I'll give a vote to the Iconians.

According to the specs you provided, above, the Terran BB's are going to be the 1st targeted - you will lose probably at least 2 if not all 3 of them on the 1st round. The Iconians look like they will stand up pretty good against the Terran Mediums afterwards.

My bet is on the Iconians losing 3 ships and wiping out the Terrans.

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 already conducted the battle 10 times. The winner won 9 times and lost once.

Ok, so you know the results.
The opinions are tied, with one abstaining.

Are you going to tell us who won?

And while I have never been to Russia to experience 'a good Russian winter', I do enjoy a good Colorado winter. The more snow, the better.

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.

Terrans win with 3 ship standing

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

In general the Iconians are toast. Though is does matter who's attacking first. Though the Iconians have four ships with massive hit points the Terran fleet is going to continue to chew through their ships round after round. Even if the Iconians manage to burn a Terran ship or even two in each of the first two combat rounds, they [Iconians] are also going to lose at least one ship each of those rounds. If the Terran fleet attacks first they may even take out 2 or 3 ships in their massive first volley. If The Iconians attack first, they can probably knock out at least 2-3 Terran ships but that's still going to leave the Terrans with 6-7 ships and a darn good bit of fire power. I think they would lose another ship each round but give their higher amount of fire power per ship and the absence of a good defense from the Iconians, the Terrans still come out on top.

Terran win, the only question is how much the victory costs them.

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.

More OT:
I love the BLack HOle Gun !!!!
But those darn torpedos did help me win my first Tough level game ...

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

Interesting.

Thanks, ShuShu

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.

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.

Does that mean that Fleetsim needs a little tweaking then?

Everyone else was merely guessing on a coin flip.

heh..Yea I admit it  , but I did try to survey the data given. I had noticed the firepower of the Terrans being spread quite thin compared to the Iconians. The Iconians matching defenses, I thought would hold up pretty good though with the HP advantage. Only bad rolls could hurt them badly.

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.

Does that mean that Fleetsim needs a little tweaking then?

Possibly, but I doubt it. The issue was the unknown distribution of defense and offense in the Terran fleet. Without specific knowledge, I "assumed" an even distribution. If that had been the case, I'm sure the predicted results would have been obtained.

From ShuShu's description of the battle, the Iconians first took out the Terran battleships. The AI targets ships based on attack value divided by the sum of defense plus hit points. In any "normal" fleet it would be the smaller ships that would be first targeted because they would have less hit points and no defense while still having a reasonable attack value. This has certainly been true for every AI fleet that I've ever encountered. Again from the description of the battle, if the smaller ships were sufficiently credible to be targeted first, there's probably no doubt that the Terrans would have won.

The fact that the AI targeted the Terran battleships first, implies to me that the battle wasn't really 4 dreadnoughts against a fleet of 9 ships, but was 4 dreadnoughts against 3 battleships and 6 garbage scows. There was not enough initial information given to tell the difference between these two cases. This was the gist of Iztok’s post, hence my comment that he was the only one to be correct.

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 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.

Ok, I believe him.
I'm kicking myself for making a reply without having the necessary information to really have any idea how the battle would go.
Obviously ShuShu wanted to make a point and picked a battle that he thought would make it.
It is not that hard to know what the results of battles will be before they are fought once you understand how the battle system works.
I haven't been surprised by a battle result for several games now.

He didn't prove anything to me however, other than i can still be suckered in.

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.

In any "normal" fleet it would be the smaller ships that would be first targeted because they would have less hit points and no defense while still having a reasonable attack value.

This is usually the way it works for my battles, too. I once tried to create a huge hull that would take fire and let my high offense smalls keep firing, but it was impossible to make the formula work. In this case, it's obvious the Terran battleships were overbalanced in offense.

That was a great experiment Shushu. I never put more than one defense type on a ship, but that has me thinking. Also, I never really worry about ship level either. Now I see the importance of that as well.

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"

I did notice that, and I'm not making excuses, but that still didn't quite explain the defensive and offensive distribution particularly with the effect of unknown levels of weapon and defense bonus.

However, the fact that all information was not known was an obvious part of the question. I made the best guess I could using the information and tools at my disposal along with whatever assumptions I needed to fill in the gaps. When it turned out that my "educated" guess was incorrect, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. I still think Iztok's comment that there wasn't sufficient information to truly answer the question turned out to be the best response.

Anyway, I'm far less interested in the, I was right, you were wrong, thing (particularly since it was more, I was wrong, you were right) than in the question of whether or not fleetsim will correctly predict the outcome of this battle if it's provided with the correct information. Is this something that you could do?

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.  

can your results be proven to be the same time after time?

9 of 10 is good enough for me.

what exactly have we gained when it comes to the essence of "playing a game"?

Just a little more insight. True, this kind of stuff is not everyone's cup of tea. Not quite sure what this says about me but I actually enjoy it.

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.