There has been a lot of talk on these forums advocating a partial point system for Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures tournaments. The idea here is to assign a value to each hull and shield to ships divided from the total ships cost. Take a Tie Fighter Academy Pilot for instants. This ship comes in at 12 points and has 3 Hull, in a partial point system it would hold a value of 4 points per Hull. That point calculation would be assigned to every ship in your squad.

This does certainly change this in the tournament environment. If you've ever been on the losing side of a 4 Academy Ties to a beefed up Han Solo at 1-2 hull when time is called you will quickly jump on board of the partial point system. After all it is very likely the ties would have finished the job if more rounds remained in the match.

I've seen arguments for the Partial Point System from many angles. Including a cure for slow play to stopping the domination of large defensive ships. The truth is have we really sat down and though of what would happen if the system was put into effect. What would be forced to change to stay competitive.

Now I'm not going to pretend I'm on the side of implementing this new system. I want to cover the negative effects I see the system will have. There are some very calculated people on these forums who can make the Pro's list for the argument. I will say as I do stand against it, I do have an open mind.

I am a "Spike" when it comes to competitive play. For those of you familiar with the MTG name you know exactly what I mean. I look for the best squad to play and learn to fly it well, I always want to win when I'm playing. I take the approach to every meta as to where I can break it. So when I see the Partial Point System my minds starts to look for the hole in the system I can exploit to my advantage. For those of you astounded by my last few statements, I don't aim to ruin your play experience. If you ask many of the people I have played with, they will tell you I am a courteous player.

The first shift that will happen in my eyes is the playing time will extend. From my experience as a Tournament Organizer, I find the vast majority of games finish well with in time of the rounds. I would say 80% or better of the game played in 60min rounds finish in time. With a Partial Point System every hull and shield counts against me. This system will favor defensive maneuverable ships. What this will mean to the meta is an attempt will be made to protect yourself from every single damage. It will encourage players to be very defensive as to not give up points. This will increase the overall match time significantly.

Right now in the all or nothing point system you are encouraged to stay engaged with the other ships until you have at least removed a ship from the field. If I'm rewarded points for blasting a partial whole in a ship and running to defend my points, it will happen often. Have you ever tried to chase down an A-Wing or Tie-Interceptor for 20 mins in a match and never hit it, Get use to that.

Some ships will become down right terrible in this Partial Point System. Any ship with less then 2 agility will be worthless in this system. They will become a lesion from which points will bleed from you squad. We might as well begin playing taps for these vessels. At the same time 3+ Agility ships will shine as they can protect you against this Agility bleed out.

There are some cards in the game that allow for the recovery of Hull and Shields. These cards are already often very good choices to add to some ships. The point value for these ships were not calculated under a Partial Point System. Take an X-Wing carrying R2D2 for instants. At the base cost of 21points each hull and shield carry a value of 4.2points. R2D2 has a card value of 4 points and with one activation will nearly return it's value. Every activation will increase the overall squad points of your squad.

Maybe I'm completely wrong on this topic. I do need convinced of the merits of a Partial Point System. I invite all of you to have a civil discussion on the topic. If you're an advocate of the system, please plead your case. List the Pros I am failing to see.

Ok then, how does one cope with a fighter that is equipped with some of the various Astromechs that restore shields or even discard damage cards? It also makes me wonder about anything that would cause damage cards to be discarded along with other things that negate damage.

It would be funny that if you were fighting against Corran/R2D2 that you could see it partial points go from 80% at 1 hull and no shields (or is it 83% when it also has a shield upgrade) back down to 20% (16.7%) after he goes evasive and recharges all of his shields. I'd say this is a perfect example of why partial points do NOT work when you want to determine the MoV.

Now if you really want to assign points based on how big the % of shield+hull remain on a ship then why not also look at all the expendable upgrades as well? As far as playing goes two TIE Bombers with nothing left on them are the same threat level yet the partial points only based on hull is going to say the one that managed to unload a full batch of ordnance is worth more than one which never carried any. I know "all or nothing" values them differently but if you're using partial points to judge "which treat has been reduced the most" both bombers would currently be at the same threat level.

I don't play x wing because I love doing math at the end.

Partial points are a bad idea.

Yeah im really not convinced about using partial scoring. Currently its easy enough to determine who the overall winner of an individual match is. The MoV system is more for use in tournaments, where the TO should be checking the calculations and crunching the pairings - ultimately not something for the player to stress out over.

I think the only way you could change the system would be if FFG came up with a fixed victory points per ship using their own metric, with each type of upgrade being awarded fixed VP too. E.g. Tie fighters are worth 1VP, an EPT being worth 2VP, so Howlrunner with Squadleader would be 3VP etc.

