by mfaulk80
Amaranth wrote:
According to the news page, there's a rule option for Ancient Ships to gain the ability to regenerate damage, and also to have very strong resistance to missiles.
I haven't done any thorough probability calculations, but it seems to me that this variant (a) makes starting exploration more swingy and (b) alters the race balance.
Currently, most races can reliably take out single Ancient Ships on turn 1 or 2. With the variant, you can't beat Ancients by attrition - you must keep going until you get a double hit. The Ancients, however, can beat their enemy by attrition.
So who's stronger? Well, the Eridani are pretty much unaffected, since they can just blast their opponent with Plasma Cannons. The Descendants are presumably also unaffected - in fact Ancient Systems they explore now have stronger defences, and the Ancients are more likely to survive. The Mechanema are, I think, relatively disadvantaged, because their cheap options for fighting Ancients (two Interceptors or 1 Interceptor + 1 Cruiser) are likely to be ineffective. And I'm not at all sure how well a Terran attacking with 3 Interceptors will do.
It seems like getting Plasma Cannons early is a big deal if you border Ancients. I think Improved Hull is probably less good in the early game than it used to be, but maybe it's actually even more important. And when early fleets are unreliable, Orbitals might become relatively better.
I haven't done any thorough probability calculations, but it seems to me that this variant (a) makes starting exploration more swingy and (b) alters the race balance.
Currently, most races can reliably take out single Ancient Ships on turn 1 or 2. With the variant, you can't beat Ancients by attrition - you must keep going until you get a double hit. The Ancients, however, can beat their enemy by attrition.
So who's stronger? Well, the Eridani are pretty much unaffected, since they can just blast their opponent with Plasma Cannons. The Descendants are presumably also unaffected - in fact Ancient Systems they explore now have stronger defences, and the Ancients are more likely to survive. The Mechanema are, I think, relatively disadvantaged, because their cheap options for fighting Ancients (two Interceptors or 1 Interceptor + 1 Cruiser) are likely to be ineffective. And I'm not at all sure how well a Terran attacking with 3 Interceptors will do.
It seems like getting Plasma Cannons early is a big deal if you border Ancients. I think Improved Hull is probably less good in the early game than it used to be, but maybe it's actually even more important. And when early fleets are unreliable, Orbitals might become relatively better.
Wait until the rules are released. You're making some wrong assumptions on how everything is integrated.