X-Verse Fleet Fest I

[Deadbeat_Spinn]

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Indeed, I think most fleets can be rationalized by their makers.

The Phoenixes exist as damage sinks and capital smashers, and their enormity makes them difficult for fighters to get a bead on. The Falcon Haulers are there to run anti-fighter work, and the Pelicans are disposable jeeps and missile platforms.

One potential idea for the next X-V-F-F is a smaller scale ship smackdown. Where the credit cap is somewhere around 25 million - which you can easily drain into a single MM6, or spread out across a fighter group or group of gunboats... not quite enough money to do any serious spamming of anything, except perhaps M5's. Or Zephyri. On that scale, the challenge is more about fine-tuning the balance between numbers, gun coverage, speed, and shields.

[Master of the Blade]

[Spitzeuk]

Shrike, solano - ridiculously good value for money.
Panther - almost as strong if not as strong as most other M7, decent price without the 32 hangar bay. Given the hangar bay rule this ship is by far the best choice for anyone with 30+ fighters. Also rendering carriers entirely useless in this competition.
Falcon Hauler - Fairly cheap, crazy shielding and decent weaponry potential (not sure on generator but otherwise go EBC and fill that cargo bay?)
Nova Raider - Pretty good all round ship. Excellent for the price compared to any M3+.

The competition is based around a financial cap, stands to reason that you go for the best value for money ships to win? M3+ ships are incredibly good but are they twice as good as normal M3s to make it worth it? Same for heavy variants of M6s, are they 2/3 (or 5 in the case of the Hydra) times as good as their normal variant? Especially when the Springblossom is the cheapest M6 and probably more powerful (not sure about under AI control with its speed though). Actually I'm quite surprised we have so few Springblossoms and Katanas. Lastly there is M1 vs Panther. Why would you pay 60-90 million for 30-50 hangar space when you can pay 37 mil for 32 space. Some carriers may have slightly better weapons and a fair amount more shielding but are slower, but I don't think it`ll ever justify spending double.
Given 25mil budget I think we'd just see even more Solanos, they are practically M3 ship with M4 cost.

So how can you prevent the best value for money ships being the most common? Maybe change the budget to something that isnt about credits:
Budget as number of ships? - hello Eclipse/Hyperion/Boreas spam (I'm aware you can't buy Hyp, yes)
Budget as number of guns? - not sure how that would go
Given limit for ships of each class? - would probably force fleets to be even more similar.


TLDR; When you limit a competition to a budget you have to expect the best value for money ships to be the most common.


PS I'm aware that my fleet is perhaps the biggest offender as I have all of the above mentioned ships. The fleet was designed to win - even though the winner will probably be a specialised fleet that gets drawn up against what it is designed to counter IE lucky

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

[Deadbeat_Spinn]

Leave it to NUKLEAR-SLUG to come up with an all Split (war)fleet and I like that fleet name.

I think we now close to having all 7 races and a Corporation being used as a full fleet.

• Argon: Stealth Hunter & Phinixa
  
• Boron: Mutiny
  
• Paranid: Not yet
  
• Split: kalu & NUKLEAR-SLUG
  
• Teladi: Tenlar Scarflame, ashkrowe, & Wildjames
  
• Terran: travisdh1 & stemardue
  
• Yaki: Not yet
  
• OTAS: Killjaeden

Almost.....we just need a full Paranid and a full Yaki fleet. Some came close, GCU Grey Area for the Yaki and Alex Vanderbilt for the Paranid. Both had only 2 ships and 1 ship, GCU & AV respectively, that wasn't Yaki/Paranid in origin.

Guess I have to retract my statement that there's only one M3+ all the fleets. I suspect this fleet could do rather well. What is somewhat worrying is the sheer amount of Tempests that his fleet is fielding.

[perkint]

What a surprise - N-S wades in with nearly 1,000 explosive warheads...



Tim

[GCU Grey Area]

[Deadbeat_Spinn]

@GCU Grey Area,

I agree completely with this. Out of any race/faction, the Yaki are the hardest fleet to field due to the lack of M6/M7/M7M's (even though the ships exist within the game files and are practically complete clones of Commonwealth ships) and as you mentioned Yaki capitals are very expensive. Even the Pirates would be easier to field since they have M6's (that are varients of Commonwealth ships and have different stats) and an M7.

I wonder if it could be allowed that your Deimos be converted to Kariudo Haulers since you already outfitted them with KH's in mind rather than as true Deimos. We should bring this up with TJ if and when he reappears, I saw him on the forums very briefly yesterday (i.e. 5min or so).

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

[Alex Vanderbilt]

[Deadbeat_Spinn]

[Merdocharr]

Just in case anyone is still interested about the fighter spam, I did some more testing. Yet again with my fleet vs X2-Eliah's since there was a savegame handy. Three rounds that played pretty much in similar fashion. Fleets approach, fighters engage. About 30 seconds later ships are stopping. At this point most of the ships have stopped, perhaps 30 of them are moving in total from both fleets. Since fighters were the first ones to make contact, they are still without support from capital ships and get slaughtered by moving ships (and being outnumbered 1 to 6). Missiles are being fired by moving ships that have them. Fighterspam moves to next ships, corvettes and make short work from them. Turrets do some damage, but not nearly enough. Fighterspam moves onto Big ships. First two rounds the ships either moved or fired more than one turret. Or didn't do either. Third one had actually some effective turret action. Moving fighters get to sit in place and shoot at the still capships with only a few doing attack runs. Most shoot just a little outside range to do any damage. Interestingly when no ships are actually fighting, all gain the ability to move, but return to same sitting in place when fighting starts again. Results: ~140 solanos + 8 plecos left; ~130 solanos + 6 plecos left; panther left with 57% hull since 70 fighters were shooting from too far and being blasted to bits.

Turrets: Turrets in general fired even when ships were stopped. When bigship turrets didn't fire, plecos in range did.

Oh, and for reference my system is Q9550 @ 2,83GHz, ATI 4870 and 4Gb of 800MHz DDR2. Tests were run on full details and 1920x1200. The few other fights I've tested have had 80-100 ships at a time and no stopping in the scale of this. Perhaps the next Fleet Fest should have a cap on ship numbers?

[Cpt.Jericho]

Had similar problems, though in real game. When I accepted a couple of patrols and the sector is one hell of a battlefield my turrets often cease firing. Probably the limits of the game engine. Never noticed stopping ships though.
And yes, later XFFs should have fighter caps. Better saying a fixed number than the available docking bays or most fleets will use Panthers again.

[Deadbeat_Spinn]

My two cents on fighter and fleet cap for future XFF battles,

Fighters: 100 (though the majority of current fleets that contain fighters don't exceed 100).

Fleet: 150 (same as above).

Additions: Pirate ships and varients become accessible when building a fleet. My reasoning behind this is adding a bigger variable when it comes to fights and fleets could be more diverse.

As for Xenon I think they should remain off limits for one major reason. Xenon M1's and M2's are by far the cheapest of their respective classes and someone would most likely throw together a Xenon M2 fleet. Hullwise one could field 3 Xenon K's for close to the same price that 1 Boreas costs.