Proposed solution.

During Swiss rounds there are no wins, losses or draws. During each round a player earns points equal to points destroyed. Points lost would be the first tiebreaker but otherwise would not matter. The half points for half destroyed rule would be for all ships not just large ships. A player facing a squad with a total less than 100pts would get the difference added to their points destroyed total at the start of the match.

Although this doesn't eliminate the possibility of a draw. It removes any benefits of an intentional one. Since destroying zero ships would get you zero points aside from the few you might get from the opponents squad being less than 100pts.

This eliminates modified wins and heavily encourages engagement. Only real downside I can see initially is that a player can run for 75 minutes just to be a jerk.

After X amount of rounds you cut to top 4/8/16/32 as usual and play by current elimination round rules.

Thoughts?

In a technical sense, you make your measurement of player skill more sensitive, at the cost of decreasing the reliability of that measurement.

Suppose you're a triage nurse and you greet a new ER patient by asking about her level of pain. You might say "Are you in pain?" and she can say either yes or no. That's a very repeatable measurement: if you ask 5 patients with the same kind of injury, they'll probably all give you the same answer.

Now suppose that instead you ask them to grade their pain on a scale from 1 to 10. If you ask 5 patients with the same kind of injury, you're likely to get some duplicate responses, but you'll get a lot more variation. Some of that increased variation reflects actual variation in the level of pain the patients are experiencing, and some of it is measurement error. (It's generally difficult to tell which is which.)

Overall, the risk of using a measurement tool that's very precise is that it's very sensitive to any variation, regardless of whether it's meaningful variation. Think about... about a radio station with a lot of static. If I ask you to tell me whether music is playing, you can probably answer that question. If I ask you to tell me which song is playing, you're going to have a lot more trouble answering the question correctly.

Reverting to the X-wing context, the question we currently ask is whether a player wins or loses. Because it's a dice game in part, there's a lot of "static", so we have to be aware that the more detailed the question gets, the harder it gets to find the "right" answer.

In a technical sense, you make your measurement of player skill more sensitive, at the cost of decreasing the reliability of that measurement.

Suppose you're a triage nurse and you greet a new ER patient by asking about her level of pain. You might say "Are you in pain?" and she can say either yes or no. That's a very repeatable measurement: if you ask 5 patients with the same kind of injury, they'll probably all give you the same answer.

Now suppose that instead you ask them to grade their pain on a scale from 1 to 10. If you ask 5 patients with the same kind of injury, you're likely to get some duplicate responses, but you'll get a lot more variation. Some of that increased variation reflects actual variation in the level of pain the patients are experiencing, and some of it is measurement error. (It's generally difficult to tell which is which.)

Overall, the risk of using a measurement tool that's very precise is that it's very sensitive to any variation, regardless of whether it's meaningful variation. Think about... about a radio station with a lot of static. If I ask you to tell me whether music is playing, you can probably answer that question. If I ask you to tell me which song is playing, you're going to have a lot more trouble answering the question correctly.

Reverting to the X-wing context, the question we currently ask is whether a player wins or loses. Because it's a dice game in part, there's a lot of "static", so we have to be aware that the more detailed the question gets, the harder it gets to find the "right" answer.

You totally lost me here.

I'll try again.

We currently grade players on a 0-1 scale: a player either wins a match or loses a match. You're proposing that instead, we grade players on a 0-100 scale. That's not inherently a problem, but suppose you're looking at the outcome of a game between me and Paul Heaver. If he's having a bad day and I get on a hot streak with dice I could win, but if we played the same match 5 times I probably get tabled in 4 of them. So the chance that the tournament match got the outcome "right" is 4/5 = 80%.

If we were going by points destroyed instead, the match I win is 100-75, and the matches I lose are 40-100, 60-100, 75-100, and 50-100. Which one represents the "right" outcome--that is, which one really reflects the gap in skill and practice between me and Heaver? There's no way to tell. From the given information, it's difficult or impossible to tell how much of the differences between those matches represents the real gap between the players, and how much is just dice. So it's difficult or impossible to tell which result represents the real difference, rather than one that's too high or too low.

Am I making any more sense?

So if I beat someone 75-50, it should be worth the same as someone who lost 75-100?

Really?

This'd artificially advantage point forts again.

You totally lost me here.

I'll try again.

We currently grade players on a 0-1 scale: a player either wins a match or loses a match. You're proposing that instead, we grade players on a 0-100 scale. That's not inherently a problem, but suppose you're looking at the outcome of a game between me and Paul Heaver. If he's having a bad day and I get on a hot streak with dice I could win, but if we played the same match 5 times I probably get tabled in 4 of them. So the chance that the tournament match got the outcome "right" is 4/5 = 80%.

If we were going by points destroyed instead, the match I win is 100-75, and the matches I lose are 40-100, 60-100, 75-100, and 50-100. Which one represents the "right" outcome--that is, which one really reflects the gap in skill and practice between me and Heaver? There's no way to tell. From the given information, it's difficult or impossible to tell how much of the differences between those matches represents the real gap between the players, and how much is just dice. So it's difficult or impossible to tell which result represents the real difference, rather than one that's too high or too low.

Am I making any more sense?

So if I beat someone 75-50, it should be worth the same as someone who lost 75-100?

Really?

You're not beating or getting beat by anyone.

You're just trying to amass as many points as possible in each round.

You totally lost me here.

I'll try again.

