Yeah, killing some scrub like porkins in ANH or red 5 in rogue 1 doesnt really translate to squadron decimating powers

Also be really **** dumb if single ships cpuld kill bomber squadrons by themselves (raider excepted)

Because then why bother?

Well atm, its why bother with big ships at all. Heck why bother with ships at all. 134 squadrons and 3 transports and 1 nebulon and another small ship that totals 6 attack dice.

Who says they gotta kill them all. How about just not be total fodder for squadrons?

This is the point where I once again note that the Michigan Regionals were won by a fleet with a super decked out HMC80 and 4 A-Wings (2 of which were Shara and Tycho). This point seems to have been overlooked in the desire to continue crying on the internet, but actual competitive results disagree with both the claim that big ships don't work and that you need max squadrons to be effective.

I actually tried a variant of that list. Although, I could not make it work against the mass squadrons. Part of that though was being unable to kill a Z.

What does the rest of the regionals data say?

I mean, this is a good data point, but does that mean the rest of them are dominated by high squadron values? There have been a ton of regionals.

There has been a ton of different lists arriving in top 4 in the regionals.

Last time I checked, it was pretty well mixed and ran the gamut from light to medium to heavy squadrons.

I don't think the "squadron heavy" game is as problematic, or as prevalent, as people are saying.

FFG regional was won by a list with just Tycho and Shara...

Max squadron lists aren't as prevalent as many people seem to think. I'm sure some local metas might give certain impressions. But I see numerous 60-100 point fighter screens doing well.

Yeah, killing some scrub like porkins in ANH or red 5 in rogue 1 doesnt really translate to squadron decimating powers

Also be really **** dumb if single ships cpuld kill bomber squadrons by themselves (raider excepted)

Because then why bother?

Well atm, its why bother with big ships at all. Heck why bother with ships at all. 134 squadrons and 3 transports and 1 nebulon and another small ship that totals 6 attack dice.

Who says they gotta kill them all. How about just not be total fodder for squadrons?

This is the point where I once again note that the Michigan Regionals were won by a fleet with a super decked out HMC80 and 4 A-Wings (2 of which were Shara and Tycho). This point seems to have been overlooked in the desire to continue crying on the internet, but actual competitive results disagree with both the claim that big ships don't work and that you need max squadrons to be effective.

I actually tried a variant of that list. Although, I could not make it work against the mass squadrons. Part of that though was being unable to kill a Z.

What does the rest of the regionals data say?

I mean, this is a good data point, but does that mean the rest of them are dominated by high squadron values? There have been a ton of regionals.

Shmitty has just such a spreadsheet compiled of the wave 4 (and later) Regionals data. Average number of squadrons in a winning fleet is just under 6. That means you've got a pretty wide range of squadron approaches being viable (as there are some highs and lows in there) but the average is 5 and some change. If squadron-heavy was the apex predator fleet archetype that just blew everything else out of the water, the average would be much higher.

There really is a very good reason why they use up all that room on board Capital ships for all those fighters.

There has been a ton of different lists arriving in top 4 in the regionals.

Last time I checked, it was pretty well mixed and ran the gamut from light to medium to heavy squadrons.

I don't think the "squadron heavy" game is as problematic, or as prevalent, as people are saying.

Actually, if you look at the squadron average size, it gets progressively larger and larger EVERY step as you go 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

Other data points are largely unchanged or cannot be determined: cr90s apparently consist of wins 78%, ISDs drop in success over each step, but Mc80s are up, by large swings, meaning that there's really not enough data...

Which makes it really hard to use these for numbers.

Rhymerballs are over performing, and Imps win 66% of the time.

Secondly, some of the labels don't really correspond to information we need.

What is Rebel Swarm? How many lists had BCC?

Anyway, if you wanted it. Squadron average size gets progressively larger and larger on each step.

Highest winners and top4 are Rhymerball, then rebel carriers. So... I think that does exclaim that with our little data, squadrons are doing statically better than normal.

Page 2 again, average number of squadrons simply increases, look at the graph.

