What exists to boost defense? Where's even the action equivalent of a target lock action for defense?

Just as a FWIW, a target lock equivalent for Agility would be strictly worse than focus. The equivalent is actually Evade, of which there's no red equivalent for good reason.

What exists to boost defense? Where's even the action equivalent of a target lock action for defense?

Just as a FWIW, a target lock equivalent for Agility would be strictly worse than focus. The equivalent is actually Evade, of which there's no red equivalent for good reason.

i mean there's vaguely one and no one uses it.... Weapons Guidance

In this case, Theorist is more right than he knows (if that's even possible), for reasons that he can't really quantify, but his intuition has led him to these general conclusions. Sometimes his intuition is right. Sometimes it is horribly wrong. The main high-level point in his recent post is one of the former.

[Edit:] Some of the particulars of his solutions are kind of out in left field and shows a lack of deep understanding in the underlying math, but in general the problem he has identified is very real.

The problem that he describes is significant enough that I have had to change the underlying method for calculating expected damage output in MathWing 3.0 (which is not public, unlike v2.0). Back when I published MathWing 1.0, you could still kill the hardest-to-hit targets like Soontir Fel with 2ATT. It was a bit of a pain, but still possible. There is now a long list of high damage mitigation ships (which is only going to get worse with x7 Defenders), so that is no longer the case.

I get the impression from this article the X-Wing is seriously unbalanced or dramatically getting that way. Even toward the end he says "Unfortunately the list of hamstrung fighters is longer than just those 2 ships".

Am I over thinking his intent?

No, you are not over thinking it. Game balance in X-wing is extremely dependent on mathematics. The game boils down to statistical probability and geometry, and these are both fundamentally highly mathematical in nature. No offense is meant to any of the excellent folks at FFG, but I seriously doubt they have ever had anyone working within walls that has the technical background and aptitude (note: those two are substantially different) to know how to properly balance the game. Such an individual would likely be making 3x - 5x times more as an employee working somewhere other than at FFG, and significantly more if they had some entrepreneurial and business skills. I have made this point a few times on these boards already; its partially just a business decision on FFG's part, and it is not necessarily a wrong one.

[Theorist]

"I’ve been calling things pretty much perfectly since Wave 1, and I’ve learned over the years to trust my uncanny intuition."

This summarizes the main problem I, and several others seem to have, with Theorist. He is the best X-wing philosopher the world has ever seen..... in his own mind. There are many examples of him being absolutely wrong; my favorite example is his adamant stand that generic StarVipers at 25 points are just fine and dandy.

And his rant on PS bids is weird, because bidding PS 3-4 has never been a major feature of the meta.

He's not wrong that PS3-4 should beat PS9-11. One of the fundamental problems with the current game balance is that it's largely TLT-wing and Ace-wing, where a lot of high PS named pilots are actually MORE cost efficient than virtually all of the game's generics pilots.... and then they get repositional capabilities and higher pilot skill, for no additional cost. It's unlikely that FFG knows how to quantify this (see earlier statement above), let alone fix it.

What exists to boost defense? Where's even the action equivalent of a target lock action for defense?

Just as a FWIW, a target lock equivalent for Agility would be strictly worse than focus. The equivalent is actually Evade, of which there's no red equivalent for good reason.

i mean there's vaguely one and no one uses it.... Weapons Guidance

Not really. Weapons Guidance mostly alters the value of the focus token slightly differently (and somewhat negatively, there's reasons no one uses it). I'm talking about an action that adds a hit result in addition to any dice rolls. I think the only thing close is the Advanced Targeting Computer, which is quite obviously, very powerful.

*stuff

*more stuff

Thank you both of you! I think between these two comments, we can pretty much get all that 'needs' to be concluded from Theorist's article.

This is exactly what I was thining when I started the TLT topic:https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/205786-is-it-time-for-reverse-tlts/
Specifically:

"I thought about the reverse-TLT after reading the 4agi vs. TLT thread and also playing a lot of high agility ships vs. TLTs myself. As the agility dice can be fickle and the TLT does a reliable sustained damage, the best option for a high agility/low HP ship is to not get hit at all, i.e. be outside range 3 or inside range 1. But then you don't need the agi dice at all, do you? It's like a next phase arcdodging, rangedodging

Actually autothrusters are an implementation of the range-dodging mechanic (at the same time arcdodging), giving you a free evade outside a certain range.

