Could the problem really be that dice (particularly dice with different facings) are, themselves, fundamentally unbalanced? The ships that work best seem to be those that best mitigate the dice (preferably through large numbers).

my 85/15 rant is really pointing out that a non-swarm list with more than 1-2 two dice guns is going to be pretty helpless to take down the fat falcon

Strongly disagree with this. You're screwed if you get into endgame with the Falcon vs. a two-dice ship, but the Falcon's evades only work once per turn. Focus fire on it early and you can still kill it.

and soon there will be combos to make FATTER falcons that can ignore 3-4 and maybe even 5 damage a round

I don't think this is at all a threat. Theoretically you could come up with a list designed around getting tons of evades on a Falcon (title + C-3P0 + Jan + Lando with PTL, EI, and a wingman ship nearby) but then you've effectively got a 100 point Falcon that has no chance of killing anything in a timed tournament.

I mean that, e.g., your assumptions about the action economy are essentially certain to be violated in a non-negligible number of matches. Upgrades violate these assumptions all the time, and differences in playstyle can change things as well. Likewise, the chance that the set of ranges for a particular game will correspond to your assumption is certainly small.

I'm not saying that you've done a bad job, but that:

(1) You're attempting to make a reasonable assumption about the metagame as a whole, but that's dependent on your version of the metagame, and of your sketch of that version. To put it in more technical terms, you have a number of model parameters that are highly sample-dependent.

(2) Even if I spot you the assumption that your assumptions about the metagame are an accurate picture, the vast majority of individual samples don't correspond to any measure of central tendency.

(3) It's obvious, at least to me, that there's an interaction effect between a ship and a player. I can't comfortably run a Lambda without an Engine Upgrade, for instance, and I've tried. Equally obviously, that's unmodelable, but it means that my record with Delta Squadron Pilots or HWKs or the Outer Rim Smuggler might be substantially better than your model indicates even if the model were spot-on in every respect.

• Y-Wing: still too overcosted without a turret.
• TIE Advanced: WAY too overcosted to begin with.
• A-wing: 2 point tax on all missiles)
• TIE Bomber: good ship, only bad thing is that missiles and torpedoes are so expensive.
• Z-95: already a VERY cost effective ship. Cost effective missiles could only help it.

* shrug * OK. I have yet to see an example of a "dud" ship get resurrected without intentional love to directly buff it.

Non-dice factors (stat line) such as unique dial maneuvers (like white K-turrns or red 0) and unique actions (cloak) are more difficult to place a relative value on, since there is no comparative baseline with which to balance between ships. Other actions such as Target Lock are easier to quantify since you can numerically compute the increase in expected damage output.

Therefore the certainty of predicting the overall efficiency of some ships is lower than others, and again I have been up front about this. However, this does not mean that the entire method is worthless, especially for those ships that do have common functionality. You seem to imply that because it is difficult to mathematically quantify one specific action on one specific ship, that it renders the entirety of mathematics out the window.

In the case of the TIE Phantom, the pertinent point is that as long as the cloak action does not have a negative value (which it obviously does not), an ACD Phantom with higher PS than its opponent is extremely cost efficient, even before considering the benefit of a "free" 2 speed decloak barrel roll / forward. So in this case, the jousting value puts a minimum floor on the performance of an ACD Phantom (again, assuming ACD triggers before it gets shot at), and that minimum floor is already nearly the highest efficiency in the game.

I'm serious about this and it give me concern for some of your evaluations. If you are making value judgments about abilities that don't have a direct numerical representation without playtesting those abilities, in some ways I consider it worse than game designing with only playtesting and no math. Some abilities are no big deal, but I bring up decloaking because it has a huge impact on how effective a phantom performs, but can't begin to see how to numerically represent that without playtesting it.

When comparing non-jousting factors, I clearly state which ones have a higher or lower degree of certainty. And the TIE Phantom is on the extreme low end because of its cloak action. If you read the linked thread it explains it all, if you can work through it. Standard disclaimers apply: this method is no substitution for playtesting, especially for unique abilities, side effects of too much MathWing may include nausea, microwaving bad dice, etc etc etc. I think the problem is when people assume too much about it without reading up on it, and try to turn it into something that it's not.

But again, the ACD Phantom is a different animal in regard to having a unique ability. Most ships that have a unique capability pay for it by having a poor jousting efficiency (Lambda being the only other exception). The ACD Phantom is the other extreme, where it has a HIGHER jousting efficiency: it does so much damage, and is so durable for its cost, that even if it didn't have a decloak maneuver, it could still be an effective ship. Obviously this advantage goes out the window if it loses the PS bid.

And again, we are going to see the same thing in wave 5 with the Outrider HLC. It's efficiency is significantly better than a named YT-1300. But it goes out the window if everything is at range 1 and it's damage output instantly drops to zero. Dash's pilot ability is actually what makes this most scary. I'm also excited to see the counter-meta builds, the PS10 Admirals with Engine Upgrade, eternally trying to chase down Dash through debris fields. It will be epic. I just hope it's also balanced! We will have to wait for 2015 Store Championships, or possibly the Team Covenant tourney results, to fully find out.

