I am so sick of...

You know what. Never mind. I think I'm going to take a break of the forums for a few days and let this blow over.

I am so sick of...

You know what. Never mind. I think I'm going to take a break of the forums for a few days and let this blow over.

I'm not a math guy. I have no basis to dispute juggy on his calculations.

well, I would if the Mathwing didn't already acknowledge how it's not a perfect representation of the game by any means

From what I understand, Mathwing is a projection of a ship's efficiency in terms of stats per cost. It cuts out all dice-independent strategy and focuses purely on the numbers. This is why it is built around the term of "jousting" which is a scenario in which ships are expected to exchange dice by shooting at one another

That's it.

If Mathwnig were a comprehensive summary of how amazing ships actually were, we'd only ever play tie fighters and the very very few things that are more efficient than them. What it actually is is the only resource we have for estimating how effective a ship will be in a dice-off against other ships.

Jousting Value takes into account abilities that work better against certain dice totals than others (such as Luke against 2 dice ships) but its ultimate "value" is seemingly based on its average performance across all types. So, if you look only at Luke's jousting value, you'd never see how amazing he is at swatting ties and Zs.

Jousting Value also doesn't take into account anything that isn't an exchange of dice

Arc-dodging, whether through high maneuverability, auxillary-arcs/turrets (even a HWK can arc-dodge because it can move in different ways without sacrificing offense), control (easy to dodge if you have less options) or even the Defender's 4-k etc etc etc. flips jousting values over their head s.

Jousting value is not an absolute metric . Rather, it is for things like this:

I remember when Juggler was talking about the Defender's inefficiency. He was projecting its jousting value not against the Tie fighter but against turreted ships, which have similar (or better in case of named pilots) jousting values for an advantage (primary turret) that he deemed better in almost every context to the Defender's (white 4k).

The only advantage the Defender boasts is the small base, which is huge and leads me to personally disagreeing with the good mjaor, but you can see where he's coming from. His rubric for which ships are overpriced or not are not simple X > Y , but also includes a rough, human estimate of how much joust-transcending abilities are worth relative to other ships .

So, his opinion that Defender = overcosted is not a function of Defender < Tie Fighter, but rather Defender =< primary weapon turrets. He used both jousting value and a projection of joust-transcending abilities to arrive at that opinion. We have to do the same, or we're kind of missing the point of this wonderfully complex game.

Imo, the only time when jousting values get close to an absolute metric on their own is when a ship can do very little outside of jousting .

This explains why the Z is considered solid (slightly higher value than the fighter due to rebel PS, apparently) but the rookie X-wing...yeah

Of course, that's just in the case of generics. Wedge and Luke have higher values, but personally I feel they transcended their values already (Luke because he's surprisingly survivable and Wedge because PS 9 + his ability makes him terrifying ; his **** defenses don't matter if you can't shoot him )

The reason why I stopped using Wedge is not because he's inefficient or something, but because he has zero chance of killing a fattie before it murders him

Still use Luke, though.

MathWing: Killing Diversity In The Game Since 2014?

HEL-NAH ... NOT HERE AT BOSS CENTRAL !

NA-OPE, NA-OPE, NA-OPE!

NAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The way to address stagnant metas is to give the devs accurate, relevant feedback so that they can incorporate that when putting balance tweaks into the next wave. Some of the most relevant feedback is statistical analysis of the ships, combined with tournament results and trends.

Oh, that's MathWing.

No, I don't think that's Mathwing. Mathwing is about producing models of efficiency to predict the strongest combos of lists to play with.

What you're talking about is good old fashioned data collection and anaylizing. I'm pretty sure that that's not mathwing's primary goal...

Jacob

On my last two league nights I played mostly Fun lists... A XXYY list and last time a S&V list with 2 HWK's and a Y. I actually did pretty well with both lists, even though they aren't high powered lists, and the math points out where I could likely improve them.

But next weekend the 24th when I'm at the FFG event center for Regionals, I'll be flying something at the most point effective list I can, I want to do well, and will make sure my list is the best list I can come up with because I don't want how well I do hindered by a bad list.

