Except slowplay/stalling can be dealt with currently. You just need to call a judge over and issue warnings/DQs as necessary. But, you know, "fly casual".

And you don't understand that a fixed turn limit is far, far easier to manipulate for a win than slow playing.

Explain. Also, even if it is easy to manipulate it would not allow for slow playing, which is cheating.

It is very easy to come up with scenarios. For example, BBBBZ vs dual IG88.

I'll just run around with the IG88s and burn all the rounds. You can't catch me.

Then when there are two rounds of combat left I'll engage and kill one of your ships. It only has to be even a Z-95 which I can frequently get in 1 round. You're not going to burn down an IG88 in 2 rounds when the first engagement is at range 3. Ta-da, I win. This strategy would have about a 95% success rate.

Yeah this I totally agree with. It is an unfortunate situation but the root of the problem is still the scoring system.

That said I really do believe in Fly Casual the "right" way.

(Hm, that sounds like a "No true Scotsman" argument, but hopefully you get what I mean)

Except for the likelihood that such a change would push us further down the 2-ship meta, as they would be the only lists immune to such tactics. That might not be a terribly popular meta development.

You can already do those shenanigans in the current situation. Only the first point you raised against the round limit suggestion is actually a valid one, all of your other criticisms also apply to the current system.

And your point is... what, exactly? That your system has the same problems as the current one, introduces more, doesn't fix the underlying issues, and yet it still is the way to go? How does that make sense?

Except for the likelihood that such a change would push us further down the 2-ship meta, as they would be the only lists immune to such tactics. That might not be a terribly popular meta development.

You can already do those shenanigans in the current situation. Only the first point you raised against the round limit suggestion is actually a valid one, all of your other criticisms also apply to the current system.

And your point is... what, exactly? That your system has the same problems as the current one, introduces more, doesn't fix the underlying issues, and yet it still is the way to go? How does that make sense?

It fixes people gaining an advantage from cheating via slow playing, that's the point. That's the point of this thread.

And you don't understand that a fixed turn limit is far, far easier to manipulate for a win than slow playing.

Explain. Also, even if it is easy to manipulate it would not allow for slow playing, which is cheating.

It is very easy to come up with scenarios. For example, BBBBZ vs dual IG88.

I'll just run around with the IG88s and burn all the rounds. You can't catch me.

Then when there are two rounds of combat left I'll engage and kill one of your ships. It only has to be even a Z-95 which I can frequently get in 1 round. You're not going to burn down an IG88 in 2 rounds when the first engagement is at range 3. Ta-da, I win. This strategy would have about a 95% success rate.

And what exactly is preventing someone from keeping an eye on the clock and doing this very same thing in a 60 minute round?

Calling a judge over.

And you don't understand that a fixed turn limit is far, far easier to manipulate for a win than slow playing.

Explain. Also, even if it is easy to manipulate it would not allow for slow playing, which is cheating.

It is very easy to come up with scenarios. For example, BBBBZ vs dual IG88.

I'll just run around with the IG88s and burn all the rounds. You can't catch me.

Then when there are two rounds of combat left I'll engage and kill one of your ships. It only has to be even a Z-95 which I can frequently get in 1 round. You're not going to burn down an IG88 in 2 rounds when the first engagement is at range 3. Ta-da, I win. This strategy would have about a 95% success rate.

And what exactly is preventing someone from keeping an eye on the clock and doing this very same thing in a 60 minute round?

Nothing. But timed rounds would probably still be at least as bad as timed play.

Calling a judge over.

Running away from your opponent for the whole game and turning around for the last few rounds to kill a single TIE Fighter is absolutely legal in a 60 minute game. What is a judge going to do? Grab your opponent's IG-88 dials and force them to engage your BBBBZ?

And you don't understand that a fixed turn limit is far, far easier to manipulate for a win than slow playing.

Explain. Also, even if it is easy to manipulate it would not allow for slow playing, which is cheating.

It is very easy to come up with scenarios. For example, BBBBZ vs dual IG88.

I'll just run around with the IG88s and burn all the rounds. You can't catch me.

Then when there are two rounds of combat left I'll engage and kill one of your ships. It only has to be even a Z-95 which I can frequently get in 1 round. You're not going to burn down an IG88 in 2 rounds when the first engagement is at range 3. Ta-da, I win. This strategy would have about a 95% success rate.

And what exactly is preventing someone from keeping an eye on the clock and doing this very same thing in a 60 minute round?

Nothing. But timed rounds would probably still be at least as bad as timed play.

