Competitive games are not just vs one opponent. You need to win many games. I can lose to [meta list] if i win agains the other match ups. If the meta favors a different list that doesnt need an initiative bid, people wont.

Gah! That is the point!

1. OP thing comes out.

2. Lots of people use OP ship, because it is OP.

3. Because lots of them out there, initiative becomes important

4. People spend as much on initiative as they can for the mirror, while still winning most matchups.

5. A floor is hit where you simply can't spend more on initiative for the mirror and the list somewhat settles.

In essence, if a ship or pilot is OP, it will often force the meta into a state where initiative becomes more important. If there aren't OP ships, then no particular setup repeats often enough, and initiative is less valuable. So saying "If the meta favors a different list that doesn't need an initiative bid, people wont." is kind of like saying "There are not OP ships in the meta". Because if there are OP ships, then the importance of Initiative (and PS for that matter) are greatly amplified by their higher than average use.

That's not entirely true. Say TIE Defenders were crazy OP, because ImpVets pumped them even harder than it already is. I don't think the initiative bid would go that high, because initiative isn't having a huge effect on Defender vs Defender games. They're not great blockers, and they're not very action dependent, and they don't really do a ton of repositioning. You might make a 1-2 point bid for a little advantage, but a 3-point bid would be a hull upgrade, which is probably better in the mirror match.

So, the question was, could I beat the aces at 97 points? I decided that I could. With the init bid I had, I knew I could beat a mirror, and had a reasonable chance to beat aces and any other list I faced.

This illustrates the point that many people keep missing. You acknowledge that initiative is basically a huge deciding factor in the mirror. So you decide you must win initiative. How low are you willing to go? 96? 94? 82? The initial answer is "as low as it takes to get initiative in the mirror". BUT, there is a bound on that. You can't just trim upgrades forever to keep winning the mirror. You needed to also feel that you could beat "everything else".

How low that bound is, is an indication of the list's strength. If you still felt you could take on the field at 96 points, wouldn't you consider going 96 points? If you felt you could not beat aces at 97, you might have gone with a 98 point setup (or a different list), yes? You felt that 97 points was good enough in matchups where initiative did not matter, and the 97+initiative would win the mirror.

If a list was coming in at 90 points to win initiative and still taking on the field successfully, would you say it was imbalanced? What about at 80 points? While we may disagree on how much initiative bid represents a balance problem, there absolutely is a line somewhere.

Having an initiative bid really doesn't mean much when it comes to individual ships and balance.

I absolutely agree...except when we see lists that are homogeneously the same ship, especially if they are the same pilot.

Competitive games are not just vs one opponent. You need to win many games. I can lose to [meta list] if i win agains the other match ups. If the meta favors a different list that doesnt need an initiative bid, people wont.

Gah! That is the point!

1. OP thing comes out.

2. Lots of people use OP ship, because it is OP.

3. Because lots of them out there, initiative becomes important

4. People spend as much on initiative as they can for the mirror, while still winning most matchups.

5. A floor is hit where you simply can't spend more on initiative for the mirror and the list somewhat settles.

In essence, if a ship or pilot is OP, it will often force the meta into a state where initiative becomes more important. If there aren't OP ships, then no particular setup repeats often enough, and initiative is less valuable. So saying "If the meta favors a different list that doesn't need an initiative bid, people wont." is kind of like saying "There are not OP ships in the meta". Because if there are OP ships, then the importance of Initiative (and PS for that matter) are greatly amplified by their higher than average use.

That's not entirely true. Say TIE Defenders were crazy OP, because ImpVets pumped them even harder than it already is. I don't think the initiative bid would go that high, because initiative isn't having a huge effect on Defender vs Defender games. They're not great blockers, and they're not very action dependent, and they don't really do a ton of repositioning. You might make a 1-2 point bid for a little advantage, but a 3-point bid would be a hull upgrade, which is probably better in the mirror match.

I can accept that as a valid counter point. But it really only changes things to "If there is significant initiative bidding, there probably is a balance issue. If there is not, we really have no idea."

Triple U-boats might be a corner case, not very representative for the whole idea of initiative bid.

