Please forgive my ignorance, not have actually played a SFCII campaign. I don't really understand what the problem/inbalance is. Why is the speed in which a race an flip hex's a problem? Is the problem that the Kzinti are able to start flying DN while the plasma races are stuggling to get out of DD's?
This is one of those bleeding ulcers that have been with the D2 as long as the D2 has existed. Here's the senario:
Let's take a ficticous server of 100 people. 50 on the alliance side, 50 on the coalition side.
Flamebait #1, Mission times;
This is essentially gook's explanation. Drone boats kill AI faster, leading to shorter mission times. In the dynaverse, every mission you complete adds or subtracts a number from the hex in question; If it is a hex belonging to your empire, the number is added. If it is an enemey hex, this number is subtracted.
So, let's show an example. Let's say the adverage mission time for a Mirak is 5 minutes, while the adverage mission time for a Gorn is 20 minutes. In one hour, the gorn will score 3 'points' in missions. However, in the same span of time the Mirak may score up to 12 (less if the base is far away, but let's keep this simple for now).
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Flamebait #2, inept defence;
Now, the crafty man or cat might say that a good defence can stop this cold. It can, but defending a sector isn't as simple as sitting on it. You see, missions are run independently of hexes; only the result is reported.
What exactly do I mean by this? To put it simply, missions can be run 'around' defenders, to their great chargin. If you run a mission and there's a *free* enemy in the hex waiting for you, you will draft that enemy. However, if someone's in the hex, but in mission, then you can run a mission, avoid this enemey, AND both missions will affect the Defence Value (DV) of that hex.
Let's show this as another example. Let's say two mirak are assaulting a hex, with two Romulan defenders sitting on it. The mirak, being crafty, stage their jumps into the hex in a staggered fashion. The first mirak draws BOTH the romulan defenders, and for the next 30 minutes leads them on a merry chase which eventually causes the mirak to flee. However, the second mirak may have racked up 6 DV points as this mirak was able to run missions 'around' the defenders. They lose one point due to the romulans driving off one, but are still 5 points ahead in this game.
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Flamebait #3, Sneak attack;
Now, a server may have equal numbers on each side, but during a certian period of time their may be server imbalances. Let's say most of the alliance pilots live in America. Thus there are certain times when these people will sleep, go to work, and other such things that prevent one from doing the important work of winning a server.
Now, a sneak attack is when a group of people wait specifically until hours that they are aware that the opposition is most vulnerable to attack. This is hardly a mirak-only tactic, but short mission times can compound the damage done by such raids, and long mission times can limit success of races with them using this tactic.
Let's take this example: 40 americans fight for the Lyran empire, scoring 120 DVs against the mirak during the course of 4 hours. The 20 mirak of the miraki empire get together and agree to a sneak attack. So, they wait until there are only 5 lyrans on, and then come en-masse and counterpunch for 4 hours.
Generally, a droner race will win these contests again by grace of the first flamebait, short mission times.
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Flamebait #4, The Great Hexx Flip-off:
One of the Dynaverse's limitations is that it is generally only conductive to a kind of hex-flipping warfare without gratitutious effort by the game's host to make it otherwise, and this is the center of the droner argument. Drone ships do well what the dynaverse seemingly wants done, this being the efficient claiming of little hexes. Most of the ships that can't perform fast missions can perform against players (Player versus Player or PvP) but because of 2 unless server rules are given, PvP vessels have been limited in their strategic effectiveness, hence the lines along "Rules GSA but not the Dynaverse."
The majority of server tinkering and server rules has been to try to level this field. Bounties, VCs (as opposed to straight territorial conquest), Disengagement rules, and so on.
I suppose then that the answer to the quoted question is this: The dynaverse, in the end, doesn't care who's in the DN and who's struggling in the DD, so long as they can take territory faster than their opponent.
Topic: #9 (Read 21520 times)