Shields block crits first.

Edited for unnecessary rudeness.

Do you even know how to play?

Shields cancel Crits first. Every time. Please read the rules.

Do you even know how to play?

Shields cancel Crits first. Every time. Please read the rules.

Do you even know how to play?

Shields cancel Crits first. Every time. Please read the rules.

I believe you're mistaken. Shields absorb hits before crits.

I use howlrunner for my damage boosting. The value of focus is lessened by her presence. ... I value my TIEs being on the table longer where you are leaning more towards taking stuff off the table.

Do you still always take the Evade action once Howlrunner is dead? I ask that because Howlrunner is a priority target for a lot of people so I can't imagine Howlrunner is always around for you.

I use howlrunner for my damage boosting. The value of focus is lessened by her presence. ... I value my TIEs being on the table longer where you are leaning more towards taking stuff off the table.

Do you still always take the Evade action once Howlrunner is dead? I ask that because Howlrunner is a priority target for a lot of people so I can't imagine Howlrunner is always around for you.

Depends on the game state. But evade is usually the go to if there are any arcs on that particular TIE. However if theres only that one arc on multiple TIEs then focus is acceptable for those TIEs.

Is that a change? If not my mind is blown. We've been playing wrong since the beginning.

I need to go home and check my rules now.

If you are correct, my humblest apologies. (I did edit my post for unnecessary rudeness before you responded)

Also theres only 4x 2 damage crits in the deck.

You still have that wrong. There are seven Direct Hit! cards in the 33-card damage deck. There is a 21% chance of drawing a Direct Hit! on a critical hit with a fresh deck.

Sorry, I was off by one.

Is that a change? If not my mind is blown. We've been playing wrong since the beginning.

I need to go home and check my rules now.

If you are correct, my humblest apologies. (I did edit my post for unnecessary rudeness before you responded)

To be fair thats what I thought as well. Until I read the rules myself and found out the filthy space terrorist gypsies were cheating! Which really shouldnt have surprised me!

You guys are missing the point with your pedantry. The 'lowly' TIE Fighter is as immune to getting vaporized by any one shot as the Z-95 at range band 2-3. IF you are considering range band 1 shenanigans then the Z-95 is far more vulnerable than the TIE on virtue of having 2 green dice base.

The biggest shake up to the meta which will stem from the Z-95 is not really going to be solely from its cost/durability but also from the fact that it allows the Rebels a low cost missile platform that is also not terrible once it has spent its load. Add munitions fail safe and the options are endless. If all the rebels do is line up 8 Z-95s against 7-8 TIEs they will still lose due to not being able to evade + lack of access to Howlrunner.

Well, our pedantry is correct and we were simply correcting your absolute statement. A TIE with and evade can be one shot with three attack dice. It is true that a Z-95 facing the same result (3 hits, with one of them being a direct hit OR a minor explosion with a "hit" roll, so there are 9 bad cards) is also dead because it doesn't have evade. A TIE without actions is more likely to be one-shot than a Z-95 facing the same number of hits, of course because of its two shields. Two hits that get through are all it takes to kill a TIE w/o evade. A Z-95 requires at least three hits to get through, unless the one hit that does is a proton bomb x2 crit

That said, I agree with you and take evade for exactly the same reasons.

I use howlrunner for my damage boosting. The value of focus is lessened by her presence.

How so? I'd say the opposite: Howlrunner's ability has synergy with focus.

Also, it's worth noting that focus is not only better than evade offensively, it's typically better defensively as well.

Its to do with the mindset that a failure for evasion is punished far more harshly than a failure for missing.

Based on 2 dice math.

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.5 by the focus token

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.34 by Howlrunner

Therefore without the focus the overall loss to average damage is only -0.16 which is an acceptable loss in my mind.

The value of focus increases the more dice you have where the value of Howlrunner is pretty much static, so for something like an interceptor, focus would have greater relative value so its possibly a better choice over evade. However the penalty for failing to evade is also steeper for a squint so that needs to be considered as well.

I use howlrunner for my damage boosting. The value of focus is lessened by her presence.

How so? I'd say the opposite: Howlrunner's ability has synergy with focus.

Also, it's worth noting that focus is not only better than evade offensively, it's typically better defensively as well.

I just sent you a PM asking in particular about one shot situations with evade vs focus.

Its to do with the mindset that a failure for evasion is punished far more harshly than a failure for missing.

