Call For Comments: Round 13 Beta 3 Ship Stats

[Banned]

Ladies and gentlemen, the following is a variant of what I posted about 6 weeks ago on the private stats forum. It was meant as a call for comments on what was then the Round 13 Beta 1 stats. I now issue the same call for comments to the community. For more see below.

http://www.clawofdarkness.com/PA/stats.html

A battle calculator with the current stats is available, but it's hosted on my adsl line so I can't give out the url. Fortunately the modification needed to the current bcalc code is reasonably trivial so hopefuly Blazde or some other helpful soul will provide us with a public bcalc soon.

Some quick notes: This set started with a variant on robin targetting, Zikonian as a second EMP race (myself and MAdnRisKy who began work on the set believed Subversion to be inherently broken) and some vague hand-waving from PAteam. I was later informed about stealing, and altered Zikonian to fit. I was told that all stealing ships fire after roids are stolen and distributed. This, I think, is a good base strategy to balance stealing. Eventually I figured out that round-robin is bad: even the 'skewed distribution'-resistant version of it we had going wasn't worth the trouble - it much too easily became the victim of unforeseen consequences.

Currently somewhere between 1x and 2x attacker value are needed to stop attacks. These figures are based on single-class attacks. While there is difference in quality of targets (for example, Terran are likely to have a decent supply of Dragons, thus making them a bit harder for Cathaar to hit than basic stats would indicate). I haven't looked particularly hard for combos, though in some cases (Xandathrii in particular) they are necessary.

I'm not sure 1-2x is the right number. We want easy to attack, but not incessant roidswapping. That said, we have to keep in mind that since every race can contribute, there's more defense to go around.

Here's a quick breakdown of the races:

Terran
"This is where mechanical excellence and one-thousand four-hundred horsepower pays off."
- Mr. Eddy

Terran ships are all about being bigger and meaner. This is displayed in their armor and their relative cost to similarly classed ships among other races. Excepting the Pegasus their initiative falls after EMP and Xandathrii ships. Unlike most other races whose smaller ships generally fire sooner, Terran big ships out-init their smaller ships. The logic is that their smaller ships don't have as long range and therefore get hit while flying in.

Due to their good armor, Terran are great for roiding. Their defensive capabilities are a bit lacking though. The Harpy is an important ship for alliance defense. BS is better than DE by the looks of things, but ship availibility may change this.

I changed Harpy to CO since it traditionally hits its own class. Phoenix hits DE so that made sense too. Aside from that I didn't figure Minotaur was a 'big' enough name for a BS. Especially not one with 1000 Armor.

The draw of Terran is the big, powerful ships.

Cathaar
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke

Cathaar have EMP and crappy kill ships. EMP ships have low armor, but their kill ships have heavy armor to make up for their terrible damage. EMP initiative is the best there is, but their normal ships fire last of all bar Zikonian. CO are currently amazing for roiding other Cathaar and good overall. CR is important for defending (FR/BS) as well as attacking.

Currently the Tarantula is a bit of a useless ship, so if anyone has any bright ideas for it, shout out. I'm thinking a back-up ship for CO, but seeing how most anti-CO ships are FI. My other alternative is to make it an EMP ship, which would in many ways be a Good thing. If I do this, I would also like to change the Scorpion. Perhaps to make it a non-EMP ship that fires on BS.

The draw of Cathaar is the ability to take full control of your own losses by firing first.

Xandathrii
"And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."
- Jean Rasczak

Xandathrii have great initiative, sometimes even equalling Cathaar EMP. High damage with proper low armor is hard to do with EMP damage the way it is, but initiative makes up for it in most cases. Xandathrii require crossing classes to roid properly with FR, but with FI can usually get away with outflakking with Vsharrak/Pulsars. They're also easily the best defenders.

I didn't bother with a Xandathrii BS, but both their DE and that pathetic excuse for a CR are necessary ships. I'm not entirely sure the Fireblade is 'how it should be', but it makes a lot of sense from a Xan v Xan point of view. The FI structure killer is the weakest of the structure killers due to its ETA and equal cost. It is also the only structure killer targeted by a Zikonian kill-ship (Clipper).

The draw of Xandathrii is low ETA and high kill power.

Zikonian
"There's nothing to explain. You're trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen."
- Vizzini

Zikonian have crap kill ships and even worse steal ships. But it's proper stealing. With their kill ships firing last of all normal ships and their steal ships firing after pods and SKs are done it's going to be hard to play Zik without taking a few bloody noses. Both their roiding fleets are weak and I think that realistically they're going to need to steal ships to support their roiding habits.

I'm not entirely sure Zik kill ships should always fire last, but I'm loathe to give them anything that resembles a Good Ship in the complete sense of the word. In this case, I'd much rather err on the side of safety.

With 3 normal ships and 6 stealing ships, they're bound to take heavy roid losses. Every race has 1 pod-class that Zik can't defend against properly. Terran have BS, Cathaar have CR and Xan have FR. Not only that, but every race has a pod-class ship that targets the Zikonian ship that hits that pod-class. The Buccaneer is the exception, and is DE class so it can't be used to harvest ships out of galaxy. So Dragons will fire on Marauders before being stolen, Roaches will fire on Thieves and TBT/Clippers will fire on Corsair. That way it's hard for them to steal the primary roiding fleet of other races.

CO are crap for roiding, but have enough armor that they can flak through on most targets. Xan in particular stop Zik CO very easily. Zik FR fares slightly better.

There are 4 ships that can be used for alliance defense. Since roids are lost anyway, I don't think Zik defense is going to be terribly popular to defend other Zik. Note though: EMPed ships can be stolen!

I've considered dropping Zik pod armor a bit and increasing same-class stealers a bit so that they can steal even if pods are fully covered. This would make them stand out a bit from the other races and focus on their primary ability more. However, it would also make it marginally easier for them to defend themselves.

The draw of Zikonian is stealing and the high risk/high reward play-style.

Structure Killers
I've nerfed them to hell, but barely tested them. I think we want to stop opportunistic SKing, but support it as an option for taking out opposition targets. No one should really get hit with SKs unless there is tactical soundness or stupidity behind it. With their current efficiency they are definitely 'just for alliances'. That and for bashing Zikonians

Astropods
As you can see, most of the pods are very well armored. This is probably the easiest way to regulate how hard it is to roid; Halve a pod's armor and it's twice as hard to get through with it. Some people in the private beta have complained about the Leviathan, but I think it's worth noting that its low damage makes up for its Terran style armor.

