Some thoughts have been mulling around in my head recently, so I thought I'd post here so that I can get them in order and see whether the greater game community agrees with me or not.

These thoughts have been inspired by Paul Heaver's 3 pillars article and some recent podcast musings from Major Juggler. They could well be either total tosh or something everyone figured out already, so apologies if either is the case.

According to our esteemed double world champion, ships fall into three categories: jousters, turrets and arc dodgers. However, Major Juggler recently pointed out that phantoms are good as both jousters and arc dodgers. In addition looking at what data is available, jousting ships tend to be used only as low PS generics whilst arc dodgers tend to be used as high PS named pilots.

This made me realise that actually the function of a ship is highly dependent on its PS and the the typical costing of ships rarely accounts for this.

So, it occurs to me that (if we want a game where absolutely every ship is balanced to its price, which is a whole different argument in itself, so let's just assume we do) there are two possible solutions I can see:

1. PS should cost more or less depending on the ship's role. For jousting ships high PS should come cheaply - Dagger squadrons for 23pts, Nera and Ibti 24, Ten Numb & keyan 25 (maybe, I've not done any maths on it, I'm just making a suggestion for how it might look). Conversely arc dodgers should have PS cost more, but the generics start at a cheaper price - Fel and Jax stay at 27 and 26, but shave a point or two (or 3) off the other named pilots. Alphas at 16, avengers 17, sabres 20, royal guard 22 (again just suggestions to illustrate the spread).

2. Have much shorter PS ranges (and suitable costs) for each ship. TIn fact you can even have named pilots overlapping with generics in terms of PS. To use the same examples, Daggers and nera at PS3, Ibti and keyan at 4, Ten at 5; alphas at 5, avengers and sabres at 6 (a point for an EPT on an arc dodger seems worthwhile), Royal guard 7, and named pilots at 6-9.

I know there all sorts of logistical issues with any attempt to implement any of these fixes, but I'm just that if the game had been designed like this from the start, would it mean we'd see more variety of ships in competitive play?

Anyway, I've got my thoughts down. Ponder Demon exorcised. Make of them what you will.

Cheerio,

Ben

(Notice for option 2 the crossover at PS5, perhaps there should be a wider crossover band for this method)

If you line up all the pilots according to skill and include one of the non-unique pilots you will notice that a general standard deviation curve exists with the most pilots in the median 4-6 pilot skill and a several in pilot skill 1 with only a few in pilot skill 9. I think it works although certain ships like the Phantom demand high pilot skill and the Tie swarm makes 1 pilot skill better than 5.