Racial Traits, Discussion on Pro's/Con's.

[avdb]

In PBM I thus far did best with Religious. The 100% hit chance gives a great advantage. Combine this with a ship strategy of Maximum Weapons Range gives a huge advantages and a lot of misses on the enemy side (in combat replay). Rusty, did you take ship staregy into account when doing the simulations?

[capnq]

I tried Religious in my Last PBW game, and got thoroughly crushed before I had a chance to research the Talisman.

I did a lot better in the game before that with Organic. There was one battle towards the end of the game where I had a fleet with over a dozen ships armed with two to four Seeking Parasites each. When I was watching the combat replay, my screensaver kicked in on four consecutive turns because of all the waves of seekers flying around.

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Cap'n Q
My first SE IV mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[This message has been edited by capnq (edited 10 November 2001).]

[Tricorder]

I find that I don't like any of the advanced research trees. I would rather use the 1500 points to increase things like aggressiveness and defensiveness for one thing, then use that advantage to attack with the null spacers since they skip shields and armor.

Summary: 1500 racial points can be better used to increase lesser traits when there is good stuff in the basic research tree.

EDIT: Oh wait, that was more meant for the 'How to Fight Organic Tech' thread. Oh well.


[This message has been edited by Tricorder (edited 10 November 2001).]

[Rusty_Nail]

I have been doing some all-tech testing of the special races from the point of view of one-on-one combat to see which is best (Dreadnought size maximun). The results depend on whether you are talking tactical or strategic combat. In tactical, the talisman combined with long range direct fire (Anti Proton) and a worm seems to kill anything with a shorter range if you handle it properly, even bigger ships. The enemy seldom even gets off a single shot before being destroyed. Of course you need a few PDs for missile defence, but that is elementary. Conclusion: religious by a mile.
In strategic, it is different because there is no suitable movement option to control distance to enemy ships at end of turn.(This could and should be introduced by MM). So even the talisman gets beat out most of the time(about 75%) by a well-fortified allegiance converter. Conclusion: Psychic.
In my strategic simulations, none of the other races has anything to even come close to the AC. This could be changed if MM introduced some new movement options. These are my tentative results. I would like to hear your comments. Have I overlooked anything? If anyone wants to suggest an even better design, please publish your design and I will test it against mine.
Of course there may be other reasons for choosing one of the other races. Also working with two or more ships each could conceivably change the above results.

[Rusty_Nail]

S-J: A Master Computer is not a viable defense against the Allegiance Subverter in one on one combat in strategic mode. You can try "Don't get hurt" but the AS will eventually corner you. Of course, the AS needs massive shield defences in order to take the first hit from some powerful baddies.
Avdb: I did look at ship strategies. The AS does best with a point blank/short weapons strategy. While optimal weapons damage is usually the best strategy for most direct fire ships, sometimes it is better to get close and ignore defensive considerations, e.g. if you are using a worm or an AS where you do not expect to get hit back. In a fleet though, this could be dangerous.
MM could enhance the game immeasurably by introducing some more sophisticated ship strategies. An example: I call this "just out of range". Place your ship at a distance away from your opponent equal to your opponent's strike range (move points plus direct fire range) plus one. This assures you of the first shot if he moves towards you, which will often be the deciding factor. Any human operating optimally would do this automatically in tactical combat, right? This would give a much more formidable AI as well as allowing PBW humans a more sophisticated use of ships in fleets.

[Mephisto]

quote:

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Originally posted by rusty nail:
S-J: A Master Computer is not a viable defense against the Allegiance Subverter in one on one combat in strategic mode.

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Why that? If he did not bring a computer virus along you are immune to his attacks.

[Mark Walton]

On Emotionless:
This should be reduced in price, I feel, simply because it removes good effects of high morale as well as avoiding effects of low. (Doesn't it?) Which means, you are losing out on a possible advantage.

On Racial techs:
I am thinking of running a test with all base-racial techs set to starting level 1, so you don't have that research overhead. You would still need to research the actual tech, just not the initial "race" tech.

[Rusty_Nail]

Mephisto: Sorry. I thought it was obvious that the AS had the computer virus since S-J was assuming this. I recommend having a couple extra to be sure you hit the first time.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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S-J: A Master Computer is not a viable defense against the Allegiance Subverter in one on one combat in strategic mode.
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Why that? If he did not bring a computer virus along you are immune to his attacks.

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Hey, its better than nothing, right? It also means one more chance that the enemy will miss (If either shot (CV or AS) misses, your ship will not be converted)
Plus, you now have two things to target with your null-space cannon; disabling either CV or AS ensures your victory.

Since there is nothing else that helps, you might as well use it. Mix it up by using twin MC IIs, thus requiring either two CV hits or a largemount CV.
When you get really pissed off, throw a BattleMoon at them, with its natural immunity to ASers.

[Rusty_Nail]

"Hey, its better than nothing, right? It also means one more chance that the enemy will miss (If either shot (CV or AS) misses, your ship will not be converted)
Plus, you now have two things to target with your null-space cannon; disabling either CV or AS ensures your victory." S-J.
Good point, S-J. The null space is indeed the most formidable opponent, winning about 48% of the time against the AS. Whoever gets in the first shot wins, 98% of the time on the first combat round. The reason it is not exactly 50% each is that occasionally the AS's first shot comes at exactly strike distance 11 (5 moves plus 6 range). He knocks out the null space engines with the virus, cannot fire his AS (range 5), uses his worm, then finished null space off easily later as null is reduced to one move point. Of course, in tactical combat, AS rules null space easily using the "just out of range" tactic. Incidentally, null space does only about 40% against the talisman beamer in strategic (smaller chance of getting in the first shot due to a greater range difference; 8 versus 5 to the AS's 6 versus 5).
By the way, what is a Battlemoon? A base ship? I have only looked at Dreadnought class so far.