In the defense of Mathwing:

I don't fully grasp it. I know it isn't perfect. I can see the limits of it's use. It has been very consistent in predicting and explaining many aspects of the game. Don't pretend it's the be all end all or that it's flawed so useless and use it for what it's meant for (somewhere in the middle) and it's great.

+1 exactly, couldn't have said it better myself!

I get really annoyed when Mathwing figures are held up as the end all, be all of X-wing game theory. Especially MajorJuggler's figures which point to an extremely broken game that needs an entire recosting.

I don't think it points to an extremely broken game at all. If it was I wouldn't still be buying ships. There is room for improvement and there are a few "duds", but it is certainly not broken.

If the Advanced and Defender were as overpriced as people have been saying, I should never had even close to the amount of success I've had with my Vader & Rexlar list. Is it top tier, no. But, it should not have beat the squads I did (including one Phantom + 2 Firesprays).

And the times I lost, I recognize very clearly why it was my mistake in losing.

I get really annoyed when Mathwing figures are held up as the end all, be all of X-wing game theory. Especially MajorJuggler's figures which point to an extremely broken game that needs an entire recosting.

To be completely honest, I get more annoyed at people who post their anectodical evidence as facts, which are more likely on the good flying from your part and bad flying on part of your opponent.

MajorJuggler's figures are pretty good when it comes to generic ships withouth funny dials.

Doesn't the lambda have a terrible jousting efficiency though? It can't make the k-turn, so after the first pass, it can no longer joust.

I'm just gonna make this short but:

MJ's MathWing might be imperfect but it does give lots of very very useful data on meta-usage and dice-chance. It also predicts corrected a considerable amount of new findings.

In physics and other sciences, we use the ability of a theory to predict findings that have not been found yet as a relative measure of how strong the theory might be.

I agree that anecdotal evidence tends to be a little more annoying.

As for the upgrades and non-jousting abilities, one very important thing jousting efficiency tells you is how much you need to get out of your upgrades and special abilities. For example, if ship A has 80% of the jousting efficiency of ship B but also has some fancy tricks then you know that those tricks had better add 20% value. If they add 20% or more (and you have the skill to use them effectively) then you've got a good ship. If they don't add 20% then you'd be better off taking ship B and just killing your opponent with better math.

Textbook example: PTL interceptors, especially named PTL interceptors. Their jousting numbers aren't all that impressive, so their value depends entirely on your ability to use their maneuvering advantages. Having the jousting math tells you how good you need to be to make up for the inherent weakness of the stat line, and how screwed you are if you have to face a turret ship where your maneuvering actions are negated.

Great way to describe it, iPeregrine

Although there's in principle hundreds of thousands of list combinations, there's a small number of list archetypes.

Are you (or is anyone) invested enough in the question of whether games are won or lost for the most part before the ships hit the table to get behind an empirical test that would help illuminate the answer?

As for the last test, I think it's a false question, for two reasons. First is that it's almost certainly an impossible task. But more importantly, why is it directed at the people who think build has become a major factor? We have a difference of opinion on it, and that's fine - are YOU invested enough in the idea that build has no influence to come up with and carry out an equally empirical test?

As far as my personal opinion, I tend to lean more towards the "paradigm shift" that you describe - I think matches are mostly determined by list. I also think that luck has a lot more to do with the outcome than many people seem to give credit to.

But let's get back to my question. I am interested in running an empirical test. (I asked you, specifically, because you started this thread for theory-crafting reasons, I'm curious how interested you'd be to see a test of the theory)

So as I stated, there's too many possible lists to test them all. But if we select archetypes instead, and build a "representative" list, we sacrifice outlier data points but gain the ability to actually do it.

Then we choose an opposing archetype list, and build a representative of that.

And then the idea is,

1.Put the list pairs into Vassal,

2.Get as many people as possible to play the lists against each other, recording the game,

3.Analyze the results,

4.Extract details about how squad A fares against squad B,

5.Repeat with another list pair,

6.???

7.Profit

On the one hand I balk at how much work would be necessary.

On the other hand, I try not to underestimate the power of a crowd-sourced project.

So that's why I asked the question: I wanted to see if there was anyone else out there interested in seeing what I'd be interested to see.

If the Advanced and Defender were as overpriced as people have been saying, I should never had even close to the amount of success I've had with my Vader & Rexlar list. Is it top tier, no. But, it should not have beat the squads I did (including one Phantom + 2 Firesprays).

And the times I lost, I recognize very clearly why it was my mistake in losing.

I get really annoyed when Mathwing figures are held up as the end all, be all of X-wing game theory. Especially MajorJuggler's figures which point to an extremely broken game that needs an entire recosting.