Various
I've checked total and average armor and damage on non-pod/SK ships vs round 11's stats, and there's more armor to go around, but less damage. On average 5 more armor and 4 less damage. Make of it what you will. I don't have round 12 in an excel sheet so haven't bothered checking there.

Aside from the Tarantula and Fireblade, I'm a bit iffy about the Gryphon/Chimera and part of the Zik setup. There are very few ships I feel strongly about, though, so feel free to tear things up

Incidentally, a lot of people in the private beta spoke about Spider/Tarantula, Black Widow/Scorpion and Gryphon/Chimera, but almost no one suggested any changes. I would like to extend my gratitude to Walldo for taking some heat and still making some decent suggestions.

The key alternatives are as follows:

Spider/Tarantula - The Spider was, up until the lats few alpha revisions an EMP ship. It changed because Cath could defend much too easily against CO. At the moment, I think changing the Tarantula to EMP is a viable tactic. However, some considerations: This will mainly make them harder to hit with CO and make it viable for them to use an extra fleet class in attack. I'm not sure any of this is a good thing. Another alternative is to change the Tarantula's class, for example to CO. But most anti-CO is FI anyway, so I don't see much point. Any other ideas?

Black Widow/Scorpion - My primary idea here is that they fulfill two different roles. Most people I've spoken to adamantly claim that one is better than the other. I think this makes for an interesting choice, but it means redundancy. I'll freely admit that Cathaar is the race I have least experience with, which I think is reflected in the stats. One option I've considered is: Scorpion to target FI, Tarantula to EMP. This way you you need to build a smarter fleet balance to roid with Cathaar. This leaves another redundancy (Scorp/Beetle) and makes Cathaar roiding fleets much more similar to last round (DE/CR), but plays more on their natural style of 'disable everything'. I'm interested in feedback on this idea. Incidentally, I'd rather just change the Scor to a Normal ship.

Gryphon/Chimera - I think Walldo suggested changing Gryphon targetting to CR. This somewhat invalidates the Syren, but it Makes Sense from other standpoints. Including this: it makes the Terran/Xandathrii FR/DE combo a little bit weaker.

Unicorn - Anyone prefer other names? Needs to be mediterranean mythological, preferably something known for destroying stuff.

REQUIREMENTS TO BE HEARD
READ THIS BEFORE YOU REPLY
OR I WILL PROBABLY IGNORE YOU

There is a minimum level of entry to be heard, but not to speak. Since at0mic.c0w keeps a tight ship (and doesn't like me much ), I'm going to try to keep everything as civil and nice as possible, however, I ask a few things in return.

Reasoning and arguments
If you post 'Ship X sucks, give Race Y more Z', I will ignore you. Please post a modicum of reasoning behind your points.

Include relevant battlereports!
Pastes of relevant battlereports would be very much appreciated. This goes hand in hand with the previous point. If you can't find a good example of your point, you may not have one.

What race do you usually play?
For example:

Originally Posted by Banned

I usually play whatever race is worst, I invariably pick the race that looks the most tempting for clever ideas that are actually bad. I have played all 4 races, but some more than others.

Or:

Originally Posted by AnExample

I'm a steadfast Terran player, I like the simplicity of that race.

Or:

Originally Posted by AnotherExample

I'm all about EMP, so I've played Cathaar mostly. But I did try Zik in round 12 because Subversion looked very good.

The general idea is to share what paradigm you're in. Not let people claim bias, but let them gain your perspective.

Give alternatives
You'll be taken more seriously if you give well-considered alternatives to the problem situation. Refer back to the point about Reasoning and arguments when presenting these.

Make sure you've read the entire thread
Has something been said already? You may want to post in support of a previous argument rather than post blind to arguments already presented.

A short alliance history
Obviously if this is in your sig, you don't need to post it. For me it's something like this:

Originally Posted by Banned

I've been played in all sorts of alliances, in all sorts of roles; from peon in winning alliances, to HC in failing alliances and quite a few in between. I've worked as a BC in round 6 and some in round 7, in addition to round 12. Among the alliances I've been in are: AIM, nos, Discordium, Deus, Omega Agency, RaH and 1up.

Again, this is to gauge perspective. I will not automatically write off anyone for their alliance history, nor should anyone else. I ask at0mic.c0w/Sovereign to intervene if this becomes an e-penis race. --

Some quick notes on combat changes for those who haven't been informed:

Zikonians can steal now. Proper stealing, almost like round 2. The disadvantage is that their stealers fire after everything. That is, you can't stop roids from being captured or structures from being killed with the stealing ships.

EMPed ships can be stolen. Killed ships can't. Stolen ships don't fire later in combat and can't be killed later in combat.

[edit]Remember: Roids have 50 armor, structures have 500[/edit]

--

I will be posting changelogs as they're made. I will also post short reasonings with this.

If you would like, I'm also open to discussing things via PM, email or on IRC. I prefer the two former, however, as IRC gets very noisy, very fast.

Thank you for reading this and thanks in advance for any comments.

[BeeKiller]

Just for some background, I've been playing cath and zik during the beta testing the stats on both. I usually play cath in normal rounds (though i've played every race at least once other than terran), and I also have done and still do DC for my alliance so I (hope to) have a relatively good understanding of the stats. The following is my suggestion:

I made some posts on the beta forums about spiders/tarantulas but as the forums now down I don't think you saw them, and I infact think I've changed my mind. (my suggestion was spider as emp).
One solution, which I favour, would be, make Tarantula emp corvettes (therefore increase their damage), make scorpions kill fighters. This would mean widows would be used for attacking terrans, and the scorpions would act as a detterent for the terran to leave phoenix at home (scorp initiative might need to still be lower than phoenix for terrans to still be viable targets). Changing scorp to killing fighter may make it harder for xans to attack cathaar, so perhaps either marginally increase xan frigate armour (to reduce effectiveness of roach against them), or reduce roach damage (though this would afftect cath vs zik also so i prefer the former). These ideas are to hopefully retain the order of the food chain and remove partially reduntant cath ship likeness.

[Cochese]

Race History: Usually Terran or Xan through all versions of PA; Terran r6, 7, 9.5, 10, 10.5, 11; Xan r9, r12 (soon to be r13 ). Cath experience from multiple rounds of classic play in 'that clone game'.

Alliance History: co-creator of HellsAngels r3, MadCows (MO type) r3-6, Wrath (peon) r7, MadCows HC r8-9, Eclipse (peon) r9, 9.5, 10 (scanner); 1up r11 (scanner) to present (peon).

