XP: The way to go?

[Ultimate Newbie]

This listing showing the rank of planets in XP from Sandmans' shows the huge differences in playing each of the races; of the top 50, 23 are Cathaar and there are only two Ziks. What i am surprised to see, though, is the fairly large number of Xans up there too. I would have thought that Xan as a race tends to fight in two types of battle; 1) where the attacker completely overwhelms the defender (generally through exploiting either FI or FR weakness) which likely results in severe losses for the defender and/or the defender flees, or 2) where the Xan lands and is completely eliminated and loose their fleet, resulting in little roid cap (or none) and thus again no XP - nor a fleet to get more roids the next night.

I thought the result of that would mean that Xans either have high value as avoiding combat (1) conservs fleetscore for the Xan, meaning they tend to have high value and thus less room for XP, or they have a small value after loosing their fleet (2), where they are unable to capture many roids. Both of which result in small amounts of XP (as XP requires both a high defender value and a low attacker value, plus the capture of roids) in order to accumulate.

But nevertheless, there are 18 Xans in the top 50 for XP - which is more than there should be i would have imagined.

What further surprises me is that there arent more Terrans. I would have thought that Terrans would be in a much better position to collect XP than Xans for the following reasons; 1) Terrans are able to fake fleets, and thus it could be imagined that they are more likely to land as their fleet isnt as predictable as Cath or Xan planets, 2) In situations where defence is present, a Xan or Cath would be far more likely to have to recall as they stand to loose their attacking fleet far more easily than the heavily armoured Terrans; thus Terrans can land more often thus stealing more roids and collecting more XP, 3) Whilst Terran value might tend to be higher due to their ships dying less freqently, they should be able to attack much larger planets than themselves as unlike Xan (in particular), the proportion of a Terran's attacking fleet to total fleetscore is alot higher, simply because they dont have many effective (especially alliance) defence ships ; less defence means more cash on attack, and thus they can punch through on heavier targets. This means more XP again (though perhaps a lesser extent).

However, even with all of these factors on the side of Terrans, they still seem to be unable to collect XP in a reasonable fashion; only 7 of the top 50 are Terrans.

Am i missing something fundamental here?

As an aside, i think the Terran planet An Undertaking of Great Advantage should deserve special mention for playing for XP; a ~400k value planet is the top ranked Terran by score and still in the top 25 (where many around him have thrice his value).

[Cannon_Fodder]

Ziks: Wait a bit longer before asking why theres so few

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Am i missing something fundamental here?

Yes. The reason there are so few Terran there is that there are very few good players playing Terran. So the stats will naturally skew against them. As bwtmc said in the other thread, there are probably only 3 Terran between Angels, EX and 1up. I dunno how that holds for ND, but given those numbers, 14% of the top50 on XP is actually a strong overrepresentation.

Xan do well in the XP field because there are very many of them, and they can hit other big Xan. But really, they're overrepresented because of the number of (good) players that went Xan.

As an aside, i think the Terran planet An Undertaking of Great Advantage should deserve special mention for playing for XP; a ~400k value planet is the top ranked Terran by score and still in the top 25 (where many around him have thrice his value).

Yeah, he rocks.

[The_Fish]

Some of ND's scanners are Terran, and thats about it.

Playing for XP looks ace right now, but as soon as people playing for value can keep their large roid counts, they'll be charging ahead of the XP whores.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by The_Fish

Playing for XP looks ace right now, but as soon as people playing for value can keep their large roid counts, they'll be charging ahead of the XP whores.

Quite.

[Cannon_Fodder]

update,
20 caths
5 terrans
3 zik
22 xans

in top50 for xp

[Zero]

tbh, im not at all suprised by the number of xans in the top 50 for XP.
I say this because what most xans are doing is mass building tzens and attacking other xans of higher value, as vsh, despite looking so powerful on the stats page, are pretty weak imo because of the tzens init. As a xan myseld i have found it almost impossible to hold on to my roids because as soon as i have hit a certain number, i will be waved by xan FR multiple times so some are bound to get through. This means i have resorted to xp whoreing and attacking the biggest xans i can in order to get a few roids and a nice bit of xp.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Zero, are you a FR Xan?

[jupp]

Originally Posted by Zero

tbh, im not at all suprised by the number of xans in the top 50 for XP.
I say this because what most xans are doing is mass building tzens and attacking other xans of higher value, as vsh, despite looking so powerful on the stats page, are pretty weak imo because of the tzens init. As a xan myseld i have found it almost impossible to hold on to my roids because as soon as i have hit a certain number, i will be waved by xan FR multiple times so some are bound to get through. This means i have resorted to xp whoreing and attacking the biggest xans i can in order to get a few roids and a nice bit of xp.

exactly what already happens everywhere and it will get even worse with time going on as the amount of vsh-fighters will just raise into insane high numbers that nobody will want to lose.

