Yeah, I think it would be cool if abilities such as Juke, Palpatine etc. were added as available "icons" below the roll results. As it is now, when rolling attack dice, you're halfway between automatic calculation and manual modification and that's a bit of a disconnect.

I gave it a whirl this morning and the AI is just so terrible.

It does collisions really well though.

Just to see how bad the AI was, I tried 'standard' Soontir against 4 TLT thugs w/ unhinged. Didn't lose stealth. So then I tried 30pt Soontir (just push the limit) vs 8 TIE academies. Lost 1 hull. Then I tried 30 pt Soontir against 8 bugzapper z-95s (112 points to 30!!!). That one was close, just 1 hull left on Soontir.

Then I thought, maybe the AI could do well with Soontir? I flew 2 academies vs 30 point Soontir. I lost 1 academy to a fluke shot but then killed Soontir. So I tried 3 academies against 35 point Soontir. Didn't take any damage...

So maybe good for kids to learn? Otherwise I can't see the appeal....

Although I managed all that in less than 2 hours, so it does play quick!

This is just fantastic. I love it.

Though, the AI needs massive improvements, which is fine and I am sure will happen at a later date. Right now as others have stated it's just for practice and a quick x-wing fix.

Use it as a tool to help you plan maneuvers, or certain card interactions. But if you want a challenge you'll have to play against another person "hot seat" style until the AI algorithms are improved.

But, for being web-based and FREE, it's all water under the bridge and a MASSIVE kudos to the creator for doing this.

CHEERS!

I only trust the AI with 4 Thugs or 4 T70s. Everything else, it gets a little too "creative."

It is awesome for learning positioning and formation flying. Would be better if it was an app, full screen and bigger buttons so I don't have to use a stylus on my tablet. AI/some actions need work, but still a very good program without the hassles you get from Vassel.

Very cool. It is relatively easy to setup and is good practice regardless. Of course I'd rather play against a human opponent, but some practice is better than nothing.

So i assume it is planned to work on the little bugs and flaws in the AI that are still present, but not to include an online multiplayer mode?

I already like it a lot, but with just a few improvements it would really be awesome, and if it had a multiplayer it would possibly be able to outshine Vassal for online Tournaments if the flaws are fixed too!

It does indeed need a few little tweaks with upgrades and abilities here and there, and i would also recommend to enable people to undo moves and actions.

It would be very cool to make it playable in more browsers too. At the moment it seems to work with Edge and Explorer only. A friend of mine has a Mac and cant get it to run with any browser he can get.

Other than that it's a ton of fun and awesome work!!! Better than Vassal because more user-friendly!

I just ran it on a mac in chrome without any issues. I haven't had the opportunity to use vassal yet, but this is extremely straight forward and quick to run. Showing the upgrade details might get them into trouble with FF.

It does indeed need a few little tweaks with upgrades and abilities here and there, and i would also recommend to enable people to undo moves and actions.

It would be very cool to make it playable in more browsers too. At the moment it seems to work with Edge and Explorer only. A friend of mine has a Mac and cant get it to run with any browser he can get.

Other than that it's a ton of fun and awesome work!!! Better than Vassal because more user-friendly!

I just ran it on a mac in chrome without any issues. I haven't had the opportunity to use vassal yet, but this is extremely straight forward and quick to run. Showing the upgrade details might get them into trouble with FF.

Yeah let's say it this way. I love X-Wing, and i have tried it on Vassal, but it's really a pain to build your squad and you have to manually do everything like drawing crit cards and so on. The only thing it does automatically is moving your ships if you input the correct maneuver... But that's just if you are unobstructed.

This benchmark is really user-friendly, and the only major issue i have with it is that you can not manually revert stuff. Which is easily possible on Vassal. All the little bugs are not a problem, but being able to revert a small error or lrt your opponent take back an action is pretty important.

I have also notived that ships that are parked on asteroids will still shoot! So you need to manually change all the hits to misses!

Idk but my friend seems to not get it to work on Chrome and for me it will not work in Firefox. Any settings i can change to make it work perhaps?

Two things I find amusing about this thread-

1. Immediate vassal bashing.

2. Complaints about the AI (especially when it doesn't use card effects)

Number 2 first. This software is an incredible accomplishment. It's a free, homemade program that actually runs through all the game mechanics, and also as a bonus has a rudimentary AI. Most people are just pointing that out, but every time one of these threads comes up, there's always the "The AI is too stupid to do this obvious 3 or 4 card combo, pls fix" comments. Freeware has spoiled us a little.

