[Discuss] Killer Cathaars?

[Gio2k]

I was thinking why not give Cathaars a slight twist, making their ships EMP/Kill ships at the same time. Let's say around 10-15% of the ships frozen by a Cathaar attacker can't recover their navigation systems in time, and end up crashing into another, or into nearby asteroids.
Pure Cathaar kill ships are totally ineffective, and this slight change would make Cathaars feared, without taking the essence of the race from them.
Of course it might be hard to code, but would be a nice thing, especially for those players that like playing EMP.

Discuss

[ChubbyChecker]

I quite like this, especially if you get rid of the Cat ships with normal weapons.

[Alessio]

It wouldnt make cathaars feared as you said..
but the idea is good.. I like it very much

[Melesse]

Be nice with a cath specific research that went say

0% kill rate - starting point
5% kill rate - 12 ticks
10% kill rate - 24 ticks
15% kill rate - 48 ticks
20% kill rate - 72 ticks

Be nice to start distinguishing the races a little. Also I'd like to see this be a choice in the research tree...have to give something else up to get it.

Melesse

[Gate]

I definitely like the idea. You could just as easily claim that in some instances, life support systems are removed and the crew dies?

Perhaps this would then lead to cath ships only killing in defence: when an enemy attacks, they are forced to leave their crew-less ships behind, but in defence, the ships can be salvaged and re-crewed easily. This makes feasible sense, but I dunno if it adds anything to the game tbh.

This would give the caths some chance at defending themselves, and I definitely like the idea after seeing the frustration of some caths as they can get roided by anyone. It will be difficult to balance though, and should be kept to something low IMO, like 10%...

[barney]

maybe by removing all the kill shippies (as suggested above) it would be acceptable to raise this % a little maybe to 15-20% of thyose shippies frozen die, would maybe have to rethink the initiative and damage tho to avoid making them too powerful

[Alessio]

it wont make them to powerfull because caths are in need of something like this to balance out a bit with the other races

and dont remove those useless kill ships thats not necesarry imo

[Makhil]

sounds nice, i still wouldn't play them but i know a few players who might reconsider dropping them next round. With the current stats a 10% kill is a max, if you want a higher percentage we might need to tune down a bit their freezing capacities.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Melesse

Be nice to start distinguishing the races a little. Also I'd like to see this be a choice in the research tree...have to give something else up to get it.

Whilst having a 'race specific' research would be a great idea - what type of research would you envision for Terrans? or Xans? Xans could hardly research more effective cloaking as it is already perfectly useless. Unless Xan research focused on some scan inaccuracy - which gradually make Unit scans less accurate, with the final research possibly resulting in being unable to unit scan (in addition to being unable to fleet scan as per now) a Xandthrii planet? Though tbh that would prolly make them too powerful, at least they would be unscannable at the end of the round and not at the beginning (lo Military Scans ).

As for terrans - i dunno. Maybe a combination of more effective building practicies to make their production of battleships down to about eta 8 or something. Altering the cost of their ships is inbalacing, and increasing the efficiency of their roids is unbalacing as well. Perhaps they could have a race specific bonus in the form of the existing Resource handling - being able to mine more roids before needing new research. But that's not really a whole new branch.

Originally Posted by Gate

Perhaps this would then lead to cath ships only killing in defence: when an enemy attacks, they are forced to leave their crew-less ships behind, but in defence, the ships can be salvaged and re-crewed easily. This makes feasible sense, but I dunno if it adds anything to the game tbh.

So, if a Xandathrii player attacks a cath and has some of his FI frozen. are the Xan FI then taken over by the cathaar (as it sounded like the cathaar chould just comandeer ships that are 'left behind' ). This isnt a good idea as it is kind of a Stealing EMP - similar to Subversion but you get to keep the ships :\. It would also severely reduce the incentive to go Zik as well (that is not necc a bad thing, but nor is it a terribly good one).

This would give the caths some chance at defending themselves, and I definitely like the idea after seeing the frustration of some caths as they can get roided by anyone. It will be difficult to balance though, and should be kept to something low IMO, like 10%...

The best defence is attack. Cathaars (and everyone for that matter) should be out roiding some hapless Xan to death every night with their Cruisers - and just take the roid losses. Every race (with exception to supermassive Ziks, perhaps) is in the same situation - they are all vulnerable to incoming whether they stun or kill. The solution is to keep attacking, take advantage of this round's scoring system and get a high rank not by keeping roids, but by stealing them.

The important thing is, ofc, to keep your ships alive though. Screw the roids - keeping roids is old fashioned thinking.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

So, if a Xandathrii player attacks a cath and has some of his FI frozen. are the Xan FI then taken over by the cathaar (as it sounded like the cathaar chould just comandeer ships that are 'left behind' ). This isnt a good idea as it is kind of a Stealing EMP - similar to Subversion but you get to keep the ships :\. It would also severely reduce the incentive to go Zik as well (that is not necc a bad thing, but nor is it a terribly good one).

I wasn't suggesting stealing, the ships just get dragged into the gravity well of a planet or the cathaars don't believe in using the ships or something.

The best defence is attack. Cathaars (and everyone for that matter) should be out roiding some hapless Xan to death every night with their Cruisers - and just take the roid losses. Every race (with exception to supermassive Ziks, perhaps) is in the same situation - they are all vulnerable to incoming whether they stun or kill. The solution is to keep attacking, take advantage of this round's scoring system and get a high rank not by keeping roids, but by stealing them.

