Races

[Gary]

Why dont we just introduce a fifth race that can subvert? That would freshen things up, and would provide another possible check against Zikonians. As for the stealing, put up the bash limit for Zikonians, from 25% to say 33.3%. Its not much, but as the round develops, a lot more of the little planets wouldnt have to worry about their fleet being stolen if they dare to go out for a day.

As for ship stats, Zikonian BS by themselves is not all that effective. Im a t150 planet with a BS oritentated attack fleet, and 3k Wraith with the target's DE targetting BS ships, pretty much stops me in my tracks. It is teaming up with Terran BS that makes Zik BS quite powerful.

[furball]

Originally Posted by GJN

Why dont we just introduce a fifth race that can subvert? That would freshen things up, and would provide another possible check against Zikonians.

Quite a few people have suggested this already. However, Round 12 proved that subversion has major problems associated with it, in particular those of red defence. Ziks also become incredibly powerful if the ship-stats aren't designed perfectly.

Originally Posted by GJN

As for the stealing, put up the bash limit for Zikonians, from 25% to say 33.3%. Its not much, but as the round develops, a lot more of the little planets wouldnt have to worry about their fleet being stolen if they dare to go out for a day.

I'm personally more in favour of rewarding attacking at your own value and above, but this isn't a bad alternative.

[Gary]

Going back to R12, if I remember rightly, the green defence were Xandathrii FI/CO ships? A stat adjustment of a higher init could theasibly make this an unworthwhile tactic, because if the subversion takes place after the "green defence" then it would mean heavy losses. ofcourse though, higher init would make the subverting race a lame duck in some areas, but yet again, so is Cathaar if you dont get the best alliance defence coverage. If the stats were designed so each race can be totally twated in one or more areas, and combined with a higher bash for the Ziks (and other tweaking issues) then I think we would have the direction in which PA can go. A lot of ifs and buts, but it is seems possible if the effort can be put into beta testing and coding.

[furball]

Originally Posted by GJN

Going back to R12, if I remember rightly, the green defence were Xandathrii FI/CO ships? A stat adjustment of a higher init could theasibly make this an unworthwhile tactic, because if the subversion takes place after the "green defence" then it would mean heavy losses.

On the other hand, you just ****ed up Xan's round. Way to go.




(and there'll always be another ship that can be used to this effect, you can't make every ship have a higher initiative than every other ship)

Originally Posted by GJN

If the stats were designed so each race can be totally twated in one or more areas ... then I think we would have the direction in which PA can go.

Only if that direction is to emphasise alliances over individual skill and activity. How is it fair on the skilled players in less hardcore allies to make them twattable by a quarter of all planets?

[Makhil]

The problem is that by making the other races ships stronger, you only make Ziks stronger once they've stolen them...
I like Devlin alternative, he should take showers more often .
Introducing a stealing resistance for each ship could also work.

[Squidly]

Originally Posted by Makhil

I like Devlin alternative, he should take showers more often .

I think half of PA would agree with this particular statement

Much <3 dev

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Makhil

The problem is that by making the other races ships stronger, you only make Ziks stronger once they've stolen them...

Yeah, this is where the lot go wrong doing those little bittle statistics. You don't make other races stronger, you make zikonian weaker. The recent two rounds have acknowledged that zikonian is too strong, but neither Gate (whose stats were, all respect, a lot better than the ones we are on at the moment) nor tuxed0 (why was he doing the statistics in the first place? I remember being named "inept" to do statistics by Idler - - which I may well be - - but, tuxed0?) nor tuxed0 really grasped it.

Let's summarize:
You do not give them zero-loss steal ships.
You do not give them an attack fleet which has strong targetting options.
You do not give them kill-ships that are better than those of other races (brigand, cutter, clipper, assassin).
You severely limit steal ships' damage and armor per cost.

This round we have zikonians with two powerful killships (brigand beats or at least equals xandathrii fighters on paper, cutter is zero-loss), and an effectively tasking attack fleet (that targets five of the six anti-battleships). To top this, the steal ships' damage/armor ratios are below those of other races only 14-20%.

Looking at what we have for zikonian this round, can someone seriously claim that zikonian are made "difficult to play" or "given significant disadvantages" to cancel out their tremendous potential?