For example to stop a team up of 2 Xans with 4500 FR each and about 3000 tzen each you need maybe 130-140k vsh to stop the Xan.

With an average Vsh fleet per Xan of maybe 20k that would be 7 defenders - nice thing isnt it ?
( Example Bcalc )

Same with the corsair - just with a bit different ratios.

[Paisley]

Something to take into account for xp whoring is to make sure you dont run out of momentium in keeping it up.

The ability to keep roids is realtively harder and rebuilding losses on a bad landing will take some time to rebuild.

Edit... I dont think xp is off putting when it comes to selecting targets/reducing incs tho.
If anything at this stage of the round I see a xp whoring cath I think hmm anti de weak cath. 9/10 the scans confirm this.

[Shyne]

Ive always believed in holding value as a playing strategy.

Some players reach the top by 'whoring' but i believe this is unreliable. Wouldn't u rather be the guy with 1.5m value and 3m score than the guy with 500k value and 3m score?

[Zero]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Zero, are you a FR Xan?

yes...i wanted to be a FI player at the start as any FR attacks give the defending alliance 2 ticks to send def and i thought that FI would be the way to go but with the tzen init, i was covered ingal almost every attack i made so i changed to FR

[Zero]

Originally Posted by Shyne

Ive always believed in holding value as a playing strategy.

Some players reach the top by 'whoring' but i believe this is unreliable. Wouldn't u rather be the guy with 1.5m value and 3m score than the guy with 500k value and 3m score?

It would be great to have the high value but the only way to get it is to have a friendly ingal zik who is willing/allowed to send his mara's to def you as your alliance can't cover you every time and the more roids you have, the more likely you are to be roided as a xan so its all swings and roundabouts for me and many other xan players.

[Paisley]

Originally Posted by Zero

It would be great to have the high value but the only way to get it is to have a friendly ingal zik who is willing/allowed to send his mara's to def you as your alliance can't cover you every time and the more roids you have, the more likely you are to be roided as a xan so its all swings and roundabouts for me and many other xan players.

It is all to do with striking a balance between value and xp...
I see it as if you have too many roids, you will get incs.
However if you get the right ships I see it as a great stealage (for my zik m8s) or salvage time.

Battle reports available on request.

If you keep your ships you will be uber at this stage of the game.

[Clogg]

I am the single Terran player for ND, there are others, but they are scanning. And I can say out of experience, this rounds sucks for terrans, though the xan FI fleet isn't that big nowadays, there still are a lot of Pulsars flying around, and 5k makes a bigger dent in my DE fleet then I like.
I'm not even starting on those bloody bombers here.

Besides DE, BS is the other attackfleet for Terrans, but an nice PK / ghost combo can force a recall nicely. Also them Clippers are a pain in the arse.

So the target to go is cath for terran, no surprise here, the only problem is, since cath can keep hold of their roids much longer then the average terran, most have more roaches that EMP a DE fleet 4 times the size you have. The same goes for the Black widow and the widowmaker, since Zik BS is abundantly.

So this could explain the lack of XP for the terran camp.

On a side note, I was planning to scan this round, by looking at the stats this could all be figured out before hand, but there was a slight tiwst of faith, and thus I'm more a trooper then an scanner.

[ComradeRob]

There are a few problems with playing for XP:

1) To gain XP, you need to cap lots of roids. This drives up your value - partly value in roids, partly value in ships (produced by your now-high income).

2) True XP-whoring requires being allianceless. Alliances need to have control over who their members attack, but this often leads to hitting small targets which provide little XP gain for most of the round. The reverse is true late in the round, where the only way to gain substantial XP is to join alliance attacks on big planets.

3) As the round goes on, it becomes harder to find planets with the combination of low amps, lack of fleet analysis, and decent roid/value ratio. This makes faking more difficult, and faking is the main weapon of the solo XP-whore.

4) If you're allianceless and regularly capping roids, you'll get regular incoming too - often in the form of vast cluster-**** waves. This carries a significant risk of being fleet-caught, or of being landed on by structure killers.

[bwtmc]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

The reverse is true late in the round, where the only way to gain substantial XP is to join alliance attacks on big planets.

Everything gets a lot more loose at the end though thanks to inactivity, it's not a complete lost cause. I like to think with only four weeks or so to go and no stagnation looking likely yet this round might prove an exception.