Can someone please explain me why cannot we just use a formula like

(Total Squad Points) * (Hitpoints Lost) / (Total Squad Hitpoints)

that any $3 calculator can do?

Does it lose a lot of precision or something?

$3! We ain't all made of money Mr moneybags.

If you can't do $3, it's on the "cheap" smartphone you have in your pocket too... or ipod / musicbox... whatevs...

Incidentally, I'm a fan of cheap and simple. You know exactly how many points are in a squad when built. Every time you take a hit, it is easy to see how many points it cost you. Most people can do it in their heads, but it only matter for calculation at the end. Han has 2 hull left... multiply 2*Fatness. Move on.

So is it for every shield and hull. Shields and hull are both thematically and mechanically different. If a B-wing has 2 shield tokens on it then really the pilot should not be sweating at all. Just recharge them and send him back out. When they are down then it is time to panic. # of hull points remaining would work better than hull + shields.

But the reason behind a fixed partial point system is so that you don't have to use a calculator even if it is $3 one or a free smartphone app. Sure division is easy but when every you throw in a division into the function you won't always end up with a whole number, then you have to explain rounding (do you always round up or down or to the nearest whole number?) and other stuff. Sure once players get it down it would be simple but that is one too many hurdles I would want to add in while trying to bleed points from point fortresses.

Can someone please explain me why cannot we just use a formula like

(Total Squad Points) * (Hitpoints Lost) / (Total Squad Hitpoints)

that any $3 calculator can do?

Does it lose a lot of precision or something?

$3! We ain't all made of money Mr moneybags.

If you can't do $3, it's on the "cheap" smartphone you have in your pocket too... or ipod / musicbox... whatevs...

Incidentally, I'm a fan of cheap and simple. You know exactly how many points are in a squad when built. Every time you take a hit, it is easy to see how many points it cost you. Most people can do it in their heads, but it only matter for calculation at the end. Han has 2 hull left... multiply 2*Fatness. Move on.

So is it for every shield and hull. Shields and hull are both thematically and mechanically different. If a B-wing has 2 shield tokens on it then really the pilot should not be sweating at all. Just recharge them and send him back out. When they are down then it is time to panic. # of hull points remaining would work better than hull + shields.

But the reason behind a fixed partial point system is so that you don't have to use a calculator even if it is $3 one or a free smartphone app. Sure division is easy but when every you throw in a division into the function you won't always end up with a whole number, then you have to explain rounding (do you always round up or down or to the nearest whole number?) and other stuff. Sure once players get it down it would be simple but that is one too many hurdles I would want to add in while trying to bleed points from point fortresses.

Thematically speaking, hull and shield are totally different, yes. In game terms, though, they aren't so different, as 96% of the ships in this game cannot recharge shields.

A shield and a hull point differ only on that it is usually better to have a shield absorb a damage because it neutralizes crits without consequences. Also, with very particular upgrades, combos or abilities, you can recover shields. But there are also upgrades and abilities that let you discard damage cards, virtually healing the hull. All in all shield and hull are different flavors of hitpoints.

Grayfax has actually a good point on coining the term Fatness for how many squad points every hitpoint contains. The more upgrades are stacked on a ship, the more points each of that ship's hitpoints are worth.

If you want, you can calculate it beforehand, just as you calculate your total squad point cost.

Fatness = Total Squad Points / Total Squad Hitpoints.

So, the player, at the end of a match, would just need to inform the organizer if their game has timed up, and in such a case, how many hitpoints each of them lost (just count damage cards and missing shield tokens, we all can count natural numbers, right?).

The organizer just needs to multiply that number times the Squad Fatness factor to get the amount of points each player has "downed". Only the organizer needs to take care on rounding.

Hmm... That might bias toward excessive Fatness in smaller ships... say Z95s paired with a large ship.

I was thinking on a ship per ship basis. Usually it will be all or nothing on the smaller ones, but would be very fat if added in and divided by the whole squad when it should be lean on wingmen.

Something about saying shields and hull are the same value and can be lumped together and then compared to other ships with the same hitpoints is ignoring one BIG factor and that is the ship's agility. I really think partial point systems break down when you look at that simple thing when trying to say that two ships are equally close to death just because they have the same hitpoints.

