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P1's Notebook 5:

Income, expenses, timing.

I'm going to, before we run this, rate the various faction's economies from top to bottom. You're free, of course, to disagree... but this is how I see it:

1) Bios
2) Giga
3) OH
4) GT
5) IC
6) Belters
7) Rix
8) Phoenix
9) TF
10) Drac
11) Dreg

Generally speaking I rate the faction's economies like this: First and foremost, the price of tech and constructors. Lowering expenses is HUGE, and in that regard Bios (with their dirt-cheap tech) and Giga (with their dirt-cheap bases) have excellent economies. Second, I look at paydays and starting cash. Belters have low paydays and starting cash, as does IC. Giga has a huge buff to both paydays and starting cash. Third I look at how efficient their miners are. Dreg's miners spend three days at a rock, TF miners are slow enough that they need a ref in every sector, but Giga miners can suck up 2 rocks each on some settings and are quite zippy, being enh and having that giga 1.1 speed. Fourth I look at how resilient the econ is: how hard it is to kill their miners. Giga miners are hard to kill early because they start as enh, plus Giga can always go specs against an overly aggressive exp or tac team. Dreg miners are easy to kill thanks to a hull nerf and how long it takes for them to mine, plus their specs aren't very cost effective.

What's interesting is that these econs can, I feel, be broken up into a different kind of grouping: "top tier," "middle tier," and "bottom tier." Specifically, Bios, Giga, and OH occupy the "top tier" where their econs are so stronk you're either going to have a hard time stopping them (Giga, Bios) or they can very easily dual-tech if you don't really pressure them (OH, Giga). The "middle tier" is everyone except Drac and Dreg: these guys don't have *bad* economies and are really sort of grouped together. Getting your first adv tech isn't a challenge at all, but getting the second requires some careful thinking, thrifty spending, and excellent planning. The "bottom tier" is Drac and Dreg: getting adv tech with these factions can actually be easily stopped by light miner pressure.

I can already hear TheAlaskan objecting to my low placement of Drac, so I guess I'll use them to show you a guide to my thinking:

Drac miners are tough and they're speedy, sucking down rocks fairly quickly. However, they have a 5% starting money nerf and lose $100 per payday. To offset that, their tech prices are exactly the same as everyone else's, while having miners which are actually easier to kill than Belters miners once you get guns on them. They basically have Rix's completely average and mediocre econ... but with a miner capacity nerf, a payday nerf, and a starting money nerf. To top it all off, they can't even quickly channel their money into defensive or offensive tech with a 3 minute research time! The end result is that Drac has to mine more cash than any other faction by a fair margin. What saves them from being the Dregs of econ (`gu) is the toughness of their miners. Dreg miners will spend about a year and a half staring at a rock and then explode if you look at them funny. Drac miners spend a few minutes at a rock and will casually eat through a lt ints mini1 ammo with no $#@!s given.

This all means that what you buy and when you buy it is very important. Drac miners are basically immune to mini1, and yet there are people who don't buy mini2 when facing off against drac. Last week I talked about the GAs, yet I still see commanders deciding that, even with 10k in the bank, sig GA is just not "useful" because they won't be sneaking around. Or I'll see people who just blindly buy everything because why not.

I'm probably the only commander who will routinely purchase EWS2/3. I love those techs and they're very high on my list because they make my probers happy and also make my probers more efficient and effective. If my miners are being consistently harrassed, you can bet that EWS 2/3 is going to be the first expense that goes "off the books" so I can get us the tech we need to end the game. Pausing for 10k to get insane probage is fine when we have a robust economy. Pausing for 10k to get insane probage when we're unsure if we're going to make adv figs and galvs is insane.

If we think back a month or so, we'll remember P1's notebook #2 where I talked about your style. A corrollary to that style (and talked in that particular notebook) was the concept of a plan. If you don't have your tech expenditures planned out, then you don't have a plan. To give you an example, here was a plan I had for the map IO as GT:

1) Get enh cons, delay the cons until they're enh, only get 3 miners
2) Try to find a U rock in any of my four "backsectors"
3) Send TP and OP to the opposite direction of the U rock
4) Get ENH miners
5) Get an exp, buy mini2 ints and yield GA
6) Get a tac and a research
7) Get sfs with most of the pertinent tech
8) Get a palisade
9) Get adv tac
10) SBs, gauss, go win game.

I won't reproduce the numbers here, but I specifically worked out the entire build order including miner dockings on 1.0/1.0 settings. Obviously you don't have to go as in-depth as I did for this particular GT build, but the point here is that your gameplan should involve what you're going to buy, when you're going to buy it, and how much money you're going to have.