To be completely honest, I get more annoyed at people who post their anectodical evidence as facts, which are more likely on the good flying from your part and bad flying on part of your opponent.

MajorJuggler's figures are pretty good when it comes to generic ships withouth funny dials.

So dismissing someone's experience (which can contain facts, btw) with hypotheticals ("you're probably playing people who are terrible") is better than than taking someone's experience at face value and or discussing with them why they think it works?

I don't mean to sound harsh, but this is certainly a pattern I've seen on the boards . Very often I've seen people post a list that they've done well with that doesn't fit the meta and then are dismissed in a fashion similar to your comment because it doesn't support the perception of the meta.

* shrug * OK. I have yet to see an example of a "dud" ship get resurrected without intentional love to directly buff it.

I don't think you're following the original discussion. The original line of discussion comes from this talk about game design:

This makes it even more important to have all of the best tools at your disposal during the development process! With zero playtesting before release, I was to accurately predict ship performance better than the developersin the above cited instances (I am judging that I did a better job in these instances than the developers because I am assuming that they intended for the ships to be costed / balanced appropriately).

It's a naive statement, since we don't know what was happening behind the scenes. Things get planned, discarded, replanned, sized up with future plans, those future plans get changed or discarded, etc. It's a lot of work and back and forth.

Here's a scenario: Perhaps the Tie-advanced and A-wing were at one time more appropriately priced, but initial plans of epic play-testing showed upcoming missiles to be very powerful, especially on small maneuverable ships. Perhaps they added a tax to the missile slot to compensate, wave 1 was released, but later play-testing caused those missiles (or epic play) to get reworked where missiles were less valuable. Well, now what do we do? Should we errata it, or include something in a later expansion to make those ships better?

And again, the point isn't that your calculations don't say something valuable, and you do state the caveats in your mathematical threads, which is good. However I see you making absolute statements without those caveats and it misleads people into thinking they shouldn't use certain ships.

For example you've given advice on taking Blues instead of Rookies because Rookies are "overcosted". The Rookie is 1pt overcosted has an average jousting value 6% lower, etc. but even at a "very high degree of certainty" those differences are small, and the arbitrary values you're assigning to dials, system slots, etc., could very well cause those value differences tip in a different direction. There's no way to really calculate a margin of error because of those arbitrary values.

Talk on regional results determining the effectiveness of ships can also be misleading without having complete sets of data. As we see in Gen Con nationals and a few other tournaments where you have complete rosters, the ships that make it to the top tables also tend to be the ships taken the most, so yes there is a popularity factor. So what parts of a ship making it to the top tables are due to actual ship effectiveness, what parts are due to popularity, and what parts are due to hard-counter certain other ships?

If the Advanced and Defender were as overpriced as people have been saying, I should never had even close to the amount of success I've had with my Vader & Rexlar list. Is it top tier, no. But, it should not have beat the squads I did (including one Phantom + 2 Firesprays).

And the times I lost, I recognize very clearly why it was my mistake in losing.

I get really annoyed when Mathwing figures are held up as the end all, be all of X-wing game theory. Especially MajorJuggler's figures which point to an extremely broken game that needs an entire recosting.

To be completely honest, I get more annoyed at people who post their anectodical evidence as facts, which are more likely on the good flying from your part and bad flying on part of your opponent.

MajorJuggler's figures are pretty good when it comes to generic ships withouth funny dials.

So dismissing someone's experience (which can contain facts, btw) with hypotheticals ("you're probably playing people who are terrible") is better than than taking someone's experience at face value and or discussing with them why they think it works?

I don't mean to sound harsh, but this is certainly a pattern I've seen on the boards . Very often I've seen people post a list that they've done well with that doesn't fit the meta and then are dismissed in a fashion similar to your comment because it doesn't support the perception of the meta.

I said that i gave more credibility and i am more interested into reading somebody who actually spent time thinking about they are going to say than "i just played a few games with X, therefore you are wrong". If that's what you meant, yes.

I actually dismiss silently a lot of comments yes, because most of them are either highly hypocritical or armchair players who actually spend little time playing with or against what is being discussed, either on a practice / playtesting / tournament level and it is very obvious when you read them. Funnily enough, while they think they are helping, they end up giving also horrible advice about facing nowaday's meta ("focus it down", or "spread your firing arcs." are some of the last months hits).

If the Advanced and Defender were as overpriced as people have been saying, I should never had even close to the amount of success I've had with my Vader & Rexlar list. Is it top tier, no. But, it should not have beat the squads I did (including one Phantom + 2 Firesprays).

And the times I lost, I recognize very clearly why it was my mistake in losing.

I get really annoyed when Mathwing figures are held up as the end all, be all of X-wing game theory. Especially MajorJuggler's figures which point to an extremely broken game that needs an entire recosting.

To be completely honest, I get more annoyed at people who post their anectodical evidence as facts, which are more likely on the good flying from your part and bad flying on part of your opponent.

