So, a lot of people have mentioned a preference for Stealth Devices or Hull Upgrades on a general level, and I was wondering what people thought about it. As a personal exercise, I collected the biggest arguments for/against each one, and came up with my own opinion, but I am by no means an expert, so I wanted to get the communities thoughts.

The big pro for Hull Upgrade I heard was that it can protect you from Flachette Torpedoes in addition to giving you an extra point of Hull.

Both are 3 points - so a wash there

The Stealth Field argument was that it accomplishes the same effect as Hull Upgrade (reducing the net damage against the ship) by 1 if even a single evade is rolled. Additionally, if you avoid them all, it can give further return on investment in future rolls (unlike the 1 and done Hull Upgrade).

With these viewpoints in mind, I looked at the following;

1) Exactly what was the chance that a Damage or Critical was removed directly as a result of Stealth Device

2) How often would Hull Upgrade actually protect you from Flachette Torpedoes

3) How often would you actually get a second use of Stealth Device?

I took all the ships through Wave 4 and tallied their starting Agility, Hull and Shield values, as well as noting if they had Evade native on their action bar.

I then accounted for those ships that would be damaged by Flachette Torpedoes without a Hull Upgrade, and for each ship that would be saved by their modification I assigned a point advantage to Hull Upgrade.

I then calculated the chances of avoiding a standard hit chance at their native Agility Value. In doing this, I took a standard attack results of 1.5 hits/crits against both their native Agility, and then also against their adjusted Agility. The delta between these two values could then be taken to represent the improvement in performance that would be applied to the additional die and thus the Stealth Device. In cases where this took them to avoid a single full damage, I assigned a point advantage to Stealth Device.

Finally, I calculated those instances where against a standard 1.5 hits/crits the Stealth Device would eliminate ALL hits/crits, allowing the ship to potentially prevent a second damage, I assigned a point advantage to Stealth Device.

In the end, out of 16 craft, 8 showed no native preference at all to having either the Hull Upgrade or Stealth Device attached. In the remaining 8, 7 showed Stealth Device having a larger impact on their gameplay than Hull Upgrade. This mostly stems from the fact that the 6 ships where Flachette Torpedoes are prevented by Hull Upgrades also will on average eliminate all damage from incoming attacks if equipped with a Stealth Upgrade as well - mitigating a clear preference.

In the end, the ship where the Hull Upgrade makes the most difference is actually (a surprise to me) the B-Wing, where it will now be immune to Flachette Torpedoes as well it will not benefit enough from a Stealth Device to reliably avoid a damage with a single bonus Agility die.

Let me know what all of you think, as I'm interested in expanding my understanding of the nuances!

Actually I believe that you have to have higher than 4 hull to prevent the stress from Stealth Device. Which means the only ship off the top of my head that benefits in this way from hull upgrade is the HWK. Y-wings and large ships are the only unaffected ones right now.

EDIT- and TIE bombers.

Wow you're right! See - newbie!

So taking that into account, ONLY the HWK-290 has any affect at all from Hull Upgrade ... TIE bombers have a natural Hull of 6 ...

That makes the Stealth Device a natural preference for 11 of 16 craft, with the HWK-290, Y-Wing, B-Wing, YT-1300 and Imperial Shuttle having no innate preference for either.

I don't see you mention the biggest advantage of the hull upgrade, which is that it's guaranteed. A poor roll with a stealth device means 3 completely wasted points. In a timed game the reliability of a hull upgrade might overmatch the gamble of a stealth device.

I don't see you mention the biggest advantage of the hull upgrade, which is that it's guaranteed. A poor roll with a stealth device means 3 completely wasted points. In a timed game the reliability of a hull upgrade might overmatch the gamble of a stealth device.

That's where the comment about delta between miss chance and evade chance of a single result comes into play.

