Once you get to the elimination stage, MoV is irrelevant (and ironically due to the longer rounds there was less of a problem anyway)

MoV is still extremely relevant in timed elimination rounds, as it frequently determines the winner, especially in 60 minute rounds.

Interesting ideas on scoring though.

Okay so what about these new numbers.

Again going with shields down (only for ships that start with shield tokens) damaged to a certain point and completely eliminated. These modification are met to go in order with the greater victory point condition replacing the lesser one.

Shields Down => Half Hull => Destroyed.

Shields Down- 5 points (must start with >0 shields, if any shields are recovered at the end of the round no points)

Half Hull Remaining- 10 points (rounded down so 3 hull will have to be at 1 before this takes effect, also this replaces the shields down condition. So say if a B-wing is at 1 hull it only provides 10 points not 15 but a B-wing with 2 hull remaining will only give shields down points which is 5)

Ship destroyed (full point value).

If you're going to insist on giving points for being "almost dead" I say you need to factor a ship's agility, and possibly even available actions, into that. As I tried to point out earlier a TIE Advanced at "1 hull" remaining can be a lot harder to kill than an X-Wing at that same point or heaven forbid a HWK with 1 hull remaining.

If you want to say death's door is worth something maybe a ship with 1 hull remaining should be worth 6 points -1 per point of agility. Now 5 points from a near dead Han may be far less than the 40+ some think he needs to be worth but are we trying to close up the MoV a little bit or simply change the outcome of the game?

If you're going to insist on giving points for being "almost dead" I say you need to factor a ship's agility, and possibly even available actions, into that. As I tried to point out earlier a TIE Advanced at "1 hull" remaining can be a lot harder to kill than an X-Wing at that same point or heaven forbid a HWK with 1 hull remaining.

If you want to say death's door is worth something maybe a ship with 1 hull remaining should be worth 6 points -1 per point of agility. Now 5 points from a near dead Han may be far less than the 40+ some think he needs to be worth but are we trying to close up the MoV a little bit or simply change the outcome of the game?

I believe the intent is to close up the matches on the point fortresses. To a point where if say the decimator + Academies ships looses 3 acadamies but destroys 2 X-wings or A-wings in a 4 ship build the turret doesn't' win all the time.

The attempt is to close up the MoV for timed matches to where point fortresses don't win all the timed matches.

However you are right the hit points on say a Tie interceptor are harder to take off than a hit points on say a Y-wing.

So here is a question. If partial points were given would be better on 1 hull remaining or on less than half hull remaining such as a Tie Fighter with only 1 hull left (rounded down) or a Aggressor with 2 hull left?

So here is a question. If partial points were given would be better on 1 hull remaining or on less than half hull remaining such as a Tie Fighter with only 1 hull left (rounded down) or a Aggressor with 2 hull left?

Could you re-phrase the question? I'm confused.

So here is a question. If partial points were given would be better on 1 hull remaining or on less than half hull remaining such as a Tie Fighter with only 1 hull left (rounded down) or a Aggressor with 2 hull left?

Could you re-phrase the question? I'm confused.

So instead of giving each hull a point value, put a point value (say 10 points) when damage on a ship reaches certain bench marks until it gets destroyed in which the full value of the ship will be given.

So one option for example say the point value for 10 points (not a full ship) is given at when a ship has 1 hull left. So for the Tie Fighter if it takes 2 damage against the hull it is now worth 10 points for the opponent. Same for the Decimator or Falcon when it has only 1 hull left.

The other option would be at half hull value (rounded down). So it will still be 1 hull for Tie Fighters and Interceptors but on the Decimator it will give 10 points once it has 6 hull damage and the Unique Falcons will give 10 points once it reaches 4 hull damage.

So my question would be which of these options would be better?

I know this will probably introduce new math imbalances such as the B-wing which is mostly shields so in the 1st post I thought of a low point value (1-4) for removing all shield tokens as a initial bench mark, but that sort of screws with the S&V faction which have many ships of only 1 shield.

