Topic: OP - Define "cheese" please

[troycheek]

Got a cable modem a couple of months back and now I finally understand the big hoopla about playing online against other people.  And after a few early butt-whippin's, I've gotten pretty good at playing OP against human opponents.  Well, at least people don't get into shouting matches trying to foist me off onto the other team anymore.  :-)

One thing that still confuses me is the concept of "cheese".  Based on a couple of months of playing, here's my working definition of cheese:

Cheese (n): Any ship or tactic that I beat you with.

Is there a more or less generall accepted definition or list of cheese ships and tactics (as some of my opponents imply), or is it simply a matter of personal taste (as others suggest)?  Or is this simply another case of sour grapes?  "Sure, you beat me, flying that cheese ship!"

My standard taunt to anyone who says I'm using a cheese ship is to offer to play the next game, them in my ship, me flying theirs.  Nobody seems to want to take me up on that offer, for some reason.

Troy
 

[FireSoul]

Of course not.. they play a few ships well, and that's about it..
.. it's yet another reason why I started enhancing the shiplist with additional SFB material: the rules have changed, the cheese are different.. and quite numerous.. numerous enough to dilute the issue that there might be a balance issue.

oh well, it takes a TRUE player to be able to play all sides well.

-- Luc

[TheShadow]

   Hey Troy. I dont mean to hijack your thread, but I noticed that youre in Benton, TN. I used to live in Tellico Plains. I live in NC now. Small world.    

[3dot14]

the way I see it:

Cheese (n) any tactic that involves the deficiency of the original programming.

for example: escort ships (and other ships using 3+ droG) are cheese because the programming overcompensated when implementing droG's double-duty.
Or massive droner (classic: 3 Z-DF immortalized by Ktujegh (apoligizes for misspelling)) because the point defence routine is not perfect. If the game is played on speed one and PD is manual, the result might be different than playing at speed 9 with auto-PD.

BUT...

I can't think of a "real" cheese tactic that's still in the game. Most of them are supressed through patches already.

[Robb Stark]

I would also count "cheese" as a tactic which makes deliberate use of some flaw or limitation in the game itself.  Specifically, I'm thinking any map border tactics.  The map border (also known as the Stupid Big Red Line in Space) is an artificial constraint created for the purposes of the game - it has no conceivable "real life" equivalent.  

Therefore, tactics that involve camping out in the corner of the map, herding someone towards the border, or using your tractor to push them out of the map and force them to disengage are cheese tactics.  At least, that's how I'd look at them.  

[FatherTed]

Cheese is generally regarded as a ship(s) that doesn't require any real effort to win with, or is so over the top that it's unbeatable in a seasoned player's hands. Examples would be any Klink, Kzinti, or Fed escort; multi-carrier fleets; multi-PF fleets; and a few other ships that are capable of beating 1-2 size classes above it's own, even against a human. IMHO, the biggest cheese in OP are the 2X ships, i.e. "Wisconsin's Finest". 1st generation X-ships are definitely beatable by normal ships, but the 2nd generation should never have been put into the game. SFB dumped them because they were so ridiculously over the top, yet they sneaked into SFC.  

I'm sure there are many others who can give you examples of cheese.  

[EE]

cheese
 (chz)
n.

A solid food prepared from the pressed curd of milk, often seasoned and aged.
A molded mass of this substance.
Something resembling this substance in shape or consistency.
 

[Firestorm]

There are three ships considered to be Cheese that I can think of in OP:
In no particular order:

• The ISC PPD boat
  
• The Hydran G2 boat
  
• The Mirak MIRV boat.
  

 

[3dot14]

Quote:
There are three ships considered to be Cheese that I can think of in OP:
In no particular order:

• The ISC PPD boat
  
• The Hydran G2 boat
  
• The Mirak MIRV boat.
  

 

Good point. Guess I don't play OP enough. (here are a couple "real" cheese's that I couldn't think of earlier)

So guess my previous definition was imcomplete. the "no effort" definition is much broader.

p.s. I just realized there is no "thumb up" icon anymore  

[troycheek]

Quote:
Cheese is generally regarded as a ship(s) that doesn't require any real effort to win with, or is so over the top that it's unbeatable in a seasoned player's hands.

Against me, pretty much any ship is beatable by a seasoned player, unless I get lucky.  I guess that's my problem with the entire concept of 'cheese': Even playing with a cheese ship or a cheese tactic, a better player can still beat me.

Some nights, it seems that every time I lose it's because the other player is better than me, but every time I win, it's because I'm flying that cheesy ship.

On the other hand, I've encountered some very nice (or evil, depending on your point of view) people who believe that any ship or tactic that the game lets you use is legal, so you'd better use it against them because they're sure going to use it against you.  Those people are a blast to play against.

