Archive through May 23, 2014
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Tournament Zone:
Tactics Discussion:
Archive through May 23, 2014
The most obvious thing that makes one counter-attack favoured is the starcastle. Enemy dumps his weapons into your TAC-brick and WW, then you can mug him. But I don't see any changes likely to happen there, considering the near riot that happened last time this came up. Non-aggression covers it to some extent, 'nuff said.
Beyond that, the incentives not to make a definitive attack are fairly obvious:
1) opponent doesn't let you: he sees you have the advantage, so dumps an F in your face and runs off.
2) if you guess his brick wrong, you've wasted your shot.
3) Your OLs can't be held. If you can't be sure of making R8 this turn, that's a whole turn (or more) wasted.
4) How many weasels does he have? Better not empty all the plasma into him.
5) Is that plasma-S real or Memorex? Better not risk it. The 10 internals I'd take might kill my batteries.
6) He's stuck in the corner at low speed. Probably planning to brick and weasel. Better not engage.
and so on. But these are the things that make it the game it is, so I'm not sure there's anything you'd be able to change there.
You suggest that some weapons are available too long into the game. Not sure what you mean; there's usually a fairly even distribution of weapon types in the end-game, excepting that phasers and Disr-10 always get the repairs.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the reply.
You are absolutely right that a key element of what makes SFB the game that it is, is that the duel starts "counter-attack favored"
I have no objection at all to the existence of this characteristic.
Imagine if both sides didn't start out "counter-attack favored". One or both players would be incentivized to just cruise on in and blast away. There is little thought or maneuver to that. Just arm the weapons and start rolling the dice. There is a balance, we wouldn't want the game to be done in 1 turn. The "over in a flash" syndrome has made many other starship combat games horribly dull.
Indeed, what makes the game interesting is the "opportunistic defensive press", where for several turns you do maneuver and wear each other down, creating windows to go in for the kill.
I want to clarify that my whole prior post is *not* a proposal. The first 3/4 are merely a framework for talking about the several phases in the progression of a typical game. The last 1/4 merely illustrates how you might use the framework to look for changes that would make the definitive attack happen sooner.
Drones, suicide shuttles, and wild weasels are consumable resources. Once those are out for a ship; that ship has a much smaller chance to deflect a definitive attack. Once those are out, a ship has less offensive firepower; but more importantly the ship is far less able to deflect a definitive attack. It has a much weaker counter attack.
Batteries are interesting. Again, you might first think that reserve power makes mounting an attack easier. It does; *but* note the word *reserve*; reserve power very telling. The primary use of reserve is in reacting to your opponent, and exploiting the opportunities that come up. Some of the most effective uses of reserve power I've seen are when they can be used to prepare a counter strike. For example, suppose you use reserve to tractor your opponent so he keeps his down shield facing you over the turn break instead of drifting away.
The more reserve power you have, the stronger the counter attack. The reduction in cost of the unallocated speed change *very* definitely improved the counter attack. Therefore within the framework of my theory, this should make the game a bit longer on average than it was prior to that change.
A few posts back (corresponding to many months), a William Wilson posted about batteries and phaser capacitors and other resources in the game you "exchange". I would build upon his nice analysis by noting the goal of the exchange is to either temporarily or permanently get an opening for a definitive attack. The exchanges he described are both temporary and (eventually) permanent. For the most part, I see players continuing to mount the "opportunistic defensive press". A sign that your opponent has emptied his phaser caps and batteries profligately or with little effect, is a good sign to consider mounting an definitive (counter attack).
For those interested, I updated my player and ship rating / RPS information and posted it at my webpage. All the data is complete through 31 December 2012. The time-varying stuff (the SFB Tournament Report v2.1 and Appendices D, E, F) has been updated based on some modest changes to the approach.
v/r
Robert
Moving this here from the General Tactics area:
By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Wednesday, May 08, 2013 - 03:48 pm: Edit
I'm posting here because I didn't find a Tournament-Tactics thread and did not find a WYN-Tactics thread. This is an attempt to move the discussion from the Netkill thread to here, with a repost from Josh.
