What does your placement at worlds have to do with anything ? I haven't been able to finish this episode as I just couldn't stomach it anymore after all of that. Hopefully it gets better when I do go back to it.

The discussion is not for everyone but rest assured that we get back to more familiar territory after the flight deck with some good talk about the Mist Hunter and then the rest of The Force Awakens.

Kris

It was how it was conducted that bothered me. I'll eventually get bored and go back to it I'm sure.

As I said earlier in the Thread, I felt a little blindsided by the topic on the show as we had no prep for it like we would have if it were a regular segment not a part of the flight deck, no ones fault but the choice was to either only put one side across or to try to present counter points and a chose the latter.

Kris

Right. I agree with you. You did the right thing. It was the talking over and cutting others off that bothered me. Most of this was bob being a bit to shall we say eager to make his point.

Well, frankly, that is because often others were attempting to make a counter argument that didn't understand the point Bob was making. He was (I think) attempting to say "you didn't understand what I said, so let's not go down that direction". Or, he could have sat there while Sean droned on and on for 45 minutes, because basically the entire cast spoke about how wrong he was while he said very little. (As a side note: For **** sake, somebody interrupt Sean every once in a while).

Sorry, I've been catching up on podcasts, and realize I'm bringing up a week old thread... but this really bothered me too. I actually enjoyed the back and forth between Bob and Kris, as I thought they were making interesting points and counterpoints. While I do appreciate Sean's perspective as a TO on the amount of work involved, I reached the point where I just kept skipping ahead 10 seconds at a pop hoping not to hear Sean's voice. I've been hesitant to say anything because I don't like to call out one person, but I felt like he was basically lecturing Bob about how he should just get over it. It was almost like Sean was feeding off of Kris' energy, trading 1-2 punches. I took Kris' argument to be more "the small instances where it would have an impact don't make it worth the trouble it would cause," where as once Sean sank his teeth into this rather ironic idea (considering how much the rules have changed since the game started) that you shouldn't try to improve the rules, he just wouldn't let it go, and just kept lecturing Bob and the rest of us about accepting imperfection because that's just how things are - which to me, didn't seem to be Kris' point at all, and didn't add much to the discussion - but consumed a lot of it.

And I feel bad critiquing Sean directly, but honestly, it has made it hard to listen to the rest of the episode...

The rest of the episode is all over the place, you get to hear me insult Bob's math some more and more Force awakens talk.

We actually get back on point relatively quickly once the flight deck is put to bed.

Kris

The rest of the episode is all over the place, you get to hear me insult Bob's math some more and more Force awakens talk.

We actually get back on point relatively quickly once the flight deck is put to bed.

Kris

Isn't that maths for you Brits?

The rest of the episode is all over the place, you get to hear me insult Bob's math some more and more Force awakens talk.

We actually get back on point relatively quickly once the flight deck is put to bed.

Kris

Isn't that maths for you Brits?

Its yours so I will call it Math.

New episode soon?

who the f*ck is that english bloke? I'm 18 minutes in and I feel so sorry for this dude who got raped by the scoring system. I just want to jump through this computer and snap his f*cking neck.

New episode soon?

Should drop today!

who the f*ck is that english bloke? I'm 18 minutes in and I feel so sorry for this dude who got raped by the scoring system. I just want to jump through this computer and snap his f*cking neck.

Bring it

who the f*ck is that english bloke? I'm 18 minutes in and I feel so sorry for this dude who got raped by the scoring system. I just want to jump through this computer and snap his f*cking neck.

The British guy is KrisSherriff.

Do you know who I am?

who the f*ck is that english bloke? I'm 18 minutes in and I feel so sorry for this dude who got raped by the scoring system. I just want to jump through this computer and snap his f*cking neck.

While we appreciate your enthusiasm for the show, mentioning physical violence is against the Forum Rules. Lets keep it civil to avoid a thread lock. Thanks.

