R21 Stats Comments

[Gate]

Originally Posted by furball

All that top 500 spots indicate is which races the top 10 alliances' players go for. Xan and Zik are natural targets for them - and there's about 100 more planets of each of those two races than of Eitraides.

Yeah, that too, having more data such as alliance race breakdowns would help analysis, but the comment of more planets is slightly misleading. (Top 500 %/Race %) is 1.22 for Eitrades, 1.49 for ziks and 1.26 for xands; ie xands have a higher percentage of their players in the top 500 than etd do. These numbers also indicate ziks may have one or two advantages over the other races, rather than just etd being overpowered.

Of course, I haven't played this round at all, just something I think is worth a look at.




And keiz got my point about killships across. Going for stronger EMP just makes the biggest caths better, and punishes the smaller caths. Big caths can afford to stun almost everything, making them awesome (and with a big stockpile, tough to hurt). Smaller caths cannot afford to stun every ship in an attack fleet, so they get raped endlessly with no risk to the attacker.

The scorpion/mantis thing certainly helped cath in this respect (but raised other balance issues which I think could be ironed out); smaller caths could get away with slightly fewer killships since they tended to have fewer roids and there was little XP gain. Larger caths saw slightly less benefit as they needed more scorp/mantis per roid (XP issue) and they tended to concetrate on lots of scarabs or tarants as attack ships.

[robban1]

well i gotta say im tired of all the small terrans with 40-50k harpies who only def nowadays, 0 loss ships should be expensive dammit

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by robban1

well i gotta say im tired of all the small terrans with 40-50k harpies who only def nowadays, 0 loss ships should be expensive dammit

The whole harpy-thief-xandathrii frigate setup is a massive ****up, that was more or less intentionally commited. First, thief was made to fire steal type damage before harpy (conventional damage). I'm not sure whose idea this was, but the person should be mugged, stabbed, shot, strangled, drowned, ran over by a truck, and burnt. After this, the brainiacs in question realized that fighting thief (with it's abnormal damage and armor per cost ratings that come common with the postmodern steal) with harpies is a waste of oxygen, so they decided to bump up harpy. C'mon, if you look at the terran ship stats, there are two ships that have been overbumped because of their shitness (harpy and chimera, or whatever the frigate is called). The obvious downside was, that, while chimera is just plain shit, the harpy actually targets something useful - xandathri frigates.

The snowball effect with the low xandathrii armors, and huge harpy damage (and armor too; because of the outrageously ridiculous thief) caused harpy to become something very much misplaced and ackward. This has been seen in form of for example a given member of a fabled alliance having a multi-planet he used as a "harpy-whore" to cover his and his alliance mates' incomings. So much about the harpy.

[Thrackan]

Let's just give my opinion on this rounds stats, per race, and the way I feel it SHOULD have been (but that's personal sometimes).

Terran:
Attack fleets, both DE and BS are average attackers, able to land.
Defense is utterly bad, as a DC I have used only Harpies on about 3-5 calls and DE as EMP soakers.

My opinion:
Attack fleets might need some tweaking but look OK
Defensewise, Terrans should do better with effective anti-FI, not just the Pegasus that is used for attacks as well.

Cathaar:
Attackwise, CO fleets are defendable, without all too much effort. CR fleets are powerful, if built in the correct Tarant/Roach ratio.
Defense: Anti-DE (Spider) is very low-powered. The rest is around average balance.

My opinion:
Attackwise, a Cath can cope with CR. Early round, CO can be landed as well, not bad imho.
Defense: The most useful defense was Scarabs and Scorpions, the defense against lower classes (FI/CO/FR/DE) is horrible, FR and DE being the absolute ease to land. Tweaking the Spider should solve this.

