I stated in an earlier thread my current fleet has really nothing against someone who decides from the getgo they don't want to engage me. But if you are swarming with MC30s and CR90s... good luck trying to stay disengaged from that. Just another question Mothma swarms are a perfect answer to.

Part of the reason I also play Speed 4 ships. "YOU WILL FIGHT ME, DAMNIT!!!"

I might argue that the ability to disengage effectively / prevent your opponent from doing so is one of the ways to separate good players from great players, and the impact on MoV is a feature, not a bug.

This is true in so far as good players should try to minimize their loss margin, but one of the "bugs" that I and the OP have noted is that it can warp the ability of a multi-round tourney to sift out the best players when less good players aren't doing that.

Imagine that Player A and Player B are of roughly equal skill and experience.

In Round 1, Player A plays against Smarty McGoodPlayer, who he outflies but Smarty has the wherewithal to minimize his losses during his defeat, so Player A gets a 7-3.

In Round 1, Player B plays against Newby McGoon, who flies right into the mouth of Player B and loses everything, granting Player B a 10-0.

So now, Player A, who has played the much tougher game and has a more "impressive" win is sitting on 7 points and a not-so-great MoV. Player B, who basically had a 'freebie' matchup and has proven nothing, sits with a big 3pt lead and has an almost insurmountable 350+ MoV already, meaning if he and Player A end up tied he'll almost certainly win based on his massive pile of MoV from tabling the Round 1 noob (unless Player A also tables someone 10-0, it is mathematically impossible for him to overtake Player B in MoV if they end up tied in tourney points).

Now, since we're in Swiss pairings, Player A has no chance of playing Newby McGoon and will have to outscore Player B by four points in the next two rounds to overtake him, all whilst playing much stiffer competition than Player B just faced.

So, the potential issue is that the tournament scoring system doesn't really account for quality of opponent (e.g. strength of schedule). It is always better to blow-out noobs in easy wins than it is to narrowly beat-up highly skilled opponents. This is a bit wonky, of course, as you'd think beating LeBron James by one point in a game of pick-up basketball ought to be worth a hell of a lot more than beating the kid down the street by twenty points. But in Armada, blowing out the kid down the street is always better than narrowly beating the pro.

While I do agree with what people are saying here about the current tournament rules and MOV chart, Rocmistro's point makes me think...It would be really cool to me if points were more about the objective and less about destroying ships. It would be a different kind of scoring, and would require a new type of objectives, but it would add an interesting layer to fleet building.

I might argue that the ability to disengage effectively / prevent your opponent from doing so is one of the ways to separate good players from great players, and the impact on MoV is a feature, not a bug.

This is true in so far as good players should try to minimize their loss margin, but one of the "bugs" that I and the OP have noted is that it can warp the ability of a multi-round tourney to sift out the best players when less good players aren't doing that.

Imagine that Player A and Player B are of roughly equal skill and experience.

In Round 1, Player A plays against Smarty McGoodPlayer, who he outflies but Smarty has the wherewithal to minimize his losses during his defeat, so Player A gets a 7-3.

In Round 1, Player B plays against Newby McGoon, who flies right into the mouth of Player B and loses everything, granting Player B a 10-0.

So now, Player A, who has played the much tougher game and has a more "impressive" win is sitting on 7 points and a not-so-great MoV. Player B, who basically had a 'freebie' matchup and has proven nothing, sits with a big 3pt lead and has an almost insurmountable 350+ MoV already, meaning if he and Player A end up tied he'll almost certainly win based on his massive pile of MoV from tabling the Round 1 noob (unless Player A also tables someone 10-0, it is mathematically impossible for him to overtake Player B in MoV if they end up tied in tourney points).

Now, since we're in Swiss pairings, Player A has no chance of playing Newby McGoon and will have to outscore Player B by four points in the next two rounds to overtake him, all whilst playing much stiffer competition than Player B just faced.

So, the potential issue is that the tournament scoring system doesn't really account for quality of opponent (e.g. strength of schedule). It is always better to blow-out noobs in easy wins than it is to narrowly beat-up highly skilled opponents. This is a bit wonky, of course, as you'd think beating LeBron James by one point in a game of pick-up basketball ought to be worth a hell of a lot more than beating the kid down the street by twenty points. But in Armada, blowing out the kid down the street is always better than narrowly beating the pro.

Except now the person who has a 10-0 will have to go against someone else of that level of skill and can walk away with a loss in his/her next game.

