So. Any monkey can visualize a straight 1 or 2.

Do you have a good trick for visualizing long k-turns? 3k 4k 5k?

This also includes coming out the other end. Say you're k-turning into a board edge, and you're not quite sure if you're gonna stay on.

Another: how do you visualize range 2 and range 3?

What about 3 slight turn?

--

I've noticed that my outstretched fingers equals about a 2 range or a 5 straight.

The width of my fist is a 1range (also a 2.5 straight)

My forearm with a fist is R3. This one is less useful as trying to scope it without getting dubiously close is hard to be accurate.

If i was making these gestures but not holding them really close to the models, would that be legal? I do know you can pick up the movement templates and look at them in the air away from the ships. (right?)

--

Another rules question: If your turn template goes off the board edge, but you land completely within the board, are you considered out of bounds?

--

Here's another one. There's already the Rule of 13. Which helps in a straight on consideration. (see youtube).

But what if you're not at a perfect straight on point and you want a bomber to get into R3 for instance. How do you visual an area of say... 8 to 11 straight?

[[As a note, I've read Osoroshii's thread and I've passed basic formation flying and I've watched that video on how to do formation flying and pinwheeling.]]

Another rules question: If your turn template goes off the board edge, but you land completely within the board, are you considered out of bounds?

No; only the ship's final position is relevant.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/110115-earning-your-wings-a-guide-for-understanding-movment/

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/110115-earning-your-wings-a-guide-for-understanding-movment/

Thanks but I've already read this. Note the more specific question of how to visualize long maneuvers better.

I find that it is covered therein just fine.

Just add the length of the ships base and learn to visualize 'em!

Adding ship bases becomes increasingly difficult as you begin to place more than 3. Maybe you have better visual summation eye talents. The rest of us do not and that advice doesn't help.

I'd differentiate that this is both skill and talent, where skill is learned, talent is innate. I'll take another talent and skill for you: pitch sense. Its much harder for a person with "bad pitch" to improve their direct interval recognition by counting half steps. A person with perfect pitch actually doesn't have to count at all. Something about how the pitches sound is distinctly different to the point of millisecond recognition.

--

Also, visualizing large areas was not covered until just now. Large meaning like gauging range 3 or 7.5 straight. Or 8 to 13 forward length on a non-linear plane.

keep your templates in nice neat piles along the edge for comparative views, and take an hour or two to fly though an asteroid field alone, with 2 ships, then with 6 without hitting any of the asteroids, it'll help you judge distances alot better for all ranges as well as improve forsight.

@Blail

I have never had any problems visualizing K-Turns and have often landed within millimetres of the edge/rocks/other ships but I've never considered that others might have so, sorry!

Adding one or more ship bases mentally+visually before the move is super easy for me - as long as it is straights.

The banks (especially with large ships) however, are what messes with my head, as I always go further than expected.

I've learned to always add a few millimetres to my guesstimate, before I decide if I want to commit or not, so its not as bad as it was in the beginning.

keep your templates in nice neat piles along the edge for comparative views, and take an hour or two to fly though an asteroid field alone, with 2 ships, then with 6 without hitting any of the asteroids, it'll help you judge distances alot better for all ranges as well as improve forsight.

I've done about 20 hours of that. =) Definitely helps.

I'd like to stop guessing as much though and actually KNOWING that I'll pass or hit. That K-turn using the range two board edge asteroids is a great trick from Osoroshii

@Blail

I have never had any problems visualizing K-Turns and have often landed within millimetres of the edge/rocks/other ships but I've never considered that others might have so, sorry!

Adding one or more ship bases mentally+visually before the move is super easy for me - as long as it is straights.

The banks (especially with large ships) however, are what messes with my head, as I always go further than expected.

I've learned to always add a few millimetres to my guesstimate, before I decide if I want to commit or not, so its not as bad as it was in the beginning.

Haha, thanks Keffisch. Sorry, I was getting a little peeved too.

I definitely have a really hard time with visual placement. (I'm not great at driving either!) Practice helps a lot, but my strengths lie in theory.

Yeah, those large ships really can muck me up too.