WAX(11g1) vs WBS(BB):
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Quote:
Well the WYN Aux 11g1 is tricky for sure.
I don't have all the answers on what you do to defeat the ship. Several players offered good suggestions above, but id like to point out that counter drones are risky and even if they work wont hurt the WYN.
One tactic I've seen disruptor ships use is to use reinforcement turn 1 instead of powering the disruptors, I think that's a pretty risky plan because 4 drones wont even slow the WYN Aux down.
My feeling is the key is to get on the WYN Aux's tail, it can't HET, and your GBS has a significant TM advantage. Work your way onto the aft shields, and remember to watch his movement very closely to try and guess which shield has the brick. Try not to shoot that shield, turn after turn of wasted bricks will demoralize the Aux captain. And if you can stay on the 3-4-5 shields you have taken 2 of his phaser 1's out of arc.
And if your going to get anchored by the Aux do try not to be on his LS or anywhere in FA. Without the phaser G it will take all the built in phaser 3's plus phaser 1's to deal with your seeking weapon threat.
I would always try to have a couple weasels powered, but do everything possible to not use them. What I usually do is try to use the tournament barrier to avoid the drones and anchor or plot the weaseling at EA but its still very risky.
I have always said the best way to learn to beat a ship is to play that ship, nothing else will teach you its weakness like time playing it.
If it has one its got to be the number 3 shield, no phaser g there, and the FA phaser 1's aren't in that arc. So I would try to launch drones to support an attack run with direct fire weapons so that the majority of the Aux ph 1 360's would be forced into anti drone work. About the only time you will have the chance is when the Aux is in a corner and making a turn the direction you want.
Another thing to remember is the Aux will usually have either a brick OR tractor usually not both. If he's thinking brick and you go for the tractor you may have a good shot at landing drones and suicide shuttles if your out of LS arc. With two shuttle bays in a single impulse you can launch 2 type IV drones, 2 type I's and 2 SS which is actually one SS more than the Aux 11g1 can launch in an impulse.
Try to use the Aux's tricks against it, its too fast for speed 20 drones to seriously threaten it, but its also limited to speed 20 drones so perhaps when your using your superior turn mode to get on his 4 shield you can juke the drones, that would force the Aux to decide if trailing drones were worth the channels they were taking up or if he would be better off dropping control to launch fresh ones that you would have to use weapons on or abandon the chase.
The Aux 11g1 works by combining an insane power curve with the most power efficient weapons in the game. I think to defeat it you have to adjust your tactics to maximize the use of your own ships power and seeking weapons. The GBS has a lot of weapons but powering 4 overloads its not going to be able to stay up with an Aux 11g1 so maybe for a time while your maneuvering into his RA you should avoid spending much on disprtors and consider the power you could save by not carrying as many special mission shuttles. If you plan to tractor and kill him quickly then suicide shuttles will be handy, but if your wanting to run him out of drones over a long game your probably wasting a lot of power powering suicide shuttles.
I'm not sure how effective "splattering drones" all over the map will be the Aux will probably stay between speed 21 and more often 31 and you will probably end up with the drones trailing him within a turn. I'm all for spreading them out against a ship you expect will weasel but the Aux 11g1 will do everything it can to not have to weasel.
The problem with counter drones is at high speed you need to be absolutely certain your going to intercept his drone when you think you are. And they are a non renewable resource and your ship doesn't lack phaser 3's in good arcs. So I would really think about using speed and phasers to counter his drones. He only has 4 racks of medium speed drones, keep them pruned back every turn and there only going to cost you a few points of phaser energy.
