Like much game discussion, a lot of what goes on in these forums is discussion on what cards are too effective for their cost, and which ships are not effective enough for their cost.

But what about those that hit the mark dead on? What cards are just as effective as they should be for their cost? I think this is a discussion we should have along with the far too often discussions I mention above.

Some of the most common examples of balanced cards are what are often called the "baseline" ships, such as Academy Ties and Bandit Z-95s. At a low and effective price that has seen consistent use and success throughout the history of the game (at least until late), they are often used as a measuring stick for new releases.

To get the discussion started, I will throw one other card out that I think meets the criteria- Darth Vader pilot (post Tie/x1 title). I don't know how else to explain why I feel this way other than when I play with or against Darth Vader pilot, the game always feels fair no matter the result. I never feel cheated by his ability or PS. When I lose to a Vader, it is because the player outplayed me. I largely feel this way about Tie Advanced overall as well. I think it is one of the better balanced ships in the game post-fix.

What cards do you feel are exactly at the power level they should be?

I think plasma, extra munitions, homing missiles, and flechette torps are correct for what they cost. Extra munitions because it doesn't do anything by itself but is cheap enough to help out other cards that had problems in the past (other munitions that where very costly), plasma torps, which has made many appearances in the meta, sitting at 3 points for a one time 4 shot attack that does an extra effect when it hits. Flechette torps are in the same boat but a point cheaper for 1 less attack die and gives a stress out to a ship, the stress can be argued to be either very strong or very weak depending, but still feels it is a proper ordnance. Homing missiles is a bit pricy but still is a appropriately costed munitions if we go with plasma as a "base line" 4 dice + spending TL = 3 points, keeping TL and preventing the use of a defensive token can easily be 2 points more since it is still a one time use.

Ion torps on the other hand is about a point over priced and adv proton torps is about 2 points over cost because of its range restriction as well as doesn't "really" do anything without a focus token

Everything that's not undercosted or overcosted.

Totally nailed my thoughts on Vader. He's really great to play against, whichever way it goes. More shooty and meaty than Soontir, but without the permanent Focus and constant cowardly fleeing to R3 for guaranteed AT success.

Rant on, appreciate if read as an IMHO and not a statement.:

This basically boils down to what has started the whole powercreep nonsense - Autothrusted PTL aces. Not fat turrets as often mentioned here. The problem was that the Interceptor-goers wanted their favorite toys to be great against EVERYTHING. Fat turrets have the inherent superhigh cost, which means they can be easily countered by massed fire from cheaper ships. But instead of adopting balanced squads which bring in varied elements to the table (i.e. Aces mixed with expendables), Empire players moaned until their "trumps everything but turrets" ships got "castrate turrets too, upgrade" and the whole cycle began.

AT, Biggs, Zuckuss, Corran, Palpatine, Jumpmasters, Veteran Instincts and Defender title, the game would be so much better off without those.

If you do try and remove them from your table, you'll notice how many more ships and upgrades become Vader-level fun.

Lots of cards are where they should be:

Predator - fair cost to reroll just an attack die. Any cheaper and it would be everywhere. Any more expensive and only the double tapping ships would use it to get their values worth.

Crack Shot - perfectly priced one-off card for getting 1 single damage through

VI and Adaptability - Going up or down PS, fair cost for what they accomplish

Pilots:

I think most imperial ships are well balanced and priced aside from a few outliers like Punisher. This is mainly because Imps rely less on shenanigans like Zuckuss/4lom, or control ships, or regen, and are more just about flying or raw power so its easier to keep them in check (aside from that one 8pt crew card). Even though people think the x7 is too powerful, its actually exactly what the ship needed, its that 8pt crew card that is the problem.

For the rebels, there isnt much I think is costed appropriately.

Awings are cool since the chaardan refit.

Kwings are priced fairly. Any cheaper and it starts getting dicey with what they are capable of.

ARCs are new and priced accurately. Awesome awesome ship.

Uwing, another new ship that is priced fairly. You can build it out for a third of your list and its not overpowered.

VCX I think is right where it needs to be for what it is capable of.

I hardly ever fly scum, so I will let others comment on those pilots. I will say any game with a YV seems fair. Even the party bus, since you can actually get behind it and its toast. Not super overpowered.

Free, the best stuff always cost nothing.

That is a nice topic (even though it is more or less about hte balancing xD) to think about.

Correct priving heavily depends on the meta IMO hence the prices of cards should vary from wave to wave (or even from place to place). That is not realistic so we have to deal with some cards being priced wrongly.