So here is a question. If partial points were given would be better on 1 hull remaining or on less than half hull remaining such as a Tie Fighter with only 1 hull left (rounded down) or a Aggressor with 2 hull left?

Could you re-phrase the question? I'm confused.

So instead of giving each hull a point value, put a point value (say 10 points) when damage on a ship reaches certain bench marks until it gets destroyed in which the full value of the ship will be given.

So one option for example say the point value for 10 points (not a full ship) is given at when a ship has 1 hull left. So for the Tie Fighter if it takes 2 damage against the hull it is now worth 10 points for the opponent. Same for the Decimator or Falcon when it has only 1 hull left.

The other option would be at half hull value (rounded down). So it will still be 1 hull for Tie Fighters and Interceptors but on the Decimator it will give 10 points once it has 6 hull damage and the Unique Falcons will give 10 points once it reaches 4 hull damage.

So my question would be which of these options would be better?

I know this will probably introduce new math imbalances such as the B-wing which is mostly shields so in the 1st post I thought of a low point value (1-4) for removing all shield tokens as a initial bench mark, but that sort of screws with the S&V faction which have many ships of only 1 shield.

Yeah, you need it to work "fairly" or at least consistently across different ships, since the value of the ship and number of hit points can vary drastically. So a fixed 10 points of value doesn't really help that much. You could make up a complicated rule set on what the benchmark points are, but at that point it is probably simpler to just do math with your smartphone.

Wow, not a single comment about what I suggested. Not even one of derision.

Was it really that bad, or is it because I'm not "known" I can't possibly come up with I decent idea?

MOV has some very interesting "issues" with it, which I do think is bad for the game (As I'm sure others do)

1, As mentioned it encourages "Fat builds" and in of itself that's okay (ish).

2, The real insidious effect is that it encourages playstyles designed around "Not Losing" rather a play style geared towards winning. Get ahead then do everything to not lose the game. Turtling, not engaging and "Fortressing" the last two are not good for the game.

3. A player can be at a disadvantage before even building based solely on his opponent building to abuse MoV - without even seeing the build in regards to a "hard counter" to his own list

For the record, I'm not convinced partial points is the answer (as discussed). it just seems to strengthen the MoV of the loser.

Maybe something akin to what Flames of War used.

Currently the maximum number of ships a list can have is 8, so regardless of how many ships you actually have there is 8 "Victory points" up for grabs.

2 ship build each ship is worth 4 points

3 ships, first ship destroyed worth 3, second worth 2, the 3rd is worth 3

4 ships, each are worth 2

5 ships, 2,1,2,1,2

6 ships, 2,1,1,1,1,2

7 ships, 1,1,1,1,1,1,2 -(not sure if the middle first or last should be worth 2 points)

8 ships, 1 each

You table your opponent you get a full 8 points, you lose, you get points based on number of ships you killed.

Next round pairing is based off of VP's, not win/ loss.

Fat Han + 3 Z's, the Z's are flat out liability as they bleed 6VP's, but that is okay, because you built the list knowing that and that is something that YOU not your opponent has to accept.

2 ship builds bleed a VP on the easier kill if the likes of Dash and Corren are being flown. Double Phantoms. Aggressors, FIresprays, being that the ships tended to cost similar points.

8 ship swarms are in the boat they were, may be a little better due to VP's gained from the opponent.

You might even be able to use points bled as a tie breaker on pairings

Wow, not a single comment about what I suggested. Not even one of derision.

Was it really that bad, or is it because I'm not "known" I can't possibly come up with I decent idea?

Well, if you had Fat Han + 3Z's, you would get the same benefit from killing a Z-95 as you would Han. It makes more problems than it fixes.

Wow, not a single comment about what I suggested. Not even one of derision.

Was it really that bad, or is it because I'm not "known" I can't possibly come up with I decent idea?

