New Stats

[Mr. Ed]

What do you all make of the new stats then?

[Iceaxe]

Not a whole lot of changes, nothing ground breaking really.

I'd guess this will be a xand heavy universe again but with more (and bigger) cathaar due to it being private gals.

As I heard someone mention a few hours ago, this looks to be another round dominated by small ships. Nothing wrong with this ofc, I love fighters and corvettes.

[Chax]

Well, they've made the zik pirate a lot better, which was really needed and something I suggested at the end of the r8 beta but that never happened, although I don't see why they had to up it all that much. It seems they always overcorrect things.

Maybe they had to up it all that much because they totally ruined the Marauder and the Rogue?

OR is there some change in the stealing algorithm that I'm not aware of that makes things dofferent?

[Ants]

The pirate is eta 4 now though

*edit* I got this from the stats on the bcalc as the official page wont open for me.

[Domin]

they did raise the fire power of thiefs from 3 to 7. but with vultures ag they will still be a pain to get. they also lowed the armour from 25 to 20.

But now it's better in my eyes..

btw is it a tradition that the brig/sabre can never have the same name in 2 diffrent rounds?

heh

[Domin]

Originally posted by Ants
The pirate is eta 4 now though

heh nope...

[Ants]

the bcalc.com stats are very unreliable sorry, I cannot get the official page to work for me.

yeah, i can't get the stats to open for me either

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by Iceaxe
Not a whole lot of changes, nothing ground breaking really.

I'd guess this will be a xand heavy universe again but with more (and bigger) cathaar due to it being private gals.

As I heard someone mention a few hours ago, this looks to be another round dominated by small ships. Nothing wrong with this ofc, I love fighters and corvettes.

you sure about that m8? To me it looks like they about raped xand.. They're tough enough to play mid-late round, now they just made their start game tougher by increasing costs.. Doesn't sound like a very happy race to be imo.

*points to r7 for better xand stats*

[XB.]

For those that cant get the page try this its a DNS problem i think.


http://195.149.21.104/stats.html

[KingGnome]

Originally posted by Ants
The pirate is eta 4 now though

*edit* I got this from the stats on the bcalc as the official page wont open for me.

bcalc.com has always shown the pirate as eta 5 (and still does) - I havent changed it

Originally posted by Ants
the bcalc.com stats are very unreliable sorry

If you find errors in the stats, please post them to...
1) the bcalc announcement thread in the strategy board
or
2) www.apc.34sp.com under bcalc bugs

I have fixed the two bugs in the stats found so far... (I forgot to change thiefs, and the "official" stats have got the vulture armour wrong - it should be 10)

[DarkCroW]

LoL, XAN is holy **** right now!

Maybe they still have a little advantage with their fast Pods, but everyone targets CO heavily and with increased costs, they now really get raped in battle concerning losed Score.

Did u ever calculate Peg vs Xan-FI? 1 Peg (12k Res) kills 4 Pulsars (8k Res)! Real Heavy rating of 1,5 : 1, the best kill rate i have ever seen. In R8 it was 2:1...

Same with Cutter/Marauder vs Xan. And same with everything of XAN in battle. The Kill-rate decreased for them cause of increased costs, thats bad. After 1 week of game XAN will lose their ships like flys in offense and defense. My Opinion.
--------------------
The Guardian is now a real good FR/CO-Killer. Maybe a good mobile PDS to prevent u from attacks and remember BS are difficult to supress.
--------------------
TheThief is now a good alternative to flank the Brig, perhaps as a roid-fleet with some stolen Vultures....

Thief / Brig maybe a good and fast Combination... in both Offense and Defense

[Domin]

Originally posted by DarkCroW
LoL, XAN is holy **** right now!

Maybe they still have a little advantage with their fast Pods, but everyone targets CO heavily and with increased costs, they now really get raped in battle concerning losed Score.

Did u ever calculate Peg vs Xan-FI? 1 Peg (12k Res) kills 4 Pulsars (8k Res)! Real Heavy rating of 1,5 : 1, the best kill rate i have ever seen. In R8 it was 2:1...