A good measure to judge the pricing should be the following

Overcosted: Something is overcosted if noone uses it. I personally do not wish for every pilot to see play, each ship having one accurately costed pilot is enogh for me. The pricing scheme of 1 (or 2) points for 2 PS (and an elite talent) does not really get along with the concept of arc dodgers who need high PS, so low PS arc dodgers should be priced cheap enogh so you can use them as jousters. That might be the problem with generics in general. Hopefully FFG playtests the ships before realeasing them so named pilot performs too well and the generics are made more expensive so it matches the +1/+2 PS scheme (at least I could imagine that).

Edit: Some ships are fine by themselves but you cannot get them plus other nice things in a list, like the ~40 point Poe Dameron build, which only goes well with a large based ship these days because you do not get 2 nice small ships for the remaing 60 points.

Undercosted: Something is undercosted if the costs allow to bring nasty combos into a 100 point list without anything lacking. Examples might be the Triple Jumpmasters or x7 defenders (undercosted is not automatically equal to overpowered!) because you can fill your list completly with their jousting efficiency. Imagine they were even better but not available for less than 34 points or 36 if the would work well with Palp, that would effectively make them worse because you could only bring 2 and had to fill the rest of your list with something not that good. According to that definition, most upgrade cards that are not essential for a build cannot be undercosted (not sure if I like or dislike that), but for ships, it should work quite well.

Palp probably is undercosted within that definition, but we have to see how he performs when arc dodgers are not favored by the meta.

These are my first thoughts on the topic, I hope you will comment on it ;-).

Well this might be a double post if noone answers before I finish.

Correct pricing depends on the meta as I stated above. So the ships that I would consider as correctly priced are the ones that perform well no matter what the meta is. If it were not or the defenders forming every single competitive Imperial list, he would most likely still be around and perform well ever since he got the title. Standard TIE Fighters have been around from the start, so the might fit into that category as well. But apart from that, I am not sure. Because Soontir + ace + palp fits into one list and performs exceedingly well, these ships should be considered undercosted (at least up until pre worlds).

Things like TIE bombers, that have a huge variance in their performace, are difficult to evaluate since the might cause lots of damage or explode before even shooting.

IMO most small based rebel ships suffer from the opposite effect that makes ships undercosted: They are to expensive to fit 3 into a list and there is no good filler that uses between 20 and 29 points of your list (other than Biggs, who does not fit into all concepts). This should probably be part of my overcosted definition. I guess I will edit it in.

It is probably the same with every scum ship that does not have a super dope configuration for 50 ± 2 or 25±1 points.

My faction picks for spot-on cards:

Rebel: Outrider title. It's the most expensive title, but you can't have Super Dash without it. More points makes it unplayable. Less points makes it OP.

Scum: Protectorate. All of it; the whole expansion.

Imperial: Omega Leader. Out of the box ace. As an Imperial Player it always has your back for the right price. As an opponent, if you lose to Omega Leader, then it was probably your own fault for not taking it out while you still had two ships to deal with the nasty pilot ability.

everything is over or under costed .................from a certain point of view

The funny thing about ship value is how it can only be calculated relative to all the other ships and how they interact with the current rules and upgrades. Every release has the potential to alter the balance. FFG's choice to put toys for every faction in each release helps mantain that balance quite a bit better than doing releases focused by on a codex and ffigures for one faction.

I look at frequency of use as a "possible" indicator of proper valuation. When I see something in 75% of lists at a large tourney devoid of oddball scenario conditions, it can be due to those items being costed well below their value. It could also be the flavor of the month but when I see something in winning lists all the time and other stuff that never makes it in, I think it often speaks to mismatches between value and cost.

Cool topic.

Advanced Sensors, it can help an inexperienced player compensate for poor planning and maneuvering, or it can be devastating in the hands of a skilled player. It's sound cheep at 3 points, but since it mainly helps out in the Planning & Activation Phases, you'll probably be investing additional points into the ship's offense.

My faction picks for spot-on cards:

Rebel: Outrider title. It's the most expensive title, but you can't have Super Dash without it. More points makes it unplayable. Less points makes it OP.

Scum: Protectorate. All of it; the whole expansion.

Imperial: Omega Leader. Out of the box ace. As an Imperial Player it always has your back for the right price. As an opponent, if you lose to Omega Leader, then it was probably your own fault for not taking it out while you still had two ships to deal with the nasty pilot ability.

Everything else you said is spit-on.

Cool topic.

Advanced Sensors, it can help an inexperienced player compensate for poor planning and maneuvering, or it can be devastating in the hands of a skilled player. It's sound cheep at 3 points, but since it mainly helps out in the Planning & Activation Phases, you'll probably be investing additional points into the ship's offense.

GREAT pick. The systems slot has a lot of really balanced and fairly priced upgrades. FCS is a really powerful card, and maybe could get away with being 3 points with how popular it is at 2, but it has never been a card that has been meta warping while always being strong wave after wave, and because of that I think it is a model of a well made and priced card. Sensor Jammer, while not well received initially, is proving to be well worth 4 points in the right lists (although if Palp wasn't a thing, I think 3 points would still be fair), and Accuracy Corrector also seems right on the dot at 3.

