FG: Galactic Overloard 18: Sign-up Thread.

[Ben Kenobi]

The late game in GO sucks, about as much as the late game in Civ. We just don't have the massive alliance battles that would be interesting and cool; a 3v2 combat leaves some chance for the 2 to win due to good OOB or superior fleet composition (I don't recall the shipping totals, but I do recall feeling that if chaunk and I ended up defending together that we'd have a chance). Not to mention a much more interesting game than the 1v1 mopups ...

We were hoping you would let us take the intiative at the end by doing an allied defend. It's why we split jon and jag, once we knew that I was to sit back and build for the turn. If you guys shielded we would then be able to pick you off one by one the next turn.

If you guys did allied defend, which was the other possibility, we realised a two prong attack would split the defense and disrupt your order of battle. So we were willing to take the risk with just Jon and Jag. Jon and Jag in alliance against one would likely lose if you did allied defend.

A 3vs2 allied defend was a disaster for you folks since Jon had more tonnage then chaunk and jag had 50 percent more then everyone else, let alone adding my tonnage to the mix.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Okay, no rule changes.

I'll start the game thread on Fri with prebuilds due by Monday noon CST, and game turns processed on Mon, Wed, and Fri.....til the field narrows.

[Flubber]

I find the discussion interesting since after only one game, I was struck by how much tougher defense was, compared to attack. I don't want any rule changes for this game but I did want to raise something else for consideration


The existence of a "foolproof" combination such as laser close in spread out bugged me. Nothing gets an advantage against it when that element is shooting (other than superior tonnage or a mismatched maneuvre) and I thought that this game would be a better one if everything always had a thing that it loses to-- even if the ratios were small (For instance changing the advantage of lazers/fighters/ torpedos to 2.2 would mean that torps would actually beat lasers even when the lasers spread out-- change the advantage to 3 and a predictable one weapon fleet becomes a liability ). I am not necessarily advocating this particular fix but I do think it would be good to have SOMETHING that makes it so people have to actually think about things and make the order of battle matter more. I also think it would mean more fleets would have mixed weapons types since you can't just choose one weapon (lasers usually) and run with it. More mixed fllets might actually mean that the back end of the OOB gets used more. As it stands, the majority of battles seem to be determined by those first 3 shots .

The second element of this is that neither fighters nor torpedos currently share the same immunity- Bunched closed in lasers would have a 2:1 adavantage over Backed off fighters while spread out fighters would enjoy that same 2:1 advantage over bunched torpedos

[Spaced Cowboy]

Yet strangley the person that won the last game did so with a fleet combination of torps and fighters while the single minded laser fleets all bit the dust.

[joncha]

The Lazzergeddon strategy is flashier, but far less sound.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
Yet strangley the person that won the last game did so with a fleet combination of torps and fighters while the single minded laser fleets all bit the dust.

yes but that was more a function of choosing the right targets and having the right strategic alliances than OOB matters. If you recall correctly, one of our early attacks went badly awry with losses despite 3 players versus 1. Also a lot of the laser folks saw too much of their fleets destroyed to the double close-in mayhem from mismatched OOBs

[Ben Kenobi]

Flubber:

Don't you think there is a reason why Jag and I went with Torpedos with a lesser fighter component?

We were looking at the overall composition of the fleets, especially Kassi and Skanky. They went Lazzers early, so we wanted to design a fleet that would be capable of dealing with them and would complement Jon's Lazzers.

So yes the choice of Torps and Fighters was very deliberate to give us an advantage in the ending.

[joncha]

I, however, was just being an asshat. I wasn't sure how reliably I could get orders in this game, so I built up a good one-dimensional early-game fleet, used the same obvious OoB every round, and just started taking people out. I fully expected to be taken out myself sooner rather than later.

It wasn't until mid-game (when others started fishing for my support in allied attacks) that I started changing things up and playing to win. By then there wasn't much point in balancing out my fleet, though.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Flubber:

Don't you think there is a reason why Jag and I went with Torpedos with a lesser fighter component?

We were looking at the overall composition of the fleets, especially Kassi and Skanky. They went Lazzers early, so we wanted to design a fleet that would be capable of dealing with them and would complement Jon's Lazzers.

So yes the choice of Torps and Fighters was very deliberate to give us an advantage in the ending.

Jag always goes for torpedoes with a fighter component, or at least talks about it

[Spaced Cowboy]

Linky to the game thread