While I do agree with what people are saying here about the current tournament rules and MOV chart, Rocmistro's point makes me think...It would be really cool to me if points were more about the objective and less about destroying ships. It would be a different kind of scoring, and would require a new type of objectives, but it would add an interesting layer to fleet building.

Fire Lanes, Precision Strike, Contested Outpost, etc. These are objectives that not only mitigate a horrible loss but also help you dominate when someone wants to turn tail.

While I do agree with what people are saying here about the current tournament rules and MOV chart, Rocmistro's point makes me think...It would be really cool to me if points were more about the objective and less about destroying ships. It would be a different kind of scoring, and would require a new type of objectives, but it would add an interesting layer to fleet building.

This is an interesting concept. I doubt we'll ever see it, but I like it.

While I do agree with what people are saying here about the current tournament rules and MOV chart, Rocmistro's point makes me think...It would be really cool to me if points were more about the objective and less about destroying ships. It would be a different kind of scoring, and would require a new type of objectives, but it would add an interesting layer to fleet building.

Fire Lanes, Precision Strike, Contested Outpost, etc. These are objectives that not only mitigate a horrible loss but also help you dominate when someone wants to turn tail.

Superior Positions as well. You run and you get plinked as you go for points.

I might argue that the ability to disengage effectively / prevent your opponent from doing so is one of the ways to separate good players from great players, and the impact on MoV is a feature, not a bug.

This is true in so far as good players should try to minimize their loss margin, but one of the "bugs" that I and the OP have noted is that it can warp the ability of a multi-round tourney to sift out the best players when less good players aren't doing that.

Imagine that Player A and Player B are of roughly equal skill and experience.

In Round 1, Player A plays against Smarty McGoodPlayer, who he outflies but Smarty has the wherewithal to minimize his losses during his defeat, so Player A gets a 7-3.

In Round 1, Player B plays against Newby McGoon, who flies right into the mouth of Player B and loses everything, granting Player B a 10-0.

So now, Player A, who has played the much tougher game and has a more "impressive" win is sitting on 7 points and a not-so-great MoV. Player B, who basically had a 'freebie' matchup and has proven nothing, sits with a big 3pt lead and has an almost insurmountable 350+ MoV already, meaning if he and Player A end up tied he'll almost certainly win based on his massive pile of MoV from tabling the Round 1 noob (unless Player A also tables someone 10-0, it is mathematically impossible for him to overtake Player B in MoV if they end up tied in tourney points).

Now, since we're in Swiss pairings, Player A has no chance of playing Newby McGoon and will have to outscore Player B by four points in the next two rounds to overtake him, all whilst playing much stiffer competition than Player B just faced.

So, the potential issue is that the tournament scoring system doesn't really account for quality of opponent (e.g. strength of schedule). It is always better to blow-out noobs in easy wins than it is to narrowly beat-up highly skilled opponents. This is a bit wonky, of course, as you'd think beating LeBron James by one point in a game of pick-up basketball ought to be worth a hell of a lot more than beating the kid down the street by twenty points. But in Armada, blowing out the kid down the street is always better than narrowly beating the pro.

Except now the person who has a 10-0 will have to go against someone else of that level of skill and can walk away with a loss in his/her next game.

Sure, but we've already assumed in this example that Player A and Player B are both "good" players of comparable skill level, whatever that means. Of course Player B might lose his next round, but so might Player A; they are both pairing up against winners next round. Heck, as rare as 10-0s are, it's not inconceivable that Player B will pair against an 8-2 if that's the next biggest win, and even if he pairs against another 10-0 winner odds are that person also got their 10pts by playing a less skilled or newer opponent than Player A faced. The point still remains, though, that you always want to be Player B in this situation, because you go into Round 2 with a gigantic advantage, even though by most every consideration your 10-0 win was far less impressive or meaningful than Player A's hard-fought 7-3 win. That is the "bug" in the Armada tournament scoring.

While I do agree with what people are saying here about the current tournament rules and MOV chart, Rocmistro's point makes me think...It would be really cool to me if points were more about the objective and less about destroying ships. It would be a different kind of scoring, and would require a new type of objectives, but it would add an interesting layer to fleet building.

Fire Lanes, Precision Strike, Contested Outpost, etc. These are objectives that not only mitigate a horrible loss but also help you dominate when someone wants to turn tail.

Superior Positions as well. You run and you get plinked as you go for points.

Correct. many people like to go for objectives that assist them in a tactical advantage. I have found that I would rather have the more riskier objectives because they can increase my MoV and make up for my losses.

I might argue that the ability to disengage effectively / prevent your opponent from doing so is one of the ways to separate good players from great players, and the impact on MoV is a feature, not a bug.

