I'll give a vote to the Iconians.

Terrans 8
Iconians 8
+ 1 prediction that there will be exactly one winner, and one loser. (not the most daring prediction, but it was a prediction so I felt I ought to count it. )

Depends

I keep forgetting that not everybody enjoys a good russian winter.

I figured I would wait, until the thread stopped getting new opinions. I will say that more than one poster has already outlined exactly how the battles go. If the guesses die down, I will post tonight.

Specifically
Round 1 Terrans lose 2-3 ships of lower HPs
Round 1 Iconians lose 1-2 ships
Round 2 Iconians lose their 2nd ship if they didn't lose it in round 1; else 3rd ship loss is 50/50
Round 2 Terrans lose their 3rd ship if they didn't in round 1; else no losses
Round 3 Iconians lose their 3rd ship if they haven't already
Round 3 Terrans lose their 4th ship
Round 4 Iconians lose their 4th and last ship

Terrans have 3 ships left, 1 may have some damage but most likely just a little

OT
I would win the battle as EITHER fleet !!!!
Because in a close battle I ALWAYS have multiple fleets ready to attack.
The AI NEVER does that, so the player will WIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THe galaxy is mine.

The Iconians win.[/B] Except for the one battle they lost, they had over 30 hp left. Twice, they came away with TWO ships. Quite frankly, I was suprised at the one loss. The terrans were very lucky and got two Iconians in the first Round.

The other battles all follow the Same pattern. The terrans take out the 70 Hp Iconian and damage the second. The Terrans lose their top battleship and suffer great damage to the second in the first round. Both sides lose a ship in the second round. The terrans lose their last battleship in the third round. At that point, it is a mop up operation as the medium ships do little or no damage. The third Iconian ship only dies if the third terran battleship has taken out 3/4ths of the hitpoints before it goes.

-----------------------------------------------

I actually posted the question to illustrate my Evolution of Fleet composition thread. Ever since Mumble called me on one, I have felt the need to back up my claims.

Some points that were made
1) The terrans ALWAYS dealt more damage, but almost NEVER won.
2) The Iconians were tailor made to beat the terran ships
3) The Iconians did not over invest in offense

Some points that weren't made
1) The square root took a much bigger bite out of the Terrans than Iconians
2) By having shielding in all three categories, the iconians block three damage FROM EACH SHOT. That third Iconian ship was shot at over 30 times!
3) By having 3 shielding categories, there is more statistical protection against bad defensive rolls.
4) That big hit point ship was over level 30. It NEVER failed to take out a ship when it shot.

[B]Some observations
1) You don't get level 30 ships by fighting battles like this
2) Hit points are cheap and effective, always buy as many of them
as you can
3) The terrans paid as much for their weaponry, as the Iconians paid for their whole fleet.
4) Iconian fleet had a speed of 40, Terrans had 12. this economy of scale benefit results from cheap hit points

See what the fleetsim says

Fleetsim said this:

Terrans win losing 4 to 5 ships, 87.5% of the time. Terrans win losing 3 or 6 ships, 11.5% of the time. Any other occurrence, approximately 1% of the time.

However, there needed to be assumptions made because of the incomplete data given. I think this actually means only Iztok was correct. Everyone else was merely guessing on a coin flip.

I absolutely do not believe you ShuShu.

Of course if you gave complete details on all the ships i might change my mind but if the ships are more or less balanced for the fleet numbers the Terrans win with 3 ships standing on average.

I absolutely do not believe you ShuShu.

I'm sure ShuShu isn't lying.    However, he did leave out crucial information, probably inadvertently but possibly on purpose.   

if the ships are more or less balanced

It's clear to me that they couldn't have been balanced.   


I would be interested to see the Fleetsim prediction of this battle using the correct data for each ship involved.   

I'm kicking myself for making a reply without having the necessary information to really have any idea how the battle would go.

You made a reply based on reasonable assumptions, just as I did. When I saw your post pretty much agreeing with mine I had no doubt whatsoever we were both correct. But you know the old saying that you make an ass out of you and me when you assume. I wouldn't put it past ShuShu that this was his point.

The Terrans have 3 Battleships with 7 BHGs, the rest are medium ships with 7 graviton or Quantum drivers. The all have as many ZPAs as weapons The Iconians are 4 huge hulls with 4 quantum torps except for the 48 which has 5 antimatter torps.

Just want to point out, that nobody changed there stance after this post, so I think the ..."Well I didn't realize the fleets weren't balanced statements" are really, "I didn't realize that unbalanced fleets maded a difference until I saw the results"

Just want to point out, that nobody changed there stance after this post,

Didn't feel the need to since I did warn that you can't trust the Iconians, now didn't I? Just kidding, in case you can't tell!  It was a good demonstration but one which I myself wouldn't have put so much thought into. That shows the level that some people are on when playing this game and quite frankly, it astounds me. There is nothing wrong with analyzing different factors to predict an outcome, but I have to ask... barring the obvious educational benefits that have arrived from this excercise, what exactly have we gained when it comes to the essence of "playing a game"? Sure some of us were a little shocked at the outcome and how the numbers came into play, but overall, wasn't this a lot of effort for a minor advancement? Just my opinion and please don't get offended... I just never, ever, ever have put that much "intellectual" thought into a game. Daydreamish visions of empire building and how to go about it, yes, but serious statistical number crunching... not willing to do it. Oh, and by the way, with the seemingly "occasional bug/glitch" that always seems to be present in the game, are you totally sure that you can trust the numbers to be accurately tallied and can your results be proven to be the same time after time? Thought I would ask.  

Not quite sure what this says about me but I actually enjoy it.

Nothing bad Mumblefratz, nothing bad! And I overlooked the 9 out of 10 in my haste to rant without interruption, so apologies. It doesn't change the fact that I can't place total faith in something not reading right when it comes to this game, if you know what I mean.