Sure I could go with a 4X list, and maybe even do well. But if I can win with a suboptimal list, then I could do even better with a optimal one.

The only issue really is what Nightshrike said, a lot of people treat every game like it's a tournament game and bring their best lists. But at the same time, I think that the idea that every friendly game is treated like that is overblown because that's what we talk about and there's hundreds of friendly games, played with fun lists out there for every serious top meta only type games.

I wonder what the lists would be like if the game was played out at the various locations its played at, and no information was shared and nothing was up on Youtube and each individual meta existed in its own unique environment. Certainly X might win the Nationals, but the diversity in the remaining group might be greater than it might be this year.

Jacob

It's 2015, so I can't tell if you're being ironic (based on which posts you "liked" I'm guessing you're not).

What you're talking about here is not related to Mathwing but to modern communication. Even if the Mathwing wasn't as refined as it was, you'd still have people posting highly successful lists and copying them.

Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. Without this kind of communication, people wouldn't be able to copycat lists as easily, but taking that along with an excellent worldwide community that generates a lot of energy for the game is a far better tradeoff.

On a more serious tone. Star Brothers (& Sister) we do not have to play a game according to what other people think.

Nope.

Make your own fixes. The fact that is a fact is that the Wave 1, 2, and 3 ships are a little less than hot new ship, but only by a little.

It is not a tragedy or a crime, it just is.

So agree with your friends to some little house rules, and stay the bleep away from the meta-meanies that ruin your fun.

It is real easy.

From what I understand, Mathwing is a projection of a ship's efficiency in terms of stats per cost. It cuts out all dice-independent strategy and focuses purely on the numbers. This is why it is built around the term of "jousting" which is a scenario in which ships are expected to exchange dice by shooting at one another

That's it.

MJ provides two levels of analysis, actually. The simpler, more numerical analysis is the jousting value that you describe. That takes the current shape of the meta and uses that to determine the ratio of damage done against a meta-average target over a number of rounds equal to the expected time to death of that ship, to point cost. That gets normalized to the TIE fighter, and is used to figure out how much weight the intangibles (dial, upgrade slots, pilot abilities) need to provide for the ship to pull its weight.

But MJ also does analysis of those intangibles. This work is a bit more subjective, and reasonable people can disagree over details, but it still can assert "this ship needs a 20% boost over the jousting value, and the poor dial and lack of upgrade slots mean that's unlikely to happen" and generally be correct.

No, I don't think that's Mathwing. Mathwing is about producing models of efficiency to predict the strongest combos of lists to play with.

What you're talking about is good old fashioned data collection and anaylizing. I'm pretty sure that that's not mathwing's primary goal...

I think that you are also conflating jousting values with the larger effort. People latch onto jousting values because it's a single number, but jousting values are not the be-all, end-all of MathWing.

every time i hear meta groans on this forum its like ive been shoved back in time about 20 years before the internet when people thought that doing the same thing was cheating.

Or that they've never played a competitive game in their life, or never once been in the modern world of stock exchanges, gambling, heck.

it feels like the middle of a farm country that stretches for miles, filled with uneducated people who really dont like the look of my face.

its stifling and pukeworthy.

Right, there may be some aspect of confirmation bias going on, but these things are played over dozens of iterations. If Mathwing predicted that the most efficient ship combination was something like 4 pre-fix TIE Advanceds, that might get lots of players trying it out. I doubt very much if that meta would survive, however, because it really isn't an efficient combination. The fact is, while Mathwing has a margin of error and the game has a degree of randomness to it, the margin of error has limits. Knowing those limits helps to improve the balance of the game over time.

There you've neglected the thing MathWing also neglects: player skill. X-Wing is, relatively speaking, a very well put together game. All the ships are pretty close together. Granted, if you made predictions about the TIE advanced being amazing you'd be empirically proven wrong very quickly. However, if you said the B-wing was awful from the get go you'd probably kill it off, and two similar lists (say XXBB and XBBZZ) where it very much would come down to player skill could be made or broken by their MathWing predictons. MathWing has disproportionate influence over people's list building.

well, I would if the Mathwing didn't already acknowledge how it's not a perfect representation of the game by any means

The problem is that people (not MajorJuggler I'll point out, who is the first to point out the limitations of his model) treat it like it is. They don't treat it as fallible.