Based on 2 dice math.

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.5 by the focus token

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.34 by Howlrunner

Therefore without the focus the overall loss to average damage is only -0.16 which is an acceptable loss in my mind.

The value of focus increases the more dice you have where the value of Howlrunner is pretty much static, so for something like an interceptor, focus would have greater relative value so its possibly a better choice over evade. However the penalty for failing to evade is also steeper for a squint so that needs to be considered as well.

Could you explain what you mean about the failure mindset? For me, I feel like the evade does two things that focus doesn't. 1) Make sure I don't get one shotted (or at least highly unlikely) and 2) gives me a chance to avoid more damage than I actually have dice for.

Its to do with the mindset that a failure for evasion is punished far more harshly than a failure for missing.

Based on 2 dice math.

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.5 by the focus token

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.34 by Howlrunner

Therefore without the focus the overall loss to average damage is only -0.16 which is an acceptable loss in my mind.

The value of focus increases the more dice you have where the value of Howlrunner is pretty much static, so for something like an interceptor, focus would have greater relative value so its possibly a better choice over evade. However the penalty for failing to evade is also steeper for a squint so that needs to be considered as well.

Could you explain what you mean about the failure mindset? For me, I feel like the evade does two things that focus doesn't. 1) Make sure I don't get one shotted (or at least highly unlikely) and 2) gives me a chance to avoid more damage than I actually have dice for.

Its to do with the mindset that a failure for evasion is punished far more harshly than a failure for missing.

Based on 2 dice math.

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.5 by the focus token

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.34 by Howlrunner

Therefore without the focus the overall loss to average damage is only -0.16 which is an acceptable loss in my mind.

The value of focus increases the more dice you have where the value of Howlrunner is pretty much static, so for something like an interceptor, focus would have greater relative value so its possibly a better choice over evade. However the penalty for failing to evade is also steeper for a squint so that needs to be considered as well.

Could you explain what you mean about the failure mindset? For me, I feel like the evade does two things that focus doesn't. 1) Make sure I don't get one shotted (or at least highly unlikely) and 2) gives me a chance to avoid more damage than I actually have dice for.

The steep price of failure means the extreme effect of the loss of a ship on a botched evade role. Theoretically a focus token could mitigate more damage over time but it doesnt eliminate the presence and thus the extreme penalty for failure. This is a desirable situation for me because in my mind its harder for a swarm to come back from a points disadvantage where Aminar is of the mind that the time advantage from having a stronger offence is more desirable.

Additionally in an environment where 3 dice ships are the norm, the presence of evade tokens on the table means that they will have to allocate shots inefficiently wasting red dice just to clear those tokens, further 'stretching' the durability of my swarm.

Its to do with the mindset that a failure for evasion is punished far more harshly than a failure for missing.

Based on 2 dice math.

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.5 by the focus token

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.34 by Howlrunner

Therefore without the focus the overall loss to average damage is only -0.16 which is an acceptable loss in my mind.

The value of focus increases the more dice you have where the value of Howlrunner is pretty much static, so for something like an interceptor, focus would have greater relative value so its possibly a better choice over evade. However the penalty for failing to evade is also steeper for a squint so that needs to be considered as well.

Could you explain what you mean about the failure mindset? For me, I feel like the evade does two things that focus doesn't. 1) Make sure I don't get one shotted (or at least highly unlikely) and 2) gives me a chance to avoid more damage than I actually have dice for.

The steep price of failure means the extreme effect of the loss of a ship on a botched evade role. Theoretically a focus token could mitigate more damage over time but it doesnt eliminate the presence and thus the extreme penalty for failure. This is a desirable situation for me because in my mind its harder for a swarm to come back from a points disadvantage.

Additionally in an environment where 3 dice ships are the norm, the presence of evade tokens on the table means that they will have to allocate shots inefficiently wasting red dice just to clear those tokens, further 'stretching' the durability of my swarm.

If I evade with everything I still lose a ship in the opening volley but will do less damage. Might be why you worry about a points disadvantage so much.

Its to do with the mindset that a failure for evasion is punished far more harshly than a failure for missing.

Based on 2 dice math.

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.5 by the focus token

Average damage is increased by approximately 0.34 by Howlrunner

Therefore without the focus the overall loss to average damage is only -0.16 which is an acceptable loss in my mind.