Is a Y-Wing with no shields and a damage card really in the same boat as an Aggressor that has just had it's shields taken out? Both start at 8 hitpoints and are currently down to 4 hitpoints but it would generally take a lot more to get those last 4 points off the Aggressor when they are protected by 3 Agility dice and possible Autothrusters and Evade Tokens that it would be the Y-Wing with 1 Agility die and possibly some kind of astromech unit.

Not really sure what problem your addressing. I dont think MOV or people care much in my circles. After all, dont lose in Swiss and your making the cut. The argument who deserves 16th vs 17th is about as interesting as last teams in the NCAA tournament. There are plenty of other reasons why you didnt make the cut.

Something about saying shields and hull are the same value and can be lumped together and then compared to other ships with the same hitpoints is ignoring one BIG factor and that is the ship's agility. I really think partial point systems break down when you look at that simple thing when trying to say that two ships are equally close to death just because they have the same hitpoints.

Is a Y-Wing with no shields and a damage card really in the same boat as an Aggressor that has just had it's shields taken out? Both start at 8 hitpoints and are currently down to 4 hitpoints but it would generally take a lot more to get those last 4 points off the Aggressor when they are protected by 3 Agility dice and possible Autothrusters and Evade Tokens that it would be the Y-Wing with 1 Agility die and possibly some kind of astromech unit.

Exactly! Plus, most people fly differently and take different actions to avoid getting to 0 hull and getting destroyed. You take this out, where it does not matter much to lose you last hull point vs losing 1/2 your points potentially in a fat build late in a game, the decisions you make will be affected.

Hmm... That might bias toward excessive Fatness in smaller ships... say Z95s paired with a large ship.

I was thinking on a ship per ship basis. Usually it will be all or nothing on the smaller ones, but would be very fat if added in and divided by the whole squad when it should be lean on wingmen.

You can do it that way also, of course. But then it needs some more calculations, as you need to multiply each hitpoint lost per that ship's Fatness factor, then add them together. Not a problem if this is made by an Excel sheet or program on the organizer's laptop, but I can understand that the average player would feel more uncomfortable with this.

Something about saying shields and hull are the same value and can be lumped together and then compared to other ships with the same hitpoints is ignoring one BIG factor and that is the ship's agility. I really think partial point systems break down when you look at that simple thing when trying to say that two ships are equally close to death just because they have the same hitpoints.

Is a Y-Wing with no shields and a damage card really in the same boat as an Aggressor that has just had it's shields taken out? Both start at 8 hitpoints and are currently down to 4 hitpoints but it would generally take a lot more to get those last 4 points off the Aggressor when they are protected by 3 Agility dice and possible Autothrusters and Evade Tokens that it would be the Y-Wing with 1 Agility die and possibly some kind of astromech unit.

Exactly! Plus, most people fly differently and take different actions to avoid getting to 0 hull and getting destroyed. You take this out, where it does not matter much to lose you last hull point vs losing 1/2 your points potentially in a fat build late in a game, the decisions you make will be affected.

All that is clear to everyone. A Soontir Fel with 3 hitpoints left (unharmed) is not in the same condition than a Z95 with 3 hitpoints left.

But if we start trying to describe with a number "how really close is this player to being defeated", we will never get anything done because there is not a single linear function that can represent that. Not even two humans might come to the same conclusion. How many games have you had where one player was about to concede, only to end winning several rounds later?

In the end, the current MoV has this same flaw, only much much worse: Player A with a Fat Han with one hitpoint left and a Corran with one hitpoint left, against Player B with a swarm that has lost a single TIE Fighter and all others are unharmed. Who is closer to defeat? Clearly player A. How gets the win though? Player A!

So instead of trying to describe how close was a player to total defeat, let's just see it the other way: it gives a score to the opposite player, based in how much he managed to deal damage. That has more granularity that the all-or-nothing of the current mechanism. And this is what awarding points per hitpoint removed achieves. It's exactly the same system as today's, only that instead of each ship having a "health bar" with only two positions (0% or 100%) it has several.