Looking at Xan specifically:

Vsh: any improvement was a necessary improvement.

Pulsar: not quite sure the damage is enough, but as Pegasus armor is lower (130 last round?) and Chimera (Drake) is higher (100 last round?), it's not dealing with quite as much armor as previously.

Sentinel: Love the change 'back' to a Fighter-class ship, while remaining a Fighter killer.

Fireblade: We have the Pulsar, why is adding *another* Destroyer-killer in *another* class going to be useful? Some reasoning here would be appreciated.

Arrowhead: has an increased importance as Xan's only Frigate killer.

Tzen: Useful in attacking other Xans since they only have Arrowheads to defend, while the Tzen targets half of Xans buildable ships. Also good against Ziks, as they only have Corsairs to deal with.

Peacekeeper: Fitting role for a Xan cruiser in light of Tzen targetting change.

Won't miss the Dreadnought at all.


Overall, I generally like the changes. Changing the Sentinel and Voracean into Fighter-class ships was an excellent idea (*cough* ) as it expands on Xan's existing strengths.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by BeeKiller

I made some posts on the beta forums about spiders/tarantulas but as the forums now down I don't think you saw them, and I infact think I've changed my mind. (my suggestion was spider as emp).

Funny you should say that, the reason there's redundancy here is that I changed the Spider from EMP to Normal

One solution, which I favour, would be, make Tarantula emp corvettes (therefore increase their damage), make scorpions kill fighters.

I like this. What I don't want is to make Cath 'just like last round' in that they have Roach/BW/Scor attack fleets that wank all over everyone.

Changing scorp to killing fighter may make it harder for xans to attack cathaar, so perhaps either marginally increase xan frigate armour (to reduce effectiveness of roach against them), or reduce roach damage (though this would afftect cath vs zik also so i prefer the former). These ideas are to hopefully retain the order of the food chain and remove partially reduntant cath ship likeness.

Yes, the consequences would need to be considered. Unfortunately I'm not too keen on reducing the Beetle's damage (which would be the logical next step imo).

I think Tarant -> EMP, Scor -> Normal/FI is a viable option and it will definitely be among those considered.

[shik]

omg who should read all this.
i already told you/jesterina what i hate bout them stats
cats are way too weak... no proper defense possibility against zik fr, ter bs, xan fr and xan fi.
building shitloads of roaches will help but i hate guardians

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Cochese

Pulsar: not quite sure the damage is enough, but as Pegasus armor is lower (130 last round?) and Chimera (Drake) is higher (100 last round?), it's not dealing with quite as much armor as previously.

Fireblade: We have the Pulsar, why is adding *another* Destroyer-killer in *another* class going to be useful? Some reasoning here would be appreciated.

Terran/Xandathrii FR/DE attack wanks all over Pulsars. In fact, Xan FR/DE does a pretty good job *alone*. I still feel the pairing is slightly unfinished, but they basically play different roles. Oh, and you don't get to question me! Incidentally, both the Terran DE are better armored per cost than they were last round, from 50/55 to 61/58. The Pulsar also does more damage than it did last round (from 41 to 44). This may look like 'omg the pulsar sucks now', but keep in mind the entire design philosophy behind the stats are different. The Pulsar isn't actually that bad at stopping a pure Pegasus/Minotaur attack, when you compare it to how the other races fare.

Sentinel: Love the change 'back' to a Fighter-class ship, while remaining a Fighter killer.

Of course you love it, it was your idea and I shamelessly stole it.

Tzen: Useful in attacking other Xans since they only have Arrowheads to defend, while the Tzen targets half of Xans buildable ships. Also good against Ziks, as they only have Corsairs to deal with.

I'm considering upping the init here. It was originally dropped when I was dealing with The EMP Spider Problem.

Peacekeeper: Fitting role for a Xan cruiser in light of Tzen targetting change.

As much as I love the Peacekeeper I worry that the low armor is too low.

Overall, I generally like the changes. Changing the Sentinel and Voracean into Fighter-class ships was an excellent idea (*cough* ) as it expands on Xan's existing strengths.

It doesn't just expand on their strengths, it expands on their style. Last round I felt Xandathrii were a confused race, with good ships here and there, but little cohesion.

[Cochese]

Originally Posted by Banned

keep in mind the entire design philosophy behind the stats are different

I sorta picked up on this when trying to factor in the Tzen changes and additon of the Fireblade.

Did you end up using the 'make each race best at defending itself' approach? (as compared to the rock-scissors-paper approach, as that's sort of where the afforementioned changes seemed to spring from, in my mind)

It doesn't just expand on their strengths, it expands on their style. Last round I felt Xandathrii were a confused race, with good ships here and there, but little cohesion.

Well put. I thoroughly agree.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Cochese

Did you end up using the 'make each race best at defending itself' approach? (as compared to the rock-scissors-paper approach, as that's sort of where the afforementioned changes seemed to spring from, in my mind)

Well yes, but no, but yes, but no.

I wanted to avoid the Terran DE/Cath Defender situation. I wanted to avoid the skew factor that made Xandathrii powerful in round 11 and Cath powerful in round 12. At first MAdnRisKy and I defined a matrix of 'every race has three good targets, one with both its pods, one with each of the other'. The remaining race was itself. This gives you 2 defenders for each type of pod. The idea was that this sort of targetting would be much more resistant to skewing than the plain old 1v1. I think MAd will agree with me when I say that setting up targetting for this was a nightmare. And that was just targetting!

I ended up using that matrix more as guidelines for targetting than any form of rule. Then I applied initiative in a strict EMP -> Cloak -> War -> Zik normal -> Cath normal fashion and progressed from there. At some point while I was still working with Zik as an EMP race I realized that defending self has the same flaw as feeding on a single other race:

The more people choose a race, the worse it becomes. This isn't something new, mist pointed it out when suggesting it (which is where I first saw the idea). The problem is that the most chosen race isn't necessarily the best.

Anyway, even before I was told to muck up everything with stealing I found I was drifting more and more away from the matrix and more towards the design principle we used for the Round 7 stats: Everyone is basically a target, but some fleets are preferable forms of defense. Some people will have fleets focussed in ways that make them undesirable (Terrans with big Dragon fleets may deter Cathaar for example), but that opens them to many other classes. Personal choices affect your weaknesses and strengths rather than just what race you picked.