Same with Cutter/Marauder vs Xan. And same with everything of XAN in battle. The Kill-rate decreased for them cause of increased costs, thats bad. After 1 week of game XAN will lose their ships like flys in offense and defense. My Opinion.
--------------------
The Guardian is now a real good FR/CO-Killer. Maybe a good mobile PDS to prevent u from attacks and remember BS are difficult to supress.
--------------------
TheThief is now a good alternative to flank the Brig, perhaps as a roid-fleet with some stolen Vultures....

Thief / Brig maybe a good and fast Combination... in both Offense and Defense

The real problem to xan the way i see it is that manny fi/co costs alot more c so that the senitel aren't so much needed as a c drop.

[Sun_Tzu]

Xandas got raped. Their CO-class still sucks, they still can't flak the ever weaker vulture and their fi-class aswell as their co-class has less armor and firepower for the money all the way through. And they don't even have any good place to dump their c(though I was expecting this, especially after some beta-tester reported xans had extra c once more).

Other than that, the ziko marauder looks pretty raped to me, it used to be a very nice flak-ship, now it's armor is lowered and it kills itself at an ever higher rate. If you have a cathaar buddy to attack with then zikos might make a very funny race with lots of stolen ships but I still feel they have been downgraded. Oh, and the thief is ever worse for flaking those stolen vultures aswell...bummer...

Cathaars look good, though I still wouldn't use the mega-pod I can see the use of the guardian as a heavy class mobile defense unit; maybe even forcing my attackers to use 1 higher eta than normal.

And if cathaar gains, terran looses, that's the way I see it atleast. Though I still can't see a natural enemy for the terrans; xandas are weaker and are surely not gonna attack you. Zikos are in effect weaker and if you stick to capital ships you should be safe still. And terran vs. Terran never seemed to work out that well... So simply out they may have a limited range for feeding upon, but not many are gonna feed upon them either; if done right...

hmm...

[TheSeeker]

Im going for the cathaar pds


Guardiaaaans ahoy !

and ofcourse, this makes the CR + BS combination for cathaars in later stage of the round more attractive....

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
Im going for the cathaar pds


Guardiaaaans ahoy !

and ofcourse, this makes the CR + BS combination for cathaars in later stage of the round more attractive....

yet it still is +1 eta and thus, easier to stop :-/

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
Xandas got raped. Their CO-class still sucks, they still can't flak the ever weaker vulture and their fi-class aswell as their co-class has less armor and firepower for the money all the way through. And they don't even have any good place to dump their c(though I was expecting this, especially after some beta-tester reported xans had extra c once more).

...

hmm...

I think the less armor for the money is key in your statement. As parracida pointed out in another thread somewhere else, xand works on the scare principle: You make your target run because the amount they will lose if they stay. What they did here was, in the same battle there would have been in r8, increased the cost damage xand would take in return in r9. Xand are not going to be able to land at all now because their losses. Its a game of chicken.. if the guy doesn't run, the losses are too high to land reasonably. Late round was always like that, they just made the whole rest of the round like that too :-/

[Gerbie]

Well i think Xans are just about right. Xan will need to play opportunistic: attack people with slow fleets out, or hope that they will run. If they don't its only profitable to land if the opponent has neglected his fi/co defence. Or when you are in really desperate need for roids. Looks like xan will be difficult to play. As they were intended to be.

I think there still will be too many xan around with these stats. Though a lot less then last round.

[TheSeeker]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
yet it still is +1 eta and thus, easier to stop :-/

but with parallel you will have an eta reduction, plus launching xx:59 will make it hard to get defence , only parallel will be able to get there, with fast ships, which are targetted by guardians and scorps.

[TheSeeker]

btw, anyone knows how much the cathaar got extra, i see it has changed, but i cant find an old table of r8 anymore to compare it with... i'd like to see how much it got better etc.

[Andy_r]

Xands have a huge vulnerability to Mantis, but apart from that, there is still the eta advantage and the milscan-confusing advantage, who cares about ship costs when you only need to send out dummy vulture fleets?

[zenopus]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
btw, anyone knows how much the cathaar got extra, i see it has changed, but i cant find an old table of r8 anymore to compare it with... i'd like to see how much it got better etc.

Mantis
Armour 105 -> 125
Agility 7 -> 10
Crystal 15000 -> 13500

Guardian
Power 10 -> 15

[TheSeeker]

thanks.