That said I think the MoV system is perfectly workable, and that's from the point of view of someone who recently helped run a small event. At first the numbers make no sense but once you've crunched a few they do give a clear indication of suitable pairings.

Easiest way to cure the need for 'partial points' - push out a FAQ update that removes 60-minute matches as an option. 75 minutes the new minimum.

*bam*

Problem solved.

Wouldn't they keep it simple if they implemented it?

Less than 1/2 starting shield/hull points = 1/2 victory points.

That's how most systems work that I've seen.

I think the removal of 60 minute rounds is probably sensible. Games do feel like they just need a little bit longer to play out.

The vast majority of tournaments I've been to around here have had 75 minute rounds, and these work fine.

I have no issue with having a fixed time limit in a match. The idea that you have this unknown variable when it comes to the round length is a little silly. FFG has already done the work to determine the number of rounds that should be played baed on attendance. Setting a one round length to standardize to the tournament experience will do a lot to improve the game. I agree with Domfluff and xenderf that the rounds should be played in 75min. This issue does relate to the Partial Point System as a way to allow the current all or nothing system to complete a full match. If the matches still end and you are in that awkward leading in points destroyed but losing in damage done. That is where the Partial Point system is be suggested as to help determine the winner.

We already have plenty to calculate during a match, I don't want to have to sit there and calculate which ship to take a shot at because partial points make some ships a better target than others. Or calculate how many shots at each ship I have to take to maximize my partial points. I especially don't want to do this to anything with 5+ ships.

Partial points probably makes a little sense if you're flying double YT2400's all the time. No, nevermind. It doesn't make sense anywhere.

75 mins will go quite a ways towards fixing it. And honestly there's just no way that partial points won't get messed up at a higher rate than the current system. It could be a disaster.

No matter how intuitive or creative your partial points system may be it won't make any difference. People will mess it up badly and there will be so much hurt that the game will lose players.

Let's pick an extreme case: say I have an 8 Academy Pilots and my opponent was running a 63-point Han and 3x Headhunters. At the end of the match, I have four Academy Pilots pursuing Han at Range 2, and my opponent has just Han with 1 hit point, two stress tokens, and the Blinded Pilot and Injured Pilot crits.

One more round would almost certainly be enough for me to win, 100-48. Han is so badly crippled that he can't hit back. But under the current rules my opponent wins that match 48-36. The sketch produced by tournament scoring doesn't match the game state--in this case, the picture is so distorted that it looks like a loss for me instead of a fairly commanding win.

Of course real games are almost never that clear-cut. But overall, the current tournament scoring has the effect of pushing tournament players toward lists that are smaller and have better defenses, because those lists lose MoV more slowly. Over time, then, small defensive lists help you stay at the top of your score group.

The pro of adopting some kind of partial-points rule is reducing the impact of MoV on list-building by ensuring that the final score of a match more closely resembles the final state of the match. The con is certainly the extra difficulty and complexity of tracking partial points.

This is not a competitive reason for keeping things the way they are (although I 100% agree with the OP's interpretation of things), but I feel like partial points are very bad thematically. There is a huge difference between destroying a ship and heavily damaging a ship in a setting context, and partial points diminish that. Looking at an extreme example, what's the difference between the Falcon with Han and friends dying or escaping with a couple of hit points? It's huge! Heroes of the Rebellion will live, and a very capable ship still flies, even if it will be in a hangar for 4 months. This is represented by the current scoring system. With partial points, the difference between a heavily damaged Falcon (2 points left) living and dying is about 10 points. For these reasons I'll never be able to get behind full partial points, but I'm probably okay with some kind of half point system for ships (maybe only large ships) that cost >X points, where X = 50ish points or so. This gives a chance to get something for your work in tearing down a big, defensive ship, even if there's something left at the end. It's not perfect, but it addresses the most extreme cases like the one Vorpal Sword just described.

Partial points would just screw things up, there are already smaller stores that have a hard time understand the concept of Margin of Victory as it stands now

I'm not playing in tournaments, only against my brother, where usually one of us concedes when he thinks he will loose in the end, so the scoring system does not really matter to me. But for the sake of the argument, I'll try to give some pros/ideas how to overcome some of the cons already given in the thread.

A partial system can reward shooting ships down. Lets assume 3 Academy pilots: If you spread three damage over these pilots, you can either have one killed and the other two unharmde, which will net you 12 points of MOV. Otherwise, you gain nothing under the current rules. In a partial scoring system, you could easily make a table of the basic ships, which assigns points according to the damage dealt. For instance:

Full health TIE: 0 points

One damage TIE: 3 points

Two damage: 6 points.

