Time For Change.. again?

[Razgriz]

Looking at recent suggestions it seems there has been alot spoken about the ability to steal and how players would go about it using cov-ops. I was just thinking would it be worth bringing back the steal ability for every race?

From what i understand the Ter/Xan/Cat races steal ships were taken away because some people wanted the Ziks to be the only race that steals but it seems that some players want to be able to steal without having to choose Zik as their race. Or am i seeing things differently and players just want a new stealing cov-op used by every race? The only real difference between a ship stealing cov-op available to all and ships that steal ships available to all is the amount a player is able to steal depending on how the formula goes.

[NitinA]

That cov-op thread of mine is about a year old--from the time when all the races had 1 steal ship. The steal ship for every race idea is an intresting one, given; but the reason I assume it's not done, is that it's a lot harder to balance the stats given that.

-NitinA

[Gate]

Originally Posted by NitinA

That cov-op thread of mine is about a year old--from the time when all the races had 1 steal ship. The steal ship for every race idea is an intresting one, given; but the reason I assume it's not done, is that it's a lot harder to balance the stats given that.

That's definitely true; though appoco made an excellent set of stats in r14, the stealing factor allowed some great ideas (terran CR/BS being a 'bouncer', guaranteed to take losses but could still steal...), but it wasn't necessarily worth as much in all the races, and stealing a particular ship could give a planet a huge advantage. If terrans stole lancer, they became pretty immune to cath CO, which were terran's main weakness (plus, xands couldn't easily send sentinels along as well, so terrans could build harpies and become immune to xand FI/CO fleets too), if caths stole sentinels, or even a lot of cutters, they could become immune to FI or possibly even DE (sentinels were the main one though), which could make caths pretty unfairly tough.

Whilst cath CR and terr CR/BS were pretty awesome fleets, xand FR were pretty crap, so building them was not particularly good for the xand, and the only worthwhile ship to steal was the spider, but a xand who stole spider then had a pretty unfair advantage because there was no longer any easily available ship that could actually hurt his attack fleet...

So, it was a great set of stats, but there were some problems :P

[Razgriz]

Sorry, i must have fell out of the loop - What were the problems with the stats and all race steal ships?

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Razgriz

Sorry, i must have fell out of the loop - What were the problems with the stats and all race steal ships?

The problems were:
Caths and terrans could easily fit scorpion and wyvern into their fleets. In fact, it made pretty logical sense to do so, and these ships were very useful. Therefore caths and terrans could steal ships pretty easily.

Xand frigates sucked ass though, and so it was very difficult for xands to steal stuff.

However, the whole aspect adds another dimension, as you have to make sure certain ships either can't be stolen, or are very difficult to steal. If a terran stole lancers, their DE fleet would be pretty unstoppable (it removed ALL zero loss defence against DE. Everything either got shot first, or shot at the same time), and they would be immune to xand FI/CO and cath CO, which could make terrans with stolen lancers far more powerful than they should be.

A similar thing could be said for caths with stolen cutter or sentinel.

And attacks wise, a xand with stolen spiders was pretty much impossible to stop in ally.

Basically, it gave a huge advantage to planets who were able to steal certain ships, whilst those who invested and didn't manage to steal these ships (the targets ran, fleetcatches got defended against etc) were comparitively far worse off, and from a personal PoV, a cath or terran's success should not be based on how lucky they get with stealing.

So all of this has to be taken into account. Though I do feel perhaps an initiative change on the phoenix combined with changing sentinel to FI would have made the round 14 stats work even bettter.