Round 17 Stat balance

[Proxi]

I've been landing on around 200 scorp def or equivalent for a while now, and have started to lose a lot more roids

(Didnt lose any for around the first 2 and a half weeks of the round!)

[Snurx]

There's just too much antifr around for me (as a very low value cat) to land any decent attacks, and that makes me attack people below my score so I don't get decent XP

I just cant keep value this round, everytime I go over 200 roids I get 4-5 waves on me. Combined with a few touches of unlucky happenings (like one uncovered wave killing 250 scorps that landed on the same tick home or loosing 450 fr due to computer crashing) it's been a shit round so far. The stats are good for cat, I can (in theory) attack xans very nicely (fr and cr, since ghosts are almost always out) and cover myself better then I've ever been as a cat (i almost always play them) but the bashlimit/xpformulae is ruining it for me at least

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Snurx

I just cant keep value this round, everytime I go over 200 roids I get 4-5 waves on me.

If you haven't already, maybe this is worth a look? If you have any suggestions, it would be cool.

It is my opinion at least that every race should have a chance to play for value. A bigger variety of fleets flying around makes things more interesting!

[Gate]

Anyway, it's nearly the end of the round, and the current t100 count is 8 terrans, 19 caths, 27 xands and 46 ziks.

The ratio for top 500 planets, however, is 12:17:32:38. A little bit more even.

How do people view this; are xands and especially ziks overpowered? Are terrans and maybe caths underpowered? Or is it a balance issue in the stats?

The main mistake I feel I made, was zik CO. Zik CO were very difficult to stop (corsair sucked, phoenix needed to be around in large numbers and terrans often used mandrake or chimera to defend anyway, and phantom/assassin were attack ships). A lack of good alliance anti CO should have been fixed.

The scorpion too was perhaps a problem. Either a damage cut to under 30 efficiency, or a class upgrade (perhaps to BS?) so it remained a zero loss ship so caths could defend themselves but not a dominant ally defence ship. Overall, for balance issues, I still feel caths need a fundamental redesign if they are to become 'balanced' overall!

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Gate

Anyway, it's nearly the end of the round, and the current t100 count is 8 terrans, 19 caths, 27 xands and 46 ziks.

The ratio for top 500 planets, however, is 12:17:32:38. A little bit more even.

Don't let yourself get fooled into believing that even numbers equate balance. It's very much down to what race the winning alliance picked (which in turn might reflect race strength) in addition to a lot of other complicating factors (such as what players were able to get defense, or kept playing the last 2-3 weeks).

How do people view this; are xands and especially ziks overpowered? Are terrans and maybe caths underpowered? Or is it a balance issue in the stats?

No, possibly, no and no. The issue is that value is more important than XP this round, therefore giving the race with stealing an edge. Zik CO is probably too good, but that's not the big issue (imo).

Zik is also overrepresented because they had the most motivation to play the last 2 weeks (in fact, from what I hear their round started pretty dull, with Ghosts/Scarabs making it impossible to keep roids, but has gotten progressively better the whole time).

The scorpion too was perhaps a problem. Either a damage cut to under 30 efficiency, or a class upgrade (perhaps to BS?) so it remained a zero loss ship so caths could defend themselves but not a dominant ally defence ship. Overall, for balance issues, I still feel caths need a fundamental redesign if they are to become 'balanced' overall!

I think the Scorpion was fine. Personally, I prefer situations like the Mandrake/Banshee, where the usefullness is dependant on the type of incoming, thus encouraging cooperation. A class upgrade on the Scorpion would hurt Cath a lot. Recall that they've had that ship for quite a few rounds (the old Guardian). In my opinion, the problem with Cath this round was the exact same problem they always have*, and thus not to do with stats at all.

* Caveat: when I don't make stats

[Cannon_Fodder]

Zik CO is strong?

Damn.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Cannon_Fodder

Zik CO is strong?

Damn.

Good point. It was entirely possible to play Zik well without relying on CO, therefore it probably wasn't too strong.

[robban1]

hmm my opinion as terran is that de is "ok" and bs sucks as attackfleet the prime target cath for me got to big too soon makeing it impossible to target them and in my opinion its dead wrong that they got 2 ships that target de and 1 of them is an effective low eta emp means that in gate case build lots of cr and get spiderdef <-too damn effective

why do you think i nagged like a bitch at the stats in the start? for fun?

