[*]Hull Upgrade
[*]Shield Upgrade
Just curios, what exactly makes you think shield and hull are properly costed?
Undercosted, overcosted... What is CORRECTLY costed?
Just curios, what exactly makes you think shield and hull are properly costed?[*]Hull Upgrade
[*]Shield Upgrade
I agree that hull and shield are fantastically costed in the current game. But, if in the future FFG were to release a 5 agility, 1 hull ship, we would have to revisit the card, as in such a case it would become quite powerful. But in the game currently, the cost is such that on ships with high agility, or ships with synergistic pilot abilities (such as Tel Trevura), it costs you a valuable amount of points, but it still provides the benefit you seek. The give and take of hull and shield asks the list builder to find where it wants to be most. It does not spoon feed you by being undercosted in every situation. It asks instead, "Is the value of 1 hull more than an extra agility until you get hit? Or the chance to barrel roll for one less point? Or the 3 squad points I could spend elsewhere?" You actually have to think if hull or shield are the right choice. Sometimes they are, but usually they are not. Which is perfect. Nothing should ALWAYS be the answer. That means list building actually matters, and you have to work to find the times an upgrade works optimally!
As a counter example, let's look at Autothrusters in detail. Autothrusters offers no conundrum similar to hull or shield, because its value is higher than the cost you pay for it in almost every case on the 3 agility ships that can equip it. Because Autothrusters is not appropriately costed in this context, it has a negative effect on the game in that the mod slot on 3 agility boosting ships is essentially a placeholder for Autothrusters. All that internal debate that happened between whether to equip Hull upgrade, Stealth Device, Vectored Thrusters or nothing at all in the last paragraph? Gone. Because none of these choices compete with the value of Autothrusters.
One can argue that without Autothrusters, these type of ships would be incapable of competing with turret heavy lists. Perhaps so, but the point is that cards that are undercosted in comparison to their counterparts are bad for the game because they restrict and control list building to the point of making it pointless. Soontir has already reached this state of, what I will call for the sake of irony, "nirvana". Soontir always, ALWAYS starts out with 2 upgrades- Push the Limit and Autothrusters. You will be hard pressed to find any Soontir in competitive play without those 2 upgrades. In fact, I would wager that there has never been a Soontir that has made a top cut at even a store championship that has not had them equipped (if anyone can prove me wrong though I would love to eat my words). The value of those two upgrades on Soontir is unmatched. This means that, with the Royal Guard title, Soontir, a ship with 3 available slots, actually only has 1, and even that is largely restricted to Stealth Device in a lot of scenarios. Even if you were to increase the cost of both PTL and AT by 2 points, it is likely Soontir would still prefer them over every other option.
Shield and Hull upgrade do nothing of the sort. Instead, they have niche places where they work as a player intends for a fair price.
The first thing you need to do is establish a baseline.
For X-wing we can use the base Tie Fighter and X-wing as a starting point as they are literally the Starting Point.
From that standpoint you can argue the value of turning maneuver from red to white to green based on how much it impacts performance against the baseline.
You could then argue that because of the variety of modifications possible that the baseline has started to float which was always going to be the case so realistically what you have is standard deviations around the average power level. Outliers which allow far greater impact than the nominal average are under costed and those far below the average are overcosted. You want the distribution as tight as possible to be balanced.
Power creep is what you get if that nominal average continues rising over time. From what I can tell the goal has been to allow more increases in the average as the game filled out its offering to wave 7-8 and is beginning to taper off and reign in overshoots like the JM5K.
Just curios, what exactly makes you think shield and hull are properly costed?[*]Hull Upgrade
[*]Shield Upgrade
I agree that hull and shield are fantastically costed in the current game. But, if in the future FFG were to release a 5 agility, 1 hull ship, we would have to revisit the card, as in such a case it would become quite powerful. But in the game currently, the cost is such that on ships with high agility, or ships with synergistic pilot abilities (such as Tel Trevura), it costs you a valuable amount of points, but it still provides the benefit you seek. The give and take of hull and shield asks the list builder to find where it wants to be most. It does not spoon feed you by being undercosted in every situation. It asks instead, "Is the value of 1 hull more than an extra agility until you get hit? Or the chance to barrel roll for one less point? Or the 3 squad points I could spend elsewhere?" You actually have to think if hull or shield are the right choice. Sometimes they are, but usually they are not. Which is perfect. Nothing should ALWAYS be the answer. That means list building actually matters, and you have to work to find the times an upgrade works optimally!