The value of focus increases the more dice you have where the value of Howlrunner is pretty much static, so for something like an interceptor, focus would have greater relative value so its possibly a better choice over evade. However the penalty for failing to evade is also steeper for a squint so that needs to be considered as well.

Could you explain what you mean about the failure mindset? For me, I feel like the evade does two things that focus doesn't. 1) Make sure I don't get one shotted (or at least highly unlikely) and 2) gives me a chance to avoid more damage than I actually have dice for.

The steep price of failure means the extreme effect of the loss of a ship on a botched evade role. Theoretically a focus token could mitigate more damage over time but it doesnt eliminate the presence and thus the extreme penalty for failure. This is a desirable situation for me because in my mind its harder for a swarm to come back from a points disadvantage.

Additionally in an environment where 3 dice ships are the norm, the presence of evade tokens on the table means that they will have to allocate shots inefficiently wasting red dice just to clear those tokens, further 'stretching' the durability of my swarm.

I much prefer messing with the threat thresholds of my opponent. If I put a focus on all my academies, offering them optimal offensive power and have Howlrunner as decked out in defense as she can get they're much more likely to try to strip focus tokens than to attack Howlrunner who is the backbone of my fleet. Taking 7 actions to avoid a 1 in 10 chance isn't worth it. If they don't one shot the first tie they'll 2 shot it. Maybe 3. Either way I'll have 12 attack dice with 4-5 focuses and Howlrunner rolls to follow up with(Most likely killing one ship(X-wing) and crippling another, or murdering a B wing and tagging another lightly.

If I evade with everything I still lose a ship in the opening volley but will do less damage. Might be why you worry about a points disadvantage so much.

Yeah I understand where you are coming from. My logic is that faced with a wall of evade tokens my opponent will attempt to strip 1 ship of an evade token and then try to focus it down and I actually dont care if its Howlrunner or not. It should also be noted that I try not to spend evade tokens unless damage is lethal. For example if its 1 normal hit early on in the 'stack' I'd save the evade token for potentially fatal damage later on. This is the important difference between evade and focus defensively. You have 100% control on spending your evade tokens but focus is contingent on your ability to roll eyes.

Mind you this is just an opening gambit. Once the initial joust is over the battle plan transitions into something a lot more flexible. However in a scrum I tend to favor evade on low PS ships because you can never be too sure what will be pointing at your ships.

Hobby : a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation

If doing all the math and crunching gives you that same feeling you are no longer a human, the world has crushed your soul, and and no amount of cool miniatures games will help.

He's onto something! The author of the thread is actually a self-aware artificial intelligence bent on world domination and extermination of the human race, but due to a code bug believes that this can only be achieved through the battle simulator known as "X-wing Miniatures".

Upon attempting to register a squad in a Store Championship, the Tournament Organizers denied access, saying "we don't serve their kind here". The AI has taken to watching the documentary Battlestar Galactica for guidance on how to work around this issue.

See! See! I knew it! Its NOT me! Its THEM!

Thread Necromancy!

• Z-95: It's undeniably an excellent value, and its price point will finally give rebel lists more versatility in filling smaller point gaps. Per point cost, it has more firepower and durability than an X-wing, the mighty B-wing, and even.... a naked TIE Fighter.
• E-wing: It doesn't look like a very good value, but it should still find its way into some elite 3 ship lists, or Etahn + swarm lists. It's a terrible jouster, so you need some inventive squad builds and flying to make this ship work.
• TIE Defender: It has a very unique dial, so all mathematical predictions are off. What can be said: its jousting value is just as bad as the TIE Advanced, so this ship needs to repeatedly abuse its white K-turn to be worthwhile. Merely keeping your action isn't enough, you'll need to simultaneously avoid arcs with it as well.
• TIE Phantom: Mathematical predictions at this point are not very useful, but the jousting value puts a minimum floor on its performance potential. Expect it to be potentially devastating, and meta shifting.
• A-wing with Refit: Almost as good of an overall value as the Z-95, and its jousting value will be about on par with the B-wing. Lots of people are dreaming about how they can cram tons EPTs onto these ships, but thats not their strength. They're an extremely good jouster with an absurdly good dial, and PS1 blocking. Once Rebels have these highly competitive 12 and 15 point ships, the meta and rebel list building is going to be blown wide open. The diversity of competitive lists and tactics that are going to appear is going to blow your mind.

