NOVA Squadron Radio – Episode 34: Force Awakened Core Set Part II

Welcome to NOVA Squadron Radio! This week we joined by Doug Kinney and Paul Heaver as we continue our coverage of the Force Awakened Core Set. We also talk some about the 2016 Store Championships prize support before we break down the First Order side of the new Core Set. All of that and a lot more!

NOVA Squadron Radio is:
Ed Horne – Host
Chad Brown – Co-Host/Editor
Sean Dorcy – Co-host
Bob Randall – Co-host
Kris Sherriff – Co-host
Richard Hsu – Special Guest
Doug Kinney – Special Guest
Paul Heaver – Special Guest

Here are the show notes from Episode 34:

[0:00 – 1:51] Show Opening
[1:51 – 56:01] Flight Deck
[56:01 – 1:09:23] News:
Capa Cup 2016 http://www.capacup.net/
What Color is your Squadron: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/9/18/what-color-is-your-squadron

[1:09:23 – 2:03:52] Main Topic: Force Awakened Core Set Part 1
[2:03:52 – 2:08:30] Show Closing

Musical Credits go out to the band ‘Insane Ride’ and their songs ‘Sound of Rock and Roll’ and ‘Wrong or Right’ found on the Free Music Archive at http://freemusicarchive.org/

Thanks for listening, and talk to you again in two weeks!

Here is the direct link: http://novasquadronradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/NOVA_Squadron_Radio_Episode_34_final.mp3

www.novasquadronradio.com

Guys, I love you, but c'mon.

2 hours isn't short.

You need to tighten up the editing. In a bad way.

Ed needs to keep his opinions and editorializing to a minimum.

The audio is atrocious, several important people were unlistenable.

Thanks for the detailed show notes though.

Guys, I love you, but c'mon.

2 hours isn't short.

You need to tighten up the editing. In a bad way.

Ed needs to keep his opinions and editorializing to a minimum.

The audio is atrocious, several important people were unlistenable.

Thanks for the detailed show notes though.

I don't know that we ever advertised as being a short podcast.

But there is always a lot of room for improvement, thanks for the feedback!

Paul did sound funny. It must have been a side effect of being in his super-secret mad scientist X-wing lair.

Guys, I love you, but c'mon.

2 hours isn't short.

You need to tighten up the editing. In a bad way.

Ed needs to keep his opinions and editorializing to a minimum.

The audio is atrocious, several important people were unlistenable.

Thanks for the detailed show notes though.

Actually two hours is short for them.

And the time isn't bothersome. Sure, you can't one sitting it. But I'd rather have too much Xwing to listen to than nothing.

I'm thankful for what we have.

Love your show guys! Don't listen to those Who think it's too long. The longer The better! Can't get enough X-wing.

As always loved the show. Never too long and love all the details.

Did anyone have that list with the 2 shuttles that Major Juggler faced?

I'm through the flight deck and just wanted to say that it was much improved: focusing on general overview of match-ups and key/interesting moments in the games.

Guys, I love you, but c'mon.

2 hours isn't short.

You need to tighten up the editing. In a bad way.

Ed needs to keep his opinions and editorializing to a minimum.

The audio is atrocious, several important people were unlistenable.

Thanks for the detailed show notes though.

You're listening to an X-wing podcast where it's pretty much exclusively about people's opinions. While I haven't listened to the second half of this one yet, so maybe it's different but I've always thought Ed does a good job saying what he needs to and then letting someone in.

I like content but it's hard not to checkout when someone's battle report is more than a few minutes long. There's a great part in the 30 for 30 documentary on Rotisserie League baseball where the founders of the league are hanging out in a hotel room with some groupies and all these people want to talk about is how their plucky, hand-picked team went on to unexpectedly win... and the founders realize that these stories are just completely inane because they're only fun to listen to for the people telling the story.

Did anyone have that list with the 2 shuttles that Major Juggler faced?