What I really liked about the Round 6 stats when Petru first showed them to me. They had feel, they evoked imagery. I suppose that's weird to say about a set of numbers. And that was expanded on for Round 7. When Kal first told me about the idea for stealing shooting entirely last, even after pods had capped roids, I got that same feeling. So what we have now is profiling and personality for the ships and races, rather than who they can attack deciding what their ships do and race being more of a guideline for in what shape the ship should be good. There are traces of the original matrix left, but I defy anyone to try to figure out who was able to attack whom.

[Cochese]

Originally Posted by Banned

Personal choices affect your weaknesses and strengths rather than just what race you picked.

I picked up a hint of this originally, but it's fairly plain to see after reading your reply. Thanks.

[Proxi]

I have played both zik and xan from round 11-12 respectively (since pre pax doesn't really matter so much i wont waste time specifying further)

I agree with what was said above about xan being confused last round, and the changes are definatly for the better in terms of style, but i can't help but wonder if the incredible amount of armour they will have to wade through to kill terrans will make the traditional xan preferred target economically viable.
I can only assume that the fireblade is there to stop the pegs shitting all over xan fi, although im not sure that forcing xan into fi/co instead of pure fi is nessesary, again due to the ridiculous amount of firepower they will need to kill ter ships anyway.

Flakking through cath is now possible im happy to see I personally dont think that the frigate fleet will be all that effective for roiding, but as stated in the original post the tzen will be awesome for fi def calls.

The cath changes are ones i also like, the lack of hard hitting normal ships is more than made up for by the high damage of the emp, the way i would have imagined them working. The tarantula has its use as a good flak ship due to its heavy armour, so it may be unessesary to change it to make it more effective. Possibly a lowering of the cost?

Im really not sure about zik, so im going to wait for the battlecalc to come out before i comment on them.

Imho the terran ships are probably the best right now, even though they are really expensive theyre effectiveness and survival ability will make them popular. You're ****ed if you get fleetcaught though They're probably who i'd pick for r13, although maybe xan to be a def whore.

[Proxi]

Originally Posted by Banned

What I really liked about the Round 6 stats when Petru first showed them to me. They had feel, they evoked imagery.

I may have to go xan now, simply because they have a ship called the peacekeeper.

Curse you banned!

[Alessio]

r14 is gonna be great for teh ziks..

[demiGOD]

i am very interested in this part of your thread as i have become a very avid fan of the cathaar race

Originally Posted by Banned

Spider/Tarantula - The Spider was, up until the lats few alpha revisions an EMP ship. It changed because Cath could defend much too easily against CO. At the moment, I think changing the Tarantula to EMP is a viable tactic. However, some considerations: This will mainly make them harder to hit with CO and make it viable for them to use an extra fleet class in attack. I'm not sure any of this is a good thing. Another alternative is to change the Tarantula's class, for example to CO. But most anti-CO is FI anyway, so I don't see much point. Any other ideas?

incidentally, from suggested r13 stats, xan anti-cr's (andvordian bombers) are very cheap to produce so keeping tarantulas as cr's (vice co as mentioned) might be a good idea because cathaar cr's are already outstanding attack fleets, specially against xan's so changing tarantulas into something else instead of cr's (and this goes to the rest of the cathaar cr fleet) might defeat the purpose of xan's ability to produce a massive amount of andvordian bombers
(this is an obvious comparison of cath and xan as cath is very effective against xan's as most of cath players know - and the only way of xan's defending themselves is of mass production of andvordian bombers - honestly, tarantulas as cruisers attacking corvettes make a lot of sense and so are the rest of the cathaar cr fleet)

Originally Posted by Banned

Black Widow/Scorpion - My primary idea here is that they fulfill two different roles. Most people I've spoken to adamantly claim that one is better than the other. I think this makes for an interesting choice, but it means redundancy. I'll freely admit that Cathaar is the race I have least experience with, which I think is reflected in the stats. One option I've considered is: Scorpion to target FI, Tarantula to EMP. This way you you need to build a smarter fleet balance to roid with Cathaar. This leaves another redundancy (Scorp/Beetle) and makes Cathaar roiding fleets much more similar to last round (DE/CR), but plays more on their natural style of 'disable everything'. I'm interested in feedback on this idea. Incidentally, I'd rather just change the Scor to a Normal ship.

honestly, scorpions attacking fi sounds really good (going by previous rounds stats) but then again, them attacking bs's might be something interestingly different as far as cathaar anti-bs fleets to be complimented - tarantulas emp'ing might be a good thing, but i'd prefer them to be kill ships because of the very high init (compared to the rest of the co fleet of the rest of the races) - so tarantulas as kill ships might make more sense than them emp'ing, a high init like the tarantulas can be very much of a disabling factor for cathaar players if they emp'ed - another thing... there's really nothing wrong with redundancy - most rl military organizations will suggest as much redundancy as possible

Originally Posted by Banned

Zikonian have crap kill ships and even worse steal ships. But it's proper stealing. With their kill ships firing last of all normal ships and their steal ships firing after pods and SKs are done it's going to be hard to play Zik without taking a few bloody noses. Both their roiding fleets are weak and I think that realistically they're going to need to steal ships to support their roiding habits

from what it looks like, the zik race might suffer (even with the outstanding 'steal ship' feature) because of the steal ships being very very expensive - the thing is, with the init of those ships being rediculously high, the only chance of these zik ships to be effective in battle is to have a massive amount of them - seeing these steal ships as a bunch of expensive ships might hurt a zik player - but then again, if stats make these steal ships at a decent amount of expense to build might make the zik a very unstoppable race - so i dont really know, as far as just looking at the current suggested r13 stats, i think these zik steal ship vessels might be too expensive to be as effective as expected

-these comments are just based on purely just by looking at the stats - unfortunately i wasn't selected to play the beta's so i dont have any battle reports to support my opinion.. but still worth listening to anyways - good luck to all supporting casts on these stats - can't wait till r13 starts

[Mek]

Race history: mainly played as a terran player, been xan once and cat twice. was thinking about giving zikonian a try as they are the onyl race i feel i havent had chance to have a go with. they look interesting and it seems a good fun race. also with the reintroduction of steal ships this could become a very interesting race to play.

alliance history is as below

just been looking at terran and xan stats.. seems the xans are going to have to keep their wits about them. the leviathen, despite its high cost, is looking to be the pod of choice for roiding xans as it costs twice as much resources to build enuf peacekeepers to kill 1 leviathen.. i cud be persuaded to play terran by these stats to be honest.. good to see the improvement of terrans heavist ships.

i have now decided..i wud like to be a terran :P

[NitinA]

I've played all the races, but my use of each in totals in order of most used to least used is : Zik, Ter, Cat, Xan. I went ZIk in r12, and Ter in r11, most recently.

