Final stats of round 26

[JonnyBGood]

Since UN asked for a new thread and I was partially responsible for creating the stats I thought I'd offer some thoughts.

Personally I like the way zik has turned out. It's a little bit different, rather weak offensively for sure, but this can be compensated for by well timed steals via hidden prod, stockpiling or normal ass defence. Your main weaknesses, fr/de fleets, can be compensated for by massing corsairs. Some stolen scorpions or fireblades are your only really good alternative to this. Ziks will be doing a lot of roiding via holes in other people's fleets i reckon, the targetting/inits means there's not much you'll be able to blind launch on (although teamups will be big) but things like de weak xans etc you'll be able to roid well enough.

Moving onto terrans I reckon most will probably face a choice of either concentrating on the fr fleet or the bs fleet. It'll be difficult to keep up a good fleet in both as the main advantage of terran, even more so than in past rounds, is their heavy armour. Co and fi/co incs will be a big problem. You'll probably have to decide on either nixes or centaurs but the armour and salvage bonuses should start adding up after a while. It's possible to just go pure harpies/frigates and do okay so I wouldn't be too surprised to see a few planets like that. Equally you're basically ignoring some of the inbuilt strengths of terran what with faking and such so I definitely wouldn't be a fan.

Xan seem to be very popular (which will suck a bit for some as xan->xan is a world of pain). I imagine a lot of this is the co or fi/co fleet which hits, to various extents, everyone bar zik (which the de fleet fills in for). Some landings will be tough to talk yourself into though versus possible fake def and such and I imagine some will go badly wrong. Weak versus cath cr and terran bs unless you invest heavily in peacekeepers, cr/bs teamups will especially hurt.

I rather like cath, I'd actually consider going cath. In general (and I know nobody sees this unless you can automatically read emp guns/resistance or look at the efficiencies) emp is a bit stronger than last round. The co and cr fleets are good offensively, both can be improved by adding fi or bs in certain circumstances. The scorpion obviously keeps off de incs and the non-attack fleets ships are designed to flak up with each other for defensive purposes (etd will have to freeze all your co before getting to your spiders for example). Notably you won't have to build medium factories which should improve a cath's ability to prod out of incs, always a big factor.

Finally etd. I thought cloak/emp was cool too, tzu was just mainly looking for something to give etd an identity as opposed to a mongrel. The fr fleet is, obviously, pretty rocking but there's a lot of ways to defend against it in-ally versus only emp. Cr and cr/bs might actually end up doing well on caths and ziks (it may be a cloaked fleet but it's got nigh on terran armour) but I imagine more people will concentrate on the fr fleet which should end up roiding xan very well. Weak enough versus co but it's not like investing heavily in defenders will weaken your fleet. Cr might be a bit of a problem but there are better things for cr fleets to do out there so I'd be surprised if it was a serious one.