Don't worry about the meta as a new player, learn the ships, learn what you like, fly what you like, and you will win. Meta lists and netdecking doesn't help you become a better player.

That being said, doing your research doesn't hurt. There's little point wasting time trying to get a bad card to work when a quick forum search will tell you it won't.

And money too.

Shado, um, where do I start?

1. Using that initial definition of balanced, it would be balanced if everyone could choose either a) cavemen with sticks, or b) a Death Star. Since both players have access to the same lists....

2. There are many games that have asymmetrical unit composition but are still very well balanced. For example StarCraft 2.

3. Who said anything about all lists being equal if the game was balanced better? There are obviously very strong paper rock scissors dynamics in place. If the game were balanced better then the reverse is true there would be more build diversity. And that would be a good thing.

I don't really get your post. It amounts to saying "The game is not balanced... but it would be worse if it was balanced!"

My post may be a little hard to follow. I'm talking from my different points of view as to what I think balance in the game is.

Shado, um, where do I start?

1. Using that instragidefinition of balanced, it would be balanced if everyone could choose either a) cavemen with sticks, or b) a Death Star. Since both players have access to the same lists....

2. There are many games that have asymmetrical unit composition but are still very well balanced. For example StarCraft 2.

3. Who said anything about all lists being equal if the game was balanced better? There are obviously very strong paper rock scissors dynamics in place. If the game were balanced better then the reverse is true there would be more build diversity. And that would be a good thing.

I don't really get your post. It amounts to saying "The game is not balanced... but it would be worse if it was balanced!"[/quo

I wasn't sayi g you are wrong, just disagreeing from my point of view. But your response to my post is definitely way off of what I was getting at. That wasn't what I was trying to express at all. I have to start work now and will try to elaborate a little more later in the day.

I wasn't sayi g you are wrong, just disagreeing from my point of view. But your response to my post is definitely way off of what I was getting at. That wasn't what I was trying to express at all. I have to start work now and will try to elaborate a little more later in the day.

OK, cool no, worries, sorry if I put you on the spot. I think i get where you are coming from, mostly, it just came out sounding like it had some weird examples that did not make sense to me.

I find your jousting method of determining ship value and fixing things based in a vacuum, relatively flawed.

Right, which is exactly why I don't rank ships just by their jousting value, especially when compiling technical balance fixes. To imply that I only use the stat line jousting values is a gross misrepresentation of my understanding of the game and methodology.

Do you mean you have actually playtested them, or is this pure theory? If you have played them, feel free to let me know how it went, I am always looking for feedback.

Actually, the point adjustments are made for a 100 point squad. The distinction is very relevant when you dig into the underlying math.

You're clearly taking my point out of context. I was merely pointing out that it is possible to have asymmetrical unit composition and still have a balanced game. I picked Starcraft out of hundreds of possible examples. Unless you would like to go down the list and look at every single asymmetrical game and demonstrate that not even one of them is well balanced, my point stands.

At the point you jumped to, the Protoss has a slight army / supply advantage on a 1 base timing push, and Immortals directly counter roaches. And the Protoss ended up winning, no huge surprise there.

Only 5 of the 16 ships have had generic pilots represented in the winning squads in 25 wave 4 Regionals and Nationals, and if you remove 1 game from that list, then it is only 3 ships: Z-95s TIE Fighters, and B-wings. The designers at GenCon said in an interview with Team Covenant that they might have priced the generic E-wings too expensive, so I guess hindsight is 20/20 after seeing tournament results. The difference, and this is significant, is that using my models I accurately predicted before wave 4 released that the generic E-wings were significantly overcosted, and that they were not going to be competitive. This is one of the few examples that we have of hearing balance discussion directly from the FFG designers, and is evidence that in at least this instance, I had more accurate insight into game balance than the designers did.

The proof is in the pudding. Since I have been able to accurately predict how each of the generic ships will perform for every release since I started tracking the ship values, the burden is on you to demonstrate that the Mathwing is wrong. Wave 6 will be a really good test since we are getting so many ships.

TL;DR: some ships are better value than others. The competitive meta gravitates to these ships. Newer players will eventually figure this out.

I hate backseat game developers, and would not play a game with "modified" point values.

Hate is a strong word. I am compiling a list of technical balance fixes for House Rules, so I guess that makes me a backseat game developer.

Do you allow for the possibility that some in the community can potentially have an equal, or even better handle on game balance than the developers themselves in some areas? For example, it appears that I have performed significantly more numerical analysis than any of the FFG designers that have ever worked on the game. This isn't meant as a dig at them at all. You can't expect your company's game designers to also be math nerds that understand differential equations and calculus, and have the capability to perform complex statistical analysis. So occasionally some mistakes have gotten through their playtesting that would never have made it past a more rigorous numerical approach. My numerical approaches have been able to pretty accurately predict of all of the ships' performance before they were released. That's more than can be said for FFG themselves, unless you think their intent was to intentionally limit the effectiveness of about half their ships.