This is true in so far as good players should try to minimize their loss margin, but one of the "bugs" that I and the OP have noted is that it can warp the ability of a multi-round tourney to sift out the best players when less good players aren't doing that.

Imagine that Player A and Player B are of roughly equal skill and experience.

In Round 1, Player A plays against Smarty McGoodPlayer, who he outflies but Smarty has the wherewithal to minimize his losses during his defeat, so Player A gets a 7-3.

In Round 1, Player B plays against Newby McGoon, who flies right into the mouth of Player B and loses everything, granting Player B a 10-0.

So now, Player A, who has played the much tougher game and has a more "impressive" win is sitting on 7 points and a not-so-great MoV. Player B, who basically had a 'freebie' matchup and has proven nothing, sits with a big 3pt lead and has an almost insurmountable 350+ MoV already, meaning if he and Player A end up tied he'll almost certainly win based on his massive pile of MoV from tabling the Round 1 noob (unless Player A also tables someone 10-0, it is mathematically impossible for him to overtake Player B in MoV if they end up tied in tourney points).

Now, since we're in Swiss pairings, Player A has no chance of playing Newby McGoon and will have to outscore Player B by four points in the next two rounds to overtake him, all whilst playing much stiffer competition than Player B just faced.

So, the potential issue is that the tournament scoring system doesn't really account for quality of opponent (e.g. strength of schedule). It is always better to blow-out noobs in easy wins than it is to narrowly beat-up highly skilled opponents. This is a bit wonky, of course, as you'd think beating LeBron James by one point in a game of pick-up basketball ought to be worth a hell of a lot more than beating the kid down the street by twenty points. But in Armada, blowing out the kid down the street is always better than narrowly beating the pro.

Thank you. Yes, you described the potential scenario more succintly and better than I did.

So, basically, this very thing happened last Saturday.

Noobie 1 (2x ISD list) played Noobie 2 (too many squadrons for his carriers). Noobie 2 flew his ships right into the maw of ISD and lost 10-0.

Meanwhile, my first game was against a far more experienced player, GoodPlayer 1. We had a great game, and I ultimately won 7-3. He disengaged in late round 4. I had not lost a single ship, and only 3 of my A wing squadrons.

So I went into round 2 with 7 pts against Noobie 1 with 10 pts. I'm not patting myself on the back when I tell you I am a better player than Noobie 1. Luckily, he was cocky coming off the heels of his previous win, and thought he'd go through my little Rebel ships like a knife through hot butter. If he had realized the danger he was in, he may have attempted to disengage the entire game, and I could have come out with a 5-5 or possibly a 6-4. Either result would have won him the Tournie (we only went 2 rounds as it started late*). In round 3, he realized the bad predicament he was in, and got his 2nd ISD TFOD (the f&*k outta dodge), but, luckily, it was too late, and I had already gobbled up his first ISD and all his squadrons.

I'm hoping this is more a problem at local/lower level tourneys, and that I won't see that kind of play in a Regional tourney, but who knows. It's kind of the same paradigm of playing pool against someone who doesn't know what they are doing. They are likely to just really screw up the table on you by random chance or knocking your set-up shots out of place. My wife drives me nuts with this :-)

*A 2 round tournie, I realize, is hardly an official thing, and probably skews the results more. I'd have to think more about how that might affect things in a larger tournament, but I think the point still stands: what demonstrates more skill; a close game against an excellent opponent or a blowout against a total noob?

While I do agree with what people are saying here about the current tournament rules and MOV chart, Rocmistro's point makes me think...It would be really cool to me if points were more about the objective and less about destroying ships. It would be a different kind of scoring, and would require a new type of objectives, but it would add an interesting layer to fleet building.

Fire Lanes, Precision Strike, Contested Outpost, etc. These are objectives that not only mitigate a horrible loss but also help you dominate when someone wants to turn tail.

This is a good point, Lyr, and one I might re-evaluate when it comes time to consider what objective we are playing. I already like Contested Outpost because it tends to cause my opponent to camp an objective, which means stationary, which means I know where he's deploying and generally at what speed, and what his first couple opening moves are going to be, at the cost of a couple objective tokens in rounds 1-2. If I can force him off it earlier, though, I can really make him pay for disengaging me. This is worth thinking about more.

This is why we need a ranking system across the community.

This way, a TO can match appropriately to begin with. That way there is no "top tier" player matched up round one to "I just bought the core set" and a free 10-0 is had...

It is also concerning when people concede and grant a 10-0 to an opponent. It really...really...REALLY wanks with the appropriate placings.

