new stats

[teknik]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I worry about Zik FR fleets to the extent that i think their armour should be reduced so less survive to steal Sents. Late round, Ziks will (again) be completely untouchable against Xan FI fleets due to stolen Sents, and even before then i think Ziks will be feeding off every small to medium Xan in the universe (like me ).

not sure i agree with this. even if a zik can gather alot of sentinels, if you send a ton of xan fi/co at them you are basically saying "ok, you are going to kill alot of the attacking ships, but you are going to lose all your xan co in return and then you're going to be wide open to the next 10 waves of fi coming at you"

also, its already been pointed out that zik are going to have a few problems stealing ships this round, as they cant gain de/fr/co/fi from alli def..and stealing ships off an semi active player while attacking them is going to be tricky too, because people run their fleet all time.

[Psi_K]

Originally Posted by ChubbyChecker

It'll be interesting to see how steal ships perform this round.

The fact that you can't defend with them out of galaxy will seriously dent their effectiveness.

Can someone fully explain this?
or just link me to a posting explaining it.
Is it only the Ter/Cath/Xan stealers which are 'in-gal' only? or all ships which are 'stolen'

Thanks

[ChubbyChecker]

Originally Posted by Psi_K

Can someone fully explain this?
or just link me to a posting explaining it.
Is it only the Ter/Cath/Xan stealers which are 'in-gal' only? or all ships which are 'stolen'

Thanks

There's no rule that says you can't send stealers out of galaxy. What I meant was that all steal ships except for Rogues and Buccaneers steal a ship class smaller than them. So your eta will be too slow to catch attackers that are attacking somebody that is not in your galaxy. Unless of course you have more ETA research than the attacker but I was assuming that everyone has max ETA. That will be the case during most of the round anyway.

Capisce?

[jerome]

About the current set of stats in Beta:
Slightly lower dam/cost of the beetle, widow & coach to 56/65/58 respectively and increase rogue's d/c to 37 and i'm satisfied.

maybe decrease d/c of cath all in all about 2-3 and zik upgrade 2-3, heh.

edit: just browsed through a couple posts about worries bout zik - its a possibility but the strength of cath and xand is more to worry about really. especially cath.

[Rocko]

i really dont think caths are too strong,.. their good, but not to good,.. be interesting to see how terrens do,.. think their gonna be the hardest to get a high score with,

[jerome]

you think wrongly about caths.

[Appocomaster]

Cath are always going to be targets. I've got complaints in the beta people still hit them, even though they've had some quite strong upgrades from last round. They'll always be targets as they're often 0 loss, and their kill ships aren't great. Terrans might be harder to play, but with all the Xans around, their Cr/Bs fleet will probably be quite effective. I know some Terrans who prefer De fleets, and that might work too.
btw, stats were changed yesterday in the following way:

Pegasus Armour 245-> 250
Lynx Armour 280 -> 300, Damage 180 -> 200.
Leviathan Damage 300 -> 320.

Viper Armour 27-> 28
Tarantula Damage 130->135
Roach Damage 225->240

Dagger Armour 5 -> 4
Sabre Armour 35->30 Damage 45-> 40

Cutlass Armour 42-> 44
Buccaneer damage 135-> 140.
Privateer Damage 60->75
Pillager Damage 200 -> 220

[jerome]

whine

[Rocko]

ok, i just lost a fairly large post about each race,.. so to sum it up
Terrens,.. De = gud against cath and with enough chimeras they can handle other terrens who have not built phoe
BS/crui good agasint xans and caths,.. just BS vs ziks is quite good,.. but needs alot of dragons

Caths co = gud agasint Terrens,..
Crui good agasint Xans, can manage it against ziks to,..need alot of taran.
Stealing other co will be hard to do,.. most of it will be gained deffending in gal from other caths and from xans.

xans Fi/co = potent agasint caths and terrens, but enough deffence will make them pull.
Frigs/de, another scary sight,.. but most people will have anti frig, and so should be able to cause enough damamge,..
Xans can need couple of people to deffend from their inc,.. but it tends to be around.

ziks,.. should all be shot,.. stealing is naughty!! but if you must play them,.. then you already know the best things to do with them, and anything i say will proabbly be wrong

[Kargool]

I see that the Zik has been upgraded again. I just want to remind Appocomaster about ziks advantage ahead of other races, the way they can gain value and score is to hit inactives. With theese stats we are gonna see another round of Zik owning the universe, with Xan hanging behind. The low amount of caths will make it hard for terrans to find targets again.