They are built in such a way that there's a ton of +/- 1 point tweaks you can do to each of them (proton/plasma torps, agromech/overclocked, no crew/Boba/4LOM). I have a hard time thinking of any other ship that allows such incremental tweaking of cost. Most ships have an optimal X point build (like the 35 point Soontir ortho 31 point Inquisitor) that are rather hard to tweak (the only realistic tweak to Inquisitor for example is prockets, and that's a 3 point difference).

Triple U-boats might be a corner case, not very representative for the whole idea of initiative bid.

They are built in such a way that there's a ton of +/- 1 point tweaks you can do to each of them (proton/plasma torps, agromech/overclocked, no crew/Boba/4LOM). I have a hard time thinking of any other ship that allows such incremental tweaking of cost. Most ships have an optimal X point build (like the 35 point Soontir ortho 31 point Inquisitor) that are rather hard to tweak (the only realistic tweak to Inquisitor for example is prockets, and that's a 3 point difference).

That is just reaching the "floor" where a thing remains competitive. The floor for Palp Aces may be 98 points instead of 96, because of inflexibility. This maybe doesn't necessarily mean that Palp Aces ARE balanced. It isn't high point totals that tells us anything for the very reasons you point out. Only low totals can indicate something.

And there is at least one other example in the TIE swarm that allows for really incremental variations.

Competitive games are not just vs one opponent. You need to win many games. I can lose to [meta list] if i win agains the other match ups. If the meta favors a different list that doesnt need an initiative bid, people wont.

Gah! That is the point!

1. OP thing comes out.

2. Lots of people use OP ship, because it is OP.

3. Because lots of them out there, initiative becomes important

4. People spend as much on initiative as they can for the mirror, while still winning most matchups.

5. A floor is hit where you simply can't spend more on initiative for the mirror and the list somewhat settles.

In essence, if a ship or pilot is OP, it will often force the meta into a state where initiative becomes more important. If there aren't OP ships, then no particular setup repeats often enough, and initiative is less valuable. So saying "If the meta favors a different list that doesn't need an initiative bid, people wont." is kind of like saying "There are not OP ships in the meta". Because if there are OP ships, then the importance of Initiative (and PS for that matter) are greatly amplified by their higher than average use.

That's not entirely true. Say TIE Defenders were crazy OP, because ImpVets pumped them even harder than it already is. I don't think the initiative bid would go that high, because initiative isn't having a huge effect on Defender vs Defender games. They're not great blockers, and they're not very action dependent, and they don't really do a ton of repositioning. You might make a 1-2 point bid for a little advantage, but a 3-point bid would be a hull upgrade, which is probably better in the mirror match.

I can accept that as a valid counter point. But it really only changes things to "If there is significant initiative bidding, there probably is a balance issue. If there is not, we really have no idea."

That's probably true. I think the size of a responsible initiative bid is probably one sign of a ship's power, but not the only sign.

Triple U-boats might be a corner case, not very representative for the whole idea of initiative bid.

They are built in such a way that there's a ton of +/- 1 point tweaks you can do to each of them (proton/plasma torps, agromech/overclocked, no crew/Boba/4LOM). I have a hard time thinking of any other ship that allows such incremental tweaking of cost. Most ships have an optimal X point build (like the 35 point Soontir ortho 31 point Inquisitor) that are rather hard to tweak (the only realistic tweak to Inquisitor for example is prockets, and that's a 3 point difference).

That is just reaching the "floor" where a thing remains competitive. The floor for Palp Aces may be 98 points instead of 96, because of inflexibility. This maybe doesn't necessarily mean that Palp Aces ARE balanced. It isn't high point totals that tells us anything for the very reasons you point out. Only low totals can indicate something.

And there is at least one other example in the TIE swarm that allows for really incremental variations.

The only tweak you can do to a guven Palp Aces IMO is Electronic Baffle. Consider your own example of 98 point Palp Aces. Considering a Lambda Shuttle and 2 aces I can't think of a single 2 point upgrade that would be worth it to bring it to 100 (except Kallus on Whisper if her crew slot is empty).

Scouts are atleast 2 points undercosted,

I assume you do have some kind of proof backing up such a factual statement?

