If you could change the tournament scoring system...

By DagobahDave, in X-Wing

What would you do? Would you change which ships qualify for partial points when they are half-destroyed? Would you change the way wins/losses/modified wins/draws are achieved, or change the tournament points awarded?

Are you sure you want to open the can of worms?

The bottom line is that NO MATTER how a tournament is scored there will ALWAYS be people who will miss the final cut. ALWAYS. As a result, there will ALWAYS be people who will complain about the tournament scoring, feeling that they have been ripped off.

I've post this before but I'd like to see the tournament scoring system move more towards what is used in Armada. Each match is worth 10 points that gets divided between the two players. For games that are a draw or a modified win in X-Wing each player would get 5 points. Tabling an opponent without losing a ship awards the winner the full 10 points. There are a few tiers for score difference that fall between those two extremes.

That seems like it would make getting enough points to secure a win and then playing evasively until time expires a strategy that might clinch some wins but might make it hard to make the cut.

What would you do? Would you change which ships qualify for partial points when they are half-destroyed? Would you change the way wins/losses/modified wins/draws are achieved, or change the tournament points awarded?

Regenerated health does not regenerate MoV. You do 5 damage to a super Corran, you get 48 points for it even if regenerates back to full health.

Partial points for everything over 29 points.

Edited by ParaGoomba Slayer

Someone always gets screwed by the tiebreakers.

Though I am still partial to SoS.

I always win! No other change needed.

I'd want to put emphasis on destroying ships, and create a situation where the incentive is on the current "winning player" to engage rather than play defensively.

While I'm not sure this would always create the situation I want, I think it'd move in the right direction. I'd probably tweak tournament points after I see it in action for a while, but at the moment, I'll use the current structure.

1) Full Win (5 points) for destroying all of the opponents ships.

2) Modified Win (3) for any games going to time. Determine MoV as we currently do (total ships destroyed, + half points for large ships). No 12+ points requirements. Goes to time = modified win every time, no matter the MoV difference.

2) Draw (2)

3) Loss (0)

It would be really frustrating to destroy 88 points worth of your opponents ships and only get a modified win, I hope it would encourage more aggressive play overall.

Edited by Rividius

I've post this before but I'd like to see the tournament scoring system move more towards what is used in Armada. Each match is worth 10 points that gets divided between the two players. For games that are a draw or a modified win in X-Wing each player would get 5 points. Tabling an opponent without losing a ship awards the winner the full 10 points. There are a few tiers for score difference that fall between those two extremes.

That seems like it would make getting enough points to secure a win and then playing evasively until time expires a strategy that might clinch some wins but might make it hard to make the cut.

You do realise that moving to the Armada system is almost perfectly correlated with MoV, right? I am going to assume you don't, otherwise you would (or should have) mentioned that instead. To get to a 10-0 scoring system all you do is take the MoV scores and divide by 20. I think almost everyone can agree that using sum of MoV to determine the winner of the tournament is a terrible idea. Lots of issues as every lost ship effects the scores and it leads to massively lop sided tournament scores, i.e. you could smash you first 3 opponents and lose all the rest of your games and still win overall (or make the cut I guess). Is bashing 3 chumps and losing to good players worthy of making the cut? Not in my opinion. You think playing a tie swarm is bad now, it would be totally unplayable under your system.

I will admit that should objectives become a part of X-wing then the Armada system has more (some) merit.

I'd want to put emphasis on destroying ships, and create a situation where the incentive is on the current "winning player" to engage rather than play defensively.

While I'm not sure this would always create the situation I want, I think it'd move in the right direction. I'd probably tweak tournament points after I see it in action for a while, but at the moment, I'll use the current structure.

1) Full Win (5 points) for destroying all of the opponents ships.

2) Modified Win (3) for any games going to time. Determine MoV as we currently do (total ships destroyed, + half points for large ships). No 12+ points requirements. Goes to time = modified win every time, no matter the MoV difference.

2) Draw (2)

3) Loss (1)

It would be really frustrating to destroy 88 points worth of your opponents ships and only get a modified win, I hope it would encourage more aggressive play overall.