Killed: 12 points

As for the math being a problem: FFG could write an tournament app, which can run on the phones on all the attendees. They enter their list before, and after a game they enter against whom they have played, and in which state each ship is. Of course, everybody needs a device on which this app runs, but in an environment where people spend money on plastic space ships, that won't probably be too much of a problem.

Edit: Wasn't there also in some old tournament rules a paragraph, that explicitly states that conceiding a lost match was good sportmanship?

Let's pick an extreme case: say I have an 8 Academy Pilots and my opponent was running a 63-point Han and 3x Headhunters. At the end of the match, I have four Academy Pilots pursuing Han at Range 2, and my opponent has just Han with 1 hit point, two stress tokens, and the Blinded Pilot and Injured Pilot crits.

One more round would almost certainly be enough for me to win, 100-48. Han is so badly crippled that he can't hit back. But under the current rules my opponent wins that match 48-36. The sketch produced by tournament scoring doesn't match the game state--in this case, the picture is so distorted that it looks like a loss for me instead of a fairly commanding win.

Of course real games are almost never that clear-cut. But overall, the current tournament scoring has the effect of pushing tournament players toward lists that are smaller and have better defenses, because those lists lose MoV more slowly. Over time, then, small defensive lists help you stay at the top of your score group.

The pro of adopting some kind of partial-points rule is reducing the impact of MoV on list-building by ensuring that the final score of a match more closely resembles the final state of the match. The con is certainly the extra difficulty and complexity of tracking partial points.

Green Squadron Pilot w/ Chardaan Refit, Push the Limit 20 points, I go against your Han Solo Predator, C-3PO, Gunner, Millennium Falcon, Engine Upgrade 62pts. Han has a hit value of 4.7 and the A's have a value at 5. The first exchange takes place in turn 3 15 mins in you manage to get 1 hull off of an A while I get 7 hits off of Han. I'm leading by 27.9 points. I spend the next 7 turns avoiding you and your only able to manage 3 more hits and kill that A-Wing you started with. I never even shoot at you again in my defensive running I will walk away with a full win. But this shows an accurate calculation of who won the match? To bad the match ended with your Han and 3 Z's finally in a position to get one of the A's in a range one shot and likely kill it.

Extreme work in both ways

I think Osoroshii brings up some good points. Does a Partial point system solve the problem or does it just shift the problem to something else. Say we shift to running Partial points, Panic attack would suffer a lot in this case because of the agility 1. One of the nice things about B-Wings and Y-Wings is that they have a lot of hit points, that would no longer matter under a Partial point system. Some ships will blossom under these rules and other ships will fall. I don't like the idea of the tournament system causing that much disruption. New releases should shake the meta not tournament rules. I don't think partial points solves the problem. The simplest solution is a little more time. That's not always possible for some stores so I don't think you can just say all tournaments are 75 minutes. If you do that then some places just can't host events, and I don't like that. Maybe we need to look at the full win condition and see if we can make adjustments to that. The old 36 points for a full win seems like too much, but maybe 12 is too little. Perhaps a new value.

I think Osoroshii brings up some good points. Does a Partial point system solve the problem or does it just shift the problem to something else. Say we shift to running Partial points, Panic attack would suffer a lot in this case because of the agility 1. One of the nice things about B-Wings and Y-Wings is that they have a lot of hit points, that would no longer matter under a Partial point system. Some ships will blossom under these rules and other ships will fall. I don't like the idea of the tournament system causing that much disruption. New releases should shake the meta not tournament rules. I don't think partial points solves the problem. The simplest solution is a little more time. That's not always possible for some stores so I don't think you can just say all tournaments are 75 minutes. If you do that then some places just can't host events, and I don't like that. Maybe we need to look at the full win condition and see if we can make adjustments to that. The old 36 points for a full win seems like too much, but maybe 12 is too little. Perhaps a new value.

I've always felt the 12points for a full win was way to little. I would suggest a split right in the middle of the two at 24 for the full win.

Let's pick an extreme case: say I have an 8 Academy Pilots and my opponent was running a 63-point Han and 3x Headhunters. At the end of the match, I have four Academy Pilots pursuing Han at Range 2, and my opponent has just Han with 1 hit point, two stress tokens, and the Blinded Pilot and Injured Pilot crits.

One more round would almost certainly be enough for me to win, 100-48. Han is so badly crippled that he can't hit back. But under the current rules my opponent wins that match 48-36. The sketch produced by tournament scoring doesn't match the game state--in this case, the picture is so distorted that it looks like a loss for me instead of a fairly commanding win.

Of course real games are almost never that clear-cut. But overall, the current tournament scoring has the effect of pushing tournament players toward lists that are smaller and have better defenses, because those lists lose MoV more slowly. Over time, then, small defensive lists help you stay at the top of your score group.

