Alternate Scoring System:

Let’s quickly analyse the Scoring Methods of the past and the current system before moving on to an alternative system.

The Original Scoring System:

· 5 points to the winner in case of a Full Win (difference in destroyed points > 33 points)

· 3 points in case of a Modified Win (difference < 33 points)

· 1 point in case of a Draw

· 0 points for the loser

· Secondary Ranking was done by “Strength of Schedule” (the sum of Tournament Points accumulated by the opponents one had played against during the tournament).

Problems with this system were in my humble opinion:

· It was difficult to get Full Win, which is not a terrible thing in itself, but together with the entire scoring system, achieving only a Modified Win sometimes meant to be out of the tournament.

· For the loser it was actually better to concede and give the opponent a Full Win as this would improve one’s own SoS.

· A Draw was a) a rare occurrence and b) pointwise almost as bad as a loss. Actually, a draw very often meant the elimination from a tournament.

The Revised Scoring System:

· 5 points to the winner in case of a Full Win (difference in destroyed points > 12 points)

· 3 points in case of a Modified Win (difference < 12 points)

· 1 point in case of a Draw

· 0 points for the loser

· Secondary Ranking is done by “Margin of Victory”

In my opinion this system is a huge improvement over the original scoring method, as MoV made people less reliant on the former opponents. I once played at a tournament where the ranking before the cut was determined by the opponents of round 1, e.g. player A was lucky and his first round opponent managed to score some victories during that day, giving him a better SoS than player B who was “unlucky” to have being paired with a rookie player, who had lost all his games that day.

For many reasons the threshold of 12 points is a better choice than 33.

There is still the problem with Draws and it still bothers me that losses do not differentiate between being outright destroyed by 100:0 and being only beaten by a narrow margin of 12 points of a single TIE Fighter with only 1 HP left.

Weiß-Blaue-Strategen-System

In Bavaria, Germany, a local club by the name of “Weiß-Blaue Strategen” (credits where credits are due) came up with this system:

· Difference of points left at end of match:

· 70-100 5-0 (5 points to the winner, 2 points to the loser)

· 40-70 4-1

· 10-40 3-2

· 0-10 (Draw) 2-2

· MoV as secondary ranking tool.

What I like about this system is, that it distinguishes between outright humbling losses and narrow defeats. Same goes for Wins: There is now a huge difference between a crushing victory (5-0) and a very close win (3-2).

Also there is more draws and the range of a draw is wider. A game should not be won, because Fat Han A costs 64 points and FAT Han B costs only 62 points. That’s neither a clear victory nor a clear loss in my book.

A Draw also is no longer as bad as it used to be, as it gives a player still 2 points.

Drawbacks:

This system punishes initiative bids, as the points left are counted and not the points destroyed.

This system punishes “sacrificial” ships like Biggs or Doom Shuttles, as these ships will almost always be destroyed in any case. Same goes for TIE Swarms which invariably will lose one, two, many TIEs to win the match.

On the other way this system “rewards” defensive lists like Dual Falcons with R2-D2 that will either go down completely or win with both ships still on the table.

Weiß-Blaue-Strategen 2.0 (aka Unicorn-System)

Finally, here the new and revised system that I intend to use on my non-official tournaments. (The Weiß-Blaue Strategen also switched to something very similar after some input and feedback.)

· Difference between points destroyed:

· 70-100 5-0 (5 points to the winner, 2 points to the loser)

· 40-70 4-1

· 10-40 3-2

· 0-10 (Draw) 2-2

· MoV as secondary ranking tool.

· If a player completely destroys his/her opponent, the player will still be awarded 5 tournament points. (E.g. The match ends 100-79, the score will be 5-2 instead of 3-2.)

What I really, really like about this system is, that in the last round there are (usually) more players still in the race for the tournament win, not only the players at table #1. Also, the players in the lead will have to win decisively and not only by a small margin, as another player might score a 5-0 and surpass them, if they only score a close 3-2 or a draw.

I am not sure how players around the world feel about this system. Maybe in the US a “Winner-takes-it-all”-mentality is more prevalent and partially the source for the current scoring system, but this is just a guess.

I also guess, this system might look rather strange at first, as it is possible for a player to be defeated twice (3-2) and still win the tournament, if he wins his other games by large margins (5-0). This, however, is actually also possible with the current system, where 4 modified wins would be worth less (12) than 3 Full Wins and a Match Loss (15).

Please, fire away with comments, criticisms, concerns and further improvements!

(Also, again, credit goes to the Weiß-Blaue Strategen on whose system we built our system.)

So your tournament has say 16 people in it, and of that 16 there are 3 guys that are really superior. 2 of the really great guys get paired against each other and have an outstanding, close game. One guy scores 3, the other scores 2. So already two of the best people in the tournament have nuked each other's standings. The third good player fights a new guy and beats him 100-0. He scores 5. He's now much much more likely to win the tournament than the other equally good players because he has clubbed a seal. If all 3 of these guys get wins in the middle two tiers for their next two rounds the seal clubber is still ahead.

The issue is really that ''good wins'' and ''kinda close losses'' not a problem worth solving. I get the appeal but the system just makes pairings more important by encouraging winning extra hard and actively punishes players that are equally good unless they stomp each other. You also invite obnoxious gameplay - when Good Player A and Good Player B are paired up in round 1 and Good Player A has a very strong chance to win by turn 3 or 4, you don't encourage player B to take a risk to win, you encourage him to either cut a deal with player A to give him a 5-0 (cause B's standing is already screwed) or he spams evades and flies into corners for 15 minutes and nukes the standing for both player A and B.

Creating a flat win/loss with a margin the size of the cheapest ship in the game at least guarantees you killed something and doesn't invite manipulating your standings to the extent that you can in this new system.

I think that the additional granularity in the proposed scoring system would only be a benefit if the number of samples per tournament was much larger. As it stands, it highly sensitive, which means that pairings and dice are going to have a larger impact on final standings, which I don't think is a positive change. This would be excellent for a long league, etc.

I also think that the statement about the "system punishes “sacrificial” ships" is understated, and on top of that the tank-turret list archetype is already over-represented. I think that this would degenerate the meta further.

Straight Match Points are important to create a tier of players (undefeated, X-1s, etc...). I think if anything we need to adjust how pairings are done within the tiers. Currently it's done MoV against similar MoV, I think we should change it to High vs Low MoV. That would be more inline with a lot of tournament structures and have a lot of advantages (really separate the top players, if a top player had a bad round, they would bounce back quickly, not grind the top players against each other).