Dont shave the Caths!

[Tietäjä]

The market is a funny thing, and customer support yet another. A product can be flawed because it's inherently bad -- which makes people wonder why they originally bought it, and generally products used for a while do not grant refund -- or if an external factor made the product worthless or less worthy. In any case, there is a lot of utter crap sold on the market, and yet people buy it.

In general, we *can* not be talking about an inherently bad product having the facts that the cathaar race was picked more by paying customers than any other race! Prior to the current round, when the stats were out there for people to read, many came up with the conclusion that cathaar is the most viable choice for the round. Certainly not because the stats sucked hairy balls, but because they figured the stats were good. It's funny how the stats are now responsible for the collapse of the cathaar race. An alternate view to the "fall" of cathaar was represented by ComradeRob:

The fact is that Cath sucks in "siege" rounds, which involve large alliances kicking the crap out of each other on a nightly basis. In rounds where one side wins with relative ease, Cathaar do much better, because they are probably the best race attack-wise, but the weakest defensively (for their inability to kill anything much).

People who expect the races to remain equal in usefulness in every round are denying the effects of the "meta-game", the alliance politics and attack strategies that have a strong effect on the outcome of a round. This round, I'd say 1up are fairly Cath-heavy, but politics has been against them, thus depressing the performance of Cathaar as a race. Exilition have (until recently) been a stronger performer and are fairly Xan-heavy, boosting Xan as a race. Part of this might be because of their race choice, but it's equally possible that alliance politics are altering the performance of the races.

Also, we can elaborate it mathematically: Jester (Banned, eh) posted these figures on forums when Chika requested them. They measure race choice spread in payed accounts.

Ter: 1
Cath: 2.5
Xan: 2
Zik: 1.75

I don't know how many would agree with me, but I still claim -- as I did in SD, which nobody reads anyways -- that these figures ultimately affect the race "balance" or lack of thereof. Together with the boom of zikonians (many people knew to expect top zikonian planets, but few anticipated they'd totally take over top100 - a thing that may yet change...) and the avaibility of corsairs (now, here is in my opinion, the only piece where stats relate to this issue), and the large number o cathaars caused a sharp increas in anti-CR.

Now, we can interfere with the metagame -- and by God, fix all problems and make the round balanced -- by making a PATCH! Some brainiac here came up with the conclusion that, because Fallout was bugged beyond recognition on release date, and a patch was released to repair the damage. A grand idea. Let's patch the game, why not recoupe the stats midround. Saying this, I don't think the person (whose idea in all it's naive perspective sounds good) gave thought to completely peeing on the metagame part of it. Say the adminstration had not "delayed", but had fixed the cath early round, when the problems were starting to emerge. Damn we'd be having a lot of patches around. Next one would have been on xandathrii, believe me, or then the terrans

The universe rankings would look different. And I don't mean just planet rankings.
Phoenix was adjusted a bit mid-round during r4. It caused a lot of hassle and people threatening to quit the game over it. Imagine the scenario, should a whole *race* be adjusted. It'd really (believe it or not) take extensive testing to reach a balance, or then we'd be hunting a duck with a 40mm. pipe. That would make a mess.


Simply put, this wasn't anticipated. Information and expectations play a major role in these things -- more or less exact expectations, which take account also the metagame, which is very hard to predict. I'll give a cookie to the person who -- with the ability to proove it -- said pre-round that no cath will make it to the top50 or even as far as top100. Things can be fixed for next round, as there'll be time for it -- Sovereign seems to be on it already. It's a horrendrously difficult task, to make a set of interesting statistics yet retaining game balance, and I don't really remember, during my short PA career, a round that had been all nice and balanced.

[Rinoa]

You wouldnt happen to be Zik by any chance would you?

[Gio2k]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I thought it might. thankyou .
That's stupid. All races must be biased - but biased in different respects. ... snip ... Next round, it could be different. Last round it definately was. Race selection isnt just about ships, but the race as a whole and how to use their strengths to succeed. ... snip ...

On a side note, last 2 rounds stats mattered fk all. What mattered was which target race was more abundant and which nemesis race was less numerous. Round robin rounds made stats actually the least important factor when choosing race.
The point for most people here is the following: ALL races should be playable from a stats point of view. And at the moment they are not. Terran are arguably also a bit limited, but playable, for people who know how to play them and are active enough.