[JonnyBGood]

I think zik was really strong once you stole a few fr/de/bs pods. The nature of zik, unpredictable incomings, mean they're the hardest to defend against. Everything else has pure zero-loss defence, at least ingal and that meant that late-round zik just take off. Having 6 or 700 scorpions now is very easy for a cath and most landing just don't make cost sense.

I was wrong on cath because while I was right that the scorpion is awesome I underestimated quite how awesome it is at dicking cath fr.

[Proxi]

Use fullstops robban, that paragraph is almost unreadable.

Scorps did sort of ruin the round eventually for cath fr, but I have to say, the cr
fleet came up trumps for me, and I wish I had invested in it 200 ticks earlier. The Roach was a great ship, and tarantulas made sense too. Mantis were a bit evil however. Terran DE was a pain in the arse at the start of the round, but it looks like I'm gonna finish on only 7k spids, with the Roach effectively keeping the DE inc at bay for a long time now.

I didn't think Xan were all that hot to be honest. Far fewer of them would have ended in the top100 if it hadn't been for Mandrakes.
Mandrakes. I hated this ship all round. It was a constant kick in the nads to see
even small terrans sending enough eta 7 def to make your fr unlandable. Eta 7 0 Loss non-emp def is NOT cool.

Can't really comment on zik to be fair, but they seem to be racing to the top along with Xan at the end of the round.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by robban1

hmm my opinion as terran is that de is "ok" and bs sucks as attackfleet the prime target cath

The clipper is perhaps a bit too powerful, I would think that efficiency of 38-40 would have been better, but it still needs a huge number of them to force terran BS to recall. Meanwhile widows aren't particularly good (130% or so efficient) and wraith suck until they arrive in huge numbers. I was surprised and very happy about how few terran BS fleets have been flying around. If they had been about in more substantial numbers, they would have posed a serious, serious issue for a lot of alliances.

and 1 of them is an effective low eta emp

The spider is pretty crap alone; the least efficient EMP ship of all at 113% efficiency. If all EMP ships were so weak, caths would be endlessly raped. Hell, I'm getting roided by FI for no loss atm despite quite a decent number of beetles which fire at closer to 190% efficiency.

in gate case build lots of cr and get spiderdef <-too damn effective

Build nothing and get lots of scorpion def as a terran against xand fr <-too damn effective?

Whereas in the above instance it's 0 loss defence, your example is hugely resource intensive. If someone wants to invest such a huge amount in such an inefficient ship as the spider (Which does make a great supplementary defship, however), I can't see what's wrong with that. In fact, very few NDers did build mass spider, and the one time I did get defended by such a number was when almeida was kind enough to help out. :|

The majority of times the mass DE incs on me got stoppedwas a combination of ND chimera, my own CR and massive ingal zik CR backed up by smaller cath CR and spectre fleets... again, if 2 huge ziks, a large cath and several smaller planets cannot stop a wave of 4-5 DE planets (Including some smaller flak planets, one of whom just sent 800 barghest and no pods), often using their primary attack fleet (and tehrefore largest investment...) to defend with, I would imply that the stats were flawed in favour of DE.

why do you think i nagged like a bitch at the stats in the start? for fun?

Yes, actually, since you never made any comments or offered anything useful or insightful. At all... I'm not exactly psychic, unfortunately.

[robban1]

Originally Posted by Gate

I was surprised and very happy about how few terran BS fleets have been flying around. If they had been about in more substantial numbers, they would have posed a serious, serious issue for a lot of alliances.

bs is supposed to be a serious treat for allies, as it was this round it was enough with a small antibs fleet for the planets to cover all that ingal so ppl can build anti-de instead, terran are supposed to be hard to stop but this round it was kinda easy

ps: spelly>you, at all times

[Tietäjä]

Terrans. Let me begin with the destroyers and battleships. I tried to build up a battleship fleet at one point, but that was very much in vain. Black widows are pretty much stronger than spiders (which also started piling around en-masse), and clippers - had there been more battleship fleets around, there'd have definately been more clippers. Enough on those. And what comes to corvettes, they were only strong against terrans. Offensively, destroeyrs were unarguably the best attack fleet of the round. The chimera wasn't around too much (which saw a high value top10 terran get chipped down 300 roids in retaliations for having "too few"), perhaps because of the lack of top terran presense.