[DarkCroW]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
Though I still can't see a natural enemy for the terrans;

----> Its Cathaar! Early game u can easily attack them with Beetle/Pods. Middle Game u can bash them with mass BW/Pods (Until Ter has Wyvern or Syren) and late game u can Kick Them with BW/Tulas/Pods. Perhaps u have to take some damage from Harpys or Dragon, but that should be ok concerning the roids u get in late game...

The only natural Enemy in Defense as a Cathaar is Terran. So good vs them in offense, but difficult to block all those Pegasus. Need to freeze most of them and kick the rest with MaSS Corsair. But if u have a working alliance and a good Galaxy, it should work. And i cant really see any Case where Cathaar gets problems... TheY rock since XaN is weaker!

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by Gerbie
Well i think Xans are just about right. Xan will need to play opportunistic: attack people with slow fleets out, or hope that they will run. If they don't its only profitable to land if the opponent has neglected his fi/co defence. Or when you are in really desperate need for roids. Looks like xan will be difficult to play. As they were intended to be.

I think there still will be too many xan around with these stats. Though a lot less then last round.

So only being able to attack people with their fleets out is your idea of 'about right' ?

[zenopus]

Originally posted by SpazMonster
So only being able to attack people with their fleets out is your idea of 'about right' ?

You say that like it's a bad thing? (Note that "fleets out" was only one of several options).
Anyway, AFAICT the word Gerbie was looking for was "balanced". As for that, time will tell. If significantly more than 25% of the universe goes xan and/or significantly more than 25% of top planets are xan, we can deduce that xan is stronger than the other races, if played right.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by DarkCroW
----> Its Cathaar! Early game u can easily attack them with Beetle/Pods. Middle Game u can bash them with mass BW/Pods (Until Ter has Wyvern or Syren) and late game u can Kick Them with BW/Tulas/Pods. Perhaps u have to take some damage from Harpys or Dragon, but that should be ok concerning the roids u get in late game...

The only natural Enemy in Defense as a Cathaar is Terran. So good vs them in offense, but difficult to block all those Pegasus. Need to freeze most of them and kick the rest with MaSS Corsair. But if u have a working alliance and a good Galaxy, it should work. And i cant really see any Case where Cathaar gets problems... TheY rock since XaN is weaker!

you are way off on that one. A normal issue when deducting who to attack is initiative. As Cathaar shoots before everyone, none can be discluded due to this. After that we need to examin their weaponry, EMP, and the defence against this kind of attack that other races posses. Now I wonder again wich race it was that traditionally had the best emp-resistance....

ps. Anyone can attack a cathaar and get away with it. Overwhelm him with fi/co and go straight through as xanda(unless he's putting all his time into building anti-fi/co), mass him with the capital class ships prefered by terrans and he'll be in trouble(their high emp-res only makes this more prominant) or kick his arse by sending loads of ziko frigates at him to soak up that bw-fire.

The thing is, you can just about ignore cathaar fire when attacking them, if it was any other race you'd have to avoid it as far as possible but with the cathaars...

[Gayle29uk]

The Sentinel is still going to be the defence ship of R9, that low ETA combined with the T3 is going to make anyone with 20k of them available very very popular again.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by Gayle29uk
The Sentinel is still going to be the defence ship of R9, that low ETA combined with the T3 is going to make anyone with 20k of them available very very popular again.

the problem being that very few will have 20k of them as they now are less of an c-sink and also cost more, that metal is preciously needed for many other things aswell as I'm sure you know

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
the problem being that very few will have 20k of them as they now are less of an c-sink and also cost more, that metal is preciously needed for many other things aswell as I'm sure you know

Playing R8 style (and trying to win) you're obviously correct, I tend to get to a certain point with roids though and start defending so with a 3:2 M:C ratio I could still build up a scary ass mass of Sents alongside Pulsars with some Arrowheads thrown in for good luck (I hate Vsh) and my alliance would love me (as usual ).

Also very useful for my other mid-late round hobby, fleet tracing

If I'm not concentrating on roiding then the Sentinal is still 'The Daddy', it just needs a tweak in the roid ratio.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by Gayle29uk
Playing R8 style (and trying to win) you're obviously correct, I tend to get to a certain point with roids though and start defending so with a 3:2 M:C ratio I could still build up a scary ass mass of Sents alongside Pulsars with some Arrowheads thrown in for good luck (I hate Vsh) and my alliance would love me (as usual ).