I've played in a lot of different alliances : RB (HC), Silver (HC), and am currently Wolfpack (Mil HC), I've also BC'd since r3.

Just one stats suggestion--about structure killers. Instead of this order firing : (1) Normal & EMP Ships (2) Pods (3) Struct Killers (4) Steal Ships. What do you think about changing it to this order : (1) Normal & EMP Ships (2) Pods (3) Steal Ships (4) Struct Killers.

As Xan/Cat/Ter can all effectivly stop structure killers with their "default" producable fleet, Zik is effectivly crippled without the capibility to stop the Termite or the Unicorn structure killers. As you stated in the first post, Ziks are bashed quite easily by structure killers, esp. against the aggressive roiding fleets of the Terrans, and lacks defence against it.

-Nitin

[Banned]

Originally Posted by veX

I can only assume that the fireblade is there to stop the pegs shitting all over xan fi, although im not sure that forcing xan into fi/co instead of pure fi is nessesary, again due to the ridiculous amount of firepower they will need to kill ter ships anyway.

The Fireblade and Pulsar are comparable at the moment, so it definitely doesn't force them into fi/co. I'm seriously considering changing the Arrowhead to FI and Sentinel back to CO (or just swapping around names and targetting).

Flakking through cath is now possible im happy to see I personally dont think that the frigate fleet will be all that effective for roiding, but as stated in the original post the tzen will be awesome for fi def calls.

The Tzen is definitely going to have its initiative changed. I suspect it will be much less useful than the current set indicates.

[MAdnRisKy]

ok, I've often played zik since about rnd 7 or so (terran rnd 6), but I have played the various races in different capacities, mostly only in betas (xan is typically not a race I;m comfortable with, but I played rnd 9.5 zik like a xan using co and stealign half to all of their fleets )

Alliance wise, legion rnd 4 titans rnd 6, olypians rnd 9 stopped rnd 9.5 pronstars rnd 12 I think it was. oh and I used to BC (DC / MO / whatever the heck you kids are calling it these days) now and again too


first off I LIKE the themes, it's been a long time since that's been in this game stats, and I welcome their return!

few pointers on what is a very interesting set of stats and it's nice to be able to offer tweaks rather than rehauls, shows that you've done a good job on them.

First off, I'm REALLY liking a vsh sent fireblade combo on say terran. can't see it being stopped too easily, shame about the firepower though.... was this planned to be this devistating?

second thought. Zik are getting hard done to in a lot of ways, though yes the stealing thing is just going to be manic. They're the only race with pod classes which are shared by another race, this is going to mean more anti these ships about..... and they'l get stung on both sides.
They're stupidly easy to roid, but like you said earlier, a cat zik roiding combo...... yeah gonna be a pretty sight to behold. I just think that it's going to be very easy to abuse. there will be TINY zik players, and MASSIVE ones, with no middle ground. also I'd support the SK steal swap in init because zik have it hard enough as it is

anyway the rest I'd leave particularly the tula, as in light of point number 1 it's the only reasonable defence against that combo.

I would swap the bucc and thief targets and init over (and fire power and ... and... basically I mean have an fr ship that steals co and a de that steals CR..... this makes it much easier for zik to build up a co fleet and thus makes stealing viable - i mean why would you want to steal cr as a zik)

[Banned]

Typo
The following typo was discovered today:
Vsharrak Fighter has Initiative 4 (not 5) and damage 5 (not 4).

[TheRat]

I havent had the time to properly examine the stats yet, so Ill start with some a few firstimpressions on cat vs terran, and revise as I get a proper look.

My alliance history quite short. R3 I was prophets, R4 they merged with nemesis and cecame Prophets of nemesis, R5 I joined ely, became officer R6. Was ely til R11, when I joined 1up and became military officer. Currently Im a senior mo in 1up.

Race history: R6 thorugh R9 I switched back and forth between xan and terran, so I have some experience with both. R11 I was Zik, R12 + numerous betas/speedgames I was cat. Personaly, Id say I have decent experience all over, but probably the most in playing cat (however, being MO requires me to know a lot of every race, hehe).

The first thing I noticed about cat, was the wierd setup with two capital ships firing against the BS, but you mentioned to me on irc that it had a purpose, so I shall be looking for it and report back .

Secondly, I find it quite wierd, that the cathaar emp ships, which are supposed to be powerful as a subsitute for not killing, is actually outmatched by the levithan when it comes to cost of taking it down. Fair enough that Terran is supposed to be big chunks of steel useless for anything but flaking, but thats a bit over they edge in my opinion.

Third, it seems to me that the armor of the terran ships has been quite overdone, seeing as I cant seem to find many ships with severly upgraded firepower. With these stats, it takes a shitload of cost to take down any terran ships. I mean, common, a fighter with 21 armor? On that note, it seems that the Cathaar normal ships have been the victim of this exact same syndrom, with armor through the roof. On a positive note, Im glad to see the average armor of xandathrii (costwise) has been raised, seing as they were far to weak last round.

My view of the zikonian race, is that you have raised its difficulty a bit over the edge. I am aware of the fact taht its supposed to be hard to play, but currently it seems you need to be a master tactician to make it work I agree with the point you made about not having all steal ships fire last, some should fire earlier to make it a bit easier to play. Another note on zikonian, curse you all for reintroducing stealing . Seriously tho, with stealing back in business and no loss of steal ships while doing so, you can expect to see a lot of farming out there. Also, stealing adds a lot of unwanted complexity to the game (considering you are trying to make it more newbie friendly to increase the playerbase), as having a race with all ships is going to be quite difficult to handle for the average newbie. Also, this adds for a point of unbalance in the stats, as you suddenly have one race capable of having all ships.


Ill go more throurougly through the stats later, and revise this post.

-TheRat

[Banned]

beta3->beta4
* Change Minotaur name to Demeter
* Change Unicorn name to Behemoth

Simple name changes. I'll post an updated version of stats.html in a moment.