Scum & Villainy Podcast (or was it Nova Squadron Radio?) interview of Alex Davy in April 2016.

One of the hosts asked Alex if the Contracted Scout is undercosted or if other huge ships like the WSF are overcosted - to which Alex responded 'probably both'.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the original quote shouldnt be too hard to find.

Look, game design isnt a binary matter - there is not just perfectly balanced or omg OP. The diesigners know that and overall, they have done a great job so far. But they know they dont always get it 100% right.

So, the question was, could I beat the aces at 97 points? I decided that I could. With the init bid I had, I knew I could beat a mirror, and had a reasonable chance to beat aces and any other list I faced.

This illustrates the point that many people keep missing. You acknowledge that initiative is basically a huge deciding factor in the mirror. So you decide you must win initiative. How low are you willing to go? 96? 94? 82? The initial answer is "as low as it takes to get initiative in the mirror". BUT, there is a bound on that. You can't just trim upgrades forever to keep winning the mirror. You needed to also feel that you could beat "everything else".

How low that bound is, is an indication of the list's strength. If you still felt you could take on the field at 96 points, wouldn't you consider going 96 points? If you felt you could not beat aces at 97, you might have gone with a 98 point setup (or a different list), yes? You felt that 97 points was good enough in matchups where initiative did not matter, and the 97+initiative would win the mirror.

If a list was coming in at 90 points to win initiative and still taking on the field successfully, would you say it was imbalanced? What about at 80 points? While we may disagree on how much initiative bid represents a balance problem, there absolutely is a line somewhere.

I understand your point, and I think most of the other that are posting understand it as well.

To answer your question, yes, I'd have made as low a bid as I could have to win the init while still giving me a chance to beat the rest of the field. I felt 97 was the lowest I could go.

I think the point you are missing is that in the grand scheme of things, 96-100 point lists aren't really making a large enough init bid to really confirm your argument. If there were lists running into the very low 90s or high 80s, then your point would be much easier to find confirmation. 96 points is really only usually an upgrade or two of omission, that's not in any way crippling to a list. I think your argument depends on losing a normally crippling amount of upgrades, which is not something we are seeing with a 4 point init bid.

And the 86 point Phantom bid may actually be confirmation of your point. But an 86 point list is much different than a 96 point list. I don't think that relationship is linear, it's probably some asymptotic curve.

Scouts are atleast 2 points undercosted,

I assume you do have some kind of proof backing up such a factual statement?

Scum & Villainy Podcast (or was it Nova Squadron Radio?) interview of Alex Davy in April 2016.

One of the hosts asked Alex if the Contracted Scout is undercosted or if other huge ships like the WSF are overcosted - to which Alex responded 'probably both'.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the original quote shouldnt be too hard to find.

Look, game design isnt a binary matter - there is not just perfectly balanced or omg OP. The diesigners know that and overall, they have done a great job so far. But they know they dont always get it 100% right.

I do understand what the OP is saying. If your list can afford to spend 4+ points (read a hell of a lot of potential for upgrades on your other ships) solely to have the advantage in the mirror match then surely

1) you expect to see lots of similar lists to yours (because why wouldn't people run the list of its at the top of the power curve)

2) you don't need to fine tune your list to beat the rest of the field (because with 4 points you could tweak your list to shore up your worst match ups, but you don't need to because your only difficult match up is the mirror against those silly OP ships)

3) you only need to be able to shoot first/block in order to practically guarentee victory (OK, so now we're really getting some indicators that something might nt be right here)

Sure, there are a million other reasons you might bid high on initiative. And there's probably at some stage going to be a OP list that doesn't give a rats behind about initative. No one is suggesting that once someone wins a premium event with a 4+ bid there's an auto-nerf effect that kicks in. All I'm getting from what Zebra is saying is 'oh hey look, there seems to be a recurring theme here with list archetypes that end up getting a nerfing (read: acknowledgment from FFG they made a boo-boo via a errata or new tech to combat such archetypes). Might be something worth keeping an eye on'.