I personally don't believe it's actually possible to place all the ships in X-Wing on a linear scale. To me, MathWing's true strength isn't as a list building tool but a tactical one. It's very good at measuring which ship is most likely to come out on top in a head-on conflict where that isn't immediately apparent.

I should add that, in the current meta, there is one huge reason as to why we're so engrossed in jousting values:

primary weapon turrets

Here's how they'll interact with your list:

1.) ideal "angelic-harps playing" scenario --> the fattie's stuck on a space peanut and you get free damage

2.) best case scenario --> you're "jousting" the turret (i.e exchanging dice) because you can't do **** to avoid it (**** I hate that rule)

3.) worst case scenario --> you're getting arc dodged and the turret is hitting you.

because you'll at best be exchanging dice with the big dumb bastards, jousting efficiency becomes an essential factor of list building. Being efficient won't win you ****, though (the turret can still dance around you), but exchanging dice is literally the only way to kill a primary turret. The more efficient you are, the less of a % of your squadron you'll need to not auto-lose to the turret.

It's why FFG had to release auto-thrusters, Tie Interceptors simply had no way of competing short of praying for RNGesus to deliver a miracle unto them that didn't involve them going sploot when the turret shot first.

From what I understand, Mathwing is a projection of a ship's efficiency in terms of stats per cost. It cuts out all dice-independent strategy and focuses purely on the numbers. This is why it is built around the term of "jousting" which is a scenario in which ships are expected to exchange dice by shooting at one another

That's it.

MJ provides two levels of analysis, actually. The simpler, more numerical analysis is the jousting value that you describe. That takes the current shape of the meta and uses that to determine the ratio of damage done against a meta-average target over a number of rounds equal to the expected time to death of that ship, to point cost. That gets normalized to the TIE fighter, and is used to figure out how much weight the intangibles (dial, upgrade slots, pilot abilities) need to provide for the ship to pull its weight.

But MJ also does analysis of those intangibles. This work is a bit more subjective, and reasonable people can disagree over details, but it still can assert "this ship needs a 20% boost over the jousting value, and the poor dial and lack of upgrade slots mean that's unlikely to happen" and generally be correct.

Oh, I think you may be right.

I filed that under his "opinion" section (the whole "why the defender is overcosted" bit), but I do believe he explains how he has to approximate the value of abilities (esp named pilots) when forming jousting values.

In the end it's never maths that wins you a game but skill.

Keep your mystical numbers and strange symbols I'll take what I like and win far more than I lose because In the end my pure ignorance of how out matched I am shields me from defeat.

It's better to be good than lucky, fortunately I'm both.

Right, there may be some aspect of confirmation bias going on, but these things are played over dozens of iterations. If Mathwing predicted that the most efficient ship combination was something like 4 pre-fix TIE Advanceds, that might get lots of players trying it out. I doubt very much if that meta would survive, however, because it really isn't an efficient combination. The fact is, while Mathwing has a margin of error and the game has a degree of randomness to it, the margin of error has limits. Knowing those limits helps to improve the balance of the game over time.

There you've neglected the thing MathWing also neglects: player skill. X-Wing is, relatively speaking, a very well put together game. All the ships are pretty close together. Granted, if you made predictions about the TIE advanced being amazing you'd be empirically proven wrong very quickly. However, if you said the B-wing was awful from the get go you'd probably kill it off, and two similar lists (say XXBB and XBBZZ) where it very much would come down to player skill could be made or broken by their MathWing predictons. MathWing has disproportionate influence over people's list building.

I didn't neglect player skill, I just pointed out that there are limits to margins of error, and that there are builds which are so disadvantageous that player skill cannot be expected to overcome it.

If you take 4 rookies or 3 deltas math will decide a lot of your games.

In the end it's never maths that wins you a game but skill.

Keep your mystical numbers and strange symbols I'll take what I like and win far more than I lose because In the end my pure ignorance of how out matched I am shields me from defeat.