[Makhil]

yep, massive farming and/or bashing that's how a zik player will win R14 (looks as if lessons from r13 where not learnt). If i wanted to win at all cost i'd go Zik, but as I prefer the fun, i'll pick another race, coz it needs more skill to play well with Terran, Cath or Xan.

[jerome]

?

cath/xand are easy ass races to play. if you can't do atleast reasonably well (say t100 at a bit of a downgraded stretch) then your alliance either lost badly or your crap heh.

[ChubbyChecker]

Stealers have been downgraded significantly since last round. I do believe that Zik planets will have the highest scores this round but it won't be anywhere near as pronounced as last round. Xans will be hot on their heels.

And Cats aren't overpowered. Remember that they do EMP damage so that gives them a significant disadvantage over others. Ziks and Xans are both better races. In fact I asked last round that EMP damage ratio be increased to 55-60 so I can't say it's too powerful now

[jerome]

stats are now finalised and i claim all credit for the changes :|

[Rocko]

(i'll only get tonnes of negrep if i leave this comment in,...but i ment all three words of it)

[Gate]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

cath/xand are easy ass races to play. if you can't do atleast reasonably well (say t100 at a bit of a downgraded stretch) then your alliance either lost badly or your crap heh.

Caths are, IMO, still gonna rely on decent defence though. Especially with terrans finding it easily to flak through caths, I see a lot of terrans (those who attack solo :/ ) going after caths and flakking through, drawing off ally defence and meaning that many caths will lose roids.

That said, I do love the caths, pod armour downgrade (eg. beetles are now nearly 100% more effective against FI than they were last round, and the sentinel has been moved to CO as well) makes them more likely to survive, whilst they allow for so many cool attack combos.

<3

[Appocomaster]

Well, I think stats are final, but some people are unhappy with Terran (the Syren / Peacekeeper / Ghost / etc ratio).
Cathaar are obviously going to be targetted a fair amount (like Terran to a lesser extent), but their EMP damages have increased quite a lot from last round. Cathaar are quite strong attacking though, much more than last round, which is in their favour. They have some nice ships, so I don't feel they're unplayable. Xan are perhaps the nicest race for playing on your own, but I think each of the races have their weaknesses.

[Rocko]

Right,... here goes.
For the whole public preview i've been able to send a crui/bs fleet (as terren obviouisly) to xans,.. this was their weakness as it were,.. since it takes a large proportion of peacekeepers to stop enough cruisers hitting their frigs which hit my BS.
The loss of syrens was normally worth it, for taking out the ghosts that hit my BS.
Now those peacekeepers fire first, instead of at the same time as the syrens.
100 syrens firing at the same time as 450 peacekeepers (roughly the same fleet value), meant that 25 syrens were left,.. but you could take out a little over 1k of ghosts,.. thus saving it on your BS.
NOW since the peacekeeper goes first,.. theres only 25 syrens left to fire,.. taking out a little over 250 ghosts,.. meaning over 3 times more damage on my BS.
Attacking a xan as a terren is now impossible with BOTH podding fleets, without loosing mass loads for no reply. (i'e they take down your ships, but you get to fire back at theres to).
caths and xans do not have this problem.
you can tell me "but look at the peacekeeper compared to the syren" all you want, but now it is Impossible to land an attack on a xan unless he's much smaller then you (once the round is properly underway).
On the flip side,.. xans now can hit terrens alot more, since their frig/de fleet has less to worry about, since they can take out any syrens first, before having their frig fleet hit.
And so terrens will only hit caths, bashing them alot more, who will either play well and xp whore,.. or get bashed and quit.
one init change has, for me, changed the stats from being a well balanced and enjoyable round, to a nightmare with xans and ziks dominating completly again!
The only way i'll be playing terren is if i'm a scanner, and want to build alot of amps quickly.

Please,.. change the peacekeeper init back,... please!

