@Psions said in Reclaim:
If you are attacking enemy main base that is not generally going to be a raid, that is more an attempt to end the game by crippling the opponent entirely, or killing his com. Reclaim is an afterthought, the big loss if you fail in such an endeavour is the huge amount of mass you invested into the attack.
No. The reason people only attack an enemy base with intent to end the game is precisely BECAUSE they don't want to leave reclaim behind.
If I spend 400 mass to make a little army, and I attack your base, and I kill 600 mass worth of your stuff, that attack could be considered a failure. Not counting reclaim, there was a net 200 mass in my favor. But it would leave about 500-700 mass of reclaim, which means it's a net -400 to me. In general, net negative = bad attack and net positive = good attack.
(The only exception to this is if one team has a lot more income than the other team; in that circumstance, the low-income team can't rely on trades that are 10% more efficient to make up the eco difference. If Team 2 has 150 mass/second and Team 1 has 100 mass/second, then if team 1 is over and over again killing 10 enemy tanks for every 9 that they lose, that's just biding time until Team 1 loses. Whereas if both teams had 100 income, those trades could snowball into an unstoppable advantage for Team 1.)
And the ONLY reason it backfired was because of reclaim.
Take away the reclaim, and that would have been a successful attack (net positive mass for me).
If attacks like that brought success to the attacker, we would see more of them. People would not only attack an enemy base with the intention of destroying it entirely. People would be willing to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack.
Right now, if someone is trying to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack, they are primarily using low-cost units (light arty drop) or they are trying to do massive damage (corsairs to snipe all t2 pgens, the value of corsair reclaim will be less than the cost of a terrible power stall)
And the reason for this, it cannot be disputed, is the reclaim mechanic. If you take away reclaim, many attacks that would now be considered failures would be properly classified as success. And many attacks that now are considered to be successful would, without reclaim, properly be considered failures.
Here's the simple math:
Because of the 81% reclaim, the attacker is going to donate 50-80% of the mass of their attacking units (some reclaim will be destroyed during the fight), and the defender is going to recoup 50-80% of the mass that they lose (rebuilding on wrecks and again some reclaim can be destroyed in the fight).
If I attack you with 1k mass, and there was no reclaim, I would only need to do 1001 mass of damage for the attack to be worthwhile. With reclaim, if you're going to get 50% of the mass of my attacking units, now I need to do 1501 damage in order to make an attack by 1k mass of units worthwhile. Except out of the 1501 mass damage i did, it only costs you 750 to repair it. So really, I need to destroy 3001 mass worth of stuff in your base to make the attack worthwhile.
On my side of the ledger, I'm -1000 mass for the cost of the units
On your side of the ledger, you're -3001 mass for the damage done, but +1500 for the value of your own losses, and +500 for the value of my losses. Which means you're -1001 mass overall. If I'm -1000 in order to cause you to be -1001, that's a success for me.
But it's a VERY small success (just 1 mass worth). When you take into account the risks involved (my attack is not guaranteed to be a success, maybe it doesn't do as much damage as I hoped), risking 1000 mass of units for the chance to move the game 1 mass in my favor is actually a terrible investment.
So really, I shouldn't attack with 1k mass worth of units unless I have a very good chance to destroy 4k+ mass of your stuff.
If you take reclaim away, I can justify attacking with 1k mass of units in order to destroy 1001 mass worth of stuff in your base, or with a risk-reward analysis I would want a decent chance of destroying at least 1500 mass. So you can see that 81% reclaim makes a HUGE difference in what kind of attacks/raids on a base are good or bad.