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by Gio2k

The point for most people here is the following: ALL races should be playable from a stats point of view. And at the moment they are not. Terran are arguably also a bit limited, but playable, for people who know how to play them and are active enough.

Ofcourse this all sounds great (and pwetty obvious i think ), but is is close to impossible. As the stats also rely on the race-choises of the players. Its impossible to predict which race will be chosen most, usually its a result of the opinion on races end of the previous round + the race its performance in beta. Every race should have a ideal target race, and should be a ideal target race for atleast 1 other race. That way each race can be balanced out by actions taken by the race that is fit to deal with it. However if a certain race is picked alot more or alot less, chances are stats become unbalanced because there are either no (or less) targets, or no players in position to fight back against a race (efficiently).

Judging the race choices made by everyone this round, the stats looked balanced (as the number of ppl playing each race is closer to eachother then i have ever seen in race-pa history), that actions taken within the round prove otherwise is unfortunately a unforseen event which can be used for next round stats to (try) avoid it. And next rounds set of stats might look balanced again, but who knows what tactics ppl come up with that can unbalance the round significantly, you simply can't tell. In either way its impossible to make 'balanced' stats and ensure with that the round will be balanced for every race.

[Gio2k]

Originally Posted by Wandows

Every race should have a ideal target race, and should be a ideal target race for atleast 1 other race. That way each race can be balanced out by actions taken by the race that is fit to deal with it. However if a certain race is picked alot more or alot less, chances are stats become unbalanced because there are either no (or less) targets, or no players in position to fight back against a race (efficiently).

You know that you will never have a uniform spread between all races, which makes the idea of having an ideal target race and being the ideal target for another race unpractical. The solution is to not make stats round robin. Jester's stats made a step in the right direction in this sense. But the stats are not ideal. Stats should be designed with the best resilience against race distribution. But Jesters comment about Cathaars being playable if Cathaars were around 10% of the paying base made me worry, since i have seen no round with less than 20% of paying Cathaars in the universe.

The next point i want to address here is: Everyone so far has said 'Changing stats mid-round is a big NO NO', etc. Care to justify why? I mean, give us a detailed analysis and predictions of why for example raising the efficiency of tarantulas would make the round even less balanced than it is now. Of course Xans and Ziks will have the obvious argument that it will make them less effective overall. But that is actually one of the reasons the game is unbalanced, Zik and Xan are the most strong races by miles. Just come and paste your well thought analysis of how making Caths more powerful (even if at the middle of a round) is indeed a no no.

[Tietäjä]

Yes I am a zikonian, and my anti-fi sucks, please upgrade cutlass.

Originally Posted by Gio2k

eBut the stats are not ideal. Stats should be designed with the best resilience against race distribution.

In an ideal world, 15% of the population wouldn't gain 81% of the world's total income. Also, in the ideal world, the stats would be perfect and balanced, and not metagame nor race spread could affect the fine balance. In reality though, the large amount of cruisers in the universe leads, ceteris paribus, to increase in amount of anti-cr. Also, ceteris paribus, the rise of zikonians, granted with the efficient vsharrak, leads into xandathrii climbing ranks. In reality, creating perfect statistics is quite hard - maybe you'd be up for the job, Gio?

The next point i want to address here is: Everyone so far has said 'Changing stats mid-round is a big NO NO', etc. Care to justify why? I mean, give us a detailed analysis and predictions of why for example raising the efficiency of tarantulas would make the round even less balanced than it is now.

Yes, first of all, it degrades xandathrii. Once tarant's efficiency is raised, and "the universe made balanced", the terrans will conquer the streets next. Again, changing stats midround changes the game radically for some customers, for good or bad. I also spoke about the metagame Rob mentioned in my earlier post.

And again, they've chosen the race they chose. I'm eager to hear why cathaar form a majority of paid accounts. Is it because people knew they'd suck pre-round and decided to go cath anyways? Stats-wise, people *thought* cathaar was GOOD! We can either estimate a majority of people (especially people in a certain high profile alliance) were utterly mislead by something that dwells in the numbers Jester wrote, OR there must be something else to it.