Quote:
 Examples would be any Klink, Kzinti, or Fed escort; multi-carrier fleets; multi-PF fleets; and a few other ships that are capable of beating 1-2 size classes above it's own, even against a human. IMHO, the biggest cheese in OP are the 2X ships, i.e. "Wisconsin's Finest". 1st generation X-ships are definitely beatable by normal ships, but the 2nd generation should never have been put into the game. SFB dumped them because they were so ridiculously over the top, yet they sneaked into SFC.

However, said ships do have higher BPV.  For what a bare X2 (as I call them) ship costs, you can fully outfit a DN and maybe an escort to boot.  Seems to me that evens things out a bit.

Except, of course, for those who tell me that DNs are cheese, having a second ship is cheating, etc.

Total cheese ship list:

Whichever X2 ships my opponent *didn't* choose but I did
Any DN or BB, regardless of era or BPV limit
Any ship with MIRV or more drones than your opponent can shoot down in one turn
Any ship with PPD
Any ship with hellbore
Any ship with fighters/PF
Any ship with heavy disrupters
Any ship with a G2 phaser
Any ship with a rear-firing heavy weapon
Any ship that can charge weapons faster at speed 20 than theirs can at speed 31
Any ship that can reinforce shields more at speed 20 than theirs can at speed 31
Any ship whose shields regenerate faster than theirs
Multiple ships

Total cheese/cheaters tactic list:

Playing near map border
Playing near planet or asteroid
Leading opponent through dust clouds
Playing near black hole
Multiple T-bombs
Tractoring opponent into any of the above
Gorn anchor to prevent WW launch
Launching WW to prevent tractoring
Phaser boating/phaser enema
Star castling/just flying slower than they are
In 2v2 or 3v3, ignoring one ship and going 2v1, then concentrating on second ship, etc
In FFA, firing back at someone who fires at me even though they are "clearly" in a 1v1 with someone else
After being left for dead, using the 15 spare parts I bought to repair my ship
Retreating while flinging plasma or drones over my shoulder
Using ECCM and proxies to get a decent hit rate with photons
Using ECM, EM, and shield reinforcement to prevent damage by photons
Using cheat codes to cause plasma/drone to ignore WW

Some good stories to go with some of those, if anybody is interested.

Troy
   

[troycheek]

Quote:
.. it's yet another reason why I started enhancing the shiplist with additional SFB material: the rules have changed, the cheese are different.. and quite numerous.. numerous enough to dilute the issue that there might be a balance issue.

That reminds me that I downloaded your shiplist but have yet to install it.  I think I've got a note here reminding me to experient with batch files so that I can shift back and forth between yours and the old.

Quote:
oh well, it takes a TRUE player to be able to play all sides well.

I can't play all sides well, but I can play all sides.  I've played and won the single-player campaigns of SFC1, EAW, and OP with all available races.  That's one thing I liked hearing about SFC3, having the play all three races to get the whole story.

Troy
 

[Whiplash]

I think its really a combination of things. Also, as tactics develop, what gets called cheese changes.

For example, the Mirak carriers armed with the mirv drone fighters. The fighters happen to have unlimited drones. This makes it a tough battle for the other guy, perhaps unreasonably so. People call this cheese because the ship is very strong, and because it exploits the (purposely done) unlimited drones of those fighters.

The Rom SPZ used to be called cheese. Nowadays, I don't even see many people flying it. 120 points of close-in plasma was thought to be cheesy purely because it was so strong. Then people started flying ships heavily armed with phasers and the SPZ started losing a lot. Now its not called cheese any more.

Any ship whose BPV is lower than it "should" be is likely to get called cheese.
Any ship that exploits some odd programming bug or feature to powerful advantage is going to get called cheese.
Any ship flown with a new and very powerful tactic may also get seen as cheese, but that may change as tactics change.

W.
 

[troycheek]

Quote:
I Any ship whose BPV is lower than it "should" be is likely to get called cheese.

Reminds me that back in the days of SFCv1 there were some complaints about the BPV for certain ships - too high or too low based on how the ship used to play under SFB vs how it played under SFCv1 (due to changes made to the ship or whatever).  One of the suggested improvements was a dynamic BPV.

Dynamic BPV in that every time a ship is on the winning side of a battle, its BPV goes up 1.  Any time it's on the losing side, its BPV goes down 1.  If two ships went head to head 50 times and one always won, the winner's BPV would be 50 points higher while the loser's would be 50 points lower.  Which is roughly how the original SFB BPVs were determined - lots of trial and error and playtesting.

Theory being that sooner or later, the cheese ships would be so expensive in terms of BPV that nobody would be able to afford them and everybody would be playing the "good" ships which were balanced against each other and, since they'd win and lose pretty much evenly, stay near their original BPV.  In practice, I'm sure that there'd be people complaining anyway.

