On Psychic Tech and Gameplay Balance

douglas · #1 May 16th, 2005, 05:32 PM

Full ship and fleet training plus better racial combat bonuses versus no training is a no contest victory for the trained ships every time, assuming equal tech. Especially if you're using stealth and scattering armor as well as ECM on your ships and with the light cruiser size bonus added in, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if his ships hardly ever hit even at point blank range. Tell your opponents to stop complaining, research Military Science 2, Advanced Military Science 3, and train their own ships and fleets. That's the only way they'll ever have a chance against you, and it's something practically every good experienced player does very early in every game.

Edit: here are the numbers, assuming max relevant tech:
Your defense bonuses: 10% size + 60% ECM + 15% stealth armor + 20% ship training + 20% fleet training + 10% racial = +135%
Their offense bonuses: +65% CS
Net effect: 135 - 65 = 70% penalty to hit. At point blank range, their ships can only hit with 20% of their shots. At range 2, 10%, range 3 and greater, 1%.

spoon · #2 May 16th, 2005, 06:06 PM

Yeah, psychic is probably the weakest of the racial traits. Religious is king, Crystaline gives you really good armor, Organic and Temporal let you crank out ships. Psychic is great, until everyone gets the master computer. then it is so-so.

If your enemies are missing, it is probably because they didn't train their ships/fleets (that's a 40% difference).

tesco samoa · #3 May 16th, 2005, 06:32 PM

and i think it goes,,, crystaline, organic, temporal , religious , psychic

Kevin_Raven · #4 May 16th, 2005, 07:17 PM

okay, well that would explain why they seem to hit only about 1%

another thought that has occurred to me is that the problem might be with the combat replays themselves: other players are reporting that their ships don't even get a chance to fire, but in my replays they are clearly firing (but missing, of course). Has anyone had any trouble with the combat replays when playing by e-mail? I know that I don't particularly like the combat replay engine mainly because it doesn't display which components are damaged on a ship

oh, and I guess I won't be playing psychic again any time soon, I can see how useless their advantages can be (at least compared to religious and the others)