That's quite the pedestal you're placing yourself on.

A number of games do start with math (especially ccgs). However there are number of things that math can't encompass and so a lot of playtesting needs to be done.

FFG needs to account for a number of things, like future releases, possible future interactions, different scales/types of play, abstract non-math mechanics, theme, fun, etc. Your calculations are hindsight and narrowly focused on the 100pt level at best. FFG is already working on and thinking about waves and different styles of games that are a few years down the road.

And the regional stats are a very good example of what I'm talking about. The math may be sound, but since you only have the top 16 results you can't account for things like popularity, and so your interpretations might be faulty. Your data isn't complete or randomly sampled, instead it's heavily skewed to the top 16 with the assumption that all ships/lists are taken relatively equally.

I hate backseat game developers, and would not play a game with "modified" point values.

Hate is a strong word. I am compiling a list of technical balance fixes for House Rules, so I guess that makes me a backseat game developer.

Do you allow for the possibility that some in the community can potentially have an equal, or even better handle on game balance than the developers themselves in some areas? For example, it appears that I have performed significantly more numerical analysis than any of the FFG designers that have ever worked on the game. This isn't meant as a dig at them at all. You can't expect your company's game designers to also be math nerds that understand differential equations and calculus, and have the capability to perform complex statistical analysis. So occasionally some mistakes have gotten through their playtesting that would never have made it past a more rigorous numerical approach. My numerical approaches have been able to pretty accurately predict of all of the ships' performance before they were released. That's more than can be said for FFG themselves, unless you think their intent was to intentionally limit the effectiveness of about half their ships.

That's quite the pedestal you're placing yourself on.

The evidence speaks for itself. Don't shoot the messenger! Someone else would have eventually figured it out, I just happened to be the first.

So are you disputing that the method works, or do you dislike the idea that anyone outside of FFG can understand game balance as well, or better, than they do? There is a fairly long laundry list of predictions that I made regarding wave 4 before it was released. The major ones are:

• Generic X-wing usage is going to become obsolete in favor of Z-95s which are more points efficient. We already started to see this in wave 3 with B-wings, which I also predicted.
• Z-95s are going to be about on par with TIE Fighters, and will be the biggest long-term meta changer in wave 4. However you will rarely see them using missiles as FFG suggested.
• TIE Phantoms without ACD are not going to be competitive, unless you can seriously work magic with the cloak action. Unfortunately using cloak during combat reduces your damage output, which negates the advantage of having 4 attack dice. The Advanced Sensors + cloaking nerf essentially guaranteed that non named generic TIE Phantoms will almost never see play competitively.
• TIE Phantoms with ACD are going to be extraordinarily good, up until the point that they are countered by turrets that either 1) have a higher PS, or 2) have Gunner. Traditional PS countering can also work against Phantoms, but the meta has been so Fat Falcon heavy that we still haven't seen this fully emerge yet. (Read: Roark and PS10+ on something other than Han Solo).
• Generic E-wings are extremely overcosted. The model is very confident of this, since all the E-wings's functionality is common with other ships. It's essentially a B-wing with slightly better durability, a better dial, and a droid slot for 5 points more and -1 PS.
• The generic TIE Defenders are also likely overcosted, but it's the only ship with a white K-turn, so it will take some time to really figure out its value. The named pilots get a discount on their PS progression and abilities, so they should see more use. Vessery in particular is very reliable if you build a squad around him properly, although still expensive at 35 points.
• Related: the A-wing is overcosted by 2 points. Rebel Aces is announced, and it gets a -2 point cost adjustment in the form of Refit. The numbers predicted that something like this was going to have to happen to make the A-wing viable as soon as wave 2 was announced.

I have more than the Top 16 results, and I am calculating conditional effectiveness, which I added specifically to address skewed results due to popularity.

From here we can also diverge philosophically on what is the best way to measure effectiveness. There is a huge disparity in player skill. Cutting it off at the Top Third / Final Cut eliminates this variable, which at the low end is a far bigger factor than list building. But if you would prefer to calculate it some other way, all the data is publicly available. I have (almost) 100% of the lists for most of the wave 4 Nationals, including GenCon, if you would like to look at those.

Edit:

I have been making predictions using mathematical models, for upcoming unreleased waves, for quite some time now. Wave 4 predictions, for example, are above. How is this hindsight?

Also, would you care to elaborate specifically how this affects the calculations?

The short answer is...

I hate backseat game developers, and would not play a game with "modified" point values.

