Choosing the right race...

[Makhil]

This is just how I feel it, I'm interested in your opinions:

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Terran
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The biggest threat to their DE: the Thief, to their BS: the Chimeras, Spectres, Buccaneers.
Free landings will be few, but the armour should be able to cope with that. The new XP system makes it worth it to land on big guys.
Daring Terrans will fare well, shy ones can always bash lowbies, but the risks are the same (with the 0 loss def flying around) while the reward will be much lower.
+20% salvage bonus is good news for a kill race.
Pick Feudalism and you'll have a good package.

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Cathaar
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Though they lost a kill ship, they still have the initiative advantage over anyone. Both attack ships can almost land without losses (except for Cath on Cath CR attack coz of the Tara playing chicken, and the slow Ter Wyvern on FR fleet).
Of course they will attract a lot of attention, even more than before now that calc is complicated. A good ally or BP is needed. Same equation as before: start big and keep growing.
+40% salvage is interesting.
Pick Unification to ensure a superior income from Tick 1, and you're all set for a busy round. No mistake allowed, if you lose your fleet you're doomed coz you'll be hammered by the whole universe before getting a chance of catching up.

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Xandathrii
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They looked invicible at the start of public Beta... so they were doomed. Gone are the days of Xans being the reference in kill ship. After the episode of Pegs firing same time, now is coming the time of other races with even better init: Zik and Etd.
In a Xan heavy universe their worst enemy would still be fellow Xans hoping to win the famous chicken game. Either you mass build Fi or FR to overhelm the big Caths freeze power (but you're open to Xan attacks) or you try to cover all directions and go for lowbies.
Use to the full the advantage of cloaking by attacking with multi class... there lies the key (you can already start building Distorters btw).

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Zikonian
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Mass build Cutter & Buccanneer and you're protected from anything except Fi fleet. That's the power of their newly found initiative.
Steal Ter DE with your 0 loss Thieves. Get an active Cath in your BP and go collect easy roids.
How you can steal CO or FI without some willingness from your target is a mystery (but I'm not a specialist).
Pick either Feudalism or Unification, the disadvantages will just neutralize your natural bonuses, no big deal.

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Eitraides
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They have some nasty ships like the Tycoon and... well that might be it. They can discourage attacks from Xan FI, Ter and Zik DE, but they will be hard to play.
Now they lost their salvage bonus... might be the final nail in their coffin. I have the feeling that Etd will be completely different next round, atm it looks like a dead end for them.


My choice would be between Ter, Cath and Zik... depending on the universe composition.

I expect a defensive round, lot of bashing, more team ups in attack.

[Elevator]

Originally Posted by Makhil

Pick Feudalism and you'll have a good package.

got the numbers for this one? As I see it more benefitial with the 18% mining bonus. In addition production will be slower with feud.
Thinking more about doing terran and setting uni around tick 150ish

[MikeB]

basically, if you have 25% pop on mining, uni gives you 100%+25%+18% mining = 1.43 x what value you would have

feud you get 100%+25% / 0.85 = 1.47 x what value you would have, and the res/con penalties are lower. altho, ofc.. its much harder to be immune to cov ops.

[EDIT] btw, forgot to add.. nice post MakHil [/EDIT]

[MikeB]

and the slower production "penalty" for feud is really just to make ship prod times normal.. because of the lower resource cost ^^

[Makhil]

Thanks MikeB.
The other advantages of Feud over Uni I can see is that you stock less ressources (attracting less cov opers), people targeting you tend to forget to add those 15% extra possible ships to their Bcalc.
Uni research penalty is a no-go for me (unless Cath) as in this round you'll need Incoming Scan ASAP (in addition to all the rest... travel time, constructions, Cargo Transfer). Delaying the picking of Uni government is wrong. It prevents you to get extra cash at the start, and the time penalty you save on early Research is minimal, while you suffer the most on the later ones.

[Pilatus]

One thing i find strange is before a round ppl are discussing about things like percentage. But after the round started it's like ppl are bragging about loosing the most res each tick, because of lack of research.

Not that it's bad to earn more resources or being able to buy more ships for your resources, but shouldn't lack of hct research be added to the math? Or loosing roids because of not being able to do incoming scans?

[Mzyxptlk]

Yes, it should. But research time is relatively hard to guess. It's hard to estimate (pre-round) at what tick you need what HCT, which causes many to just ignore it.