You have 6 phaser 1's in FA and 4 disruptors, all the Aux 11g1 has is phasers which are fairly weak outside range 5. But as I pointed out before if you can stay outside FA and that shouldn't be that hard against a TM D ship that cant HET. If you can get on the 3 or 4 shield at r4 or 5 you out phaser the Aux so I think that should be the goal, then just hammer away at him till there isn't a shield to reinforce while avoiding his tractors.
I hope that helps Greg, don't lose hope I think this one is winnable for the GBS.
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I have some things to add to Josh's statements.
Many WAX captains will put the phaser-G in a wing-mount, simply because the increased arc (LS vs FA) helps with drone defense.
Additionally, I've found that aiming to be on the #3/4/5 shields is not the only viable tactic against the WAX. Often times I (as the WAX captain) end up in some sort of "death spiral" maneuver, where I'm trying to get the opponent into FA, he's trying to stay out of FA, and we both end up turning around some common point. This plays to the opponent's strength, in that it's usually outside of effective phaser range, but he is commonly (particularly in the WBS) able to bring more phasers to bear. Net result could be that the WAX loses a shield before the WBS does. The better TM of the WBS would normally allow the WBS to get a FA shot on a flank shield of the WAX at some point, unless the WAX is able to use his drones to cause the WBS to make broader turns than it is capable of making.
Keep in mind that the WAX is not going to weasel. He usually has too many drones out to want to lose them to a tracking-drop and a stopped WAX is a dead WAX. I have never seen a WAX who stopped, win a game.
And a reply to that post:
Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Wednesday, May 08, 2013 - 08:00 pm: Edit
The tournament tactics thread is in the Tournament Zone here. But this will do OK.
My thought about "splattering drones across the map" was that as they'll tend to trail far behind, you can cut him off when he comes out of a corner. The basic issue with a fast ship running away is that it has to go somewhere, and then it has to come back again. If half your drones stay as far left as possible and the others stay right, the pig will eventually have to maneuver to avoid one of them rather than just having them trailing in a single stack. Whether it's worthwhile is another matter.
Dave Zimdars,
You have statistical training and like to analyze puzzles.
I have a 80% (193-47 in recorded tournament games) tournament game win% (and, oddly, the last time I lost a tournament game (prior to yesterday's adjudication) was April 2012).
I have a 20% (1 of 5) adjudication win% (I play really fast and concede in preference to adjudication unless I think I am winning or it is very close, so in 2 decades of tournament play I have only been involved in 5 adjudications - perhaps unsurprisingly I remember them all well.)
Explain. 
Paul,
Maybe its because they just want someone else to have a chance to win
I don't think that is it. Though I know you are just joking. I have my own theory, but I waiting for Dave or anyone else with a thought to weigh in first.
Paul,
I think the extremes of both your win/loss record and your adjudication record may be explained by small sample sizes, but the small sample size effect comes into play in different ways in each case.
I can hypothesize on the mechanism which may bias the statistics based on my knowledge of how SFB tournament games work and my knowledge of the player base, with the caveat that statistics alone may help guide hypotheses but I know I don't have the data to eliminate some viable alternative explanations.
First, I would hypothesize that skill level in SFB tournament reaches an asymptotic level where dice and RPS decisions would dominate the reason for victory of two extremely skilled players - that is there should be a top cohort of players who have a 50% win/loss ratio against each other but a greater than 50% against everyone else. I hypothesize that in a growing, or perhaps even stable player base that there should be players entering your (Paul Scott's) skill cohort and that your win/loss average, over time ought to decrease as tournament brackets fill with these highly skilled players. In this case, the small sample size is the player base - our player base is decreasing or just not large enough to begin with to fill a bracket with players equal to your skill.
Next, only 5 of your 240 games (about 2%) have gone to adjudication. I can't know the judges view or your opponents view of the odds exactly (and judges are not permitted to explain their decisions); however if I liberally estimate that they were close enough to 50% then you had a 6/32 (19%) chance of being awarded the game 0 or 1 times (its late, I think I got that combination right, its bedtime). 19% is not a small chance of this occurrence, even if there is no inherent bias in the process.