-- Bob

The threat of violence successfully summons a Scum and Villainy Podcast member to the thread!

Having listened to the podcast, here are a few short thoughts:

• Several times in the cast Bob's idea was refuted by appeal to authority: "Because those are the rules, Bob!" Bob appropriately sputtered against the logical fallacy.
• The fallacy fallacy also reared its head during the discussion. While Bob's implementation idea is lacking in areas, that doesn't mean that his assertion is incorrect. Bob's right: the current way of handling games going to time isn't great. It leads to some unfortunate situations.

Sozin, does this mean we're commandeering their ship?

The Pirate Crew needs a new ship. Just sayin.

I never saw this kind of mileage on this topic, really!

My argument was never that the rules are the rules and that they are perfect.

My argument was that Bob knew the rules going in and when he received a Draw that should have urged him to adjust his mindset for the rest of the event. Arguing that he went undefeated and didn't make the cut was what lead to the heated aspect.

Whilst 100% correct as a statement it does not mean that he deserved to make the cut.

Also I never said that the current system was perfect, as explained in the thread I rejected his proposed idea, not that the system is flawed.

Nice links Sozin but not really relevant.

I do like the discussion on the rules and how they could be done better. I don't think that saying the system is better than other systems, even if not the best, is not really a good argument. That doesn't mean you can't think of better ways to improve the system.

The rules are the rules, but trying to come up with better rules isn't a bad thing.

I never saw this kind of mileage on this topic, really!

You never know what people will latch on to sometimes. But this is one reason I suggested it as a future topic, because I think there is more ground to be covered here. I think we all can acknowledge that - personal anecdotes aside - there are some flaws in the scoring system, and I would love to hear the group discuss things further.

As a fellow engineer, I appreciate MJ's need to pursue perfection even knowing that it isn't attainable. Just because the system we have now is pretty good or - ostensibly - better than some other game's, doesn't mean that we can't make it better.

I never saw this kind of mileage on this topic, really!

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

My argument was never that the rules are the rules and that they are perfect.

My argument was that Bob knew the rules going in and when he received a Draw that should have urged him to adjust his mindset for the rest of the event.

From a player perspective I 100% agree this is the appropriate response. Within the direct context of playing in a tournament, this is in fact the only reasonable response.

However, I was approaching the topic on the show from a design and architectural point of view, not from a player perspective. I generally have a different approach than most, as >80% of my X-wing time and mental energy is spent evaluating the fundamental design and architecture, and not playing the game or developing tactics as a player. This discussion was an extension of that.

I never saw this kind of mileage on this topic, really!

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

My argument was never that the rules are the rules and that they are perfect.

My argument was that Bob knew the rules going in and when he received a Draw that should have urged him to adjust his mindset for the rest of the event.

From a player perspective I 100% agree this is the appropriate response. Within the direct context of playing in a tournament, this is in fact the only reasonable response.

However, I was approaching the topic on the show from a design and architectural point of view, not from a player perspective. I generally have a different approach than most, as >80% of my X-wing time and mental energy is spent evaluating the fundamental design and architecture, and not playing the game or developing tactics as a player. This discussion was an extension of that.

If you had given us a heads up, the discussion would have been about that, as it was there was no discussion just 3 people talking about almost entirely unrelated things. Not a big deal as far as I am concerned but it does mean that you didn't get to present your points in a clear manner due to us all being on different pages on what was being discussed. We live and learn however as this isn't any of our jobs, so next time I am sure we will be much better prepared for any discussions where all of the casts opinions vary so widely.

I honestly think we have had a much better discussion of it in the 9 pages of this thread than we would have gotten on the show, but that's the way that it goes sometimes.

Kris

The threat of violence successfully summons a Scum and Villainy Podcast member to the thread!