The 1 price upgrades, as well as Reinforced Deflectors... Proooobably not at the right price point. Scopes and Baffle would be fine at 0, and Deflectors (which has no reason for being large ship only first of all), could be as low as 1 point I believe with little backlash.

My faction picks for spot-on cards:

Rebel: Outrider title. It's the most expensive title, but you can't have Super Dash without it. More points makes it unplayable. Less points makes it OP.

Scum: Protectorate. All of it; the whole expansion.

Imperial: Omega Leader. Out of the box ace. As an Imperial Player it always has your back for the right price. As an opponent, if you lose to Omega Leader, then it was probably your own fault for not taking it out while you still had two ships to deal with the nasty pilot ability.

I disagree about the Outrider title. The go-to Super Dash is too flimsy and hamstrung by a middling pilot skill 7 to be worth 58 points. Everything Dash can do, Miranda can do better, with ordinance and regen. I'll admit I'm incredibly biased, though.

Everything else you said is spit-on.

Miranda can't, you know... Totally ignore 3 to 6 obstacles on the field every game... I understand the comparison though. Super Dash is still a nasty terror though. I think the Outrider title should/could have been the same price as whatever cannon you equipped alongside it. Doing something silly like equipping a tractor beam? Cool, it will only come out to 2 points to do that. Ion? 6 points. HLC? That ones gonna cost ya a bit more- 14 points.

Dash is way scarier than miranda to me.

First of all the ability to ignore obstacles.

Second being able to reposition. Miranda can with slam, but then she isn't shooting that round.

Third the if she's using her TLT, max damage she can do is 2, dash can do up to 4. Yea she often has a homing missile, but that's a 1 time thing, max twice if she has EM.

The only big adantages miranda has besides cost is that she doesn't have the range 1 bubble, and if she has bombs that's another X factor in her favor.

My face is always the most correctly costed thing in the game. Vader is the other correctly costed ship: Solid abilities but with plenty of ways to be countered, including fickle green dice.

On the OT question, I was about to add that 0-point EPTs (and that one 0 cost System) are a quite good addition, but...

Sure, it feels right to get something for the slot, when you're paying "opportunity cost" to have it on the ship itself, anyway. Especially for EPTs.

This does give me a lot of grief, when I think about certain other upgrades, though. Why are Rebel fighters stuck with so many useless ordnance slots?

(I thought of adding something about Turrets, but actually let me make a separate tread from his one)

Will we get 0-point filler for most slots at some point?

Are you already paying for DOA new Falcon to get Trick Shot for your Zeta Leader? Got 3 Mist Hunters for your A-wing swarm?

How about 0-point modification, coming with some Wave 11 "buy it only for the cards" expansion?

You must have gotten the point by now, lol.

The funny thing about ship value is how it can only be calculated relative to all the other ships and how they interact with the current rules and upgrades. Every release has the potential to alter the balance. FFG's choice to put toys for every faction in each release helps mantain that balance quite a bit better than doing releases focused by on a codex and ffigures for one faction.

Take Deadeye... for years you couldn't give that card away... then suddenly because of other cards combining with it, it had to be Errata'd

Carnor Jax
Biggs
All the Ghost pilots
Adv tempests
Whisper & Echo
Decimators
Omnicron & Yorr
Brobots (underpriced when they first came out!)
YV666s
Y wings

These are some of the well-priced ships that I like to fly. (The only overpriced ship I like to fly is the Starviper.)

everything is over or under costed .................from a certain point of view

good is a point of view, anakin

everything is over or under costed .................from a certain point of view

good is a point of view, anakin

The Empire are the good guys *scampers off and hides*

Considering the best numbers we have on cost haven't been updated since wave 5, I don't think we can accurately judge anything at this stage.

everything is over or under costed .................from a certain point of view

good is a point of view, anakin

The Empire are the good guys *scampers off and hides*

Some one drank to muck Kool Aid

Correctly priced: TIE fighter, Z-95. They're literally the benchmark standard and the rebel's count-the-percentage-points counterpart, so...

Probably correctly priced: post-FAQ mangler Scyks, TIE Advanced, IG-88. Notice that these have various builds, which makes it harder to tell - but in practice, there's nothing wrong with the way they fly, more or less.

Many others are hard to quantify. The rest are wonky.

About the only thing that's really underpriced at the moment is the Defender and Palp, so at least we've got that going for us!

Everyone who is saying that the Defender is underpriced is correct, but.

I remember the conversation that happened when the Defender was first announced. It was DOA, on the release article, and confirmed dead when it was first proxies on Vassle.

2016 is a weird timeline.