MajorJuggler's figures are pretty good when it comes to generic ships withouth funny dials.

So dismissing someone's experience (which can contain facts, btw) with hypotheticals ("you're probably playing people who are terrible") is better than than taking someone's experience at face value and or discussing with them why they think it works?

I don't mean to sound harsh, but this is certainly a pattern I've seen on the boards . Very often I've seen people post a list that they've done well with that doesn't fit the meta and then are dismissed in a fashion similar to your comment because it doesn't support the perception of the meta.

I said that i gave more credibility and i am more interested into reading somebody who actually spent time thinking about they are going to say than "i just played a few games with X, therefore you are wrong". If that's what you meant, yes.

I actually dismiss silently a lot of comments yes, because most of them are either highly hypocritical or armchair players who actually spend little time playing with or against what is being discussed, either on a practice / playtesting / tournament level and it is very obvious when you read them. Funnily enough, while they think they are helping, they end up giving also horrible advice about facing nowaday's meta ("focus it down", or "spread your firing arcs." are some of the last months hits).

I believe that most of these "expert players" really are the best players, in their location / groups / gaming circles. Now, we all have extremely different gaming experiences. Some of use play only once fortnightly, others play 3 times a day. Some stay up on Vassal all night, others prefer to lurk the forums. And the advices given naturally reflect that. Suppose in their region, nobody really uses the phantom, and as we know the phantom is a ship that requires a lot of practice, otherwise you would keep ramming into rocks and stuff and be pretty ineffective. So the guy would probably be all like "oh you could easily block his decloaking options. Wait for him to run into rocks, then shoot him down." Stuff like that. He is giving valid advice, just that it would only be effective within his area.

Doesn't the lambda have a terrible jousting efficiency though? It can't make the k-turn, so after the first pass, it can no longer joust.

When I use the term "jousting efficiency" I am referring only to the 5 variables of attack / agility / hull / shields / cost, so the dial does not matter. I occasionally refer to this as "stat line efficiency" which is a more semantically correct description.

As for the upgrades and non-jousting abilities, one very important thing jousting efficiency tells you is how much you need to get out of your upgrades and special abilities. For example, if ship A has 80% of the jousting efficiency of ship B but also has some fancy tricks then you know that those tricks had better add 20% value.

This is exactly it. To add to this, we also need to introduce the concept of "statline combat power", which is where the jousting efficiency is derived from.

statline combat power = (expected damage output) * (durability)

statline efficiency = [ statline combat power ] ^ 0.5 / cost

The numbers are all normalized to a TIE Fighter's EDO, durability, and cost, so there is a common reference point. I use a different curve than simply x^0.5, but that's the basic idea. So now you can lump all of the non-jousting factors together as a single coefficient. This coefficient mathematically represents the fractional change in a ship's total damage output before it gets killed. You can get a larger coefficient by either increasing your damage output through upgrades (like Fire Control System), by increasing your durability (by arc-dodging or regenerating shields), or some combination of both.

total combat power = statline combat power * (non-jousting coefficient)

total efficiency = [ total combat power ] ^ 0.5 / cost

So, now you can work it backwards to figure out what the "non-jousting coefficient" needs to be in order to break even with a theoretical 100% jousting efficiency. After a little algebra, you get:

(non-jousting coefficient) = [ 1 / (statline efficiency) ] ^ 2

So, for your example of a ship with 80% jousting efficiency, you get:

(non-jousting coefficient) = [ 1 / 0.8 ] ^ 2 = 1.5625

So what this says, is that ship "A" with 80% jousting efficiency to "break even" with ship "B" that has 100% jousting efficiency, ship "A" needs to do 56% more damage before it is destroyed, relative to what would be predicted by looking only at its raw stat line. (Again, the curve isn't exactly ^0.5, because it is a 100 point game and so this favors more expensive ships, but you get the general idea).

From there, you can try to get approximate values on what the "non-jousting coefficients" should be for each of the ships. For some ships this is nearly impossible, because they have unique capability and you have nothing to baseline against. But for about half of the ships the functionality is shared and so the model should have a high degree of confidence. For example, the categories of maneuvers and upgrades available on the E-wing are all available on multiple other ships, and so it predicts that although the jousting efficiency is below 80%, the total efficiency is in the high 80%'s, predicting that the ship is much better than its jousting value, but that it is still overcosted. (I don't have the latest numbers on me, but its in that ballpark).

Here's a scenario: Perhaps the Tie-advanced and A-wing were at one time more appropriately priced, but initial plans of epic play-testing showed upcoming missiles to be very powerful, especially on small maneuverable ships. Perhaps they added a tax to the missile slot to compensate, wave 1 was released, but later play-testing caused those missiles (or epic play) to get reworked where missiles were less valuable. Well, now what do we do? Should we errata it, or include something in a later expansion to make those ships better?