I am pretty sure the list was actually 101 points, not that it really mattered. I will ask him again tonight when I see him at league night. Pretty sure I went over it on the show, but here it is:

Redline + FCS + Extra Munitions + Proton Torpedoes + Concussion Missiles + Cluster Missiles (43)

Omicron Group Pilot + Sensor Jammer + Emperor Palpatine (33)

Omicron Group Pilot + Sensor Jammer (25)

Did anyone have that list with the 2 shuttles that Major Juggler faced?

I am pretty sure the list was actually 101 points, not that it really mattered. I will ask him again tonight when I see him at league night. Pretty sure I went over it on the show, but here it is:

Redline + FCS + Extra Munitions + Proton Torpedoes + Concussion Missiles + Cluster Missiles (43)

Omicron Group Pilot + Sensor Jammer + Emperor Palpatine (33)

Omicron Group Pilot + Sensor Jammer (25)

If he had plasmas instead of the proton torpedoes, that would make it 100.

Perhaps they were plasma torpedoes? Dunno.

*edit* ninja'd

Anyway, thanks again for another episode!

I am pretty sure he had both Proton Torps and Concussion Missiles; Concussion Missiles for when he has F + 2xTL, and Proton Torps when he only has TL.

Just listened to the part about the broken pegs early on (were they weaker in wave 1? I've never managed to do that). I'm glad they sell replacements now, but you guys do realize most ships can fly just fine with only 1 peg right? Also I cringe a little whenever I hear someone say they throw pegs/bases/cardboard tokens//large cephalopods/etc away, I keep an "extras" box with anything I don't need on a regular basis, like 50 extra focus tokens, and it doesn't take up that much room on the shelf. But then, I store my ships on their bases now with magnets, so maybe if I had a box with 50 extra bases I wasn't using I might feel differently, but probably not.

Anyways, great show guys, keep it up!

Just listened to the part about the broken pegs early on (were they weaker in wave 1? I've never managed to do that). I'm glad they sell replacements now, but you guys do realize most ships can fly just fine with only 1 peg right? Also I cringe a little whenever I hear someone say they throw pegs/bases/cardboard tokens//large cephalopods/etc away, I keep an "extras" box with anything I don't need on a regular basis, like 50 extra focus tokens, and it doesn't take up that much room on the shelf. But then, I store my ships on their bases now with magnets, so maybe if I had a box with 50 extra bases I wasn't using I might feel differently, but probably not.

You haven't seen MY closet! I live in a small apartment with my girlfriend and, well you know how that goes. Maybe I could store x-wing stuff in some of her shoes...

I've gotta confess I'm guilty of throwing out the extras. I've got a reserve of everything, but there's no way I'm going to play and EPIC game using 100% of my ships. And if I do, now FFG has given me an option.

Oh, and as to the complaints about C-FREEpo, well said, Kris

I thought the discussion of the new TIEs was pretty helpful. I feel like it went a bit more in depth than you guys usually do, talking about the different interesting ways to incorporate them into lists. I'm interested in hearing more of this sort of analysis.

Mystery solved, he had proximity mine not proton torpedoes!

Guys, I love you, but c'mon.

2 hours isn't short.

You need to tighten up the editing. In a bad way.

Ed needs to keep his opinions and editorializing to a minimum.

The audio is atrocious, several important people were unlistenable.

Thanks for the detailed show notes though.

Don't listen to this guy!

Two hours is great, keeps me entertained for a couple of days commuting or running. And there have definitely been longer shows.

I think the editing is fine. It's feels very natural. This is a podcast, not a radio show. There are no producers or editors and no-one's getting paid. Minimal editing is fine. And keeping to the fortnightly schedule is already an amazing commitment. I'd rather the show kept going than Ed got overburdened with editing and quit.

I already think Ed is very restrained and plays the host very graciously. No complaints from me at all.

And I think the audio is probably beyond anyone's control. I assume it's Skype using a laptop or mobile mic.

vs

Podcast much too short for my liking. I think 16-18 hours for each show feels about right.