While statistically speaking nothing is 100% (even statistics over 100%) the actual chance of gaining no successes at all was weighted against the chance of gaining a single success. The likelihood of gaining no results fluctuates based on the number of dice being rolled - these results were where I gathered instances wherein 1 result would be achieved due to Stealth Device.

There's no way to statistically account for luck, but allowing luck to factor into your squadron build decisions isn't a matter of game mechanic preference - which is what my math was built around.

As someone that has a torrid on again/off again relationship with Murphy, I can understand your opinion, but I always get frustrated when I realize I'm making a "safe choice" just based on my fear of the worst outcome.

I trust in hull and shields rather than those **** green dice.

Yes hull upgrade is the "safer" bet whereas stealth device is more "risky" but could have a higher return investment. No we're not talking about stocks here haha. But generally that's the rule. Stealth becomes less risky when higher number evade dice are rolled.

Although rare it is possible to roll all blanks with the stealth device the hull is a sure thing.

Last week I shot at interceptors with stealth device at range three with an x-wing, I got two hits my mate rolled five dice and got just one evade so he lost the device and took a hit.

Green dice you can't trust them.

My personal preference goes for Stealth Device. Yes, even in 2 agility ships. IMO, the increase from 2 to 3 agility is noticeable enough to get that extra Evade or Focus result that makes the upgrade worthy. I find base agility 2 an acceptable minimum to run this upgrade.

I think that in the end, Hull vs Stealth it is only a matter of player's mentality. Some people just don't want to take chances, any chances. Others feel comfortable in the realm of uncertainity.

I don't think this is that deep of an issue. Hull upgrade and Stealth is the same cost. ( From what I remember ) Low agility ships, obviously will get more use from hull upgrade. Stealth isn't a promise of any extra evades rolled, hull will always give you one more hull point.

On high agility ships, stealth can pay off some. However relying on dice, you go with chance. The best defense is always, stay outside of arcs, and don't get shot, or don't allow good shots with dice fixers i.e make the enemy bump so they can't augment their dice.

Hill for promised aid, Stealth the chance for more gains , a gamble if you will.

Question is, do ya feel lucky, punk ?

I don't think this is that deep of an issue. Hull upgrade and Stealth is the same cost. ( From what I remember ) Low agility ships, obviously will get more use from hull upgrade. Stealth isn't a promise of any extra evades rolled, hull will always give you one more hull point.

On high agility ships, stealth can pay off some. However relying on dice, you go with chance. The best defense is always, stay outside of arcs, and don't get shot, or don't allow good shots with dice fixers i.e make the enemy bump so they can't augment their dice.

Hill for promised aid, Stealth the chance for more gains , a gamble if you will.

Question is, do ya feel lucky, punk ?

Sometimes and that's when the dice gods punish me

There's no way to statistically account for luck

You can, actually, it's called the Probability Density Function.

In my experience, there's no such thing as luck.

I think which is better depends on the ship. Stealth Device isn't going to go the distance on a Falcon or B-Wing obviously, but for the likes of Soontir Fel who can stack actions I think it is better than Hull, as with more dice he can use his stacked Focus and Evades to better effect.

If you take a look at both cards they are only supposed to be able to benefit until the first hit, then they are practically good as gone. So lets take a look at the 3 defensive modifications. Shield Upgrade, Hull Upgrade, and Stealth Device.

Shield upgrade and Hull upgrade are essentially the same as far as giving a ship 1 more hit point. The only difference is that for 1 more point you get a shield. Now shields are better than hull in the ability that they negate critical damage but 1 shield alone is not worth 4 points. On an un-shielded ship you are better off giving it hull and having another point you can spend elsewhere.

Now on the hull upgrade there was the mentioned of flechete torpedoes which affects all fighters with less than 5 hull. As of now there is only 1 ship that has a default of 4 hull and that is the HWK. Funny thing for the HWK is that it is the only ship that can benefit from both Hull Upgrade or Shield Upgrade equally without one being better for the other. The Hull will make it immune to the stress torps, while 2 shields are way better than the HWK's base 1.