Hate is a strong word. I am compiling a list of technical balance fixes for House Rules, so I guess that makes me a backseat game developer.

Do you allow for the possibility that some in the community can potentially have an equal, or even better handle on game balance than the developers themselves in some areas? For example, it appears that I have performed significantly more numerical analysis than any of the FFG designers that have ever worked on the game. This isn't meant as a dig at them at all. You can't expect your company's game designers to also be math nerds that understand differential equations and calculus, and have the capability to perform complex statistical analysis. So occasionally some mistakes have gotten through their playtesting that would never have made it past a more rigorous numerical approach. My numerical approaches have been able to pretty accurately predict of all of the ships' performance before they were released. That's more than can be said for FFG themselves, unless you think their intent was to intentionally limit the effectiveness of about half their ships.

That's quite the pedestal you're placing yourself on.

The evidence speaks for itself. Don't shoot the messenger! Someone else would have eventually figured it out, I just happened to be the first.

So are you disputing that the method works, or do you dislike the idea that anyone outside of FFG can understand game balance as well, or better, than they do? There is a fairly long laundry list of predictions that I made regarding wave 4 before it was released. The major ones are:

• Etc.

First? I have had and still do have respect for what you do, but posts like this and others you've made in this thread sound very arrogant to me. I don't find any of those predictions very profound or involving complex math, and most likely nor were you the first.

You can't begin to address popularity unless you know the frequency and performance of ships taken across all players, or at least a large enough random sample across all players. That data isn't there. Your data addresses "the effectiveness of a certain ship if it happens to be in the top players' lists". GenCon data begins to change that, but is one tournament at a certain moment of time.

This is out of context and refers to game design decisions. In development of wave 4, I'm sure elements of wave 5, rebel aces, wave 6, maybe even whatever the next wave is, etc. were taken into consideration. So anyone making an analysis of "this unreleased wave 4 ship should have been 2 points less" is hindsight unless you know what's planned for future waves and for other design goals. It's not to say they don't mistakes or shift design plans, but criticizing design decision or point costs happens with a limited view of what has happened behind the scenes.

I think I was the first (and only so far, possibly?) to apply quantifiable numerical methods to appraise ship value. If you know of some other work that has been done I would love to see it. I don't think anyone else has attempted something like this for X-wing, but I might have missed it. I have certainly looked. Similar work has been done in other games though. I'm pretty sure some people in the Eve Online community were trying to apply Lanchester's Square Law to that game, which involves massive ship battles.

I'm sorry if it comes across as arrogant, that's certainly not the intent. I can see that perspective though, if "some guy from the interwebs" comes in and claims to have a model that predicts game balance on several of the ships better than the game designers themselves.

As for the math being complex, it's all relative. To someone that doesn't understand statistics or differential equations, then it's complex. For a PhD that does stats or heavy math routinely for their day job, not so much. I'm probably somewhere in between.

As far as it being "profound", well, sometimes math is profound and sometimes it's not.

Euler's formula is profound.

X-wing cost appraisals.... not so much.

You can't begin to address popularity unless you know the frequency and performance of ships taken across all players, or at least a large enough random sample across all players. That data isn't there. Your data addresses "the effectiveness of a certain ship if it happens to be in the top players' lists". GenCon data begins to change that, but is one tournament at a certain moment of time.

Well, I'm doing the best I can with the data I have! (And believe me getting it all is a pain. Would you like to take over? He he he. ) So it's better than nothing. Hopefully this time next year we will have 100% of the squads, and then we can just argue about player skill alone skewing the statistics.

Sure "hindsight" isn't entirely correct. I guess what I mean is part "hindsight", part "lack of foresight" of what's to come, and "lack of insight" into FFG's design process and goals. If you were to make predictions about wave 6, you wouldn't have the foresight of future waves that they've already been developing, and any other insight into other directions of the game.

No I'm not trying to cover for FFG, but for game designers in general. It's a lot of hard work. It's easy to point to this ship and say "they made a mistake, it's overcosted" without seeing all the decisions leading up to that. It's easy to criticize, a lot harder to actually "do".

In terms of in game examples, I don't have any inside knowledge. But taking your tie-advanced example, perhaps future missiles in wave 2 or beyond were expected to be a lot more deadly and so that slot had a bit of a premium attached? Perhaps certain upgrades were in the works that would have been a good combo for the advanced that were either dialed back or removed? Who knows.

Edit:

I do think a better example might be the bombers. Again, ordnance may have had a premium attached to it. Bombers may not be at the top of the pack in 100pt games, but they are extremely effective in Epic play. I believe some of their balancing is a result of Epic ships, especially Rhymer who seems to have a high premium attached to his ability.

Shado, um, where do I start?