I have to disagree about caths attacking xans. I've been attacked about 60 times this round; the majority of these incs were CR, and not one of those has gotten through, thanks to the effective defence of bombers, scarabs, corsairs, dragons, and the fact I get 4 ticks to get def. Of all the defcalls, I consider only xan FR and Terran DE easier to stop than CR. As a cath, I'd go pure CO and roid other caths, hope that xans don't build lancers, hope that ziks don't build buccs and terrans don't build phoenix. Which isn't really going to happen :/

[Makhil]

the Race specific research mentionned are quite interesting
- ok for the Cath kill ability
- Xans as suggested would render the unit scan less and less effective (inaccurate figures or missing ship types ?)
- Zyks stealing ships should at first die when they steal a ship, the research would be to allow them to survive.
- Terrans have no special ability so it's a tough call... maybe their research would be to counter the other races special skills. Search all anti Xan = terran unit scans are not affected by cloacking, search anti Xan/Cat/Zyk, the effects of the 3 races are just diminished...

[Squishy]

Originally Posted by Makhil

the Race specific research mentionned are quite interesting
- ok for the Cath kill ability
- Xans as suggested would render the unit scan less and less effective (inaccurate figures or missing ship types ?)
- Zyks stealing ships should at first die when they steal a ship, the research would be to allow them to survive.
- Terrans have no special ability so it's a tough call... maybe their research would be to counter the other races special skills. Search all anti Xan = terran unit scans are not affected by cloacking, search anti Xan/Cat/Zyk, the effects of the 3 races are just diminished...

So u diminish the effect of cath meaning they dont fire?

or u diminish the effect of zik meaning they dont fire?



On another note why not equip the caths with an emp gun and a kill gun. Ware the kill gun accounts for very little of the damage but would still cause a bit of hurt and give the caths an incentive in defending for salvage. (which the currently dont have)

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Squishy

So u diminish the effect of cath meaning they dont fire?

or u diminish the effect of zik meaning they dont fire?

I think he meant that the killing side of Cath EMP is reduced - like from 15% to 10%.

On another note why not equip the caths with an emp gun and a kill gun. Ware the kill gun accounts for very little of the damage but would still cause a bit of hurt and give the caths an incentive in defending for salvage. (which the currently dont have)

heh, i went looking for my Second Array idea - where capital ships had primary and secondary weapon arrays - alas i think it died with the purge three years ago .

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Gate

I wasn't suggesting stealing, the ships just get dragged into the gravity well of a planet or the cathaars don't believe in using the ships or something.

So for all intents and purposes, those ships are crunched down for salvage?

I have to disagree about caths attacking xans. I've been attacked about 60 times this round; the majority of these incs were CR, and not one of those has gotten through, thanks to the effective defence of bombers, scarabs, corsairs, dragons, and the fact I get 4 ticks to get def. Of all the defcalls, I consider only xan FR and Terran DE easier to stop than CR. As a cath, I'd go pure CO and roid other caths, hope that xans don't build lancers, hope that ziks don't build buccs and terrans don't build phoenix. Which isn't really going to happen :/

heh - i can usually only cover the first four waves of CR on me - after that i tend to be helpless :\. The key is to attack after all the other caths have attacked - when an alliance's anti CR def has been exhausted of all ETA's. So launching later - even if its only a tick or two after the latest night's attack - you are almost certain to get through.

There are just SO many caths out there...

[furball]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

heh - i can usually only cover the first four waves of CR on me - after that i tend to be helpless :\. The key is to attack after all the other caths have attacked - when an alliance's anti CR def has been exhausted of all ETA's. So launching later - even if its only a tick or two after the latest night's attack - you are almost certain to get through.

There are just SO many caths out there...

Unhappy Cath reporting in

I suggest you build yourself a Xan FR fleet and go retal your uncovered CR attackers, since their roaches are out and watch the roids roll in. Or don't, it's up to you.


This suggestion has a lot of merit, but balancing seems so very hard to me. If you're going to do specific race researches, then balancing those 4 will be impossible. If you're just granting this option to Caths, then I would rather do what Wandows suggested in another thread:

Originally Posted by Wandows

in my experience ( i have never played another path then science/cathaar, except for r7 where i was zik), since PaX Cathaar is pretty much undervalued (atleast the rounds where they could EMP). I still think its insane to have EMP ships with less efficiency at emp`ing then other races have at killing that same class.

EMP should actually be powerful because its the only thing that can't do lasting damage to anything. Kill ships with an efficiency of 19 or so at killing is just a joke and that teaming up with EMP ships that, eventhough fire at first init, can't do more then "normal" damage isn't exactly helping to make a decent race (like i hear most Xan's say how they not care about Tara's as they have poor efficiency anyways). And the EMP ships armour isn't helping to much either, its almost as if EMP ships get punished for not doing more then normal damage (as they should imho, BW is at a nice eff for example) leaving them to die easier as their armour is relatively low.

Except for last round (when there finally were some reasonably effective EMP ships in PaX) cath never have had a strong force with their special power. Its not that i dislike this stats as they seem to be somewhat balanced. I just like to see cathaar back to its pre-pax EMP effeciency again, where EMP was value wise alot stronger then killing ships and still balanced stats.

The key thing is that anyone can out-flak a Cath's EMP ships with no losses. The same cannot be said of any of the other 3 races. By making EMP stronger, you give Cath a fighting chance.

