Terrans

[noah02]

I see this as a bit of a strategy question sorta question.

Whats happening with Terran this round? I have taken a round out and so far looking and sandmans we getting the old theres lots of terrans a few xans (almost equal tbh) and xan are looking (aint looked at stats either this round) like they where in round 12 completly superior over Terrans and keeping them out the top 100.

Hope some of you Terrans out there get back into top 100 i dont wanna have to make an account.

[Goatsemaster]

Originally Posted by noah02

I see this as a bit of a strategy question sorta question.

Whats happening with Terran this round? I have taken a round out and so far looking and sandmans we getting the old theres lots of terrans a few xans (almost equal tbh) and xan are looking (aint looked at stats either this round) like they where in round 12 completly superior over Terrans and keeping them out the top 100.

Hope some of you Terrans out there get back into top 100 i dont wanna have to make an account.

Terran def is utterly craptastic, so most alliances told their members not to go Ter.

It's not about Xan owning Terran at all though. Xan primarily attack with FR, and Terran have Wyverns that are 0-loss vs FR. Cath, Zik and to an extent Terran can all get through cheap on Terran. And Terran don't have much they can contribute to their alliances bar Phoenix (low damage, not much DE around anyway) or Chimera (PKs beat the pants off them).

[Dotatrix]

I allmost allways take the 'worst' race, so I took ter this round - dunno why

I'm soon in top100!

[Monroe]

******master is mostly right, not many terrans are in top allies, and terrans are pretty much completely helpless against FI and CO attacks, as well as Zik FR attacks. Since FI/CO/FR are the primary offensive weapons this round terrans are not doing so well. On an upnote, they do very well against DE/CR/BS, but there arn't that many of those around.

[Proxi]

They have two pretty wicked attack fleets though.

And its Terrans not Terran's

[Paisley]

If you know how to play terran it is a good race to go...
terrans are a slow starting race but as the round picks up you will find a good few more terrans in the t100

[bwtmc]

It's a playable race, or at least it was.

Then all the top alliances went Xan heavy and messed it up :P

[Appocomaster]

As has been said, a lot of top alliances didn't want people going Terran because they're not the best alliance for defence (and due to their poor damage they tend to be targetted more than some other races). They aren't bad on their own; as has been said Wyvern aren't bad vs Xan Fr fleets, being the only 0 loss defence. Terrans weakness is probably worst vs Co, really. It's surprisingly resiliant to Xan if you build enough Harpies and Wyverns. :-)

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

As has been said, a lot of top alliances didn't want people going Terran because they're not the best alliance for defence (and due to their poor damage they tend to be targetted more than some other races). They aren't bad on their own; as has been said Wyvern aren't bad vs Xan Fr fleets, being the only 0 loss defence. Terrans weakness is probably worst vs Co, really. It's surprisingly resiliant to Xan if you build enough Harpies and Wyverns. :-)

Terrans are pathetic against CO, I gave up on building gryphs a long time ago. As for anti FI, if you build enough of ANYTHING it's a killer. The problem with harpies is of course sentinals, which xans will build as FI defense, because they are also good on attack, and they have lower init then harpies making them good against terrans who build harpies. Since the only purpose of building harpies is to defend against xans they also are pretty pointless. But again, in large enough numbers they do get interesting, but then they are a big resource sink that is useless for attack. Whereas sents are a great resource sink, both for attack and defense.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by bwtmc

It's a playable race, or at least it was.

Then all the top alliances went Xan heavy and messed it up :P

What?

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

As has been said, a lot of top alliances didn't want people going Terran because they're not the best alliance for defence (and due to their poor damage they tend to be targetted more than some other races).

It's not the poor damage, it's the ETA.

What's their anti-FI? Harpies, which are decent, but get fired on first.
What's their anti-CO? Gryphs, too slow ETA.
Anti-FR? Wyverns, great, but won't make alliance ETA.
Anti-DE? Phoenixes. 0-loss, but need huge masses of them to make them count.
Anti-CR? BS, sorry out roiding. (That is, Dragons are always needed in roiding fleets, unlike say Ghosts or Bombers.)
Anti-BS? Chimera, sorry, out roiding.

It goes beyond just bad damage. There's not a single reedeming asset in terms of alliance defense.

[bwtmc]

eX Angels and 1up have about three playing Terrans combined I think. Seeing as they all have a good number of Caths and stopping Fi/Co fleets is pretty difficult with reard to alliance eta - It's very difficult to retain roids.

Even Phoenixes are pretty useless, you don't see Destroyer incomings very often and the Bomber's pretty efficient anyhow.

Clearly though yes, the big flaw with the race is its out of galaxy defence prospects.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by Banned

What?
Anti-BS? Chimera, sorry, out roiding.

You dont need to roid with your chims as a terran. Plenty good enough to let the BS do that job.
Since your chims is basicly what useful asset you can offer your alliance, it should be spared for that job.

But in large, I agree with Jester. Stats are ****ed up concerning terrans.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Tbh, i think the perspective on Terran has changed - it now closely resembles that of Cathaar; Terrans should be out attacking with a DE fleet and a BA fleet, at least, every night. They should have a *huge* amount of jammers and all terrans should have had construction on P1 and built jammers non-stop for a week. Terrans should be gaining score through effective XP attacks, and whilst they arent wonderful at holding their roids against Caths, they are good at holding their roids against Xan FR (which is becoming more prevalent) and Ziks as well. To an extent, Terrans can just turtle up and try and trade in-gal to get effective anti CO (ie, Lancers, Guardians) for Wyvern for example, and rely on their highly effective attack fleets to gain XP. Terrans tend not to loose much value in attacks (unlike Cath) due to their high armour, and they are capable of taking some good XP which means that they should still have a good score - just be roid poor at the same time.