Zikonian:
Attackwise: FR/DE combination is good for faking, and very landable. Opposed to other rounds (playing Xan) I have not crashed one single time!
Defensewise: Rogues and Marauders are the most used def, anti-FR sucks balls and large amounts of Corsairs are only good for scaring off potential incoming.
Stealwise: The opportunities to steal are average: FI/CO are well stealable, stealing DE is a hard task (but Zikonian have good DE of their own), stealing FR is nigh impossible because of the eternal CO-FR and FR-CO targeting (but again, Zik FR is pretty nice by itself), the occasional CR that doesn't pull vs Zik def might be a nice asset.

My opinion:
Overall, Zik is a well powered race with a serious vulnerability to FR, which is not entirely a bad thing and keeps them from being overpowered.

Xandathrii:
Attackwise: Early-round FI, average to good, FR: an all-round working combo.
Defense: Xan aren't made for def, except the Bomber is a nice piece of machinery, able to kill off alot.

My Opinion:
Attackwise: Xan imho are the "agressive" race. They get roids and lose them again because they lack defense. This has been Xan characteristic and it shouldn't change. Xan do good.
Defensewise: Bombers, Bombers, Bombers. anti-DE and anti-BS is only useful in large numbers, but Bombers stopped many a FR attack dead in its tracks this round. Good for Xan to have 1-2 effective def ships.

Eitraides:
(First my personal opinion: I still have the opinion Eitraides should not have been added to the game. They are supposed to be "the best trades of all the four races", are thusly always slightly overpowered and cannot be balanced without losing the race's identity. Unfortunately, it is not my decision to make.)

Attacking: Eitraides' CO was landable early round. Etd BS, as usual, very hard to defend against all round.
Defense: Etd have few vulnerabilities. FI/CO is defendable, Xan FR is a pain, but Zik FR has nothing to say to a good Etd fleet. DE are only landable because the Broker is an attack ship. CR can be somewhat of a pain and BS... well only Ter BS has a good chance, if there's any Terran around with enough chances to build up a good BS fleet...


Overall conclusion: Terran defense is obviously the worst, while Etd defense is probably the most effective this round.
Of all attack fleets, it is probably the Terran again to have the worst, but that's due to underdevelopment caused by the lack of defense described above. The Xan might be the best attacking race I've seen this round, but Etd/Cath/Zik are not far behind.

Last note about these shipstats: There is a LOT of what I like to call "crossfire" in the stats. I mean CO targeting FR and FR targeting CO for instance. This makes for very boring and one-sided confrontations between fleets and limits the number of effectively usable def ship classes and races. I'd like to see more variance in that area.

[isildurx]

I imagine EDT is very good for the top players, but perhaps the planets lower down(rank 100-300) struggle due to not managing to build enough anti fi\de to stop swarms of zero loss inc.

[SteInMetz]

I think you're actually wrong there, as most players should be attacking up, not down the foodchain. Ofcourse the smaller Etds will not have the same stockpile, but they will often be very strong against the fleets coming at them.

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by SteInMetz

I think you're actually wrong there, as most players should be attacking up, not down the foodchain.

You would be right if XP weren't a joke this round. Unfortunately, it is.

[isildurx]

Everyone is attacking down the foodchain, except for the few people with very specialized bs or fi fleets.

[SteInMetz]

But then again then it isn't a problem for Etd only, then it is for every player, as there will be an overwhelming fleet coming at your planet.

Edit: Let me clarify what i mean, since there are races with a lot more defensive problems than etd, and when most people attack down the food chain, there will ofcorse also be harder for the other races to defend itself, and etd will still be strong. When there is a huge fleet coming at you, and you aren't in the "top", you will have problems defending it, unless you actually have managed to keep your roids long enough to have a decent stockpile.

[Mortal]

Originally Posted by Thrackan

Xandathrii:
Defensewise: Bombers, Bombers, Bombers. anti-DE and anti-BS is only useful in large numbers, but Bombers stopped many a FR attack dead in its tracks this round. Good for Xan to have 1-2 effective def ships.

bombers are not that good they can only stop zik Fr alone u just cant use them agaisnt xan Fr alone cos nightmares shoot before and kill very much bombers before they do anything.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Mortal

bombers are not that good they can only stop zik Fr alone u just cant use them agaisnt xan Fr alone cos nightmares shoot before and kill very much bombers before they do anything.