As for the comparisons to Vassal, there's a bit of history in order. Vassal was originally a client for Advanced Squad Leader, and as such excels as stacking virtual counters in hexes. In the ASL module, the counters are almost all "dumb" i.e. they have no attributes or abilities other than what's on the two sides, and no actions beyond "flip."

The X-wing module has been shoehorned into this framework and every weird thing that the module does or requires stems either from this legacy or from avoiding waking the slumbering giant copyright Mouse (successful after 3 plus years, btw). The module is at the extreme edge of what Vassal can handle (I 'opened the hood' once to look at building better ways for resolving collisions- it's got so many layers and classes that allow it to do what it does, and work around the platform's limitations). Nobody claims that the module is perfect, but people who are experienced with it run it just fine. Mu0n (and the developers before him) have wrung water out of a rock getting the module where it can do what it can.

The Benchmark actually is the game, Vassal is just the pieces, though with a lot of the game baked in, but that's just all semi automatic processes- you still need to know the game, as there is no way that vassal could ever be taught it- it simply doesn't have the capability of 'running' anything. (An example is collisions- the platform doesn't have a way for counters/tokens to interact with each other, other than for being stacked.)

The fact that Vassal is free and 'dumb' is what makes it relevant- It's easy to have a universal server to handle all different kinds of games, bringing together a critical mass of numbers to make having a server worthwhile. Anybody can write a module, and anybody can play. And people do- in the last month there were 23,298 sign-ins to the server and 4,324 game rooms opened, just for X-wing. The server is what makes online X-wing play as a community endeavor possible- spectating is just as important as playing. (For this reason, among others, I'm hugely skeptical of Tabletop Simulator as an answer to Vassal. There's not enough of a player base to justify getting into it.)

The developer of the benchmark software has stated clearly that he does not intend to expand to multiplayer versions, which would require its own server, and again bring in the copyright concerns. The Vassal Server is agnostic about what game is played, largely immunizing it against legal intervention. Now if someone were to fork this software and take it online to a server where you could browse games, spectate and play, that might be a thing, but it'd be such a huge undertaking, not to mention a legally risky one. Until then, there's vassal.

So in the end, this is a fun little piece of software, and while it does some things better than the Vassal platform allows the X-wing module to do, it's a different animal entirely, and provides no excuse for not learning Vassal.

Two things I find amusing about this thread-

1. Immediate vassal bashing.

2. Complaints about the AI (especially when it doesn't use card effects)

Number 2 first. This software is an incredible accomplishment. It's a free, homemade program that actually runs through all the game mechanics, and also as a bonus has a rudimentary AI. Most people are just pointing that out, but every time one of these threads comes up, there's always the "The AI is too stupid to do this obvious 3 or 4 card combo, pls fix" comments. Freeware has spoiled us a little.

As for the comparisons to Vassal, there's a bit of history in order. Vassal was originally a client for Advanced Squad Leader, and as such excels as stacking virtual counters in hexes. In the ASL module, the counters are almost all "dumb" i.e. they have no attributes or abilities other than what's on the two sides, and no actions beyond "flip."

The X-wing module has been shoehorned into this framework and every weird thing that the module does or requires stems either from this legacy or from avoiding waking the slumbering giant copyright Mouse (successful after 3 plus years, btw). The module is at the extreme edge of what Vassal can handle (I 'opened the hood' once to look at building better ways for resolving collisions- it's got so many layers and classes that allow it to do what it does, and work around the platform's limitations). Nobody claims that the module is perfect, but people who are experienced with it run it just fine. Mu0n (and the developers before him) have wrung water out of a rock getting the module where it can do what it can.

The Benchmark actually is the game, Vassal is just the pieces, though with a lot of the game baked in, but that's just all semi automatic processes- you still need to know the game, as there is no way that vassal could ever be taught it- it simply doesn't have the capability of 'running' anything. (An example is collisions- the platform doesn't have a way for counters/tokens to interact with each other, other than for being stacked.)

The fact that Vassal is free and 'dumb' is what makes it relevant- It's easy to have a universal server to handle all different kinds of games, bringing together a critical mass of numbers to make having a server worthwhile. Anybody can write a module, and anybody can play. And people do- in the last month there were 23,298 sign-ins to the server and 4,324 game rooms opened, just for X-wing. The server is what makes online X-wing play as a community endeavor possible- spectating is just as important as playing. (For this reason, among others, I'm hugely skeptical of Tabletop Simulator as an answer to Vassal. There's not enough of a player base to justify getting into it.)