The speed of a maneuver is how many small bases long it is in the forward direction.

I don't know how i do it but i can visualise where things will end up fairly accurately not 100% by any means but more often than not i'm right.

I played alot of space simulators as a kid i got good at knowing where i was in relation to the other ships and that spatial awareness just stuck with me so i glance at the board and make my best guess.

The speed of a maneuver is how many small bases long it is in the forward direction.

I have a Soontir with 1HP trying to kill a Bandit hugging the side of Fat Han. None of the ships are in the straight head on configuration (meaning I'm not in the silly easy to guess position of directly facing the bandit). I want to check if I have a shot on the Bandit and also if I am BARELY in range by millimeters of Han or not. (Because I really don't want to be).

So... lay 7.5 bases in your head exactly within millimeters?

How would you KNOW that you got it right before finding out after committing to non-BRboost actions?

Also assume that Soontir doesn't ahve Targetting Computer, which would let you attempt to target lock Han to check that range. However, even then, you'd be at a disadvantage as you'd use up one of your actions to not be defensive while youre at 1HP and you are trying to shoot the bandit not the Falcon.

Hello,

using any body parts or any other tools to help you in the planing phase is illegal. Just use your eyes.

What could help is drawing all the maneuvers on a pice of paper. Just put the template and a base on every end down on the paper and draw around it. Repeat this with all templates with the same starting position.

I'm guessing long straight distances by flipping over the base in my mind (like moving in diskwars), or even the doubled base.

Curves are harder. One trick for the 90 degree curves: if you imagine a line diagonally through your base, the end positon must lie on this line. For every template, for every base, small or big. You hast have to guess the distance between start and ending position. For the 1 hard curve its about half a base, 2 hard is a full base, and so on.

Also if you draw the end positions for the curves on the paper, you will see in what way the end positions for a bank 1, 2, 3 will overlap. So, if you find a good way to visualize a bank 2, you can go from there to see the end positions for bank 1 or 3.

Also draw help lines on the paper that you will find useful. e.g. through the stoppers. You must find your individual way to visualize curves, and the paper will help you. Look at it from time to time. Make different guessing games, like putting down a start position, guess the end position of a maneuver and but a second base there. Use the template compare your guess to the real result.

I hope this post was useful to you.

Here I was just going to warn you that some people would say that using ANYTHING to help judge distances will be called CHEATING although I only see the rules saying no to templates. I don't think there's any issue using body parts as a quick, and rough, guess as you're certainly no measuring in the truest sense of the word. This topic has been bashed before so you've been warned in case things turn ugly.

Used to be a problem back when i used to run 40k and fantasy tournaments for GW UK and the game had 'guess range' weapons like stone throwers and mortars... less scrupulous players would measure their elbow to finger tip or clenched fist, lean on the table and point to a model and go...'ooh he's lets say 18" away'... and get a bang on hit.

Clearly not playing to the spirit of the rules (which were flawed in that they seriously compromised anyone with poor dpeth perception )

I feel the same way about templates in Xwing

In our games in the 'tidy up' phase we move all the templates (i have two sets even for home games) to the edge of the play area or off it. I've never seen a friend do this but it would be all too easy to leave templates 'on table' stratgically close to your ships to predict a move.

Here I was just going to warn you that some people would say that using ANYTHING to help judge distances will be called CHEATING although I only see the rules saying no to templates. I don't think there's any issue using body parts as a quick, and rough, guess as you're certainly no measuring in the truest sense of the word. This topic has been bashed before so you've been warned in case things turn ugly.

Yes this is a good point because the rules specifically state you cannot use maneuver templates. It does however state that you must estimate ship movements using your head so that also leans towards not using body parts to measure. It's pretty obvious what ffg intended but there are those that need specific rules and this may be a case where ffg might want to add estimating using nothing but your head in which case someone will try and measure with their physical head haha.

I eventually got really good at visualizing range just from experience. It just comes naturally now.

Nothing is more painful for me to watch than to see a new player grossly guess wrong on where a ship will end up with their particular move.

