Yup, the slowest bunny always wins. Every credit wasted on engine is every credit lost on everything else. So it’s no surprise that a 0.18 speed fleet with close range weapon can easily crush a 0.39 one.
But, as you are aware, having 0.18 speed means, as long as the other side have some plasma and are just as slow as yours, they will win. So that’s the trade off you are making. This is the difference between playing a challenge and making one. Once you post up a slow CL fleet, a lot of people will throw plasmas at you.
As for rather or not I use repair, no I don’t use them.
This. I hope Cliff is reading this thread and will give us a response
Tribe needs a nerf very badly for competitive play. RCIX has really opened up my eyes to just how OP it is… The innate defense is just way too much. Just compare the defensive bonus to other means of defense:
Shields: Against any serious fleet with Cooperative and/or Vulture, a high capacitance shield will probably only add ~400-500 effective “hit points”. So let’s say you add a shield and a gun to your cruiser, taking up 2 loadout slots. OK, cool, you have some defense and offense. Now compare that to a tribe cruiser, which would just add two guns adding nearly the same amount of HP for LESS of the cost. As well as, you know, twice as many guns. Twice as much offense and the same amount of defense, for LESS of the cost!
How is that fair? (And let’s not forget that shields have diminishing returns. )
Speed: Getting a bunch of frigs or even cruisers up to decent speed may be good in theory, but it is extremely cost prohibitive. In practice, it also has too many counters and doesn’t seem to be entirely consistent.
Armor: A little bit of armor on cruisers goes a long way in fending off rocket fighters, and not having that ability is definitely a weakness of tribe. However, it’s not nearly as bad as one might think. Adding a tractor beam has pretty much the same effect and may even be a better use of loadout, since cruisers with tractor beams don’t just protect themselves.
Armor stacking: Armor stacking is potentially strong, but the costs of armor makes it too prohibitive. Basically, you need to spend nearly TWICE the amount PER CRUISER with less than 1/4th of the damage output just to get armor to a point where it actually matters. It just doesn’t stand up to tribe.
As far as tribe fighter vs. rebel fighters, can someone explain to me why rebel fighters are supposedly better?
Rocket fighters are fast enough to be nearly untouchable by lasers. Meanwhile, tribe fighters have twice as much HP. Seams like tribe fighters should win?
Edit: As far as how to nerf Tribe, someone suggested +50% hull bonus, but I think that is still way too much, considering that is essentially 50% FREE defense. Bring the bonuses in line with the other races. ~20% seems to be the highest bonuses around, so maybe +25% hull bonus, -25% armor and -25% shield. This would make it so tribe would actually have to spend some money on defense.
How about you put a challenge up of just tribe fighters on an open and anomoly free map?
I personally don’t say rebel/swarm fighters are better - I say the way one handles fighters can negate the use of fighters in an fighter vs fighter role. For hitpoints on tribe fighters - since I use cruisers for AA defense two hits and the are done. CL’s deal out punishing blows to fighters.
as for RCIX-SAC - maybe the map size/fighter count/pilot ratio gives the Tribe a favour?
the original SAC I think I saw much more Swarm deployments than tribe.
I am playing mostly with the Rebels - and have never felt underpowered to the tribe.
That’s very true. The RCIX SAC map does favor tribe greatly. Their mediocre fighters are a non issue due to how little fighters the other side can employ.
I think we need to make a new SAC with follick’s “forced middle deploy” map and the resource count of the old SAC (1 to 300).
I don’t think it’s the problem with the map or the ratio, I think the problem is inherently tribe. The previous SAC only required depth 3, which means it was much easier to pump out non-optimal deployments, which means other races were much more plausible. In RCIX-SAC, I can’t even tell you how many times I got 3 out of 4 with other races.
But anyway, I totally support the creation of a new SAC. I think not just one person should be in charge, but we should all come to a consensus on the rules, map, ratio, etc.
Also, another important issue, how do we handle cases where a fleet beats another only some of the time?
I say green light to that. Some of the time is good enough. Anything to promote activities and new participants. Plus we might actually have more diverse builds that way.
I disagree. In the original SAC, I didn’t content myself with a fleet that only won over the three previous. My goal was generally to create a fleet that would sweep all the previous challenges if possible. I think the Tribe is dominating RCIX-SAC because of the low fighter counts.
So, does a middle deploy map with 300/90000 sound good? That’s a 1:300 ratio.
In the original SAC, I counted a fleet as a winner if it defeated the other fleet 2 out of 3 times.
300:90000 is just too much, because it will definitely break some people’s CPU, lol.
I honestly want to try the original SAC’s 100:30000, but I could understand if people are bored of that. So in the name of being novel, how about something like 50:15000. One advantage to a low pilot count would be an incentive to customize individual ships, probably making each fleet uniquely more interesting. Bigger numbers are not necessarily better. Also, a low budget setup like that could bring big shield stacking back into the game. From my vantage point from RCIX, shield stacking was all but out of the game.
Anyway, here are the rules/specifications I propose:
-Map: Joust, forced center deploy
-50:15,000 ratio
-A deployment must win against the previous 4 (same as RCIX) to be the next contender.
-No unit stacking (not even two).
-To be considered as a win, your deployment must be victorious 66.6% of the time. (This is pretty much the honor system, at LEAST test your fleet out a couple of times per challenge if you’re not sure.)
-All ships must have engines AND must be able to get to the opponent on their own. E.g., you can’t surround a ship and set everything to escort it.
Anything I’m forgetting?
P.S.: It would be a good idea to rename the map to something like ZZJoust, so people can easily find the challenges by sorting.
I would much prefer to see large fleets - Follick’s suggestion is pretty good sized. I also have no problems with corner deployments. The idea of a large sized map appeals to me more than a small one. I like to see running skirmishes and the Joust map would just be a recipe for driving formations. The original SAC got some extrememly imaginative deployments - Cowards HO! was especially fun to watch.
And perhaps a suggestion to Cliffski that after he is done with the campaign some way to get feedback from retaliations - like winning percents, ship survival stats etc. I would like to know a lot more than “person named here” crushed your fleet. It would help to know how and why.
My netbook can handle 1000/100K. So can my aged Pentium 4. I can’t imagine 300/90K would really be a problem for anybody.
I want a good pilot count and enough points to be able to build a varied fleet that can handle multiple types of opposing fleets.
A 50 pilot map would essentially rule out fighter tactics altogether and would limit frigate rush tactics. It would quickly degenerate into a boring question of which kind of Utopia spam you will be using.
I would be interested in increasing the challenge depth so that a posted challenge would have to defeat somewhere beetween 5 to 10 previous challenges.
I also oppose any “Honor rules” such as minimum speeds or limits on stacking. Any limits, such as requiring engines, should be included in the map itself.