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

Cathaar are obviously going to be targetted a fair amount (like Terran to a lesser extent), but their EMP damages have increased quite a lot from last round. Cathaar are quite strong attacking though, much more than last round, which is in their favour. They have some nice ships, so I don't feel they're unplayable. Xan are perhaps the nicest race for playing on your own, but I think each of the races have their weaknesses.

It does look like terrans and caths will have to lean on their alliances a lot, but caths in particular can offer a lot back to their alliance.

Having looked at the stats from a xan perspective, i originally considered xan to be the best race out there overall, but it's really quite difficult for a xan to cover all avenues of approach... I have a feeling that by going for jack of all trades they will definiteiy end as master of none and have some major weaknesses.

I could obviously be wrong; for these stats I find it particularly hard to predict how things will pan out.

I think we'll see some caths managing to get to T100 playing in a more traditional manner whilst also being in major wars (eg. last round the only big caths were Angels, and perhaps NoS?), but a fair few caths will probably fall behind as normal. Though how everything else will go... I daren't say.

[The_Mad_Keg]

tbh xans dont have to be jack of all trades that much, frig de fleets are excellent, they def well against terr crui/bs and des, cath crui and corv, and zik bs. obviously caths are to a much lesser extent as roaches are beautiful things, but its a 0 loss def (cept roids).

they are also good at attacking terr , frig/des will knock out syrens drakes and phoe nicely, then pound on the bs. the only worry is enuf wyverns surviving to steal des, but will it be worth losing large amounts of crui,des and bs for a few other des?? sumtimes it may be, but its still gonna hurt.

Against caths the lancers knock out vips, ud need alot of corv flak. guardians again are beautiful things but ull never have enough, otherwise the xan wouldnt be attacking. so it may be low losses for the cath, few guards and some roids, but its a no loss attack for the xan.

ziks all depend on what theyve been pilfering.

But it stands that with the changed init its removed another worry for the xans. add some sentinels and ure covered against xan fi/co. all in all a frig des fleet is a hugely useful tool for a xan, coupled with the fact its the fastest of the main fleets, terr bs, cath crui and zik bs all being slower, cloaking and cheap ships, they are very very strong. the best def against a frig/des fleet would probably be clippers, as they will lose ships but also kill well. causing a bit of a bloodbath.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Rocko

you can tell me "but look at the peacekeeper compared to the syren" all you want, but now it is Impossible to land an attack on a xan unless he's much smaller then you (once the round is properly underway).

I would have thought that the use of Wyvern would have discouraged the Peacekeepers to be sent in defence/ stay to defend. Granted, it doesnt help you insofar as the Peacekeepers already firing - however the Wyvern will steal those paper-thin Peacekeepers by the bucketload and complement your DE fleet - compensating you with stolen value. Those stolen Peacekeepers would then discourage Cath CR attacks on you, as their Roaches would have to stun all your Pegs (anti FI def / attack fleet escort) as well as the Peacekeepers to reduce their losses.

Having said that, i havent seen the latest set of stats in action (as i didnt play the beta) - but that is what i would have imagined.

[kamikaze69]

just to get you up to speed then Newbie, at the beginning of the Beta round the XPK'ers were init 6 as were the Syren, now they are init 5 meaning that no Terran cannot send his Syren without taking massive losses.

Either don't send them and their BS get wasted, or send them and get both their CR and BS wasted.

If rocko wants, he can also argue the case of the DE fleet (as I haven't researched that one)

[Grog]

Originally Posted by The_Mad_Keg

Against caths the lancers knock out vips, ud need alot of corv flak. guardians again are beautiful things but ull never have enough, otherwise the xan wouldnt be attacking. so it may be low losses for the cath, few guards and some roids, but its a no loss attack for the xan.

How can a Xan ever have enough lancers to get past the Roaches & still kill all the corvettes?

Maybe as a secondary fleet roiding lowbies & hunting spiders, but not likely to be a threat to any decent sized Cath.

It sounds good, but getting enough roaches to freeze the average Xans lancers shouldn't ever be difficult & then its just Vipers chewing up paper thin frigs.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Grog

How can a Xan ever have enough lancers to get past the Roaches & still kill all the corvettes?