How so? It wouldn't allow for someone to gain an advantage by slow playing.

Becuase if you are playing in good faith, the "run away" scenario isn't as bad as many want to think. Y-wings can chase a ship into a position to get a shot.

How so? It wouldn't allow for someone to gain an advantage by slow playing.

No, but a good player can arguably control the engagement timing better than you can control a clock.

Be a little more pessimistic and try to find ways to break the scenario - it's not hard. At best it is roughly equivalent to the same level of abuse that you can achieve in timed games.

More importantly, it is completely impractical to allow for untimed rounds unless you break out the Final Cut to a second day, which has its own issues. Games have to be timed so people can go home before 3 a.m.

Becuase if you are playing in good faith, the "run away" scenario isn't as bad as many want to think. Y-wings can chase a ship into a position to get a shot.

Okay then, the run away scenario isn't actually a problem. At least it isn't a problem unique to a round limit system.

Calling a judge over.

Running away from your opponent for the whole game and turning around for the last few rounds to kill a single TIE Fighter is absolutely legal in a 60 minute game. What is a judge going to do? Grab your opponent's IG-88 dials and force them to engage your BBBBZ?

He can't do that under your system, either, so what advantage is there in it? Nothing! People still get to game the system; all you've done is change how they get to game it.

I mean, yes, your system would stop people stalling the game in order to win. Good job. But you haven't fixed the underlying issue of why that gives them an advantage, and you've provided them with an easier way to gain that advantage that is even harder to police than the current one.

Fix the cause, not the symptom, as they say.

How so? It wouldn't allow for someone to gain an advantage by slow playing.

No, but a good player can arguably control the engagement timing better than you can control a clock.

Be a little more pessimistic and try to find ways to break the scenario - it's not hard. At best it is roughly equivalent to the same level of abuse that you can achieve in timed games.

More importantly, it is completely impractical to allow for untimed rounds unless you break out the Final Cut to a second day, which has its own issues. Games have to be timed so people can go home before 3 a.m.

Remember, games under a round limit wouldn't go on until one player concedes or one player loses all their ships. Games under a round limit should still end at around 60 minutes. If everyone has to wait an extra 10 minutes, then it would be no different from having 75 minute rounds as the default. I doubt many games would go 15 minutes over 60 under a round limit rule.

I'm genuinely surprised that my round limit suggestion draws so much criticism. It's like our current system, except a little better. You hate our current system, you'd hate mine a little less. None of these problems could be completely solved unless we went to playing normal completely untimed, unlimited games like everyone does on their kitchen tables and on casual X Wing night. But obviously, those aren't feasible for tournament play so we have to settle for a real time limit or as I have suggested, a round limit. My round limit suggestion eliminates the slow play problem.

Partial points just makes things very difficult to manage. And people will just start to game that system. Do you get points for shields destroyed, or just Hull? If you take a Hull upgrade, does that mean that each hull on a 12 point tie fighter is now worth 3 points instead of 4? Way too complicated.

Honestly? Come on. Each point of durability, shield or hull or anything, is worth the total cost of the ship divided by that ship's total durability. Whether you agree with it or not, there isn't anything complicated about it.

Sure, you can deliberately come up with variations that make it seem complicated, but the easiest and most intuitive method would take a normal adult 60 seconds to calculate at the end of a match.

I think you are overestimating the competency of human beings to do simple arithmetic. At GenCon last year during the first day 1, between each round they would post pairings. Only after they posted the pairings would they realize that someone had made a scoring mistake of some sort, pull the pairings down and recalculate everything. So, we'd all wait another 5-10 minutes for the pairings to be posted again. This happened between almost every round. This was at the National Championship, with FFG running the tournament, with multiple judges and TOs, and players that all understood the scoring rules. And this was with the current simple system of just adding up the points destroyed on the ships actually destroyed.

Any partial points system is going to require a division problem to get the per hit point cost, and then a multiplication problem to get the points killed score, and then a subtraction problem to get the points left. Let's take a 60 point Han Solo with 13 hull points. So, each hit point of Han is 60/13 = 4.615384615384615 points. Now let's say Han survives with 9 HP remaining. So that means we need to take 13-9 = 4 HP destroyed. 4 HP times 4.615384615384615 = 18.46153846153846 points. Is that 18 or 19 points for MOV? Because that's 18.46 points destroyed, but there was 60-18.46 = 41.54 points left on the board. So does that mean we round up or down to 41 or 42 points. Oh, and we need to do that exercise with each ship that is remaining on the board for both players.