But the TIE Advanced and A-wing were never appropriately priced. If you had to build wave 1 and wave 2 squads now, people would not be taking them. The only reason the TIE Advanced was getting some use in wave 1 was because people were still figuring out how to play the game optimally. From my understanding, the TIE Swarm wasn't even really a thing until after Doug won at Worlds.

A 6% - 10% difference can actually be quite significant, because there is a squared relationship between efficiency and combat power and efficiency, see above.

1) The values aren't completely arbitrary, since the mathematical metric is how it affects the combat effectiveness. Vorpal frequently points out that this approach risks being "post-hoc" modifications. If you only have one ship that has this ability, then this is certainly true, which is why I have "degrees of certainty" for different ships. But when you have the same capability shared across multiple ships, you can't post-hoc change the coefficient to affect only one ship. For example, to make the E-wing appear to have a better overall value, you would have to drastically increase the coefficients for having a droid slot and the system upgrade slot. But this would result in the X-wing, Y-wing, and B-wing (along with several other ships) getting large increases to their overall efficiency as well, to the point that their predicted efficiency would clearly be much higher than what we are seeing from extended playtesting (Regionals / Nationals). So, although it's not as precise as calculating the jousting numbers, you can still get a reasonable range. For example: if it's impossible to tweak the numbers to get the E-wing to be more than 90% efficient without simultaneously making the X-wing and B-wing look like the most powerful ships in the game, then you know that the E-wing has to be overcosted.

2) It's actually pretty trivial to get a margin of error, you would just need to assign a range of coefficients for each non-jousting variable, like I do for the jousting values. I am not doing this now, but will eventually add it in the future. The difficulty is in nailing down the "range". For example you might decide that the System Upgrade slot adds anywhere between 2% to 6% value to a ship, with a typical increase of 4% (making up numbers for illustration only).

Very often I've seen people post a list that they've done well with that doesn't fit the meta and then are dismissed in a fashion similar to your comment because it doesn't support the perception of the meta.

I think this is an unfortunate side effect of net-decking and group think. The irony is that many of the winning lists at large events actually win because they go slightly counter to the meta, and bring something new to the table that can take advantage of the weakness in the existing meta. It also helps to get good matchups.

"focus it down", or "spread your firing arcs." are some of the last months hits

Focusing fire has always been the best practice. Against Fat Falcons you obviously want to focus on that big centerpiece early in the match, when your attack power is highest. So that seems like a perfectly sensible strategy for dealing with that list, and it's one that's been consistently very successful for me. (Unless the Falcon invites a chase while the escort fighters rush you, in which case you use your temporary 5:2 advantage to dispatch the Zs or whatever and then jump on the Falcon.)

And spreading out your firing arcs so that each ship's arc overlaps its neighbor's arc by about half--so that most of a Phantom's likely positions are targeted by a couple of ships, even if they're not targeted by the entire list--is again a strategy that has worked for me personally. It's not as consistent as bringing a turret, and it requires the dice to be neutral or fall your way, but if you're stuck using lower-PS attackers with regular firing arcs it's the only way I've found to consistently threaten a Phantom.

So I'm also not sure what you mean here.

I hope it's not impolitic to quote myself with something I said on another thread that I think is also relevant since the discussion has again turned to the historical development of point costs, and the relative imbalance of certain ships (with some emphasis added):

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.

Another thing constantly overlooked in all these criticisms is that the design team is not the same as it was in Wave 1. This is the second generation of designers since the core set.

Another thing constantly overlooked in all these criticisms is that the design team is not the same as it was in Wave 1. This is the second generation of designers since the core set.

It's actually the third generation. So no, we haven't overlooked it.

And while it's certainly relevant, I don't think it's the excuse you want it to be. There's a decent case to be made that the balance has actually gotten worse , not better - in Wave 4 with the Phantom and the overpriced E-wing, and soon with the stupidity that is the -2400 and the Decimator, so the truly problematic units are more recent.

To their credit they've been trying to correct some of the oversights from the initial game, but it's been clumsy at best. Wave 3 saw pilots paying costs for their abilities, but that costing was erratic, to say the least - which gives us Rhymer paying 4 points for his ability, and Keyan's ability being -1 compared to Ten and free compared to Ibby, despite being obviously and dramatically better than either.

Another thing constantly overlooked in all these criticisms is that the design team is not the same as it was in Wave 1. This is the second generation of designers since the core set.

It's actually the third generation. So no, we haven't overlooked it.

And while it's certainly relevant, I don't think it's the excuse you want it to be. There's a decent case to be made that the balance has actually gotten worse , not better - in Wave 4 with the Phantom and the overpriced E-wing, and soon with the stupidity that is the -2400 and the Decimator, so the truly problematic units are more recent.

To their credit they've been trying to correct some of the oversights from the initial game, but it's been clumsy at best. Wave 3 saw pilots paying costs for their abilities, but that costing was erratic, to say the least - which gives us Rhymer paying 4 points for his ability, and Keyan's ability being -1 compared to Ten and free compared to Ibby, despite being obviously and dramatically better than either.

