Thank you for this discusion. Let me tell you why.
I have been being stopped by an enemy fleet in the campaign. Without revealing too many details about the campaign or the changes that I think cliffski is making, suffice it to say that in my testing I kept encountering this “unbeatable” fleet. Its a Rebel fleet by Mad_Wolf, with 90 squads of fighters and 40? cruisers (300,000 credit limit and 1500 pilots). It tore my campaign fleets up like no tommorow (those fighters are INCREDIBLE). And his cruisers can withstand my best fighters/bombers. Needless to say in testing he chewed me up and spit me out and took several systems/planets to boot.
The 3CL version of my ship (improvements spurred by lkohime’s excellent comments) proved to be the downfall of that fleet. 16 cruisers and 90 squads of fighters and I munched that fleet something fierce. It even played well at 4X on my machine (yes 180 squads of fighters total!!! and 50-60 cruisers!!!).
So a fleet I thought was completely unbeatable fell to “Fleet C” (aka Paper). Now if I only had enough resources and time to build all the possible fleet types and move them together: Rock Paper & Scissors! It would be great.
But then wouldn’t that just create the next level of R-P-S? AKA: Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock. Oh well, it will be fun when I get there.
You know hybrid of rush and missile spam is just anti rush, basically lots of MWM and enough CL to still outgun a rush at close range (which can only be done by cutting down on engines). Of course, by cutting down on engines it will always lose to a pure MWM spam.
Likewise, by putting engines on a mix ship, you risk get horribly outgunned at all range. If your ship is set to remain in long range, then it will get killed by a Missile Spam (pure or anti rush). If your ship close in as well, then it will also get killed by good rushes and anti rushes.
So currently the triangle is
Rush -> Long Range -> Anti Rush -> Rush. Outside of serious abuse in challenger advantage (decoys), this triangle seem to hold quite well.
I could not have said it this well, or defined it this clearly. And at first reading I might have disagreed with you, until I remembered some Alliance fleets of pure MWM that did beat my campaign fleets. I seem to counter MWM with Fast Missiles effectively enough to win. And I run very low on engines. But there have been the 1 or 2 fleets that had so much MWM that they did win.
Maybe I am not a good rusher - or most fleets I am playing against are Anti-Rush (in the campaign). Because Rush fleets inevitably die a horrible death when I use them in the campaign. I predominately run Fast Missiles, so I would think that is a Long Range fleet.
What makes it hard to classify any of my fleets is the amount of anti-fighter I have to put on my ships. I really think durability is the name of the game in the campaign, yes, against cruisers, but what fills your eyes with horror are the fighter fleets that are faster than your fighters and eat cruisers for lunch. Then your whole front line is gone and the computer takes one, two, or three systems from you in the comming turns.
Yeah, I think your triangle is good, and holds true for the most part. There are a couple of places it doesn’t - fighters and frigate spam. Maybe we’re already in the world of Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock, with Lizard and Spock being those last two, fighters and frigate spam (especially Swarm).
What is missing for me in the order system is a way to tell my Keep Moving rush fleet to wait in the back until the Long Range missile fleet is engaged before starting your attack run. If I could use Keep Moving as the backup to Formation I could do that set-up with a sacrificial frigate to “guide” them in. Don’t kill the lead ship, it will unlease HE double toothpicks.
The original triangle does not change in regard to Fighters and Frigates spams.
Since majority of the competitive cruiser fleets are Tribes, we can look at it like this
Tribe Cruiser + Serenity Hybrid → No Fighter Defense (frigate spam can go here) → Cruiser with Pulse + Tractor → Tribe Cruiser + Serenity Hybrid
If you need some insight to fighter defense, just look at the later NEC1s. Since fleets without fighter defense cannot survive Follick’s NEC 1-1, the later NEC1 fleets stop using fighters entirely (except lures), and just Pulse + Tractor.
Another thing, fast missile is neither a long range nor rush weapon. They don’t stand a chance against near stationary pure MWM/Nomad missiles, nor are they as good an anti rushing as the ultra slow MWM/Cl hybrids. Probably why no one uses them in competitive play.
I need to get my hands on a copy of the full GSB for mac
Last time i was playing, my Fast Missile formation beat most fleets except for tribe (which i consider an unbalanced race, compared to the Rebels and Federation) and CL rush’s
eh, figured. I honestly only play tribe challenges with a 5 star enjoyment. I’ve found that it’s very rare to see something original from a tribe fleet. They tend to run nearly identical builds, formations, and orders. And even when I do, my fleet that wipes the floor with similar builds in any other race (but swarm and Nomads; Swarm was a few weeks old last time I played, and i won’t be getting nomad’s until it’s on steam) gets trashed because of that freaking +100% hull bonus. Kinda annoying to go through and theorycraft a new fleet just to kill one specific race. heck, that’s part of why i made my forum account anyway was to see how people trashed Tribe fleets!
This isn’t to say that my fleets are original or that tribe players are bad. Just that I’ve found tribe fleets tend to be rather repetative, as do my well-formed long-range missile fleets.
Plasma spam has always been one of those “Great concepts, but a lot harder to execute” concepts to me. Although some repair modules are vital when up against a plasma-heavy fleet, i hate how they eat through the shields xD
Lol, yeah, but they don’t really function that differently from the MWM spam. Still the same slow speed.
Personally I tried breaking away from Tribe for a bit. I managed to get a few Swarm (frigate spams), Order (Rad rush and MWM with armored wall) and Nomad (Nomad Missiles with armored wall) fleets up in SAC and NEC. All of which has characteristics that Tribe cannot imitate. I haven’t find other fleets that wouldn’t improve simply by remaking it with Tribe.
Try challenge 4614728 (Order Missile) if you haven’t seen it before.
Will do, once it comes out for steam!
And the very reason you pointed out, that most fleets are improved simply by making them tribe, is the reason i don’t play it. I like working with the balanced races, as they’re more fun to me in a challenge.
Going by the latest NEC series (ZG’s #5), it seems like there is just a lot more variation with less tribe fleets. Already we are on #14 and I still feel there is a lot more room for optimization. I’m sure a lot of that is just because people are less familiar with optimizing non-tribe fleets, but I also think that the majority of the other races are more or less on par with each other so that no particular race dominates. That’s actually pretty amazing when you think about how close Cliffski got to complete balance.
