Home » Primary Racial Traits » HE » Meta-morph
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Re: Meta-morph |
Tue, 06 January 2004 00:14 |
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Sotek | | Chief Warrant Officer 2 | Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
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Your attractiveness calc is wrong.
First: Beams dislike targetting heavily-shielded low-bora ships.
The frigates are highly attractive to missiles (on par with most chaff, in fact), and are very *un*attractive to beams.
However, did you forget that I specified gatlings?
Gatlings, which shoot *everything* in range.
Including ... chaff.
And, yes, a battleship like that would also destroy your frigates, but is getting slightly high in tech.
You know what else is a good counterdesign to your frigates?
In fact, a bloody astounding one?
Frigates, with an okay engine, tech 3 or 6 shields, and sappers.
They're remarkably good as an anti-frigate counterdesign.
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Re: Meta-morph |
Tue, 06 January 2004 04:21 |
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timmy | | Crewman 1st Class | Messages: 21
Registered: October 2003 | |
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alexdstewart wrote on Tue, 06 January 2004 00:49 |
Plans within plans within plans within plans...
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Wow ... I've been following this whole thread, but this is getting ridiculous ... who is trying to prove what again? Perhaps you guys should just play a game ... one of you make Metas for mainline ship, the other one cruisers. right now it's just too much theory-craft. You know things are getting dumb when someone says "well you know, a good counter-design to that frigate is a battleship with ..."
lol
regards,
Tim
[Updated on: Tue, 06 January 2004 04:33] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Meta-morph |
Tue, 06 January 2004 08:59 |
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iztok | | Commander | Messages: 1211
Registered: April 2003 Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
timmy wrote on Tue, 06 January 2004 10:21 | Wow ... I've been following this whole thread, but this is getting ridiculous ... who is trying to prove what again? Perhaps you guys should just play a game ... one of you make Metas for mainline ship, the other one cruisers. right now it's just too much theory-craft.
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Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap... (a long applause ).
BR, Iztok
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Re: Meta-morph |
Thu, 08 January 2004 01:34 |
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timmy | | Crewman 1st Class | Messages: 21
Registered: October 2003 | |
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alexdstewart wrote on Thu, 08 January 2004 01:11 |
Easy- there is something called The "Battle Simulator"
You should try it... someday.
I'll publish the results as soon as I get to it,- I am rather busy now...
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I've heard of and used the Battle Simulator, thanks. But you're talking about a little bit more than just individual battles when you argue CCs vs. metas. Your battle simulator can only give you answers about specific tactical situations, ignoring the strategic and economic aspects of warfare. If you yourself admit you "donno how to play HE", then you may find not many people will take your battle simulations seriously, no matter what results you publish ...
I'm not saying either one of you is wrong. Just that no matter how many simulations you run, or how many imaginary battles you explain, it won't prove your point like actually playing a game and speaking from experience will. Some of these guys have been playing this game for years and years ... you are not going to be able to argue against them by just quoting hypothetical numbers and simulation results. Simulations have their place, but they can't win an argument by themselves. So go learn to play HE, and use metas instead of CCs. Then come back and talk about it.
regards,
Tim (Timoids)
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Re: Meta-morph |
Fri, 09 January 2004 02:50 |
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HE Prt of course has no gates, and how you design your ships highly depends on your choices of race design. So I agree with Timmy that actual experiance is a good thing.
You should have a total plan including expansion and warship style (and figuring out how to live without your own gates). You can be high tech or low tech hordes, mineral overflow or mineral scarce, focused on weapons and/or const and/or energy and/or something else. Your LRT's also highly influence which ships are good designs (or even possible), such as RS, IFE, NRSE, BET, CE, IS (no stardocks means early defence, fuel supply and speed more important as ship producers are further away).
Since Alex is a fan of armour, I suggest he also look at bio/TT/organic armour/cheap scanners/smarbombs if he goes with one of the high growth variations. For a certain style of HE, TT can actually make sense because you can get it for half the points of a normal race.
Also, for an armour fan a focus on const rather than weapons (early super armour and nubs) might be good.
For the RS fan, a focus on energy gives something to trade and early flux capacitators.
And the metamorph makes HE compete with Warmonger (and perhaps SD) as the second most stealthy race. So yet another reason to think about electrical (beyond the usual).
David
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Re: Meta-morph |
Sat, 10 January 2004 11:10 |
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LEit wrote on Fri, 09 January 2004 07:48 |
multilis wrote on Fri, 09 January 2004 02:50 | For the RS fan, a focus on energy gives something to trade and early flux capacitators.
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This probably doesn't belong in the HE forum, but I'll just briefly mention here: For RS I tend to mostly ignore energy and instead focus on construction. RS does poorly in the BB era, so you want that to be as brief as possible, and get to nubians ASAP. Also with +40% to your shields, you can afford to be a level of shields behind people who don't have RS. It's nice to have RS and better shields, but on a BB it's not going to help much. However having nubians and poorer shields RS will help a lot.
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You also have metamorphs to think about, even for specialty ones having move slot flex is nice.