I was just trying to think outside of the box about a new type of 'class', as now we basically have: slow and ponderous with low agility and high HP and arcdogders with high agility and low HP. In the first class agility is almost a non-factor; it's that lucky 1 damage less that you really shouldn't count on; durability is its basic feature. In the second class, agility is a safety net, not a basic feature; you depend on arcdodging to avoid getting hit altogether, because even one bad agi roll (all blanks) can sink your whisper or unshielded ace like soontir.

I was thinking about something like a more reliable agility that also (for balance) hinders maneuverability. A paper to the low agi/high HP ships rock. Something that can reliably tank reliable, but low damage, but is susceptible to high unreliable damage."

But, yes, it is essentially "I miss the Wave 3 Meta", which was the best the game had been, at that time. And his rant on PS bids is weird, because bidding PS 3-4 has never been a major feature of the meta.

Even more ironic with the potential of alpha strike ordnance becoming a thing, PS 3 - 4 might become an actually thing because of the advantages you bring against other generics. Removing them from the board before they can shoot back is a very useful thing IF alpha strike ordnance list become a thing. And the forum is full of ideas to make those list work right now.

But, yes, it is essentially "I miss the Wave 3 Meta", which was the best the game had been, at that time. And his rant on PS bids is weird, because bidding PS 3-4 has never been a major feature of the meta.

Even more ironic with the potential of alpha strike ordnance becoming a thing, PS 3 - 4 might become an actually thing because of the advantages you bring against other generics. Removing them from the board before they can shoot back is a very useful thing IF alpha strike ordnance list become a thing. And the forum is full of ideas to make those list work right now.

Yeah. Triple Contract Scouts are not going to care if you're PS4 or PS9 when they shoot. They're only going to care if they have in inside of their arc. That's going to make cheaper ships with lots of hull fairly valuable, like Lambdas, who can safely absorb those hits.

But, yes, it is essentially "I miss the Wave 3 Meta", which was the best the game had been, at that time. And his rant on PS bids is weird, because bidding PS 3-4 has never been a major feature of the meta.

Even more ironic with the potential of alpha strike ordnance becoming a thing, PS 3 - 4 might become an actually thing because of the advantages you bring against other generics. Removing them from the board before they can shoot back is a very useful thing IF alpha strike ordnance list become a thing. And the forum is full of ideas to make those list work right now.

Not that it matters much, but Sithborg is wrong here. PS 3-4 WAS a significant thing back in wave 3. That's when the obsidian swarm and 'biggs walks the daggs' were born. Even sabre squad pilots were pretty good back then (Han w/ marksmanship + Gunner was their only real 'counter')

Edit: Oh yeah, and triple firesprays! almost forgot those guys, its been so long since they were formidable...

I agree that the article has many issues, but there is some valid cause for concern, IMO. Namely:

-Balance between Health and Agility is off. In very loose terms, a high health/low agility ship should be about on par for survivability with a low health/high agility ship, with the mid-range ships filling into the middle and therefore roughly equivalent. It is not. It is ALWAYS better to be low agility/high health the way the game is structured, except in corner cases like Palpatine Aces, or even just AT/SD Soontir. No other Interceptors perform nearly as well as he does.

You make here an assumption which is totally off. It absurd. It comes out of nowhere, and the mobility and dial of high agility ships clearly state that they should not have the same durability a high health / low agility ships. They are simply different classes of ships.

And btw, the Inquisitor offers impressive evade tank. Stay on outer border of range 3, ignore enemy autothrusters and extra agility dice, while getting them yourself. V1 gives you on top that really useful evade token from a target lock, if you get Focus as well either from PTL or external source you are looking at 0.002471923828125 damage from an unmodified 3 dice attack and 0.0025 damage from a atk 3 with focus and target lock. Similar things could be said about agile flankers with missiles or just agile and fast interceptors used as flankers. Though it always comes down to making use of auto-thruster and making good use of them.

Just my 2 cents, it's late, I am tired and I am new to the game, so take it with a dessert full of sand, but still, there are positions for those high agility ships which are very, very safe for them. And you seem to be able to force your opponents to make hard decisions when flying against them, even outside our beloved Baron Fel.

Avoiding the differing of opinions, I think the article makes too many assumptions without offering adequate explanations. Now, most of us can infer what was intended, but that isn't a very effective way to form an argument.