Having listened to the podcast, here are a few short thoughts:

• Several times in the cast Bob's idea was refuted by appeal to authority: "Because those are the rules, Bob!" Bob appropriately sputtered against the logical fallacy.
• The fallacy fallacy also reared its head during the discussion. While Bob's implementation idea is lacking in areas, that doesn't mean that his assertion is incorrect. Bob's right: the current way of handling games going to time isn't great. It leads to some unfortunate situations.

I'll have to re-listen to the podcast to be sure, but I felt this was due the way the topic was framed. The "logical fallacies" were often addressing the personal experience since that was the impetus for the proposals and that personal experience, iirc, was referred to in defense of the changes. This made it seem much less like a "design" approach as stated above, but MJ has since framed it much better.

The "fallacy fallacy" issue was probably due to the fact that this was a discussion he had been able to prepare for but the rest of the cast had not. This led to a situation where the cast was really only able to react to MJ's proposals and not really come up with their own.

I am looking forward to the next show...

You guys could probably have a good discussion segment about the huge diverse showing of lists we are seeing in the store championship victories and top cuts.

For all cast members in the next recording session:

What are your favorite 'new' successful lists you find interesting and what are your thoughts about those lists compared to others?

Go!

While I do agree that the rules for resolving games that go to time have trouble recognizing the game state at time, I do want to offer a counter. If partial scoring had been a thing Bob would have likley had a modified or full win instead of a draw. That said, what if the game state was reversed? You have a badly damaged stresshog behind an undamaged but severely stressed one at time. The player with the damaged hog recieves the loss despite clearly being a head, and now partial scoring has given a loss instead of a tie to the player in a better position.

While I do agree that the rules for resolving games that go to time have trouble recognizing the game state at time, I do want to offer a counter. If partial scoring had been a thing Bob would have likley had a modified or full win instead of a draw. That said, what if the game state was reversed? You have a badly damaged stresshog behind an undamaged but severely stressed one at time. The player with the damaged hog recieves the loss despite clearly being a head, and now partial scoring has given a loss instead of a tie to the player in a better position.

You can never get a rule set that has enough intelligence to look at the positional portion of the board state to make a reasonable determination on who is currently "winning" the game. I acknowledged this up thread.

Quoting myself from a related Nova Squadron FB post:

Like Chris says, the only way is no time limit. Unfortunately a time limit is needed. So that doesn't leave you with many options.

1) Automatically declare all unfinished games a draw.

2) Do the best you can to declare who is the victor.

#1 would be really REALLY bad for the game, as a player that is losing will be forced to slow play and drag out the game to avoid getting a loss.

#2 is the only other option, the only question is "how do you determine the victor in a way that minimizes the scoring errors?". Short of allowing a TO to arbitrarily award a player a victory (also a bad idea), you're stuck with somehow using ship points and hull/shields to "guess" at who is in the lead. FFG already does this with their scoring system, but their implementation can be VERY inaccurate.

FFG's system for scoring timed games fundamentally has two kinds of error:

• board state
• proportion of the list's hit points remaining at time

It's impossible to get around the first one (although I'm open to suggestions), but you can at least remove the error from the 2nd. Arguing to keep the error from the 2nd effect because you can't get rid of the first anyway doesn't make sense to me. The point is not to be 100% perfect, the point is to be better than we are now.

who the f*ck is that english bloke? I'm 18 minutes in and I feel so sorry for this dude who got raped by the scoring system. I just want to jump through this computer and snap his f*cking neck.

The British guy is KrisSherriff.

And he is a global treasure

What does your placement at worlds have to do with anything ? I haven't been able to finish this episode as I just couldn't stomach it anymore after all of that. Hopefully it gets better when I do go back to it.

The discussion is not for everyone but rest assured that we get back to more familiar territory after the flight deck with some good talk about the Mist Hunter and then the rest of The Force Awakens.

Kris

It was how it was conducted that bothered me. I'll eventually get bored and go back to it I'm sure.