1. Using that instragidefinition of balanced, it would be balanced if everyone could choose either a) cavemen with sticks, or b) a Death Star. Since both players have access to the same lists....

2. There are many games that have asymmetrical unit composition but are still very well balanced. For example StarCraft 2.

3. Who said anything about all lists being equal if the game was balanced better? There are obviously very strong paper rock scissors dynamics in place. If the game were balanced better then the reverse is true there would be more build diversity. And that would be a good thing.

I don't really get your post. It amounts to saying "The game is not balanced... but it would be worse if it was balanced!"[/quo

I wasn't sayi g you are wrong, just disagreeing from my point of view. But your response to my post is definitely way off of what I was getting at. That wasn't what I was trying to express at all. I have to start work now and will try to elaborate a little more later in the day.

So anyways, I think I may have misread the meaning of your post when I commented on it (had a long yesterday working in the sun, my brain was a little baked), and not all that I said was in response to what you had said. I won't say that I disagree with you this time because after reading your post again I realize that I am not totally sure what you meant about the game being unbalanced at the top end. I will just try to define my view on the subject.

The comment about all lists being even was in reference to another post where someone had said that no matter what list you built, your odds should be 50/50 of winning. When I said the game would get boring fast for me, it was in reference to if that was true. The reason why I feel that way is because I like there being surprises and an element of chance involved, not just straight up skill vs. skill. I use to play a lot of chess with my friends, but after a while it began to bore me because those I was better then I almost always beat, and those better then me, almost always beat me. It just became repetitive and predictable.

I totally agree that there is some balance issues among some cards in regards to value for point costs, but I don't think that creates an imbalance at the tournament level, because all have the same options to pick from for building their list. If a player finds themselves at a disadvantage in a match up, I believe that's either because the player built a crap list for competitive play or just because of chance. I agree that there is a rock, paper, scissors thing going on. I don't think that dynamic has complete influence over the game though, otherwise I think player skill would be worthless. Rock, paper, scissors requires no skill to play as it is a game of chance, and despite there being a rock, paper, scissors dynamic in the game, the game is still mostly dominated by high skilled players at the top level. However, I like the element of chance that this dynamic brings. I think that element of chance is part of the nature of the game. I like the fact that I may be able to beat a much more skilled opponent because my list just happens to have elements that can exploit the weaknesses of their list, essentially giving me a handicap simply earned by luck of the match pairing. But that same chance could easily work against me as for me, again in my eyes creating balance. I don't believe that element of chance adds imbalance to the game because all face it. But if a player is good at reading as to what kind of builds are going to be in a tournament, then its possible to reduce the odds of those chances working against you. I believe this is another way in which skill enters the game on a competitive level.

So basically my views are...

- Yes there is an imbalance among some ships in the game, but I don't think that translates to an imbalance at a tournament level because all are equally affected by it.

- I don't believe that the match pairings that pit a list that is built able to more easily chew through another particular list (eg. Fat Han vs. Phantom) is really best described as an imbalance in the game. I think those chances are meant to be a part of this kind of game. This is what I was referring to when I said "yes you could call it an imbalance, but is it really if its in the nature of the game?"

Now I'm not trying to say that I am right, or that anyone else is wrong. This is simply how I feel about the game. If anyone has any points that they can make that may change my views, then fire away. I try to keep an open mind. If I'm missing something, whether obvious or not, I would like to hear about it.

Don't worry about the meta as a new player, learn the ships, learn what you like, fly what you like, and you will win. Meta lists and netdecking doesn't help you become a better player.

That being said, doing your research doesn't hurt. There's little point wasting time trying to get a bad card to work when a quick forum search will tell you it won't.

That's assuming that everything you read on a forum is correct, and that right there is very far from the truth.

I certainly think it IS worth it to test out ships and see why they do and don't work. And after you've got your own assumptions, THEN see what is or isn't doing well in tourneys. We shouldn't give ones players the wrong message. Learning how dice and hits and combinations of all this even on the bad ships is worth looking into. Yourself AS WELL AS through research.

Also, in my original post, I was talking about both Tournament AND Casual play. I certainly am a major supporter of playing lists to try and win, including a tournament scene. I just think it is important to spend time to establish what you think your OWN meta is.

Play what think will win is certainly the lesson you should take away from this. If you build a slightly off the wall list, and it ends up working very consistently, don't stop liking it just because you read on the forums that X ship isn't maneuverable enough. However, this does NOT mean purposely ignoring flaws as you play lists. Build to correct them as best you can, and if you cant make it work at 100 pts, move on to something else.

Great point, and to add to that, every great list has to get played the first time somewhere, sometime!

Even common lists frequently end up having minor changes later that alters the play style significantly.

