Zorg wrote:We are against to change RIPs RF rates or whatever. Remember that RIP has to be strong and remember that RIP has 1 huge weakness: speed. It is easy to ninja them, especially now with ACS attack.
Also, let us not forget how many reacted when we suggested to increase RIP fuel consumption. Istalris, you were among the ones who stood heavily against it. The result was the fuel consumption to remain at 1 in X-TREME while in Speed and Standard, it got an increase lower than initially planned. This shows how unready most people are to hectic changes. This is why the modification of LG is the best way to go.

(...)

Everyone against increasing deut consumption realized that such an increase is only a short-term solution, since everyone can build higher deuterium synthesizers increasing their production to match the increase in deuterium consumption.



I agree however with the LG being a defensive ship.. I don't see myself launching a lot of LG's in attack with the deuterium consumption it has (2.5 times more than destroyers).
But having LG in your fleet would make RIP ninja's way more effective.

One last thing.. ninja'ing and ACS Attack? ehhh...
Ninja'ing is accompanied by ACS Defend which has been around since almost forever.. and might be heavily underused..

And furthermore, to ninja RIPs you need RIPs.. negating the speed factor. (since it takes about 500 destroyers to take out 1 RIP, to defeat a fleet of 100 RIPs one would need at least 50k destroyers.. which brings the cost debate back into play since 100 RIPs need 900 million res to build while 50k destroyers need 6.25 BILLION res to build..)

You don't want LG to be an attacking ship?

Then please answer me this Zorg, how are we supposed to defeat the players that come online just to build a few RIP's and then leave them around. We can't crash them because they are way to powerful, and we can't attack with Lunar Guardians because the fuel cost is off the scale.

What you are basically saying here is that you are going to leave the RIP's as overpowered as they are but beef up another ship that you can use to ninja them when they attack you?

ACS attack doesn't work against RIP's anyway since they will always completely destroy one of the attackers, both attackers need to be able to survive on their own if they are joining an ACS, which kind of defeats the purpose..

What we need is a ship that is strong in attack against the RIP, not one that has to wait around for them to fly at us.

My suggestions would be to lower the fuel cost of the LG to 1000 and increase RF to 8-10. It's frustrating how this game has devolved to a spam one ship or defense state.

Balance guys, balance!

On a slightly off topic note, I would like to suggest that you make one of your company employees create an account on Xtreme and get him to play as a fleeter for a few months like all the rest of us, then talk to him and realise we were right all along.

C'mon Zorg... if LGs are defensive ships, then we still have a massive problem about RIPs being to powerful.

Let's take a look in my former example:

player B still has 6 RIPs and 2k LLs which, if you convert to metal by the 3:2:1 trade ratio is 82.8mil metal.
If LGs are out of the picture since you say it is intended to be a defensive ship, player A needs to launch 3.5k BCs to win with 0 losses. That fleet converted to metal values 472.5 mil

Now, with some simple math, you can see the attacker needs 5.7 times more expensive fleet just to crash those damn 6 RIPs. And this is just a simple example cause people with 6 RIPs have more than 2k LLs.

Let's say player B now has only 4k LLs more which value is 6.6 mil metal. (so now he has 6 RIPs and 6k LLs)
If player A wants to win with his fleet intact, he needs to launch 4.6k BCs which is 1.1k more than in previous example. 1100 BCs values 148.5 mil metal.

Don't you see the disproportion???


EDIT:
If you don't want to mess with RIPs, I welcome the suggestion of increasing LGs speed and lowering their deuterium consumption. I think 750-1k deuterium consumption and 10k Speed is fair.

It would also be a good idea to make the defense more expensive. After all, 70% of it rebuilds itself automatically after the attack, so it should be at least 50%, if not 70% more expensive. And I'm not talking just LLs, but the whole defense.

With those 2 changes RIPs would still be very powerful, but building fodder for them is limited by it's cost.

What I meant for LG as offensive ship was to incorporate it in fleets against anything. Of course you will use it offensively to ninja the RIPS on return. This is why I proposed a fleet speed increase myself at another post.

Regarding the problem you pose when the RIP owner has a good shell, obvisouly, we do not want the LG to be able to take this off. There should be a battle prior to RIP ninja that will reduce defenses. LG should have all these characteristics that will make them good against RIPs.

Now on to your suggestions:
-Increase of RF up to 10
-Decrease of fuel consumption to 1000
-Increase of Speed

Regarding RF: Open but not yet ready. Have you actually used the simulator with current RF 8 ? You find it still innapropriate ? Why ?

-Regarding speed & consumption: We have to be careful because LGs are quite similat to destroyers, although destroyers thanks to the RF rating beat the hell out of them. However they currently have the same speed and 1 to 2.5 ratio in fuel consumption. So we got to be very careful.

I would say that ultimately a speed increase would not change things much as LGs are already fast. If we are to make a change in speed, the only one should be at 7500, just to give some points to the players that will choose to amass LGs in order to help in ACS attacks against RIPs.