Personally, I think he's got a point. Clearly I'm poking fun in my examples above but there's an element of truth in there. i can see how when we get to a stage in meta where the only choice is which of these three lists do I take and how big is my bid (and we've been there) then you have to acknowledge there's a problem. As the bid is a big factor when we get to that stage, I can see how increasingly large bids in commonly field squadrons could become an indicator of a problem in the game.

As for Scouts. Meh, yeah they're annoying but people are adjusting already to facing them and the alpha in general. Soon the menace will die down and undoubtedly we'll see decreasing bids as the mirror match potential decreases.

TLSR: OP has a fair point, go easy on the kid, but whilst it could be an indicator of power creep, there's too many other influences on int bid to make a direct correlation.

Sometimes you just can't get a significant improvement by spending more points with the upgrade slots remaining in your list. Also some ships benefit from having the initiative choice much more than others, or expect to run into a mirror match or otherwise matching pilot skill values often, so spending points to ensure you get that choice is the same or better as spending those points on more mildly useful but unnecessary upgrades.

Comparing total squadron point costs in general is not really a useful piece of data imo since "more points = more power" does not accurately reflect the design trends of the game.

Sometimes...but in each of the cases I've mentioned though, there are clear "better" upgrades.

Take 86 pt Phantoms. They elected to leave out an entire ship because it was an MOV liability.

Take U-Boats. R4 Agro is clearly better than Overclocked...if you can afford it. You get dice modification with no stress.

And actually, more points is supposed to indicate more power. That is why we see ships with better statlines at higher costs, better abilities at higher costs, etc. Designers aren't perfect though. So when they miss, we start to see lower point lists that can compete with higher point lists, upgrades that get taken consistently above others, etc.

I wouldn't say R4 is "clearly" better than overclocked. In a vacuum where you're shooting and not getting shot at, yes, R4 agromech is better. But if you're taking shots, overclocked can focus for defense if needed and still be ablet o fire and modify torpedoes. The agromech has to choose between spending the focus to prevent some damage (or survive possibly) and firing it's torpedoes. It can't do both.

Scouts are atleast 2 points undercosted, so it doesnt hurt as much to go below 100 for the init bid.

Especially with Boba and the importance of blocking the mirror match is often largely dependent on initative.

Right I get this, and it is kind of my point. The less it hurts to trim some upgrades off your list, the more likely the ships are under-costed. Every list has a breaking point where if you trim any more, it simply can't be competitive against the variety of lists in the meta anymore. For TIE swarms, it seemed to be about 96-97 points. For U-boats it appears about the same. For Scyks, it is 130.

I'd be happy with 115-118 for scyks. I've been running a 5 scyk crack swarm that''s actually been doing pretty well. It's higher PS than a-wing or tie swarms, but loses a shield per ship compared to a-wings and loses a ship compared to ties. If I could fit 6 scyks, it'd be a lot more comperable to a crack black swarm. heck, even 8 points would let me get 6 TVPs with crackshot (just woudn't be able to have serissu like I do now).

So, the question was, could I beat the aces at 97 points? I decided that I could. With the init bid I had, I knew I could beat a mirror, and had a reasonable chance to beat aces and any other list I faced.

This illustrates the point that many people keep missing. You acknowledge that initiative is basically a huge deciding factor in the mirror. So you decide you must win initiative. How low are you willing to go? 96? 94? 82? The initial answer is "as low as it takes to get initiative in the mirror". BUT, there is a bound on that. You can't just trim upgrades forever to keep winning the mirror. You needed to also feel that you could beat "everything else".

How low that bound is, is an indication of the list's strength. If you still felt you could take on the field at 96 points, wouldn't you consider going 96 points? If you felt you could not beat aces at 97, you might have gone with a 98 point setup (or a different list), yes? You felt that 97 points was good enough in matchups where initiative did not matter, and the 97+initiative would win the mirror.

If a list was coming in at 90 points to win initiative and still taking on the field successfully, would you say it was imbalanced? What about at 80 points? While we may disagree on how much initiative bid represents a balance problem, there absolutely is a line somewhere.

I understand your point, and I think most of the other that are posting understand it as well.

To answer your question, yes, I'd have made as low a bid as I could have to win the init while still giving me a chance to beat the rest of the field. I felt 97 was the lowest I could go.