[-=Chronic=-]

from original post: ziks are not great in battle but it does make up for it coz we can steal shippies

[jerome]

hey how about you all just love this instead: http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=192268

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by GJN

Going back to R12, if I remember rightly, the green defence were Xandathrii FI/CO ships? A stat adjustment of a higher init could theasibly make this an unworthwhile tactic, because if the subversion takes place after the "green defence" then it would mean heavy losses.

This is a problem, as you say. However, you can get around it to some degree by paying attention to initiatives. Making *some* subversion ships fire before some Cath ships, some Xan ships, and some after, means that the subversion race isnt a 'lame duck' insofar as one or two ships can still be used to great effect on certain races such as Cathaar or Xan, however due to targeting might not be useful against Terran or Ziks. Similarly, later firing Subversion ships might, by virtue of class and/or targeting, be useful against Terran or Zik ships, but far less so against Xan or Cath.

Further, initiative coupled with targeting is extremely important when dealing with Subversion - obvious units that can be used as Red Defence (mainly Xan ships) will need to fire before the Subversion ships and thus they cannot deal damage to defenders. However, this doesnt mean that those same Subversion ships are useless - it is a difficult balance to make and any stats with Subversion in them will take a very long time to make correctly. iirc, it took me about two months to sort out my Production48 set of stats, which was the first to use Subversion (i called it Psi EMP at the time), just because of all these headaches. Stats with subversion in them definately cannot be made in a day, including by me.

In addition to this, or instead of, you can hard-code into the game certain features to stop Red Def in its tracks. iirc, Sid suggested that by having a tickbox next to each inbound defence fleet, you could say that 'Oh no, i know you arent actually friendly', and then the "defensive" fleet would actually be placed in the Attackers column and not the defender's. This would significantly reduce the potential for Red Defence to be effective.

Originally Posted by furball

On the other hand, you just ****ed up Xan's round. Way to go.

If you are refering to the change in Initiative, my understanding is that GJN was refering to making the Subversion units fire after Xan ships, which prevents Xan from being abused as Red Def units. Thus, if anything, it may actually improve Xan as their units wouldnt be used by alliances as farms etc.

Originally Posted by furball

Only if that direction is to emphasise alliances over individual skill and activity. How is it fair on the skilled players in less hardcore allies to make them twattable by a quarter of all planets?

I dont think that this is a valid argument. If it was, no-one would play Cathaar atm, and often no-one would play Zikonian either due to their stealing occuring after Roid capture. Its not hard to imagine a Subversion race which had a mixture of conventional and Subvert ships, just like present Cathaar, just like present Zikonian. This would do much to reduce the sheer vulnerability of the race, whilst not making them significantly different from the others.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

If you are refering to the change in Initiative, my understanding is that GJN was refering to making the Subversion units fire after Xan ships, which prevents Xan from being abused as Red Def units. Thus, if anything, it may actually improve Xan as their units wouldnt be used by alliances as farms etc.

However, you make Zik powerless against Xan. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that that was what he meant.

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I dont think that this is a valid argument. If it was, no-one would play Cathaar atm, and often no-one would play Zikonian either due to their stealing occuring after Roid capture. Its not hard to imagine a Subversion race which had a mixture of conventional and Subvert ships, just like present Cathaar, just like present Zikonian. This would do much to reduce the sheer vulnerability of the race, whilst not making them significantly different from the others.

I don't think the present Cathaar/Zik are comparable with GJN's suggestion to make each race wide open to attack in a specific area. This would be similar to the old Cathaar Defender being the only anti-DE defence for Caths (if I remember correctly), which was a painful flaw for them.

Both Cath and Zik have benefits that outweigh their issues with stopping enemy attackers. Cath are (or should be) very powerful attackers, while Zik can of course steal. However, creating weaknesses for the sake of having weakness in a race seems like an inherently bad idea to me. This then in turn creates the alliance vs. skill problems that I mentioned in my post.

[Welshy]

Originally Posted by ChubbyChecker

As for Zik stealing, I think it's great the way it is. Zik stealing has kept me playing the game for the last few rounds, without it I would certainly have quit the game a couple of rounds ago. I think the fact that it's abusable is a small price to pay in comparison.

But how many people have quit as a result of a zik stealing their entire fleet?