[Ultimate Newbie]

mys pe

Originally Posted by Nonentity

I suggest you build yourself a Xan FR fleet and go retal your uncovered CR attackers, since their roaches are out and watch the roids roll in. Or don't, it's up to you.

Hmm. Good idea. I just ordered 200 sabres

The key thing is that anyone can out-flak a Cath's EMP ships with no losses. The same cannot be said of any of the other 3 races. By making EMP stronger, you give Cath a fighting chance.

Yes, yes it can. A number of times (tonight included) i have attacked a Zik with my FI fleet - granted, i took some losses (~600 vsh), but i killed some 4k Cutlasses (and some other CO) before they fired and got almost free roids (losses were almost entirely due to the Sentinels he had - which was pittance anyway). This is an obvious example where kill ship on kill ship (or steal ) can be 'out flakked' by an attacker - and i didnt (directly) take losses from that engagement anyway.

So your argument is flawed

Anyway, you and Wandows are refering back to the days when there were multiple tick battles. The idea of making EMP far more efficient than killing was that; over the course of a three tick battle, the amount of ships that were stunned was about the same as the amount that would have been killed. The difference was that EMP ships would stun the same amount three times, whereas the kill ships would gradually add more damage over the three ticks. So if you looked at the battle in any single tick - yes you would see that EMP far overpowered conventional killers. If you expand your view from the edge of your nose and looked at the whole battle, you would see that total resources killed and EMP'ed were roughly equal . The advantage of going EMP was that you remove more enemy ships that fire at you sooner (ie, the first tick) so you'd take less losses, but the downside was that if you didnt quite stun them all, the damage done to you would increase exponentially over time.

Possible exceptions to this rule were Spiders, which were so redicuously efficient it wasnt funny - though i might add that it was largely because of player's demand for a low eta anti-pod def ship was vital to the game. Do you remember the proposed R4 ship stats, with Pods being FR classed and Tarantulas would be the only EMP ship to target them (Tarants being up-classed from DE to CR as well, and thus ETA 5 on ETA 4 pods?). The uproar was massive. Anyway - that's just another story and quite a major tangent .

My point was that by making 1 tick battles, you simply cant have caths/emp stunning 3 times the amount that other races are killing. Having said that, i think that there should be a 'premium' placed on not being able to kill (in the region of +20%) to stop simple ownage of poor Cath planets (which i do when i build stats). Tbh, a possible solution that i just thought of then would be to give Cath kill ships real teeth - but because there are only two (or so) of them you can prevent attacks by all the races with those pods, but not all races attacking with all the possivle pod classes. This would have the effect of reducing - but not eliminating - the free-rider problem.

What do you think of that, Jester?

[Wandows]

however.. pre-PaX cathaar did have more efficiency in EMP, which made the minimum fleetsize, that was needed to attack the target, bigger. Atm anyone can easily get through on cathaar which makes them probably the easiest target in the universe. By increasing their EMP effeciency (and i am not saying it should alot higher, about 55-60) they will become a harder target. You will need more ships to break through, meaning you need to be bigger to be able to attack them which in turn should give Cathaars a better chance on growing. If you get through on a cathaar there is nothing he can do about it anyways. He can't hurt the attacker but only try to stun enough to reduce cap a little bit. While other races can actually keep ships home and get salvage in return for their lost roids (not in all cases ofc).

Atm anyone would like to attack a cathaar as they can hardly stop any reasonably constructed attack fleet, make that a tad better and cathaar should be better. If outflakked, cathaar will lose either way. I know in old rounds that the value in the end would add up, but it also meant you wouldn't lose all ur roids, atm you are outflakked easily, get killed AND lose all your roids... which isn't exactly a fair option compared to other races. As all they can do is try and stun which has no scare factor at all, the only way to make it better for them is making it a tad harder to get through on them in the first place

[MAdnRisKy]

right.

Sov it was rnd 5, and they made the spid hit fr.... (I'll be wrong now)

the problem with cat not being efficient isn't cat.

It's xan the fisdher price combat engine doesn't allow for a low armour race with high firepower, and efficient cat ships, if you make cat effective at say zik and terran, it MAULS unfairly on xan... make xan have higher armour, and they look nothing like xan :/ (you end up having to drop firepower to balance, and then its hello terran mk 2).

before you can really fix cat you need an emp res collum :/

also race specific research rocks.

armour on terran (maybe only a few points)........killing on emp ships.....scan inaccuracy on xan..... (or actually, I'd go more for extra firepower) ...... and % less lost on stealing (and go back to an old stealing formula, but have it set top start at as say 50% or whatever, rising to 80% or whatever, play with the numbers)

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

right.

Sov it was rnd 5, and they made the spid hit fr.... (I'll be wrong now)

the problem with cat not being efficient isn't cat.

It's xan the fisdher price combat engine doesn't allow for a low armour race with high firepower, and efficient cat ships, if you make cat effective at say zik and terran, it MAULS unfairly on xan... make xan have higher armour, and they look nothing like xan :/ (you end up having to drop firepower to balance, and then its hello terran mk 2).

before you can really fix cat you need an emp res collum :/

also race specific research rocks.

armour on terran (maybe only a few points)........killing on emp ships.....scan inaccuracy on xan..... (or actually, I'd go more for extra firepower) ...... and % less lost on stealing (and go back to an old stealing formula, but have it set top start at as say 50% or whatever, rising to 80% or whatever, play with the numbers)

personally.. if we should go back to race specific thing i don't think Terran should get any specific bonus, simply because they always were the "normal" decent race which was good to play for the new players, as there wasn't some special game style/knowledge required to make a decent planet out of them. Other then that the suggestions sound nice.