I was working up a response because I like the concept of scoring only for ships you destroy and not for ships you maintain, though I didn't like the idea of equally dispersing points for the reason Major Juggler pointed to. I wanted to work on something using actual ship point value. Then my brain started working on whether that really equated to something different if you used the ship's actual point value, coming around to the conclusion I was working in a circle to what we have now. Then my brain shot off to the idea of "what if there were no wins/losses, we only did MOV, and your MOV was only the ship points you had destroyed, nothing more". But that doesn't work either, for numerous reasons I won't go in to. I still think you had the start of a good idea in there, I just can't get at it.

I kept these thoughts in my head because they wouldn't coalesce (or those that did coalesce weren't anything good), but since you brought it up, that is why I didn't reply. For whatever it is worth, nobody knows me either.

Personally, outside a type of "less than half starting hits remaining= half points" I'm not convinced that any partial points system will be truly implementable* due to the customizable nature of the game.

"More problems than it solves"

I disagree (Obviously) it brings a different problem, but solves a few.

Due to the MoV system there are basically 2 halves to the game. Playing the table and playing the MoV system. It is a BAD THING to have lists/ builds that are strong in both sections, because it will cause a stagnant meta as only certain builds are worth taking and a new build won't make it unless it wins in both.

Fat Han +(Something), Duel Phantoms, Double D's end up being strong at both elements of the game

Tie Swarm, Rebel Swarm, only strong on the table, due to MoV they bleed points (In fact, I would hazard a guess that MoV became 12 points, to make Tie Swarms weaker)

I'm sure there are some other builds, but the point should be seen.

We all agree that a "fairer" system is needed, but I can't help but think that people are getting lost in the Math. A VP system doesn't need a massive level of detail.

Now my sincere apologies if I've got this wrong, but IIRC correctly outside X-wing you don't have much "wargaming" experience (It's Boardgames right?) So you haven't seen the VP systems of a multitude of other systems and how they evolved and the pit falls they suffered, I have. A VP system needs to be simple, if it's too complicated to be done by average Joe with pen and paper, it's too complicate.

I'm not saying my idea IS the answer, but I do think the answer is that simple, and is in that direction

Now my sincere apologies if I've got this wrong, but IIRC correctly outside X-wing you don't have much "wargaming" experience (It's Boardgames right?) So you haven't seen the VP systems of a multitude of other systems and how they evolved and the pit falls they suffered, I have. A VP system needs to be simple, if it's too complicated to be done by average Joe with pen and paper, it's too complicate.

I'm not saying my idea IS the answer, but I do think the answer is that simple, and is in that direction

I agree that it must be simple. This is why I've tried to argue with Major Juggler in a vain attempt to get him to turn his massive math brain toward something that is fair(ish) and simpler, if not as precise.

I'm still working on it.

Well we have identified the issue with point fortresses being so strong in timed matches. Unfortunately we have no simple solution.

Give a one point MoV bump to each player for every minute ahead of time the game finishes. Finish a 75-minute round in 45 minutes? You get 30 points each in MoV.

That should keep the game moving. You could give points only to the victor, but then that creates an incentive for a player down on points to stall to the end rather than fight to the finish.

Give a one point MoV bump to each player for every minute ahead of time the game finishes. Finish a 75-minute round in 45 minutes? You get 30 points each in MoV.

That should keep the game moving. You could give points only to the victor, but then that creates an incentive for a player down on points to stall to the end rather than fight to the finish.

That still does nothing to motivate a player who is losing badly to finish out the game. He would still rather let the game go to time rather than lose the game and lose 60+ points of MoV. And that is really the fundamental problem to try and address, I think.

That still does nothing to motivate a player who is losing badly to finish out the game. He would still rather let the game go to time rather than lose the game and lose 60+ points of MoV. And that is really the fundamental problem to try and address, I think.

Well, if someone's losing and is going to stretch the game to time just to minimize the MoV loss, there's not much to do -- that player will still lose.