Troy
 

[Whiplash]

I like this idea (though its definitely not SFB  ) I would add the restriction that this would only happen in 2-player, and the BPV would go up only when the base value of the ship is lower than the one it beat.

To be perfect, you'd also have to include player skill, but I don't think this can be done. Perhaps if the other conditions are true and both players vote yes to increasing it, then it could be done. That way, a conscientious better player would vote no because he thought it was skill. Cheese players would always vote yes, though, if they wanted to see the ship go up in value. Too complicated.

W.
 

[762]

Cheese is anything that can't be countered on equal terms.

OP has many good examples:

The ultimate: I-XCB
Any ship with more than 2 G2's
Any ship with more than 1 ESG lance (especially that cheesy Tigerheart CL)
Most of the LDR ships, especially that 1 frig (4 gats at 80 BPV)
K-D5E and AD5; F-NEC and NAC
 

[troycheek]

Quote:
Cheese is anything that can't be countered on equal terms.

OP has many good examples:

The ultimate: I-XCB
 

I might agree except that I routinely lose in the I-XCB to good Fed players whose ships, I believe, have low BPV than mine.

I don't have enough experience with the other ships you mention to have an opinion one way or another.

Troy
   

[Corbomite]

Quote:

Quote:
Cheese is anything that can't be countered on equal terms.

OP has many good examples:

The ultimate: I-XCB
 

I might agree except that I routinely lose in the I-XCB to good Fed players whose ships, I believe, have low BPV than mine.

I don't have enough experience with the other ships you mention to have an opinion one way or another.

Troy
   

The Fed XCA can beat any other ship out there, easily, but since it's a Fed ship no one dares call it cheese. I think all X ships are cheese, I don't like any of 'em. The Feds, ISC and Hydran ones are too powerful, and the Klingon and Lyran ones suck eggs. The Rom, Gorn and Mirak are the only ones at all competetive and the Mirak only because fast missiles are so expensive.

[Rob Cole]

Quote:
Cheese is anything that can't be countered on equal terms.

OP has many good examples:

The ultimate: I-XCB
Any ship with more than 2 G2's
Any ship with more than 1 ESG lance (especially that cheesy Tigerheart CL)
Most of the LDR ships, especially that 1 frig (4 gats at 80 BPV)
K-D5E and AD5; F-NEC and NAC
   

I will beat the I-XCB with a R-XCF anyday.
Hydran G-2's are pure cheddar.
ESG-L cheesey???? Maybe.

The Escorts are cheese yep.  

[**DONOTDELETE**]

A cheese ship is could also defined as any ship that requires little basic pilot skill to fight with. Good examples are the Cavalier or drone ships. At the most basic level, the player has little actual fighting to do, since most of his weapons are controlled by the AI (fighters, drones). However, using either effectively can require great skill. A cheesy player will take such a ship because he or she doesn't know or wish to learn tactics.

A determination of cheese is also best not left to a new player; they don't have the experience or the tactics knowledge to make an accurate determination.

X ships in general are cheesy. The reason this is is that you can generally run at maximum speed with one, while charging weapons, and with ECM. These ships do not require power management skills in general, and therefore don't require the same level of skill to employ. Thus cheese. Questionable design decisions also make this worse. The MIRV rack is an excellent example. This missile exists in SFB, however, it can only fire anti-fighter missles, not missiles that can effectively attack ships. I generally refuse to play on OP D2 servers because of X ships; I don't like them, but once they're available everyone must have one to stay on the same level.

Escorts are considered cheese because Taldren in a very questionable design decision decided that the G missile rack would have an offensive and defensive function at the same time. The source game that SFC is taken from required you to pick the function (offensive or defensive) and switching took time. Since the game is balanced with that in mind, the change in SFC makes escort ships overpowered for their size. Not only do they escort, they also are drone cruisers at the same time. The implimentation also adds a internal for every G rack a ship has, which it did not have in the source game. It could also be said that any ship with a large number of G racks is cheesy for this reason as well.

[troycheek]

Got a cable modem a couple of months back and now I finally understand the big hoopla about playing online against other people.  And after a few early butt-whippin's, I've gotten pretty good at playing OP against human opponents.  Well, at least people don't get into shouting matches trying to foist me off onto the other team anymore.  :-)

One thing that still confuses me is the concept of "cheese".  Based on a couple of months of playing, here's my working definition of cheese:

Cheese (n): Any ship or tactic that I beat you with.

Is there a more or less generall accepted definition or list of cheese ships and tactics (as some of my opponents imply), or is it simply a matter of personal taste (as others suggest)?  Or is this simply another case of sour grapes?  "Sure, you beat me, flying that cheese ship!"

My standard taunt to anyone who says I'm using a cheese ship is to offer to play the next game, them in my ship, me flying theirs.  Nobody seems to want to take me up on that offer, for some reason.

Troy