I think the point you are missing is that in the grand scheme of things, 96-100 point lists aren't really making a large enough init bid to really confirm your argument. If there were lists running into the very low 90s or high 80s, then your point would be much easier to find confirmation. 96 points is really only usually an upgrade or two of omission, that's not in any way crippling to a list. I think your argument depends on losing a normally crippling amount of upgrades, which is not something we are seeing with a 4 point init bid.

And the 86 point Phantom bid may actually be confirmation of your point. But an 86 point list is much different than a 96 point list. I don't think that relationship is linear, it's probably some asymptotic curve.

Yeah, 96 points isn't some key line of demarcation. It feels like it to me, but that is just primarily because that seems like historically as low as the floor goes before lists stop working (barring the Phantom deal).

Thanks for seeing the middle there Rauhughes. I'm not preaching any absolutes here.

I'd say pretty much south of 97 you should really be looking at things. 86 was silly and sad. It's hard to say if 3 Scouts would perform well if they were a point more a piece and a 99 bid. I think you'd see a lots more 2+ something else if that were the case.

But really Init only matters when PS matters and PS still doesn't matter as much as it should/could. 2 Vs. 1 matters both ways. 9 matters a lot. 10 and 8 matter a little less. Outside of that? Doesn't really matter. 4 Vs 5 only kinda matters and shows this exact problem. If you could get a a jump master 1 PS higher than the Scout for only 1pt more each you'd do it right? You'd still have a 1pt bid and probably a 2pt bid as people would take 2 higher PS and 1 lower for blocking. If FFG can make some PS 4-7 ships that matter, PS will matter more and init will matter more for different (and maybe better) reasons.

Having an initiative bid really doesn't mean much when it comes to individual ships and balance.

I absolutely agree...except when we see lists that are homogeneously the same ship, especially if they are the same pilot.

If you're looking at a homogeneous squadron then you'll always have an initiative bid. Three ships at 33 each is only 99 points. Drop each ship a point and now you're looking at 96 points while 31 point ships just make 93 points. Now maybe you can spend a few of those points to upgrade something but there are times when those points are mostly wasted (upgrading PS doesn't help if you still don't beat your opponents) and may even be detrimental as one of the best things about a homogenous squadron is that you can use them as you like and then none of them will stick out as an obvious target.

Just consider the max sized TIE Swarm with eight TIE Fighters in it. You can see them at 96 points with 8 Academy Pilots, 100 points with an even split of Academy and Obsidians at 100 points, or maybe even something else with another variation being used instead of straight APs. Now does spending those 4 points left from APx8 actually make the squadron perform better? Sometimes it does but other times it may be gaining nothing or even hurting the swarm. I don't see how the difference in points left are really showing how unbalanced the TIE Fighter is.

The only tweak you can do to a guven Palp Aces IMO is Electronic Baffle. Consider your own example of 98 point Palp Aces. Considering a Lambda Shuttle and 2 aces I can't think of a single 2 point upgrade that would be worth it to bring it to 100 (except Kallus on Whisper if her crew slot is empty).

The plural of anecdote is not data, but I will throw this out anyway. Anti-Pursuit Lasers.

I faced three Palp Aces at regionals. One had Soontir and the Inquisitor. The other two of them had Soontir and Jax. One was 98 points. The other was 100. The difference between was, of course, the lasers. And that's the one I lost to.

The lasers played a significant part in that loss. He 2-turned into me using Palp to make the damage roll a crit and it was all downhill from there.

This topic turned into sth different than the title, which starts from OP.

A lower point fleet beating a higher point fleet is not an indicator of the lower point lis being imbalanced.

Take palp aces, in a 2 ace vs 2 ace mirror matchup having the shuttle upgraded is actually a detriment. Since some times only shuttles will die and the player with the mor expensive shuttle will loose.

There is no initiative involved in this example. So does this prove that 29 point shuttle is better than 31 point shuttle?

Not in the match itself.

Trying to take a complex situation as lower point squads and trying to fit them in to a single explanation for them having lower points will not work.