[KarnivOre]

why not make emp more powerful, so that it freezes more ships. it would mean that cath are not necessarily feared, but would take a lot more to roid, because at the moment bein a cath means i get pillaged contantly

[Gate]

Originally Posted by KarnivOre

why not make emp more powerful, so that it freezes more ships. it would mean that cath are not necessarily feared, but would take a lot more to roid, because at the moment bein a cath means i get pillaged contantly

I think that this killing ability would actually provide a superior deterrant to attackers, whilst not making the caths overpowered in an attack. With much more EMP capability, they could be able to easily roid targets far larger than themselves, particularly xans with their weak armour. Now that the rock-paper-scissors race balance is in decline (I'm glad to see it going out of the way tbh), this would only be a step backwards IMO.

I definitely like this killing idea

[Neferti]

There should be a limit of 10% if this is done. 20% would be far too powerful.

Though I think the old system (up to round 12) of cathaar having a couple of ships with decent (not great, but not really bad like now) damage. This seemed to work well.

I have to say though that the thing I dislike most about cathaar is the inability to get salvage. It's just annoying.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

Sov it was rnd 5, and they made the spid hit fr....

Hmm sorry - obviously it was R5, not 4 . Indeed, they did make the spider target FR - but only after the massive public outcry .

before you can really fix cat you need an emp res collum :/

FINALLY!! SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME!! \o/
/me dances in street.

Obviously, the ships have been simplified too far. The removal of WPSP and Agility was excellent - as it greatly simplified matters of calculation (it was now ALOT easier to do them in your head). Obviously, as the #guns was no longer important, the Guns and Power columns were replaced by Damage. Why why the hell remove the EMP res? All that did was detract from race balance and strategy in the game. eg, when i make stats, i like to make Terrans have high armour and high EMP res with poor init, with Xans low(er) armour, buggered EMP res and excellent init - as it then gives a different 'flavour' to the two races as all too often you find that they are too similar as 'cloaking' doesnt really have anything to do with it.

armour on terran (maybe only a few points)........killing on emp ships.....scan inaccuracy on xan..... (or actually, I'd go more for extra firepower) ...... and % less lost on stealing (and go back to an old stealing formula, but have it set top start at as say 50% or whatever, rising to 80% or whatever, play with the numbers)

I hesitate with researches (or other means) by which you can alter the statistics of your ships (which increasing damage, armour etc etc does) - as this has the obvious and dangerous potential to throw the entire balance of stats. You'd be amazed how important even a small change can be (many an hour i have played around with the stats on PAOL and let in run for a day or two, and see what proportions of races were at the top at the end of it... )

So i am firmly in opposition to race specific bonuses that alter ships' efficiency in regards to weapons, armour et al.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Wandows

Atm anyone would like to attack a cathaar as they can hardly stop any reasonably constructed attack fleet, make that a tad better and cathaar should be better. If outflakked, cathaar will lose either way. I know in old rounds that the value in the end would add up, but it also meant you wouldn't lose all ur roids, atm you are outflakked easily, get killed AND lose all your roids...

Tbh, i've been thinking a bit more (!!), and the only effect increasing the EMP efficiency of Cathaars would be to enhance their offensive power. Defensively, Cathaars - even with an eta 20% firepower (which is significant in 1 tick battles) are stillgoing to get out-flakked by all other races. However, offensively, cathaars will be stronger as they reduce further the amount of damage received to them/their pods and thus increasing the likelihood to land significantly (and taking less losses as well as being harder to defend against).

As i said above, defending your roids isnt important - but stealing them is vital. Cathaar are an offensive race and should (imo) be played that way.

[KarnivOre]

even i look to roid caths, all u need is a concentrated amount of one ship class and you get through, whereas with other races you think "oh crap too many losses" with cathaar you think "hah, i broke his emp limit, lets go a-pwning"

tweaking stats is also not a good idea, because it will make bcalc bloody useless.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by KarnivOre

even i look to roid caths, all u need is a concentrated amount of one ship class and you get through, whereas with other races you think "oh crap too many losses" with cathaar you think "hah, i broke his emp limit, lets go a-pwning"

I have addressed this already. Its not necc the case - kill on kill can be in the same situation where initiatve levels differ.

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Yes, yes it can. A number of times (tonight included) i have attacked a Zik with my FI fleet - granted, i took some losses (~600 vsh), but i killed some 4k Cutlasses (and some other CO) before they fired and got almost free roids (losses were almost entirely due to the Sentinels he had - which was pittance anyway). This is an obvious example where kill ship on kill ship (or steal ) can be 'out flakked' by an attacker - and i didnt (directly) take losses from that engagement anyway.

tweaking stats is also not a good idea, because it will make bcalc bloody useless.

Obviously, this discussion is more for future changes of the race for later rounds. It is definately not going to be changed mid-round.

[Appocomaster]

I think that most people seem to want race specialisations.
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=184841
my comment here was (along with having a zik malfunction rate, etc)

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

... Maybe they can only start researching other ship types AFTER they've completed the rest of the tech tree? "we have lots of bored scienctists, they want to look over a few stolen ships and see if we can make some". ?
This would time delay to a certain extent meaning that there was no way a Zik could research all the ships (probably even half of them), and by now he'd have stolen quite a few anyway - the 'active, attacking players' at least. It'd give a chance to all those ziks who aren't doing so well stealing.
Other races would obviously also have to have other features (I think they'd need to be combat-related, OR a choice of one combat-related OR one non combat related). For example, Xan could have researches that cloak their ships from unit scans (or even further distort them on the unit scan, and distort them on the galaxy page), OR the old military scan that shows all ships in fleets etc.