Why on earth would I take 3 academies for 36 points instead of 2 Alphas for 34? Sure I get 3 more health but I also gain much more versatility with boost and more potent attack (I find 2 x 3 dice to be more valuable than 3 x 2 dice even at range 1). Hell, screw the current tie swarm, I'll take 4 Alphas, 1 Academy, and 1 Howlrunner with determination over the norm right now, that is down right terrifying.

OK, so I guess you have a beef with 17 point Alpha Squadron Pilots. That's actually a very easy one. The combat power of a force is proportional to the number of ships squared, so a ~70% increase in firepower is more than offset by a 33% reduction in numbers. You are correct that 2 squints will do slightly more damage than 3 TIE Fighters. They had better, considering that the 3 TIE Fighters provide 50% more hit points! If you are attempting to argue that 2 TIE Interceptors provide more jousting value than 3 TIE Fighters (regardless of what point value we arbitrarily assign to them), then you would be very wrong.

A squad's total jousting power can be considered to be its total health times its total attack. So normalizing for the 34 vs 36 point cost, and the TIE Interceptor doing 1.7x the damage (a meta dependent average), we get:

Interceptors: (2*1)*(2*1.7)* (36/34)^2 = 7.6

TIE Fighters: (3*1)*(3*1) = 9

9 > 7.6

So you are still clearly paying for the capability of Boost, and consolidating your attacks to fewer ships. So lets look at your 6 TIE Swarm, or this 7-TIE swarm:

100 points

Howlrunner

2x Alpha Squadron Pilot

4x Academy Pilot

This squad hits exceptionally hard on paper, but it has several glaring weaknesses:

• No PS bid, Swarm Tactics, or protection for your glass cannons, so the TIE Interceptors are extremely likely to get killed before they can shoot, even keeping them in the back.
• No protection on Howlruner
• No initiative bid for against other swarms

So, while these 2 Swarms would be good, I seriously doubt they would be too powerful, and could be handily dissected by quite a few squads. BXXZZZ would probably have a very fun time picking these squads apart just by virtue of shooting first.

Again, if you have play tested this please let me know. Otherwise, I can assure you that I have almost certainly put more thought into it than you have.

Seeing as you like using starcraft as an example, which is by far a TERRIBLE analogy to a balanced system because it is ALWAYS evolving to fix the issues, something board games just can't do without erratas left and right.

You're clearly taking my point out of context. I was merely pointing out that it is possible to have asymmetrical unit composition and still have a balanced game. I picked Starcraft out of hundreds of possible examples. Unless you would like to go down the list and look at every single asymmetrical game and demonstrate that not even one of them is well balanced, my point stands.

I give you this example of using a balanced unit, but using player skill to wield an advantage over someone even though that person should of won (and yes I know this can be used as an example for a counter argument but I find it enjoyable none the less):

http://youtu.be/lSgnq60ictU?t=5m10s

At the point you jumped to, the Protoss has a slight army / supply advantage on a 1 base timing push, and Immortals directly counter roaches. And the Protoss ended up winning, no huge surprise there.

Now I am not saying FFG isn't without fault. Some cards like expose were completely useless but that isn't such a problem now. I trust that the game designers that are now in control are learning from the environment and fixing the game up into a much more balanced situation.

Only 5 of the 16 ships have had generic pilots represented in the winning squads in 25 wave 4 Regionals and Nationals, and if you remove 1 game from that list, then it is only 3 ships: Z-95s TIE Fighters, and B-wings. The designers at GenCon said in an interview with Team Covenant that they might have priced the generic E-wings too expensive, so I guess hindsight is 20/20 after seeing tournament results. The difference, and this is significant, is that using my models I accurately predicted before wave 4 released that the generic E-wings were significantly overcosted, and that they were not going to be competitive. This is one of the few examples that we have of hearing balance discussion directly from the FFG designers, and is evidence that in at least this instance, I had more accurate insight into game balance than the designers did.

The proof is in the pudding. Since I have been able to accurately predict how each of the generic ships will perform for every release since I started tracking the ship values, the burden is on you to demonstrate that the Mathwing is wrong. Wave 6 will be a really good test since we are getting so many ships.

TL;DR: some ships are better value than others. The competitive meta gravitates to these ships. Newer players will eventually figure this out.

After 5 games of dominating with your "fixed" value ships against "top tier" lists, I decided to go no further. The games weren't close, losing only an interceptor or two before the game was over. Han cried himself to sleep, Phatoms thought they were fat ballet dancers with the amount of times they got tripped up, and XXBB wanted to know when the hurting would stop.

