ETA and all that jazz
 

I would like to propose we drop the different ETAs between metaclasses. I don't see it serve any purpose whatsoever. On the other hand, it makes creating ship stats that much harder, because most people will prefer to have the fleets with the lowest ETA.

Can anyone convince me this suggestion is a bad one?

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

/signed and a big hug from me

..although stats would need fi/co that target BS/CR, but i see no problem with that.

eta = current fr/de one.

or eta = BS/Cr and then add one or two more layers to jumpgate research.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Why?

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

They wouldn't "need" them, but there would be no reason to leave them out anymore

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

I dont like the idea.
Been tried before with same eta on all ships hasnt it? ( r10? ) Was that a success? :(

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Actually, there would be, because it reduces the number of defence ships against those classes, reducing the complexity of the ship stats.

Do you have an actual argument why it would be a bad idea, or are you just fear mongering?

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

r10 and r10.5 were the worst rounds I have EVER played of PA.
This might be a factor of several things, but I remember same eta on all being one important factor.
I also dislike single targetting though, and would prefer pa to go back to r3-r4 code. soooooooo.
Call me a fearmonger if u want, I just doubt it would be good. But then again, pa at its current form is shit regardless, so any change might be good.
i d prefer another change than eta to be that one however.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

What is true for r34 was not for r32, people pick the best combo, not the fastest one.
I'd like more complexity to the game, not a simplification of an already boring system.
If we start with the same base eta for every class, make ETA research independant for each meta class. People could fast research CR/BS etas if they like... you could have some BS fleets faster than FI at some point... in the end it could have the same result for people's main fleet, but it would be to the detriment of their other fleet (if we go for single targeting it would work even better).
A side effect would be to force people to go for FA scan as you couldn't recognize a fleet from its eta alone. And build more dist or amps (not just piling up finance centers)...
More options = more strategic choices = more diversity

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

I can't say I'd object to it being tried it out. WIsh is right in that r10/10.5 simplified things too much and it become a load of dogshit but that was due to more factors than just eta.

Implementation would be important though. What's our baseline? If everything "becomes" fi/co eta that would make dcing pretty hard (everything's now eta 7 so only 3 hours to organise ingal def and only 1 for ally def and everything's eta 7 so incomings are condensed) and there's already a decided leaning in the direction of making it a more offensive game.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

This is typically a question of self-imposing choice though. You see, there's very rarely (I can remember an EMP fighter from round 13) ships that target upwards two classes (ie. fi/co that targets cr/bs). This conveniently removes the biggest disadvantage of battleships and cruisers: there's rarely a ship that'd be able to pull from two ticks behind which would dramatically ease defending against the big ships. Now, this is a design choice which essentially makes medium and large ships fairly indifferent. The only true ETA advantage has generally been for small ships, and again, they've been generally designed to have some drawbacks to compensate for this.

Stat design has usually been balanced so as to consider the ETA inherently.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

mz what would you want the base eta to be?

I'm in full favour of this idea if it lets me get 9 hours sleep :D

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

I think I m one of the few which would like 30min ticks, and lower etas :(

make attacks slower, and u make it more boring for some. More chilled and relaxed for others

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

I'd probably want attacking fleets to show at eta 8, like fr/de fleets do now. That's not set in stone though. More than anything. this topic is about finding out whether this is a good suggestion at all, not about convincing people that it is. I can't see many objections, but I figured, maybe others can.

As for balancing defence and attack, it would perhaps be possible to give alliances ETA -2, or to reintroduce cluster defence ETA -1.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Cluster defence still is -1 no change made to it.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

I like the variance in etas, I think it adds to the strategy of the game. Why take the eta strategies out of the game? They are not too complicated for newbies but at the same time add complexity to attacking and defending that helps keep the game interesting. As Tietäjä points out the ship stats tend to compensate for the differences in etas to balance them out, and certainly there hasn't been a huge rush to FI/CO because they are faster then CR/BS. In short I have yet to see a good argument in this thread as to why this should be done, and there are interesting tactical reasons for it not to be done.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Ah, I see what went wrong when I checked it: I have 1500 fr I forgot to extract from my otherwise co-only fleet, so it showed as eta8. Silly me.


