General Class Fleet Composition

No, I literally used the exact same resource value as the attacker had sent, in my sim. I did not give him any extra ships. All I did was give him a 20% tech advantage.

Notice how I said that I cut the number of BCs in half, and used the equivalent resources for cruisers, and then for LF. 150k BCs = 439,655 Cruisers = 3,187,500 LF. This scenario is a classic example of why cruisers are better fodder than LF.

https://trashsim.universeview.…7b-4aa5-9234-2f047a997219

Just substitute the cruisers with 3,187,500 LF instead, for the equivalent cost of them.

In my opinion, if you are building a fleet for defensive purposes, you are doing it wrong. Your fleet should never ever be attacked whatsoever, if you fleetsave properly. Sure, it can help in ninja situations, but in those situations you normally need speed, which is no good with LF - But it's not exactly easy to ninja a skilled player, and it would be very strange to build a LF fleet just for this purpose.

And again, my main point is - How often are you going for fleets above your head? Even with LF these types of hits are 90% of the time going to be unprofitable for you either way. If you don't overpower your opponent, why are you even attacking him? If you do overpower your opponent, then in most cases LF are giving you unnecessary extra losses.

Well, I think it's very likely that in the bulk of those engagements you are making, having cruisers or other capital ships instead of fighters, would increase your profits.

Quote from Disturbance

if you want, let us sim with this one https://trashsim.universeview.…4c-4254-a4c7-b03eafffbbe0 (edited away API) and we can see what different values in fleet result in - taking into consideration trade ratios.

It is a decently balanced target with the same fleet copied over to attacking side. The challenge here being: change the attacking composition to be more favorable, you will have a hard time doing this unless sending purely BC/Cruisers as they have rapid-fire against fodder. I'm really having a hard time to showcase how fodder is about adding versatility to your fleet comp, allowing you to dictate rapid-fire in a sense.

If you remove all ships except the BC/Cruisers from the attacking side, and adding LF only, this will be the result: https://trashsim.universeview.…cd-44ae-baa4-77ac461c574c

This is using cruisers: https://trashsim.universeview.…ab-48a8-85a9-ee65544d3cc8

Do you feel this is not representative then I can see if I can come up with another example.

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Agreed, that is certainly a scenario where LF are the better choice. But depending on the conditions, they can easily become the inferior choice. For example, give the attacker 20% combat tech advantage, and throw in 400 Reapers, and run both sims. Suddenly the LF sim does worse than the Cruiser sim.

Again. I don't at all disagree that LF are an asset in some fights. My main point of argument, is that from my running sims, the VAST majority of REAL battles that I would consider initiating, the LF are the worse choice.

Just look at your example, as an example. Would you really do an attack where you lost 186m in fleets, for just 28m profit? In a game where time is such a valuable asset - the time lost rebuilding is not worth that kind of loss. I would pass on this attack myself, even though there was some profit to be made. Also, would you have enough recyclers to get all that? Maybe? Maybe not?

Again, in the large majority of real world attacks that I would actually make, because they are profitable, rarely do fighters seem to be the better choice.

Quote from Gaby

haha, goodluck with that. I challanged him also few posts earlier, he concluded that RIPs( 1550kk vs 155kk) are proving his point... I don`t know why he opened this post, he is not open to any suggestion..

I'm actually not even sure what your example was trying to prove. You could send 1m LF against that many DS and still lose. What in the world was your point?

I have been listening to every suggestion, and showing with reasonable numbers, why I don't agree. If you think I am simply dismissing what I am hearing just because I am being stubborn, you are quite wrong.

EDIT: Also, another thing I really should add to the discussion, is that at least on my server, every single top 10 is a Discoverer, and most of the top 50 probably are too. In fact pretty much everyone and their uncle is. What does this mean? Loads of pathfinders and/or LF. Pathfinders have rapid fire against both fighter types (and is actually a fantastic combat ship. I'd argue it is a better combat ship than the Reaper, in fact, because the Reaper Rapid Fire is a joke.).

Quote from Disturbance

Nevermind, this is a lost battle and you can't see the fault in your arguments. You game fleet values by changing tech values, which should be obvious to everyone really, one tech can cost 50-100mil easily.

A 2 level tech bonus on my account would equal about 250mil resources or more - i also note the lack of sims from your side, leading me to believe you are gaming even more numbers without realizing ships aren't free and neither are techs.

You calling reapers weak really shows you totally lacking knowledge of how a battle works, start by reading up on that and you will hopefully understand why we are all sighing at this point.

You gave me a sim of a battle that I would never initiate.

As I see it from my position here, you are simply advocating building LF, for a very narrow and specific margin of profit/loss, whereas the bulk of battles will not be such a close margin. If I am not largely outnumbering and/or out-teching my opponent, why am I even going to make an attack? It has to be profitable enough to be worthwhile, and from my running sim after sim after sim, the margin of where LF are a significant difference maker, is limited to a spectrum of battles that I would almost never want to initiate voluntarily.

Yes, there may be fleets out there, that you could hit and turn a profit because you had LF - Your latest sim was a perfect example of this. But I argue that there are even MORE hits, where you are either better off not bringing your LF at all, or where they substantially increase your losses compared to a capital ship fleet. Also, the more even hits tend to come with substantially greater risk.

I absolutely understand that tech becomes obscenely expensive as you increase in ranks. I also understand that General gets a 20% bonus even then, and therefor I am not being unreasonable here.

Also, I can't seem to re-iterate this enough - How often am I going to be attacking players that are the same tech/fleet size as me? No matter my fleet composition, the vast majority of those battles are unprofitable, or not profitable enough to be worthwhile. I don't see the point in trying to build a bunch of LF fodder just to eek out a few extra bucks out of this kind of fight that will make up a small minority of my engagements. Even if it allows me to spread my fleets out and do a few extra hits now and then - I highly doubt it will make up for all the hits I miss out on, because my fleet is slower.

And yes, for their cost (to build and to deploy), Reapers are pretty weak. Their rapid fire is quite lackluster. They have their uses, and can be helpful in battles where you need heavy hitters, but I personally am rather disappointed in them.

Quote from Disturbance

I am tempted to ask you if you really think you are better at this game than people like Volke - But I guess we all know the answer is yes and years old knowledge is probably wrong.

If you think the above sentence sounds wrong, start with asking - "Why is no experienced fleeter in my camp? What am I missing?"

Well of course few are in my camp. I am questioning a many years old and heavily established way of thinking. And as I said in my very first post in this thread - I may very well be wrong with my viewpoints. I also understand that fleets are highly situational, and not all unis are the same.

I mean no offense when I disagree with established fleeters. My problem is that I simply have seen no real evidence, and in fact all of the evidence that has been provided to me in this thread has only solidified my opinion even further.

Just because the majority thinks something works a certain way, does not mean it does. Copernicus being a wonderful example