Stealth Device, as I mentioned earlier like bot the shield upgrade and hull upgrade stealth device is designed only to work until the first hit. The extra evade dice means it works better with high agility ships. So it is best to put on any thing with 3 Fighter, Advanced, Defender, A-wing or dare I do say Phantom in order to roll insane amount of defense dice. Only problem is one round of bad rolling and it is as good as gone (and I have seen 5 blanks on green dice with a focus). Ships to not put it on is obviously shuttles Y-wings and B-wings as they most certainly will get hit with only 2 or 3 defense dice.

So here is a flow chart.

Does it have 3 agility => Stealth Device

Does it have shields => Shield Upgrade

are there any other modifications you might want to put on it => that modification.

do you have 3 points to spare => Hull upgrade.

I almost hate to say this but who remembers the "Stealth Device vs Shield Upgrade" debates? Even in those there were plenty of people who would conclude that the Shield Upgrade was better. Now if you look at the HU vs. SU debate I'm not really sure how big that debate should be; if you have nothing that helps make one better for some reason (the shield recharging astromechs being the easiest example) you need to ask is the small chance that a shield stops a critical hit worth one point over being able to survive one more damage card. Here the HU should easily win because of its lower cost and that certainly can give it an edge over the SD in many instances.

This is one of those cases where it's actually pretty easy to math this one out.

To be consistent, we have to track the extra SD die separately. This is easy to do at the table, because you can roll your normal number of green dice, and then say "and now I'm rolling the one extra that SD gives me." That last die gets put into its own area by itself.

Let's assume the best case for Stealth Device, namely that you're being shot at for as much damage as you would roll evades for *without* SD, plus one. This makes sense, because if you rolled enough evades without the SD die, then you didn't need the SD die. We'll just pretend that the case where you get more than one extra damage never happens (ie. we are putting SD in the best light possible).

This all works out to the the same as having zero agility, and being shot for one damage every time.

If you don't have a focus when you get shot, you have a 3/8 chance of getting that extra evade, and then getting another 3/8 chance on the next shot, etc. If you assume you're going to get shot at an infinite number of times, it adds up to an average 0.6 evades. This is clearly worse than hull upgrade.

If you do have focus it's 5/8 for that first shot, which sums to 1.66 evades. This is clearly better than hull upgrade.

If you have a focus every other shot (ie. getting shot twice a round), it's between 0.8 evades and 1.1 evades, depending on if the first shot had focus or not. This is iffy, and I would say worse, since we're ignoring the case where your normal evade dice leave you with 2+ damage uncanceled.

I'd only use SD on high agility ships that expect to have a focus for defense (recspec, fleet officer, certain specific pilots).

This is one of those cases where it's actually pretty easy to math this one out.

...

I'd only use SD on high agility ships that expect to have a focus for defense (recspec, fleet officer, certain specific pilots).

This conclusion was wrong! Sorry about that.

There's another case where SD can make sense, and that's when you have a ship that expects to be shot at more than once per round, and goes into combat with an evade token. In that case, you use the evade token when SD doesn't come through and therefore keep the SD for the next roll. That would give you two SD rolls, and you would only lose SD if you fail them both (again, under the assumption of exactly one extra damage each time), and that double-failure is only going to happen 39% of the time for two shots.

Of course, that doesn't address the big assumption of exactly on extra damage each time, and now that there are cases where the expected number of evades is more than one, it starts to matter again.

The best case scenario I came up with for stealth is 3 agi w/o Focus. As you add more agility or a focus token, the probability of the stealth device doing anything significantly drops. As you reduce agility, the probability of the SD hanging around for multiple attacks significantly drops.

But even at the best case scenario, the SD only prevents ~.65 hull on average. Which means that the HU is quite a bit better point for point.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are actually 4 outcomes to an attack against a stealth device, two of which most people ignore:

1) The base dice defended all of the damage, stealth device did nothing but is not lost

2) The base dice left all except 1 damage uncancelled, stealth device canceled the remaining damage saving 1 damage and staying active

3) The base dice left 1 or more damage uncancelled, the stealth device did not cancel any additional damage. It is lost with out contributing anything.