I don't believe in paper, rock, scissors nor do I believe that it really exists in the game after playing ships that should be countered by the popular archetypes. Having a 3 interceptor with a tie list that went 78-15 (mostly tournaments after the first 15 games for learning purposes). With it I beat the famous Han shoots first and dual falcons builds multiple times, usually with only a single casualty. By your standards and the communities, this shouldn't of happened. Once the phantom was out, I moved to two RGPs and Echo, and it was heaven, especially against turreted ships. Poor things just couldn't get the damage out. Now I am on to a defender, lambda, phantom and am even more excited.

I'm glad you watched the video. I am also glad that I know now, that you have close to no understanding about anything in starcraft. So I would really suggest stop using it as a reference. Without going too far off topic the protoss player was in a terrible position with that push. His second base had just been established while the zerg had a fully operational second, his zealot heavy army fought a zerg roach army that counted him so well that both the commenters and crowd though it was over after the 3rd base cancel from the zerg when instead the zerg focused to outnumber the protoss in sheer roach power going almost to a 2:1 army population ration over the protoss. He then turned it around by using just two immortals and a handful of zealots produced at a time to push back the oncoming doom. Two immortals had over 30 kills each by the end of that game, that shouldn't happen especially with how well the zerg's econ was going. So to say it was no surprise, well you apparently are the prediction genie cause the whole crowd and announcers thought it was over. The video was to convey that player skill, while even outnumbered and outgunned people can win by sheer skill alone. But yes, immortals are a counter to roaches, but not when the roaches outnumber the immortals 10:1

Your use of just a top tier event that not everyone could go to is a not the best stat point. I know at least 8 people in the local and extended play area that would of loved to go to a wave 4 regional, even more so to Gencon, myself included. But we couldn't due to other obligations or money issues. Knowing this I am betting there were many people that also fell into that boat and could of won the tournament. Gencon gave us some usable data but even that was flawed due to the same restrictions I already posted. So I wouldn't say using that one stat point as being the perfect example of the current flow of the game. Rather, the only real way of this is to have multiple gaming groups supply you with a constant list of league and tournament lists and winning squads from them then factor those in and see how everything really does stack up.

The reason you are predicting ships so well is because you help influence the results from the people you are getting stats reported back from. Unlike most I throw most of this out and try different things and usually am surprised by the underdog ships, or so the community would deem them, perform. Generic E-wings with sensor upgrades (SJ particularly) are extremely mean and durable ships, dual kitted out defenders are a force to be reckoned with, and interceptors are not the glass cannons people believe them to be yet due to posts like your own, people draw those conclusions and never try them or give up after losing a game and searching the forums and seeing this info.

Finally, the reason the meta is getting stagnant is because people fear change. Fat han isn't scary, Zs are great filler ships but will never take rookies away, B-wings are great knife fighters but aren't as cracked up as people believe them to be

So like I was saying, don't just listen to people on the internet. Use them as a resource to figure out what works, but never be dissuaded by these or other forum goers say. Try stuff out, learn it, and you will fly well. Also, its easy to take another's creation and critique it and not have your own.

P.S. They never said the E-wing are overcosted, they said they could've come in at a lower cost, but since they don't follow a rigid formula (like you propose) they price them out to what they feel is worthwhile, which kinda goes against everything you strive for in this game. Personally the ships feel like they fit nicely into their spot.

So, freeing up 4 points allowed you to completely steamroll everything in your path? Hm. Do you have specific matchup details? Vassal replays would be great if you had them. Against a Fat Han I would certainly expect a swarm build to be favored. I assume you were flying the Howlrunner+Det; 4x Alpha; Academy? I'll assume you were playing equivalently skilled players and not clubbing seals.

I don't believe in paper, rock, scissors nor do I believe that it really exists in the game after playing ships that should be countered by the popular archetypes. Having a 3 interceptor with a tie list that went 78-15 (mostly tournaments after the first 15 games for learning purposes). With it I beat the famous Han shoots first and dual falcons builds multiple times, usually with only a single casualty. By your standards and the communities, this shouldn't of happened. Once the phantom was out, I moved to two RGPs and Echo, and it was heaven, especially against turreted ships. Poor things just couldn't get the damage out. Now I am on to a defender, lambda, phantom and am even more excited.

Congratulations on your tournament success. Maybe you won all the test games with the 17 point Alphas above, because you are just generally awesome! Now be respectful and do not put words in my mouth (italics).

Are we resorting to name-calling now? This is a very presumptuous and rude comment. It's also completely irrelevant, as my original point was to simply point out that there are games that are very well balanced with asymmetrical unit compositions.

Discussion points in spoiler tag. TL;DR: the Protoss economy was better (not the other way around), and roaches artificially inflate army pop value. This is fundamentals 101. Watch the replay closer.

It's never going to be perfect. But it's the best we have. If you are serious about wanting better statistics, then I submit to you, that you should be more involved in getting said statistics yourself!

