Cathaar Race Guide (R15)

[Appocomaster]

Cathaar are the most offensive race, and least defensive race. Only 3 of their ships kill and all are without an extremely high efficiency or low initiative, so they're generally over-targetted when planning galaxy raids.
For this reason, greater than average galaxy/ alliance support is often required.

Cathaar have two fairly strong fleets.

The Corvette fleet.

This is probably the most offensive and strongest fleet in the game. Ziks will be queueing to send you ingal defence to steal Co.

Spider: Fi->Co
Beetle: Co-> Fi
Viper: Co-> Fr
Mosquito: Co-> Roids

Anti (Fi+) Co:
Harpy: Fi -> Fi
Gryphon: Fr -> Co
Pegasus: De -> Fi
Spider: Fi -> Co
Beetle: Co -> Fi
Guardian Bs -> Co
Sentinal: Fi -> Fi
Arrowhead: Co-> Co
Lancer: De -> Co
Cutter: Co -> Fi
Cutlass: Fr -> Fi
Thief: Fr-> Co

As you can see, there's a lot of anti Fi/Co.
However, all but the Pegasus, Lancer and Guardian are targetted by the Spider/Beetle/Viper combo, which fires first (with the exception of the Spider at Co). If you're willing to take a few losses, this makes this fleet hard to stop without ingal defence (especially if you regard Spiders as expendable). I think a lot of Cathaars will try this route.


Cathaar Cruiser Fleet.
This is a weaker fleet than last round in some ways. It's now not as simple as building Roaches and hitting Xan, at least

Widowmaker: De -> Bs
Black Widow: Cr-> Bs
Roach: Cr -> De
Tarantula: Cr-> Fr (Kill).

I included the Widowmaker as it might be used to hit Zikonians.

Anti Cr:
Drake: De -> Cr
Dragon: Bs -> Cr
Scarab: De -> Cr
Ghost: Fr -> Cr
Rogue: Bs -> Cr

2 Bs, 2 De (1 EMP) and 1 Fr. You can EMP Bs and De, and shoot at Fr.
I'm sure early on the best option is to torment Ziks with Widowmakers / Black Widows and pods. After that, you could either hope Ziks don't steal (m)any Ghosts, and hit them, switch to Terran and specialise more in Black Widows/Roaches depending on which seems more popular, somehow find low-Ghost Xans. Alternatively, you could just hit Cathaar and out-flak them (Black Widows are the best for this, cheapest Cr ship with 130 armour vs 200 on the Hornet makes for hard stopping).


Defensively, Cathaars are nice to help drop roid loss, and together with kill ships can effectively cover incomings.

The most important ship for Cathaar is the Viper, both in attack (Gryphon, Thieves) and defence (vs Tzen).

The Guardian will probably be under used, but will be useful if the Cathaar Co fleet gains supremacy. Spiders are also an essential attack/defence fleet.

The Fi and Co need to be built no matter what, and the Scarab is probably a key ship too.

I think if you go for either Co or Cr, you'll need Fi/Co for defence anyway.
If you want to keep that as a pure defence fleet, Guardians and Tarantulas aren't so essential.

Black Widows vs Widowmakers, I think some of each is better. Maybe slightly more Black Widows if you're going for a Cr fleet, and more De if you're going for a Fi/Co fleet.

[The_Fish]

The Guardian is possibly the most useless ship in the game atm. Well, maybe it's not useless for selfish players, but people who play for their alliance should be shot for building (m)any.

[Appocomaster]

They're useful deterrents vs Cath incoming for your galaxy. Alliances would prefer you to spend the resources on Vipers, yes. But they're more likely to force a recall on their own as ingal def as Guardians.

[cypher]

cath is least defensive?:S that confuses me... cath rocks as defenceships :P

[The_Fish]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

They're useful deterrents vs Cath incoming for your galaxy. Alliances would prefer you to spend the resources on Vipers, yes. But they're more likely to force a recall on their own as ingal def as Guardians.

The difference is, how often do you expect to get cath co incs? How often can you send ships to your alliance? There are better ships available in gal for co incs rather than Guardians anyways. like arrowheads, or thieves.

[Gate]

I'm actually quite keen on the guardian. A few of them can put a nice, happy shaped hole in attacking CO fleets and get rid of them. Seeing as any cath that attacks another cath can send along spiders for absolutely free (they won't lose spiders, and the spiders are likely to stun a decent proportion of any defending arrowheads, making ally def quite weak), having the guardian could well reduce your incs and help the alliance overall. It's like a xan building lancers over arrows and using his fleetslot for bombers or something (IMO).