[Kal]

i ahve a suggestion here - on the signups page we could indicate the order of difficulty for playing the races e.g. terran easy and zik hard - but which way round should the other 2 be

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by Kal

i ahve a suggestion here - on the signups page we could indicate the order of difficulty for playing the races e.g. terran easy and zik hard - but which way round should the other 2 be

Imho, from low to high, Ter, Cat, Xan, Zik

[Banned]

Originally Posted by demiGOD

incidentally, from suggested r13 stats, xan anti-cr's (andvordian bombers) are very cheap to produce so keeping tarantulas as cr's (vice co as mentioned) might be a good idea because cathaar cr's are already outstanding attack fleets, specially against xan's so changing tarantulas into something else instead of cr's (and this goes to the rest of the cathaar cr fleet) might defeat the purpose of xan's ability to produce a massive amount of andvordian bombers

Sentences please

But yeah, Tarantula to something else would have repurcussions to the effectiveness of the Bomber.

from what it looks like, the zik race might suffer

I expect that to be more of a will than might ;p

-these comments are just based on purely just by looking at the stats - unfortunately i wasn't selected to play the beta's so i dont have any battle reports to support my opinion.. but still worth listening to anyways - good luck to all supporting casts on these stats

Public beta should be opening soon. Thank you very much for your input.

[Proxi]

Originally Posted by TheRat

I
*Snip
Terran armour = shocking
*Paste

I have to agree here, i think the terran flakking ability is a bit ridiculous with the stats the way they are.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Kal

i ahve a suggestion here - on the signups page we could indicate the order of difficulty for playing the races e.g. terran easy and zik hard - but which way round should the other 2 be

I'd rate it similarly to TheRat, though I don't think Xandathrii is more difficult to play than Cathaar.

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by Banned

I'd rate it similarly to TheRat, though I don't think Xandathrii is more difficult to play than Cathaar.

Only reason is the high deathrate of xandathrii and the ease of roiding in cathaar.. Emp can mostly roid free while losses are mandatory for xandathrii

[pig]

My main gripe with the stats, is the lack of decent anti fi for cath, imo the scorpion should be targetting fi, not bs. The reason I say this is, that for a cath if you had a cr fleet, you would build tula, roach, scorp, hornet, now all those ships are useful apart from the scorp.

The scorp is deemed useless when attacking imo, as the tula targets co, roach fr, and hornet pods ofc. If the scorp targetted fi it wudnt be deemed useless and mere flak, it would do something. Im talking about roiding xans here.

ATM the lack of anti fi means xans walk over you, and when i can afford some beetles to match a xan fleet ill try and show you why.

Just to add, I am more likely to build scorpions, as not only wud they act as def if they were anti fi they wud act as a means of attacking, where as beetles are useless, other than ally def.

[pig]

Just following up on my post, i still believe the scorp shud have the ability to target fi, but i propose something else.

ATM im roiding terrans by using the combo hornet/scorp and zik the combo of hornet/roach, now why not change the tula, so it targets the fi. This would mean that most caths who attack with cr, can also defend with cr and arent limited to bashing terrans and ziks.

[Gerbie]

I think with these stats we will see a lot of fighters. Xan will attack with fighters. How to defend against that? Terran cannot make the eta. Cathaar only emp. Xan will most likely have their fighters out flakking on their own attacks. And zik fires too late. So possibly a cath/zik combination?
That means that after a few people landing zik can attack with fighters as well...

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by pig

My main gripe with the stats, is the lack of decent anti fi for cath, imo the scorpion should be targetting fi, not bs. The reason I say this is, that for a cath if you had a cr fleet, you would build tula, roach, scorp, hornet, now all those ships are useful apart from the scorp.

the only reason that i can see why scorpions were changed into attacking bs's is to support some sort of 'chance' to be able to fight hostile terran fleets, as terrans have been very owning over cathaars

i can also see your point that with the anti-fi fleet of cathaar being downsized might indicate an open door for major owning of hostile xan multiple fighter fleets - from the looks of it though, a very massive amount of beetles might (or should) be able to fight considerable masses of xan fighters because of beetles' init, armor and damage (combined with vipers to kill hysperian lancers and enough spiders to protect the vipers from culdassa arrowheads)

but then again (heh) - looking at production costs of beetles vice production costs of all xan fighters (and the rest of the xan fleet for that matter) a xan player will build more and will build quicker

with this being said, xan could be the 'new terran' of r13 in terms of attacking/defending strategies of a cathaar player

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by Banned

Sentences please

heh, my bad

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by demiGOD

the only reason that i can see why scorpions were changed into attacking bs's is to support some sort of 'chance' to be able to fight hostile terran fleets, as terrans have been very owning over cathaars

If it was to fight the terran bs, how do you explain that the cost of the lev armor is a lot cheaper than the scorpion/widow damage?

[Cochese]

I think Vsh damage and armor are still too low...probably Pulsars too.

They're supposed to be 'high power, low armor', but the high power aspect remains missing...

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by TheRat

If it was to fight the terran bs, how do you explain that the cost of the lev armor is a lot cheaper than the scorpion/widow damage?

maybe not the leviathan per se, but the fact that the terran fleet has four different types of battleships, and the cathaar have 2 anti-BS led me to think that it might be so that cathaar will have some sort of fighting chance against terran

for the sake of this argument, i agree with pig - i'd rather have the scorpions targetting fighters because it's not cost effective to build enough beetles to contend with xandathrii fighters

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by demiGOD

maybe not the leviathan per se, but the fact that the terran fleet has four different types of battleships, and the cathaar have 2 anti-BS led me to think that it might be so that cathaar will have some sort of fighting chance against terran

In my opinion, you should always compare to the strongest ship, which here happens to be the pod ^^

Originally Posted by demiGOD

for the sake of this argument, i agree with pig - i'd rather have the scorpions targetting fighters because it's not cost effective to build enough beetles to contend with xandathrii fighters

I totaly agree on this point.

[furball]

Originally Posted by demiGOD

for the sake of this argument, i agree with pig - i'd rather have the scorpions targetting fighters because it's not cost effective to build enough beetles to contend with xandathrii fighters

Originally Posted by TheRat

I totally agree on this point

I've been playing Ziks all day.

I find them terrible against Terran BS, that's my main bugbear right now. Their only anti-BS ship is the Marauder, which gets fired on first by the Dragon anyway. So unless you've got a lot of them, you've just lost the Marauders anyway. Perhaps this is the idea, but it results in Terrans owning Ziks. At the same time, there's little advantage to be gained from getting even a few Terran BS, since they don't fit into an attack fleet like other races' ships do.