Cathaar. Well, as Jester said; this round, it was created as a winner race (we saw the person who created the statistics use perhaps the most effective cathaar combination around, and perhaps the sole things that prevented him from ranking better were his high hostility towards a certain alliance and lack of "good enough" support). The cathaars that climbed up rarely saw being taken down, the mid rank cathaars eventually got wiped more or less. Or less. The Scorpion and Mantis were just *ace* at stopping two major (represented in two races each) pod fleets on their toes. Perhaps the lack of "fast" anti-fi (when xandathrii was building shadows instead of mirages) saw them finally overcome by fighters.

Xandathrii. Generally what they are always; fighter fleets are either underestimated or then just generally thrive (this round, they were, underestimated for long in my opinion). The frigates were over rated all round through, and perhaps the change from FR to FI finally gave zikonian CR more room to roam. Spectres, nevertheless, were rather strong, even if the wraith "wasnt" (battleships weren't exactly a problem though with strong black widow and clipper).

Zikonian. On a value round, they tend to come on top then, whether because their statistics still don't penalize them enough or because of something else. What I find misfortunate here, is the "kill" ships - clipper, brigand, and assassin. Two zero-loss ships, one ship that fires before main contestents. Brigs could shut down xans from attacking ziks (the other ship that could do this was stolen shadow; far less around), clippers just vanished battleships. In my opinion, the strength of zikonian kill ships contributed to their defensive rating; we saw cathaar roided by fighters, zikonians could just build brigands and be off with it.

While zero-loss defences is generally a good way to limit attacking power, I think it is where this round's statistics went too far. With some reducing powers and tweaking targetting, we might have been better off. I also disliked the view to cathaar, but that's just me.

In general, it was a decent set of statistics. Terran and cathaar are the races that need (tweaking, terran, revamp, cathaar) work on.

[Cannon_Fodder]

This round reminded me how much I love being zik, because you never had to worry about jgping so long as you chose your target well.

I never sent what little CO I had to attack with, primarily because I was investing in other areas, but also because the number of assassins needed to kill the phoenix on your average terran was much greater than my cr fleet thus couldnt fake. Also it was occasionally annoying when ziks sent co at me over and over again (the most assassin ive had in the round was 1k) which made me spend my res :shakesfist:

One ship kickstarted my round, and that was the leviathon. As JBG said, faking BS as CR worked a treat and once I got them it was a case of 'if only i had 2 more bs fleets to send out ' This also had the advantage of stealing plenty of mantis which kept CR fleets at bay

My CR fleet was next to useless attacking wise, even after I got 600 tara and a few hundred wraith) with the usual couple of 4-8k ghost on every jgp, so i just deffed in gal with it, and picked up some nice cat fr which i of course faked with and hit tasty xans.

Yeah. Levs, tara, recluse are my ships for this round

Oh and keiz, about the brigand thing, it was a pretty useless ship in that xans would just send banshee (and possibly mirage too for anticorsair) along so it was pointless building them as they weren't even good for alliance def.

P.S. Banned still got that brep when I landed on you when you swore it was so obvious it wasnt cr and i stole like 40 fr?

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

and perhaps the sole things that prevented him from ranking better were his high hostility towards a certain alliance and lack of "good enough" support

And 5 days in the Lake district followed by a week of apathy \o/

The cathaars that climbed up rarely saw being taken down, the mid rank cathaars eventually got wiped more or less. Or less. The Scorpion and Mantis were just *ace* at stopping two major (represented in two races each) pod fleets on their toes. Perhaps the lack of "fast" anti-fi (when xandathrii was building shadows instead of mirages) saw them finally overcome by fighters.

The biggest issues for me this round have been xand FI (fking unable to kill the fking things ), zik CO (a serious issue), terr DE (another serious issue :/ ), zik CR/BS (a lot of mantis/widow scare off most though) and terran BS (hardly any of it around, but it takes a helluva lot to stop, if terrans had maintained value it would have been another serious issue). The double-cover defships were designed to give mid range cathaars a better chance, but I posted another thread somewhere discussing the inherent problems with caths.

The stats were not designed with a single winner race in mind, but with a few basic premises: every race was planned to have 2 viable attack fleets, and could do well with either. Every race could hit all 3 of the other races, depending on their fleet choice (so they could hit 1 race with either fleet, and the other races exclusively), there would be no overpowered attack fleet, and all races would be viable for a 'top' player to pick and try to win with.


Xandathrii. Generally what they are always; fighter fleets are either underestimated or then just generally thrive (this round, they were, underestimated for long in my opinion). The frigates were over rated all round through, and perhaps the change from FR to FI finally gave zikonian CR more room to roam. Spectres, nevertheless, were rather strong, even if the wraith "wasnt" (battleships weren't exactly a problem though with strong black widow and clipper).