Realistically, its that R3 distance that's really the hardest for me on a regular basis. Checking or guessing to see if its worth it to take a barrel roll out of an arc.

Unfortunately, that arm trick isn't accurate enough still if I don't get close lol.

Haha. We people with poor depth perception have a REALLY hard time with this game ^^. It gets better, but not by much.

I'm pretty decent now, but I still average about 2 asteroid hits a game, unintentionally.

I've also found through some trial and error that very rarely does it feel worth it to go through the asteroid intentionally. (Yes, you can get away with it once perhaps but thats it.)

So. Any monkey can visualize a straight 1 or 2.

Do you have a good trick for visualizing long k-turns? 3k 4k 5k?

This also includes coming out the other end. Say you're k-turning into a board edge, and you're not quite sure if you're gonna stay on.

Another: how do you visualize range 2 and range 3?

What about 3 slight turn?

--

I've noticed that my outstretched fingers equals about a 2 range or a 5 straight.

The width of my fist is a 1range (also a 2.5 straight)

My forearm with a fist is R3. This one is less useful as trying to scope it without getting dubiously close is hard to be accurate.

If i was making these gestures but not holding them really close to the models, would that be legal? I do know you can pick up the movement templates and look at them in the air away from the ships. (right?)

This was covered in another thread, and most decided that if you were waving your hands over the table in that manner, it constituted 'pre-measuring'. Even picking up the templates to look at them was considered dodgy. The game is about estimating where you're going to end up after a maneuver. If you have to go through elaborate measures to do that, then an opponent could very well call that pre-measuring and cheating.

My advice is: Practice, Practice, Practice.

Place a ship on the table and think about a 5-straight. Place another ship about where you think it might end, then measure to see how close your estimation was. This is not going to be perfected over a few hours - it can sometimes take years.

I've played Modern Micro (1/285th scale) for the last twenty years and I've got my range margin of error down to less than 5% on average. Which means if I'm looking across the table at a model that is about 100cm away from mine, when I measure it will invariably be within 95-105cm. Anything under 100cm and I'm pretty much bang on.

X-Wing is no different. The more you play, the more you will learn. Range and maneuver estimation accuracy will only come with practice and time.

Here I was just going to warn you that some people would say that using ANYTHING to help judge distances will be called CHEATING although I only see the rules saying no to templates. I don't think there's any issue using body parts as a quick, and rough, guess as you're certainly no measuring in the truest sense of the word. This topic has been bashed before so you've been warned in case things turn ugly.

Yes this is a good point because the rules specifically state you cannot use maneuver templates. It does however state that you must estimate ship movements using your head so that also leans towards not using body parts to measure. It's pretty obvious what ffg intended but there are those that need specific rules and this may be a case where ffg might want to add estimating using nothing but your head in which case someone will try and measure with their physical head haha.

Maybe FFG should publish two rulebooks. One 312 page volume for the rules-lawyers that covers every conceivable eventuality and comes with its own 240 page FAQ, and then the regular rulebook and FAQ for people with common sense.

I believe my head is about range four. So. Want to take that quad laser shot?

So I posted some of my ways of measuring banks in another thread. They differ from the "earning your wings" thread because I have a hard time visualizing lines through the nubs and remembering all the "x move is y bases" conversions. Not knocking the guide, it is fantastic in fact. I just found a way that works better for me and doesn't require fractions of bases. I'll link my thread when I get done with these tips.

1. When I first played (and often still), I placed an asteroid at range 2 from one edge and range 3 from another edge. This gives something I can just mentally "move" from place to place.

2. I also would place asteroids consistently at Range 2 from one another so I would have Range 2 measurements sprinkled around the board. Also the distance between these asteroids would be exactly the distance for a 4 speed maneuver. Just have to remember which ones you placed in relation to others.

3. Even though everyone knows that bases measure out distance (small base = 1 move for example) but for some reason I always tried to visualize it. It was months before I started realizing that there happens to be, say my opponent's base sitting RIGHT THERE about where I'm going to do my move for easy measure. I would always be so focused on that ship that I wouldn't look at easy landmarks.

Here are my measuring tips: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/112102-useful-measurements/#entry1177069