I said second generation SINCE the core set designer, which is correct, so you didn't need to go out of your way to be disagreeable even when unnecessary. It is getting overlooked when people keep posting a conflated picture of the design process, lumping Waves 1-5 all together. So although YOU aren't ignoring that, it was a valid point to be made even just for clarification in the discussion. So for those who, like you, have a problem with the newer design elements, I think it should be considered separately from the balance issues in Waves 1 - 2, when the game was new and its potential unexplored.

Forgive me if I've overlooked it, but I can't recall anything you have posted recently to contribute anything of a positive nature in your critiques. You have called recent expansions dumb, lazy, clumsy, and stupid. I get the feeling we aren't playing the same game sometimes. At least MajorJuggler has made a positive attempt at making adjustments he feels are necessary, even if I disagree on the main with what he did.

I'm sure I'm not alone in expressing the opinion that Waves 4-5 are bringing some of the most interesting new ideas to the table we have seen in the game. If we wanted more of the same as Wave 1-3, it would be very stale.

It's a naive statement, since we don't know what was happening behind the scenes. Things get planned, discarded, replanned, sized up with future plans, those future plans get changed or discarded, etc. It's a lot of work and back and forth.

Here's a scenario: Perhaps the Tie-advanced and A-wing were at one time more appropriately priced, but initial plans of epic play-testing showed upcoming missiles to be very powerful, especially on small maneuverable ships. Perhaps they added a tax to the missile slot to compensate, wave 1 was released, but later play-testing caused those missiles (or epic play) to get reworked where missiles were less valuable. Well, now what do we do? Should we errata it, or include something in a later expansion to make those ships better?

But the TIE Advanced and A-wing were never appropriately priced. If you had to build wave 1 and wave 2 squads now, people would not be taking them. The only reason the TIE Advanced was getting some use in wave 1 was because people were still figuring out how to play the game optimally. From my understanding, the TIE Swarm wasn't even really a thing until after Doug won at Worlds.

My point was that the TIE Advanced and A-wing may have been more appropriately priced during development, prior to their release , but changes in the development process caused their point values to change to a higher value for release.

But we don't know how certain or uncertain your numerical evaluations of the abstract concepts like maneuver dials are. So although 6% difference could be a significant difference, that 6%, or portions of it, may fall into a margin of error that is coming from arbitrarily choosing values for abstract abilities. For example it could actually be 2% or 15% because you are either under or overvaluing an ability or maneuver.

And this is the third time we've gone over this. Again, if you don't have all the lists in a tournament or a significant amount of randomly sampled lists across all lists, you aren't gauging total popularity. Most of your results show of the ships that make it to the top tables, how likely they are to succeed. If you want to see if a ship is making it to the top tables because it is actually an effective ship and not just a popular one, you need complete data or randomly sampled data across all lists. The mathematics might be sound, but statistical conclusions are poor.

Forgive me if I've overlooked it, but I can't recall anything you have posted recently to contribute anything of a positive nature in your critiques. You have called recent expansions dumb, lazy, clumsy, and stupid. I get the feeling we aren't playing the same game sometimes. At least MajorJuggler has made a positive attempt at making adjustments he feels are necessary, even if I disagree on the main with what he did.

I've pointed out the erratic nature of the costing for abilities. Are they not erratic? Is Farlander's ability the equal of Ibby, or worse than Ten? Is Jake's very nice free action ability the equivalent of Arvel's worst-in-game? The cost says it is. But I guess attacking me for not being "positive" is easier than addressing the issues brought up.

I'm honestly not sure what I'd have to do to meet your qualifier for "positive". I've suggested what would be my preferred way to have fixed missiles, rather than just cramming a Deadeye'd Homing Missile in at half the cost. Many people have suggested alternates to Chardaan to help the A-wing - I disagree with some, because most of them are still about adding the shiny new sensor slot. I've also been pretty clear about things I like. Love the incoming Scum, a third faction always adds a deep new variable. I'm glad they finally seem to be doing something to limit turrets, although I'm skeptical Autothrusters will actually prove to be worthwhile. I'm pleased that they're trying to fix the PS tax with new ships, and have said so.

Seriously, what do you expect me to do? I'm not on the design team, I'm not a playtester, the utter mess that these rules still are pretty much proves they don't even read my (now defunct) blog, and I'm not going to redefine the entire game the way Juggler's tried to. Even if I thought it was the way to go, it's not something you can force on everyone in tournaments or when you travel, so I think it's pretty pointless. We're generally powerless to change anything in this game. We're stuck with what we get, and at this point as nice as I'm sure they are, none of the generations of developers (however we choose to count them) has impressed me all that much with their ability to either create or maintain balance in this game.

Terribly sorry that I don't meet your standards for being positive enough. I'll print a Bieber headshot, label it "Frank Brooks" and stare at it for a few hours to see if I can muster the proper adoration you expect.