What was said above about Terran being a slow race to start i think is accurate - it takes a while to get the technology to build ships and good eta, it takes a while to build an effective Jammer screen, and it takes a while to build two good attack fleets that can easily fake eachother. The problem is all this must be done whilst being relatively roid poor, and this just means it takes longer to get going.

Having said that, the role of Terran Frigates i think has to be re-examined; either remove the Gryphon and make it a CO that does something useful, or make Terrans have FR/BA pods (ie step down the DE) and make Xans have the DE pods (or zik perhaps). Nevertheless, whilst i think Terran is far from being unplayable, i do think that some aspects of the race need to be looked at again.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Ziks as well.

How does that work?

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Banned

How does that work?

Zik Frigates into Wyvern. I recognise that Clippers are fairly effective anti BA, but they are also strongly required for Defence too; though to be fair i havent had much Zik incoming recently i havent seen much in the way of offensive Clipper usage. More Buccs tbh.
Zik Crusiers into Dragons (in particular) though some Terrans are building Drakes instead/as well. As to their effectiveness i am unsure.
Zik Battleships into Chimera (which as one of two useful defence ships are quite common. Plus the Pirate isnt an effective stealer).

Those are the primary Zik attack fleets, and i would imagine that they wouldnt have sufficient FI (esp Pulsars) to take on Pegs, but again weakness to CO means that - provided Ziks have sufficient stolen Mosquitos and ideally Vipers - they will be able to roid Terrans at will (just like a Cath CO would).

Oh, on that note; why is everyone saying that Harpies are a Terran's primary defence against Fighters? I would have imagines that the Pegasus would be, due primarily because there are fewer Pulsars as a proportion of a Xan fleet than Sents - thus less damage to Terran anti FI, thus more survive to deal more damage to the enemy, thus less incoming. Plus Pegs have the wonderful ability to be part of an attacking fleet too.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Oh, on that note; why is everyone saying that Harpies are a Terran's primary defence against Fighters? I would have imagines that the Pegasus would be, due primarily because there are fewer Pulsars as a proportion of a Xan fleet than Sents - thus less damage to Terran anti FI, thus more survive to deal more damage to the enemy, thus less incoming. Plus Pegs have the wonderful ability to be part of an attacking fleet too.

That's exactly why harpies are the primary defence ship against fighters. A terran can't defend his alliance with pegs. Of course, harpies suck and this is why very few players in good alliances have gone terran.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Yeah but they shouldnt even be trying to defend their alliance against FI incs. Terrans have three fleets - two for attack (1 DE, 1 BA or 2 DE or 2 BA ; whatever confuses the most ), and this only leaves one fleet for defence. By far the best Terran defensive ship is the Chimera for obvious reasons. The second best ship is Phoenix - Terrans should only be building those units as their third slot can be used for both (ie sending anti DE and BA to counter other faking terrans etc). There isnt a need for harpies in an environment with alot of Sents, Beetles and those nasty Zik Corvettes (Cuttlasses?). Harpies arent needed imo.

Thus anti FI is a personal defence issue, which means that it need not be based on some ETA decision. Pegs fill this role excellently, and the only reason why Terrans should get FI incoming is if their Pegs (and other DE) are out attacking and thus not at home - but this is no more or less so than Xan Sents and Cathaar Beetles.

[ComradeRob]

There's still an issue with Phoenix cost though. At 33 dam/cost, it's almost 50% more expensive than the Pulsar for equivalent effect. In addition, it's useless against Lancers (due to poor initiative), whereas Pulsars are not, so Pulsars are always preferable for defending against Terran/Xan combos.

Bizarrely, the Harpy has a dam/cost ratio of 40, the highest of any terran ship - far higher than the Pegasus (31 dam/cost, the second-weakest non-structure-killing ship in the game). This is enough to make Harpy/Beetle defence viable, though Sentinel defence remains first choice.

In short, the Phoenix is good because of its class, but does weak damage and has poor initiative. The Harpy does good damage (by terran standards) but its class/initiative means it always loses against Sentinels. Given the choice between playing Terran and building a defence fleet entirely of Phoenixes, or playing Xan and having a defence fleet of, say, Arrowheads, I know which choice I'd make (this is why I'm Terran and allianceless ).

[bwtmc]

I heard he got kicked out

[Paisley]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

That's exactly why harpies are the primary defence ship against fighters. A terran can't defend his alliance with pegs. Of course, harpies suck and this is why very few players in good alliances have gone terran.

there are cases where a cath attacks a xan (with little or no lancers) with fi/co
and all his fi gets frozen as with his arrows... There have been times I have used harpys to get a good few spiders wiped...this has often caused a recall.

or heavy losses in spiders...

[noah02]

So all in all thank you.

I think I am glad I took a round out because by the looks of things Terrans have been kinda shoved out this round to one side.
But hey it happens to at least one race every round (last round was very good tbh all round for the races) so lets hope they fix it when i get back
As for harpys everyone should build them I did last round ask anyone they is some scary stuff Xans have to be careful remember( they got paper mache ships) so build harpys, if you get attacked by an xan you know hes gonna wipe ur fleet out so just run off.
I built mine as a detterent and always have and last round i had about 2 xan incomings ( damn cath co is all i mostly got) and they both sent about 50k sents (co or fi its all the same) but I would run or get defence.
Its so much easier to have harpys in ur fleet never dismiss them just run them

[Benneh]

Harpys last rd rocked

I ended with like 70k of the things <3