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Hi,

Dahoudaboudadoudawou in Re: Remarks on FLAK?:

Opponents are completely unable to calculate the battle result since they do not know about the strength of the cloaked fleet. In a regular battle you are able to predict that one carrier X will take down 2 cloakers Y before it gets knocked out on its own. Now all 3 cloakers will probably survive the fight and remain a threat.

I don't think that is vastly different from 1:1 combat; even there, the cloaker race could have many more ships at the end of the battle order. The difference with fleet combat is that you actually SEE them which I actually consider sort-of a (slight) advantage for the opponent. If your battleship is destroyed by two cloakers in 1:1 combat, you don't know whether that was all, or whether there are five more waiting. Thus, you can get quite good intel by sacrificing a probe or freighter, which you cannot in 1:1 combat.

Or am I missing anything?

I agree, this I did not take into account. It's true that a scout is able to trigger and unveil the entire fleet - unless not all cloakers join the battle in order to avoid being scouted

Cloakers are able to break up enemy fleets by towing away and destroying single ships without suffering any loss.

Even without towing fleets apart cloakers are able to take out individual ships with intercept attack. 3 cloakers A fighting carrier X, 3 cloakers B fighting carrier Y and after intercept attack 6 cloakers A+B fight the remainder of the fleet (untested).

The need to form big fleets plays to the Fascist self destructors. You can imagine the effect of D19s on a fleet of carriers which must stick together since they would be easy prey alone.

But that's not a (big) difference to 1:1 combat, is it?

My first 3 points do actually all refer to the same issue: Races possessing cloaked battleships are able to deal with enemy fleets without own losses vs. regular battle where 2-3 Darkwings are being destroyed before the carrier is down. Which IS a pretty big difference to 1:1 combat

The Fascist advantage based on his self destructors is not that increased vs. regular battle, I agree. Also there players tend to keep their ships together in order to transfer cargo and to win battles. I'd estimate the higher efficiency to no more than 10%.

The Pirate's main drawback was his ships' weakness against bases and big battleships. Now 3-4 of his bigger ships are able to take out each of them without any loss.

If I understand your argument correctly, that is a conceptual problem:

All ship lists that we have are designed for 1:1 combat. Building five RAVAGER CLASS CUBE is cheaper than building an EXTERMINATOR CLASS CUBE, although the five Ravagers have better fighting power in FLAK. In PHost 1:1 combat, the Exterminator usually wins.

This argument also came up when we initially designed FLAK (but quite late in the process), and lead to the "Compensation Cheat". Essentially, the smaller fleet (fewer ships) gets a bonus when firing at an enemy ship. This cancels the non-linearity somehow.

To further level it out, we'd need a new ship list. Feel free to make one

I'd be happy to add my gameplay experience if anybody with ship list creation experience is willing to take over the project management

Cheers,
Mike