If I was cath, I'd ignore the CR fleet. To me, it looks like having a rough time. Bombers will rip you up and I expect them to be quite an abundant ship. Against terrans, their BS are not only heavily armoured but, being the terran's best attack fleet (IMO ), should be in abundance, helped by dragon/leviathan flak (whilst ziks should have plenty of pirate/pillager flak). Though I'd consider spending some resources on tarants to dissuade people from flakking pods through your vipers.

I'd concentrate on spamming FI/CO, and I'd roid any ziks or caths I could alone, then combo with xand FI to roid xands and terrans. For defence purposes, I'd buy some guardians (Immune to CO), and lots of scarabs/widowmakers, plus (ofc )extra vipers. Scarabs prevent terrans from sending syren, and widowmakers put a dent in the BS. With enough widowmakers, you can also really screw things up for an attacking zik with just a little ally def, which is about as safe as most caths will get :/

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

The Corvette fleet.

Spider: Fi->Co
Beetle: Co-> Fi
Viper: Co-> Fr
Mosquito: Co-> Roids

I would question the inclusion of Spiders into that fleet. The only unit that Spiders shoot at that target CO are Arrowheads, and the price of that targeting is about half the ships in the universe firing at them.

I'd be more inclined to just take the damage from Arrowheads (or building a very small percentage of Spiders solely to take the edge off potential Arrowhead defence), rather than having them as an important part of my fleet.

Obviously, that will depend on the prevelance of Arrowheads as defensive ships in the universe and ofc the array of anti FI in the universe, but still...

[Stifler]

Arrows do a lot of damage when left to fire, so I would prefer take the spiders and maybe a xan along

[Ultimate Newbie]

But you must compare potential losses by not including Spiders (indeed, you still might take corvette losses from arrows even if you do send spids), and compare guarenteed losses by sending your Spiders along - you will effectively throw away your spids in every CO attack that you make, whether arrows are there or not.

Obviously, like i said, if arrows are really common then you'd have to include the spiders. If they are infrequent, then just take the hits and have a wtfpwn CO fleet that is larger and far more difficult to cover by anything other than Arrowheads.

[Chika]

Xans won't have many arrows. just like last round. They will be idiots and build a lot of lancer. Thats where stiflers idea comes in.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by Chika

Xans won't have many arrows. just like last round. They will be idiots and build a lot of lancer. Thats where stiflers idea comes in.

I'd expect to see more arrows this round, considering the new status of the cutter... xands that go for a FI based fleet are likely to be packing a few of those. And I'm guessing that many ziks will later ignore cutters after getting mashed by arrows so much, so we could see some late round arrow fleets still flying around IMO.

[Paisley]

I do think it will be quite hard for a cath to land on a xan without losses
or the very least the spider becomes the disposable ship.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by buddies

I do think it will be quite hard for a cath to land on a xan without losses
or the very least the spider becomes the disposable ship.

How the hell do you plan to stop lancers?

It's not teh spiders I'd be worried about, as vipers stun tzens whilst beetles stun sentinels (though maybe not through all of the flak?). Cath CO just aren't designed to hit late-game xands IMO.

[rop1964]

for what i see, cathaar will, again, be a largely target race, as they ll have very few def vs de incoming , and bs fleet just outmatch the cathaars defensive ships.. all in all.. the race will suffer as the game goes on.. :-( truly.. if i had to choose a race, i d probably go with terran this round, or xand.. as they got he best balance of defense/offense.. cathaar ships (which use emp) are mainly a defensive race.. they are not "offensive" unless they get defense support , which is rare , as every planets goes out on attack.. comparing ship cost , i see terran, xand , cathaar and zik having the best value for ships.. time will tell , but i doubt we ll see lot of cathaars in top 20..

[Paisley]

Originally Posted by Gate

How the hell do you plan to stop lancers?
It's not teh spiders I'd be worried about, as vipers stun tzens whilst beetles stun sentinels (though maybe not through all of the flak?). Cath CO just aren't designed to hit late-game xands IMO.

2 options really... 1.Double team with a xan fi/co fleet
2. Try something off the wall like.

attack with cr fleet, guardians and some vipers (vipers might be on a 1 way trip)
what happens is vipers freeze frigs, roach freezes de and then the frigs get hit
Although the arrows can still fire at the co the guardians can still hit the arrows.

Bar that Gate I am on to plums
(I am going terran anyway hehe)

[Ron7684]

Edit: Ive removed the guide and made a new thread here.

Your suggestions seem to be on outdated stats

[sexy_mommy]

Caths could hit xans easily if they added Roaches to their fi/co attack.

[Paisley]

Originally Posted by sexy_mommy

Caths could hit xans easily if they added Roaches to their fi/co attack.

Providing your target can't fleet scan you and you have a really CR heavy fleet ( I mean a similar number of cr and co ships) then aye.
Problem is that you would give the target an extra 2 ticks to get anti fi and co.
Good idea in theory just that it was practical drawbacks to it.

