MajorJuggler put in a lot of (unpaid) work mathematically modeling this game....I bet it's frustrating to see things released that are obviously mis-priced in this game that could easily have been fixed with some simple calculations at this stage in the game's development.

Yea, especially when it can be predicted and prevented.

Balanced pricing and cost efficiency of ships/upgrades should be the standard now. And whether or not you think X-wing should be perfectly balanced, we should expect FFG to be at least near the mark.

Stuff like the Hound's Tooth title simply shouldn't happen anymore. Any one of us could immediately tell how bad that upgrade card was and we don't develop games for a living or have dedicated playtesters.

I used to think that previous gaffs (Phantom, TLT) were growing pains that the designers would have learned from. The Contracted Scout has given me serious doubts and I think the need for a change or addition to their design team has never been clearer.

God you sound so arrogant and douchey. Please show me your resume of amazing games you designed, developed or helped balance?

MJ has done some great quantitative analysis for no compensation that was posted on this forum. behave yourself and do not hurl insults

I used to think that previous gaffs (Phantom, TLT) were growing pains that the designers would have learned from. The Contracted Scout has given me serious doubts and I think the need for a change or addition to their design team has never been clearer.

I am with you 100% here.

God you sound so arrogant and douchey. Please show me your resume of amazing games you designed, developed or helped balance?

MJ has done some great quantitative analysis for no compensation that was posted on this forum. behave yourself and do not hurl insults

MJ's just being honest really. I think it's clear at this point that had FFG used his models, the overall balance and meta of X-wing would be in a better place.

I mean, he saw 3 Scouts coming from a mile away.

God you sound so arrogant and douchey. Please show me your resume of amazing games you designed, developed or helped balance?

MJ has done some great quantitative analysis for no compensation that was posted on this forum. behave yourself and do not hurl insults

MJ's just being honest really. I think it's clear at this point that had FFG used his models, the overall balance and meta of X-wing would be in a better place.

I mean, he saw 3 Scouts coming from a mile away.

also, had they done any play testing. I know several people think triple scouts is fine, but if you just play against it with zero/low agility ships you'll see that maybe it isn't 100% ok. and they came out in the same wave with a huge zero agility ship.

You say you want the game to play like the movies?

What's more like the movies then the insanely hard, seemingly hopeless fight against the evil Emperor whose very goal is to oppress you.

That's just rebel (scum) propaganda. The movies are really about a terrorist cell who uses starfighters (planes) to blow up the most powerful military installation in the galaxy (United states). For some reason in 1978 they saw the terrorists as the heroes. Now, not so much.

Terrorists attack civilian populations. You know, like blowing up an entire planet of civilians.

"Fear will keep the local systems, in line. Fear of this battlestation" - A terrorist.

There was this thing...happened during a war...2 cities...Japan..."terrorists"?

Yes.

And that is one of the beautiful things about Star Wars: both sides are doing things that know to be wrong but only one side gets to be the "heroes" or the "good guys". The "government" that wins gets to write history.

You say you want the game to play like the movies?

What's more like the movies then the insanely hard, seemingly hopeless fight against the evil Emperor whose very goal is to oppress you.

That's just rebel (scum) propaganda. The movies are really about a terrorist cell who uses starfighters (planes) to blow up the most powerful military installation in the galaxy (United states). For some reason in 1978 they saw the terrorists as the heroes. Now, not so much.

Terrorists attack civilian populations. You know, like blowing up an entire planet of civilians.

"Fear will keep the local systems, in line. Fear of this battlestation" - A terrorist.

There was this thing...happened during a war...2 cities...Japan..."terrorists"?

Yes.

And that is one of the beautiful things about Star Wars: both sides are doing things that know to be wrong but only one side gets to be the "heroes" or the "good guys". The "government" that wins gets to write history.

oh come on, in the original trilogy of star wars the two sides are pretty clearly good and evil. for example, one side destroys an entire pacific planet just to show off, the other side only attacks military installations.

now in our history, I think there are only a few examples of good vs evil that are clear. for example, USA helping liberating europe was good vs evil. USA bombing japan was inhumane and basically a government terrorist act.

in the new trilogy, you could argue the good vs evil is slightly more nuanced. the trade fed vs naboo is evil vs good, but the republic preventing systems from voluntarily seceding is not good vs evil

Not to start a heated discussion over this but...

USA bombed Japan because of the way Japanese soldiers fought. They were/to an extent still are very dedicated people to what they believe in and will gladly throw their lives away for it. USA hoped that by showing such massive power it would cause them to not want to fight and give up, saving more lives in the end than doing it the traditional way.

Whether the actual numbers made it a better option i have no idea. But it wasnt a government terrorist act.