I get that we are in a FFG run forum, but i dont understand why everybody gets so upset when the Xwing design team's decisions are questioned.

Evidently, they have failed in a few ways. Look at TIEadv, look at ordnance, look at the Awing chardaan fix, look at them admitting that the Ewing is overcosted in the gencon interview. Yes, i agree that Xwing is a beautiful game, but it is far from perfect, else we wouldnt even have this discussion about ACD and C3P0 being too overpowered. Blindly defending the design team doesnt help anything at all.

And while it's certainly relevant, I don't think it's the excuse you want it to be. There's a decent case to be made that the balance has actually gotten worse , not better - in Wave 4 with the Phantom and the overpriced E-wing, and soon with the stupidity that is the -2400 and the Decimator, so the truly problematic units are more recent.

To their credit they've been trying to correct some of the oversights from the initial game, but it's been clumsy at best. Wave 3 saw pilots paying costs for their abilities, but that costing was erratic, to say the least - which gives us Rhymer paying 4 points for his ability, and Keyan's ability being -1 compared to Ten and free compared to Ibby, despite being obviously and dramatically better than either.

I'm not even sure where to start, but I think this might do it: upthread you chastised me for being more dismissive than I need to.

The Phantom arguably presents a balance problem (although I'd take the con side of the argument), but I don't think it's reasonable to say the E-wing is too expensive overall . Corran and Etahn have both been fairly popular, and in a meta that's sharply depressed the use of generic Rebel pilots across all ships, it's hard to come to a firm conclusion about the proper place of Knave Squadron and Blackmoon Squadron.

Moreover, observe that in comparison to the A-wing, the E-wing has +1 attack, +1 shield, and a drastically better upgrade bar. In comparison to the X-wing, the E-wing has +1 agility, a generally more favorable ratio of hull to shields, a better dial, and a better upgrade bar. What's the proper price for that? MJ says it's overpriced by about 2.5 points, but I'd argue that even at 25 points it would be an excellent buy in comparison to the generic X-wing. If you compare it to the Refit A-wing instead, you're paying 12 points but you're getting a lot in return.

So while I think--now that they've been in wide release for a few months--you could reasonably ask for a trim of 1-2 points on the generic E-wings, I'm not sure that merits the suggestion that the E-wings are a worse example of game design than the TIE Advanced.

***

And to call the YT-2400 and Decimator stupid choices before they're released implies that either you're a playtester with a very poor opinion of the results of your hard work or you're reasoning way beyond the actual data. An Imperial counterpart to the Falcon is something the player base has been asking for since the Falcon was released, and likewise the Outrider is a fairly prominent part of the EU and something else that was repeatedly requested and predicted.

If you don't like playing against turrets, that's a valid personal preference but not one FFG is bound to respect or honor: the game has included turrets since release, and ships with turrets occupy a central role in Star Wars (go ahead and count the number of space battles in the Original Trilogy that don't involve the Falcon), so it's hard to argue that they shouldn't be part of the game. You could argue more convincingly that the Wave 4 metagame as it exists now doesn't need more pancakes--but given what appears to be a long lead time for releases at FFG, it's not very reasonable to fault the designers for a lack of clairvoyance.

And it's also hard for me to see how additional turrets don't diversify the metagame in an important respect. If the problem is too many Han builds in response to Whisper + VI narrowing the set of strong counters, then presto! In Wave 5 you'll be facing Decimators and YT-2400s in addition to YT-1300s, all of which have different dials, different pilot abilities, and different parameters for durability.

In summary: they were responding to clearly communicated desires from the player base, they didn't know for sure what the metagame would look like when Wave 5 would be released, and the release of two new turreted ships is likely to increase overall diversity in the game for a reasonable definition of diversity. That's a long way from "stupid".

***

Finally, with respect to Keyan, the argument you're making is nonsense. Yes, he's underpriced in comparison to Ibtisam and Ten Numb, but Ibtisam and Ten Numb pay, respectively, +2 and +3 points for their very weak abilities (with each +1 PS counted as 1 point). Keyan pays 2 points for a good ability, which seems about right, and is what you probably ought to have expected out of a pack that's implicitly designed to "fix" the lack of good unique pilots for the B-wing.

I get that we are in a FFG run forum, but i dont understand why everybody gets so upset when the Xwing design team's decisions are questioned.

Evidently, they have failed in a few ways. Look at TIEadv, look at ordnance, look at the Awing chardaan fix, look at them admitting that the Ewing is overcosted in the gencon interview. Yes, i agree that Xwing is a beautiful game, but it is far from perfect, else we wouldnt even have this discussion about ACD and C3P0 being too overpowered. Blindly defending the design team doesnt help anything at all.

First: it's a painfully obvious bait-and-switch, even if it's unintentional on your part, to start off talking about the TIE Advanced, ordnance, and A-wing and proceed to talking about the ACD and Threepio. The current design team put up a fix for the A-wing, an Advanced fix is supposedly on its way, and ordnance is trending toward the more balanced side of things; ACD and Threepio are at best debatable points.

