Damage table for Anti-Medium weapons (AKA as LRFs):
Medium Armor 1.3333333
Very Light Armor 1.000000
That's right, LRFs are almost as good against corvettes as they are against light frigates...of course, this is easily overlooked since LRFs suck at turning and shooting the damn things....unless you are an ILLUMINATOR, in which case the sillly fighter behavior of corvettes doesn't matter...so what ends up happening is that massed illuminators practically become immune to corvettes....
Did some tests to confirm this:
40 illuminators vs. 80 TEC corvettes
Corvettes win, but with ridiculous losses (only about 25-30 survive)
50 illuminators vs. 100 TEC corvettes
Corvettes win with same ridiculous losses (only about 40 survive)
To put this into perspective:
75 LRMs vs. 100 TEC Corvettes
Corvettes win with hardly any losses (about 70 survive)
So.......
Once you start getting into the 30s or so with illuminators, corvettes essentially become a non issue...corvettes barely beat out the illuminators without defense vessels being involved, add those and nothing short of HCs or a powerful AoE can stop an Advent fleet...this is why AL and their coronata is so powerful, because you combine the best fleet with the best support ability (suppression) and 2nd best FFing ability (Unity Mass)...
This is an issue specifically with the illuminator, but how does one make the illuminator weaker against corvettes without removing the side weapons? I propose that the damage table be changed such that Anti-medium weapons no longer fair so well very light armor...maybe a value or .80 or .75 would be more appropriate...sure the illuminator will always have an advantage over the other LRFs when going against corvettes, but the LRM and kanrak make up for it with better focus fire...the current situation though is just ridiculous, there is no counter whatsoever against illuminators other than HCs, and that simply is not acceptable...
The only reason I can possibly think of that would ever give cobalts an advantage over disciples is the build times....
The base build time for a disciple is 22 while for a cobalt it is 24 (these are the base build times, game speed will change them but both would be modified by the same multiplier)...
So, on a pure fleet supply basis, disciples are building at 5.5 seconds per fleet supply while cobalts are building at 4.8 seconds per fleet supply...in short, cobalts build slightly faster on a per fleet supply basis...
I can potentially see this making a difference if you were immediately Orky rushed (we are talking 2 jumps away)...that being said, the extra DPS per fleet supply that disciples have should mostly offset this...IIRC, disciples do 9 DPS (which comes out to 9/4 = 2.5 DPS per fleet supply) while cobalts do 10.5 DPS (which comes out to 10.5/5 = 2.1 DPS per fleet supply)...
If you consider both build time and DPS, you will find that on a per second basis you can "build" 9/22 = .4091 DPS/s as Advent and 10.5/24 = .4375 DPS/s as TEC...in short, TEC can "acquire" or build DPS (via LFs) slightly faster than Advent...however, the percent difference between these values is only 6.7% in favor of the cobalts....
So, there is a difference, but it is very small...in my opinion, both factions are going to be capable of defeating an Orky rush coming from 3 jumps away and both factions are going to have difficulty stopping an Orky rush that is 2 jumps away...
Note that this analysis did not consider costs...however, I think it is fair to say that the costs are comparable enough where the DPS and build times are far more relevant...
Another thing ignored was the capital ships....on one hand, the Marza clearly has more direct firepower...on the other hand, the Progenitor has a squadron of SC (which if bombers would contribute a decent amount of firepower)...because the Marza does not have a squadron while the Progenitor does, in reality both capital ships will be contributing comparable amounts of firepower (I do believe Marza still would be contributing more)...
In a true Orky rush scenario, it is unlikely the capital ship is beyond level 1....most Marza players would have picked raze planet while most Progenitor players would have picked colonize, neither of which are abilities that matter when it comes to Orky rushing...but, if we let the capital ship become level 2 (in my opinion we would then be at a stage where both factions are more than capable of having enough LFs to make this argument moot), then we can allow the Marza to have radiation bomb or incendiary shells which would result in extra DPS...
However, if we do that, then we also have to let the Prog player pick a 2nd ability as well...since that ability could very well be shield regeneration, the Advent capital ship would actually go to great lengths in protecting the disciples from a low level Orky...this is a strategy I have done myself and have been told of by very skilled players (it is by no means a new or recent strategy)...
In short, I find very little evidence to suggest that an early TEC fleet could stop an Orky with minimal (or zero) losses but that in the same situation an Advent fleet would suffer massive losses...Sagewon and Cykur's tests also support the notion that both factions are more or less equally capable in this regard....
If a test is done that shows Orky rushing from 2 jumps away can easily be stopped by TEC but not by Advent, I would be interested in seeing those replays....
Yes, it was 3 jumps, but two of the jumps are almost right angles and don't take long to traverse. The final time I was showing Sagewon he could defend from me, I sent the Migrator immediately and it was arriving just as the technology was finishing being researched. 2 jumps or 3, it was near the limit of how soon an Orky could be built.