For next round, cathaar needs a fix. For next round, several issues need attending. Experts are working on them, but don't expect the ship statistics for next round to be perfect either. It won't be happening.

[Duncan]

If you didn't read Tietäjä's posts, do yourself a favor and don't bother. He clearly didn't bother reading this thread.

I'll just repeat the same points using diffrent words again.

The market is a funny thing, and customer support yet another. A product can be flawed because it's inherently bad -- which makes people wonder why they originally bought it, and generally products used for a while do not grant refund -- or if an external factor made the product worthless or less worthy. In any case, there is a lot of utter crap sold on the market, and yet people buy it.

You described chosing cath this round perfectly -- utter crap people bought and can't get a refund for. False advertisng, a game that provides an unplayable gaming experience for 25% of it's users and the company's inablity to correct it's own errors .... might as well stop there because further reasons this game could be considered utter crap don't really apply to this issue.

In most instances people catch on and stop paying for unworthy products. PA is an example of this.

Prior to the current round, when the stats were out there for people to read, many came up with the conclusion that cathaar is the most viable choice for the round. Certainly not because the stats sucked hairy balls, but because they figured the stats were good.

This just proves that gamers can't do the job of professional coders any better. (Or is wandows right? They can't even afford to put coders on the payroll and use intelligent community members to do it for them?)

Signifcantly less caths are doing well.

Actual reasons for this:

1. There are 3 ticks of available defence vs. the cath's strongest roiding fleet the CR
2. This is the only class of ship that has 3 ticks of available defence.
3. Cathaar have the only CR roiding fleet so all CR defence is used on them.
4. Their CR ships aren't strong enough to counteract all of this def.
5. The CO roiding fleet is also easy to stop compared to others.
6. Teaming up and multi fleeting have been proven relatively ineffective by skilled players (remember more paid accounts chose cath)
7. All 3 races can take 0 loss roids from cathaar. Caths have the 1st or 2nd hardest time attacking and are by far the easiest to attack.
8. The blockwar means that cathaar see multiple waves of organized incoming from more then one alliance that they can't deal with. But this point applies to every race. Caths just have a harder time regaining lost roids and are much easier to roid in the first place, and that's a result of 1-7.

Fantasy reasons Caathar are doing bad:

1. More PAID accounts chose them.

I chose terran, so any cath players out there who could help fix/adjust these lists please do so.

For next round, cathaar needs a fix. For next round, several issues need attending. Experts are working on them, but don't expect the ship statistics for next round to be perfect either. It won't be happening.

People are asking for some degree of balance and playability, not perfection. What an asshole, who has asked for perfection here? People don't want to waste their time and money on the 'wrong' race that has no hope of success. Just out of curiosity, has there ever been a round where the rank skew between the races has been as bad?

[Wandows]

Whitetrash... instead of keeping complaining of things and just keep repeating the obvious (yes.. cathaar is not the best race this round \o/), why don't you, as a person who seems to know exactly what the problems are, suggest your completely balanced stats for the coming round. I, and many others, would surely appriciate it.


Sidenote: if you can sum up all those reasons why cathaar are so bad.. why did you chose them as race in the first place (as taken from ur comments i suppose you are cathaar)?

We all know that Cathaar turned out to be not as great as everyone thought it would be... well things happen. Face it, if everyone knew before round cathaar would be bad don't you think there would be less playing? Same thing with hiring/going to a movie, you think it will be fun, but it might turn out to be a crap one which can ruin your evening. This game is just like a movie, sometimes its fun, sometimes is exciting and sometimes its the opposite. Things happen, just go on with ur life next day.

[Duncan]

I, as a person, am not a game coder, bad with computers, poor at math and I'm just not smart enough tbh. That's why companies who produce video games hire people with those skills to make them.

That list was mostly other people's observations that keep getting ignored or dismissed time and time again. I picked terran because it was described as the best choice for newbies.

Beyond some mild entertainment PA provides, it's very easy for unsatisfied players to go on with life. They can simply replace PA with a better game or with other productive activities. More then 100000 players have chosen to do so already.