How to resolve this? I don't know, I must admit that I'm no expert on actually changing stats. But hopefully someone else will have an idea.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Mek

just been looking at terran and xan stats.. seems the xans are going to have to keep their wits about them. the leviathen, despite its high cost, is looking to be the pod of choice for roiding xans as it costs twice as much resources to build enuf peacekeepers to kill 1 leviathen.. i cud be persuaded to play terran by these stats to be honest.. good to see the improvement of terrans heavist ships.

BS have been doing disproportionally well in the beta, I don't think the current situation with them can remain as it is.

[Orion Treet]

Race history: For the most part Zikonian, been Xan and Teran as well, but last 4 or so rounds zik.

Alliance history: round 5-9.5 4D HC, r12 Absolute/ND

I haven't taken ful time to look through the stats but did take a good look at zik. As has been said it will be very very hard to play, and the thing I'm most worried about in terms of defence is that they can be roided with any fr fleet with no difficulty what so ever, concidering the only anti fr ship is a very weak fighter, and a stealship. Also initiative is like........ The smallest zik fighter (kill) shoots last against any other ship of any race, I mean, the small fighters shoot their shots, the huge ships shoot their gigantic cannons at eachother and then the smallest zik fighter with hardly any damage and armour comes in and shoots its small laser...... Ah well, I probebly can't be kept from going zik again so will be a fun chalange

Ziks will need a lot of help at the start from alliance etc, so definately not a race for noob players, and still a real challange for experienced players, as you'll have to very slowly build up a good fleet, but once you have that it will be almost unstopeble I think. You'll have very very large zik players and very very small ones, not much room for anywhere inbetween.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by NitinA

Just one stats suggestion--about structure killers. Instead of this order firing : (1) Normal & EMP Ships (2) Pods (3) Struct Killers (4) Steal Ships. What do you think about changing it to this order : (1) Normal & EMP Ships (2) Pods (3) Steal Ships (4) Struct Killers.

I've strongly considered this. From my discussions with Kloopy this shouldn't require any changes to the combat engine, just the entered stats. This may make it into the next revision.

[Zero]

although i have pathetically little experience timewise in pa i do like to think i know what im talking about

race history: zik rnd 10.5 (top 150), xan rnd 11 (top 100), rnd 12 didnt play(rl issues), also played about 10 havoc/beta type rounds mainly with Xan

alliance history: been with HR since rnd 11

ive go for terran in the beta and terran are untouchable with a bs attack fleet

if i attack with a bs fleet against:
Ter - v.little chimera have been built from what i can see and other ppl run their fleet anyway because of the Wyvern
Cat - all anti bs is emp and either de (black widow) or cr (scorpian) so there are no possicle losses and if i out flack the emp then ter bs will destroy the cr/de anti bs
Xan - easy to outflak the peacekeeper as they are so weak for their price
Zik - only anti bs is cr again so even is a zik were to steal loads of anti bs then a ter would still be able to take out any anti bs they might have

from this no race can sufficiantly scare away ter incs unless the ter is heavily outnumbered and even then the defending fleets will prob still sustain heavy losses

i suggest making the xan's peacekeeper a bs or making the black widow a norm ship and not emp so the ter bs can be stopped or scared away with sufficiant def

im sorry if this is slightly unreadable but its late and im tired

[Banned]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

first off I LIKE the themes, it's been a long time since that's been in this game stats, and I welcome their return!

Yay.

First off, I'm REALLY liking a vsh sent fireblade combo on say terran. can't see it being stopped too easily, shame about the firepower though.... was this planned to be this devistating?

Yes, but no, but yes, but no. As I said on IRC, if I could do one thing over, it'd be to multiply all damage and armor by 3, so it's easier to tweak the low-costing Xandathrii Fighters. The Vsh/Sent/FB combo isn't as good as it looks tbh. It takes 3:1 FB:Peg ratio to kill all defending pegs, which means your fleet is going to be excessively heavy on FBs, which in turn means you won't be able to flak your Daggers that well. You're probably better off with Pulsars.

second thought. Zik are getting hard done to in a lot of ways, though yes the stealing thing is just going to be manic. They're the only race with pod classes which are shared by another race, this is going to mean more anti these ships about..... and they'l get stung on both sides.

Seeing as this is guaranteed to happen to one race whichever way you sort it, I think it's best that the one race that has a chance to do something about it gets the short end of the stick.

They're stupidly easy to roid, but like you said earlier, a cat zik roiding combo...... yeah gonna be a pretty sight to behold. I just think that it's going to be very easy to abuse. there will be TINY zik players, and MASSIVE ones, with no middle ground. also I'd support the SK steal swap in init because zik have it hard enough as it is

anyway the rest I'd leave particularly the tula, as in light of point number 1 it's the only reasonable defence against that combo.

I would swap the bucc and thief targets and init over (and fire power and ... and... basically I mean have an fr ship that steals co and a de that steals CR..... this makes it much easier for zik to build up a co fleet and thus makes stealing viable - i mean why would you want to steal cr as a zik)

The motivation for stealing CR is quite obvious: You get Scorpions which let you freeze BS which can then be stolen with your natural CR (Marauder). As for swapping the the DE->CO and FR->CR, that's very doubtful. Every race has a podclass ship that fires on the Zik stealer that fires upon that podclass; Clipper*/Vsharrak/Tzen/Roach/Chimera/Dragon/**. Moving the CR targetting to DE would require a Cath CR to fire EMP shots and target DE. I'm not entirely sure I want to change the Tarantula to that, because it would beef up the Cath/Ter CR/BS combo.

* That is, the Zik FR that fires normal shots upon FI. This is going to change name in the next revision.

** Did you catch the odd one out?

[Banned]

Originally Posted by TheRat

Secondly, I find it quite wierd, that the cathaar emp ships, which are supposed to be powerful as a subsitute for not killing, is actually outmatched by the levithan when it comes to cost of taking it down. Fair enough that Terran is supposed to be big chunks of steel useless for anything but flaking, but thats a bit over they edge in my opinion.

Firepower will be getting some boosts in the next revision, EMP damage for some ships will be among those boosted.

Third, it seems to me that the armor of the terran ships has been quite overdone, seeing as I cant seem to find many ships with severly upgraded firepower.

That's part of the idea, it makes attacking easier.

On a positive note, Im glad to see the average armor of xandathrii (costwise) has been raised, seing as they were far to weak last round.

I started off with Xandathrii armor around ~30 in efficiency, and damage around 55-60, unfortunately this made them impossible to attack with and hideously efficient in defense Now their damage is more in their low initiative.