Not to start a heated discussion over this but...

USA bombed Japan because of the way Japanese soldiers fought. They were/to an extent still are very dedicated people to what they believe in and will gladly throw their lives away for it. USA hoped that by showing such massive power it would cause them to not want to fight and give up, saving more lives in the end than doing it the traditional way.

Whether the actual numbers made it a better option i have no idea. But it wasnt a government terrorist act.

I know the motivation behind it, but they bombed civilians, not just as collateral damage bombing a military target, but as an actual target, and not with conventional bombs but with a nuclear bomb, significantly increasing civilian suffering. you can call a black cat white if you want

Not to start a heated discussion over this but...

USA bombed Japan because of the way Japanese soldiers fought. They were/to an extent still are very dedicated people to what they believe in and will gladly throw their lives away for it. USA hoped that by showing such massive power it would cause them to not want to fight and give up, saving more lives in the end than doing it the traditional way.

Whether the actual numbers made it a better option i have no idea. But it wasnt a government terrorist act.

The Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings were vicious and effective. Did it end the war? Sure. But please for the love of God do not try to justify it any further. I can't stand attempts to depict the bombings as noble or even close to necessary.

They killed ~200,000 civilians.

If we adjust for the population growth rate that's closer to 400,000 civilians today.

To put that in perspective, the 9/11 attacks killed 3,000 civilians.

You say you want the game to play like the movies?

What's more like the movies then the insanely hard, seemingly hopeless fight against the evil Emperor whose very goal is to oppress you.

That's just rebel (scum) propaganda. The movies are really about a terrorist cell who uses starfighters (planes) to blow up the most powerful military installation in the galaxy (United states). For some reason in 1978 they saw the terrorists as the heroes. Now, not so much.

Terrorists attack civilian populations. You know, like blowing up an entire planet of civilians.

"Fear will keep the local systems, in line. Fear of this battlestation" - A terrorist.

There was this thing...happened during a war...2 cities...Japan..."terrorists"?

Yes.

And that is one of the beautiful things about Star Wars: both sides are doing things that know to be wrong but only one side gets to be the "heroes" or the "good guys". The "government" that wins gets to write history.

There is no clearer right/wrong movie than Star Wars. The Empire literally blows up planets full of innocent people, lol.

It's kind of crazy that people still talk like this, but then that's what happens when people like Trump are getting the nomination, I guess.

There was no military need for bombing Japan.

Simply blockade the island.

Nothing would get past the vastly superior Allied fleet and overwhelming aerial superiority...

Not bashing anyone for decisions made over 70 years ago by others.

But a war-crime it was.

(IMO)

Peace and fly casual.

[edit; typo]

God you sound so arrogant and douchey. Please show me your resume of amazing games you designed, developed or helped balance?

To those pushing back at Atomic here, you can cut him a little slack.

While it's certainly not my intent to be "an arrogant *****" as Para says, it can be difficult not to be interpreted this way when merely stating the facts bluntly, particularly over an internet forum vs having a real conversation. Plus, I have a full-time job that decidedly does not involve publishing or designing games, so I don't have as much direct industry experience as, for example, FFG designers.

That being said, hopefully this will serve as an answer, or at least some background. In no particular order:

• I coined the term "jousting value" and invented the "moneyball" approach to evaluating a ship's baseline cost efficiency in a public post in March 2014. FFG has gone on to reference this work in their news articles (most recently the Defend the Empire article) as being fundamental to game design. (Side note: they never cite the original reference or credit me, which would be considered plagiarism in the academic world.)
• I updated the original v1.0 MathWing and publicly posted a more advanced v2.0, which cleans up some rough edges, but is still only generally useful for comparing generics vs generics.
• I privately overhauled the analysis again to v3.0. I still have a few more things left to implement in v3.0, but even so, X-wing ship costing is essentially a "solved" problem for 90%+ of the pilots across the board. This was definitely not the case in v2.0. I have intentionally decided not to publish the results, as I don't think it's particularly business savvy to give away the farm for free. I may end up publishing some of the underlying mathematical fundamentals in the academic literature.
• I started manually collected the tournament results from FFG official tournaments with the 2014 Regionals Season, and have continued to maintain such threads for Store Championships, Regionals, Nationals, and Worlds since then. While not directly MathWing per se, it became the inspiration for sozin's excellent List Juggler website. Alex has stated that he spends a large portion of his job looking at tournament results, and this provides valuable data analytics for the FFG designers.
• Through all of this, I have been (generally very accurately) predicting the future performance of ships before they were released. My first foray was actually before I had published MathWing v1.0, predicting that the generic TIE Defenders would be dead on arrival. This was not a popular opinion at the time. MathWing v3.0 is now robust enough that I can precisely quantify which named pilots will do well with which upgrade sets and why. To some extent this is intuitively obvious, but I believe I am the first to explicitly quantify it, along with each pilot's corresponding combat metrics that a player is required to hit in order for that pilot to be competitive.
• I turned down playtesting for FFG because the NDA/non-compete agreement was unreasonably favorable to FFG: they wanted permanent and exclusive ownership over any mathematical intellectual property I generated.
• FFG has, on multiple occasions, directly contacted me to solicit my feedback specifically in regards to X-wing. I'm not at liberty to discuss any details. I'm not a playtester as I refused to sign their NDA, so I'm not credited.