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by furball

However, you make Zik powerless against Xan. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that that was what he meant.

hmm? how so?

It was my understanding that atm Zik already fired after Xan. Granted, Ziks can steal atm whereas they wouldnt be able to in a Subversion round, unless you made a mysterious Fifth Race to have the Subversion which i understood to be the basic premise that was suggested above somewhere.

Nevertheless, it would be true that Subvertion units firing after Xan will have little impact on them, much in the same fashion that EMP firing after other units doesnt do much good either, eg Spider/Beetle or whatever. I did mention that there is potential for some Subversion units to fire before Xan ships, specifically those who would be used to attack Xans with (eg, a Subversion CO fleet attacking a Xan FI fleet might contain a CO that targets FI with subversion with Initiative earlier than that of the Xan FI, assuming that the Xan FI targets CO else that would be rather pointless). Regardless of the circumstances, this can still occur. However, most importantly, The Statbuilders must consider the implications of Red Defence whenever Subversion units come into play. This is quite obvious and i'm sure you wont disagree furbeh . I'm saying, from experience, that it is *possible* to do this. Its just really, really hard.

I don't think the present Cathaar/Zik are comparable with GJN's suggestion to make each race wide open to attack in a specific area. This would be similar to the old Cathaar Defender being the only anti-DE defence for Caths (if I remember correctly), which was a painful flaw for them.

I'm not quite sure that is the case. I understood GJN to mean that each race is vulnerable to another race's attack fleet - eg a rock/paper/scissors or some variation thereof. I dont believe that he meant that a race cannot target a certain class with anything except pea shooters, as obviously anyone who is commenting on Ship Stats must keep the (somewhat obscure) notion of Balance into account. Being "wide open" to attack doesnt mean that the race cannot target a class, merely that the attacking units are especially well suited to countering those units that would be used as defence - take for example, the R13 Zik vulnerability to Fighters. Xan happened to have a unit that was effective at targeting Zik's main counter to FI (the Cutlass iirc), as it had the initiative advantage. Thus, Zik was vulnerable to Xan FI raids - at least untill the Ziks farmed sufficient TBT - however vulnerable less so to other race's FI raids (primarily because other races lacked FI pods), but also because other races lack the CO targeting FI of good initiative.

However, creating weaknesses for the sake of having weakness in a race seems like an inherently bad idea to me. This then in turn creates the alliance vs. skill problems that I mentioned in my post.

Personally, i think creating vulnerabilities and strengths in each race's fleet is largely the point of building ship stats. It is how the statbuilder adresses the dynamics of the game. It has always been done, to various degrees of effectiveness. I dont think it creates skill problems, as clearly having sufficient skill in picking the right fleet combination and then using it against the right target for maximum gain in roids (or fleet) is how Skill is represented in this game - if no race had any vulnerabilities, and by extention no strengths, then it would be a clash of numbers which i believe is skill-less. Big alliances have by their very nature benefits and costs for their members, and the members of the alliances that they target. its a part of the game, especially in an environment that strongly favours the attacker as the present PA does. Making races vulnerable to certain other raids is SOP, and as such wouldnt create any additional problems than already exist in the current environment.

I reckon.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

hmm? how so?

It was my understanding that atm Zik already fired after Xan. Granted, Ziks can steal atm whereas they wouldnt be able to in a Subversion round, unless you made a mysterious Fifth Race to have the Subversion which i understood to be the basic premise that was suggested above somewhere.

I was talking about a subverting Zik race, of course. As you recognised, subverting ships that fire after 'normal' ships are pretty much useless.

It could be amusing to try to balance a universe with both subverting and stealing ships. I can't see it working out though

Originally Posted by Ultimate Nublet

I'm not quite sure that is the case. I understood GJN to mean that each race is vulnerable to another race's attack fleet - eg a rock/paper/scissors or some variation thereof. I dont believe that he meant that a race cannot target a certain class with anything except pea shooters, as obviously anyone who is commenting on Ship Stats must keep the (somewhat obscure) notion of Balance into account. Being "wide open" to attack doesnt mean that the race cannot target a class, merely that the attacking units are especially well suited to countering those units that would be used as defence - take for example, the R13 Zik vulnerability to Fighters. Xan happened to have a unit that was effective at targeting Zik's main counter to FI (the Cutlass iirc), as it had the initiative advantage. Thus, Zik was vulnerable to Xan FI raids - at least untill the Ziks farmed sufficient TBT - however vulnerable less so to other race's FI raids (primarily because other races lacked FI pods), but also because other races lack the CO targeting FI of good initiative.

