by Absolut Zero » April 26th, 2011, 8:55 am
Kudos for starting this, but unfortunately this round history you list is different from what actually happened.
The mechanics of the round weren't quite like that. Although the raiding knowledge was far superior, you still needed two different types of ships to pop a port or a planet. Retooling was very turn consuming. Especially if the other alliance managed to gain wind of ops targeting a switch in raider types, they'd try and pick off the raiders as they were retrofitting, which meant several battles above stations before each op was even scheduled to begin.
Fury were largely quiet for the round, likely burnt out from super activity the round before. KAOS was stereotyped as a retirement community for has beens that get uppity for the first month or two of every round. Yet somehow KAOS was able to stave that off (likely with the appeal of the retro round for the older vets). They started strong and were the major player for most of the round along with the Outcasts.
The big war was between KAOS and Outcasts. XF/SD didn't get involved until they started letting Outcast raiders dock on their planets to avoid getting podded. KAOS couldn't find the main Outcasts raider, spent money/turns on ships with massive vision, and then scouted every single sector in the entire game. We guessed XF/SD were housing Outcasts raiders. We popped their planets, we were right, they were protecting them.
Eventually the war between KAOS and Outcasts (XF/SD wasn't really a big factor) was called for a truce since Outcasts claimed boredom, yet the handwriting was on the wall for them. They misused their bank accounts and realized they couldn't keep up with K's bank inflation. Outcasts were going broke, their warbirds were 40-60 levels lower than K ships were. After the truce, there were a whole bunch of Mak fests between Outcasts and K with hunting territory, loud proclaimed "violations of the truce", small skirmishes etc, nothing major. Neither side wanted to resume that long drawn out war especially since activity times for both alliances were vastly different. Outcasts were primarily European, while K was primarily North American. It wound up being incredibly infuriating and frustrating, there were accusations on both sides that they were deliberately choosing to raid when the other was least able to jump it, but ultimately the wide gap in time zones was the culprit.
The races you list as dominating were Kitaran and Zallun. This leaves out two others which were incredibly potent. Due to the bank inflation allowing for unique ship builds, Wraiths were deadly, which K utilized. Wraith's had a bonus to energy/power/whatever it was, and they were able to rock some sick damage ships that could fire more full salvo's before having to repair than any other race. The difficulty with this was getting Wraith's to stop hunting and getting a large enough bank account to actually a build a ship capable of maxing out weapon slots. And yes, the ships raped in battles, specifically small-mid scale ones with fewer than 10 ships on either side. EMP didn't have time to pile up since the battles would simply end in a few rounds.
The other was the trading race, forget what it was. With bank inflation, it was the workhorse of alliances. Get a few of those and your banks inflation could outpace other premier alliances incredibly fast. I think this was a big reason why KAOS was winning the war of attrition with the Outcasts.
Just a side note, but I believe UF was thought to be a smallish alliance that was actually an up and comer. If they allied up with a vet alliance, they would have contributed.