I thought the other suggestion was bad, but this takes the cake. You have fallen for the fallacy that only slow play leads to timed games. This is patently untrue and indeed the majority of timed games are actually because they are evenly matched games. You are penalising anyone for not killing all the enemy ships and in the process encouraging everyone to turtle up and use highly defensive ships since you have incentivised wiping the opponent out, if that is the case it is extremely important for the masses to prevent that for the greater good. You have incentivised the losing player to play for time instead of the winning player. Also why do you have a point for a loss? What's the point?

The drawback is you can have a guy get 3 full wins, a loss, and a draw (17 points) and come out over a guy who got 5 modified wins (15 points).

How would you like to be the guy who went undefeated yet lost the event?

The current system works fine. Large ships being worth half points has made the 2 ship list more even. You can no longer run away with your half dead IG88 an run out the clock for a win. The 75 minute time limit has eliminated a lot of the slow-play issues in the past.

MOV as the tie breaker rewards aggressive ship killing. You can add SoS as a secondary tie breaker in case MOVs are tied an if your tie after that then either make those 2 play a sudden death match or the person with the lower squadron points wins...or both if that's a tie also.

Ultimately, the system works an more importantly, everyone knows the score.

...

I thought the other suggestion was bad, but this takes the cake. You have fallen for the fallacy that only slow play leads to timed games. This is patently untrue and indeed the majority of timed games are actually because they are evenly matched games. You are penalising anyone for not killing all the enemy ships and in the process encouraging everyone to turtle up and use highly defensive ships since you have incentivised wiping the opponent out, if that is the case it is extremely important for the masses to prevent that for the greater good. You have incentivised the losing player to play for time instead of the winning player. Also why do you have a point for a loss? What's the point?

The one point for the loss was a typo. I have since editted, so woops on that one.

I don't think that only slow play leads to timed games, but I wanted to reward aggressive play. Perhaps I achieved that, perhaps I didn't, but I think it's unfair if you don't read half the post to then 'decide' what I am thinking. 'Read between the lines' all you want, but I put my motivation at the top of the post.

Edited by Rividius

Considering that a good portion of my games go to time, playing against new players guarantees going to time, and that I've had a player get very angry at me when I told him to speed it up after he wasted 5 full minutes to decide maneuvers for 3 ships, **** no on the "going to time = modified win" idea.

Also, this system is broken should one player simply not care about winning. If your system were to be enacted I would go out of my way to force going to time just to prevent another from advancing because I didn't like the player's list. Yes, I would kamikaze once I realized I wouldn't be placing near the top. Punishing going to time enables it to be used as a weapon and that shouldn't be allowed.

One time I was forced to play the board game Elysium. I was very tired and could not comprehend the rules, also the game was rather abstract and hard to understand to begin with. I wasn't really paying attention past a certain point, and when it came time for my turn I was told specifically to do something in order the prevent the player in first (who was in the bathroom) from winning. I responded with, "Well, but what if I want Paul to win? Have to make a king, right?" and then the other players immediately threw up their hands and scooped. More fun than actually playing the game, haha.

Edited by ParaGoomba Slayer

One time I was forced to play the board game Elysium... I responded with, "Well, but what if I want Paul to win? Have to make a king, right?"

Paul always wins!!!

the only real change I would like to see is one of the tie brakes be who registered/showed up first has player dominance or you cant win the tournament if you register after the official start time of the tournament. If everyone knew that was a major tie breaker then maybe people would show up on time and tournaments would start on time

I'd probably want to give something for being on the wrong end of a modified win. So something like 5 points for a full win, 3 points for a modified win, 2 points for a draw, 1 point for a "modified loss" and 0 for a loss.

Don't imagine it'd make much of a difference, but it also makes draws less punitive, which I kind of like.

Age! i would add an age bracket!! lol where you get an extra point for each year over 40!!! and minus one point for each year under 25!! -_-

Are you sure you want to open the can of worms?

The bottom line is that NO MATTER how a tournament is scored there will ALWAYS be people who will miss the final cut. ALWAYS. As a result, there will ALWAYS be people who will complain about the tournament scoring, feeling that they have been ripped off.