Not to start a heated discussion over this but...

USA bombed Japan because of the way Japanese soldiers fought. They were/to an extent still are very dedicated people to what they believe in and will gladly throw their lives away for it. USA hoped that by showing such massive power it would cause them to not want to fight and give up, saving more lives in the end than doing it the traditional way.

Whether the actual numbers made it a better option i have no idea. But it wasnt a government terrorist act.

I was afraid this would have been brought up

Japan was actually ready to surrender

Japan would have surrendered given a little more time.

The US knew this!!

That was a test that the US wanted to use as an excuse

I always found it funny, how in history they are the only country to use nuclear weapons against another country, yet go on and on about "weapons of mass destruction"

Do a little research before posting such remarks.

One of many links you can find

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_weber.html

MJ's just being honest really. I think it's clear at this point that had FFG used his models, the overall balance and meta of X-wing would be in a better place.

I mean, he saw 3 Scouts coming from a mile away.

I very much appreciate MJ's work, but this is a good example of the complexity of the game, since while he may have mathed it out, I don't think he's the first person that "saw it." Had he been in on the design and playtesting would he have been able to adjust it or convince them to drop the EPT? In the end, that build has put ships out of the meta and is successful but it isn't winning as consistently as a lot of other lists.

I'll also point out, and MJ can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe his two most frequently played successful lists that he's discussed on his podcast: Dual IGs with VI and Maximum Danger Zone were made successful by other players first (or in the case of Maximum Dangerzone, a variation). Maybe he doesn't like taking the top shelf lists, but the math hasn't given him insight enough to come up with these lists before other people, even if he has done the math on effiicient ships. I'm not saying that as a knock on him by any means (and I do think his math would give us a lot fewer ships that need fixes out of the gate), but I am pointing out that games this complex are beyond one person (designer or otherwise), no matter how they analyze it. If it could be, it probably wouldn't be as interesting.

MJ's just being honest really. I think it's clear at this point that had FFG used his models, the overall balance and meta of X-wing would be in a better place.

I mean, he saw 3 Scouts coming from a mile away.

I very much appreciate MJ's work, but this is a good example of the complexity of the game, since while he may have mathed it out, I don't think he's the first person that "saw it." Had he been in on the design and playtesting would he have been able to adjust it or convince them to drop the EPT? In the end, that build has put ships out of the meta and is successful but it isn't winning as consistently as a lot of other lists.

I'll also point out, and MJ can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe his two most frequently played successful lists that he's discussed on his podcast: Dual IGs with VI and Maximum Danger Zone were made successful by other players first (or in the case of Maximum Dangerzone, a variation). Maybe he doesn't like taking the top shelf lists, but the math hasn't given him insight enough to come up with these lists before other people, even if he has done the math on effiicient ships. I'm not saying that as a knock on him by any means (and I do think his math would give us a lot fewer ships that need fixes out of the gate), but I am pointing out that games this complex are beyond one person (designer or otherwise), no matter how they analyze it. If it could be, it probably wouldn't be as interesting.

well a quant analysis doesn't give you much insight on the tactics like arc-dodging, placement and so on, that's a different skill set. it's like saying that Billy Beane, the guy who applied quant analysis to baseball, was not a baseball champion himself. He was a professional player before becoming a manager, but apparently his career didn't meet the high expectations scouts had for him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane

MJ's just being honest really. I think it's clear at this point that had FFG used his models, the overall balance and meta of X-wing would be in a better place.

I mean, he saw 3 Scouts coming from a mile away.

I very much appreciate MJ's work, but this is a good example of the complexity of the game, since while he may have mathed it out, I don't think he's the first person that "saw it." Had he been in on the design and playtesting would he have been able to adjust it or convince them to drop the EPT? In the end, that build has put ships out of the meta and is successful but it isn't winning as consistently as a lot of other lists.

