This happened at a tournament I played in over the weekend. It was scored at 5-5, but the winner had a negative margin of victory which killed his tiebreakers (margin of victory are the first tiebreaker)
Winning and Losing at the Same Time
I totally agree with ScottieATF. Destroying last ship should trigger a full point win, else in tournament, people will "by mistake" fly their last ship out of the map to deny points to score bigger.
Example:
I have all my 100 points squadron alive and I had a 10 points initiative bid. You killed 140 points of ship and I have a 50 point ship left. I destroyed you 140 points of ship/squadrons.
Now I can keep trying to fight and allow you to kill some squadrons and make the game end at 8-2, 9-1 or 10-0 points, or I could kill my own ship and make it end right there at 7-3 points. It is pretty obvious I will just make my own ship die to get 3 points to keep the best Tournament Points Score I can.
If you award full points for destroying just ships you are penalizing players for spending a larger amount of points on squadrons. There is no incentive to try to deal with squadrons instead of just trying to burn down your opponent's ships. Fleets with a large number of points spent on squadrons already expose themselves to having their ships taken out quicker there's no reason to encourage people to ignore squadrons.
Don't grab the Snitch when you are down by 15 or more goals.
Note: I've yet to play a game and am still waiting for my stuff to show up in the mail so let me know if I'm way off base.
So it appears the tournament rules were updated today! It seems to address this issue.
Good to see from FFG.
It's so well worded, I love it!!
It's nice that they addressed the issue but it seems odd that they'd stack the points in favor of taking ships over squadrons so much. It's now in your best interest to completely ignore your opponent's squadrons if you think that you can get away with it.
The game is about Ships, not about the Squadrons.
If destroying Ships is the Victory condition you can't have it not score you the full build points. That would just be a fundemental flaw in the rules and introduce to many situations where your opponent can score more tournament points by losing the game worse.
It's nice that they addressed the issue but it seems odd that they'd stack the points in favor of taking ships over squadrons so much. It's now in your best interest to completely ignore your opponent's squadrons if you think that you can get away with it.
Try to ignore the squadrons... you will find yourself in a world of pain. You will have to deal with them anyway and smart admiral will use them wisely and force opponent to deal with them.