Cath could have the abilitiy to increase their max stealth from 95 to 105 or something, or researches that increased their EMP damage.

Terran could have something that boosted their construction limit (or perhaps increased their construction / roid armour), or armour-increasing researches for ships.

Obviously the researches would have to be quite long, but you get the idea.

tbh, I still like the idea; where cath would either have an EMP damage % enhancement or just turn a certain % of that damage into kill.

[Goafer LX]

i like melesse's idea of having to research it, seeing as cathaar currently research so much faster than other races anyway!

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Tbh, i've been thinking a bit more (!!), and the only effect increasing the EMP efficiency of Cathaars would be to enhance their offensive power. Defensively, Cathaars - even with an eta 20% firepower (which is significant in 1 tick battles) are stillgoing to get out-flakked by all other races. However, offensively, cathaars will be stronger as they reduce further the amount of damage received to them/their pods and thus increasing the likelihood to land significantly (and taking less losses as well as being harder to defend against).

As i said above, defending your roids isnt important - but stealing them is vital. Cathaar are an offensive race and should (imo) be played that way.

the point is not that cathaar won't be outflakked anymore, but to make it harder to outflak cathaar. Meaning planets have to be bigger to be able to hit a cathaar planet, this would reduce the amount of incs on cathaar planets and better their chances to maybe equal to other races. Atm cathaar can pwetty much only rely on hitting Xan (cuz of their low armour = easier to stun) and hitting Cath who haven't got alot of scarabs (but also.. the scarabs aren't that great and easily outflakked with a reasonably CR fleet). Atm offensively spoken cathaar ain't that much better then other races (if it is better), while defensively spoken they are crap... so the odds are against Cathaar here. Increasing their EMP efficiency with 5-10 points would make it alot more interesting as they can attack easier (jay offensive) and have a slightly reduced range as target themselves,as smaller planets will have a tad more problems attacking cathaar since they won't outflak them that easy anymore.. like it was in the good old pre-PaX rounds.

[ANdrode]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

right.
before you can really fix cat you need an emp res collum :/

I think you could split up a ships armor.
To kill a ship, you need to destroy it's armor + it's electronics.
Both have some hitpoints.

EMP goes directly through the armor, so you only have to have disable the electronics stun a ship.
(Actually, this is a kinda weird implenmentation of a empres)

This, combined with a bit of killing while defending, should make cath a safer race to play if you're active enough.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by ANdrode

I think you could split up a ships armor.
To kill a ship, you need to destroy it's armor + it's electronics.
Both have some hitpoints.

EMP goes directly through the armor, so you only have to have disable the electronics stun a ship.
(Actually, this is a kinda weird implenmentation of a empres)

This, combined with a bit of killing while defending, should make cath a safer race to play if you're active enough.

Basically you want an extra EMP variable AND cath ships all doing normal damage as well?

[Murador]

I have already thought about that, I don´t think cats should destroy ships, coz they have EMP and not normal ships. After thinking about it a little, I cloncluded that something should change, and thought about 2 solutions, that are the following:
1 - rise the damage of caths ships, as they don´t destroy, they shold, inded, have the best inic and the best damage.
2 - EMPed ships could be EMPed for some more ticks, eg: u EMP that ship, and it can´t work for 30-50 ticks

In my opnion the better solution was 1, and the one proposed could be nice too, but some mates have already talked something about the #2 solution I posted

Some things in this round was clear for me, like Ziks and Terrans are overpower atm, as I though the first time I studied the stats, and a CR inc is quite easy to cover.

I really prefered Ziks subverting ships, but if they go on stealing, they should have some looses when they steal, eg: Ziks could loose 20% of the armour of the total ships stealed in the ships that fired against those ships, in numbers, u steal an amount of ships, that makes 1000 of armour in total, the ships that fired on those ships, should loose 200 of armour, so, losing some ships for the ones stealed

About terrans, just a little bit less armour should to the trick

[furball]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The Cathaar race would be perfectly fine if the damage efficiencies on its best ships were all increased by around 10 points (testing required ofc).

Last round Cath had a very effective fleet combination of Black Widows/Scarabs/CR, and there's not really an equal to that this round. I'm now trialling a Black Widow/CR fleet, but my hopes aren't that high.

Oh, and the Corsair targetting CR is just silly. That's one of the things that has completely nerfed Cath for this round - and hopefully this round only.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Nonentity

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The Cathaar race would be perfectly fine if the damage efficiencies on its best ships were all increased by around 10 points (testing required ofc).

Rather than a flate increase of about 10 points, I'd argue that an increase of about 15-25% is 'in order'. I haven't played Cath since old skool PA times and quite miscalculated some things as a result. I'm well annoyed with myself. Especially for even giving a moments credence to the 'omg cath are overpower' crowd.

Oh, and the Corsair targetting CR is just silly. That's one of the things that has completely nerfed Cath for this round - and hopefully this round only.

Nah, the Corsair is actually the coolest thing about Cath this round.

The problem, like you said, isn't 'ship X is a weakness', but a combination of a weakening from last round, the pod armor/cost changing and it being the most popular of the races among paid accounts. Should've seen that last one coming tbh.