That said, I can see the point of how many modifications there are for attack, and how few there are on defense.

I remember my first few games, not having thoroughly examined the dice, and feeling extremely confident in my chances of evading a given hit. Now, I roll the green dice more as a formality than with any expectation of defense.

I have to say that the article did get me thinking about defense dice and their modification options. Funny how one of the very few defense rerolls is on one of the most maligned fighters in the game...

I'm left to think that with all the boons to attack, we may see more defensive options in the future.

Chimps have arrived fellas. FFG has gone to far. I will keep repeating myself.

Avoiding the differing of opinions, I think the article makes too many assumptions without offering adequate explanations. Now, most of us can infer what was intended, but that isn't a very effective way to form an argument.

That said, I can see the point of how many modifications there are for attack, and how few there are on defense.

I remember my first few games, not having thoroughly examined the dice, and feeling extremely confident in my chances of evading a given hit. Now, I roll the green dice more as a formality than with any expectation of defense.

I have to say that the article did get me thinking about defense dice and their modification options. Funny how one of the very few defense rerolls is on one of the most maligned fighters in the game...

I'm left to think that with all the boons to attack, we may see more defensive options in the future.

Again, no. You won't Ever see evade dice being on par with attack Because you have to kill things to win. How is this a hard concept?

Avoiding the differing of opinions, I think the article makes too many assumptions without offering adequate explanations. Now, most of us can infer what was intended, but that isn't a very effective way to form an argument.

That said, I can see the point of how many modifications there are for attack, and how few there are on defense.

I remember my first few games, not having thoroughly examined the dice, and feeling extremely confident in my chances of evading a given hit. Now, I roll the green dice more as a formality than with any expectation of defense.

I have to say that the article did get me thinking about defense dice and their modification options. Funny how one of the very few defense rerolls is on one of the most maligned fighters in the game...

I'm left to think that with all the boons to attack, we may see more defensive options in the future.

Again, no. You won't Ever see evade dice being on par with attack Because you have to kill things to win. How is this a hard concept?

I think generally FFG has somewhat overvalued green dice on one-action generics. That's the gist of the article and I agree with it.

And you all laughed when I said TLTs were the best "jousters"/"generics". HA. SEEE I KNEW IT.

Also, FFG, your refusal to directly nerf the big ships is seriously coming back to bite us all in the butt.

I think generally FFG has somewhat overvalued green dice on one-action generics. That's the gist of the article and I agree with it.

While I don't want to get into the details of this article (I've already been told I'm wrong in another place), green dice have always had a lot of variance and ships that relied on it needed ATs (and maybe even Palp) to thrive in recent Waves. However, we are seeing more and more cards that don't even worry about agility or cut through tokens, etc... which -- independent of "hyper accuracy" makes health more valuable than agility and it's a reason I run hull/shield on my ships over stealth.

We seriously need new ideas for generics: They can't just be te most efficient. We have to want to take them over other things: Why would I ever take a Tie Adv with AC? So it can evade all day and not do damage with its puny 2 hits? Seriously??

And you all laughed when I said TLTs were the best "jousters"/"generics". HA. SEEE I KNEW IT.

Also, FFG, your refusal to directly nerf the big ships is seriously coming back to bite us all in the butt.

[Enjoys the irony of just how much AC Advances shred Y-wings]

And you all laughed when I said TLTs were the best "jousters"/"generics". HA. SEEE I KNEW IT.

Also, FFG, your refusal to directly nerf the big ships is seriously coming back to bite us all in the butt.

[Enjoys the irony of just how much AC Advances shred Y-wings]

Not with the green dice i see around here they don't.

Also interestingly enough, is TRACTOR beam the anti 1-agility ship upgrade? It might be. The TLT Y just gets hit with it and bounced into a rock, losing its shot, its one useful factor. Hmm.

And you all laughed when I said TLTs were the best "jousters"/"generics". HA. SEEE I KNEW IT.

Also, FFG, your refusal to directly nerf the big ships is seriously coming back to bite us all in the butt.

[Enjoys the irony of just how much AC Advances shred Y-wings]

Not with the green dice i see around here they don't.

Also interestingly enough, is TRACTOR beam the anti 1-agility ship upgrade? It might be. The TLT Y just gets hit with it and bounced into a rock, losing its shot, its one useful factor. Hmm.

shenanigans are there in theory; may prove more difficult in practice. They gotta be really threading the rocks for you to toss em onto it

for one, you get no damage off of the T-beam apart from a lucky 50/50

still, a TLT not shooting is a TLT not shooting

And you all laughed when I said TLTs were the best "jousters"/"generics". HA. SEEE I KNEW IT.