We currently grade players on a 0-1 scale: a player either wins a match or loses a match. You're proposing that instead, we grade players on a 0-100 scale. That's not inherently a problem, but suppose you're looking at the outcome of a game between me and Paul Heaver. If he's having a bad day and I get on a hot streak with dice I could win, but if we played the same match 5 times I probably get tabled in 4 of them. So the chance that the tournament match got the outcome "right" is 4/5 = 80%.

If we were going by points destroyed instead, the match I win is 100-75, and the matches I lose are 40-100, 60-100, 75-100, and 50-100. Which one represents the "right" outcome--that is, which one really reflects the gap in skill and practice between me and Heaver? There's no way to tell. From the given information, it's difficult or impossible to tell how much of the differences between those matches represents the real gap between the players, and how much is just dice. So it's difficult or impossible to tell which result represents the real difference, rather than one that's too high or too low.

Am I making any more sense?

Also now that I think about it we do not currently measure people on a 0-1 scale.

You can have four different results

Win

Modified win

Loss

Draw

The idea isn't totally without merit. After all that's basically the scoring system that FFG has for Armada (In Armada the more points you beat your opponent by the more tournament points you get, and vice versa for losing), and that works well enough. Throwing out points lost doesn't really work though, as pointed out by Icelom.

What if the person that destroys the most points get double that amount as their score?

I think you'd be better off just using MoV as the end all and maybe track total points destroyed as a tie breaker instead. As someone pointed out before if you kill 75 points it doesn't matter if you "win" because they don't kill a thing or if you get tabled. Now there is a difference in where your opponent ends up placing but as far as you're concerned 75 points killed is 75 points. It's a far cry from a 175/25 score compared to a 125/75.

I would do away with all the points. Lose and your out. Go to double elimination if you must. To me a point system only works with pre ranked players, so some don't run up a score against a newbie while others eek out a win against a quality veteran.

How many tournaments would you go to if it was a "lose and you're out" system though?

And how many rounds would you then have for something like worlds to get to the final winner.

Alternatively you might have a really bad match up with your opponents list.

I'd just settle for keeping it simple.

You win - 4 points.

You lose - 0 points

In the event of a played draw, I'm not sure between either 2 pts each or maybe 1 or a full win for the initiate holder.

What if the person that destroys the most points get double that amount as their score?

So, what is the difference to the current system?

What if the person that destroys the most points get double that amount as their score?

So, what is the difference to the current system?

The current system is wins with mov as tiebreaker.

I'm talking about points destroyed as main method of determining standings. With getting double points for the round if you destroy more than your opponent.

Stay the BLEEP at homes and play Glorious X-EPIC... prollum solve!

I think going on points alone would heavily favour certain types of lists, or at least make other types of lists very bad.

Archie

I think going on points alone would heavily favour certain types of lists, or at least make other types of lists very bad.

Archie

Which ones?

I'm not quite sure what problem this solves other than intentional draws which are likely going to be removed soon anyway. Draws, intentional or not, can be a problem but if you eliminate draws (initiative breaks ties, for example) I don't see why your system is better than a straight win/loss system that uses MOV as the first tiebreaker.

Vorpal Sword's comments explain the problem pretty well I think. It seems like measuring points destroyed would play with the balance of the game a little bit as well since you've made points scored rather than points differential the most important measure of performance.

I'm not quite sure what problem this solves other than intentional draws which are likely going to be removed soon anyway. Draws, intentional or not, can be a problem but if you eliminate draws (initiative breaks ties, for example) I don't see why your system is better than a straight win/loss system that uses MOV as the first tiebreaker.

Vorpal Sword's comments explain the problem pretty well I think. It seems like measuring points destroyed would play with the balance of the game a little bit as well since you've made points scored rather than points differential the most important measure of performance.

I'm going to agree here. I like the idea of a straight Win/Loss system.

1 point for each win, 0 for a loss or a draw. MOV of 100 to each player for a draw. Tiebreaker is MOV.

Under the current system - suppose you have a player who is 6-0 and all of his opponents are 5-1. Sounds simple, except if all of his wins were close, modified wins, he has 18 tournament points and can finish behind those players that he beat because they can have 25 tournament points. This seems entirely unfair, because he is penalized for winning close matches against good players.

If you make MOV the only thing that matters, and also apply the half point rule to all ships, you will shrink the meta drastically. Do that, and all you'll ever see on the table is Imperial Aces. Some ships, and some factions are designed to win in spite of the fact that some ships are lost along the way.

I was looking for something that encourages action. Not having to worry about losing ships helps with that.

So a person that wins 100-80 would get 200pts. A person that won 50-0 would just get 100pts. Yes the second person won by a better margin. But they only managed to destroy half as much as the first player.

Here is how it should go. Yes, Math Wing........

If you win you get 1 point, 0 for a loss.

MOV is calculated as the following:

Points of ship (with upgrades) / (Total Hull + Shields)

Yes, that means for each point of damage done you get some MOV, it doesn't matter if you kill the ship or not.

**** NOTE: round to first decimal.

Examples:

Academy TIE 12/3 = 4 points

58 point Super Dash

58/10 = 5.8 points

Standard Soonir Fel

35/3 = 11.6

I was looking for something that encourages action. Not having to worry about losing ships helps with that.

So a person that wins 100-80 would get 200pts. A person that won 50-0 would just get 100pts. Yes the second person won by a better margin. But they only managed to destroy half as much as the first player.

OK but if we look at games as portions of a longer war, the second game had a much better outcome for the victor.

Knowing how to be defensive with your ships is still part of the game.

What you are saying is 100 to 100 wipe out on both sides is the same as 100-0 game? How on earth does that make sense to be awarded the same? No penalty for loosing your entire fleet?