game mechanics over ship stats: an elaboration for Nat

[MAdnRisKy]

ok, here's my generally overly long waffle on why i think xan rocked so hard last round, and why i can see terran rocking so hard this round.

Last round we saw the reintroduction of random galaxies. We also saw a further reduction in player base. we saw a change in military scans. And as far as the xan race went, we saw their two main problems solved, a crystal sink provided and an increased co class ship (read pod flak) that was capable of dealing with capital ships, something which prior to this was a role performed by an FR class ship something which couldn't accompany an attacking fleet, didn't flak pods, and couldn't be used much for alliance defence.

ok so which of these factors (or others?) was resultant in the xan domination. In my view the single biggest advantage xan had last round, was not an eta 2 all targetting ship, because quite frankly the actual stats of that ship blew. The main reason for it's mased production was thet the M:C ratio last round was the most even it's been in a very long time, due to the reintroduction of the round 2 initiation formula. Xan didn't build the sentinal because they wanted to, they built it because they had to. And then you get the less stat aware players claiming that the sentinal is SO overpowered. It wasn't, it was not by a long shot, xan's best ship. Such a role should have fallen to the vsh. Ther was a snowballing effect which i'll get to which gave a use for the sent, but it wasn't the sentinal per ce that led to this.

was the new bomber the main reason for xan's dominance? well it did fill a hole in their arsenal which had been lacking for a long time, but no I don't think it was such a big deal ;-)

No the main reason for xan's unprecidented dominance of round 8 was the random galaxies. It meant that alliances had far more ships fre every night, as the player base was spread out a lot further. This meant that for a majority of attacks defence was available. The introduction of this meant that the onlynreal way to roid a planet was no longer a fleet taylored to getting the full 15% cap without too much fuss, but infact a total over kill of the target followed up by a second fleet of pods. the bash and roid tactic or as one friend of mine called it, the inter galactic game of chicken.

Now which race is going to be the best at this? clearly the race which fires before you can do anything about it and pulverize your fleet is. IO mean which race is the scariest? xan or terran or zik?

zan suddenly had a huge advantage over every other race, in that their primary roiding tactic (most xan's will tell you the traditional fleet of a taylored 15% roiding opperation, is impossible, you either kill too much and lower the cap, or you get mullered) of scary the bejesus out of the target and get free roids, was infact the only tactic able to gain roids.

Now, and this bit is quite subjective, I don't thionk xan numbers in the uni were very disproportional. In the early scanning of gal;axies that i did for my alliance, I didn't find a massive leaning of xan over othe races, but about a monthin, I did find a disproportional amount of big xan players. and due to the expotential growth of PA, this factor got worse not better (snowballed). xan were also helped to increase this scare factor by the STUPID mil scan changes, which allowed you to not only disguise your attacking fleet but certaily disguise which defence flete you sent. which meant that for BCs it became a nightmare to guess what a xan had sent in attack, but certainly what they had sent to defend a target, before ordering the pull command on big raids. which meant that xan's had more fredom of movement than any other race.

now people saw big sentinal fleets running around, mostly because they had to build them, but in effectit didn't matter, because they weren't too bad at stoping the xan players (which was far more important ion that round than any other) and could also be used against other races. now normally you wouldn't expect a terran to build huge chimera numbers, i mean they're ok, but they don't rock, they have many other ships which work as well, but in this round xan could do just that, they couldbuild their utility ship, and it became very useful, not because it was a great ship, but all the score they had to "waste" on them wasn't actually wasted.

xan rocked last round not because of their ship stats, they were good but not totally over powering, they won because of the game mechanics which let them, which then led to a snowballing effect, which only furthered their success.

Now how is this applicable to round 9. Well we see the going back to private galaxies, something which will limit the defence available and unlike private galaxies, a small uni has a negative effetc on defence, not a positive one. this drops xan's prevelance, secondly we see parallels returning. this drops the eta for a lot of early and probably mid game attacks. Terran will primarily attack with DE once the mid game kicks in, and the only ships available to defend this on time will be the pulsar the corsair and the sentinal (but that would be a BAD choice), two out of those 3 ships have been overly downgraded. Roaches which primarily were the best defence, won't make it on time, which means that DE fleets will once again rule the round, even more so than they did in round 7. It is also worth noting that the pegasus kills a lot of that defence VERY well, and since that wil be mostly the only ship that terrans use to attack with (add a few chimeras for the clever ones, or a few wyverns for the less clever ones) that's a lot of dangerous score you have to stop in just 1 tick ( no overburn) if you send out of para, and most friendly gals in para will be being hit at the same point. If the incomming is from out of para then the co can be sent again, but as often happens in PA, the players will only build what is useful, and if para attacks are prevelant early on then you won't see many roaches early on,and so most players will stick with this.

So terran will largely have a free run early on, which will lead to this same snowballing effect, and xan won't be able to take them on if they're smaller (and the massive downgrading of their stats make a failed attack VERY expensive for them and killing much harder). Which of course wil be massivly aided by these rnd 2 init systems giving terran a LOT of C for the pegs and syrens (terrans using wyverns over syrens are stupid to be honest, syrens kill much better with a much better targetting solution, and for the large part, wyverns will be useless unles you attack a zik, so just don't attack a zik heh).

Are the terran stats hugely over powered? no they haven't changed since round 7, period. so in my opinion, whilst everyone argues about stats, it's the game mechanics that really mater.

[Sun Pin]

good thread!

[Moondoggie]

A very good thread. I do have one minor disagreement though.

While the other xan fighters are much better at killing their targets, the sentinal is the most heavily armoured of the bunch. Primarily, it takes 2 pegasus hits to kill vs 1 for the other two. The others do have slightly higher agility, but it will still work out being pretty close to twice as difficult for them to kill.