I might argue that the ability to disengage effectively / prevent your opponent from doing so is one of the ways to separate good players from great players, and the impact on MoV is a feature, not a bug.

This is true in so far as good players should try to minimize their loss margin, but one of the "bugs" that I and the OP have noted is that it can warp the ability of a multi-round tourney to sift out the best players when less good players aren't doing that.

Imagine that Player A and Player B are of roughly equal skill and experience.

In Round 1, Player A plays against Smarty McGoodPlayer, who he outflies but Smarty has the wherewithal to minimize his losses during his defeat, so Player A gets a 7-3.

In Round 1, Player B plays against Newby McGoon, who flies right into the mouth of Player B and loses everything, granting Player B a 10-0.

So now, Player A, who has played the much tougher game and has a more "impressive" win is sitting on 7 points and a not-so-great MoV. Player B, who basically had a 'freebie' matchup and has proven nothing, sits with a big 3pt lead and has an almost insurmountable 350+ MoV already, meaning if he and Player A end up tied he'll almost certainly win based on his massive pile of MoV from tabling the Round 1 noob (unless Player A also tables someone 10-0, it is mathematically impossible for him to overtake Player B in MoV if they end up tied in tourney points).

Now, since we're in Swiss pairings, Player A has no chance of playing Newby McGoon and will have to outscore Player B by four points in the next two rounds to overtake him, all whilst playing much stiffer competition than Player B just faced.

So, the potential issue is that the tournament scoring system doesn't really account for quality of opponent (e.g. strength of schedule). It is always better to blow-out noobs in easy wins than it is to narrowly beat-up highly skilled opponents. This is a bit wonky, of course, as you'd think beating LeBron James by one point in a game of pick-up basketball ought to be worth a hell of a lot more than beating the kid down the street by twenty points. But in Armada, blowing out the kid down the street is always better than narrowly beating the pro.

Except now the person who has a 10-0 will have to go against someone else of that level of skill and can walk away with a loss in his/her next game.

Sure, but we've already assumed in this example that Player A and Player B are both "good" players of comparable skill level, whatever that means. Of course Player B might lose his next round, but so might Player A; they are both pairing up against winners next round. Heck, as rare as 10-0s are, it's not inconceivable that Player B will pair against an 8-2 if that's the next biggest win, and even if he pairs against another 10-0 winner odds are that person also got their 10pts by playing a less skilled or newer opponent than Player A faced. The point still remains, though, that you always want to be Player B in this situation, because you go into Round 2 with a gigantic advantage, even though by most every consideration your 10-0 win was far less impressive or meaningful than Player A's hard-fought 7-3 win. That is the "bug" in the Armada tournament scoring.

Not always. We had players in the store championship that I won that started at 9-1 or 10-0 while I got a 5-5. From there I got 2, 9-1's in a row against good players (Iskander4000 and Mikael) while the people who got the higher scores in the first round had to play each other and thus got weaker wins.

This is why we need a ranking system across the community.

This way, a TO can match appropriately to begin with. That way there is no "top tier" player matched up round one to "I just bought the core set" and a free 10-0 is had...

It is also concerning when people concede and grant a 10-0 to an opponent. It really...really...REALLY wanks with the appropriate placings.

Who would keep that up? Would vassal count? what about the really good players that only get 1-2 games in every few months (Dras, and some others)? Should they be penalized or given fodder because they dont play often? What is to stop someone from gaming the system and diluting their rank?

Talk to Steven from WWPD. We had a fairly robust one in flames of war that encompassed people all over the world. It was actually really cool and worked reasonably well.

(we only went 2 rounds as it started late*)

*snip*

I'm hoping this is more a problem at local/lower level tourneys, and that I won't see that kind of play in a Regional tourney, but who knows.

*snip*

*A 2 round tournie, I realize, is hardly an official thing, and probably skews the results more.

Yeah, I think that's the root of the problem, or at least dramatically exacerbates it. That first round is kind of a crapshoot, and while it is frustrating to get paired up against somebody you know is a great player while your rival gets paired with a noob, I find that it usually gets filtered out pretty well by the end of the second round. I don't think I've ever seen rankings heading into round three where I felt the ranking was dramatically undeserved or a fluke.

Not saying it's perfect by any means, but it does sounds like a bad, but non-representative, experience might be coloring your perspective.

I'm totally on board with a global ranking system that could be used for matching, layered on top of the current tournament system. It wouldn't even need to be particularly rigorous, because I think it would mostly function to separate "i just bought the box set and don't know the rules" players from the more experienced guys. Which makes it more fun for everybody by preventing those round one blowouts that are offputting to new players and frustrating for experienced ones.