Roaches target DE, not Lancers. I envisage Xans having quite a few Peacekeepers to deter Terran attackers, with a few Lancers thrown in to discourage CO attacks - thus, the Roaches will need to stun both Peacekeepers and Lancers to prevent the Lancers from firing. And if you can do that, then you might as well send a CR fleet. Plus it would only take 1 other Xan to send their DE to make it expensive for you to land again (if you roaches can stun 2x the DE then you are attacking too small a Xan).

[Grog]

OK I've read that reply 3 times trying to make sense of it,

I wasn't talking about Caths attacking Xans.

I was talking about how unlikely it is for a Xan frig/de fleet to be able to attack any reasonable sized Cath.
Roaches have got to be a big part of any Cath fleet, so a cath being unable to freeze all/most of the destroyers on any xan close to him in value is extremely unlikely.

Ganging up on a Cath with multiple Xan frig/de fleets or hitting lowbie Caths will work with that fleet, but thats about it.

[Gate]

Actually I'd agree with Grog on this one (And I'm sure with sov too, know that Grog's made it clear what he meant ), xan FR/DE fleets are one that caths shouldn't really have that much trouble deterring.

It's xan FI that cath should be more worried about

[Gate]

Originally Posted by The_Mad_Keg

But it stands that with the changed init its removed another worry for the xans. add some sentinels and ure covered against xan fi/co.

Which seems to immediately knock out 31% of the viable targets in the uni for xans, and means that there should be a LOT of sentinels going around, making it harder than you'd think to get through with xan FI

Conversely though, this is balanced by the fact that to attack a primary target, terrans, most xans will need to send all of their vsh/pulse/sentinels anyway...

[Rocko]

Terrens,.... bend over, here comes a xan

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Grog

I wasn't talking about Caths attacking Xans.

Unfortunately, i was, as i read the original post backwards (sigh). Thx for that .

Originally Posted by gate

Conversely though, this is balanced by the fact that to attack a primary target, terrans, most xans will need to send all of their vsh/pulse/sentinels anyway...

That's why i figured as well - indeed, i think that the most popular anti FI def will be Harpies and Beetles - but Sents and Arrowheads will make a frequent enough appearence to make them dangerous. Like in R13, Sents were excellent at stopping much larger FI fleets (ie, 20k Sents would normally make a 100k FI fleet recall) - although if they did land then often a large proportion of them would die.

I think Xans will be forced to discourage the use of Arrowheads to defend against them by sending Arrowheads along with their FI fleet - ie, its a full blown FI/CO fleet requiring all types. Whether this is a good thing or not, i'm not sure, but it means that Xans will need to build another shiptype.

They suffer from being spoilt for choice .

[noah02]

I have decided in all my stupidity and well stupidity basically that I will go Terran once again for yet another round :/
As much as I am dissapointed in them beig utter crap I think it will make for a good challenge.

But as said before Appoco in are lil PM session I think I will Defo propose that if stealing goes ahead again for next round for each race I think we should be able to choose wether we want are ships to steel or not.
Because to be honest i think I would rather have all kill ships and have the choice of steel coz i know I wouldnt choose it.

Edit: Bring it on you Xan mofo's

[Rocko]

LOL you can't hit xans as a terren!!!!
it's not a challange,.. it's practically impossible!!
if you want a challange, play cath!

[Supersander]

How are cath a challenge?

[Guran]

you will have a hard time keeping your roids.
sure you can roid ppl quite easy but keeping them is another thing.

[noah02]

Originally Posted by Rocko

LOL you can't hit xans as a terren!!!!
it's not a challange,.. it's practically impossible!!
if you want a challange, play cath!

I said bring it on coz as usual Xans are going to walk allllll over the Terrans coz I know the majority of incomings will be xan.

Cath looks good this round tbh.

Don't tell me Terran are not a challenge this round coz there are more and more and more and more Xans popping up everywhere and trust me 1 extra Xan makes it 3 times as harder for 1 Terran to grow coz they just rip us to shreds (unless ofc they have helped us a lil making pulsars and pegs the same init )

[Supersander]

Originally Posted by Guran

you will have a hard time keeping your roids.
sure you can roid ppl quite easy but keeping them is another thing.

Which means it's basically a challenge for your ally and not for you

[Rocko]

i said its MORE then a challange,.. its practically impossible,....