When I was playing Starcraft way back in the day I had a friend teaching me the basic theory of the game. One of his first lessons was: money in the bank doesn't earn interest. His second was that you can't win the game with photon canons. The overall point was that when you get money you should be spending it on things that are going to actively win the game because money in the bank does nothing and staying on the defensive literally means you can't ever win. There are, of course, times when it's good to have a bit of a bank roll (many commanders like to earmark $3500 for replacing a miner, for example, and it's usually correct to save $500 for RPs or bbrs just in case an opportunity presents itself), but generally speaking if you can buy something and you aren't, then you're wasting your time (see P1's Notebook #1).

Hopefully this explains why I like buying Probe 2/3. Spending $5k that I have just lying around on better probes is going to help me win the game. Sure, it's defensive tech (and I prefer to buy offensive tech), but I'd rather spend the 5k to shore up my defenses then let it rot in the bank stubbornly refusing to earn interest regardless of what the Fed's doing with their rates.

One last note: when multiteching you have to assume that every spacebuck you spend is your last. After getting the first adv tech with most factions, the second is a luxury. If my second tech, for example, is sup I'm probably not going to buy EWS 2/3 except in the strangest of corner cases, simply because there's not all that much helium left. Indeed, the longer the game goes the harder money is to come by and your thriftiness should increase as a result. Otherwise, see you out there!

Not really going to object to that about drac econ

So you routinely buy EWS2/3 and haven't noticed they only cost 2500 each since PCore005?

Nice post, very true and wish more people would plan a bit before commanding.

TheAlaskan wrote:QUOTE (TheAlaskan @ Jan 8 2015, 12:45 PM) Not really going to object to that about drac econ

P1TLDR: god, Drac econ sucks. Also I like probe 2/3.

Phantom032 wrote:QUOTE (Phantom032 @ Jan 8 2015, 01:20 PM) So you routinely buy EWS2/3 and haven't noticed they only cost 2500 each since PCore005?

I generally buy them when I have cash to burn, so I can't say I've ever bought them while consciously looking at their cost XD I'll fix it.

P1's Notebook 6:

The Factions.

It's been a month and a half of these almost weekly posts and I have only just barely begun to discuss factions. Here I'll give a quick overview of the factions. Later I'll go more in-depth about them.

Belters

Pros:
-Great expanding
-Great multiteching
-Great bombing
-Great sup mirror

Cons:
-Soft to expansion
-High sig
-Slow miners

Overview:

Belters, colloquially the brix, were the 4th faction released by Microsoft. They have a number of interesting perks in their modern incarnation including being able to mount "inappropriate" guns on their ships, i.e. SFs with gats and figs with miniguns. In addition, the cost of their regular bases and techbases (and the cost of upgrading their techbases) is 20% less than normal. Ship prices, such as the research cost of enh figs, is also significantly reduced for this faction while their other technology carries a 20% cost nerf. Their ships are also incapable of carrying small shields, being given a number of bonus HP to compensate as well as a hull perk. This also becomes something of a sig nerf. Their "sanctuaries" are also different, rescuing any pod that docks at them. Finally, all of their ships are slightly more massive than normal.

Overall, Belts design points them towards brute-force attacks rather than being sneaky like Bios. Belters bomb runs can be terrifying at any stage of the game and being able to mount nans on adv figs makes gunning down nans more difficult than usual. Still Belters suffers from some truly blocky ships that are easy to hit even for mediocre int pilots.

Bios

Pros:
-Cheap (like REALLY cheap) tech
-Great sensors and sig
-Good turn-rates
-Can mount hvy cloak on everything
-60s build times for everything... including carriers (normally 90s, 120 for carriers)
-Pods can rip to large receivers (mostly bases)

Cons:
-10 minute research time
-$15000 initial price of techbases
-Weak early game offense

Surprisingly, Bios sits in a position where they're very powerful in PUGs but very weak in SGs. The hvy cloak mounting actually renders Bios incredibly deadly in the mid to late game when bbrs with solo nans can almost effortlessly kill enemy bases while in the late game the hvy cloak means Bios HTTs aren't generally seen until they've fired the first missile... at which point it's almost too late. The flipside is that it's difficult to mount an offense in the early game: generally speaking your best bet is large quantities of scouts which can be foiled by a couple good int pilots and a handful of nans. Also your defensive capabilities are suspect as you're stuck with basic figs/lt ints/lt sfs for at least 12 minutes. Rix can easily bomb your home with AC2 in that amount of time.

Overall, Bios can become a steamroller in the lategame. Their expansion tech in particular has the best HTTs in the game thanks to the stealthiness. The longer the game goes, the happier Bios is.