[Neferti]

I do agree that EMP resistance is probably a stat worth considering again. Would certainly make a lot of sense, given that EMP by its very nature does not work in the same way as 'normal' weapons, so normal armour would not necessarily be as effective at stopping it

[Proxi]

An EMP almost fully across the board (im talking only 1 kill ship) set of stats with high(est) efficieny on most ships would make cat good imo.

This round, if the scorpion had been an fi targeter and the tarantula co, things might have been quite different when trying to roid those sodding ziks.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Banned

Rather than a flate increase of about 10 points, I'd argue that an increase of about 15-25% is 'in order'. I haven't played Cath since old skool PA times and quite miscalculated some things as a result. I'm well annoyed with myself. Especially for even giving a moments credence to the 'omg cath are overpower' crowd.

Amusingly I initially wrote down 15-20% increase to Cath. I then changed it to 10-15%. After re-reading through my post, I changed it to 10%, assuming that saying anything higher would result in the post itself not being taken seriously. Since someone has actually agreed with me then I can honestly say that Cath EMP efficiencies (with perhaps the exception of the Viper) all need to be between the 65-75 range.

Don't blame yourself for miscalculations. You did an excellent job on the stats, and I hope that you'll be doing them again for Round 14.

Originally Posted by Banned

Nah, the Corsair is actually the coolest thing about Cath this round.

The problem, like you said, isn't 'ship X is a weakness', but a combination of a weakening from last round, the pod armor/cost changing and it being the most popular of the races among paid accounts. Should've seen that last one coming tbh.

My main problem with the Corsair is that it forces the majority of Caths to build Tarantulas. Personally I decided not to build them, and to take my chances on defence, and that's hit me quite hard regarding recalling attacks.

If you can take a look at this post and tell me what you think, that'd be great. It got largely passed over in the other thread.

Originally Posted by veX

An EMP almost fully across the board (im talking only 1 kill ship) set of stats with high(est) efficieny on most ships would make cat good imo.

This round, if the scorpion had been an fi targeter and the tarantula co, things might have been quite different when trying to roid those sodding ziks.

The round would have been very very different. No-one would have built tarants. Everyone would have lots of scorps, and Cath would have had a decent CR fleet. Cath players would still have to balance their numbers of Roaches and Scorps, so probably the Bomber would have come into play more.

Regarding present tactics:

With the current stats, I'm now building towards a Black Widow/Roach/Scorpian/Hornet combo with the aim to roid Xans while stopping pesky Dragon defence (Dragons, imo, are now one of the most important anti-CR ships). Still unsure on ratios though, so will have to keep people updated on that.

The Black Widow targets the Dragons, while the Scorpians mean that most anti-de is targetted with the exception of Pulsars. Fireblades will suffer As always I'll try to let you know how this goes.

[Proxi]

If I were you I wouldn't bother with this, as most Xan will have a shocking amount of DE defence anyway, and Scorps are relativlely expensive. Atm I'm concentrating on beetles, and attacking big xans with a zik friend, and it's been working 'ok' .

If you really want to use the BW to attack, i would suggest going all out BWs and Roach and trying to cap off terrans with small amounts of wyverns

[furball]

Originally Posted by veX

If I were you I wouldn't bother with this, as most Xan will have a shocking amount of DE defence anyway, and Scorps are relativlely expensive. Atm I'm concentrating on beetles, and attacking big xans with a zik friend, and it's been working 'ok' .

If you really want to use the BW to attack, i would suggest going all out BWs and Roach and trying to cap off terrans with small amounts of wyverns

Well, I'm trying to find Xans like Sovereign with lots of arrowheads but few fireblades. Doesn't matter anyway, after turning off my alarm this morning it doesnt matter anymore

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by veX

If I were you I wouldn't bother with this, as most Xan will have a shocking amount of DE defence anyway, and Scorps are relativlely expensive. Atm I'm concentrating on beetles, and attacking big xans with a zik friend, and it's been working 'ok' .

I can testify that this has been devastatingly effective - at least on my planet. I actually laughed when i realised that a zik and a cath launched CO on me - untill i did a calc and saw how many Vsh those beetles were stunning . It was unbelieveable. To add insult to injury, the Cutlasses would then cap all/most of my vsh so i've had to flee twice out of two.

Not fun :\

[Proxi]

those lancers are a pain in the arse though!

Oh how i wish the viper was a co, then i might even have bought some.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Nonentity

Well, I'm trying to find Xans like Sovereign with lots of arrowheads but few fireblades. Doesn't matter anyway, after turning off my alarm this morning it doesnt matter anymore

Bah - posted same min too :\

I despair .

[Squishy]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I can testify that this has been devastatingly effective - at least on my planet. I actually laughed when i realised that a zik and a cath launched CO on me - untill i did a calc and saw how many Vsh those beetles were stunning . It was unbelieveable. To add insult to injury, the Cutlasses would then cap all/most of my vsh so i've had to flee twice out of two.

Not fun :\

Not just the CO/CO combo

but the FR/Cr combo works a treat as well. As long as the cath ur buddying with has a decent fleet composition.