What I think my suggestion will do is encourage a player who is winning slightly on points who would otherwise disengage and try to run time out to stay engaged and try to finish the match. It's a different way to try and prevent the wounded 60-point ship from running when that player is up on points.

That still does nothing to motivate a player who is losing badly to finish out the game. He would still rather let the game go to time rather than lose the game and lose 60+ points of MoV. And that is really the fundamental problem to try and address, I think.

Well, if someone's losing and is going to stretch the game to time just to minimize the MoV loss, there's not much to do -- that player will still lose.

No, I meant if the player is losing on the table in the sense that he has no chance of winning if the game were untimed, but is ahead on MoV points -- then there is nothing you can do to prevent the player from trying to get the game to go to time.

That still does nothing to motivate a player who is losing badly to finish out the game. He would still rather let the game go to time rather than lose the game and lose 60+ points of MoV. And that is really the fundamental problem to try and address, I think.

Well, if someone's losing and is going to stretch the game to time just to minimize the MoV loss, there's not much to do -- that player will still lose.

What I think my suggestion will do is encourage a player who is winning slightly on points who would otherwise disengage and try to run time out to stay engaged and try to finish the match. It's a different way to try and prevent the wounded 60-point ship from running when that player is up on points.

The problem isn't with going to time necessarily. The problem is with MOV and point retention. The whole purpose of MOV is to determine a winner if it goes to time and for ties. When you got 40+ people playing at a tournament you cannot have matches go for 2 hours a round.

However as stated in order to win at MOV you have to win at point retention and that is what point fortresses do. You have 1 big ship and one to four escorts that makes focusing down the big ship tough to do all while more than half the points in a squadron list is protected in the Boss ship.

Now to make each point of damage worth something that could be complicated as SteveO said 1 damage on a Decimator is not the same as 1 damage on Whisper or 1 damage on Han with C-3PO Title tank. So making each hit count for point will still move retention to the agility tanks and damage recovery sponges. Might not be a bad thing since they are not meta dominating but still not exactly even matched. After all why would we want to buff the phantom after it just been nerfed.

So the question is how do you balance each out so that if you do say 2 Academy pilots worth of damage against a fat ship how do you at least get credit for your effort?

A while ago I made a comment about encouraging the sort of play we want, rather than a bunch of complicated rules to force the current MoV system to encourage it.

While I'm not totally against the idea of partial points, I don't think it deals with the problem, only makes the problem less pronounced.

My belief is that the issue lies more in the win condition and tournament points than MoV. I'm sure this proposal has been suggested before, but if I saw it I don't remember who said it, so come claim the credit if it's due.

Proposal is;

If a game goes to time, whoever has destroyed the most of their opponents squad gets a modified win. That's it. Simple huh?

A few implications;

It means that if your opponent has 1 TIE fighter left on the board and you have all your ships undamaged, you don't get full victory. But I don't think it's a problem to put the onus on the player in the lead to chase down and kill off the last of his opponents ships. Currently we put the onus on the 'losing' player to chase down the 'winning' player's ships, even though they are at a disadvantage.

It means losing 1 game and full winning 2 is slightly better than mod-winning 3. It means that mod-winning everything is still a viable strategy, but if you are doing that you NEED to win every game. Dropping 1 means you are out of the race, and you may need to start pulling full wins to still be in contention.

It means the meta will shift to more offensive builds and upgrades. The Fat Falcon will still be strong, but it won't place as well in it's current form as other more offensive builds that take the victories. A Falcon list will probably have maneuverable and high damage wingman/wingmen to give it more bite.

A winning list will need to expect the 'losing' list to run away to force the modified win and have an end game plan that can catch up to and destroy the stragglers.

Slow play will still be a problem, but it will be the 'losing' player with the incentive to stretch the game out to time. I haven't really come up with something that discourages that sort of behaviour yet. This certainly won't eliminate it. I think it will push this sort of behaviour to extremely 1 sided games, because in close games it will be in the interests of both the current 'winning' and 'losing' players to quickly kill the opponent and grab the full victory if possible.