4) The base dice left 2 or more damage uncancelled. The stealth device cancelled one damage, but more still got through. It saved 1 damage but is still lost.

People tend to forget scenario 1 and 4, focusing only on 2 and 3, thinking that any time they didn't take damage, was a time that the SD saved them... Or anytime they do take damage, the SD did nothing.

To help illustrate the point, lets take a HWK shooting at R3 through a rock at an interceptor. It rolls 1 hit. THe interceptor rolls 6 dice and gets 3 evades. This would fall under category 1 in that the SD didn't help you because you were fine without it.

To illustrate point 4, lets take a Decimator w/ SD... he's attacked at R1 by an APT enhanced by Jan and Opportunist... The torp rolls 7 hits. The Decimator rolls 1 defensive die (0agi + 1 for SD) and gets an evade. The SD is lost, but the Decimator only took 6 damage, so it still saved 1 damage.

Obviously those are farfetched scenarios, but I find it easier for people to follow extreme examples than the borderline ones. One thing I've recommended doing, and has been aided by the transulecent dice, is mark your SD die, or roll it separately. I know it's not the same to say you have 3agi+1agi vs. 4agi, but it does help to illustrate the scenarios 1 and 4.

The math wizards can provide you with the data to support your own return on investment analysis, but the biggest question is ship usage. SD is a waste on anything less than an AGI 3 ship, and is maximized on ships that can arc dodge and/or stay at Range 3/behind rocks reliably. That is your tactic with an SD ship: avoiding shots or maximizing the chance of reliable green dice results. Hull Upgrade is universally better for most other ships as it generates a predictable, reliable result for the points, and for smaller ships provides some immunity to being one-shotted.

My friend and I have this debate. Even though I don't have any, I would go for the HU most of the time, maybe putting SD on a TIE.

On a different level, some ships have pilots that have defensive abilities, like Luke. Are you factoring them in?

In my experience, a Stealth Device (SD) works best on ships with a base agility of 3 or better. My analysis would be a lot different if the SD did not go poof after one hit. Because of this mechanic it is an upgrade that gets mileage only if you ensure that the ship that takes it never takes hits in the first place. This game is all about building on strengths, not mitigating weaknesses.

One thing that gets overlooked a bit is the psychological effect the SD has on opponents. A lot of players I have played against (I do not do tournaments, so take this as you will) do not even bother to go after the SD ship until the end because they don't want to "waste attacks" on a 4 Agility ship. This is doubly so if the ship is at long range or through an asteroid. It is kind of demoralizing for them to roll 3 attack dice and I grab 5 defense dice. You can turtle Soontir and Vader with both a Focus and Evade so effectively that they are practically impervious to attack.

the hull upgrade can be "wasted" in a similar way to the stealth device - you've got a ship with only 1 hit point left, plus its hull upgrade and the opponent gets two hits in, the ship is as dead as it would have been without the upgrade.

the hull upgrade can be "wasted" in a similar way to the stealth device - you've got a ship with only 1 hit point left, plus its hull upgrade and the opponent gets two hits in, the ship is as dead as it would have been without the upgrade.

Hull upgrade is usually the first to get discarded as long as it wasn't a critical hit. The reason why they made stealth device go away after the first hit is so that it isn't more powerful than the hull upgrade because to be honest that technically goes away in the first hit.

I never use a Stealth Device (SD) on 2 or fewer Agility ships, it's a waste of the 3 points, I give it a Hull Upgrade (HU). 3 agility ships love a SD and can benefit from the HU but I just prefer SD, as a 4 Agility is more fun to roll.

Or if you have the spare point Shield Upgrade (SU) is nice too, as it takes the crit hit and eats it.