The pro of adopting some kind of partial-points rule is reducing the impact of MoV on list-building by ensuring that the final score of a match more closely resembles the final state of the match. The con is certainly the extra difficulty and complexity of tracking partial points.

Green Squadron Pilot w/ Chardaan Refit, Push the Limit 20 points, I go against your Han Solo Predator, C-3PO, Gunner, Millennium Falcon, Engine Upgrade 62pts. Han has a hit value of 4.7 and the A's have a value at 5. The first exchange takes place in turn 3 15 mins in you manage to get 1 hull off of an A while I get 7 hits off of Han. I'm leading by 27.9 points. I spend the next 7 turns avoiding you and your only able to manage 3 more hits and kill that A-Wing you started with. I never even shoot at you again in my defensive running I will walk away with a full win. But this shows an accurate calculation of who won the match? To bad the match ended with your Han and 3 Z's finally in a position to get one of the A's in a range one shot and likely kill it.

Extreme work in both ways

In your scenario, the A-wings would lose under the current system, despite the A-wing player having arguably flown better. Under a new system, the A-wings win a close match. How is that a problem for partial points?

you'd be happy to chase a ship around the board even killing one and they kill nothing of yours and you lose?

you'd be happy to chase a ship around the board even killing one and they kill nothing of yours and you lose?

I didn't lose nothing, I lost half a Falcon. And the game sounds boring as hell, but that's a problem under any scoring system.

you'd be happy to chase a ship around the board even killing one and they kill nothing of yours and you lose?

There's an easy workaraound: If somebody kills a ship and loses none in return, then he wins the match no matter what. (If you fielded an empty list, you can't kill a ship, so no problem here).

Cons have already been mentioned.

Here is a system I recommended on EP20: of Nova. It's based on warhammer and 40k and heroclix tournaments I have been hosted and been too. Warning some high school math is needed.

EP:20 logic

Take the cost of the ship / Add(hull+shields+ upgrades which increase them) and Round down. We'll call this Damage Value These are points you earn for each point of damage enemy ships have on them at the end of the game. This means if he heals a shield with R2 or some other method you won't get the points. Warhammer Fantasy, 40k and many other games have been doing this for years now. This is one the main ways to stop 2 ship meta and bring balance back to the game.

Examples:

Academy Tie Fighter 12 points, 3 hull, 0 shields. This means at the end of the game 12/(3+0) = 4 Damage Value

Obsidian Tie Fighter 17 points , 3 hull, 0 shields, +1 Shield Upgrade. This means you earn 4 mov points for each damage caused 17/(3+1)=4.25 Rounded down to 4 Damage Value

Soontir Fel 33 points, 3 Hull, +1 Hull Upgrade, Push the Limit. This means you earn 8 mov points for each damage caused. 33/(3+1)=8.25 Round down to 8 Damage Value

If people cannot do this type of simple math, I'm not sure they should be playing this game. I don't understand why some people think this math is so hard to use

Ton's of games use this for their tournaments and it makes sense.

Sure you will have cases where people run away so you don't get full points, but that happens now. At least you get some type of rewards for 60 minutes of gaming, but you lost because his big ship had one hull left on it. In some cases we have to drive 4 hours to play, and it's so frustrating when people run away, so you cannot have a chance to win.

At the end of the games, players must submit one battle sheet, which has the points they earned and both players must signed. Just like Warhammer and other games.

My Two Cents:

eagletsi

So let's ask ourselves the following question:

In which situations do we actually need a partial scoring system? If I killed all your ships, while I still have some, then it's clear that I have won the game. No need for partial points here.

If I conceded because I feel I'm gonna loose the game anyway, no need for partial points, either.

The only situation, where partial points are beneficial, is when a game is close, i.e. when I have more ships left, but in the next round I'm gonna loose some of those ships. Or I have an expensive ship, which is badly wounded, against some other ships, which are in better shape, position, and are gonne kill the other ship, given time. Usually, such a round does not take that much more time, right? And there is some time planned in between rounds? So what about giving each player one additional round, which he can use when time is called, but he feels with one more round he can get a better result?

It's worth noting that the proponents for partial points often include the caveat that they would only want it implemented if the tournament software could handle the math for TOs in a more or less idiot-proof fashion.

You're not going to have to do scary math stuff at the end of a match with a reasonably well supported partial points system.

It's worth noting that the proponents for partial points often include the caveat that they would only want it implemented if the tournament software could handle the math for TOs in a more or less idiot-proof fashion.

You're not going to have to do scary math stuff at the end of a match with a reasonably well supported partial points system.

I think the "math is too hard" argument isn't valid. There's very easy ways to go about this. Does partial points solve the problem or just switch it for some other problem, that question is still unanswered.