Asteroid Mining Consortium

[Kulikk]

Hackers are obviously bad and notoriously overrated by weaker players (which is not their fault, if fryxx actually knew what is good, cards like hackers hsould be balanced to be very strong in a 2p game)

[HappyMeaI]

Hackers are obviously bad and notoriously overrated by weaker players (which is not their fault, if fryxx actually knew what is good, cards like hackers hsould be balanced to be very strong in a 2p game)

Notoriously bad

No one is going out of their way to play hackers. If there’s a better option, you go for it. However, if hackers is in your starting hand you have the extra juice to play it, you’d be a fool not to.

[jaymc1130]

Hackers are obviously bad and notoriously overrated by weaker players (which is not their fault, if fryxx actually knew what is good, cards like hackers hsould be balanced to be very strong in a 2p game)

Notoriously bad

No one is going out of their way to play hackers. If there’s a better option, you go for it. However, if hackers is in your starting hand you have the extra juice to play it, you’d be a fool not to.

Spoken like a player who truly overrates Hackers. Closed mind and arrogance is a dangerous combination as I’ve already pointed out. You’ll find you have a very difficult time improving much beyond your current level as long as you maintain this poor attitude. Production doesn’t win games of TfM consistently, efficient expenditures of resources to acquire points wins games.

[Kulikk]

Hackers are obviously bad and notoriously overrated by weaker players (which is not their fault, if fryxx actually knew what is good, cards like hackers hsould be balanced to be very strong in a 2p game)

Notoriously bad

No one is going out of their way to play hackers. If there’s a better option, you go for it. However, if hackers is in your starting hand you have the extra juice to play it, you’d be a fool not to.

I don't think so, unless you are really overflowing with energy prod and you have nothing better to do (which is extremely rare scenario).

[FrankJones]

I'll say this about hackers.

I hate when it gets played against me early. It seems to happen when I'm already in bad shape (I haven't been able to increase my MC Production, and I might even be in the negative from playing peroxide power or fueled generators.)

I'm not inclined to draft it, pay 3 MC for it, produce energy, and then pay 3 MC to play the card.
But, if I get the card for free, and/or the energy is meaningless (Maybe I just played Quantum Extractor and Mass converter), I might use it, especially if I think Banker might be relevant. IF the cost is negligible (for the above reasons), the cost ren be recouped immediately from the immediate +2 in money production.

I would say it's situational. If I see a 500+ Elo player playing it against me, I'll assume that player has a good reason. I don't think it's automatically a bad play, or automatically a good play. it really depends on a number of variables.

[Corvus Mortis]

You give a good long-winded, vague explanation of what most players already know. We know that the value of a point is worth about 5 mc at the beginning and 10 mc at the end.

The value of a VP is ~6 MC at the end of the game and ~2.5-3.0 MC on gen 1. If you score at the efficiency of 10:1 in your final gens, you will lose most games against strong opponents.

Now I will agree with you from a spreadsheet perspective that a card like hackers is infinitely worse value than AMC. Given the right circumstances, it still poses as a deadly delta card HU gen 1.(Refer to my previous post for the basic math breakdown), There are more openings in prelude to play this card or AMC.

It's not that the card is unplayable, just that it is played far, far too often. Calling it "deadly" makes me think you might be playing it too frequently. Energy early on can do so many things for you, most of which are much better than Hackers. We should value energy at 8-9 MC in gen 1 unless we are positively swimming in it. This means gen 1 we pay 15 MC + the cost of a negative VP for +Sponsors for us -Sponsors for our opponent. Just basic math the card barely pays off after you account for the VP, but it's worse than this. That is because we spend a bunch of cash in gen 1 to play Hackers, but our opponent doesn't feel the effect until much later in the game.

