cannon_Fodder]

Seconded

[Appocomaster]

while some people, especially those on the forums, obviously have a lot of time and can read and analyse the stats, the majority of the playerbase doesn't. Those in alliances rely on the alliances to tell them the best races to choose; some players choose the same race regardless, and many just pick because for some reason they look better.

[Monroe]

There have been a lot of changes to the game since PaX that have gone in the direction of simplifying the game to make it more appealing to non stat-geeks. For the most part they have been good ideas, this issue you have brought up has been brought up many times before. I myself have argued that based on the simplified ship stats and other tactic simplifying measures (the convergance of eta's and single tick attacks) we need to expand the number of fleet slots. Unfortunatly I havn't seen any movement of the PATeam to do much about either of these issues, simplified tactics do have their advantages, but there are us more advanced players who still wish to see a return to a more complex combat system.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Monroe

There have been a lot of changes to the game since PaX

Simplification since the same eta for everything, same init for everything, only 4 ship classes? God, those stats were boring.

I can't comment too much as I've only played since round 10, however, I can state quite comfortably that an alliance who's members attack by shoving 'all pods+flak' into a fleet will perform less well than an alliance which is selective in what it sends. I would be particularly annoyed if my alliance was always sending its pulsars against ziks, and leaving us to get raped against DE, or if members were actually sending their arrows to deter xan defence. Why? Because whether there's arrows in or not is unlikely to make an ounce of difference over whether people send def because of the inaccuracy of unit scans and the fact that xands can't be FAd. I'd much rather have 5k arrows for defence and save a few hundred roids than lose those roids and have someone sacrifice a bunch of FI and/or CO just to hurt a few enemy CO...