Thus the more of your fighters that survive, (the less damage you are taking ofc), and the more damage you can do the following ticks. Targetting pegasus and unipods, sentinals are only slightly less damaging than pulsars. Both have a 25 weapon speed, while the pulsar has 4 guns at 2 damage and the sentinal has 2 guns at 3 damage. The pulsar also costs a bit more. Overall, the sentinal works out being much better *pegasus* defense than the pulsars do. However, this isn't the case for all ships, but considering how numerous pegs are, it is an extremely important case.

Personally, with private galaxies I see the races ending up fairly even in numbers. It was so during Spinner's last count, with only zik being behind.

[MAdnRisKy]

ok....

the race count last round was reasonably even too, it wasn't as stacked as people remember them.

secondly, whilst I was engaging in a bit of sentinal bashing, it wasn't my main point, this isn't a stats discussion ;-)

but to answer your point the sentinal, actually is no where near as good at the pulsar in terms of efficiency with the pulsar being about 1/5 better, and as for the armour point, the idea of xan isn't about flak heh, it's about killing more resulting in less firing back. If I kill more pegs less shoot at me, resulting in less losses ;-)

try calcing it if there is still a round 8 calc about using resources, doesn't matter how many pulsars you substitute for sentinals you won't do as well.

[SpazMonster]

You've got alot of good points but I disagree with a few things.

ETA plays a much larger role in attacking than you give it credit for.

1) The eta changes for parra and cluster will be more beneficial for xand. They already have a tough to defend attack because of 1 less tick to get defence. Reducing that even further compounds defence greatly. The only time I got defended against incluster in r7 was when I hit a gal by myself or with one other person.

2) The syren sucks balls to attack with because of it's eta. Using it on attacks is 'stupid'.

3) Terran's key point in the round has always been mid-round. Traditionally every race has their specific spot in the round where it kicks ass. Xand is at the beginning when it's eta advantage and fi/co class power is very strong. Cath hit w/ the bw around mid-round and are successfull from there on to near end of round. Zik has mid round with the cutter/clipper. The DE advantage or terran only lasts for about a week before zik clippers and roaches are all over the place.

[MAdnRisKy]

point 1 is a good one, and I have considered it, xan incomming at eta 5 is quite frightening indeed, the only trouble is, it doesn't take much to put off xan incomming :/

They work in principal like cat, in that if they don't kill enough tick one, they get battered especially in this round stats being what they are.

a bunch of beetles (and without arrows being so prevelant partly due to the better balance of other races and party due to the bomber blatently being better flak) would stop most of the scary end of a xan as their emp res has dropped (due to the increased price)

point 2 is pants

I never suggested attacking with syrens, their sole use is inter galaxy defence. By having them a terran could stop a lot of incomming, and instead allow only custom fleets to attack him. When this happens he would tend to just swap the syrens for something else in galaxy (private galaxies allow this).

the point is, people say wyverns rock but I won't believe that until someone gives me a target they'd be useful on, because I can't think of one except zik, and frankly if you want to hit zik, you'll need a LOT of wyverns, and thatwill mean a massive overspending on the bs, which are only good for hitting de (they suck at FR), that's a big ammount of score for a pretty specialist ship. AND YOU'RE GOING OFF POINT!

stop turning this into a stats discussion

bah you edited

point 3, as I said roaches won't be quick enough except in para, and unlike beetles, you'll need a lot as the emp res on the pegasus is considerably better, so you're going to need a lot of allied roaches which i guess would be quite busy given that you'd hit the whole para. The clippers aren't useful in defence (except in galaxy) so just don't hit zik players

[MAdnRisKy]

oh, and Deven, ta for being such a smart bloke, but lets not turn this into a why I think terran is the best race, there's a bunch of threads like that. I'm interested in how you see the mechanics being more or less important despite the race stats, not particluarly because of an individual tweak (although admittedly i suppose it's the xan stats that made them suitable to their role, but that's due to more race design over individual ship stats).

[Nat]

thanks for this Mad, much appreciated.

Btw what race are you going?

[hyfe]

Originally posted by MAdnRisKy
I'm interested in how you see the mechanics being more or less important despite the race stats,

I think what most people do when analyzing; albeit often pretty unconsioucsly:

1. From stats they can pretty much think about (in theory) what roles and how good a race can perform in certian situations and how good they are at certian things. Ie break the entire thing down to +'s and -'s.

2. Then start predicting what the round will look like; and decide how does +' and -' work out. This is always how it is done (I've yet to see somebody who counts + and - and makes a decesion from that)

However; point 2 is often based on feelings, never/seldom discussed (i haven't had access to boards that does it atleast) and hence its much easier to miss something.

I think a large part of the difference between the difference between people who 'have a clue' and people who 'have not' stems from this fact. How good you are at predicting is largely based on experience, knowledge and 'general predicting skill'. Even though looking at the stats should be retty 'straigthforward' for somebody mathemathically inclined; their ideas doesn't necesarily work out in practice --

Last round came as a shock for quite alot of people; since condisions changed and few reflected upon it. I bet i'm not the only on who adviced everyone to go Xand thats feeling good about it now though ... So to conclude: people already consider the game mechanics and the enviroment. And the two/three of these are way to intertwined to say anything general about the importance of each imo.

[Moondoggie]

To keep on topic, I wont go all that much into pulsar vs sentinal, because though the sentinal is better pegasus defense, they both aren't good enough. The same resources of pegs vs pulsars yields 43% and 100% losses respectively. For pegs vs sentinals its 49% vs 67% losses. (feel free to calc it) This by itself isn't enough to stop a determined terran. Most likely the xan will back down before the terran would.

For the other races cath have roaches of course. These may or may not make a difference in outside cluster/parallel defense. A large number of attacks will be in parallel, though not all.

Zik on the other hand should fare quite well vs terran, while defending themselves and others. The corsair is much more effective vs de than the xan fighters are. The same resources of pegs vs cosairs yields approx 50% losses on both sides. And of course, all of the zik de's also target de. Not bad for personal defense IMHO.