Draconium
Pros:
-Very tough ships
-Telerefs

Cons:
-Basic cons can't teleport
-Very low damage
-Bad econ

Draconium is a midgame faction. Their economy is mediocre but the toughness of their ships means that as long as teams need to STFN, their bomb runs have a higher chance of succeeding. Unfortunately because of the mechanics surrounding nans and spiking, they evolve into a brute force team with less overall tankiness than Belters and much less damage making the actual forcing a difficult proposition.

Dreghkalar

Pros:
-Fast.
-Agile.
-Good hitboxes on all ships
-Great missiles (in track and damage)
-1 minute research
-lt int start

Cons:
-No hull
-Terrible econ
-Bad scan range, bad sig

Dreg is ostensibly an early game faction but they've got some serious problems in that regard. First, because they start with lt ints rather than figs, it can be difficult to secure a large section of map in the early game. There are solutions to this, of course, but it puts Dreg at an expanding disadvantage compared to Giga, Belters, or Rix. In addition the fact that all their bases are more expensive (see: terrible econ) means that their individual bases are all pretty critical. Losing a con hurts you much more with this faction than any other faction. If you can transition to the late game you'll find that being loud and blind is very problematic as it greatly reduces your ability to sneak around. This tends to push Dreg into more of a brute-force role where their low hull directly hurts them.

Dreg's success is tied into being able to take advantage of its strengths. Despite the sig and sensor nerf, their hunter 3 is incredibly potent. In addition thanks to the high speeds, they can sometimes catch their opponents flat footed. Generally speaking I've found that the only way to succeed as dreg is to get up a basic tech (I feel as though sup is best for this faction) and then transition into a specmine economy. The specs are expensive but they'll be able to carry you into the end-game stage.

Ga'Terran

Pros:
-Cheap research, great econ
-Palisades and lots of special tech
-Miners can offload at all bases

Cons:
-Requires Pali for adv tech
-Bricky nature makes them a bit easy to hit
-Really, really @#(!ty doors (FF-off is almost a requirement. I've seen people lose miners because of FF ramming bases.)

GT is a fun faction for me for a variety of reasons. Generally though the rule of thumb with GT is that you have to shove your fist down your opponent's throat. With higher-than-normal hull and tech like Armor Plating for HTTs you've got a good recipe for punching people in the jaw and getting away with it. Though I'll talk more about what makes them truly special in terms of their special techs later, it's worth noting palisades here: for the price of a techbase you get a large con that's ungalvable and can plant on any rock. These bases are absolutely absurd for brute forcing and adv pali push is very likely to succeed, giving GT a strong edge when going expansion.

Gigacorp

Pros:
-Cheap bases and carriers (regular techbases though)
-Spec mines
-Patrollers
-High payday/starting cash
-Starts with enh cons/miners
-High speed
-Lxy craft

Cons:
-Bases (non-techbases) vulnurable to normal weapons
-Only start with scouts
-Must research most Mk 1 tech
-Low hull

Gigacorp is a late-game faction much like bios, but where Bios focuses on steady, incremental advantage gains Gigacorp is all about earning an early game advantage and then coasting through its rather miserable mid game. Giga can take a huge swath of map early and patrollers are incredible early-game combat ships (especially in smaller games). The problem is that Tac and Sup both have an easy way to push Giga off the map in the mid game: dis2 and killer 1. When Giga reaches adv tech; however, its lxy craft (especially lxy fighters) are incredibly dangerous and powerful weapons that are more than a match for most enemy craft. In addition, when both factions are paydaying tech and cons (for pushing/replacement/extra He3), Giga's cheap constructors and high paydays are a huge advantage.


Iron Coalition

Pros:
-Ripping miners
-Miners offload at techbases
-Start with lt ints
-Get ships with techbase (exp gives you ints, adv exp gives you hvy ints)
-Rescue probes
-Bases can't be galved

Cons:
-Miners don't dock a lot of money
-Payday nerf
-2 minute regular con construction time, 3 minute techbase
-Bi sig nerf
-@#(!ty fig hitboxes

IC is mainly about brute force, but with their various perks (Good dam, missile dam, and energy) their SFs are also very strong. The end result is a fairly robust and flexible faction that has quite a few routes to victory. Typically commanders will go expansion but it's also not unheard of to go some kind of tac mixture. Supremacy is rare and generally frowned upon as the large hitboxes of the figs tend to render them easy targets.

Phoenix

Pros:
-None.

Cons:
-No pros.