• Scoring the dial coefficients is more regimented than before, and is broken down into various categories.
• Wave 4 dials have been spoiled, so they are now fully included.
• The jousting value for each ship now has a range that is meta dependent, rather than returning a singular value.
• Everything is still relative to a 2/3/3/0 stat line, so ships' jousting efficiency "pivot" around the standard TIE Fighter for any given meta.
• Critical Hits are now being counted and weighted, and the resulting "value" for shields is now computed mathematically. This resulted in shields being worth around 12% - 15% more than hull, depending on the defender's defense dice and the meta. Previously I had estimated 25%.
• I'm more explicit about how much confidence the model has for each ship, as I mentioned in an earlier post.
• Z-95 equivalent PS1 cost has been fixed to be 11.5, not 11.

Technical details are in the updated original post, and are quoted in the spoiler tag here.

Numerical Results

Are you looking at the Cloaking with or without the mods. Because the Stygium Particle Accelerator and Advanced Cloaking Device really changes the game with cloaking.

Are you looking at the Cloaking with or without the mods. Because the Stygium Particle Accelerator and Advanced Cloaking Device really changes the game with cloaking.

He doesn't appear to be using the Particle Generator, but is using the Cloaking Device at peak efficiency.

Are you looking at the Cloaking with or without the mods. Because the Stygium Particle Accelerator and Advanced Cloaking Device really changes the game with cloaking.

Are you looking at the Cloaking with or without the mods. Because the Stygium Particle Accelerator and Advanced Cloaking Device really changes the game with cloaking.

He doesn't appear to be using the Particle Generator, but is using the Cloaking Device at peak efficiency.

Aminar is right, I'm looking at a naked (PS1 equivalent cost) Phantom, and then a PS1 equivalent Phantom with Advanced Cloaking Device that gives it an effective stat line of 4/4/2/2. That obviously doesn't take into account the PS Bid that you will need to make Advanced Cloaking Device worthwhile. Only the jousting numbers are meaningful, since we have no idea how effective the cloaking action will be, although early indications are "very". The Phantom is in the "low certainty" bin for a reason.

FYI, I uploaded the new version of the Excel document, and updated the link in the OP, so anyone can download it. This does not include the Matlab scripts that were used to generate the meta-dependent normalized damage numbers and durability. If I can figure out an easy way to implement that in Excel later then I'll wrap that in as well.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4i-dE5epNFzeloyRGVjSlVFNlk/edit?usp=sharing

LSL seems like a nice law but I would suggest something along the lines of this:

1 unit have power 1

2 units have power 3

3 units have power 6

4 units have power 10

This takes into account 100% successful focused fire.

If you have three times the staying power compared to one enemy and the same damage output, you will have an even chance against two such enemies. It takes one time unit to kill the first, and another time unit to kill the second. Meanwhile you will have recieved two time units worth of damage during the first exchange and one time unit during the second exchange. So you dealt two time units of damage and recieved three in total.

If you add one enemy you will take 3+2+1 units worth of damage over three time units before you kill your opponents and therefore needs to have six times the staying power or lets say double the fire power and three times the staying power do deal with them.

In X-wing this means that a ship that cost half as much as another might do a decent job in a fight 2 against 1, but will do a great job 4 against 2 or 6 against 3. The real power comparisons would be

2 ships vs 1 ship, 3 power vs 1 power (3 : 1)

4 ships vs 2 ship, 10 power vs 3 power (3.3 : 1)

6 ships vs 3 ships, 21 power vs 6 power (3.5 : 1)

My simulator also confirms this to some degree.

SO are the costly ships in X-wing based on LSL with 1,4,9,16 progression, this suggestion 1,3,6,10 progression or straight up 1,2,3,4 progression?

MJ you said that the cost scaling was off on the larger ships, could this be the reason? I must admit I haven't had the time to go through all the info in your math threads, but this was my first reflection. :-)

In principle you have the right idea, but remember that you have a 100 point cap. So your example here of one ship having 3x the durability of two otherwise identical ships, translated to a 100 point limit, would be comparing a 100 point ship to 2 50 point ships. But we don't have a 50 point ship, let alone a 100 point one.

If you were to decrease the point cost to 12 and 24 so it was 8v4, then you would need more than 3x the durability to break even. The discontinuities in the curve become less, and it becomes closer to the continous time solution which results in the square root ratio.

I will analytically solve for this later, but for now the empirical calculations and corrected curved I use are pretty good until the ship value gets up well past 30 points.