The developer of the benchmark software has stated clearly that he does not intend to expand to multiplayer versions, which would require its own server, and again bring in the copyright concerns. The Vassal Server is agnostic about what game is played, largely immunizing it against legal intervention. Now if someone were to fork this software and take it online to a server where you could browse games, spectate and play, that might be a thing, but it'd be such a huge undertaking, not to mention a legally risky one. Until then, there's vassal.

So in the end, this is a fun little piece of software, and while it does some things better than the Vassal platform allows the X-wing module to do, it's a different animal entirely, and provides no excuse for not learning Vassal.

Thank you Earthworm. Was hoping someone would take the time to make a post like this.

I'm finding in Edge that it freezes on me after the third or fourth turn; in Chrome I get much better screen sizing / sideboard visibility but the AI still freezes at random times.

That said, I rarely have an issue playing "human vs human"

I use this regularly to benchmark new squads against what has been doing really well down at the FLGS. It doesn't always give a completely accurate picture, but it does help give some indication as to how it might function against a Crackswarm, or TLT Thugs.

Had a computer shuttle fly off the board and happily keep on going. One of my stressed ships was able to do a red maneuver. I was also somehow getting two actions off of Guri with no way of getting two actions. Still, for what's already there, it's pretty impressive.

Had a computer shuttle fly off the board and happily keep on going. One of my stressed ships was able to do a red maneuver. I was also somehow getting two actions off of Guri with no way of getting two actions. Still, for what's already there, it's pretty impressive.

Not sure if that's better or worse than the computer shuttle I played that just stopped for 6 turns in a row while facing the map edge. :/

Had a computer shuttle fly off the board and happily keep on going. One of my stressed ships was able to do a red maneuver. I was also somehow getting two actions off of Guri with no way of getting two actions. Still, for what's already there, it's pretty impressive.

Not sure if that's better or worse than the computer shuttle I played that just stopped for 6 turns in a row while facing the map edge. :/

Well, can you blame them?

Given that it is freeware and probably done as hobby work it is absolutely astonishing. Finally I can build and try squads in easy and fast way. Some patches here or there and we will have a perfect app for playing x-wing and testing squads.

Thank you so much to the person/people who made this! For someone who has few ships but is looking to buy more it´s a great trainer!

And I love that the AI is forgiving!

Thank you, thank you thank you! And FFG, it is making me want more ships, so you should regard it as a boon, not a drain...

It actually works best my iPhone 6, now I stay up an extra 2 hrs every night lol

I've played a couple of games on it so far, and I deem it... AWESOME!

Runs great on my iPad. As a previous user commented, the UI is super-intuitive. The AI isn't too bad... I underestimated it in my first game, and lost to the Coran/Dash list.

Not sure if this had already been mentioned, but Dash Rendar ignores obstacles in both the Activation & Combat Phases... not a big deal, just keep an eye on your AI opponent, and if it tries to do something that is against the rules... then just manually change their die results to blanks.

Thank you, to the Creator... of the Benchmark, I mean.

There seems to be a problem with spending target locks, in that it will sometimes reroll all dice and sometimes not. Anyone else experience this?

A competent AI is *NOT* 2-3 patches away. It's a formidable programming challenge, more difficult even to program than the first person shooter AIs of the 90's (DOOM, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc.) and back then, even they struggled to make those.

I love the simplicity and speed of the graphics under a much more modern engine. I love the platform-less character of it, passing through the web. This is the future - but it needs the multiplayer component that can foster a whole new community (or make the existing one transit). It's absolutely not trivial to program a synchronous multiplayer game. No one coder can make it happen, in my humble opinion. It would require a team with professional experience, drive to tackle this thankless (thankless in relative terms to the mountain of work required) - I personally don't know enough web coding to even contribute superficially.

Blew up the Death star with Porkins... 10/10 best simulator.

I don't worry about the AI being rudimentary - it moves ships in a way that I don't predict without being *completely* random, and lets me take ten minutes to test a squad and work out whether it's even worth looking at more closely without wasting anyone's time but my own.

I'm happy it exists.

AI flew the Palpshuttle off the board on the second turn (presumably scared of Proton Bomb K-Wings). Still pretty fun!