Now, I can also hypothesize why your (Paul's) perception of the odds for adjudication may be more generous than the judge, as a side effect that judging does not typically take into account any prior knowledge of the skill of the players.
Consider two random players, unknown to the judge. One may be highly skilled, the other not so much, but by either poor play on one side and/or inspired on the other the game goes to adjudication with closer odds than what might be expected on the average. Since the judge has no prior knowledge of player skill, he has no way of knowing how likely one or the other player may competently execute their plan as they communicated, or may make a drastic mistake.
On the contrary, the prior history of the single game is likely to give an impression of skill anti-correlated with the long term trend. However, the highly skilled player may be a better judge of his opponents prowess, as he's played him for 3+ hours and knows that he is not outmatched and is likely advantaged in being able to execute to plan. Because the judge doesn't know this there may be a bias towards the lesser skilled player in the adjudication result.
Now in any tournament, a judge might have to adjudicate players he knows and those he doesn't. Probably the best policy is to assume that the players have equal skill, so as not to penalize unknown skilled players while more correctly adjudicating for a known skilled player. There is just probably a big can of worms of complaints of favoritism towards friends and acquaintances if you don't assume equal skill.
Therefore one might hypothesize that a viable (though cheap) tactic to beat you (Paul) would be to force the game into adjudication, just based on probably unavoidable and bias in the process that creeps in due to applying equitable standards to all players.
The good news is that you've only had 5 out of 245 games go to adjudication, so statistically I there is no evidence that the player base is trying to take advantage of any bias inherent in the process to beat you in a cheap way. And I have no way of really estimating how strong this bias is, as it may be very weak - the small sample size is just too small to have any confidence.
The bad news is if my hypothesis is correct, the trend won't necessarily change.
-Dave
Paul,
I forgot to include the corollary conclusion. If the player base were larger, and there were more players in your skill cohort, my hypothesis is that the bias (if it exists) would disappear. There might be multiple tournaments at different skill levels, like chess, and the assumption of equal skill would be correct.
-Dave
Yeah, That is pretty much in line with my thoughts.
I think the judges take a look at the situation and imagine themselves in the ships executing the plans laid out by the opponents in the adjudication process - that is to say, in both ships. This effectively removes player skill from the equation from adjudicating.
I am not sure I am any better in that regard as a judge. You have to do something and so if I were to judge a game, I would put myself in the chairs of both captains and figure out who was most likely to win if I were flying both ships.
Since there is an objective way to consider player skill (even of those you don't know well) - SURPS - I would like to think of a way to incorporate it, but I am not really sure how to do it. The result is, however, that there is an inherent bias (a strong one, I would guess - but I agree my sample size is to small to present as evidence of it) against better players when it comes to adjudications.
In the old days - when I was an even bigger and more arrogant prick than I am today (hard to image, I am sure), I used to challenge the judge who ruled against me to "put his money where his mouth was" - I would offer a $1000 bet if the judge would take over and finish the game against me. I did not most recently make that offer to Andy. See, I have grown. ;)
Far fewer games than 2% of mine have gone to adjudication.
My W-L record includes only those games since Robert started recording them. My 5 adjudications go back much further, with only 3 in the SURPS era. I am 1-2 in those.
When I think about the effects of trying to add a perception of player skill into the adjudication process; I personally think there might be more negative consequences than positive. I'm not sure judges are forbidden to add perceptions of past performance into the equation; but I would guess most probably (correctly) choose not to.
It is entirely possible external/meta factors might be suppressing player skill on any one day. For example: low blood sugar, intoxication, sleep deprivation, depression, mania, rustiness, among others. In this case, the odds if the game is actually completed by the players might in fact favor the otherwise lesser skilled player. The judge has no way of knowing the statistical effect of these externally/meta factors.