Actually, there has been exactly that. Looking at Ascendancy this round, we have 128m value worth of fi/co, 12m value worth of fr/de and 22m value worth of cr/bs. We have more value in Thieves than we do in fr/de/cr/bs combined, and the same goes for Beetles. Banshee clock in at 23m, more than all our cr/bs combined.

We have had many other fi/co dominated rounds in the recent past, far more than we have had cr/bs dominated ones. Fi/co rounds tend to be fairly boring: whichever side has more value wins. That is one of the reasons I made this post, because I want to prevent more rounds turning out like that.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Surely thats just down to the stratergy that Asc decided to take, all zik/xan fi/co.

There were many other options available from looking at the stats, I mean look at App they went cr/bs.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

So did p3ng afaik.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

It's been done before with the only real drawback being the fact that alliances have 2 ticks to get def against cr/bs. A set of perfectly balanced (not so complicated) stats can be made with fi/co targetting cr/bs and vice versa if ETAs are all the same.

The only problem I can see is the effect this will have on fakes as people generally look at the ETA and decide which class it is (especially later on) before scanning, and it does do something psychologically.
It also means that planets that can't get scans on the attacker find it harder to defend, especially since it's no longer so easy to tell what type of fleet it is by the number of ships (I remember when I first started, a 10k bs fleet was absolutely massive, and 1mil fi was huge, so there was a clear difference, now it's not so clear cut)

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Universe stats: 1153m in fi/co, 443m in fr/de, 379m in cr/bs. Not as blatant, but still quite clear cut: there is more Xan fi than there are fr/de or cr/bs.


The more interaction, the more complicated the ship stats will be; this is not an opinion you can argue with, this is cold hard fact.

Fair point. I don't know though, maybe it would be better for the game if it wasn't so predictable.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

And DLR and I think euphoria as well? A lot of people went fi/co anyways as reflected by the universe ship stats. And even though Apprime went bs attack fleets they all had pillagers and they were all very heavily invested in them.

efb

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

CR/BS = 2 ticks to get defence (CR/BS/DE/FR).
FR/DE = 2 ticks to get defence (FR/DE/FI/CO)
FI/CO = 1 tick to get defence (FI/CO).

I think this is unfair to people who like the big ships. It also doesnt matter that much if the FI/co isnt that effective, as if your xan you get a huge bonus from cloaking.

http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...9&postcount=10 My proposed single target stats (targetting only so far) for next round.

1) Travel Time set at current CR/BS
2) Extra research for travel time (1 or 2 ticks worth).
3) All three meta hulls(Fi+CO, FR+DE, CR+BS) can be research independently (if using multipods)., and RP is equal between them.
4) Metal/Crystal/Eonium removed for single currency.
5) EMP Shields replace resistance (as this should have happened years back).
6) Damage removed from stats and only guns should be used.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Obviously it does matter. There's always going to be a middle ground. It's not like fi/co with paper armour and no damage would be everyone's first choice.

No offence intended but I wouldn't even bother. Pateam are not going to give up on the races.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Upon second reflection I can't see why this is a bad idea. I mean it actually opens up more possibilities whilst attacking, which I am definitely all for, considering the staleness of attacking, scanning, recalling/landing process we currently go through at the moment, fake possibilities are also pretty nifty, some thought might actually have to go into attacking and defending for once.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

I'm in favour of at least trying this, btw.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

DLR went FICO because we had gone CRBS the round before and wanted a change. It was recognized though that CRBS was the best attacking option for this round too.

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

Maybe someone mentioned it above. But the game used to have 1 class pods. for every race. That was a lot more balanced then it is now.

http://www.clawofdarkness.com/pawiki...d_6:Ship_Stats
http://www.clawofdarkness.com/pawiki...d_4:Ship_Stats

Greets

Re: ETA and all that jazz
 

The round 6 stats would've had different podclasses if they could've been coded in time. Round 7 was more interesting statwise for it. There was always an interesting aspect to single podclasses in that universal fleet compositions became set quite early on, whereas some enterprising individuals would adapt their fleets slightly to take advantage of that (War Frigates in round 4 come to mind).

Multiple podclasses opened the game up for stuff like faking, which is cool, but I'd be open for a change here, it's not like we haven't had enough rounds of covering for possible fakes and all that.