Also, FFG, your refusal to directly nerf the big ships is seriously coming back to bite us all in the butt.

[Enjoys the irony of just how much AC Advances shred Y-wings]

Not with the green dice i see around here they don't.

Also interestingly enough, is TRACTOR beam the anti 1-agility ship upgrade? It might be. The TLT Y just gets hit with it and bounced into a rock, losing its shot, its one useful factor. Hmm.

shenanigans are there in theory; may prove more difficult in practice. They gotta be really threading the rocks for you to toss em onto it

for one, you get no damage off of the T-beam apart from a lucky 50/50

still, a TLT not shooting is a TLT not shooting

Actually: a TLT shoot is actually literally all we care about. Because you get to dwindle their effective number and towards late game you're behind them at R1. So actually. Just not shooting is literally all we care about. For the most part those cannon takers will be able to take some TLT hits but avoid dying before they beam stuff into rocks.

In contrast 4 TLT lists will probably start taking stress rocks.

I'm not sure who this guy is but he has but alot of thought into his article.

http://teamcovenant.com/star-wars-x-wing/the-paradigm-shift-of-red-dice

I get the impression from this article the X-Wing is seriously unbalanced or dramatically getting that way. Even toward the end he says "Unfortunately the list of hamstrung fighters is longer than just those 2 ships".

Am I over thinking his intent?

The problem is defense. Increases in defense have gotten to the point where 3 attack with a focus is below average. Increases in defense have created situations where a "focus blank blank' 3 die AGI roll can be converted to 4 evades with Palp, Autothrusters, a focus, and evade on Soontir.

What I'm saying is that when I use your typical Joustwing ship that moves once and maybe does one action, I have to roll perfectly while my opponent can roll like **** and dodge all of my attacks anyways. Joustwing ships have to rely on dice, Acewings are immune to bad dice unless they whiff super, super hardcore.

C-3PO, Poe's ability, Autothrusters, PtL, etc. All of these just pound 2 attack die ships into the ground. The regen astromechs were created with Y-Wings and T-65's in mind, not an Autothrusters capable ship.

We've also had an increase in the power of repositional abilities. So now not only do you have invincible ships that can convert 3 blanks into 3 evades, you have ships that can ignore the dial part of the game by just seeing where you moved to and boosting and barrel rolling.

The offense isn't the issue. It's defense and the ability to do super extra hyper manuevers after you've seen where everything sub-PS 9 has moved to. Poe's ability on offense? Soontir's ability on offense? Miranda's ability on offense? Yeah, they all help but it's still 3 attack dice and a focus. It's the obnoxious defense they have with C-3PO and Poe and all the stuff Soontir has.

Originally defensive upgrades were priced higher and not as good as offensive ones, like Flight Instructor and Sensor Jammer. The game was meant to err towards attack generally being more powerful than defense, for example naked attack dice are 4/8 hits, and naked green dice are 3/8 evades. The problem is when defense starts to equal or surpass attack, which is what we're seeing a lot of now.

If one were to follow Theorists' conclusions to their end point point, 40 point B-Wing Aces would be top tier. But they're not. Why? No damage mitigation. All offense and zero defense.

As far as these attacks on Theorist being a bad person himself, or him saying that he's been right in the past so he's probably right now, I think discussion about that is irrelevant.

Am I over thinking his intent?

He's just 146% right on his opinion, can absolutely say I agree with him like on EVERY POINT, except for me having an epic hurt due to acewing, so I can't possibly formulate what he said in such a calm way.

except for Phantom. he didn't consider it being an arc-dodger supreme, just pointing at awful math.

The general principle I’m advocating is to provide the tools for joust lists to trump hyper-accuracy cards, so that joust lists gain a serious place in the game again. Right now they are the whipping boys.

Except for I'd fix that to

the tools for joust lists to trump hyper-maneuverable ships

Actually yes, its the other way around: Increase in normal value for defense on normal ships like Bwings and HWKs and Xwings.

But this is also i think a devaluation of 2green dice. We need weaker shots to make 2 green dice work anymore. Shots that work well vs 1 or 0 agility. Things that attack big large effing ships for real.