Phoenix is a very vanilla faction which probably makes it the worst faction in the game. And by worst faction in the game, I mean it's a tough call between this vanilla pile of boring and Dreg's crappy-econ-into-crappy-lategame approach... but I'd almost always take Dreg's missile and speed buffs over Phoenix's... nothing. Like I'm fairly sure the only reason to pick Phoenix is if you hate Allegiance and want its players to be bored.

Omicron Hive

Pros:
-Gets ships with techbases (see IC)
-Insane turning ability
-Phenomenal econ, easy to double-tech
-BBRs with energy weapons rather than PW weapons as turrets
-Telerefs

Cons:
-5 minute research time
-5 minute tech con build time

As a faction, OH is neither over nor underpowered. A lot of people like to talk about how great their ints are... which is fine because their ints are pretty good (though I'd rather fly a Rix, Bios, or TF hvy personally). I don't like it's design much though because it feels as though Weedman (the designer) basically took his favorite faction and techpath and cranked it up to 11. Part of that is because their "turret" theme was slowly taken away from them over time, and another part of that is Weedman is known almost as the original Hvy Int Whore so it's unsurprising that when he created a faction he created the ships he most wanted to fly. Interestingly their techbase con build time nerf is probably the most impactful nerf in the game. It pops up in a couple of odd ways. First, you kind of have to start buying the techbase a lot sooner than most other factions which hurts your ability to pump out the second wave of cons or buy bbrs on reaction. Second, heaven forbid you lose a techbase, it takes you a year and a half to replace it which means that a single crack in your defense can actually just lose you the game. Unlike most other factions, this faction can easily go either brute force or stealth thanks to some truly excellent stealth bbrs and their very good hvy ints.

Unlike their spiritual ancestor IC; however, they can be fairly easily galved off the map.

Rixian Unity

Pros:
-Frankly absurd damage (1.15) and PW range (particle speed)(1.2)
-Great turning left-to-right
-Outposts have THE best green-red door positioning for defensive purposes (when defending miners or against HTTs)
-Scouts act as small ripcord receivers
-12s research time
-HTTs can kill bases as well as capture
-Frankly OP stealth bombers

Cons:
-Substandard econ
-Poor up-down turning
-Poor bombers
-Lack of missiles makes mediocre SFs

The Rixian Unity has a very interesting mix of early, mid, and late game strengths that depend on the team and what techpaths you go. Mid game and early-late game rix sup is incredibly strong, their galvs are (obviously) the best with 1.2 EW range and 1.15 damage and the fact that they can rip 2 enh/adv figs to scouts makes their miner offense terrifying. Rix gat3 will flat out shred a miner in almost no time. On the other hand, Rix hvy ints are numerically up there with the best in the game (IC and Belters have as many buffs combined between PW damage and hull strength) and will melt the opposition, and rix mini2 ints almost feel like you're flying mini1 hvies. As for the early game, they have a level of flexibility other factions don't have as they can call a scout chain and easily get 100% of their team in any sector that has a scout in a minute or so. As for the late-late game, their SBs are hands-down the best in the game and it's fairly easy (if not trivial) to solo techbases in them.

Yet most people would agree that they're not the best faction, and there's a few reasons for that. First, their strange handling means that you have to fly them differently than all of the other factions as your orientation matters. Second, their econ is pretty mediocre being entirely vanilla. Finally, the line between a deadly SR scout offense and a dead SR scout offense is a thin one that requires a fair bit of discipline and situational awareness which most teams can't handle. Overall they can be seen as a sort of theoretical opposite of OH, who only does one thing very well (int-based multitechs) but has a key weakness that hinders them (5 minute techbase build times and 5 minute research times) and keeps them in the realm of "very good" rather than "overpowered." Rix has a lot of things it does very well, but because it takes so much teamwork and its econ isn't so great, they have a hard time winning some games.


Technoflux

Pros:
-PE weapons (0 spread, tons of range)
-GREAT scouts with 2 gats that mount lt boost
-Miners can be ripped to
-Miners are hard to kill
-Plascheese makes defending miners a breeze
-BBR forward weapon is `ys
-ADV and HVY scouts mount 2x nan
-missiless SBs
-Rescue probes

Cons:
-PE turrets on bbrs conflict with EW ab canon
-Lack of missiles hurts enh sup
-Miners are wonky, econ requires offload point in each sector
-Low speed
-6 minute research
-Nerfed paydays and start money
-Miners cost more
-No mines
-Starts with just scouts

TF is probably my favorite player-made faction from a design standpoint. There's a whole lot going on in this faction and almost all of it is interesting. The lack of mines makes for a huuuge change in gameplay, both as the players who are flying TF and the players who are flying against TF. PE weapons are a lot easier to aim for skilled pilots but are worse for unskilled. The scouts are incredibly strong and always a threat to solo your miners. Perhaps my favorite part of TF, from a design standpoint if not a command standpoint, are their miners.