So now at the end of the game, we need each player to have a calculator and a worksheet. Even with a calculator and a worksheet there will be errors all over the place. People will make incorrect rounding mistakes, incorrectly divide or multiply things out. They will forget to subtract from the original HP of the ship. The two scorecards turned it will be different. And let's do this for each table each round. So now the TO has to check the math on the scorecards 100+ times at a large event. At a 64 man regional with 5 rounds, that's 64 score cards times 5, 320 times. If we are lucky and only 10% of the scorecards have errors, that's still 32 errors the TO has to track down and figure out. If we say it takes 3 minutes to track down the players in question and determine the error (which is best case), that's an extra 90 minutes of error checking just to "optimize" a tie breaker.

If we don't care about accurate scoring then by all means we should have the players do math problems when they are finished with the game. If we want accurate scoring, keep it simple. As simple as possible. Partial point scoring has so many bad unintended consequences. I'm not saying it's not a better potential system. What I'm saying is that the scoring isn't done by a computer, it's done by people. People make mistakes, lots of them. We can't be trusted to correctly keep track of partial points.

Or just own a modern phone. FFG could even release an app for it.

Becuase if you are playing in good faith, the "run away" scenario isn't as bad as many want to think. Y-wings can chase a ship into a position to get a shot.

Okay then, the run away scenario isn't actually a problem. At least it isn't a problem unique to a round limit system.

Except, in a time limit, you get more rounds to chase a runner down. Because in such a situation, the dials are placed a bit more quickly than when in an engagement. Chasing ships down is not something that is necessarily quick, round wise.

Or just own a modern phone. FFG could even release an app for it.

I left my phone at home

My phone ran out of batteries

I don't want to pay for the app

etc etc etc

I left my dice ay home.

I don't have a damage deck.

I'm missing my upgrade card.

I can't cover the entry fee.

Or just own a modern phone. FFG could even release an app for it.

(looks sadly at my Blackberry)

I left my dice ay home.

I don't have a damage deck.

I'm missing my upgrade card.

I can't cover the entry fee.

You MUST have dice

You MUST have a damage deck

You MUST have all your cards and pieces

You MUST cover the entry fee

Now we MUST have an iPhone or Android to play the game? That's never been a requirement before, the others you mentioned have always been a requirement.

Let me just say that everyone thinking the partial points scoring system would be complicated is being excessively reactionary. 60 point Han with only one hull left and no shields would be worth 4.6~ points, which is rounded up to 5. 60 point Han with 2 health left would be worth 9.2~ points, which is rounded down to 9.

Dollar store calculators. Most people also have smart phones with calculator functions anyways. We don't need to make a smart phone app a requirement.

I left my dice ay home.

I don't have a damage deck.

I'm missing my upgrade card.

I can't cover the entry fee.

You MUST have dice

You MUST have a damage deck

You MUST have all your cards and pieces

You MUST cover the entry fee

Now we MUST have an iPhone or Android to play the game? That's never been a requirement before, the others you mentioned have always been a requirement.

Doing you turn in x number of minutes isn't a current requirement either.

Partial points just makes things very difficult to manage. And people will just start to game that system. Do you get points for shields destroyed, or just Hull? If you take a Hull upgrade, does that mean that each hull on a 12 point tie fighter is now worth 3 points instead of 4? Way too complicated.

Honestly? Come on. Each point of durability, shield or hull or anything, is worth the total cost of the ship divided by that ship's total durability. Whether you agree with it or not, there isn't anything complicated about it.

Sure, you can deliberately come up with variations that make it seem complicated, but the easiest and most intuitive method would take a normal adult 60 seconds to calculate at the end of a match.

I think you are overestimating the competency of human beings to do simple arithmetic. At GenCon last year during the first day 1, between each round they would post pairings. Only after they posted the pairings would they realize that someone had made a scoring mistake of some sort, pull the pairings down and recalculate everything. So, we'd all wait another 5-10 minutes for the pairings to be posted again. This happened between almost every round. This was at the National Championship, with FFG running the tournament, with multiple judges and TOs, and players that all understood the scoring rules. And this was with the current simple system of just adding up the points destroyed on the ships actually destroyed.