Zikonian. On a value round, they tend to come on top then, whether because their statistics still don't penalize them enough or because of something else. What I find misfortunate here, is the "kill" ships - clipper, brigand, and assassin. Two zero-loss ships, one ship that fires before main contestents. Brigs could shut down xans from attacking ziks (the other ship that could do this was stolen shadow; far less around), clippers just vanished battleships. In my opinion, the strength of zikonian kill ships contributed to their defensive rating; we saw cathaar roided by fighters, zikonians could just build brigands and be off with it.

I think I partly achieved some of them, at least.

In general, it was a decent set of statistics. Terran and cathaar are the races that need (tweaking, terran, revamp, cathaar) work on.

I still think a tweak to anti CO defence might solve some issues. CO gave ziks a great method to roid caths and terrans (Terrans all round, and caths slightly later), accelerating their growth and significantly slowing that of terrans. In terms of attacking terrans, I think that races that shoot first should target tough/flakked ships or attack ships OR be a bit easier to defend against, in order to give terrans a better chance at maintaining value.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Cannon_Fodder

I never sent what little CO I had to attack with, primarily because I was investing in other areas, but also because the number of assassins needed to kill the phoenix on your average terran was much greater than my cr fleet thus couldnt fake. Also it was occasionally annoying when ziks sent co at me over and over again (the most assassin ive had in the round was 1k) which made me spend my res :shakesfist:

Faking CO as CR on caths was a nice very low risk tactic. Running recluse from your 'rogues' left caths wide open. People tried it a lot on me and it annoyed steinmetz a bit as I always tried to get his phantoms for 'CR' incoming that I couldn't cover otherwise

There were a few other such fakes that were possible. Xands who built few illusion or caths who built few spider were very open to terran DE faked as BS (running spectre from dragon and roach from wriath respectively), whilst caths could fake FR as CR at other caths who didn't have CR. Unfortunately, when I tried that, it failed. The guy left 1.8k or so DE (that would have died if it was actual CR, and he only had waves 2) at home and took out my pods. I really should have just sent CR, since he didn't get any def. I suck :/

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Gate

. Xands who built few illusion or caths who built few spider were very open to terran DE faked as BS (running spectre from dragon and roach from wriath respectively)

The problem here is they usually always had illusions. The ones that had less than 5-6k (enough to kill a lot of pods) were scarce. The only "realistic" targets to fake at were zikonians (ones that didn't build clippers were good for me for a few days, I think I got some 1500-2000 roids that way).

And battleships. I still am wondering how you expect them to ever have been of any good. When Wraith fires before Battleships (compared to pegasus and illusion firing simultaneously), Black Widows are a lot more efficient *and* zero-loss (compared to weak spider which got hurt if there wasn't enough), and then we had this clipper (compared to chimera; hurts a shitload more, you know). Maradeurs, admitted, were but a joke in compared to it. The only positive side would be that you could wrestle out smaller numbers of dragons.

Really. It takes more (resourcewise, in comparison) to stop destroyers than battleships. Destroyers do not face as much zero-loss defence with *kill* power 42 (Did I ever say zikonian kill ships are too strong?).

True yeah, a combination of banshee and mirage would set the fleet a lot stronger against brigs, but then you've either got a lot more value in the fleet, or you get easier stunned by beetles (after which you get mowed by assassins). And you need a lot of illusions (which few xans used in their attack fleets). It makes your attack fleet easier to stop, essentially. But it has it's upsides.

For a terran, really maintaining value was up to two things: either fence sit, or have a strong gal. Strong galaxies generally helped you with a lot, though. I had more than 200 incoming hostile fleets this round at me, so people who call me "Xp whore" should really think before jumping into it, as there was really no way for me to hold on to 2000+ roids for longer than a day. I would probably have been able to hold on to a higher rank but this last week really cut off my activity.

[rshih]

hm.. I had 40k illusion + other fi and 25k banshees, would have owned more ziks if I had built some mirage . Was only able to targ those with few to none corsairs

[Cannon_Fodder]

Originally Posted by Gate

Faking CO as CR on caths was a nice very low risk tactic. Running recluse from your 'rogues' left caths wide open. People tried it a lot on me and it annoyed steinmetz a bit as I always tried to get his phantoms for 'CR' incoming that I couldn't cover otherwise

I forgot i had CO pods for the first half of the round