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Something I still have a bit of a hard time understanding is understanding certain factions vs others.

Take for example IC vs Giga. Giga bases are fairly weak and galvable, IC bases are ungalvable. I would expect IC to go Sup and galv the lighter bases. Toss in a few other considerations (ripping miners, IC being more about aggressiveness and Giga stuff being more delicate) and I would expect IC to have the advantage over Giga. Do correct me if I am wrong.

So when I read this on the ACS up on the wiki:

QUOTE You'll learn the other factions later but for now pick a strong opening faction (IC, Dreg, Rix, etc) and don't allow whomever has game control to stack the settings towards a comeback faction with lower costs, like Bios.[/quote]

I might be asking the obvious, but what makes IC/Dreg/Rix strong opening factions?

Rix I can see for SR scouts, IC/Dreg though? Is it just the ripping scouts for IC and faster ships for Dreg or is there more to it than that?

Another thing I don't understand is how money settings and total money settings impact the game.

IC/Dreg/Rix are strong opening factions because of lt. interceptors and their superiority at combat over fighters, ergo they have the capability to push further and faster than 'fighter' factions.
Depending on the core Rix may just have their starting figs which are pretty 1337 anyway due to the 3 gats and forward ripping capability to get behind enemy lines and mess up their early economy to get a good economic advantage.

Katya wrote:QUOTE (Katya @ Apr 6 2012, 02:08 PM) Take for example IC vs Giga. Giga bases are fairly weak and galvable, IC bases are ungalvable. I would expect IC to go Sup and galv the lighter bases. Toss in a few other considerations (ripping miners, IC being more about aggressiveness and Giga stuff being more delicate) and I would expect IC to have the advantage over Giga. Do correct me if I am wrong.

Yup, IC vs Giga tends to go for IC. Except in smaller games, where it's harder to galv/dis bases, and where Giga can push cheap, fast constructors all over the map. (IC is rather slow in expanding, because it has more expensive bases, they take 30s longer to build, and they're not automatically enhanced like Giga's).

QUOTE I might be asking the obvious, but what makes IC/Dreg/Rix strong opening factions?[/quote]

Starting interceptors.

QUOTE Another thing I don't understand is how money settings and total money settings impact the game.[/quote]

The higher the total money settings, the easier and faster it is to get advanced tech. (That's why high money settings suck. Allegiance is supposed to be all about the tech race, and in high money games, there is no tech race. 15 minutes in and both sides are advanced. Not much you can do about it).

High initial money settings tend to favor factions with quicker research times -- it gives them an early game boost that teams like Bios can't readily take advantage of. Also helps things like getting cons out faster, getting carriers out, etc. TF for example is a little money-constrained in the early game, and can use the extra money to smooth out the economy some, even though they have slow resarch times.

I disagree with that last part cashto, high money as BIOS is only a problem if SY is off.

Psychosis wrote:QUOTE (Psychosis @ Apr 6 2012, 04:47 PM) I disagree with that last part cashto, high money as BIOS is only a problem if SY is off.

I was talking about high initial money.

High total money doesn't help Bios get adv tech any faster, true ... but it does help it get its 2nd tech faster.

Also Katya ... raising the total money (as well as changing the size of the map or settings) also favors some factions more than others, due how much He3 rock winds up getting, and how that compares to the faction's miner capacity.

Strong opening factions rely on the fact that you are going to inflict damage on your opponents economy early in some form or other. For IC it's probably just that their ints are solid all rounders that anyone can fly, and more importantly completely obliterate any giga ship for the first 10 minutes or so. This obviously makes miner o really easy.

Dreg is strong at the opening because of the speed of their faction, their ints in all honesty suck now (hitbox) but can still zoom around pretty fast. They can plant their cons quick and get on miner o.

Rix, when that quote was written, was strong because they could rip basic figs (which had 3 gats) to their sr scouts and get on miner o regardless of how far back your miners were. They can still do this, only with mass scouts. So constant pressure on your miners regardless of where you have them is a major pain at the beginning when you're busy thinking about big picture things that'll guide the course of the game. The ints are OK, but i'd much rather have a mass amount of scouts rather than ints as rix these days.

Also, in the original question:

Yes, IC outposts are ungalvable.


Giga outposts are not only galvable, but they are damaged by anything, not just galvs.

Thanks for the replies guys!

I think most likely that I'll need to just play more Allegiance (oh darn!) in order to get a really good handle on how map sizes/total cash settings affect games.

QUOTE Rix, when that quote was written, was strong because they could rip basic figs (which had 3 gats) to their sr scouts[/quote]

And this is why I vote we all play on the DN core

Unless they really changed it while I was away....

>.>
<.<

I'm going to tell you a secret... one that will SHOCK the vets of this game... (/trollolol)


I wouldn't know the first thing about tweaking map settings to benefit my faction. It takes a ton of knowledge to know that. Miner capacity, harvest rate, etc.etc. I let my commander worry about that in the squad games.

I just scout a ton, mash the insert key and do what it says, and shoot things.

Bolded for importance.

Nope, was never changed, thats the reason CC came out.