As I said earlier in the Thread, I felt a little blindsided by the topic on the show as we had no prep for it like we would have if it were a regular segment not a part of the flight deck, no ones fault but the choice was to either only put one side across or to try to present counter points and a chose the latter.

Kris

Right. I agree with you. You did the right thing. It was the talking over and cutting others off that bothered me. Most of this was bob being a bit to shall we say eager to make his point.

Well, frankly, that is because often others were attempting to make a counter argument that didn't understand the point Bob was making. He was (I think) attempting to say "you didn't understand what I said, so let's not go down that direction". Or, he could have sat there while Sean droned on and on for 45 minutes, because basically the entire cast spoke about how wrong he was while he said very little. (As a side note: For **** sake, somebody interrupt Sean every once in a while).

Sorry, I've been catching up on podcasts, and realize I'm bringing up a week old thread... but this really bothered me too. I actually enjoyed the back and forth between Bob and Kris, as I thought they were making interesting points and counterpoints. While I do appreciate Sean's perspective as a TO on the amount of work involved, I reached the point where I just kept skipping ahead 10 seconds at a pop hoping not to hear Sean's voice. I've been hesitant to say anything because I don't like to call out one person, but I felt like he was basically lecturing Bob about how he should just get over it. It was almost like Sean was feeding off of Kris' energy, trading 1-2 punches. I took Kris' argument to be more "the small instances where it would have an impact don't make it worth the trouble it would cause," where as once Sean sank his teeth into this rather ironic idea (considering how much the rules have changed since the game started) that you shouldn't try to improve the rules, he just wouldn't let it go, and just kept lecturing Bob and the rest of us about accepting imperfection because that's just how things are - which to me, didn't seem to be Kris' point at all, and didn't add much to the discussion - but consumed a lot of it.

And I feel bad critiquing Sean directly, but honestly, it has made it hard to listen to the rest of the episode...

I have to say many of the above posts echoes my own feelings exactly, but I'm not sure they go far enough. I have been listening to Nova since the beginning, you guys have been one of my favorite podcasts for a long time. I apologize if this sounds harsh, but in my opinion the last few episodes have been way below your usually high standards. I have 2 major issues with the cast that are causing me to consider removing it from my listening queue.

1) The last 2 or 3 episodes I have been have been actively skipping through the parts of the podcast when Sean is talking. He NEEDS to find a way to be more concise with his thoughts, and make sure he has something new to add to the discussion. At this point you can listen to the first sentence he says, fast forward 5 minutes, and feel confident the only thing you missed was him saying the same thing over and over with a slight re-wording.

2) I cannot for the life of me figure out why Kris feels the need to attack EVERYTHING Bob says. For the millionth time we all already know MathWing isn’t a perfect representation of the actual competitive value of a ship, to my knowledge Bob has never claimed it to be. His sharp angry tone while arguing against Bob's competitive scoring suggestion was bizarre and unprovoked. It’s not simply that Kris disagrees with Bob and is playing devil’s advocate for entertainment value (or if he is then it isn’t working), his attacks consistently sound personal in nature and way over-the-top. It has gotten to the point where I can almost feel Bob’s frustration oozing out of my car stereo as he patiently explains, over and over again, the point he is trying to make while Kris spews vitriol and counter-arguments that indicate he doesn’t understand what Bob is trying to say and it makes him angry. It feels like there are some behind the scenes issues between the two of them that keep spilling over into the podcast.

At this point I am torn as to what to do. I like Ed, Chris, and the gang and both understand and appreciate the work they put into the podcast. But currently the only reason to listen is to hear Bob talk or hope and pray that Paul Heaver makes an appearance. After listening to this specific episode I thought for sure it would be Bob’s last. I honestly don’t understand why he puts up with how he is treated. If I were in his shoes I would move to another podcast with people who can engage him on a similar intellectual level instead of railing against his attempts to move the competative X-Wing community forward by helping analyze ship point values and exploring ways to improve tournament rules.

Your former fan…