I cannot deny, though, that if this system were to be used, it would have deep consequences on the choice of ships. Nowadays, damage sponges work fine because as long as they manage to outlive the incoming damage, they are as good as unharmed. With this system, these ships would be worse because you start "bleeding" points as soon as they are damaged. I see harder to hit, weaker ships would be preferred, because they take longer to bleed points with, shifting the meta towards TIE swarms, high agility, high mitigation ships, probably ending the popularity of B-Wings, Falcon, Decimator, Y-Wings, etc, and maybe allowing more room for A-Wings, X-Wings, Interceptors (scum and imperial), etc..

I am not sure if that would be a good thing. I actually love the B-Wing and I wouldn't like to see it leaving the scene. :/

Well if you go purely by a score*(hitpoints lost/hitpoints total) where hitpoints = (hull + shields) Then strength would shift to damage mitigation so evades and high agility would be more valuable than shields. One of the reasons why I separated the charts by agility is to see how how agility ships scaled compared to low agility ship when they start giving points. Sure high agility ships give points over less hits but it takes more red dice to get those hits over 1 agility ships.

If there is one criticism that can be levitated at this system is that small ships still give points sooner than larger ships. Sure 10 points for scoring 10 hits on a Falcon might seem reasonable but with that system 10 points can also be gained from scoring 2 hits on a Tie Fighter/Interceptor. It takes 5 times as many hits on the falcon than it does on the TIEs to get the same number of points. Sure a Falcon after 5 hits gives 1 point but that is still more hits than a TIE Fighter can take.

Now the variable system for damage bench marks (shields down, < half hull, destroyed) might be a better reflection of damage dealt to points received, where:

• shields down = starting shield value (MA-3 = 1, X-wing =2, Falcon =5)
• <half hull = half points (TIE Fighter = 6, TIE Interceptor = 9, X-wing = 10.5?)
• Destroyed = full points

However again the problem is that the victory point calculation can get rather complicated using that method. That is why I went with a fixed points system instead. A ship is either worth (0,1,10, or the already added point value). Simply figure out what the status is (good = 0 ,shields down = 1, <half hull = 10, destroyed = full) and take the sum.

Something about saying shields and hull are the same value and can be lumped together and then compared to other ships with the same hitpoints is ignoring one BIG factor and that is the ship's agility. I really think partial point systems break down when you look at that simple thing when trying to say that two ships are equally close to death just because they have the same hitpoints.

Is a Y-Wing with no shields and a damage card really in the same boat as an Aggressor that has just had it's shields taken out? Both start at 8 hitpoints and are currently down to 4 hitpoints but it would generally take a lot more to get those last 4 points off the Aggressor when they are protected by 3 Agility dice and possible Autothrusters and Evade Tokens that it would be the Y-Wing with 1 Agility die and possibly some kind of astromech unit.

Well if you go purely by a score*(hitpoints lost/hitpoints total) where hitpoints = (hull + shields) Then strength would shift to damage mitigation so evades and high agility would be more valuable than shields.

Replying to both of these: fears of certain craft being inherently "better" than others under a partial points implementation due to stat lines alone is a common misconception with no rigorous basis. When you score by (ship cost)*(hitpoints lost/hitpoints total), then the "points per shot" vs each ship ends up looking about the same regardless of agility, once you normalize by relative attack value, the PS bid, and stacked upgrades. Try it, the math works.

Well if you go purely by a score*(hitpoints lost/hitpoints total) where hitpoints = (hull + shields) Then strength would shift to damage mitigation so evades and high agility would be more valuable than shields.

Replying to both of these: fears of certain craft being inherently "better" than others under a partial points implementation due to stat lines alone is a common misconception with no rigorous basis. When you score by (ship cost)*(hitpoints lost/hitpoints total), then the "points per shot" vs each ship ends up looking about the same regardless of agility, once you normalize by relative attack value, the PS bid, and stacked upgrades. Try it, the math works.

Just a question but would that be with the pilots and upgrades as they are now or by the modified point values in your house rules? Either way I guess the question should the first hit on anything count for points. IMHO 1 shield down on a IG-88 really should count for anything however there are ships (the 1 shielded ships) that the first hit under my proposed system would count for a point (which is why I set it to a low value of 1 point).

But yeah I could just be setting myself up for failure because I am trying to make a mathematical system for partial ship destroying without requiring (much) math on the part of the player. That in itself sounds like a fallacy, like making a screwdriver that doesn't use screws. Still it is a system that could provide more accurate MOV rankings.