While this is true, at the same time IF you can outflak the nightmares bombers do nasty damage to them. From a defensive perspective it isn't about how bad the defensive losses are, it's about how much damage you can do to the attackers. Since defenders they can still recoop some of their losses, for attackers at some point it doesn't matter how many defenders they've killed, if the attacks loose too many of their ships they will recall.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Monroe

While this is true, at the same time IF you can outflak the nightmares bombers do nasty damage to them. From a defensive perspective it isn't about how bad the defensive losses are, it's about how much damage you can do to the attackers. Since defenders they can still recoop some of their losses, for attackers at some point it doesn't matter how many defenders they've killed, if the attacks loose too many of their ships they will recall.

I disagree generally. I find that attackers have more to gain by killing their enemy's defence, because that permits the second, third, fourth wave etc can all land with more or less impunity. Sure, someone is going to take a hit value wise, however they also receive the largest roid cap to pay it off - Xan v Xan is really messy, so to the defenders, they have a choice of either defending the first wave and dying and loosing max cap with all subsequent waves are free, or defending the second wave and dying and losing max cap with all subsequent waves landing free, or defending the third wave and loosing max cap, or not defending at all, preserving the bombers for alliance or in-gal defence against Zik FR, which it might actually kill something (before dying as it was a faked DE fleet anyway :\).

Just because xan FR can be outflaked by bombers, doesnt make it a smart move to do so.

The only time bombers are effective against xan FR is when some Cath has already stunned them all to hell anyway. And then what's the point? its likely the attacker would have recalled anyway.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I disagree generally...
The only time bombers are effective against xan FR is when some Cath has already stunned them all to hell anyway. And then what's the point? its likely the attacker would have recalled anyway.

Well all I can say in response is this has not been my experiance. I have been succesfully able to scare off Xan FR all round long by simply building bombers when they attack me. Only twice have Xan FR landed on me after I built bombers and both times the attacker lost 100% of his fleet. This is not what I would call acceptable losses if I was the attacker.

[edit]: Less there be confusion, in both cases the only defense was bombers.

[SteInMetz]

To be quite honest, im with Ultimate Newbie on this, as Nightmares do actually fires first, and as long as everyone doesnt die, it should be worth landing.. Because when they fire first, it wouldnt really be wise to have the defence there would it?

Battle Report
Just an example i got in my PM box a bit earlier.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by SteInMetz

To be quite honest, im with Ultimate Newbie on this, as Nightmares do actually fires first, and as long as everyone doesnt die, it should be worth landing.. Because when they fire first, it wouldnt really be wise to have the defence there would it?

Battle Report
Just an example i got in my PM box a bit earlier.

I personally call that a succesful defense, but clearly there is a disagreement on whether or not that is true.

[Mzyxptlk]

Wait, what? You consider losing 1.1m value worth of ships a successful defence?

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Monroe

I personally call that a succesful defense, but clearly there is a disagreement on whether or not that is true.

When the defenders lose 400k more value (in this case, goes way over 50% regarding to attackers' losses), it's a succesful defence?

[Benneh]

i call that a horrific waste of value.

[Tietäjä]

Well, as the statsmaker regards it as a succesful defence, I guess next round will give us, statisticswise, more options for succesful defences.

[robban1]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

When the defenders lose 400k more value (in this case, goes way over 50% regarding to attackers' losses), it's a succesful defence?

thats why he still defends his set of stats its ok to loose stuff now and then

[SteInMetz]

Originally Posted by Monroe

I personally call that a succesful defense, but clearly there is a disagreement on whether or not that is true.

I don't understand how you can call that a succesful defense.
Also what you don't see in that battle report, is that the attackers stole 564 roids, and shared between them.

What I see as a succesful defense is when there is really no gain for the attackers to land, wether its short time perspective, or long time perspective. If there is no gains at all, that's a succesful defense.

[Stoom]

FYI Monroe, this is succesful defence.