Also very useful for my other mid-late round hobby, fleet tracing

If I'm not concentrating on roiding then the Sentinal is still 'The Daddy', it just needs a tweak in the roid ratio.

heh, I gotta say I love the Vsh, mainly since the amount of idiots out there last round that had just loads of arrows and vultures was just silly ^^ But together a fleet of vsh+sents only and roided them easy ^^

[isildurx]

yes i gotta agree


imo vsh was the most important xan ship last round, the number of vsh u had determined how big a xan u could take on.

I had a ration of vsh/puls which was 2/1, and it worked very good 4 me.

I think i had aruond 60k vsh when the round ended, and the number would have been much higher...

[TheSeeker]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
you are way off on that one. A normal issue when deducting who to attack is initiative. As Cathaar shoots before everyone, none can be discluded due to this. After that we need to examin their weaponry, EMP, and the defence against this kind of attack that other races posses. Now I wonder again wich race it was that traditionally had the best emp-resistance....

ps. Anyone can attack a cathaar and get away with it. Overwhelm him with fi/co and go straight through as xanda(unless he's putting all his time into building anti-fi/co), mass him with the capital class ships prefered by terrans and he'll be in trouble(their high emp-res only makes this more prominant) or kick his arse by sending loads of ziko frigates at him to soak up that bw-fire.

The thing is, you can just about ignore cathaar fire when attacking them, if it was any other race you'd have to avoid it as far as possible but with the cathaars...

thats exactly how cathaar's attack enemies.... we can just overwhelm them with emp and grab and go...

you see, i always play based on offence, if you get attacked, and you dont have defence you will get roided ANYWAYS, so it sorta comes down on your defence (and your fleet structure).

[hAl]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
the problem being that very few will have 20k of them as they now are less of an c-sink and also cost more, that metal is preciously needed for many other things aswell as I'm sure you know

As they are the only C-sink for Xans they will be extremly popular still. Xans in beta often had loads of them just to put their C into something. Due to other races having good use for C their is planty of C roids around and building vrasshaks will leave an Xan with loads andload of spare C. A gal mightbe able to convert the C of one or two Xan's but any gal with three or 4 Xan's will have a C only galfund very soon.

I expect most Xans to have more sents than any other of their fighters still

hAl

[isildurx]

i agree hAl

sent will undoubtedly be the most popular FI once again

[Aknot]

Widowmaker C 4 1 2 0 Emp 30 20 35 12 5 50 70 8000 4000 160 4

so now the widowmaker is EMP and still have init 30???? doesnt make any sense....

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by isildurx
i agree hAl

sent will undoubtedly be the most popular FI once again

Will Xan be the number one race again though?

[SYMM]

Originally posted by Aknot
Widowmaker C 4 1 2 0 Emp 30 20 35 12 5 50 70 8000 4000 160 4

so now the widowmaker is EMP and still have init 30???? doesnt make any sense....

Typo, the "power" and "Wpspd" values and an (admittedly second-hand) admission from Petru, go along with this...

[Tactitus]

Originally posted by hAl
As they are the only C-sink for Xans they will be extremly popular still. Xans in beta often had loads of them just to put their C into something. Due to other races having good use for C their is planty of C roids around and building vrasshaks will leave an Xan with loads andload of spare C.

Sentinels still aren't very good though. A Xan would really be better off trading the C for M; if possible. In an all-random round like R8 it probably wasn't possible too often; but with private galaxies it ought to be doable.

A gal mightbe able to convert the C of one or two Xan's but any gal with three or 4 Xan's will have a C only galfund very soon.

Certainly a factor to consider as people decide on the distribution of races in their galaxies.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by hAl
As they are the only C-sink for Xans they will be extremly popular still. Xans in beta often had loads of them just to put their C into something. Due to other races having good use for C their is planty of C roids around and building vrasshaks will leave an Xan with loads andload of spare C. A gal mightbe able to convert the C of one or two Xan's but any gal with three or 4 Xan's will have a C only galfund very soon.