For fuel consumption, how about a 500 decrease. They still need to be more costly to move than the rest of the ships to make sure they do not become a better general solution than other ships.

So to summarize:

Current Stats:

Rapid Fire Against Espionage Ship 600
Rapid Fire Against Solar Satellite 150
Rapid Fire Against Death Star 6
Rapid Fire From Light Fighter 6
Rapid Fire From Destroyer 4
Rapid Fire From Battlecruiser 4
Rapid Fire From Plasma Cannon 4
Structure points 120.000
Shield Strength 700
Attack Points 2.000
Cargo Capacity 9.000 Units
Base Speed 5.000
Fuel Consumption (Deuterium) 2.500

Proposed new stats:
RF against RIP to 8
Base Speed: 7.500
Fuel Consuption: 2.000

On a final note, we could add a simple RF against Light Laser...

I have simmed a few set ups and I think the RF at 8 is acceptable, even at 10 it would make pretty much no difference since there is a floor you hit on the amount of LG to send where you would simply lose too many to make it worth it. You would get more effect lowering the weapons of the RIP than increasing the RF of the LG further.

This is the sim I did with roughly the amount needed to get a win, didn't go for zero loss because the costs would be even more ridiculous than they already are.

2000 LG, techs at 10

vs

10 RIP, techs at 10

LG's win with a loss of between 20 and 60 ships, which roughly caps at a 7 million lost for attacker worst case win not including deut lost.

Rough debris created is:

A debris field containing 31.944.000 units of Metal and 16.944.000 units of Crystal has formed in orbit around the planet.

Fuel cost for the 2000 LG to traverse 50 systems, which is a relatively normal hit distance, is 4,265,000 deuterium. Assuming attacker gets all the DF that is a rough profit of about 30 million if everything is converted to a metal base. Seems okay right? Consider the fact that it might not even hit, then the fact that a lot of hits are more than 50 systems, where the fuel cost of sending the LG will rise to crazy amounts.

Even then, how many people have just 10 RIP's on their own with no other ships or defense accompanying them? Zero people. So the 2000 LG is not compensating for any other ships or defense, so the amount you would need to send could easily be double or triple that amount, reducing potential profit to around.. oh wait there wouldn't even be a profit.

You may answer by saying you should send other ship types to compensate for the other ships protecting the RIP's? Well that wouldn't work since you would need a crazy amount more of different ships to survive the beating the RIP's will dish out..

Finally, let's ignore all those demotivating con's of using the LG as an offensive ship, and look at the cost ratio's.

The cost of building 10 RIP converted to metal base at a 3:2:1 ratio is 132.5 million. To beat that with 2000 LG converted to a metal base you would need to spend 390 million, that is a pretty nasty difference relative to power.

If you add more LG to compensate for the fodder you could quite easily end up needing to spend up to a billion in metal to beat a fleet worth around 170 million in metal.

As you can see, serious balance issues. The only way I can see to improve our prospects is to decrease the fuel consumption of the LG to 1000 or lower (750 would be ideal), change speed to match BS/BC and stick the RF at 8 (wouldn't frown on it being 10 though).

If I'm honest though, even improving the statistics of the LG isn't solving the cost to power ratio of beating RIP based fleets. I have no other idea of what you can do other than redesigning the RIP to be more sensible (if you did that you would also have to do the same with LL).. which I can't really see happening.

If you want to get safe assumptions when comparing 2 ships, I would prefer to seek the tie breaker point. This seems to be 550 LGs for 10 rips. (55 to 1 ratio) after some dozens of sims I did with beta simulator at http://beta.zorgempire.net/simulator.php

As the numbers grow, this leans towards LG favor while as numbers thin, leans towards RIP ration. This happens because of monstrous ratings for the RIPs.

So,
1 RIP will always beat 55 LGs.
10 Rips will beat 550 LGs most of the time but the LGs might also win.
100 RIPS will win few times against 5500 LGs
1000 RIPS win over 55 000 LGs will be really rare
etc etc

So we understand that this tie point will drop a bit as numbers grow. I will focus on 1000 Rips vs 55k LGs comparison which is the most important for X-TREME numerals right now.

1000 RIPS cost:
5 Billions Metal
2.5 Billions Crystal
1.5 Billions Deuterium

With 4:2:1 ratio, this is 16Billions

For 55k LGs we got:
3.3 Billions Metal
3.3 Billions Crystal
825 Millions Deuterium

With 4:2:1 ration, this is 13.2 Billions Metal

In these numbers LGs will win most of the time with RF at 8.

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If we move RF to 10, here is a calculator with RF at 10:
http://beta.zorgempire.net/simulatorb.php

we will see that this TIE breaker moves lower. Specifically I have made it tests with 1000 to 50k and found that 50k LGs will always win 1000 Rips.