What strikes me, is that out of all the races, terrans will fare the worst against their own attacks. Terrans have no eta 6 def, and their eta 7 (gryphon) isn't all that effective either. At eta 8 they have the chimera and wyvern, but that would never make any defense call. Eta 9 of course is the syren. So they have nothing to help their alliance mates, while only having mediocre de defense themselves, as most of their score will be taken up by pegs.

Syrens are little more than inner-galaxy PDS. No galaxy would have enough of them to stop several incoming terrans

[MAdnRisKy]

Personally I'd have about 20% or more of my score in syrens, but that's just me, and are those sent vs pulsar stats done on rnd 7 or 8?

Nat I;m not actually playing any more, I got into stat analysis this round for Oly, to give them a bit of info but If I were i'd probably go terran.

Hyfe that's a good point I guess, but i think a lot of people do just look at the stats and see which race has the most godly ships.

I don't think when the round 7 started, people planned on using as many sentinals as they did, certainly people like Parra (one of the better xan players I've met) was planning on a big pulsar vsh fleet.

What changed that was the mechanics, both the roid init situation mostly, and the need to stop xans over other races which would warent the pulsar. I;m off to run some calcs now, but i;m having a hard time believing that the sentinal is a better peg killer than the pulsar

Edit and on checking I found you made those clacs with the round 9 costs, we were discussing round 8

the pulsar as I suspected is about 1/4 more efficient against pegs compared to the sentinal. It does die a lot easier though (almost twice as easy :/)

but there is a critical mass point, if you have more than the attacker the quicker you kill them the less losses the only question is how much more.. :/

either way the pulsar is better than the sent and the stats you gave are wildy inaccurate ;-)

[Moondoggie]

Edit and on checking I found you made those clacs with the round 9 costs, we were discussing round 8

Sorry I didn't make this clearer; since we are discussing terrans in round 9, I calculated using r9 stats.

The only thing that changed from round 8 to 9 was the sentinal lost a point of armor (5->4) and both ships increased in cost.
The Pulsar got a 25.8% increase in price while the sentinal got a 16.7% increase in price.

I can agree with you that the r8 pulsar was the better ship. In round 9 however, with the larger price increase for pulsars, sentinals end up being a better ship in regards to pegasus. This isn't a blanket statement. I'm not saying all de's in general, just vs pegasus.

but there is a critical mass point, if you have more than the attacker the quicker you kill them the less losses the only question is how much more.. :/

either way the pulsar is better than the sent and the stats you gave are wildy inaccurate ;-)

The first point can be true in some cases. But in this case, the 25% firepower advantage in the pulsar is less significant than the pegs needing twice as many hits to kill the sentinals. In subsequent combat ticks, because a much larger percentage of the xan fleet is surviving, more damage is being dealt overall with fewer losses. Calculate if you don't believe me.

The second point is just a blatent "I'm right just because" statement." If you think they are inaccurate, then please state why.

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by Moondoggie
though the sentinal is better pegasus defense

stop it, you're making my head hurt

mad, when you said something about the syren replacing the wyvern i got all up in a huff. In my view the wyvern is mainly for attacking, with the added beneifit that it deturs de and fr incoming.

And about the game mechanics I agree. That is why I seriously hated it when spinner goes and tweaks stats by one or two numbers after beta testing is finished. There are other forces at work than just the battle calculations, however I guess that's why eta on ships is very very rarely changed.

The way I see it, each race has a distinct advantage at some point in the round, partly because of it's stats and partly because of the game mechanics.

I just don't agree with your analysis of terran :-P If any race has the potential to snowball the most, it would be xand because their advantages come into play way before everyone else's

[Tactitus]

Originally posted by MAdnRisKy
so in my opinion, whilst everyone argues about stats, it's the game mechanics that really mater.

Game mechanics are certainly important, but I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that they are all that really matter.

The game mechanics are always the more interesting side of the equation, because changes to mechanics often have unintended and unanticpated side-effects, because changes to mechanics are often pulled out of Spinner's hat at the last minute; and because changes to mechanics are often difficult to test (travel time changes can have huge effects on the game but they're very hard to test in beta with fast ticks).

[black-eyed boy]

Can anyone explain why so many people consider wyvern a good attacking ship ffs?

The best anti-de ships are roaches, they are the ships that usually are sent to defend and make attacker recall. Wyverns indeed don't shoot at them, they only take valuable fleetscore which you could use by sending more pegs which would be harder to block.
The best anti-de killers and probably(?) the defence most usually sent against pegs are pulsars. Wyverns indeed don't shoot at them, only use the valuable fleetscore that you could use for sending more pegs

Like MAdnRisKy says, syrens rock. A clever terran would have a lot of score in them (+ pegs + harpies only).


As for the game mechanics.. My head hurts when I actually try to imagine the picture of how it will be in r9.
Few things that I think are likely to happen are:

- Each decent gal will have more or less logical combo of races. (Unlike r8 where in theory gals with 10 planets of the same race could be randomly made.) Really active gals will have people only building the ships most efficient and useful compared to other races. Terrans - pegs and syrens, caths - roaches, ziks - clippers etc.
- There will surely be a lot more caths. For the simple reason that last round despite attractive stats they were too risky to pick in random round and now they didn't become worse but you can get into a gal you fancy. I know for sure there will be cath-heavy gals, and I just wonder what will their fate be. Imho, cath-heavy gals will be primary targets and bring nothing but troubles upon themselves.
- In previous rounds not every xan could be effectively attacked by a cath so they were getting attacked by all races. Imho now 90+% of attacks on xans will be by caths (increased number of caths + decreased EMP resistance efficiency). That's good for xans, losing only roids > losing roids and getting your ass kicked
- Finally, imho the downgrade of xans won't be felt at all.. until the time miliscans appear. Even with worse ships, they are still a threat to kill a lot of your ships when you don't know what you will face before landing. With miliscans, xans will become the ultimate targets for a while, roidfat and roidable, especially for caths.