I would make a modified loss 1 point.

Agree with those suggesting

5 for win

3 for modified win

2 for draw

1 for modified loss

0 for loss

ATM there is no reward for fighting to the end when your going to lose, yet it makes a big difference to your opponent. Close games which I find the most fun tend to put you out at least you would get some more points with this system it would be a closer reflection of the game.

I also think half hit points half points should apply to every thing not just large ships, it is just as hard if not harder to get a regening ace down to half as a large ship and there are a fair number small ships with high hit points.

If you apply half or partial points to all ships you will force a negative play experience for everyone losing against a regenerating list. I would have incentive to delay killing you with Corran/Poe/Miranda until I have full shields back. I don't want to do it, but if it nets me 30 MoV per close game I probably would.

So your suggesting that you would avoid killing the last of your opponents ships and risk turning a full win into a modified win? Just to impove your mov? And this is going to be such problem that it going to be a negative experience for everybody playing against a regen ship?

Where as currently the game can go to time in the same situation the regen ship doesn't even need to try to win against a large ship at half hit points, they can just run at that point knowing that they are walking away with a full win, does that sound like a better system to you?

I'd make it single elimination

If I could change the scoring system eh?

Is this another one of those "DC has the ultimate power type questions"?

Because I think we all know exactly what I'd do...

Change tournament scoring by match to:

Full Win: 5/0 (a win by 20 points or more)

Modified: 3/1 (win by 5-19 points)

Draw: 2/2 (any game where there is a 4 point difference or less)

The point levels could be adjusted from these but make a full win harder to achieve while also recognizing that a few points really shouldn't determine a winner thus an expanded range for a Draw although MoV would still be figured normally.

For scoring large ships would award half their Pilot's points when reduced to half its base hull+shield. You may argue about slot values but in the current scoring Chewbacca is FAR better than a shield upgrade as it prevents damage and boost shields while not actually increasing the shield score. Falcon w/ Shield takes 7 hits it's at half but with Chewie used that 7 effectively becomes 5; of course if Chewie isn't used until the last hit but the game ends then it is completely wasted points although he was still there to use.

Here is a suggestion of mine for discussion from Nova Squadron Episode 20. I reposting it here, but here is the link. It starts on Thread #33

It's simple.
Take the cost of the ship / (hull+shields+ upgrades which increase them) and Round down. We'll call this Damage Value These are points you earn for each point of damage enemy ships have on them at the end of the game. This means if he heals a shield with R2 or some other method you won't get the points. Warhammer Fantasy, 40k and many other games have been doing this for years now. This is one the main ways to stop 2 ship meta and bring balance back to the game.
Examples:
Academy Tie Fighter 12 points, 3 hull, 0 shields. This means at the end of the game 12/(3+0) = 4 Damage Value
Obsidian Tie Fighter 17 points , 3 hull, 0 shields, +1 Shield Upgrade. This means you earn 4 mov points for each damage caused 17/(3+1)=4.25 Rounded down to 4 Damage Value
Soontir Fel 33 points, 3 Hull, +1 Hull Upgrade, Push the Limit. This means you earn 8 mov points for each damage caused. 33/(3+1)=8.25 Round down to 8 Damage Value
If people cannot do this type of simple math, I'm not sure they should be playing this game. I don't understand why some of your co hosts think this is so difficult to implement or use.
Ton's of games use this for their tournaments and it makes sense.
Sure you will have cases where people run away so you don't get full points, but that happens now. At least you get some type of rewards for 60 minutes of gaming, but you lost because his big ship had one hull left on it. In some cases we have to drive 4 hours to play, and it's so frustrating when people run away, so you cannot have a chance to win. I feel your pain.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/138033-nova-squadron-radio-%E2%80%93-episode-20-%E2%80%9Cwave-4-rebels%E2%80%9D/page-2?hl=+nova%20+squadron%20+radio

Edited by eagletsi111

My concern is that emphasis is shifted from destroying ships to merely doing damage to ships.

If I can fly 4BZ in a mirror match and not lose a single ship (they're all on 1 hp) but still lose to a player with 1 B-Wing left (full health) I don't think it's any better than what we have now.