I do not rule out a rare win of the RIPs but the % must be really low. Therefore the new metrics are:

50k LGs cost:
3 Billions Metal
3 Billions Crystal
750 Millions Deut

On a 4:2:1 ration: 12 Billions Metal


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==

The 2 above examples is a PERFECT example of the power within our RF system. More specifically, higher RF ratings produce less space for random results.


Here is a simulator with RF at 50 to understand what I mean:
http://beta.zorgempire.net/simulatorc.php

Using the last simulator you will see that RIPS get to do as much dmg they can in 1st round. RF is that high that it is enough for LGs in large numbers to finish off the RIPS in round 1 or sometimes round 2.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=--=-==-=

One final analyzation. Lets say we have 16Billion Metal. With them we can build:
1000 RIPS
and 66.666 LGs (wow! )

This is above the TIE breaker and it means that LGs should always win. Even if you check with current RF at 6, LGs win.

Here are all calculators to help you:
1) RF at 6: http://www.zorgempire.net/simulator.php
2) RF at 8: http://beta.zorgempire.net/simulator.php
3) RF at 10: http://beta.zorgempire.net/simulatorb.php
4) RF at 50: http://beta.zorgempire.net/simulatorc.php

The deut consumption must remain high, otherwise there would be no point for battleships or battlecruisers at a 750 or 1000 lg consumption. Leaving the speed as is also encourages other ships. Currently they do serve a purpose already, although an rf kick up to 8 could help it. Another focus should be on dessies and heavy fighters, two useless classes as is. As a result, how about a raise of LG rf on rips to 8, but also raising Destroyer rf on LG from 4 to 8 itself? This would aid the LG in being RIP counter, and at the same time, give a counter to them and in the process, bring back a purpose to a ship that nobody uses anymore...

Well the numbers look much more sensible there, but just so you know, players never perform large scale battles at a tie breaker point. Fleeters are always looking for the point at which you get a clear win with the most sensible profit.

Now, to break down your point on the 55k LG and 1000 RIPs.

How much debris is formed from that hit?

How much would it cost to send those 55k LG over 50 systems (average distance for a hit)?

How much profit are you actually going to make from that hit considering your losses?

Nobody has 1000 RIPs solo, so lets include several thousands, or even tens of thousands of other random ships and some more tens of thousands of defense (maybe even a few 100's of thousands of light lasers, since that is not uncommon in Xtreme right now). With these new additions, what does the situation look like for those 55k LG?

You can't send different ships with the LG to compensate because the 1000 RIP's will decimate them completely, so we are forced to just use even more LG. How many LG must we now use, what are the new costs for flying 50 systems, how much billions must we now spend to achieve this amount of LG's and what are the new profit ratios?

We can't just look at how effective the LG is solo against the RIP, because literally nobody has just RIP fleets. The numbers may look good when you come down to the tie breaker of solo LG against solo RIP, but let's add a few random units into the mix and watch the excrement hit the fan.

Regarding your calculations though, I vote for RF 10 on the LG and fuel cost reduction to 1000. Speed increase too if possible.

Bottom line is, LG may look good against RIP if you want to risk a tie and probably very low profit, but that point is irrelevant because nobody has just RIP. Therefore the usefulness of LG will never be realised.

After the sims I did, I have to say that LGs loss in a battle against RIPs is inevitable. This make the particular type bad for profit. I think we have to live with this as it is also close to what we were talking about offensive ship.

LGs to be useful as it seems, they need to be in large numbers,at least 20k I would say in a universe like X-TREME. They will tend to perform well in a battle against other ships because they have RF only to a few ship types so they will most of the time focus against the RIPS. Using lighter armor ships along side with them, will ensure that they will survive 1st round in mass and in this way they can be pretty devastating.

I understand that there will be a million other strategies, as always, what we want here is a good anti rip ship though. A ship that players will know before hand it will do well against RIPs. Now, if there are strategies to make them less or more effective, this is up to each player strategy and intelligence.

I agree for RF to 10, speed to 7500 and fuel consumption at 2000.
Any further replies, please state differences on these values so we can come to a final decision.

Finally, regarding RIP alterations, why don't you create a suggestion ?
It might not be possible to change much in existing universes but we can keep good elements for the future universes.

Increasing speed to 7500 and reducing fuel cost to 2000 will have the net effect of just a speed increase and pretty much not change the fuel usage at all, since faster fleets will use more fuel anyway.

I'd still like to push for a lower fuel cost, if 1000 is out of the question then maybe consider 1500? Even leaving it at 5000 (Dessie speed) would be fine if fuel cost can be pushed down further.

Looking at the numbers and sim I've been running with the new figures, it still looks like that to perform an average RIP + random units hit in Xtreme (average for fleeters is going to be around 1 bill TD, resulting in around 4-500 mill DF depending on composition), sending over the average of 50 systems, is going to cost anywhere in the region of 30-40 million deuterium to get a good result. How many people are really going to spend that amount of deuterium just for the chance at an average hit? Consider the fact said person will be already using a lot of deuterium to build and maintain his/her LG fleet..

Let's not even get into how much it will cost to do big hits with them D: