| | Race by race now with some commentary (I'll keep adding to this):
Fed vs:
Gorn: Their cloakers can split your mid-small ship combinations and make beneficial ship trades. You must lose a ship to take a base. They can take your bases with ground assault until the late game. Advantage Gorn.
Romulan: Cloaking battleship/battle-cruiser wrecks your mid-small ships and goes toe-to-toe with the nova. Advantage Romulan.
Klingon: Your fleet is simply overall stronger but pop ships can wreck fed combinations even with Scotty bonuses, ultimately you must rely heavily on the missouri + nova or carrier trades. Klingon always forces you to lose ships as you fight bases, they don't lose ships to bases even in the late game. Overall neutral.
Pirate: Asymmetric opponent faces Loki. Still a pain to deal with bases, but he has similar problem. Advantage Fed.
Borg: No good solution to the cubes except to lose ships, sometimes lots of ships. Ship combinations can be rocked by mixing up biocide/annihilation/firecloud, the borg rarely if ever loses more. Biocide takes 3-4 planets before going down, you lose 3-4 ships to take similar territory. Advantage borg. Your worst over-all opponent.
Tholian: Asymmetric opponent not likely to fight, ship lists if forced are of almost equal strength. Super refit reduces asymmetric advantage of webmines. Loki hampers cloaked tow games. Can swing either way.
Empire: Empire ship list on paper significantly stronger and should lead to significantly better trades. In practice it simply never is due to lack of armament/mobility. In theory they take your planets at no loss with SSD, rarely pans out. Empire wins only in extreme late game (150+ turns) or allied to compensate for gaping holes in their abilities.
Cylon: Careful management of fed ship list can negate size and strength of cylon fleet. Cylon suffers nearly as much as fed do in taking planets, perhaps more since an instrumentality must be sacrificed vs. a cheap fed 6 beam diplomacy. Cylon mines factor little to the fed with super-refit and careful play. This is an even fight.
Rebel: Rebel rush is very hard to deal with (not just for fed). Cannot break it on starbases, towing to a base may be a quick path to RGA. Junky rebel ships tend to outperform, ridiculous low tech1 cygnus can mess up ship combinations. Rebel takes your planets and bases with ease, you fight his planets losing ships every time. Advantage rebel.
Colonial: Colonial ship list is almost even with fed with slight advantage to minefield supremacy of colonial and careful use of the battlestar. Trading territory for ships is all in colonial advantage, you lose ships every time, virgo outperforms its mass and takes 3-4 bases to go down. Advantage colonial.
Overall: The fed are a weak race in VGAp3, this has been seen in statistics with the Nu players even though there are quite a few dedicated fed players on the Nu server. They often survive but rarely win due to having only one real race to which they have a significant advantage over and must judiciously pick and chose when to lose a base/ship. They are designed to work well in alliance, from the outset, much like the empire. Fed emperor will be hard to achieve. (Go Halion!)
Gorn vs:
Fed: See above.
Romulan: The cloaking battleship and cruiser is a significant threat and more often than not taking away ships from the enemy will favour the bird. Gorn can take bases without losing ships, coupled with a stronger overall economy means advantage gorn.
Klingon: Klingon ship list is marginally better than lizard and can badly damage lightweight lizard flee with glory. Lizard is a superior ground attack race in early game, Klingon is a superior ground attack race late, and does not need to lose ships to your bases. Overall an even and tough fight.
Pirate: Pirate is almost helpless, ships, planets everything falls with ease. Lizard's best matchup.
Borg: Borg cubes will stomp lizard fleet flat, absolutely terrible trades can occur, lizard often forced on defensive. Must force a cruiser war of attrition, and a careful one to win. The LCC has to get in and somehow break the firecloud. A handful of planets and bases *might* fall to GA but not the important ones. Overall the gorn's worst enemy.
Tholian: Asymmetric opponent will often not fight. On paper fleets are almost even, in reality crystal fleet always fights to advantage over small ships. Gorn ability to take bases almost entirely negated by webhits to the cloaking ships. Advantage crystal.
Empire: Empire fleet on paper is considerably stronger and in the very late game (150+ turns) it really is. On paper they can take back their starbases you ground-assault and technically they might even be able to reinforce them. In practice lizard has every advantage over the empire.
Cylon: Ship trades are all bad, requiring combinations for even the instrumentality, having the lightest fleet in the game means the minehits do in fact hurt, and can potentially be ruinous to combat and taking planets. Not an impossible fight, but definitely uphill even early on.
Rebel: Rush is a big problem, similar problem for all torpedo races. Rebel can wreck captured bases but more importantly wreck your own bases and territory. Eventually clans multiplying continuously as they do, rebel will outperform in taking and re-taking territory. It can be a long war, overall even with rebel prevailing the longer it goes.
Colonial: A similar fight to the cylon, only this time your economy does not allow benefit to break their mines. Their mines go up, and stay up, forever. Their virgo takes your planets much better than robot ships and might as well be a death star as far as your ship mass range is concerned. Advantage colonial.
Overall: The lizard are a middle of the pack race in VGAp3. They have both good fights and bad fights with strong territory and ship gains early on and that balance often allows them to take big chunks of the map particularly against novice players. When forced to actually fight with their own fleet they can suffer great losses. If their territorial growth stalls, their starbase count stalls, the mathematics of the game are weighted against them, time is not their friend.
Romulan vs:
Fed: see above.
Gorn: see above.
Klingon: Klingon glory simply ruins your game, you will simply lose ships,
even playing carefully. The klingon takes your planets with ease and you have to lose ships to take their bases. Klingon advantage.
Pirate: The pirate doesn't fear you and you don't fear him, he has a better economy for
minefields, you have more beams. Even should he get an SSD, it's not a trivial matter keeping it alive against the cloaking battleship. There's no significant edge either way.
Borg: Better off than most races against the borg. You can handily win a cruiser war and occasionally even force a good trade with cloaked intercept darkwing. The problem is bases, taking on massive borg bases is often like sawing off your only good arm. Advantage borg.
Tholian: Your ship list is stronger, on paper, but again the asymmetric nature of webmines gives advantage to the tholian. Ground is taken at loss on both sides and denying territory to the tholian is difficult due to webdrain. Advantage crystal.
Empire: Fleet wise this fight is totally even, the empire only gaining a PBP edge if multiple death stars alone are deployed and even then it's dicey in the PBP trade who is better off. The empire has no other good way of forcing a beneficial trade. Technically the empire can take your bases by SSD, but it's somewhat of a joke to send SSD into a war theatre with darkwings unless used as bait. On the opposite side, you too must lose ships to planets and in the very late game, he has the edge. Even fight overall.
Cylon: Not bad ship trades overall, much like the empire the chance to engineer beneficial trades exists. The difficulty is the reduced usefulness of the battlecruiser. The robot golem while losing 30% of the time against a base is still much better than your 100% darkwing loss. Advantage robot.
Rebel: The rebel will often trade to advantage with fleet combinations. Rush alone can be beneficial to the romulan, but rush + cygnus and down go 2 darkwings. The rebel has the fleet edge. Massive problems taking territory from the rebel whereas none at all from the rebel. Advantage rebel.
Colonial: Much akin to facing the cylons, however the battlecruiser over-all fights better fights, however setting up good trades is more difficult due to positional leverage of the colonial. Same problem with taking territory, as always.
Overall: The romulans are a weak race in VGAp3, like the fed this has also been noticed with our crop of Nu players though there are fewer who specialize in them than the fed. They are not at as much of a disadvantage as other torpedo races in ship trades, their battleship is extremely versatile, tough and can take down many mid/heavy carriers for very reasonable PBP trades. They are very good at denying territory gains but their Achilles heel is always taking territory. Their options when floating above a base are invariably "I'm going to lose a #$% ship..."
Klingons vs:
Fed: See above.
Gorn: See above.
Romulan: See above.
Pirate: This is arguably the pirate's worst matchup of them all (ask Vepr). The pirate is seriously threatened by pop ships escorting the excellent ill-wind battlecruiser. The pirate has no options and against a skilled opponent often finds himself mass producing bloodfangs just to live another day. One of the most one-sided fights in all VGAp.
Borg: Unlike most races the borg is not as scary to the klingon since he can wage very effective guerrilla warfare. The firecloud can be hunted (particularly death specula). Warp-in can be threatened by glory, cloakers. The borg must fight your bases and you can actually whittle down their bases and planets causing lasting damage with small ships while making a lot of coin. The excellent battle cruiser can alone terrorize large sections of territory, necessitating cubes on lengthy deployment. It's not the borg's favourite fight, he must reach and threaten the core to win.
Crystals: Your fleets are mirror images and this time the crystal does often fight. The immunity to NUK, high beam count of all klingon ships, inability to play any sort of cloak-tow games often forces the crystal into actually making ship trades, the are almost even in the trade. They can take ships, you can take territory. This is not his favourite fight, since it's almost even.
Empire: Very similar to the lizard match up. The difference is the klingon has more late-game staying power, they have a battlecruiser, a force multiplier pop ship. By all rights the klingon should have advantage, the only reasons I don't give advantage to the klingon is because their cloaking is more easily defeated than the lizard (conventional mines and otherwise) and the minor economic and combat bonuses the lizard has add up to an over the entire game advantage.
Cylon: The cylon will generally beat you in ship trades, though he can't use the instrumentality since it's critically weak to the force multiplier pop ship and even the automa can suffer but is sufficiently heavy with enough cargo room to be a pain. Cylon mines are not as significant against klingon beams. The cylon again must lose ships to take your territory, and again you don't need to. Overall this is an even fight.
Rebel: The klingon's only disadvantageous fight, another guerilla warfare race but with many times the firepower. The rush is a major headache, a pack of them, filled with fighters and supplies means you trade ships to major losses. This is almost a red level threat, the cruisers and cloakers do outperform the majority of the rebel kitchen sink however the invariability of the rush means advantage rebel.
Colonial: This is similar to the cylon, the force multiplier pop ship is efficient to trade with the colonial mid ships and stops the cobol-virgo combo dead in its tracks limiting their positional game. It is not a bad fight, even late game advantageous trades are possible.
Overall: The klingons are the most poorly understood race in VGAp3. They are designed as a guerilla warfare race. Sending ships in a straight line to the enemy is not their way, control, deny, secure territory chipping away with ships, pillaging attrition, breaking stronger fleets with bases, force multipliers and cloak tow games. They must focus on the extreme mobility and flexibility of their excellent battle-cruiser. Few people are actually good at this style of warfare or have the patience. Irrespective, the klingon have only one natural enemy and overall are an above average middle-of-the pack race.
Pirates vs:
Fed: See above.
Gorn: See above.
Romulan: See above.
Klingon: See above.
Borg: The pirate is the only race that threatens the borg throughout the entire game. The borg has no real means to force a ship trade (ignoring tow-chunnel). The asymmetric advantage of rob puts them on a purely defensive footing. If they have means to de-cloak, approaching planets and fireclouds blind is potentially dangerous and ships may trade back and forth. They will stress their only remaining advantage: territory, they are better at taking territory and holding it, facing a wall of borg bases (ex. Taurus) is daunting even given favourable circumstance. This is their worst fight bar none but not your best, there are less dangerous opponents out there for pirates.
Crystals: Two irregular warfare races, highly asymmetric and one basically has all the cards and it's not the pirate. Open space is dangerous for the pirate, planets dangerous for the crystal, but he can always wait, and wait... Neither race is any good at taking territory and so boxed in lines may form. Not as one-sided as klingon, but still massive advantage to the crystal.
Empire: The SSD meets its true master and the empire loses, badly, in all respects. One of the most one-sided conflicts in all VGAp.
Cylon: Mines do threaten your ships, for a time, though late game they are often a joke. The cylon has trepidation making landfall and eventually he must and so the ship losses will always be more on his side. Not a fun opponent, but the pirate has the fleet cards.
Rebel: Asymmetric rob tactics simply prevail in fleet confrontation. Rebels can't use their RGA against pirates, otherwise they risk rob, they often end up fighting bases and the rush is a poor carrier to actually fight bases with. Heavy advantage pirate.
Colonial: Fighting the colonial is much like the robot except the colonial will always have lots of fuel and you essentially can't blow up his mines. The fleet cards are always in your hands, regardless. Advantage pirate.
Overall: The pirates are arguably the best asymmetric warfare race in VGAp. They have the most overall heavy advantages of any race, accounting for their popularity and rampant success. They also have critical weakness against several races, and so must placate or use diplomacy to survive until a position of strength. The best pirates know precisely the strength of the MBR at taking planets unguarded by bases and the subsequent fear of another race making landfall. They can thus be successful when forced into guerrilla warfare, however it is not their expertise. They must deal directly in the currency of the game, ships or perish by attrition.
Borg vs:
Fed, Gorn, Romulan, Klingon, Pirate: see above
Tholian: The borg is the counter-race to the tholian. The borg forces the tholian to do what he doesn't want to: actually fight, and fight at a loss every time. The firecloud allows essentially limitless resupply of fuel, armament, additional ships and beam weapons. The crystal has trouble taking bases, the borg will lose a biocide on average only 1 in 4. The one and only threat the crystal must somehow mitigate in the game.
Empire: Unfortunately for the empire the borg are also an asymmetric opponent and can capture the SSD. Little know except to the masters, the SSD can be captured by the annihilation if its shields are removed from a warp chunnel ride. This can rapidly turn whatever advantage the empire thought he had in terms of territory into a nightmare scenario of epic proportions. Advantage borg.
Cylon: Free fighters, large minefields, what could go wrong? Well the borg can asymmetrically reduce the shields and turn cylon fleet into a windfall of PBP. The cylon can't defend his planets with orbiting ships, the golem is less effective at taking invariably massive borg bases compared to the bio. In straight up fleet combat the battleship offers flexibility in guaranteeing a 1-1 trade, although at minor PBP payoff. Advantage borg.
Rebel: The rebel is a guerilla warfare race, their ships are cheap, highly mobile and pack a punch, the rush is exactly wrong in terms of trade value for the borg in that it outperforms its size and limitations. The rebel must judiciously pick his RGA targets or fall prey to the asymmetric advantages of the borg, but it can in fact be done. Forcing the biocide to die against bases, forcing bad trades and constant pressure from beginning to end game. They rebels have overall advantage.
Colonial: The colonies cannot out-position the borg, and rarely manage beneficial trades due to the danger of asymmetric borg tactics. In straight combat the biocide can eat 3 virgo in one sitting 15% of the time (!) but more likely is going to eat two 50% of the time. Not good odds.
In terms of territory both races are equally good at taking territory. Advantage borg.
Overall: There should be little doubt that the borg are the strongest race in VGAp3. Their strength lies in their asymmetric positional gameplay combined with asymmetric warfare potential combined with conventional warfare potential. They have advantage over almost every race, suffering only to guerrilla warfare and critically the pirates must be mitigated with extreme care and special tactics.
Properly managing the borg fleet and economy is part art, part science and a whole lot of experience. Diplomatically they are hated and reviled, however there is no more powerful diplomatic tool of persuasion than a vectored firecloud and cubes. Trust me on this one.
Tholian vs:
Fed, Gorn, Romulan, Klingon, Pirate, Borg: see above.
Empire: Lots of beams, only the gorbie has big fuel tanks and almost never enough fuel because everything empire is so damn heavy. If you have to actually fight their ships, they will rock you, but you essentially never have to fight their ships. As soon as the SSD is captured then they can't withhold territory from you. Overall advantage crystal.
Cylon: Your ships are worse than his ships in every respect, your webmines are better than his mines in every respect. Trench warfare develops rapidly even early game, crystal with cloakers will simply win a war of attrition. Advantage rock.
Rebel: They never have enough beams or fuel and the rebel throw the kitchen sink approach doesn't work. The rush push rarely makes it to destination. They can force you to lose ships to bases and that is their best bet. The rebel style of guerilla warfare is simply not as suited to fighting the crystal as say the klingon, falcon sweeping is over-rated. Heavy advantage crystal.
Colonial: The colonial fleet is stronger than the crystals by leaps and bounds. The thunder is NOT a virgo, and should not be confused with a battlestar despite it's similar array. The thunder loses 75% of the time to a base, the battlestar wins 75% of the time. The virgo has beams, huge tanks and the colonial comes with a never ending fuel supply and cheap ares in the worst of times. They can take territory and seal it up better than the robot, you can seal it, but the taking is rough. An even, often lengthy, unpleasant fight for both concerned.
Overall: The tholians outperform their meagre ship list through asymmetric webmines which positions them as one of the most feared and powerful races in VGAp3. They have more advantageous fights than even the pirate and only one natural predator. They have the flexibility to pick and choose when to lose ships should they need to fight, and so are almost always at advantage. Their main weakness is acquiring heavily defended territory and if left to their own ship list much like the pirate, they wilt and die.
Empire vs:
Fed, Gorn, Romulan, Klingon, Pirate, Borg, Tholian: see above
Cylon: The cylon instrumentality assures him that he wins ship trades. It's cheap enough to damage or break any front ship in your arsenal at minimal PBP. The path forward is forcing
the SSD against cylon bases, getting the left side with the gorbie, never particularly easy but the territorial acquisition edge balances out the bad ship trades. It's an even fight overall.
Rebel: The rebel "junk" stuck together with chewing gum and tape fleet fights to even your big and heavy fleet at half the cost. Your territory gaining advantage is outweighed heavily by theirs. Advantage rebel.
Colonial: The colonial has everything you need, fuel, mobility, armament, minefield supremacy.
The deathstar does eat colonial fleet for breakfast, much akin to the biocide. Overall it is easier to engineer beneficial trades against the colonial. His battlestar will break against your planets, forcing the SSD advantage is actually a good option. In abstraction this is not a-priori a bad fight, the problem is as typical reaching the battlefield as the colonial picks and chooses when it happens. The advantage overall is slight, but I give it to the colonial, for their positional game.
Overall: The empire is without a doubt the worst race in VGAp3. This has been borne out in Nu statistics and on every other server. There is no question that the combination of limited economic benefit (probe), heavy expensive ships with small fuel tanks and a trump card SSD that more often than not gets turned against its master does not make for a win. The empire can win at expert level though. As designed they are the ultimate manipulators, diplomatically they must pull the strings in the cluster to first eliminate their major threats and carefully, slowly expand using the trump-card "I have the biggest ship" "I can SSD your bases" over, and over, and over... It's not for everyone, clearly. They have no advantage against anyone, at all until 150+ turns into the game. Once everyone has strong 10-10-10-10 bases all over the place, mines covering every ly, then, and only then, do you fear the empire, if it's still alive and healthy.
Cylon vs:
Fed, Gorn, Romulan, Klingon, Pirate, Borg, Tholian, Empire: see above
Rebel: Ship to ship, the trades are often in the cylon favor. Light rebel ship combos don't work well and so it's forcibly all rush and the cylon can mix and match instrumentality/automa/golem to maximize benefit however the rebel often gets left side due to RGA threat and so the trades may go to the rebel. However when it comes to territory, the rebel simply never loses a ship to your bases. Advantage rebel.
Colonial: Ship to ship again often trades are in the cylon favor. Cylon necessarily must restrict use of the easily damaged instrumentality, because the minehits will happen and it's you that's going to be getting hit this time around. Cylon can engineer marginally beneficial trades. When it comes to bases however, the golem loses a third of the time to a base, the virgo 1/4 of the time. It adds up. This is a hard fight, any which way, the colonial must stress his positional advantage. Overall advantage colonial.
Overall: The cylons are a very popular race in VGAp3 and we have a large group of dedicated cylon players at Nu. The cylons are the brute force raw power race of the game. Big ships, big minefields, little subtlety. The low subtlety approach works extremely well against novice opponents but hardened players will cause extensive damage to the cylon fleet and force the cylon into ugly ship-for-base trades. The cylon must carefully pick what ships and what order to at all times maximize benefit and minimize costly loss. The golem with it's shields dented down to 60% loses 90% of the time to a base. The automa flat loses 75% against bases. The problem of the cylon is always bases.
Rebel vs:
Fed, Gorn, Romulan, Klingon, Pirate, Borg, Tholian, Empire, Cylon: see above
Colonial: The rebel fleet is in general stronger than the colonial fleet. The rush does eat 2 virgo, though rarely 15% of the time but it's non-negligible. It can be an even fleet battle with proper colonial positioning and use of minefield supremacy. In terms of capturing territory, advantage rebel. Advantage rebel overall.
Overall: The rebels are a guerrilla warfare race with a big punch. They are more difficult to play than many of the other carrier races as a result of their unique ship list and economy strongly dependant on the falcon which takes considerable fuel management. They have more good encounters than bad, however their weaknesses are to some of the more powerful races in the game and so they often fall just short of true glory, placing them in the middle of the pack in terms of game standing.
Colonies vs: see above!
Overall: The colonies are an excellent race in VGAp3 having more beneficial encounters than bad ones. Nu statistics indicate the colonial pound for pound blow the tar out more ships than any other race. They are the 2nd best positional race and when playing a strong positional game it can be like fighting a crystal with regular minefields instead of webs and a much bigger bite - they choose when and where to fight, you don't get much say in the matter. Absolutely no one is comfortable with a pack of battlestars waltzing around their space like they own it. They are the strongest of the free-fighter races and one of the overall strongest races in the game.
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Show Media Item - Paper, Rock, Scissor Race Guide