[Ultramar]

Surely your forgetting about the fact that ppl always seem to attack planets smaller than their own unless doubling up with gal/alliance mates...

Therefore there will be more resources of whatever is hitting the defending ships if the target is chosen and calc'd well.

[Knight Theamion]

zik is better for this round then terran.

[xtothez]

Originally posted by black-eyed boy
Can anyone explain why so many people consider wyvern a good attacking ship ffs?

Because alot of people quite simply dont bother with anti-BS. An ETA 8 BS ship capable of targeting two often-used ship classes can be something difficult to defend against. The DE/FR left at the targets base become vulnerable, forcing him to leave them to take losses, or run them and increase the effectiveness of the attacking fleet and require more def to cover.

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by black-eyed boy
Can anyone explain why so many people consider wyvern a good attacking ship ffs?

The best anti-de ships are roaches, they are the ships that usually are sent to defend and make attacker recall. Wyverns indeed don't shoot at them, they only take valuable fleetscore which you could use by sending more pegs which would be harder to block.
The best anti-de killers and probably(?) the defence most usually sent against pegs are pulsars. Wyverns indeed don't shoot at them, only use the valuable fleetscore that you could use for sending more pegs

Like MAdnRisKy says, syrens rock. A clever terran would have a lot of score in them (+ pegs + harpies only).


As for the game mechanics.. My head hurts when I actually try to imagine the picture of how it will be in r9.
Few things that I think are likely to happen are:

- Each decent gal will have more or less logical combo of races. (Unlike r8 where in theory gals with 10 planets of the same race could be randomly made.) Really active gals will have people only building the ships most efficient and useful compared to other races. Terrans - pegs and syrens, caths - roaches, ziks - clippers etc.
- There will surely be a lot more caths. For the simple reason that last round despite attractive stats they were too risky to pick in random round and now they didn't become worse but you can get into a gal you fancy. I know for sure there will be cath-heavy gals, and I just wonder what will their fate be. Imho, cath-heavy gals will be primary targets and bring nothing but troubles upon themselves.
- In previous rounds not every xan could be effectively attacked by a cath so they were getting attacked by all races. Imho now 90+% of attacks on xans will be by caths (increased number of caths + decreased EMP resistance efficiency). That's good for xans, losing only roids > losing roids and getting your ass kicked
- Finally, imho the downgrade of xans won't be felt at all.. until the time miliscans appear. Even with worse ships, they are still a threat to kill a lot of your ships when you don't know what you will face before landing. With miliscans, xans will become the ultimate targets for a while, roidfat and roidable, especially for caths.

Have you even played terran before? or even considered it?
Your PRIMARY attacking ship targets every one of those ships you mentioned (very efficiently i might add). why the hell would you want the wyvern to target them too?

Ever heard of something called the clipper? no? what about the buccaneer? didn't think so.. how about the chimeria? ah must not have thought about that either. Guess what.. the peg doesn't target any of those, but *gasp* the wyvern sure does!

I seriously hope you're not sorting anyone's defence this round. If you're organizing defence against pegs, the last thing you want to do is send FI and CO against them. In cluster and in galaxy large ships are usually the easiest way to get pegs to recall if they don't have wyverns accompanying.

When attacking zik and terran, wyvern extremely key to reducing losses and provoking the target to run. But hell, that's only half the races that it helps you in attacking so it must be useless huh?

Oh wait.. ya, I forgot to mention that it helps detur cathaar incoming because cath don't have a very effective counter to the BS.

So that gives it 2 roles (offence and defence) and can be used against 3 out of the 4 races in the game. Surely a useless ship if ever I saw one

[K-W]

Wyvern are an important ship in bashing fleets. And terrans build them because they are great def against de, and battleships are not heavily targetted in this game. Syrens are a nice ship defensively, but their eta and CR class make them unatractive and unnecessary unless you are building a mostly defensive fleet. Considering the stats for terran are not hugely changed, and last round syrens were really a non factor, im not sure why anyone is discussing them.

[Tomkat]

Originally posted by Knight Theamion
zik is better for this round then terran.

[Mi5]

The thing is, this is rnd9 not 4, parallel/cluster isnt the be all end all. There will b ~5k planets (note i said planets not players) which means (with 10 in a gal and 10 gals in a cluster) there will b 50 clusters max. Which gives 10 gals in C and 50 in P, that does sound a lot, but when u take into account allied gals you can only hit ~50% which is 29 gals or 290 planets, sharing this with ur allies and ul find the c/p can only be a target haven for a s hort duration. Taking away an advantage of the terran de fleet and not making them the race to be.

[das_experiment]

thats a very good point mi5 ^^

[black-eyed boy]

Originally posted by SpazMonster
Have you even played terran before?

Yes. Was my most successful round.

Your PRIMARY attacking ship targets every one of those ships you mentioned (very efficiently i might add). why the hell would you want the wyvern to target them too?

[patience] What universe have you been playing in all those rounds? Around 80% of defence your targets get is being sent from outside the gal. High universe eta of Fr and De makes it unrealistic for them to be used as anti-peg defence. In the universe it's FI and Co that are being sent to defend every night. (If you disagree with that, I really don't see the point in further arguing). My point is that logically thinking by sending more anti-fi/co ships it's easier to get through than sending bloody anti-fr/de.
Unless you only attack small planets that don't have friends / alliance and you fight them one-on-one every time, dealing with their Fr/De.

Ever heard of something called the clipper? no? what about the buccaneer? didn't think so.. how about the chimeria? ah must not have thought about that either. Guess what.. the peg doesn't target any of those, but *gasp* the wyvern sure does!