Proposal is;

If a game goes to time, whoever has destroyed the most of their opponents squad gets a modified win. That's it. Simple huh?

Can't comment on if it is simple or not -- you would have to go into detail on how you would determine "who has destroyed most of their opponent's squad". It is not obvious to me what that specifically means in practice.

I know this might be a step back in the discussion, but from a design perspective, I'd like to revisit what the objectives are for the match from a player's perspective, and objectives for design of tournament scoring models.

The objective of the match for each player is to destroy the enemy's ships (call this the player objective). For a game that does not go to time, you have a simple evaluation of the winner: who has ships left standing? However, before elimination rounds or in matches that go to time, some scoring model is necessary to break ties (in both individual matches and in overall win-loss for the elimination cut). Perhaps these two situations need to be slightly separated, perhaps they don't.

• The Primary objective of the scoring model is to determine which player performed best with regard to the goal of destroying all of the enemy's ships.
• A Secondary objective of the scoring model is to evaluate as fairly as possible so that no particular playstyle in pursuit of the players' main objective is relatively disadvantaged by the scoring model itself.
• A Tertiary objective of the scoring model is to mitigate exploitation of playstyles that will seek to maximize scoring model outcomes but subvert the player objective (if any exist).

The scoring model needs to be simple enough to understand and calculate between matches. The only information that can realisticly be gathered for this are ships destroyed and ending health. Trying to figure from positions, target locks, actions, critical effects, etc. formulaicly who the winner would be is simply not possible. Remember the primary objective: the model looks at the snapshot of an endgame outcome and gives rank to who would have won and by how much. Reality could mean that the scoring model is wrong in some cases, but it should have a reasonable rate of certainty and seldom have counterexamples.

Current MoV has a bit of a blindspot to ships that are very high points, and particularly those that may last a long time. For an oft-cited and illustrative example, in a game that goes to time with a 4 tie swarm left (or otherwise reasonably healthy equivalent points) on the field versus a low-health Fat Han. It might be said with a degree of certainty that if time were available to continue playing, the Fat Han would be the loser. This is a failure of the Primary Objective of the scoring model to accurately determine which player was closer to destroying all of the enemy's ships.

Having high point ships that last long being counted as full points at full health or low health (moving away from just the Fat Han example, but others, too) is also the core reason for the failure of the Secondary Objective: many playstyles or list compositions accept damage taken, even ships lost, to win a war of attrition. Joust-efficient ships are brought with an expectation that you will be taking damage but--when played successfully--at least dishing out enough damage to justify its point cost. Nuanced into the joust-efficient playstyle is the composition of ships: there are cheap jousters like z-95s and ties (call them type A), and some that are more expensive but bring higher stats to justify (call them type B). Type A is more frequently losing ships than type B even in a winning game, and thus, under current MoV, losing points more often. There are big steps of MoV points given relative to the percentage of a squad's health. A type A squad that lost 60% of their health might have lost more points than a type B squad that also lost 60% of their health (assuming the degree of focus fire was the same). Put this way, both successful results appear similarly well-played but MoV would favor the type B squad slightly. This can be a larger disadvantage than it appears because before elimination rounds you are not only losing points to your MoV score but also giving points to a competitor.

One thing that I think MoV does reasonably well is the Tertiary Objective, at least a lot better than strength of schedule. Before elimination rounds, players who try to snipe early points and slow play or play "not to lose" in an attempt to explot MoV might not be able to maximize their MoV. The players' main goal is to destroy all the enemy's ships and MoV only gives points to destroyed ships. From my limited sample of experiences, I have not seen many players who decide to disengage while ahead and burn time for the sole sake of saving MoV points, and I am skeptical that such a playstyle is really rewarded all that often under MoV. Certainly holding onto a few ships by playing this way might give you a small consolation in MoV, but I also don't think any scoring model could completely eliminate all incentive of this kind of play. I could be wrong, and would be receptive to someone proving it to me.