I'll also point out, and MJ can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe his two most frequently played successful lists that he's discussed on his podcast: Dual IGs with VI and Maximum Danger Zone were made successful by other players first (or in the case of Maximum Dangerzone, a variation). Maybe he doesn't like taking the top shelf lists, but the math hasn't given him insight enough to come up with these lists before other people, even if he has done the math on effiicient ships. I'm not saying that as a knock on him by any means (and I do think his math would give us a lot fewer ships that need fixes out of the gate), but I am pointing out that games this complex are beyond one person (designer or otherwise), no matter how they analyze it. If it could be, it probably wouldn't be as interesting.

well a quant analysis doesn't give you much insight on the tactics like arc-dodging, placement and so on, that's a different skill set. it's like saying that Billy Beane, the guy who applied quant analysis to baseball, was not a baseball champion himself. He was a professional player before becoming a manager, but apparently his career didn't meet the high expectations scouts had for him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane

Yeah, I'm aware of Moneyball. I was responding to you made the point that he saw Scouts coming "a mile away" but I think that it was people who saw the combination of cards involved that allowed that quantitative analysis to be done. Both skill sets are important, but MJ has also made a claim in this thread that he's "the one that's figured out how to balance it correctly." We actually don't know that that is true. Balancing it after the fact, after you know the type of meta it is entering (and I believe his calculations factor in current meta situations) is very different from doing so during the design process several months or even over a year in advance. I'm not saying it wouldn't be more balanced with his math-- I think it would, but I do have trouble with statements like the one I quoted (and you even elude to the fact that his analysis can only cover so many elements) and when people give him credit for things that were either evident or noted by someone else (like the Scout issue).

Why dont you look up the greater east asian coprosperity sphere to to the pacific rim. Japan got exactly what they asked for.

I very much appreciate MJ's work, but this is a good example of the complexity of the game, since while he may have mathed it out, I don't think he's the first person that "saw it." Had he been in on the design and playtesting would he have been able to adjust it or convince them to drop the EPT? In the end, that build has put ships out of the meta and is successful but it isn't winning as consistently as a lot of other lists.

Convincing the design team to do anything would invariably involve politics, which is well outside my normal area of expertise...

well a quant analysis doesn't give you much insight on the tactics like arc-dodging, placement and so on, that's a different skill set. it's like saying that Billy Beane, the guy who applied quant analysis to baseball, was not a baseball champion himself. He was a professional player before becoming a manager, but apparently his career didn't meet the high expectations scouts had for him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane

A quant analysis won't tell you how to arc dodge, but it can tell you how much you need to arc dodge.

Why dont you look up the greater east asian coprosperity sphere to to the pacific rim. Japan got exactly what they asked for.

Christ, can we leave the WWII stuff alone?

Why dont you look up the greater east asian coprosperity sphere to to the pacific rim. Japan got exactly what they asked for.

Christ, can we leave the WWII stuff alone?

is Jesus posting as Benvader or do you want to switch topic to religion?

edit: never mind

And we all get pleasure from a game in different ways. I like a game best when all players can play what they want to and have a reasonable chance of winning; maybe some weaker options, maybe some better options, but overall little enough difference that a if a guy likes something he doesn't feel forced to bring something else just to stay competitive.

That requires balancing a game well, which requires understanding the math underlying it well. I'm no stranger to doing this sort of thing myself; Catalyst Games Labs released a version of their flagship game Battletech called Alpha Strike, and the points values were... well, it was a completely different game and used the points from the old game. So instead I did a cost analysis and roughed out a simple addition-based points value that everyone started using - even the devs.

And then they created their own version that had a ton of multiplication and division and higher-order math, and yet my simple version matched their complicated version within 1 point 9 times out of 10. (considering average unit price was around 32 points and average game size is between 300 and 500 points, I consider that acceptable margin of error).

Just 'cause I ain't got no fancy 'rithmancy degree don't mean I cain't grasp what yer sayin'. But for the most part, their points values aren't FAR off, just a point or two in the wrong direction; I personally think it's the small game size which exaggerates these discrepancies.

As a side note (and I'm sure you're aware of this MJ), D&D didn't START as an RPG; it was a wargame called Chainmail that moved into fantasy elements when Gygax noticed his players were bored with the usual fare and decided to add things like a wizard that acted like a cannon in a single model, a barbarian capable of outfighting an entire regiment by himself, and so on. His efforts in that direction eventually led to a small section about creating your own fantasy heroes in the back of a Chainmail rulebook, which led to D&D itself.

1) Naked shuttles aren't cost efficient enough to overcome their dial

That's the difference between Palp and Threepio. You're taking Goldenrod on a ship you already want in your list. His Royal Badness needs to be kind of awkwardly wedged in somewhere.

Why dont you look up the greater east asian coprosperity sphere to to the pacific rim. Japan got exactly what they asked for.

Stay under your rock