Ever heard of something called pillager? peacekeeper? fireblade? avenger? tarantula? wyvern in the end? Guess what.. the peg doesn't target any of those, but *gasp* the dragon sure does!!! Just send dragons alongside your pegs and wyverns and you have anti-everything fleet!!!111!

The point is, you can't defend against everything. Instead of sending 50% of anti-1 + 50% of anti-2 it's better to concentrate on one thing making it way harder to defend against one class of ships.

That's all considering the major part of all defence flying in the universe are Fi/Co, no point in denying this.

I seriously hope you're not sorting anyone's defence this round. If you're organizing defence against pegs, the last thing you want to do is send FI and CO against them.

LMAO.
I had some doubts before, but now I see you really only post to trick newbies into thinking you are talking seriously

Sending a few roaches to completely freeze the pegs/pods accompanied by wyverns is ultimate fun. Did that every other night last round while the people I was defending had their WHOLE fleet at disposal to send to defend in gal. Now with number of caths in the universe about doubled, you still think wyverns are a good escort to pegs.

[Knight Theamion]

Originally posted by black-eyed boy
-snip-

you are a bit stupid, aren't ya ?

[black-eyed boy]

About what smartass?
Maybe you think that Fi and Co are a NO-NO to send against pegs aswell?

[MAdnRisKy]

Deven, Terran shouldn't hit zik, they realy shouldn't, and anyway there are less ziks in the universe anyway so that won't be all that hard to avoid

and you don't need wyvern against a cat, mainly because they don't help with getting the d through.

I'd make a fleet of 50 % pegs 20% harpies 25% syrens, with the rest in chimeras dems and MAYBE a few hydras if I hit xan a lot or wyverns if I don't.

For a cat to hit me with an eta 8 fleet, he can use tulas on my syrens sure, but then he has to worry about the harpies, so if he uses beetles on them, (harpies have great emp res) he has to use beetles, and if he uses beetles he has to stop all the pegs, and suddenly, he's going to put himself over the cap....

[MAdnRisKy]

Originally posted by Tactitus
Game mechanics are certainly important, but I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that they are all that really matter.

The game mechanics are always the more interesting side of the equation, because changes to mechanics often have unintended and unanticpated side-effects, because changes to mechanics are often pulled out of Spinner's hat at the last minute; and because changes to mechanics are often difficult to test (travel time changes can have huge effects on the game but they're very hard to test in beta with fast ticks).

I didn't say they were all that mattered
But like you say, they're often the most underestimated aspect and the hardest to predict, but ultimatly often the deciding factor in which races has the biggest natural advantage.

We'll see, I'm not playing this round so i have the luxury of hypothesising without fear that i might be wrong, because it won't affect my planet

[MAdnRisKy]

Originally posted by K-W
Wyvern are an important ship in bashing fleets. And terrans build them because they are great def against de, and battleships are not heavily targetted in this game. Syrens are a nice ship defensively, but their eta and CR class make them unatractive and unnecessary unless you are building a mostly defensive fleet. Considering the stats for terran are not hugely changed, and last round syrens were really a non factor, im not sure why anyone is discussing them.

Because I can't really see a good use for wyverns for attacking anyway, so since they'd often be a waste if sent to attack, I'd rather spend the resources i would spend on them on a ship which has more than just one trick.

Wyverns blow at killing fr, they're only use is against DE, syrens are useful against both, with the added insentive that they hit xan (though not greatly, but depending on bomber numbers, almost freely)

[Knight Theamion]

Originally posted by black-eyed boy
About what smartass?
Maybe you think that Fi and Co are a NO-NO to send against pegs aswell?

just ingal swap and get some chimeras or wyverns or syrens as def, but no roaches no.

[K-W]

Originally posted by MAdnRisKy
Deven, Terran shouldn't hit zik, they realy shouldn't, and anyway there are less ziks in the universe anyway so that won't be all that hard to avoid

and you don't need wyvern against a cat, mainly because they don't help with getting the d through.

I'd make a fleet of 50 % pegs 20% harpies 25% syrens, with the rest in chimeras dems and MAYBE a few hydras if I hit xan a lot or wyverns if I don't.

For a cat to hit me with an eta 8 fleet, he can use tulas on my syrens sure, but then he has to worry about the harpies, so if he uses beetles on them, (harpies have great emp res) he has to use beetles, and if he uses beetles he has to stop all the pegs, and suddenly, he's going to put himself over the cap....

Zik are great targets for terran for the most part of hte round. Wyvern are not neccessarily needed against anyone, they are a neccessary defensive ship and they are nice to throw into attacks when needed.

Syrens suck, Im not sure why you cling to this concept that a high eta terran cruiser is worth anything. If you have a big enough fleet you can make roids expensive for any race, thats really not the point.

Originally posted by MAdnRisKy
Because I can't really see a good use for wyverns for attacking anyway, so since they'd often be a waste if sent to attack, I'd rather spend the resources i would spend on them on a ship which has more than just one trick.

Wyverns blow at killing fr, they're only use is against DE, syrens are useful against both, with the added insentive that they hit xan (though not greatly, but depending on bomber numbers, almost freely)

You cant use syrens on attack. Why dont you understand that, youd have to be a big fool to make your attack eta 9 and to toss cr class into it. Wyverns are not terrible frig killers. What in the world do you mean more than just one trick? THe syren has one trick, in gal defense, it is utterly useless at anything else. You dont up your eta and toss in a vulnerable class just because the ship does a little better job at killing things.

Ive played terran my entire time in PA, wyvern are good, syern are not. Ive organized defensive from so many terrans i cant possibly count, wyvern are good, syren are not. The eta is bad, the class is bad. Wyvern have a great eta and a great class, which more than makes up for thier killing power.

[MAdnRisKy]

Germ, don't speak to me with your patronising tone, it won't win you any arguements, this is strategy not AD.