It's better to be good than lucky, fortunately I'm both.

mystical numbers and strange symbols?

tis' true! The inner working of the green ones are as inscrutable as they are whimsical

If you take 4 rookies or 3 deltas math will decide a lot of your games.

I'd agree on the rookies (though you'd better fill out those 16 points ) but not so much on the Deltas. They have the means to overcome jousting values (control cannon, white 4k), it just puts more strain on the player.

Well, except against turrets. 3 Deltas are sort of boned there.

If you take 4 rookies or 3 deltas math will decide a lot of your games.

I've won with three deltas before as have loads of others so obviously maths isn't deciding squat.

Well, except against turrets. 3 Deltas are sort of boned there.

So what you're saying is turrets are interesting to play both with and against and the game needs more, right?

Right, there may be some aspect of confirmation bias going on, but these things are played over dozens of iterations. If Mathwing predicted that the most efficient ship combination was something like 4 pre-fix TIE Advanceds, that might get lots of players trying it out. I doubt very much if that meta would survive, however, because it really isn't an efficient combination. The fact is, while Mathwing has a margin of error and the game has a degree of randomness to it, the margin of error has limits. Knowing those limits helps to improve the balance of the game over time.

There you've neglected the thing MathWing also neglects: player skill. X-Wing is, relatively speaking, a very well put together game. All the ships are pretty close together. Granted, if you made predictions about the TIE advanced being amazing you'd be empirically proven wrong very quickly. However, if you said the B-wing was awful from the get go you'd probably kill it off, and two similar lists (say XXBB and XBBZZ) where it very much would come down to player skill could be made or broken by their MathWing predictons. MathWing has disproportionate influence over people's list building.

I didn't neglect player skill, I just pointed out that there are limits to margins of error, and that there are builds which are so disadvantageous that player skill cannot be expected to overcome it.

... and I stay a billion miles away from the people who insist on using these ships with the up to the second meta-bettah-builds.

As if every Xwing player around the world is aware of MathWing existance... I don't know about the States, but here in Italy I don't think that more than handful of players follow this forum and even less than that know about MJ's MathWing thing and yet, despite the fact you can expect to find almost any kind of ship any given tournament, the ones winning more often than not are the "efficient ones".

Why? Because, despite the fact in this game any serious list could win against any other serious list, in a tournament enviroment you HAVE to play the most efficient* 100 points combination in order to be able to be at least on par against the 4 or more different lists you will face.

A B-Wing is usually more versatile than a rookie X-Wing, at least with the current MoV rules, making that ship a safer pick and you didn't need MathWing but just some tournament experience to grasp it

*It's worth noting that efficiency is a subjective thing and it goes beyond simple MathWing numbers: if I'm not capable of proper decloaking a phantom or fly large base without overlapping then I might be more efficient flying defender

I'm good enough to win regardless of how "efficient" my choices are. For example last week I won three games using two Rebel HWKs. More habitually I use Shuttles and Defenders to great success.

At a certain point you move past the need to squeeze every single last point of effectiveness from your squad loadout, because in 95% of games you can win with playskill alone. The other 5% are games where you're in the top 8 of a 30+ player event, and yes, you probably ought to have a maximized list.

Of course if you can't win without having the "perfect" choices in the list building stage then you're probably not a great player right now anyway. But you can be, if you practice enough. And then you can enjoy the looks on people's faces when you kick their ass with generic E-Wings.

If you take 4 rookies or 3 deltas math will decide a lot of your games.

But it will not determine how much FUN I have winning or losing.

In this wonderful game THERE ARE NO LOSERS.

HEL-NAH!

Well, except against turrets. 3 Deltas are sort of boned there.

So what you're saying is turrets are interesting to play both with and against and the game needs more, right?

and we have so many varied turrets to chose from

how many!?

as many as we have YT-XXXX variants! Who knows how much!? I've lost count years ago!

If you take 4 rookies or 3 deltas math will decide a lot of your games.

I've won with three deltas before as have loads of others so obviously maths isn't deciding squat.

Bravo to you for that accomplishment, but you did it despite math working against you. There hasn't been a meta since wave 1 where a delta list would actually be competitive.