Consider Sabotage, which costs 4 MC and hits your opponent for ~8 MC. This card nets you +4 MC. It's a decent card, hardly "deadly". If we play Hackers gen 1, when does it get to the place where it's even with Sabotage? Gen 6 we are down 5 MC and our opponent is down 10 MC, which puts us up about the same net as Sabotage, but we still have to make up the -VP. By now we can be very far behind where we would have been with better investments of our energy and cash.

Again, there are times to play the card, but they are rare and it's almost never "deadly".

Perhaps anecdotal, but I definitely think the meta right now involves playing hackers early on HU if you can. So, I’m not sure who these mastermind gurus of yours are that showed you the economics 101 page on TFM, but I believe they’re very wrong about hackers. (:

Not the meta among the highest-rated players, so you may want to reconsider.

[FrankJones]

Valuing that early energy is tricky, right?

The cards generally establish energy at 7 MC (power plant, Geothermal power, Giant Space Mirror), but, that's IF you have those cards.

I am generally unwilling to do a SP power plant, so, for me, the cost of not having energy production might be, "Well, now I just cannot play this very good card at all).

Similarly, playing a useful but not crucial card that reduces energy can really backfire when a better card comes in the next draft. I'm never sure when it's wise to spend my final energy production.

[Corvus Mortis]

Valuing that early energy is tricky, right?

The cards generally establish energy at 7 MC (power plant, Geothermal power, Giant Space Mirror), but, that's IF you have those cards.

I am generally unwilling to do a SP power plant, so, for me, the cost of not having energy production might be, "Well, now I just cannot play this very good card at all).

Similarly, playing a useful but not crucial card that reduces energy can really backfire when a better card comes in the next draft. I'm never sure when it's wise to spend my final energy production.

Not really. You play hundreds of games and it’s easy to deduce how much energy generally costs/is worth. You are very happy to play Power Plant gen 1, so energy clearly worth more than 7 MC.

[HappyMeaI]

TBH guys,

(HU Format)
I don’t think that deeply about this game. I don’t think the skill ceiling is high, and I certainly don’t think there is much edge to be had in the 300 —> oo elo range because of the lack of complexity the current deck has to offer. There is an extreme amount of variance in this game and any edge is often negated by an engine that you’ll see in nearly 100% of your games which revolves around Mars-U or AI Central.

So when I make my plays, I’m generally working off of muscle memory of what leads to the best outcome starting with what cards are not good vs. which ones are good. I tend to do pretty well, and I don’t have any spreadsheets up on the side like some of you probably do to help assist in what the absolute optimal combo is to play.

I also rarely play hackers, but when I do I often win the game. I am not top 10 on the arena ladder like some of you, because I do not have the time nor will power dedicated to becoming top 10 on arena. I have taken games off of several top 10ers. I’ve beaten 600s 700s, but I also believe being in the top 10 of the HU arena is simply a combination of consistently winning more than 50% of your games, putting in massive volume, and running well.

Point is, at the end of the day, most of these subtleties in “efficient expenditure” only matter in a vacuum, because HU is mostly a coin toss.

[FrankJones]

Not really. You play hundreds of games and it’s easy to deduce how much energy generally costs/is worth. You are very happy to play Power Plant gen 1, so energy clearly worth more than 7 MC.

1) That's not what I meant. What I meant was, the cost and value are variable. And when I have only one energy production, I tend to think it's a bit of gamble to play an "okay" card that decreases it to zero, knowing that a better card might come up next draft. So, it's not a question of, "Does playing Cuploa City here justify the price of the card and the energy decrease", but rather. "Even though Cupola City returns a decent combination of points and income, it is enough of a surplus to spend my last energy production?" I'm not sure we can use a set value for energy production in situations like that.

2) I'll play power plant Gen 1 if I need the energy for something. I'm not playing it just to get delayed heat production, and risk having someone swipe it with an energy stealing card.

3) I have played hundreds of games. I wish I knew why some of the high-Elo players on this site sometimes assume anyone not rated 700 is inexperienced.