[sexy_mommy]

It would also mean they would expect your full cr fleet if they can't fleet scan.

[Paisley]

As I said it would mean you having a similar amount of co and cr so that the target/ally DCs would have a problem "reading" the unit scan if a fleet scan is not possible.

problem is that having equal co and cr would Imo leave a cath anti fi/co weak (not taking guardians into account here)

[Gate]

Originally Posted by sexy_mommy

It would also mean they would expect your full cr fleet if they can't fleet scan.

The issue with this, however, is that you would need a lot of CR to persuade them of this, unless you're planning on sacrificing your roach every time. In order to stop sacrificing your roach, you're going to have to have a good # of vipers to stun the bombers (and xan FR is tasty, so should be quite abundant). And since cath CR is pretty shit IMO (possibly the most toned down attack fleet), it's just not worth getting that many CR IMO!

Besides which, most DCs would be suspect of someone sacrificing a stupid amount of CR for roids anyway and may well send some anti CO along.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by cypher

cath is least defensive?:S that confuses me... cath rocks as defenceships :P

Not when trying to defend yourself. Obviously, if you completely stunn0red all of your attacker's fleet, they wouldnt have launched. Also, i refer you to the numerous posts that deal with the inefficiency regarding the stunning of fleets with alot of Flak and few pods.

etc, etc, etc .

[rop1964]

hi ultimate newbie.. :-) if Cathaar were so bad as a defending race, why do zik target the Cathaar so much to get their ships? in all event they would be looking for others ships if cathaar ships were so bad at defending. but in truth , they are the best as they prevent the ennemy ship to act.. which make them the best defensive ships.. i often recall players asking for cathaar ships support to twart attack away, especially xan fi.. true , they cant defend themselves alone.. but nobody can, technically speaking , as it s always a matter of ships numbers. the only reason that my game in r14 was hell, was that i got fleetcaught 4 times, and after losing my cr fleet, xan started to come with their lancers to finish off my co.. (and i m not talking about those big guys that raid the 40% limits , as i m debating this with arfy.. in the secondary bashing forum).

[Gate]

Soveh is trying to say that when you're getting attacked, owning stunning ships sucks. Because the enemy take free roids.

For instance, 500 tzens does more damage to a fleet of 1 million FI than 50,000 beetles do, therefore the 500 tzens, on their own, are more likely to dissuade someone from attacking you.

Xands, for instance, tend to receive less incomings because they're a stronger defensive race. If someone attacks them with any fleet in the game except for xand FR with enough tzens, the attacker runs the risk fo taking heavy losses. Terran BS and cath CR get around this by trying to scare off ships by killing them, whilst ziks steal stuff back, but as a xand, you're a far tougher target than a cath is.

But cath ships are vital as they can improve the efficiency of kill or stealships immensely.

[Colt]

Originally Posted by rop1964

hi ultimate newbie.. :-) if Cathaar were so bad as a defending race, why do zik target the Cathaar so much to get their ships? in all event they would be looking for others ships if cathaar ships were so bad at defending. but in truth , they are the best as they prevent the ennemy ship to act.. which make them the best defensive ships.. i often recall players asking for cathaar ships support to twart attack away, especially xan fi.. true , they cant defend themselves alone.. but nobody can, technically speaking , as it s always a matter of ships numbers. the only reason that my game in r14 was hell, was that i got fleetcaught 4 times, and after losing my cr fleet, xan started to come with their lancers to finish off my co.. (and i m not talking about those big guys that raid the 40% limits , as i m debating this with arfy.. in the secondary bashing forum).

They try and steal cath ships so that they can improve their attack fleets and give more variations of fleets, you don't steal ships because you think they will help you defend.

And people ask for support from caths because cath ships in attack are very efficient, and, by joining forces with another attacker (eg xan fi/co attack) the target will have a much harder time getting enough defence to flak through the EMP and low init xan ships...

I think the point is that Cathaar aren't a bad race for defence, but people like to attack them as they are zero loss roids, which makes them look better targets. The 1st targets taken in raids, in my experience are always caths.

[cypher]

heh UN cathaar IS ace defencewise.

it's quite simple and happens in alliances every round.. yes a cathaar might get a few more incs over the round... but they need a few ships to actually cover themself and they are clear.

a xan however will always need alot of ships to cover himself till he's clear which is a huge difference.

[Gate]

Originally Posted by cypher

a xan however will always need alot of ships to cover himself till he's clear which is a huge difference.

That's often been the traditional thing, as xands have often been targetted by cath CR which are traditionally hard to stop...

But nowadays, things aren't looking so bad for xands. IMO, most terr CR/BS fleets will just need some scarabs or rogues to scare off... a lot of xan FR fleets will just need a few vipers, and many plain zik fleets should be scared off with some more vsh/peacekeeper help.

But that's IMO ofc, I could be proven wrong