My view of the zikonian race, is that you have raised its difficulty a bit over the edge.

I'd rather err on the side of safety here. I think that unless they're so bad they're unplayable some hyperactive nutcase (like Kileman) is going to end up winning the round with Zikonian. Because of the nature of the Zik special ability, if it not balanced correctly it can end up making it impossible to play anything but Zik at a competetive level. I'm not worried about that with the current level Zik are at, and they will be receiving some improvements in the next revision.

Another note on zikonian, curse you all for reintroducing stealing . Seriously tho, with stealing back in business and no loss of steal ships while doing so, you can expect to see a lot of farming out there.

Yeah, stealers firing after Astropods steal roids is in part to discourage the most extreme form of farming: ship donations. As long as the Zik needs to send to another planet to get oddball Podclasses that is a step in the right direction. In addition, apart from CO, it's not possible to farm podclass ships entirely efficiently, as you'll either need to exclude important ships or suck down some losses. In addition, farming will grow a Zik's value quickly, which means s/he'll have a harder time farming more and harder time gaining XP.

Also, stealing adds a lot of unwanted complexity to the game (considering you are trying to make it more newbie friendly to increase the playerbase), as having a race with all ships is going to be quite difficult to handle for the average newbie. Also, this adds for a point of unbalance in the stats, as you suddenly have one race capable of having all ships.

I don't really care about the former. The game is pretty Fisher Price already. The latter is something that needs to be accounted for anyway: you need to factor in combo attacks and ingal/alliance defense possibilities.

Ill go more throurougly through the stats later, and revise this post.

Please post a new one instead of editing your old one

[Banned]

Originally Posted by pig

why not change the tula, so it targets the fi.

This will be taken under consideration.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Cochese

I think Vsh damage and armor are still too low

You must be kidding. Consider for a moment the Sentinel as a CO again and have a look at their comparative worth.

...probably Pulsars too.

Maybe.

They're supposed to be 'high power, low armor', but the high power aspect remains missing...

You're wrong. The high power is hidden away in the iniative. This set of stats is deliberately high armor/low power to make attacking easier. Xandathrii have the easiest time defending in all the standard cases. Each and every increase in Xandathrii kill-power will make attacking more difficult. That doesn't mean it will never happen, but it does mean that I'm loathe to do so.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Nonentity

I find them [Zik] terrible against Terran BS, that's my main bugbear right now.

Their only anti-BS ship is the Marauder, which gets fired on first by the Dragon anyway. So unless you've got a lot of them, you've just lost the Marauders anyway. Perhaps this is the idea, but it results in Terrans owning Ziks. At the same time, there's little advantage to be gained from getting even a few Terran BS, since they don't fit into an attack fleet like other races' ships do.

That's by design. The same case holds for Cath CR and to an extent Zik/Xan FR.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Orion Treet

The smallest zik fighter (kill) shoots last against any other ship of any race, I mean, the small fighters shoot their shots, the huge ships shoot their gigantic cannons at eachother and then the smallest zik fighter with hardly any damage and armour comes in and shoots its small laser......

Consider this:

The big capital ships have scanners, autotracking long range missiles, big guns with long range. Did I mention long range? Then there's the tiny little Assassin that needs to land on the enemy bombers (Corvettes) to inject its nanobot payload.

Ziks will need a lot of help at the start from alliance etc, so definately not a race for noob players, and still a real challange for experienced players ... You'll have very very large zik players and very very small ones, not much room for anywhere inbetween.

Yeah.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Zero

ive go for terran in the beta and terran are untouchable with a bs attack fleet

I remain convinced this is because people refused to build any anti-BS or defend eachother consistently. That said, it's untouchability will be touched upon.

Ter - v.little chimera have been built from what i can see and other ppl run their fleet anyway because of the Wyvern

I think a lot of people have been getting their DE fleets beaten up by all the Xan and Zik with Xan. Running away from Wyverns is silly because one gets salvage as defender.

Cat - all anti bs is emp and either de (black widow) or cr (scorpian) so there are no possicle losses and if i out flack the emp then ter bs will destroy the cr/de anti bs

Not a pretty situation.

Xan - easy to outflak the peacekeeper as they are so weak for their price

Much as I loathe to say this, but Peacekeepers will be getting an upgrade.

from this no race can sufficiantly scare away ter incs unless the ter is heavily outnumbered and even then the defending fleets will prob still sustain heavy losses

This holds true for other attacking fleets as well, though. The problem is that no one really built anti-BS in the stats beta, nor did they defend. The Wyvern/Dragon doing a decent job of depleting the universe's anti-BS count whenever there was a failed defense (and boy oh boy were there a lot of those) helped immensely.

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by Banned

I remain convinced this is because people refused to build any anti-BS or defend eachother consistently.

The terran bs just has way too much armor/cost compared to the dmg/cost of the two races who genraly have high damage (xan/emp). If you look at the peacekeeper, it has less than half the dmg/cost to that of the lev armor/cost. (Yes, I know you said it was going to be upgraded). Altho its not as severe in the case of emp, its still rather over the edge. As it is looking at the moment, we can expect a rerun of R4, where nobody could kill anything (or was that R5? ).

Originally Posted by Banned

Yes, but no, but yes, but no. As I said on IRC, if I could do one thing over, it'd be to multiply all damage and armor by 3, so it's easier to tweak the low-costing Xandathrii Fighters. The Vsh/Sent/FB combo isn't as good as it looks tbh. It takes 3:1 FB:Peg ratio to kill all defending pegs, which means your fleet is going to be excessively heavy on FBs, which in turn means you won't be able to flak your Daggers that well. You're probably better off with Pulsars.

I usually play as cath or xan (cath r11, xan r12)

Pulsars looks good, but they have higher initiative that pegs, witch makes them useless in my opinion against terrans (both in attacks and defence).
Maybe increase the fireblades damage?

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by TheRat

The terran bs just has way too much armor/cost compared to the dmg/cost of the two races who genraly have high damage (xan/emp). If you look at the peacekeeper, it has less than half the dmg/cost to that of the lev armor/cost. (Yes, I know you said it was going to be upgraded). Altho its not as severe in the case of emp, its still rather over the edge. As it is looking at the moment, we can expect a rerun of R4, where nobody could kill anything (or was that R5? ).

i have this raging, personal hate against terrans, and i'm expecting that 'hate' to cultivate in r13 heh