Second: only straw men are claiming the game is free of blemishes, but lots of real people are arguing that Game Element X (Assault Missiles, Firesprays, Lambdas, B-wings, Advanced Sensors, Phantoms, ACD, Falcons, Threepio, Dash, whatever) is the Worst. Thing. Ever.

There seems to be a whole squad worth of strawmen in this thread...

No one, including MajorJuggler is claiming his numbers are the end all of X-Wing balance. They're useful but they are also not the whole story.

No one is saying that X-Wing is perfect, with no flaw or blemish, or that the dev team is infallible.

People who have issues with X-Wing are still playing and enjoying the game. They're not calling for the game to be canceled. They are generally speaking also willing to offer suggestions on what can improve it.

Winning once with a given list is not proof of anything, other then that saying "X can not be beat by anything!" is untrue... But most of us already knew that.

So while I think--now that they've been in wide release for a few months--you could reasonably ask for a trim of 1-2 points on the generic E-wings, I'm not sure that merits the suggestion that the E-wings are a worse example of game design than the TIE Advanced.

My point here may have been unclear. With that I was specifically responding to magadizer's comments about it being somehow unfair to compare balance issues across generations of developers. The Phantom and E-wing are in the same wave, so the same generation, and we have one overpriced ship and one that is currently on top of everything. And if you're going to chastise Duraham for lumping the TIE Advanced and ACD you should be a bit careful about doing the same to me, when I never mentioned the Advanced

And to call the YT-2400 and Decimator stupid choices before they're released implies that either you're a playtester with a very poor opinion of the results of your hard work or you're reasoning way beyond the actual data. An Imperial counterpart to the Falcon is something the player base has been asking for since the Falcon was released, and likewise the Outrider is a fairly prominent part of the EU and something else that was repeatedly requested and predicted.

Not a playtester Reasoning beyond the data, possibly... but I'm generally extrapolating from our existent base. My reasoning follows as such: We know what large, tough, mobile turrets are in the current game. Wave 5 presents us with better ones - the Decimator is even tougher, and the Outrider is even more mobile. It's certainly extrapolating a bit to predict how the new ships are going to fly, but I don't think it's all that far beyond our current data. I've also run a few test games against Dash, which have largely gone as expected. To the extent that it's been possible to deal with him it's required very narrow builds - specifically, hyper-mobile ships that can out-PS him.

There's a second point there that I think is important. Yes, people wanted an Imperial turret ship. Yes, the Outrider is popular, and was likely to be in. If we go all the way back to the beginning, yes, the Falcon (and its turrets) were certainly going to be in the game. But that doesn't mean their current incarnation is the only way it could have been done. If we take the Outrider as our example, lore says it has a heavy turret - fine. That didn't have to arrive in-game as a full-blown HLC. If large ships couldn't boost they'd still be some of the fastest and most maneuverable in the game, and it would be fine.

Arguing that people wanted them seems to argue that the only way people could get them is in their current incarnation . I don't believe that's the case.

You could argue more convincingly that the Wave 4 metagame as it exists now doesn't need more pancakes--but given what appears to be a long lead time for releases at FFG, it's not very reasonable to fault the designers for a lack of clairvoyance.

This is honestly a bit of a troubling statement. You make it sound like there's nothing they can do but design ships blindly, fling them out six months later, and see what happens to the game. While devs can obviously be surprised by players using things in ways they don't expect, having to wait for the meta implies a serious lack of control over the game. Surprises should be the exception, rather than the rule. In this specific case, concern over the Falcons, dual Falcons, the Millennium Fortress, etc, has been pretty vocal and widespread since its introduction. Similarly, anyone who didn't look at the Phantom's maneuverability and predict turrets as a popular counter is outright incompetent. If we were talking about actual clairvoyance, you'd certainly have a point. I think this falls more into simply having a decent understanding of the game.

Quoting decided to break, so:

"And it's also hard for me to see how additional turrets don't diversify the metagame in an important respect. If the problem is too many Han builds in response to Whisper + VI narrowing the set of strong counters, then presto! In Wave 5 you'll be facing Decimators and YT-2400s in addition to YT-1300s, all of which have different dials, different pilot abilities, and different parameters for durability. "

This depends entirely on how you consider turrets in the metagame. For me (and a lot of people, honestly) turrets remove a lot of the maneuver of the game. More flavors of turret don't add more to the metagame in a meaningful way, because flying against turrets is largely the same. Sure, Dash is going to be harder for you to put guns on than the Decimator, but they still laugh and shoot you no matter where you go. It's half the game.

What's more, once you hit turret vs. turret what little maneuver is left goes right out the window. It's pretty much just dropping dice at each other.

So "You'll get to face even more flavors of turret" is not a ringing endorsement of the future of the game.