Most miners will suck a rock dry, or at least 90% dry, every time they approach the rock. TF miners will leave about half of the rock, meaning they have to mine it twice. On the other hand, they mine VERY quickly. Basically this means that while for most factions (especially dreg and belters) the rate-limiting factor of mining is how quickly the helium gets sucked off the rock, for TF the rate-limiting factor is how quickly the miner can get from the rock to the dock point. This fits with their .9 speed in probably the single-most interesting gameplay innovation in Allegiance history and sets TF apart. While most factions will approach mining chains in almost the exact same way regardless of map or settings, TF has to be very careful about where they are going to try and mine and with how many miners, and settings can completely change it all up.

Overall, TF is very well balanced and when it's clicking on all cylindars, has the tools to crush its opposition. But it has some difficulties on defense being unable to camp alephs. TF is on the level of Bios in design standpoint, though considerably stronger in organized play and a little bit weaker in PUGs.

To close this notebook session, I'm going to rank the factions in my estimations. This is a combination of my thoughts, my experiences, and the statements I've heard from the game's stronger commanders. It's also (by no means) the god-given truth (mostly because I never asked Vogue's opinion) so feel free to disagree and discuss!

In PUGs:

1) Gigacorp
2) Bios
3) Belters

Tier Break

4) TF
5) Rix
6) OH
7) IC
8) GT
9) Draconium

Tier Break

10) Dreghkalar
11) Phoenix

In SGs:

1) Rix
2) Gigacorp

Tier Break

3) Belters
4) IC
5) OH

Tier Break

6) GT
7) TF

Tier Break

8) Draconium
9) Dreghkalar
10) Bios

Tier Break

11) Phoenix


Ok, what do I mean by "tier break"? That's used to indicate a significant jump in faction viability. In a vacuum (though Belters beats Giga 90% of the time), in SGs, Gigacorp is MUCH better than Belters but Belters is only a little bit better than IC. While Belts, IC, and OH are (in my mind at least) somewhat interchangeable in terms of strength of the faction, none of them are "on the level" of Rix or Giga.

You'll also notice that the 2 most volatile factions are Bios and TF. TF's strength as a faction depends on how effective opening scouts are. In PUGs, a TF scout can fairly reliably solo a miner due to lack of discipline by the PUG teams. In SGs, a TF scout should never solo a miner. Bios on the other hand goes from being the 2nd best faction (and tier 1) to second worst and stretching the edges of viability. It's much for the same reason: Bios' strength is tied into the fact that a lack of discipline will allow their scout offense to work, that the enemy won't be able to mount a strong, concentrated offensive effort in the early game when Bios is weakest, and in the late game the probing won't be sufficient to catch Bios sneaky-sneaky action.

"Why is Giga higher than Belters? Belters beats the tar out of giga!"

Faction ratings are based on how well the faction does against the field. Giga has a lot of options that Belters doesn't. First of all, patties are > figs. Second of all, anything Belters can do, Giga does cheaper and more efficiently. Finally, Giga's late game is just so powerful that it can be hard to stop a rolling Giga team. Belters might be good against Giga, for example, but Belters aren't as good against Rix, IC, OH, Drac, Dreg, or Bios. At least, not in my opinion.

"Why did you rate Draconium so low? I win all the time with Draconium!"

Except for Phoenix and possibly dreg, all of these factions are viable. Most have their good matchups and their bad. Plus, sometimes your team just plays better. Team cohesion (I don't want to use skill because a team of 10 lone wolves will probably lose to a team of 10 less-skilled-but-more-coordinated players) is more important than faction choice. To revive some olds squads, SPQR would lose to circa 2009 SysX 100% of the time regardless of the factions, settings, and techpaths. Winning with Draconium could be a mixture of player stack, disparity in command skill, and matchup.

Note: Phoenix (and to a much lesser extend Dreg) are the exceptions to this rule. Winning with Phoenix (either as your faction or your commander, `gu) is very unlikely even with a huge stack.

Dreg hit boxes are hilarious to look at in milkshape

Trasher wrote:QUOTE (Trasher @ Jan 12 2015, 01:55 PM)

Phantom032 wrote:QUOTE (Phantom032 @ Dec 31 2014, 07:55 PM) And finally:
TL;DR: Keep voobing around and let someone else command. Its what I'd do if I didn't want to read.

As for TA: their figs are quite small. I remember the ints being small too, it's possible I'm remembering incorrectly. The old model though had a huuuuuge hitbox and a tiny model. Not sure if that's the one you're looking at?