The thiefs make bombers stay away. The Roach help dampen losses to Drake and thief whilst also protecting them selfs against bombers. While scorps protect against arrows or at leaste dampen their effectivness. Only problem is corsairs but then enough tullas and their not really a problem any more. Only problem is you lose ~12.5% roid cap. Which is not a big deal if the combo gets through all the time every time


I have a nice cath mate who i attack with all the time and both these combos are somewhat unstopable. More than 10k beetles and 10k cutlass make for free roids or free roids and free ships both of which i like. And the CR/FR combo is just lovly as well its rair that one of us has to pull and rairer still that both have to

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Nonentity

Amusingly I initially wrote down 15-20% increase to Cath. I then changed it to 10-15%. After re-reading through my post, I changed it to 10%, assuming that saying anything higher would result in the post itself not being taken seriously. Since someone has actually agreed with me then I can honestly say that Cath EMP efficiencies (with perhaps the exception of the Viper) all need to be between the 65-75 range.

It goes further than that (and I wouldn't say with the exception of the Viper). Originally the Beetle's efficiency was actually dead high, but I never adjusted it to match the 33% increase in Xan FI armor. Bad move. I think Cath will finish stronger though, a bit like Xan last round.

Don't blame yourself for miscalculations.

It would be silly not to. After all, who else can I blame?

You did an excellent job on the stats

Thanks, despite the flaws I'm quite pleased with them.

and I hope that you'll be doing them again for Round 14.

Only if Jolt are running a free round.

My main problem with the Corsair is that it forces the majority of Caths to build Tarantulas. Personally I decided not to build them, and to take my chances on defence, and that's hit me quite hard regarding recalling attacks.

Build up some Scorpions and find yourself a Xan FR attackmate. A lot of the mid/late-game stuff relies on comboing.

If you can take a look at this post and tell me what you think, that'd be great. It got largely passed over in the other thread.

I'm going to quote it here as I can't stand that devel discussion forum.

Originally Posted by Nonentity

I fundamentally agree with Bashar on the galaxy setup question.

The problem as I see it is the strength of pods. I liked the idea of making pods very strong, but its negative consequences were not realised at the time. At the moment, to prevent any roids being capped, you have to stop all the pods (obviously). What you will find is that you have to kill all of the incoming ships of the pod's class in order to kill the pods. This leads to a big hit in value and the destruction of an attacker's entire attacking fleet - which is a pretty firm hit in the nads for both casual and 'hardcore' players.

This is good though. More dead ships = less value = more roids / value = longer lasting game. And it's not an issue of killing all pods, just killing enough ships that the cost isn't worth the landing. Some Cath ships fill important niches here, btw, in shutting down the attacker's non-pod ships. The Cath ship I'm most happy with is Scarab, which on paper is worse than the Black Widow, but worth a lot more because Roach-based Cath can be stopped with a Scarab/Bomber combo a lot more efficiently than by Bombers alone.

So my suggestion would be to go the other way - make the stats so that you kill all the pods without killing the rest of the incoming fleet. Make pods cheap but light on armour/damage, and things will work far better - after a failed landing, an attacker can pick himself up, build a load more pods and go out the next night with a similar fleet to the night before. The death of an attacker's entire fleet will only happen if the pods are significantly overkilled, and as a DC myself I wouldn't be too bothered about that.

That's horrid. People won't be able to cap roids at all. Organizing a defense will require no skill, just (Phoenix + Pod) * 3.

Writing this I was struck by a thought - that if you don't kill the other ships, then they will still shoot/kill defence ships (bad). Every solution to this that I think of is in itself flawed, but I pitch this up to you lot in hope that someone can take it and run with it.

I think the idea is very bad. Consider the round 12 Sabre (it was like this). What happens in that fleets become highly inflated with many, many more pods than combat ships.

The round would have been very very different. No-one would have built tarants. Everyone would have lots of scorps, and Cath would have had a decent CR fleet. Cath players would still have to balance their numbers of Roaches and Scorps, so probably the Bomber would have come into play more.

I'll let you in on a secret: Cath CR was supposed to be bad this round. Unfortunately I started out with too little of an idea of how to shape it without making CR too much alike r12 (except worse, obviously). I also had that silly 1 ship / 1 pod to a class idea that ended up forcing my hand on a few things.


Incidentally, I think veX has it right going with CO at the moment. Anti-CO is low on average (even with Xan these days), and you can team up with both Xan FI and Zik CO for pretty awesome attackage.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Banned

It goes further than that (and I wouldn't say with the exception of the Viper). Originally the Beetle's efficiency was actually dead high, but I never adjusted it to match the 33% increase in Xan FI armor. Bad move. I think Cath will finish stronger though, a bit like Xan last round.

I disagree with this here, only because Terrans are building mass Dragons. Dragons kill CR like flies, and Cath have little defence against them without introducing DE class into their attack fleet - which throws up a load of new problems.

It would be silly not to. After all, who else can I blame?

Don't blame anyone, and accept that a totally new set of stats will never be perfect first time.

Only if Jolt are running a free round.

You're leaving?

Build up some Scorpions and find yourself a Xan FR attackmate. A lot of the mid/late-game stuff relies on comboing.

combos make my head hurt...but thanks, I'll try working on this.

This is good though. More dead ships = less value = more roids / value = longer lasting game. And it's not an issue of killing all pods, just killing enough ships that the cost isn't worth the landing. Some Cath ships fill important niches here, btw, in shutting down the attacker's non-pod ships. The Cath ship I'm most happy with is Scarab, which on paper is worse than the Black Widow, but worth a lot more because Roach-based Cath can be stopped with a Scarab/Bomber combo a lot more efficiently than by Bombers alone.

Again the Scarab turns out to be as important as last round. No suprise really.

That's horrid. People won't be able to cap roids at all. Organizing a defense will require no skill, just (Phoenix + Pod) * 3.