Put it another way -- the judges are not tasked with adjudicating one particular game to the standard of play expected by past performance; but are tasked with trying to determine who would win the particular game at hand. This is inherently a process that requires turning unknown odds into a binary decision - which is an imperfect approximation. If one reads he judges guidelines, they go into a lot of objective valuation of ship state and position. That is they focus on objective observables rather than subjective impressions (although these are not excluded).
I want to make sure I think that process is designed to be fair. And the concept of fairness is much wider (as it should be) than pure accuracy.
Paul it's ironic that you imply that there is bias against when I found it difficult not to be biased for you. Unless by not being biased for you I somehow entered into a wormhole of reverse bias against you. The mind reels
But, for this game , I looked at the map and read both plans going forward: I saw a Kzinti low on drones (5 left), out of heavy drones and shielding(13-5-14-14-3-10) being forced to run from 30 points on the board and being shadowed by a Gorn with no meaningful internals, better overall shielding (14-6-24-19-0-30), an enveloper ready and both F torps hot. Majead had played very well to that point, and I had no reason to suspect that he would fall apart suddenly. Both your plans were solid. Your plan needed several more turns and was more dice dependent than Majead's plan. I think probably the majority of Judges would agree, your track record aside.
I think you COULD win this game for sure, and are one of the handful who could do so. But I think a Judge needs to try and take track record out of consideration. I indicated as much in a very nice e mail to both of you. IF you really want to avoid adjudication, beat him in regulation time. That removes all doubt
Andy,
I am specifically not talking about that game. Do I think I would have won it? Probably. But I thought it was nearly impossible to adjudicate at the point it was and was satisfied with either outcome (well, as satisfied as one can be when handed a loss). You are leaving out some important details - for example it is kind of hard for the Gorn to be "shadowing" me when he is speed restricted to 0 at the start of the turn, but no matter. I have no complaints about the specific adjudication. I have not been shy about my opinion of really botched adjudications (none involving my games). If I had a complaint about yours, you would know. ;)
It just brought up for me the odd mirror image I have in games sent to adjudication and those allowed to finish. I am wondering aloud if there is some way to remove bias from the process. I don't think it really matters, since it happens so rarely. Mostly a point of curiosity for me.
I think we all agree that the right procedure was followed and it probably the best procedure and it is what it is.
Consider the situation adjudicating 2 newbies or incompetent players. These games are actually fun to watch for me as you see game play situations that ordinarily never come up in doctrinaire play. The judging guidelines clearly prioritize strength of position. So again, assuming a competent player a situational advantage ought to translate to victory. But really, you could have no confidence that the advantage would be properly exploited--one player just lucked out monkey on the typewriter style. The judge needs a reason, and can't just throw dice-even if that is more likely to represent the true unpredictability of the players.
Not to worry Paul, I knew what you meant and wasn't taking offense although I did feel the need to explain some of the process in case folks were wondering. The game was a time out situation and very close, which is always tough. I was completely unaware of your dismal adjudicated-against record.
Why don;t you guys finish at your leisure? If you win I owe you a lunch next time I see you and vice versa. I will put my food where my mouth is. GO MAJEAD!
Updated statistics for the ships and players (RPS information etc), plus tournament predictions have been posted, see the links on my page.
Robert
Man, nothing going on in this topic for months. Let’s jumpstart this a little. I am curious to see how people rank the tournament ships currently. Not looking for the full RPS breakdown that we used to do, just your current ranking of the sanctioned tournament ships.
Here are mine:
1- ArcheoTholian (when played by an expert with the web this is, for me at least, the single most frustrating and difficult ship to fly against).