The view count on the Regionals and Nationals thread outnumbers the view count on my Lanchester's thread by about 20:1. I think it's safe to say that people are watching the tournament results, but are far less interested in my underlying math.

It's an interesting theory though, one that would make me more powerful than the game designers themselves.

"If MajorJuggler shall decree that a ship is terrible, it shall not be used throughout the realm. Nay, even more, if he shall decree a ship terrible, then even those that use such a vessel shall have a curse put upon them, and their tournament success will be hampered. So let it be predicted in the MathWing thread, and so let it be recorded in the tournaments results thread."

... yeah, that's a bit silly and an outrageous theory. Tracking the conditional effectiveness of ships / pilots quantitatively rules out this theory anyway.

In regards to generic X-wing usage, see the Regionals thread, and compare wave 3 and 4, both usage and conditional effectiveness. Then go to the Store Championship thread and look at that data point. Sorry, but it has already been happening for quite sometime, and the drop off in both occurrence and success was dramatic after wave 4.

Incidentally, you are right about a stagnant meta from people not adapting. The meta has been slow to move from 4 ship rebel to 5 ship rebel, despite a clear advantage to the latter.

6 of one, half dozen of the other...

Who said anything about a rigid formula?

Do I have replays? No, these were at home or LGS games. These people are experienced enough to know how to handle these ships. I also find no value in furthering homebrew for a well built game because a player deems ships not worth the set value in his own eyes. Though it would be unfair of me to not test these before completely naysaying them.

Large scale events are one of the only sources for info, which is why I said it brought good info to the table, but I would say it is a far fetch idea to believe it really is the best of the best that attend these events (not down playing these players though either because they are indeed very good) and that their lists are the word of God himself. They are good starting points though.

Not touching that subject again about standards because that is just a double sided sword. Will turn into a he said she said.

Did I call you a name? No, and the econ for the zerg was fine, especially for the harass he was receiving. Also glad you are basically calling the protoss player's amazing micro nothing special and roaches nothing but filler . But that is getting into a completely different subject then X-wing.

Funny I said I respect your stat tracking, its most impressive, your dice math and upgrade statistics are great as well, though I find it funny you would call someone else presumptuous when you would say you know more about a game then the designers that have made it one of the biggest games on the market, that is gold.

Someone that likes statistics, you seem to not realize, people tend to put more value into threads that have many views and replies then say, someone pointing out a new build that would be awesome but gets left on the wayside.

And you are right, you formula isn't rigid per se, it is whatever you say it is.

Do I have replays? No, these were at home or LGS games. These people are experienced enough to know how to handle these ships. I also find no value in furthering homebrew for a well built game because a player deems ships not worth the set value in his own eyes. Though it would be unfair of me to not test these before completely naysaying them.

Large scale events are one of the only sources for info, which is why I said it brought good info to the table, but I would say it is a far fetch idea to believe it really is the best of the best that attend these events (not down playing these players though either because they are indeed very good) and that their lists are the word of God himself. They are good starting points though.

Not touching that subject again about standards because that is just a double sided sword. Will turn into a he said she said.

Did I call you a name? No, and the econ for the zerg was fine, especially for the harass he was receiving. Also glad you are basically calling the protoss player's amazing micro nothing special and roaches nothing but filler . But that is getting into a completely different subject then X-wing.

Funny I said I respect your stat tracking, its most impressive, your dice math and upgrade statistics are great as well, though I find it funny you would call someone else presumptuous when you would say you know more about a game then the designers that have made it one of the biggest games on the market, that is gold.

Someone that likes statistics, you seem to not realize, people tend to put more value into threads that have many views and replies then say, someone pointing out a new build that would be awesome but gets left on the wayside.

And you are right, you formula isn't rigid per se, it is whatever you say it is.

Well. Other than providing nothing concrete or any other good way to look at things, have you said anything else? Also, as many have said. If you don't want to use these statistics, you're going to have to find some better ones to use or help collect them. Because this is the best we got and its rather good. Especially for larger sample sizes: the Regional's statistics is RATHER large.

These will include bad players, but the apparently magical good players will then be the winners of these Regionals. When these results are added to multi-country Nationals results, it provides a very good look at the high levels of play. Realistically, the only time tip top levels of play happen is probably going to be the cuts from Nationals to Worlds.

You'd also note that in the US Nationals, there were very reputable names within the top 8.

Probably the only better way would be to have Vassal automatically aggregate the information of a certain type of "ranked" game

While I do love using Starcraft as an example, a big NO NO is to attempt to use a single game to analyze a larger contextual issue. This is mainly because you get two people who simply can almost say/twist what they analyze to have happened in the game into anything they want.