The other thing I demonstrated was that there is quite a margin of safety...you don't HAVE to be completely prepared as long as you react right away and start building and sending ships. When I was defending the first time, I didn't even start building a second frig factory until after the Orky was being built. Sagewon again had an easier time than I did, because in his paranoia he amassed more ships sooner, while I pretended I didn't know an Orky attack was coming. Both of us had no problem fighting it off. Ironically, the only person who might have trouble fighting off an Orky with frigates is another Vasari if they haven't committed to frigates and didn't research for their own Orky....but as for Advent and TEC, they can just spit out Disciples / Cobalts.
Anyhow, that is why I wanted to see a replay of someone fighting the "impossible" Orky rush. If this becomes an issue in 5's, the only possible thing I can think of is that the games early speed boost via Alloy disproportionally affects build times and not attack times, making an Orky build faster than it should. This is just wild speculation on my part, because I've never directly encountered what "all skilled players know", that it is impossible to stop an Orky rush as Advent.
We need to change the culture/mindset of people and start calling these "Dominant Strategies". Then we need to ask if it's due to an imbalance in the game that causes these Dominant Strategies to occur with skilled players.
We should also only be concerned with skilled players when making these determinations. The great thing about working to actively identify the underlying imbalance causing the Dominant Strategy in question is that it will inevitably help improve the game for less skilled or PvAI games.
After all gameplay is about making choices and if the game is poorly balanced, many of the choices available are essentially rendered useless.
been a while since I double punched.
Well i have read your replies and here are my thoughts:
-Have you guys had an egg in the same gravity well during testing ( needs to be a simultaneous attack). Strikecraft is irrelevant in the calculation as egg will be present.
-I would *never* go Raze Planet on Marza at lvl 1 vs Vasari. Thats a mistakes in anyone's book. You can see the teams composition before the game and act accordingly (play safe vs random/randoms?). As a direct result of not getting Raze see my earlier post about Orky regeneration.
-Lastly and this is probably some inhouse knowledge or some people here dont seem to be aware of it, but armor and armor provides more EHP than any other upgrade on LFs. That means that armor upgrades are way more *valuable* then Hull upgrades or weapons. Not relating directly to the rush but 50 Lfs + cap ship with 3 labs upgrades will kill an upgraded orky with *0- losses. 50 discs fully upgraded at tier 3 willl all *DIE* in same scenario. I have actually tested that so take it whichever way you want.
As for the rush above, even tho both ships start with 2 Armor TEC can upgrade theirs really easily and i get mine really early. If you know how to use the BM Vasari will basically *pay* for 2 of your armor upgrades themselves at no direct cost to you. Lfs also do more damage per actual ship, have much greater survivability and likely an unstoppable (vs orky rushes) Marza as back up.
Currently Doci and Grimm are probably 2 best players on ICO at least in active 5s skilled and i can ask them to post their thoughts here and look for a replay. But both of them said that sometimes even they are unable to stop the rush even without making any mistakes as advent.
I would never throw any type of LF against an already built Orky unless I had crushing numbers. It would upgrade faster than you could kill it otherwise. We were just talking about rush situations.
The egg being in the gravity well is irrelevant unless the egg goes nano-disassembler and starts eating disciples to make your life harder.
I actually rushed faster by not waiting for my Egg which was colonizing the asteroid. If the Egg is there, it CAN kill the asteroid while you build the Orky, but a loss of an asteroid is much less than a loss of an Orky.
I however would and do, LFs are awesome at killing orkies and marzas stop orky regen during the attack (unless you took raze for no reason vs vasari).
Egg *is* extremely relevant as its part of the rush, without it the rush would never succeed! You fail to grasp that while orky deploys, the egg is bombing the planet, if u ignore it it will kill the planet AND therefore decrease orky build time by a huge amount. Additionally if you DO focus egg it will easily tank your discs and orky will finish unharmed. You will also lose the planet at least once during that process (depends who recaptures it first). Egg will also counter Prog strikecraft.
You need to re-read my posts as you are failing to grasp the mechanics of it. Only new players to the game send a migrator by itself to make a starbase on the off chance the opponent is napping or elsewhere occupied.
I already wrote a couple times that I simply lose the asteroid to the egg, kill the orky, then chase down the egg. You are the one who fails at reading comprehension. This played out twice with Sagewon. The last time I tried a different strategy purely because I can get the migrator on location faster than an Egg so that it was building at the soonest possible moment. I'm pretty confident the only way an Orky rush succeeds is because the other player doesn't expect or see the Orky rush until too late. Of course a more experienced player might succeed against a less experienced player, but it isn't because there is anything wrong with Advent, which was your whole premise when posting how bad Disciples were. Anyhow, I'm done with this thread.
Probably for the best since you are still failing to grasp the concept and havent even tested it properly. Im glad you are pretty confident but you are simply wrong but its your choice and i have no idea why you are even discussing this when you are not even open to accepting your lack of understanding or knowledge of game mechanics. If you want to learn about the game you are welcome to ask for help online and i will be more than happy to help you. I ll keep an eye on the replay for you tho.
Jingly we tested it properly (just like Quar does). Used an Egg, etc.. After all its a simple strategy. I think the biggest factor is getting the starbase building as soon as possible - befor the opponent has a chance to build fleet.
What are your ICO's nicks? I ll be on this weekend and can demonstarte it if required.
Its funny how the one time Seleuceia isnt trolling, nobody believes him.
Will this guy stop trolling?
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