2- Klingon
3- Wyn Black Shark (a good argument could be made for making this ship #1 or #2, but this is just my opinion)
4- Wyn Auxiliary Cruiser (Yes, I know I am prejudiced on this one)
5- Orion
6- ISC
7- Kzinti
8- Hydran
9- Gorn
10-Romulan TKR
11-Romulan TFH
12-Lyran
13- Federation
14-Lyran Democratic Republic
15-NeoTholian
16- Seltorian
17- Romulan TKE
18- Andro (likely just needs 2-4 more static power to make it viable, but not overpowered)
Same line = can't distinguish, spaces between lines roughly reflect tiering
GBS
ATC
ORI/WAX
ISC/KLI/KZN
TFH
HYD
GRN/TKR
LDR/NTC
FED/LYR
TKE/SEL
AND
Rough tiering for me. Both in my experience as captain, and as victim:
GBS / HYD / WAX (for optimized packages)
ISC / KLI / KZI / GRN
TKR / ORI / ATC
TFH / LYR / NTC
LDR / FED / SEL / TKE
AND
I find ranking ships kind of hard these days to the fine level of as might have been done in the past, as then nature of the player pool has changed.
I think the peak number of the cadre of players capable of playing the SFB tournament game at the highest levels ever demonstrated in the game peaked in the late 1990s with a significant tail off into the early days of SFBOL. In my opinion the peak skill levels occurred well into the tail of the height of SFB tournament popularity in the 1980s to early 1990s. This was probably due to a combination of tournament ship configuration and rules stabilizing while marginal players lost interest at a greater rate than those who stood some chance of playing at a competitive level.
The previous posters, Stephen McCann and Paul Scott represent a handful of the players at the topmost level of skill still active with in the tournament player base. These guys also rose to the top with their own natural talents and predisposition to learning tactics letting them rise to the top of a pool that started in the thousands.
While I think I'm quite a decent player, and while I'd hope to elevate myself to the same level since I've returned to the game, I rather think that is unlikely for a couple of reasons: 1)learning effective skill at the highest level appears to be only partially communicable by detailed analysis, at least at the level of brevity of term papers and casual conversation. Put another way, what Paul and Stephen do in play is best expressed with their play itself, even though both have been generous with analysis, it seems to me there remains a "je ne sais quoi" which has not yet been put into words. 2)With fewer players at the highest level participating there are just not as many players participating to see examples of the best play. I missed the boat. 3) And, for my case in particular, I think I ams skilled at extraordinary deep analysis given enough time but I am not so quick on my feet (perhaps I get tempted to do something "clever"). Always making the right paced move without making a fatal mistake is important. The less skilled the players, the less important pace is. When you are against the top cadre, any moves off the wrong pace are fatal
Optimistically, suppose in two decades a group of 16 guys learn the game and hold a tournament. Nobody we know is participating. They've never played against us, or seen any of the late 1990s cadre play. In that case, I think everything is balanced OK. And by being balanced OK, I don't mean they would think it is perfect, but they would agree it wasn't "broken". They'd probably enjoy making a list ranking the balance, but they'd probably have a different rank than us (slightly). Why? Well with just 16 guys I think it would be highly unlikely that any of them could re-synthesize the level of play demonstrated by Paul and Stephen -- the population is just too small.
Regarding balance ranking of certain ships, this is kind of a strange time. Why? Well, IMHO, for example, the WAX is a better ship when Stephen is in the population of players. In the future, without him, I really think a group of players might not rank it quite as well as today, just because they won't have seen an example of how strong it can be played. Same with the ATC - Paul Scott is a great player of that ship.
Bluntly, if the hypothesis that some ships can be played really well but this can only be shown by demonstration and practice and "natural selection of talent" and not so easily by analysis; a future player pool may only be able to look at the Schirmer ratings for some ships but be unable to recreate them.
My postulate is
"Whatever ship I am currently running is rated lower than whatever ship I am currently playing"
Using Steve's Chart:
1- ArcheoTholian
2- WYN Shark
3- WYN Aux
4- Klingon
5- Orion
6- Kzinti
7- Romulan TFH
8- Romulan TKR
9- ISC
10- Gorn
11-Hydran
12-Lyran
13- Federation
14-Lyran Democratic Republic
15-NeoTholian
16- Romulan TKE
17- Seltorian
18- Andro
I agree with Steve that the ATC has the potential to be the best ship in the game if flown perfectly (and is *incredibly* frustrating to fly against in that situation). But unless flown perfectly, it often just gets killed by accident.