While I do agree with what people are saying here about the current tournament rules and MOV chart, Rocmistro's point makes me think...It would be really cool to me if points were more about the objective and less about destroying ships. It would be a different kind of scoring, and would require a new type of objectives, but it would add an interesting layer to fleet building.

We should have an "Objective Showdown!" Where objective points are doubled (fleet points halved) and so is the danger....

OS Advanced Gunnery:Everybody gets it!

OS Precision Strike/Superior Positions: Tokens 30 per!

OS Most Wanted: Double the dice and double the points for killing the ship!

OS Opening Salvo: Double dice and points

OS Contested Outpost: 40 points per round!

OS Fire Lanes: Holy crap that could be a lot of points...

OS Hyperspace Assault:6 hyper points

OS Fleet Ambush: Everybody goes in the ambush zone!

OS Minefields:12 mines and you roll 4 blue dice

OS Dangerous Territories:

OS Intel Sweep: No Intel Sweep because I'm no good at it. JK, 150 points for the victor.

Tabling gives you a max of 200 points.

Wat

That's amazing. I'm going to see if I can get somebody to play that with me. Right after I find somebody to play faction-unchained.

Yeah, the ones like Contested Outpost and Fire Lanes are good examples of objectives that discourage running away. I'm also thinking of objectives like "escort a specific squadron from point A to point B" where it's not about killing as much as performing or preventing a mission.

I guess really what I want is an official FFG Armada campaign system.

The problem I have with MOV isn't that it's too tight/loose; all players are subject to the same rules so the value of everyone's victory or loss is graded on the same scale.

Except when it's not.

The problem I do have with MOV is that the difficulty of scoring an 8-2 or better is not reflected in the way an 8-2 is awarded for a bye. This was dramatically highlighted in the team tournament, where the team where all players got a bye was the highest scoring team in some rounds, but even under normal 1v1 circumstances the bye score does not seem calibrated with the standard score outcomes.

Lots of good discussion and thoughtful comments here.

We might want to back up and think about the problems that MoV is intended to solve. Ideally, Win/Loss straight up would be the most important determining factor. So for example, if you get enough players in a tournament, it isn't exactly time-efficient to play enough rounds to bring just one person down to a single victory; and even if MoV is used as a cut for a final play-off, that still pushes the issue back to whether someone even makes the cut or not. I see this as the primary purpose. A secondary purpose is to take into account not just whether someone won, but how they did so. This is also imperfect for many of the reasons raised in this thread: playstyles might lead to a more passive low-scoring game, and certainly one can play a points-denial style if one is ok not picking up a lot of points as well. My sense is also that especially in local tournaments, competition is pretty uneven and bounces around greatly in skill level. By its nature, this will create more unevenness in the possible results in early rounds. I think the point is correct that generally speaking it is better to have more points rather than fewer points at any given time. Finally, there's one other problem that MoV might address, and that is it specifically avoids any work that could result from creating a rating system. For example, the chess community has a long established and well recognized rating system and it factors into pairings in tournaments. I've seen 60 players show up to a 4 round Swiss tournament and only one walked away with a 4-0 score. Some of this is the fact that chess is drawish (worth merely a 1/2 point, incidentally, byes are only worth 1/2 point as well, so the point about 8-2 byes is spot on), but it also stems from the fact that a rating system allows for more precise pairings between ability levels. On the other hand, one of the real problems is that Armada is not played with near enough consistency as a game like Chess, and ratings only tend to become accurate after you've played a number of games. So in that light, I'd think MOV is a decent, albeit imperfect substitute. I think a fair discussion can be had about how to draw the lines, but it really needs to be more specific and with the recognition that changing it in one direction to correct one problem is just as likely to introduce a problem elsewhere.

I like the MoV...

Mostly because I severely dislike the idea of a Fleet that's designed for endless Pyrrhic victories...

I like how we're encouraged to win, but not win at all costs... It just feels a little more story-based for me... Yes, you can have the odd victory where everything ends up dying - but you don't throw everything you have to just squeak through all the time - You need to consider your own potential losses... Like a real admiral should.

I know its anathama to say "real" in regards to it... But its just how it feels to me...

Also, you can potentially always win big, even without no losses/tabling combined: by always going 2nd and taking Precision Strike, Fire Lanes and Superior Positions

Also, you can potentially always win big, even without no losses/tabling combined: by always going 2nd and taking Precision Strike, Fire Lanes and Superior Positions