Sometimes techs can be traded for and because others may focus on weapons and const, energy might be more useful trade wise. Sort of like having non-conflicting habs helps make friends, in a tech sort of way. (Like some go for low radiation just because other like the high radiation for radiating ramscoops).
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Re: Meta-morph |
Mon, 19 January 2004 21:54 |
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zoid | | Ensign | Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002 Location: Murray, KY - USA | |
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Sotek wrote on Sat, 03 January 2004 02:36 | The problem with your cloaked metamorph fleet is illustrated in the following scenario:
You have a cloaked metamorph fleet. I don't know about it. You also have enough bombers to take out my worlds in one year.
I'm foolish and have no cruisers.
First year... you hit a world of mine. Suddenly, I know about your fleet and where it is.
I lose a world, but you lose surprise. I design and build a cruiser fleet that will *crush* your metamorphs; not difficult if I have a reasonable-sized empire right now, given the limited number of slots you have left after your cloaks.
Second year: My cruisers finish. You kill another world. I still know where you are.
Third year: My cruisers gate together and kill your metamorphs. I now have a warfleet that can react to things much quicker than yours, and can go on the offensive.
Total cost: Two worlds.
Gain: The initiative.
Now, yes, you can bring more fleets in, but at this point I'm ready, and can either use agressive scanning combined with minefields, or abandon defense somewhat and take the offensive to you.
And then you'd be stuck doing what HE does very poorly; defending.
| Funny how none of this is the way it has happened to me in the past. You failed to explain how you know where my cloaked meta-fleet is on turn three when you engage and destroy them. I guess you are assuming that I launched my attack with a handfull of metas without having your orbits under observation, am ignorant of your reactionary buildup and am predictably waltzing from one planet to the next.
The world is full of "foolish" people who procrastinate building warships that will soon be obsolete until they absolutely must (and I don't think that is necessarily foolish). I've never seen the opponent who can build a fleet of cruisers in two turns that will defeat my meta-fleet that it took me 10 years to build, and if I did see such an opponent I'm probably toast anyways but it's unlikely that I'd be drawing first blood with him.
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I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math? Ummm, sure! I do FREESTYLE math.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Meta-morph |
Mon, 19 January 2004 23:27 |
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Sotek | | Chief Warrant Officer 2 | Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
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What agressive scanning? Okay, you're trying to be sneaky. That's going to slow your attack down. Yes, it'll slow my reaction down, too.
That third year is where I jumped to the same place as I expected you to go. If I was wrong, I lose another planet and try again.
And your fleet of cloaked metas is, ship-for-ship, *highly* ineffective in combat, compared to a dedicated warship.
You have to use a lot of slots, which gives my cruisers a very strong advantage.
Plus, when they catch you, which *doesn't* require aggressive scanning, it'll be on a world with, yes, a good starbase.
Which'll hurt your fleet quite a bit, combined with my dedicated-warship cruisers.
Plus, I've almost certainly been engaging in minelaying by now, so your freedom of motion in my space is at least partially limited.
If you split your fleet, I lose more worlds at first, but can group to catch you.
Yes, it's difficult, but it's no easier for you.
Two years of full-empire production to take out a ten-year cloaked metamorph fleet? Perfectly plausible, combined with the other advantages I have being on the defense, especially when you factor in that I've been most likely researching for those ten years where you were building... which means I probably have BBs or am very close. And BBs will destroy metas, hands down.
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Re: Meta-morph |
Tue, 20 January 2004 00:20 |
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And an Energy 14 HE with BBs will destroy regular BBs hands down.
Stealth does not have to involve just stealthy ships or just offense.
You attack a planet with a bunch of jihads against some fast beamers... HE has no gates, you know what to expect. Where did all that chaff come from? (Called overcloaking, works well against penn scans).
Similar with attack, you never know if the regular force is all there really is coming to attack you.
In my current game, my opponent has lots of cruisers, both beamer and jihad. He sees my massive horde of shielded gattling destroyers with some scout based flak, he can't match my abillity to move with his 100/250 gates (I have lots of friends with gates). He doesn't see cruisers, they aren't the mainline heavy ship, metamorphs are.
We are talking the two biggest powers of the game battling it out, I am HE, he is JOAT.
We have been at war since 2433. Not all HE's are slow starters.
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Re: Meta-morph |
Tue, 20 January 2004 20:01 |
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zoid | | Ensign | Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002 Location: Murray, KY - USA | |
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iztok wrote on Tue, 20 January 2004 06:00 | Zoid, please explain how your excellent analysis goes along with your sig. IMO you should change it.
BR, Iztok
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Thanks a lot, but every time I write something here a real expert (who won't call himself an expert, only 'intermediate') will drag out the mathmatical formulas and all that other jazz and prove me wrong. I'm wrong far too often to be any good. I still have opinions on stuff though and like to put them out there for consideration - you just never know, maybe someday I'll be right on something and the experts won't dog me out. But the disclaimer is for forum newcomers who may not be aware of my history of error, and just in case I manage to be convincing they should know that anything I write should not be taken as gospel.