I have never argued that the syren be sent on attack, where have you seen me say that?

secondly, you're asking about stats here, and this isn't a stats debate per ce, perhaps a different thread would be more appropriatel.

But to answer your point, with private galaxies this round, i would wager that for the majority of incomming this round (one larger attacker) about 70% of incomming could be stopped provided all 10 players in a galaxy are online, simply by swapping ships. that is of course provided that all players in that galaxy addopt a similar strategy of only building the best ships for their race, and not byuilding substitute ships, which fill a purpose but not as well as another race could.

I doubt many galaxies will do this of course, or even think ahead that much, but that's not my fault

oh and btw, zik are bad targets for terran right about the point where they get clippers, which is the same time the terran get a decent attack fleet, prior to that terran have no anti Fi of any measure and could only use harpies prior to fr, as cutter would decimise them.
Zik are infact the worst target fpor terran pretty much from the word go, the only point it's viable is pre fr, which most peopel are not attacking by especially with the rnd 2 init.

[K-W]

Originally posted by MAdnRisKy
Germ, don't speak to me with your patronising tone, it won't win you any arguements, this is strategy not AD.

I have never argued that the syren be sent on attack, where have you seen me say that?

secondly, you're asking about stats here, and this isn't a stats debate per ce, perhaps a different thread would be more appropriatel.

But to answer your point, with private galaxies this round, i would wager that for the majority of incomming this round (one larger attacker) about 70% of incomming could be stopped provided all 10 players in a galaxy are online, simply by swapping ships. that is of course provided that all players in that galaxy addopt a similar strategy of only building the best ships for their race, and not byuilding substitute ships, which fill a purpose but not as well as another race could.

I doubt many galaxies will do this of course, or even think ahead that much, but that's not my fault

oh and btw, zik are bad targets for terran right about the point where they get clippers, which is the same time the terran get a decent attack fleet, prior to that terran have no anti Fi of any measure and could only use harpies prior to fr, as cutter would decimise them.
Zik are infact the worst target fpor terran pretty much from the word go, the only point it's viable is pre fr, which most peopel are not attacking by especially with the rnd 2 init.

1. Im well aware of what forum I am on.
2. If you arent going to send them on attack you probably shouldnt build them, but I suppose that was a misreading of your language.
3. 70% incoming covered in gal... maybe if you are a really well organized random galaxy. But a decent alliance galaxy is going to be hit on every planet by fleets designed to handle alliance defence. They will most certainly not be stopped by in gal swapping. Since that percentage certainly has not been the case in the past I wonder how you justify your prediction in rd 9 that it will be.
4. Once again, I was a terran for the last two rounds and I hit LOTS of zik for most of the round. Terran and the ziks were by far my most common and best targets until terran got wyvern and the only ziks left in my range had better fleets.


Once again I ask what your justification is for claiming that Terrans should be played differently than successful terrans have in the past. There stats for this coming round are almost identical to the previous rounds, so the way it has been played in the past is an awefully good indicator of how best to play it.

[MAdnRisKy]

Do you as a terran send harpies on an attack?

just a thought........

My reasoning behind the in galaxy defence, is that in my experience I haven't seen many if any try it.

most galaxies couldn't do it because of the amount of score spent on ships which are better in other races, but they build them to give a rounder fleet.

For example the fleet I am proposing would have nothing against cr and upward.

It would rely on the zik in your gal building nothing but cutters clippers buccs (possibly a few corsairs but NOT cutlass and a few rogues marauders, but not in any great proportion).

It would rely on cat building beetles spids widows and roaches, and not particularly any of the cr stuff (possible exception to tulas, but that would be going away from the theme:/), they themselves would then only realistically hit xan or terran (since of course no teran is building any cr are they?)

and xan would only build bombers vsh and pulsars and NOT that blastedly useless sent.

the reason it isn't possible is that the galaxy builds other ships. zik think that brigs are a good move, and try and steal too muh usually, when they should just bother with their kill ships. cat somnetimes god forbid build scarabs and I've seen them build defenders! :eek:

xan are one of the worst for it, building arrows (though in previous rounds they had a good excuse I suppose) sentinals and broads. and terran are just as bad, building phx or gryphons because they see them as the only allied defence option. Instead they should build just harpies and only have those available, don't waste their score building substandard ships ,it's actually detrimental to the alliance.

What i am proposing to this is a holistic view of both galaxies and in the wider sense alliances, though i seriously doubt that a group that big is capable of thinking on this level, and no-one ever likes being told what to do either, so maybe I;m just dreaming :/

[K-W]

Originally posted by MAdnRisKy
Do you as a terran send harpies on an attack?

just a thought........

My reasoning behind the in galaxy defence, is that in my experience I haven't seen many if any try it.

most galaxies couldn't do it because of the amount of score spent on ships which are better in other races, but they build them to give a rounder fleet.

For example the fleet I am proposing would have nothing against cr and upward.

It would rely on the zik in your gal building nothing but cutters clippers buccs (possibly a few corsairs but NOT cutlass and a few rogues marauders, but not in any great proportion).

It would rely on cat building beetles spids widows and roaches, and not particularly any of the cr stuff (possible exception to tulas, but that would be going away from the theme:/), they themselves would then only realistically hit xan or terran (since of course no teran is building any cr are they?)

and xan would only build bombers vsh and pulsars and NOT that blastedly useless sent.

the reason it isn't possible is that the galaxy builds other ships. zik think that brigs are a good move, and try and steal too muh usually, when they should just bother with their kill ships. cat somnetimes god forbid build scarabs and I've seen them build defenders! :eek:

xan are one of the worst for it, building arrows (though in previous rounds they had a good excuse I suppose) sentinals and broads. and terran are just as bad, building phx or gryphons because they see them as the only allied defence option. Instead they should build just harpies and only have those available, don't waste their score building substandard ships ,it's actually detrimental to the alliance.

What i am proposing to this is a holistic view of both galaxies and in the wider sense alliances, though i seriously doubt that a group that big is capable of thinking on this level, and no-one ever likes being told what to do either, so maybe I;m just dreaming :/

I think most galaxies dont do it because its very tricky. Its whatever am in the morning, youve got 10 planets under attack, your running to alliances becaues eta dictates you go to them first, then go in gal, people have fleets out already, some people arent online. It takes a very active galaxy with skilled defence people.

What you are suggesting is that galaxies and alliances act as if they are being run by one person. The problem is that they arent. This is a game of individual players. You are also assuming that the entire galaxy is online 24/7. What if the guy who has the ships is offline.

This is a game of balance, not extremes. You strike a balance between relying on your gal for certain things, but building a decent fleet.

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by black-eyed boy
Yes. Was my most successful round.


[patience] What universe have you been playing in all those rounds? Around 80% of defence your targets get is being sent from outside the gal. High universe eta of Fr and De makes it unrealistic for them to be used as anti-peg defence. In the universe it's FI and Co that are being sent to defend every night. (If you disagree with that, I really don't see the point in further arguing). My point is that logically thinking by sending more anti-fi/co ships it's easier to get through than sending bloody anti-fr/de.
Unless you only attack small planets that don't have friends / alliance and you fight them one-on-one every time, dealing with their Fr/De.

Hmm.. The way I look at it, if DE is the only incoming and FI/CO are all that the incoming targets, you can avoid being shot at completely by doing a little ship swapping in galaxy. You send your fi/co to someone who can use it more and have a few chims and clippers sent to your planet, saving alliance defence for someone who might actually need it. So in this case, not only is the attacker not going to get roids, he is causing someone else in his attack not to get roids either. what a great way to make friends.

Ever heard of something called pillager? peacekeeper? fireblade? avenger? tarantula? wyvern in the end? Guess what.. the peg doesn't target any of those, but *gasp* the dragon sure does!!! Just send dragons alongside your pegs and wyverns and you have anti-everything fleet!!!111!

Most of those ships no one builds because they are crap, or because of their class won't be in enough abundance to keep you from hitting them. I was saying you can hit a wider range of targets buy building the wyvern, but I suppose you were unable to grasp that.

The point is, you can't defend against everything. Instead of sending 50% of anti-1 + 50% of anti-2 it's better to concentrate on one thing making it way harder to defend against one class of ships.

I wasn't suggesting sending to be anti this and anti that. I was suggesting sending the most efficient roiding/killing fleet. It's much easier to defend against a pure DE fleet than it is to defend a DE/BS fleet because of the lack of good anti-BS ships and the wyvern's initiative, which is higher than every one of them.

Sending a few roaches to completely freeze the pegs/pods accompanied by wyverns is ultimate fun. Did that every other night last round while the people I was defending had their WHOLE fleet at disposal to send to defend in gal. Now with number of caths in the universe about doubled, you still think wyverns are a good escort to pegs.

I'm sorry, but I don't like to take ships from my alliance m8s when I don't need to, especially the cathaar ones. I like having cathaar hit terran because good terrans are traditionally difficult to hit with any other race. If they're hitting terran they need their roaches so I prefer not to use them unless there is no other way around it.

I'm not trying to trick anyone here. Quite the opposite actually. Go and talk to some top players from the past rounds and see what they say about what I have to say. They'll agree with every bit of it.

[MAdnRisKy]

Originally posted by K-W
I think most galaxies dont do it because its very tricky. Its whatever am in the morning, youve got 10 planets under attack, your running to alliances becaues eta dictates you go to them first, then go in gal, people have fleets out already, some people arent online. It takes a very active galaxy with skilled defence people.

What you are suggesting is that galaxies and alliances act as if they are being run by one person. The problem is that they arent. This is a game of individual players. You are also assuming that the entire galaxy is online 24/7. What if the guy who has the ships is offline.

This is a game of balance, not extremes. You strike a balance between relying on your gal for certain things, but building a decent fleet.

All right so what you're saying is the idea works but it's application is difficult.

I can live with that

im picking xan ,its the one i know best.

a xan with a lot of amps and reflectors ,(should be able to block cathaar mil scans) sounds like a good plan

i hate those pegs, they seem to steal roids no matter what defences a xan has.


useing a mobile phone to get warnings,change your fleet,and get defence sound good to me , hope they employ that idea at a furture date.

[Moondoggie]

The idea could work, the application is difficult, and even if it did work, how much fun would it be? Being told to only build certain ships and be forced to play in a certain way. I am looking forward to stealing ships as zik, ie. roaches, vultures etc

Even worse, what if the person giving these build orders/plans wasn't as strategically gifted as he thought he was......? And then ended up screwing the entire galaxy.

I think it's funny that you'd tell people to not build corsairs and sentinals, and go with the inferior pulsar because you choose to not reanalyze the stats because of the bad rep from previous rounds.

[Domin]

Originally posted by LEXX
im picking xan ,its the one i know best.

a xan with a lot of amps and reflectors ,(should be able to block cathaar mil scans) sounds like a good plan

i hate those pegs, they seem to steal roids no matter what defences a xan has.


useing a mobile phone to get warnings,change your fleet,and get defence sound good to me , hope they employ that idea at a furture date.

1. Most alliances/bg have own scanners who atleast last round had upto 10k-20k amps. (and a few k roids)

2. it's all about ur fleet setup with alot of bombers u should avoid thoose pegs.

3. The sms warnings ain't fair. The us players will not have such option (notice im not a us citizen)

But it ain't fair unless everyone can have it

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by Moondoggie
The idea could work, the application is difficult, and even if it did work, how much fun would it be? Being told to only build certain ships and be forced to play in a certain way. I am looking forward to stealing ships as zik, ie. roaches, vultures etc

Even worse, what if the person giving these build orders/plans wasn't as strategically gifted as he thought he was......? And then ended up screwing the entire galaxy.

I think it's funny that you'd tell people to not build corsairs and sentinals, and go with the inferior pulsar because you choose to not reanalyze the stats because of the bad rep from previous rounds.

Seriously.. put down the crackpipe. The pulsar kills more than the sentinal. period. No if's and's or but's. The armor column in xand stats is null and void. The point is to kill everything before anything has a chance to shoot at you.

[Sn0w]

Originally posted by SpazMonster
Seriously.. put down the crackpipe. The pulsar kills more than the sentinal. period. No if's and's or but's. The armor column in xand stats is null and void. The point is to kill everything before anything has a chance to shoot at you.

pretty much meaning xands will be attacking ppl half there score or less all round :/

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by Sn0w
pretty much meaning xands will be attacking ppl half there score or less all round :/

isn't that usually how it works?

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally posted by SpazMonster
isn't that usually how it works?

that's what i was thinking...

[Moondoggie]

Seriously.. put down the crackpipe. The pulsar kills more than the sentinal. period. No if's and's or but's.

Oh joy, more "I'm right just because" posts. This forum is really starting to turn into AD. The pulsar doesn't kill more because it dies more.

The armor column in xand stats is null and void. The point is to kill everything before anything has a chance to shoot at you.

You would need 3.76 times more resources in pulsars to kill all the pegs before they fire. (23.13 pulsars per pegasus)

Or 4.50 times more resources in sentinals to kill all the pegs before they fire. (30.86 sentinals per pegasus)

How often will either of these occur? Anytime pulsars are sent to defend pegasus they better dwarf the attackers resource in fleet, or why even defend? The protected roids wont be close to making up for the lost fleet.

Pulsars are only better when their side massively outnumbers the defenders. This can happen while attacking, but you'd cap next to nothing unless you sent multiple fleets and your target ran. For defending, this would require too many people having to send defense.

In closer fights, the sentinals will always do better because they are twice as good in dealing with the return fire. Thus leaving more of them to shoot a second and third time.

Get a clue, actually look at the stats.

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by Moondoggie
Oh joy, more "I'm right just because" posts. This forum is really starting to turn into AD. The pulsar doesn't kill more because it dies more.



You would need 3.76 times more resources in pulsars to kill all the pegs before they fire. (23.13 pulsars per pegasus)

Or 4.50 times more resources in sentinals to kill all the pegs before they fire. (30.86 sentinals per pegasus)

How often will either of these occur? Anytime pulsars are sent to defend pegasus they better dwarf the attackers resource in fleet, or why even defend? The protected roids wont be close to making up for the lost fleet.

Pulsars are only better when their side massively outnumbers the defenders. This can happen while attacking, but you'd cap next to nothing unless you sent multiple fleets and your target ran. For defending, this would require too many people having to send defense.

In closer fights, the sentinals will always do better because they are twice as good in dealing with the return fire. Thus leaving more of them to shoot a second and third time.

Get a clue, actually look at the stats.

I have looked at the stats. I've been rather familiar with them for 3+ rounds now. I managed a t20 planet in r7 that was xandathrii, the top ranked Xand in r7 was my gal m8 who used the same strat I did, I helped mold the stats being part of round 7 beta, and seeing as how I helped lead a galaxy that hit no1 in round 7 I think I'm more than qualified to make certain statements, especially when they're backed up by numbers.


The 'to hit' formula looks like this: (weapon speed - agility + 25)%

We'll apply that to the pegasus in reguards to the sent and pulsar now. We only need to do it once because they both have the same weapon speed:

(25 - 23 + 25) % = 27%

So per gun, they both have roughly a 27% chance to hit a pegusus. Let's take that a step further now and apply that to the number of guns on each ship and apply the damage.

Pulsar: 4 total guns * .27 = 1.08 guns per pulsar hit
1.32guns * 2 damage = 2.16 damage per pulsar

Now we'll divide that by it's resources to get an efficiency rating per resource:

2.18/1950 = 1.117 (x10 ^-3)

Sentinal: 2 total guns * .27 = .54 guns per sent hit
.54 guns * 3 damage = 1.62 damage per sent

Again we'll divide by resources to get an efficiency rating:

1.62/1750 = 0.926 (x10 ^-3)

The pulsar is more effective at killing pegs than sents.

-----------------------------------------

Your problem is that you care about what survives the next tick. It's entirely irrelevant. When you're arranging defence, you arrange defence so you do more damage to the attacker than the defenders take the 1st tick and make his/her losses not worth the roids. Secondly, when attacking you have to wait for the sent to get around to its t3=all before it starts going after the DE, in which case it won't happen because terran generally have FR class ships, and even if they don't have either FR or CO the ALL will get split between all other classes of ships, it won't be focussed on the DE just because you want it to be.

[hyfe]

Originally posted by SpazMonster
[b]
The 'to hit' formula looks like this: (weapon speed/agility) * 30%

They changed it?

If they did i'm going to feel mightily stupid

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by hyfe
They changed it?

If they did i'm going to feel mightily stupid

I'm pulling that from memory.. it might be slightly off. what do u think it is?

either way it really won't change my calcs that much as it'll just change how often both ships hit proportionatly.

[hyfe]

wpsp - agility + 25

..

I'd say your not coming off too good now..prefacing *that* statement with all that bragging

[SpazMonster]

Originally posted by hyfe
wpsp - agility + 25

..

I'd say your not coming off too good now..prefacing *that* statement with all that bragging

I changed it to be proper :-P

And I didn't bother to look up the to hit because the end number would still come out higher for the pulsar. It's just by a different multiplier so I really didn't put much importance on it. And when someone questions my ability to look at the stats I think I'm justified in bringing up my history.