Even in some matches there will be times where you wont use several upgrads in your list and can still win. A wolfpack can easily kill a b wing and a z95 from a bbbbz list in the first salvo, later not using extra munitions and just finishing them with turrets. This does not mean a person can just skip on extra munitions. It means that some lists have an inherent advantage against others.

There will also be lists where sontir fels autothruster s will never trigger, but not taking them is not an option for most players.

What i want to get is , every single lower point squad has to be examined differently against different lists. One cant just bunch them up together from a single attribute and associate some other properties.

This topic turned into sth different than the title, which starts from OP.

A lower point fleet beating a higher point fleet is not an indicator of the lower point lis being imbalanced.

Take palp aces, in a 2 ace vs 2 ace mirror matchup having the shuttle upgraded is actually a detriment. Since some times only shuttles will die and the player with the mor expensive shuttle will loose.

There is no initiative involved in this example. So does this prove that 29 point shuttle is better than 31 point shuttle?

Not in the match itself.

Trying to take a complex situation as lower point squads and trying to fit them in to a single explanation for them having lower points will not work.

Even in some matches there will be times where you wont use several upgrads in your list and can still win. A wolfpack can easily kill a b wing and a z95 from a bbbbz list in the first salvo, later not using extra munitions and just finishing them with turrets. This does not mean a person can just skip on extra munitions. It means that some lists have an inherent advantage against others.

There will also be lists where sontir fels autothruster s will never trigger, but not taking them is not an option for most players.

What i want to get is , every single lower point squad has to be examined differently against different lists. One cant just bunch them up together from a single attribute and associate some other properties.

Your specific examples I won't go into too much detail on because they are just that - specific. I'm not talking about specifics, but a list's aggregate chance to win against all comers in multi-game settings. Specific upgrades may or may not be used in single match ups, but that isn't exactly why you take them. You take them because they improve your aggregate chances of winning against all comers (there are exceptions, such as to deal with a particular weakness, but it is still kind of about improving your chances against the field). You take Autothrusters on Soontir not because you expect it to pull its weight in every match, but because you expect it to do so often enough against the field over the course of many matches.

One must be careful when reading something as an "indicator" of something else. Sometimes there is a relationship there but at others it may just be two different things that currently happen to be moving along the same trend. It may also be the completely random alignment which causes people to start looking for causes and relationships when there really is nothing to be found.

If you think 86 points phantom was an initiative bid. You have to relearn x wing.

Also, a 96 point u boat list and a 97 u boat list are not the same lists, with one having one less point. The former is clearly giving something away in order to take initiative and thats where you actually pay the paints for. Your list is not 96 points of u boat athat point , is it 96 points and 4 point premium of going first. Thats not an issue of imbalance, or subconcius thinking. It is a tactical decision.

I take veteran instincts if I want to go first.. I do pretty well. I don't play in the big tournament scene. I tend to build to 100 most of the time and don't equip things that I don't use. I giggle to myself when some one says that they should have initiative because there build is 96 or 97 points. I say well my pilot skill is 11 and 2 tens did you beat that.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but I will throw this out anyway. Anti-Pursuit Lasers.

I faced three Palp Aces at regionals. One had Soontir and the Inquisitor. The other two of them had Soontir and Jax. One was 98 points. The other was 100. The difference between was, of course, the lasers. And that's the one I lost to.

The lasers played a significant part in that loss. He 2-turned into me using Palp to make the damage roll a crit and it was all downhill from there.

Even on a crit you receive only 1 normal damage (not a crit, sadly).

I'd say initiative bids are an indicator of a concentration of lists at the same PS, which often includes the same type of list.

Snipped for , well for snipping really but you get what i mean.

The OP starts with specific examples from the 4th line and tries to put those examples as a pattern somehow. If one tries to form a pattern with specifics, i can refute it so.

Also one shouldn't just get away with saying this "may be an indicator". One can't just take one of the meta defining lists, see some players are playing with a bigger initiative bid and apply that thinking to the whole meta.

We had 4+ years of x-wing and we can see that once a list goes down too many points, it will be weaker. That's almost by definition true.

But trying to use just this as trying to point out lists as undercosted is wrong without trying to remove other variables.

You sir/ma'm haven't shown us any "proof" for your hypothesis except for anectodal evidence.