Any partial points system is going to require a division problem to get the per hit point cost, and then a multiplication problem to get the points killed score, and then a subtraction problem to get the points left. Let's take a 60 point Han Solo with 13 hull points. So, each hit point of Han is 60/13 = 4.615384615384615 points. Now let's say Han survives with 9 HP remaining. So that means we need to take 13-9 = 4 HP destroyed. 4 HP times 4.615384615384615 = 18.46153846153846 points. Is that 18 or 19 points for MOV? Because that's 18.46 points destroyed, but there was 60-18.46 = 41.54 points left on the board. So does that mean we round up or down to 41 or 42 points. Oh, and we need to do that exercise with each ship that is remaining on the board for both players.

So now at the end of the game, we need each player to have a calculator and a worksheet. Even with a calculator and a worksheet there will be errors all over the place. People will make incorrect rounding mistakes, incorrectly divide or multiply things out. They will forget to subtract from the original HP of the ship. The two scorecards turned it will be different. And let's do this for each table each round. So now the TO has to check the math on the scorecards 100+ times at a large event. At a 64 man regional with 5 rounds, that's 64 score cards times 5, 320 times. If we are lucky and only 10% of the scorecards have errors, that's still 32 errors the TO has to track down and figure out. If we say it takes 3 minutes to track down the players in question and determine the error (which is best case), that's an extra 90 minutes of error checking just to "optimize" a tie breaker.

If we don't care about accurate scoring then by all means we should have the players do math problems when they are finished with the game. If we want accurate scoring, keep it simple. As simple as possible. Partial point scoring has so many bad unintended consequences. I'm not saying it's not a better potential system. What I'm saying is that the scoring isn't done by a computer, it's done by people. People make mistakes, lots of them. We can't be trusted to correctly keep track of partial points.

You are my spirit animal! Unfortunately, the general population isn't very good at arithmetic. Also, good luck getting new players to play competitively if they have to go through this. Keep it simple, that's the beauty of this game. If we wanted a perfectly balanced abstraction of a game, we would play chess or go.

I dont hate the idea of partial points. Just call it repair cost. To simplify it, just call every hull/shield removed is a loss of 2 points. So han survives with 1 hull left, it counts as 24 points lost...

*Also, i think complaining about players being more thorough than yourself is pretty weak. I dont want to think things through so no one else should either!

the problem with this system is that your nearly equal cost whisper with only one hull left is -6 of whatever point cost it started with. you'd have to scale the partial points for each ship.

and frankly, thats a very stupid idea.

Tell me how you really feel. I disagree though. Its by far the easiest way to implement a partial points system. Hull = hull = hull. It doesnt matter what ship it is. The extra cost for whisper is her pilot training, her crew training, the system and the cloaking device. When you get damaged, you do not lose these things in game until the ship is destroyed. So why would a crew member lose 3/4ths its value because a ship took damage? Is the gunner 3/4ths stupid now and needs to be rehabilitated? 6 points off of whisper is better than nothing. We could always go 3 points per damage instead if it floats your boat. Crits could cost more....

I dont hate the idea of partial points. Just call it repair cost. To simplify it, just call every hull/shield removed is a loss of 2 points. So han survives with 1 hull left, it counts as 24 points lost...

*Also, i think complaining about players being more thorough than yourself is pretty weak. I dont want to think things through so no one else should either!

the problem with this system is that your nearly equal cost whisper with only one hull left is -6 of whatever point cost it started with. you'd have to scale the partial points for each ship.

and frankly, thats a very stupid idea.

Tell me how you really feel. I disagree though. Its by far the easiest way to implement a partial points system. Hull = hull = hull. It doesnt matter what ship it is. The extra cost for whisper is her pilot training, her crew training, the system and the cloaking device. When you get damaged, you do not lose these things in game until the ship is destroyed. So why would a crew member lose 3/4ths its value because a ship took damage? Is the gunner 3/4ths stupid now and needs to be rehabilitated? 6 points off of whisper is better than nothing. We could always go 3 points per damage instead if it floats your boat. Crits could cost more....

That would be wonky, and the math would be way off. And you would still get people to compute it wrong.

If you really are going to do partial points, then it becomes an administrative nightmare as several people have rightly brought up. Some players and TOs can handle that fine, but not all. You would really need it built into the tournament software from the ground up, that could make it really easy and idiot-proof. But I don't see FFG doing that.

The extra cost for whisper is her pilot training, her crew training, the system and the cloaking device. When you get damaged, you do not lose these things in game until the ship is destroyed. So why would a crew member lose 3/4ths its value because a ship took damage? Is the gunner 3/4ths stupid now and needs to be rehabilitate?

You really shouldn't use fluff as an argument for a scoring mechanic...