Well I am sure the Worlds show will be gigantic. We have the prep show next week with will also be big I am sure.

I did my best with Paul's audio but I couldn't clean it up any more then I did.

I appreciate the support guys! Happy you all liked the show!

I am consistently impressed by the product quality and the work Ed puts in.

Unfortunately I think that he is a victim of his own hard work a lot of the time. With such a high standard any small thing stands out like a sore thumb which other podcasts get away with due to the overall lower quality. It is not a problem having high standards but it does open the show up to things like this as expectation normally matches the standard.

Kris

If you guys ever do an episode on asteroid placement - you should talk to me

If you guys ever do an episode on asteroid placement - you should talk to me

I have not discussed it with Ed fully yet but in the new year I am hoping to step up my Writing and stuff again and one thing I plan to do is get a decent Wireless Camera, I think we could do a good Vlog about it as the problem comes with Radio not being the best visual medium...

Although, I have been told I have a face for radio... :'(

yeah, Asteroid placement is definitely a visual thing.

I spent a bunch of time gathering screenshots of vassal asteroid layouts, and looking at placement. There are some fairly common asteroid setups


(One player corners ) - Leads to a small triangle or line in the middle with 3 corners *
(Both player corners ) - Leads to a box with 2 on the sides or in the middle
(No player corners) - Leads to more interesting shapes, but usually a wedge, chevron >> or H , or the triforce (large triangle with smaller triangle inside)

Top left : Open Box variant , Top right Wedge variant.
Bottom left: Triforce variant, Bottom right Chevron/H variant.

certainly they vary in density, but have a maximum density (via Range 1) and in exact shape, but the loose shapes above should be recognizable to anyone who has played. There are some more common forms but these are a good start.

- the important ideas being the negative space (where the asteroid prevents other asteroids from being), each asteroid further defining the overall field with more and more certainty - so not having initiative is actually really good for control over the field. Reading your opponents intentions with the first asteroid placement - (corners, dense vs sparse) are the players playing to stymie the other players asteroid placement? or are they trying to create a pattern. (So if I don't want you to place in my left corner, I can make sure a further out asteroid covers the area with its range 1 bubble.)


And of course asteroid angles as related to ship angles, and size of asteroids compared to ship bases amongst other things,There's quite a lot to talk about there really.

* unless one player specifically blocks off two corners before the corner player can place there.

p.s. One fairly interesting thing, is to mathwing out asteroid placement - Bwaha?

If you take the smaller asteroids, you can fit roughly 4 across, allowing for 16 "box grids" in which you can place them on the map, while if you take larger ones, you can reduce this to 9 zones - we must choose 6. (This is an oversimplification of course, but hey ) We're also going to pretend that all obstacles are the same - since we're looking more or less at the trends in configurations of the field shape - not in exact details of - this is a mm left than where it would be otherwise - or this is debris and that's a big rock)

Which with N choose R yields - order doesn't matter, no repetitions - yields between 8008 (16 small) and 84 (9 large) combinations of asteroid placement. That seems like a fairly large amount - but when we factor in rotations of the field, The recognizable shapes start to further diminish - as 4 rotations drops us to 2002 and 21 patterns respectively. (And that's also an overestimation that simplifies things a bit much - but makes a back of the envelope calculation a whole lot easier to figure out)

If you assume reactionary, dense and sparse goals - and shifted positions, with an a1 a2 a3 b1 b2 b3 shape looking the same as an a2 a3 a4 b2 b3 b4 shape, the number of unique shapes further diminishes - you'd need to write a fairly interesting program to really work out what the usual shapes are - looking at attractors for the positional space. Some cool math could be done - but the number of "asteroid field shapes" is actually fairly small - small enough that with empirical data from 100's of vassal games, you can work out 15 or so common asteroid field shapes. Of course, approaching them from different angles complicates things somewhat - but you can really push for field shapes if your opponent is not!