I expect most Xans to have more sents than any other of their fighters still

hAl

3 words: Terran, gal-m8, pegasus

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by Aknot
Widowmaker C 4 1 2 0 Emp 30 20 35 12 5 50 70 8000 4000 160 4

so now the widowmaker is EMP and still have init 30???? doesnt make any sense....

no, not EMP, that was a misstake

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
thats exactly how cathaar's attack enemies.... we can just overwhelm them with emp and grab and go...

you see, i always play based on offence, if you get attacked, and you dont have defence you will get roided ANYWAYS, so it sorta comes down on your defence (and your fleet structure).

oh I do know how to play cathaar, don't worry about that, but I wasn't talking of them in offence after the first paragraph, and in that I just stated that in no way was terran the natural target for cathaar but that it probably is the least likely to get hit by a cathaar.

[General1]

The Mantis is changed also, but I am pretty sure that in rd8 the cost of 1 mantis was 19000 Metal and 15000 Crystal instead of 13500 what is in the stats atm.
Or am I mistaken, doubt it.

[bagg]

Ships (170231 units total)

Vsharrak Fighter 44300 Daeraith Pulsar 34300
Lyvidian Sentinel 61363 Culdassa Arrowhead 19292
Vulture 2976 Andvordian Bomber 7000
Cryvellian Broadsword 1000

that was meh fleet the last time i recorded it from rnd 8


i went sent and vsh heavy but tbh i cant see ppl doing that this time

the sent has been b0rked less power more expensive i think...

the vsh is the most important ship a xan has and a xan players wants to concentrate on building them and roiding others xans with a vsh vulture sent combo - the sents just to take out any arrows ppl are building


they will have a hard time hitting anyone else tbh

[Sun_Tzu]

general, you are right, it's prive was reduced, try finding some old bcalc and comparing to those stats, that's what I did.

bagg, yes indeed the vsh was very important last round, but for the next round it all depends on what will be the dominating race in the universe.

[bagg]

i think that the xan despite its failings now the stats have been tweaked will be the dominent race.

i think the top 10 is gonna be xan heavy

- maybe as many as 5 xan planets
- 3 zik planets
- couple of terrans or a cath and a terran

i think after ppl got a taste of them last round they have decided that despite the stat changes they are still easy to play and the vulture roiding at the start is quite beneficial...

not everyone looks at the stats and just plays with what they know or liked

[isildurx]

i had a hard time attacking targets as xan last round, and it will not b much easier now so.....


Xan is for the hardcore players ;p

[Sun_Tzu]

xandas are definitly that easy to attack with, ever harder now that the tweaks have "degraded" the armor.

and zikos are not imho the second best race, how good is hard to say but certainly not that good, not without heavy fleet farming or a steady cathaar attacking partner.

No I have to say I feel Cathaar and Terran are the two best races, if Cathaar turns out to be the best then Terran will be at a second place, but if Terrans are the best the second place may be very open as they definitly lessen the glow of the cathaar...

[black-eyed boy]

Whoever thinks xans are the weakest race is just fooling himself

Last round they were waaay too strong and just got a little downgrade now. Yes, the killing efficiency of their ships doesn't look as good as it did before but people forget the main thing - that playing xans well requires a different style than playing any other race and that the main thing about xans isn't the firepower of their ships but initiative!

If you play xans right, you cap roids from planets 20-30% for free / really cheap price. It was like this in previous rounds, it won't change now.

Attacking someone way smaller than you with your whole fleet firing before him just rocks

[Cochese]

Based on bagg's r8 fleet, I had roughly the same ratio of Vsh:Sent in beta.

My roid ratio was about 2m:1c, and it seemed to be more than enough Crystal, often leaving me buying scans and doing newsies/mils for people (maztijn) out of boredom (managed to get as high as 75th in beta attacking 4 times, never really being attacked or losing roids, and in a pretty uncooperative non-WoE galaxy).

This was my 2nd beta round so far playing Xan, and I was reasonably impressed with them...having played Terran since races were introduced.

Sure, the peg has a better kill:cost ratio, but by the time Terrans have Dessies, let alone enough of them to worry about, a good Xan player should be well ahead of them in roids/score due to the Xan eta and tech advantage (being able to stop at CO and focus on TT res/con + scans). It's just a matter of finding the right targets, and using the trusty bcalc. If worst comes to worst, team up with a Cath for attacks.

Anyways, if I have a crap round as Xan, I'll keep a moderate FI fleet for defending my alliance, have a horrible roid:score ratio, and become a scan planet...having news/mil scans faster than most others, save those who are dedicated scanners.

If you can't be an assett, don't be a liability