[MAdnRisKy]

stat changes mid round don't work.

they have no history of working and only a history of pissing people off.
and as numerous people have pointed out, you can't change one stat without it having an impact on other people, especially since previous stat changes affected everyone equally, and now we have races they won't

why don't people get this

[jerome]

people are idiots.

[Duncan]

I'm going to do myself (and probably everyone else =]) a favor and stop posting after this -- no point in continually repeating myself to utter retards.

A patch or update is pretty common in computer games. I guess whoever runs PA doesn't have the resources for an effective mid-round patch.

^what I wrote several posts ago

It's not idiodic to ask for a patch that would BALANCE an unfair game you paid for btw. Especially when there is no warning that states something like this: "The race you choose might turn out to be utter crap, even if we describe it as the second easiest to use. You see, it is impossible for us to know if the ship-stats we create are balanced or not. It is also impossible for us to fix them if things go wrong, so don't bother whining to us on the forums please. If you feel like doing so, you are an idiot, just LIVE YOUR LIFE for ****s sake. By the way, no refunds. Love, the PAteam." PA doesn't have the money or the manpower to make something like an update happen, fine. I can accept that. My guess is there will be even less paid accounts next round, but as I said, this is hardly the main reason.

Just out of curiosity, has there ever been a round where the rank skew between the races has been as bad?

[Gio2k]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Yes I am a zikonian, and my anti-fi sucks, please upgrade cutlass.

Lucky you. I am Cathaar, and my Anti fi/co/fr/de/cr/bs sucks.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

In an ideal world, 15% of the population wouldn't gain 81% of the world's total income. Also, in the ideal world, the stats would be perfect and balanced, and not metagame nor race spread could affect the fine balance. In reality though, the large amount of cruisers in the universe leads, ceteris paribus, to increase in amount of anti-cr. Also, ceteris paribus, the rise of zikonians, granted with the efficient vsharrak, leads into xandathrii climbing ranks. In reality, creating perfect statistics is quite hard - maybe you'd be up for the job, Gio?

Are we talking about reality or a game? Real life is not ideal world. Games, on the other hand should be as balanced as possible. This is a game, not real life. As to creating statistics, is not easy, but:
1. There have been rounds with much better stats than this ones.
2. I am not against fine tuning and small changes to stats if they help balance the game.

You are asking the wrong person 'Are you up for the job'. First thing i would do is make Tarants (at least) twice as effective killing as they are now. And i would give a fk about ziks and xans whining, if i considered it good for the balance in the game. On the other hand, if the changes or the stats designed were bad, i would adjust them accordingly.
To use an analogy: If your computer is not working correctly due to a hardware problem, you don't wait for until you have enough money to buy another new computer, you change the piece of hardware that is not working, and test if the computer is running well.
Point is: sometimes, a whole redesign is needed; sometimes, small adjustments do the job.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Yes, first of all, it degrades xandathrii. Once tarant's efficiency is raised, and "the universe made balanced", the terrans will conquer the streets next. Again, changing stats midround changes the game radically for some customers, for good or bad. I also spoke about the metagame Rob mentioned in my earlier post.

And again, they've chosen the race they chose. I'm eager to hear why cathaar form a majority of paid accounts. Is it because people knew they'd suck pre-round and decided to go cath anyways? Stats-wise, people *thought* cathaar was GOOD! We can either estimate a majority of people (especially people in a certain high profile alliance) were utterly mislead by something that dwells in the numbers Jester wrote, OR there must be something else to it.

For next round, cathaar needs a fix. For next round, several issues need attending. Experts are working on them, but don't expect the ship statistics for next round to be perfect either. It won't be happening.

What makes you think that Terrans are balanced as they are now? They are also inbalanced, although still playable. Actually having Terrans in the streets again would be part of the restored balance.
I went Cathaar, not because they were the labeled as the "best" race. I read the stats, and Cathaar were definitely not stronger than Xan, i didn't know what to think of Zik back then, since for example, i didn't know that Ziks don't lose ships when stealing. In the end they turned to be the strongest race around. Stats alone didn't tell you that, you need to understand how the game engine works. Cath stats alone were also not great, but not bad. If Caths could distribute their firepower per resource and not per number of ships present, if would have been different. I chose Cathaar, because i hadn't played with them in a while, and i enjoyed playing them since they were one of the most "strategic" races around back then, because you have to calculate exactly how much to send to freeze your opponent, and so on. Xans and Terrans, and also to a lower degree Ziks depended on the scare away / kill and roid tactics.
I agree that Cathaar need a fix for next round, but i say they need a fix for THIS round as well. Won't happen, but so far i haven't read a single convincing argument in favor of not changing Cath stats. Maybe i am stubborn. Maybe i am wrong, but since the stats team are not changing them, i won't be proven wrong on my conviction .