The Shark is, likely, the best ship in general.
The Aux and Orion are both stupidly good due to all the extra power and them mostly breaking the rules of the game all the time, but they each have a few bad match ups, and the ability to hamstring yourself with questionable option choices.
The Klingon is like the ATC--it is very hard to fly well, but when flown well, it is incredibly strong.
The Kzinti is excellent, but suffers from running out of ammo against a well played, patient strategy.
I think the TFH is the best big plasma ship, but the TKR is't much worse.
ISC is very strong, but also has some significantly bad match ups.
Gorn is my favorite ship of the last decade or so, but it is very middle of the pack and has some very tough match ups as well.
Hydran is potentially very strong but suffers from being very dicey or guess-y (Paul has been doing very well in the Hydran of late by, ya know, not ever arming the Hellbores, which I suspect if people guess right puts him at a significant disadvantage).
Lyran and Fed are fought but workable.
LDR has the potential to do very well, but is very fragile.
Neo Tholian is potentially good, but has a few too many match ups where all their opponent has to do is arm guns and just kinda move forward at moderate speeds, and eventually the Neo will be killed.
TKE is has totally reasonable chances in plasma duels, but only by cloaking excessively and playing for 25 turns. So I hate it. Against non big plasma, it has a tough time.
Seltorian is close to hopeless against a competently flown opposing ship, much in the same way as the Neo.
The Andro is almost playable. It just needs a bit more static power.
ATC . Can evoke memories of fighting against Andros back in the day. Hopelessness. Dread.
The Shark is top notch and anybody with decent skill who takes one can expect to be in for a deep RAT run.
I would rank the Orion ahead of the AUX just because it can tool an AUX and has more viable packages that the AUX . This is another ship that is fearsome if played correctly
The AUX is the ship that I switched over to from the Lyran, and I found out that I was actually not that bad of a player.
It belongs at #4 as long as its a 11g1 or a HBgD
Klingon. Maybe I am biased by watching Schoeller fly it, but I am consistently surprised by how good it is.
ISC. My least favorite ship to fly against if I am in a serious game. If I am flying JFF, it's always exciting because you have to get in there and get bloody to beat it.
.Kzinti. Back in the day this ship was considered top of the line. I think it still is, but hasn't seen much play recently.
TFH/TKR Really good strong classic ships. I give the edge to the TFH because it cloaks better.
Gorn: Again. Biased I think by bakija playing it so well, but the strong phaser suite and it's general burliness make up for it's lack of cloak
Hydran: Interchangeable with the Gorn in my rankings. It's very flexible and durable. We've all been killed by a gutted Hydran.
After these ships we get to the...I won't say dregs, but the ships that are appreciably weaker than the ships above
The Lyran is probably the strongest of the weaker tier. It has a good punch, a good power curve, and occasionally the esgs are useful. It can win tournaments but man, is it alot of work.
The LDR is probably next. It's a little better against BP than the big Lyran, but it tends to get squashed alot in other fights..
The Fed can kill either Lyran with fair regularity and could be considered the king of DF ships, but it has numerous, well documented matchup problems which keep it toward the bottom. And the whole Photon thing.
Seltorian. It doesnt seem that bad. I feel that the ship is so ugly that no one wants to fly it. Could be higher if more time was invested i think
The Neo Tholian looks pretty good on paper but in reality suffers from dumb phaser arcs which makes it not as good as an ATC. It could probably be ranked higher but if someone is in the mood for a web ship the ATC is the obvious choice.
KE another ship not that bad but there are better BP ships out there so why fly it.
The Andro doesnt even count at this point