I think the idea is very bad. Consider the round 12 Sabre (it was like this). What happens in that fleets become highly inflated with many, many more pods than combat ships.

Personally I liked the idea less and less as it went on, but it was worth a suggestion at least. In the end, I think that a bump up in Cath damage will sort out the race for next round just fine.

I'll let you in on a secret: Cath CR was supposed to be bad this round. Unfortunately I started out with too little of an idea of how to shape it without making CR too much alike r12 (except worse, obviously). I also had that silly 1 ship / 1 pod to a class idea that ended up forcing my hand on a few things.

That's a shame. I like Cath CR wish I'd known that before round start!

Incidentally, I think veX has it right going with CO at the moment. Anti-CO is low on average (even with Xan these days), and you can team up with both Xan FI and Zik CO for pretty awesome attackage.

Combos

[Proxi]

Originally Posted by Nonentity

Personally I liked the idea less and less as it went on, but it was worth a suggestion at least. In the end, I think that a bump up in Cath damage will sort out the race for next round just fine.

I totally agree here, please please please dont pull a round 11-12 transition and alter the stats considerably.

The changes I personally would like to see are a fall in zik armour, (nerf teh zik!! \o/) and an increase in cath damage. Probably a few targetting chcnages aswell, but seeing as this rounds no where near over, I cba to go into them yet

Personally i'm enjoying the challenge of playing as a Cat this round, as they are by no means un-usable. However, i am angry with myself for not realising that zik would be the winners this round

PS Jester, are you leaving?

[Banned]

I'm not 'leaving', I just hate Jolt too much to work for them for free again.

[Cannon_Fodder]

\o/

About caths, they do need improving, both in effectiveness of emping (or giving them a kill bonus) and in targetting. On the second point, as much as i agree with swapping the targets of Scorps and Tarants, that would mean two anti-co emping ships, and two anti-fi normal ships. Therefore if you switched S and T, then spiders and beetles should swap type, i.e. spider emps co, beetle kills fi. I dont know if thats a good thing or not, but it could mean a simple change for the Cr could mean a complete revamp of the rest...

[furball]

Originally Posted by sniborp

\o/

About caths, they do need improving, both in effectiveness of emping (or giving them a kill bonus) and in targetting. On the second point, as much as i agree with swapping the targets of Scorps and Tarants, that would mean two anti-co emping ships, and two anti-fi normal ships. Therefore if you switched S and T, then spiders and beetles should swap type, i.e. spider emps co, beetle kills fi. I dont know if thats a good thing or not, but it could mean a simple change for the Cr could mean a complete revamp of the rest...

A better idea would be to change Cath targetting overall, not with just these four ships:

The present Cathaar stats:

Name Class Target Type Init
Spider Fighter Corvette Norm 8
Beetle Corvette Fighter Emp 1
Viper Frigate Destroyer Emp 1
Black Widow Destroyer Battleship 1
Scarab Destroyer Cruiser Emp 1
Tarantula Cruiser Fighter Norm 9
Roach Cruiser Frigate Emp 2
Scorpion Cruiser Corvette Emp 2
Guardian Battleship Frigate Norm 9
Mosquito Corvette Roids Pod 20
Hornet Cruiser Roids Pod 20
Termite Cruiser Struct Struc 50

(if I ever learn how to use code tags, it'll be a miracle)

How about a change to this:

The new Cathaar stats:

Name Class Target Type 
Spider Fighter Frigate Norm 8
Beetle Corvette Fighter Emp 2
Viper Frigate Corvette Emp 1
Scarab Frigate Cruiser Emp 1
Black Widow Destroyer Battleship Emp 1
Tarantula Cruiser Destroyer Norm 9
Roach Cruiser Frigate Emp 2
Scorpion Cruiser Fighter Emp 2
Guardian Battleship Corvette Norm 9
Mosquito Corvette Roids Pod 20
Hornet Cruiser Roids Pod 20
Termite Cruiser Struct Struc 50

Of course, this depends on accepting that Cath don't have an EMP ship targetting every class. I can live with it - can anyone else?

With the current stats, I find that the Spider is too much like the Assassin/Vsh Fi, yet inferior to both. I prefer a Cathaar race that's more easily hit by Xan, but stronger against Zik. Personal preference, of course. This is why Bolts would target Spiders and the Viper would go head-to-head with the Arrowhead. The Guardian is changed so that Cath don't have 3 ships targetting FR.

[Cannon_Fodder]

So you're assuming corsair stays as fi...Whats the inits on those ships, because they look certain to be nerfed by xans as it looks.

I might try:

The new Cathaar stats:

Name Class Target Type Init
Spider Fighter Corvette Norm 9
Beetle Corvette Fighter Emp 3
Viper Frigate Destroyer EMP 1
Scarab Frigate Fighter Norm 8
Black Widow Destroyer Cruiser EMP 1
Tarantula Cruiser Battleship Emp 2
Roach Cruiser Frigate Emp 2
Scorpion Cruiser Corvette Emp 2
Guardian Battleship Frigate Norm 9
Mosquito Corvette Roids Pod 20
Hornet Cruiser Roids Pod 20
Termite Cruiser Struct Struc 50

Although no doubt experts will pick holes in this, two points, yes it will make cr pretty damn good, as they have all the anti-cr ships targetted (apart from bws), but really caths can only specialise in 1 or maybe 2 of these. Plus note the init change on the beetle...

Discuss and dont be too hard

Edit: oh forgot, this includes the zik anti-cr class changed to Co and resulting changes as said earlier..