[ChubbyChecker]

What I don't understand is why so many nails have been put into the coffin of the Terran DE fleet. I was a Terran last round and exclusively attacked with destroyers which is why this was the first thing I looked at when having a look at the new stats. Last round two eta 8 ships could be used to defend against Terran DE, the pulsar and the fireblade. Nobody had pulsars cos they sucked but the fireblade stopped countless numbers of my attacks. Now that the phoenix and the cutlass can be used like the fireblade last round (the Cutlass having far superior firepower than last round's fireblade) I really think no Terran in his right mind would build a DE fleet. The pulsar is also far superior to last round because it shoots before the pegasus now. I really doubt that making Terrans capable of stealing Lancers would offset this imbalance.

At the very least I think that the pulsar initiative should be changed to make it the same as the pegasus. Xans would still have bombers that shoot before drakes.

[Rocko]

terrens will find it hard to steal lancers,.. any sensible xan will hide those from a terren inc,.. plus with the stuff i mean moaning about for not even 12 hours now,.. a Bs/crui fleet wont land on a xan,.. thus loosing peacekeepers and any lancers they could have got.

[kamikaze69]

make sure you tell everyone that what you mean about a BS/CRUI fleet. He is talking about a Terran BS/CRUI fleet. If a terran could team up with a cath on that subject though, that would be a good combo, even though you are then forced to share roids, share XP and waste 2 bloody big fleets on a nearly meaning less attack save for stealing a bunch of ships.

ie. that's called gangbanging.

[kamikaze69]

not to mention then that the Xan could then see those incs, decide to send his FI/CO and FR/DE (or some other mix depending on what units are at the target bases) fleets out and leave nothing to steal at his base, and be so bloody fast that the Cath and the Ter never knew what hit 'em.

[DJet]

Guardian EMP with init 9? yes... cos thats alot of use...

[ChubbyChecker]

Oh yes, well spotted

Must be a typo, it was 2 in an earlier version of the stats that I've seen. Either that or it's been changed to cause normal damage (would make more sense than EMP damage).

[Rocko]

i was told it's meant to be init 2

(enter the same comment i've been saying about the change to the peacekeeper init for a while now,... terrans are dead, long live Xandathrii )

[Appocomaster]

has changed.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by kamikaze69

not to mention then that the Xan could then see those incs, decide to send his FI/CO and FR/DE (or some other mix depending on what units are at the target bases) fleets out and leave nothing to steal at his base, and be so bloody fast that the Cath and the Ter never knew what hit 'em.

Yes, despite my misgivings about Zik FR stealing Xan CO and then making it impossible to defend against (i mentioned this above), i think i might still end up going Xan this round. I've always loved low initiatives and ever since R6 i have been either a Xan or a Cath (except in R7 when i went Zik, and having your ships fire last has still scarred me ).

But this round, i really do think that it will be far too expensive for Xans to defend against Terran CR/BA incoming - you might make it expensive for the first wave - however the Terran will do so much damage back to you that you effectively make it free for any following raids. That's not to say that you dont build any anti BA/CR - i tried that last round and you just become a magnet for incoming of multiple waves which isnt fun.

I think my solution to the BA problem will be to use my DE/FR and defend in-gal or my alliance, and send my FI/CO fleet right back at one of the terrans - i can launch my FI when he lands and still beat him home .

That shall be my vengeance i think. http://web.onetel.net.uk/%7Ekarmulia.../FIREdevil.gif

[Melesse]

Originally Posted by Supersander

Which means it's basically a challenge for your ally and not for you

I dunno SS, I'm usually Cath and I consider more of a challenge to not quit when you get tired of losing roids lol. That's a pretty tough challenge.

Melesse

[Styges]

I thought the Terran stats in the preview were ok, I couldn't do great but I don't expect much from Terran anymore. I thought maybe after the preview we would get a little boost but instead we are made clearly on paper the worst race. I'm annoyed at myself for picking terran and initiating roids so I can't change race. I also suggested Terran as a good starter race for a friend and he has done the same thing, I hope he won't get bored of this game too quickly.

[Rocko]

errm.. has the peacekeeper init been changed back?
if so,.. great!!!.....

[Styges]

I thought it was a typo that it had been changed at it was still 5?

[Appocomaster]

it has been changed back, though the peacekeeper has been modified slightly. It origionally was a typo but it seems to work better this way