Again, as MJ said: You won because you suddenly had 4 more points? We ARE going to need to see your replays. If you don't have them, make them. If you don't want to make them, don't claim them.

This fear of the group-think assumption is ridiculous. People DO try different things and DO come up with the occasional really good unusual list. (Psst, Nationals).

Its almost as if you're afraid of some big overreaching brother in the system. Hum. Maybe we should all arm ourselves in case we need to defend our individuality. =P (Sorry, couldn't resist, just kidding).

Also, for the record, I hate your gifs.

winning is fun, therefore I play2win. /thread

"If MajorJuggler shall decree that a ship is terrible, it shall not be used throughout the realm. Nay, even more, if he shall decree a ship terrible, then even those that use such a vessel shall have a curse put upon them, and their tournament success will be hampered. So let it be predicted in the MathWing thread, and so let it be recorded in the tournaments results thread."

Do I have replays? No, these were at home or LGS games. These people are experienced enough to know how to handle these ships. I also find no value in furthering homebrew for a well built game because a player deems ships not worth the set value in his own eyes. Though it would be unfair of me to not test these before completely naysaying them.

I ask because when balance testing I like to record the games so I can analyze all the dice rolls, along with other factors like player decision making. Think Lady Luck for Vassal, but more rigorous. Exact squad breakdowns, however, would be helpful if you had them, so I can replicate your results.

Sigh. You continue to misrepresent my point in your attempt to belabor an ad hominem argument while avoiding the reason that I brought up the analogy in the first place. Re: econ: you think it's "fine" for a zerg to have a weaker economy and have the same base count as the Protoss in that situation. OK. We can agree to disagree and leave it at that.

The original point in that regard is simply along the lines of, "Siege Tanks, Mutalisks, and Archons can all be balanced despite filling very different roles... it is possible for TIE Fighters, TIE Phantoms, and Falcons to be balanced too."

I find it disrespectful when people put words in other people's mouths. I'm sure disrespect was not your intent, but I don't think you fully thought through my perspective before attempting to represent it.

Here you assert that I follow a rigid formula, and that such an approach is bad.

And here you assert that I do NOT follow a rigid approach, and you imply that this approach is ALSO bad.

Logically, two conclusions necessarily follow:

1. You changed your mind on my stance with no explanation on your part as to why
2. If I use a rigid formula, it is bad. If I do not use a rigid formula, it is bad. Therefore no matter what I do, it is bad. However when FFG uses the latter approach, it is not bad.

Your prevalence of ad hominem attacks and lack of logical consistency suggests that I should simply avoid replying to any of your future posts in this thread.

TL;DR:

1. The game is really fun.
2. Mathematical models are a very useful tool to predict game balance. This is not mutually exclusive with the previous point.
3. The 2013 World Champion makes "pew pew" noises when he plays.
4. The 2012 World Champion has spearheaded an awesome "Fly Casual" campaign.
5. Play more X-wing and have a blast doing it!

Something that doesn't get discussed enough I think is that it is almost impossible to get precise point balancing given the scale of the points system itself. (This is implicitly acknowledged I think in the "fixes" proposed by MajorJuggler which include .5 point adjustments).

If the scale were 1000 point squads rather than 100 point squads, you could do something like, have a Rookie X-wing cost 205 points for example, and allow precision balancing of every game element.

But this would lose more than it gained. For one thing the balancing process in development would become much more time consuming. For another, the elegant simplicity of squad building for the player would be out the window. Most experienced players can build a lot of squads in their heads, and doing the math to add up your points is quick and easy, even without an online squad building tool. If the points values were scaled up, this would be gone.

So the designers are actually limited quite a bit by this. Just think about the EPTs. There is a huge difference in fitting a 4 point EPT into your Squad vs. a 3 point one. And often the same between 2 to 3 points and 1 to 2 points. So now, considering that the design and point costing has tightened up a lot in the last couple waves, even if not being perfect, think of how tough it can be for a decision of whether a ship or upgrade should be 20 or 21 points, say. There are breaking points, such as that, which obviously determine the number per squad, but there's other factors too. If "math" says it should be somewhere between 20-22 points, which side do you err on as a designer?

Here's another thing, as well: although many people such as myself can hardly bear to waste any points, and must build to 100, there are often lists which intentionally waste points, in several ways. Initiative bid is one obviously, and any time you have more than 1 point of higher pilot skill than your opponent, there is a bit of waste there (Especially in Generic vs. Generic, where no Pilot abilities are present). There are often points wasted on upgrades that have no effect, like Munitions Failsafes on successful ordnance attacks. Despite this, lists with wasted points win all the time, which gives some indication that there is some squishiness in the point values. That is, the cost isn't everything. It is really, really, really important, but it isn't everything.