To me, Jason Cawley, Barry (what's his name) and the other oft-quoted experts whose names and posting clips repeatedly resurface here on this forum are Stars GODS.
The rather modest guys here (who revere and quote JC, Barry and the rest) calling themselves intermediates because they figure they are not in the same league (like Micha, to name but one) may or may not be in the same league with JC, but I still think they are experts. It's understandable that they don't want to bestow the title on themselves, however. I bet there are many that most of us would consider experts who would hesitate to identify themselves as such (maybe even some of the "Stars GODS").
That's certainly not me, though. Me, I'm nobody. Just a mathematical illiterate who never seems to weary of being proved an opinionated idiot. The majority of my multiplayer Stars experience predate the discovery of hypergrowth monster races and those are a recent discovery to me after years of "Stars absence". I'm currently playing only my second attempt at an HG race, so I think I qualify as a newbie even though my Stars software (minus patches) is V2.6b. At best, I am "lower-intermediate" Stars player, expert forum idiot.
But thanks aga
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I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math? Ummm, sure! I do FREESTYLE math.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Meta-morph |
Tue, 20 January 2004 22:09 |
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zoid | | Ensign | Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002 Location: Murray, KY - USA | |
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Sotek wrote on Mon, 19 January 2004 20:27 | That third year is where I jumped to the same place as I expected you to go. If I was wrong, I lose another planet and try again....If you split your fleet, I lose more worlds at first, but can group to catch you.
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I'd drive you nuts splitting the fleet one turn, and combining them in another turn. You wouldn't know where or how many was coming to how many planets, and if your nature is anything like mine you'd be planning on making your NEXT race IS with cheap electronics so you would never again be troubled like this. If you have only two planets for your opponent to attack, THEN you're on equal footing. There's a 50% chance you'll make a right guess or a wrong guess. Other than that, I wouldn't want your chances of success for guessing the right target.
Quote: | And your fleet of cloaked metas is, ship-for-ship, *highly* ineffective in combat, compared to a dedicated warship.
| Two parts of that statement make it completely wrong. To say *highly* makes this statement patently false, since at best one could honestly argue the cruiser is "slightly" better due to the better base init and armor. The cruiser is rarely argued as better on a ship-for-ship basis; most often the cruiser is deemed to be more cost-effective. Even using the 8-capacity slot to achieve 95% cloaking leaves the metamorph with sufficient slots to rival or outperform a cruiser depending on the design of both ships. A well designed metamorph will never be "*highly* ineffective ship-for-ship" against the best cruiser design of similar tech level, only less cost-effective in the opinion of some. My argument is that the stealth of the 95% cloaked metamorph adequately compensates for the cost-effectiveness gap by entering only battles he can win. Any fights he has will be entirely of his choosing, because although you know where they are when they attack, that's too late and does you absolutely no good in the next turn when they are elsewhere unless your opponent is predictable.
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I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math? Ummm, sure! I do FREESTYLE math.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Meta-morph |
Tue, 20 January 2004 22:40 |
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zoid | | Ensign | Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002 Location: Murray, KY - USA | |
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zoid wrote on Tue, 20 January 2004 19:09 | ....I feel you're not being intellectually honest on this topic. Of course stealth has value - BIG value that cannot be so easily negated, and the MM has the capacity for 95% stealth with a weapons platform comparable to the cruiser.
| For the sake of my own intellectual honesty, let me say I just remembered that to make a MM 95% cloaked it requires the 8-slot and the two adjacent slots as well be filled with the EL10 cloak, which does NOT leave enough slots for a weapons platform comparable to the cruiser. I maintain however, that the 8-slot alone will provide sufficient cloaking to make it's stealth ability adequate for the era while the remaining slots allow for cruiser performance.
I have also referred to the two opposing empires being technologically equivalent on one hand and then suggesting a weakness in EL tech for the player opposing the HE. If they are equivalent technologically in all fields my argument is weakened. Chances are though, that the HE is more likely to have better EL tech unless the opposing player is playing a JOAT. Still, I felt compelled to mention the inconsistancies in my arguments.
I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math? Ummm, sure! I do FREESTYLE math.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Meta-morph |
Wed, 21 January 2004 04:53 |
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iztok | | Commander | Messages: 1211
Registered: April 2003 Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
zoid wrote on Wed, 21 January 2004 02:01 |
iztok wrote on Tue, 20 January 2004 06:00 | Zoid, please explain how your excellent analysis goes along with your sig. IMO you should change it.
BR, Iztok
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Thanks a lot, but every time I write something here a real expert (who won't call himself an expert, only 'intermediate') will drag out the mathmatical formulas and all that other jazz and prove me wrong. I'm wrong far too often to be any good.
... snip...
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... but from your post it is obviously you have whole game strategy and quite some experience. The only problem I see with it is nowadays you have to fight faster-starting and faster-moving races then your HE is. I have the feeling your strategy should work better with a -f race, where you don't lose much if you lose a planet, and you can attack really quick.
BR, Iztok
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