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Gio2k

To use an analogy: If your computer is not working correctly due to a hardware problem, you don't wait for until you have enough money to buy another new computer, you change the piece of hardware that is not working, and test if the computer is running well.
Point is: sometimes, a whole redesign is needed; sometimes, small adjustments do the job.

(My point about terrans conquering the streets was that they'll require harpy to be upgraded).


What if the new part causes frigment with some of the old pieces?

[Cannon_Fodder]

caths in general weren't that bad, it was just corsairs....

[Gary]

Originally Posted by sniborp

caths in general weren't that bad, it was just corsairs....

I think this sums up cathaars problems pretty well. Over-powered corsairs. Everything else is ok. The armour for roach is on the weak side, but I can live with that. Myabe putting zik anti CR on eta 8 would be another solution. Put zik cr stealers as fr/de and out de killers on eta 7. For example this morning, if it wasnt for eta 7 corsairs (and im sure i sneaked through scarabs and bombers on eta 8, i would have got through). Nm, onwards and upwards

[Banned]

Originally Posted by GJN

I think this sums up cathaars problems pretty well. Over-powered corsairs. Everything else is ok. The armour for roach is on the weak side, but I can live with that. Myabe putting zik anti CR on eta 8 would be another solution. Put zik cr stealers as fr/de and out de killers on eta 7. For example this morning, if it wasnt for eta 7 corsairs (and im sure i sneaked through scarabs and bombers on eta 8, i would have got through). Nm, onwards and upwards

No. The problem is not corsairs.

[Cannon_Fodder]

Then it was every other ship?

[Banned]

Originally Posted by sniborp

Then it was every other ship?

The problem isn't Cath attack power, it is Cath defensive power. There is no such thing as a bad cath target, just one that will net less roids.

[lokken]

One thing that smacked me in the face is that a lot of the better players went Zik because they felt confident they could manage it, could handle Zik's drawbacks, hence there should be no surprise why a lot of them are top 100, so there might be little surprise why caths aren't abundant in the top 100.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by lokken

One thing that smacked me in the face is that a lot of the better players went Zik because they felt confident they could manage it, could handle Zik's drawbacks, hence there should be no surprise why a lot of them are top 100, so there might be little surprise why caths aren't abundant in the top 100.

I'd have thought a lot of Zik would mean a lot of targets to fake CR at with a light smattering of Hornets to get high XP roids.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Banned

I'd have thought a lot of Zik would mean a lot of targets to fake CR at with a light smattering of Hornets to get high XP roids.

Most decent Ziks now either have enough Bombers or Dragons to make stealing the roids fairly unlikely.

[Rinoa]

pm me the coords of anyone without fleetscans....
kthnxbye

[Banned]

Originally Posted by furball

Most decent Ziks now either have enough Bombers or Dragons to make stealing the roids fairly unlikely.

Odd, I found a few in the top10 that strategy would be feasible on... Not to mention all the people that only get corsair def.

Originally Posted by Rinoa

pm me the coords of anyone without fleetscans....
kthnxbye

Build jammers.

[jerome]

Biggest problems I've personally found as being a cath myself is the mere fact that in an exquisitely high pod-armour round, cath are extra-weak to every race. Cath's roiding options are also far too limited to equalize that.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by _ryzekiel_

Biggest problems I've personally found as being a cath myself is the mere fact that in an exquisitely high pod-armour round, cath are extra-weak to every race. Cath's roiding options are also far too limited to equalize that.

Nail. Head. Etc.

[relik]

Originally Posted by Rinoa

pm me the coords of anyone without fleetscans....
kthnxbye

There are surprisingly more than you'd think, plus the fact that many players apparently rely on alliance scanners and have 5 amps or less