Highlighted in red where I think you're being a little optimistic

I felt that GJN was suggesting that we should go for the peashooter approach. As you concede, this is a manifestly bad idea since it overvalues one of the eight attack fleets (four races, two per race).

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newstatbuilder

Personally, i think creating vulnerabilities and strengths in each race's fleet is largely the point of building ship stats. It is how the statbuilder adresses the dynamics of the game. It has always been done, to various degrees of effectiveness. I dont think it creates skill problems, as clearly having sufficient skill in picking the right fleet combination and then using it against the right target for maximum gain in roids (or fleet) is how Skill is represented in this game - if no race had any vulnerabilities, and by extention no strengths, then it would be a clash of numbers which i believe is skill-less. Big alliances have by their very nature benefits and costs for their members, and the members of the alliances that they target. its a part of the game, especially in an environment that strongly favours the attacker as the present PA does. Making races vulnerable to certain other raids is SOP, and as such wouldnt create any additional problems than already exist in the current environment.

I reckon.

Again referring to our disagreement over GJN's preference for races with peashooters. You're pretty much stating the obvious in my eyes, since we have fairly similar views on stat-building. Alas, PA Team will not share in our wisdom!

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by furball

I was talking about a subverting Zik race, of course. As you recognised, subverting ships that fire after 'normal' ships are pretty much useless.

Not always. Eg, a subversion ship firing at eg a Vsharrak might be a waste of time, however, that same Subversion ship firing at a Harpy might do wonders. As such, the usefulness of certain subversive units (especially those of poorer init) will depend on the circumstances in which they are being used at the time, though granted they cant/shouldnt be useful all the time as that is probably unbalanced. .

Originally Posted by furbeh

It could be amusing to try to balance a universe with both subverting and stealing ships. I can't see it working out though

I must admit, this is a major problem. It takes *ages* to resolve these problems, especially with only 6 classes of ships. Hence, me wanting 10 . Still, it is possible to solve, it just takes alot of time and effort and etc.

Originally Posted by furball

Highlighted in red where I think you're being a little optimistic

Read my Sig.

Originally Posted by furblah

I felt that GJN was suggesting that we should go for the peashooter approach. As you concede, this is a manifestly bad idea since it overvalues one of the eight attack fleets (four races, two per race).

I thought GJN was being quite reasonable in his method and views. He merely pointed out what was already common practice, and as such didnt espouse radical "Cathaar Defender" type views, or at least as i understood his comments to be.

Originally Posted by furblahblah

Again referring to our disagreement over GJN's preference for races with peashooters. You're pretty much stating the obvious in my eyes, since we have fairly similar views on stat-building. Alas, PA Team will not share in our wisdom!

dirty words!

[Gary]

Just came back to this thread to see a dispute in the interpretations of what I said. My communication isnt always effective in writing, as something is lost between mind and the written form :|

I feel Ultimate Newbie is more in line with what I was trying to say. By having subverting ships firing after certain other ships, then you can stop xan red/green defence. Looking back I didn't make it clear that I did not want this to be applied to all subverting ships, and I should have gone on to say that it had to be done with stealing, emp in mind. Im my opinion, init changing, class targetting and arm/dam efficiency, as a three thronged attack in terms of balance is enough, even if subverting was brought back in a fifth race. It would be tricky, but I tend to agree with a view of JBG's (that Ive noticed he's held for quite some time - correct me if im wrong here!) that stats dont need to be truely balanced. I would go on to say that each race should be seen as playable, nothing more is needed.

[Gary]

[quote=Ultimate Newbie]I thought GJN was being quite reasonable in his method and views. He merely pointed out what was already common practice, and as such didnt espouse radical "Cathaar Defender" type views, or at least as i understood his comments to be [quote]

Yes and no. Where init, arm/dam and class targetting dont solve problems, I dont see it as a disasterous outcome if the R18 Pulsar is used as a way to nerf a particular race if they look too strong. But in my opinion, that should be a last resort.