A properly costed upgrade will sometimes be the answer, I agree. An overcosted upgrade but not hugely overcosted) will rarely be the answer. This is the place where hull and shield upgrade are currently. They're not so bad as to be 100% useless (like for example Counter-Measures was before Dengaroo, I personally had no clue that card even existed, because I had never seen it before) but it takes a whole set of favorable circumstances to make the card work. Take Tel Trevura for example. If it takes a pilot that increases the effectiveness of a card by 100% to make that card an option (not an auto-include, but an option), isn't that an indication that maybe the card in itself might be sub-par ?
Just curios, what exactly makes you think shield and hull are properly costed?[*]Hull Upgrade
[*]Shield Upgrade
Kdubb posted an excellent assessment above. I just remember reading calcs on ships in wave 3 or so when Hull Upgrade came out, and the value of a point of health came out to almost exactly 3 points. Shield, you pay 1 point in anti-crit tax. But that's always stuck with me, even if now we're in Wave 9 we may have moved beyond that. I don't know. But these upgrades strike me as the "baseline" for the mod slot on a fundamental level.
Major Rhymer is perfect, the rest of the game is severely undercosted.
Yep, he's the baseline and everything else is broken:
What, no advanced proton torpedoes? 
The first thing you need to do is establish a baseline.
For X-wing we can use the base Tie Fighter and X-wing as a starting point as they are literally the Starting Point.
The problem with that is that the Devs have already admitted that the Tie turned out to be undercosted/overpowered compared to the X-wing because of the 2:1 ratio included in the starter set. Imbalance has been there since Day 1.
Corran does have a much better pilot ability that Ryad's. Double tapping is ridculously strong in X-wing. Corran is also much higher PS.Just look how much fully equipped Corran cost (48 pts), now compare it to fully equipped Countess Ryad with X7 title.
If anything Corran is probably the only not overcosted E-wing.
It does not matter that much when you have white 4K. Also double tapping is good but not THAT good. You must live in past meta.
Lets look at another example - in my list with ARC Stressbot and Biggs I have 42 pts to spare - for this price I can buy solidly decked Miranda with Homing Missiles or cheap version of Corran. Miranda is so much better that there is no contest. And I tested both configurations many times. 5 dice from Homing Missiles is as good as double tap, if not better.
So no, even Corran with double tapping is slightly overpriced. And given that there are very popular bombing lists or that soon we will see Kylo Ren with nasty condition card, Corran will fade into obscurity.
Worlds was won by a list built around a double tapping ship. Most top tier players that I've heard talking about Dengaroo seem to think it's better not to shhot with one if your ships than offer Dengar a double tap. Personally, I feel that, as long as many top tier lists rely on one use defensive abilities, like the x7 Evade or Palpatine, getting a second modified shot is very strong.
In no way does it prove that Corran is correctly priced.
The only thing Corran's and Dengar's double tap have in common is the name.
Dengar's double tap doesn't have a drewback and is boosted by Zuckuss and Manaroo's ability. Only boost that Corran get for his double tap is FCS, which is worse than Zuckuss + Manaroo combo. Also in current meta Dengar is much more survivable, he can joust entire enemy list by himself -no one dares to do this with Corran, and rightly so.
Also, IIRC the guy that came second at worlds said he considers Miranda and Corran the best Rebel ships. Also, even accepting your (debatable IMO) statement that Miranda is clearly better than Corran, that has no relevance on whether Corran is overcosted or not, unless you can prove Miranda is properly costed or overcosted herself.
Well as it stands I would not take this year's finalists words as revealed truth. I watched finals and with all respect to Rebel player he didn't fly good.
As for the second part of your statement it makes no sense. Whole debate about undercosting or overcosting is and always will be carried out in the context of prices and utility of others ships with comparable price, unless you can prove me there is some pricing standard that indicates what is correctly priced or what is not.