Actually, if you look at the squadron average size, it gets progressively larger and larger EVERY step as you go 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

Other data points are largely unchanged or cannot be determined: cr90s apparently consist of wins 78%, ISDs drop in success over each step, but Mc80s are up, by large swings, meaning that there's really not enough data...

Which makes it really hard to use these for numbers.

Rhymerballs are over performing, and Imps win 66% of the time.

Secondly, some of the labels don't really correspond to information we need.

What is Rebel Swarm? How many lists had BCC?

Anyway, if you wanted it. Squadron average size gets progressively larger and larger on each step.

Highest winners and top4 are Rhymerball, then rebel carriers. So... I think that does exclaim that with our little data, squadrons are doing statically better than normal.

Page 2 again, average number of squadrons simply increases, look at the graph.

Are you looking at last season's data?

Because this season its the rebels that are winning 66% of the regionals, and only 49% of the Top 8 Rebel lists contain a CR-90 thus far.

So, i'm just curious if we're all on the same page data-wise.

Actually, if you look at the squadron average size, it gets progressively larger and larger EVERY step as you go 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

Other data points are largely unchanged or cannot be determined: cr90s apparently consist of wins 78%, ISDs drop in success over each step, but Mc80s are up, by large swings, meaning that there's really not enough data...

Which makes it really hard to use these for numbers.

Rhymerballs are over performing, and Imps win 66% of the time.

Secondly, some of the labels don't really correspond to information we need.

What is Rebel Swarm? How many lists had BCC?

Anyway, if you wanted it. Squadron average size gets progressively larger and larger on each step.

Highest winners and top4 are Rhymerball, then rebel carriers. So... I think that does exclaim that with our little data, squadrons are doing statically better than normal.

Page 2 again, average number of squadrons simply increases, look at the graph.

Are you looking at last season's data?

Because this season its the rebels that are winning 66% of the regionals, and only 49% of the Top 8 Rebel lists contain a CR-90 thus far.

So, i'm just curious if we're all on the same page data-wise.

Apparently this is last seasons.

Well, this seasons is even easier.

BCC increases Fromm 39% all to 53% winners, with moderate increase in the middle. In contrast, to plot another point of reference, Demolisher sees no change.

Avg Sq size here again increases linearly from all to winner. Up to EVEN HIGHER than last season, 7.41 and 8.00, instead of the average of 6 or so from last season. Which, last season had the same linear graph for success of squadron largeness.

Squadron size as median and mode graph also increase linearly, up to 8 and 9 at the top. That's incredible!

Rieekan seems an enormous glut in the middle top8 top half and top4 and increases from 31% to 40%, although he can be used for many things, he is the go-to admiral usually for squadron builds. (Dodonna seems no change)

And rebels 66% in this season.

Actually, if you look at the squadron average size, it gets progressively larger and larger EVERY step as you go 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

Other data points are largely unchanged or cannot be determined: cr90s apparently consist of wins 78%, ISDs drop in success over each step, but Mc80s are up, by large swings, meaning that there's really not enough data...

Which makes it really hard to use these for numbers.

Rhymerballs are over performing, and Imps win 66% of the time.

Secondly, some of the labels don't really correspond to information we need.

What is Rebel Swarm? How many lists had BCC?

Anyway, if you wanted it. Squadron average size gets progressively larger and larger on each step.

Highest winners and top4 are Rhymerball, then rebel carriers. So... I think that does exclaim that with our little data, squadrons are doing statically better than normal.

Page 2 again, average number of squadrons simply increases, look at the graph.

Are you looking at last season's data?

Because this season its the rebels that are winning 66% of the regionals, and only 49% of the Top 8 Rebel lists contain a CR-90 thus far.

So, i'm just curious if we're all on the same page data-wise.

Apparently this is last seasons.

To be fair, your analysis of last season's data is spot on.

The new data (and to a lesser extent my personal observations) give me hope that the meta is changing and pivoting away from the extremes to one in which more possibilities are available.

Actually, if you look at the squadron average size, it gets progressively larger and larger EVERY step as you go 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

Other data points are largely unchanged or cannot be determined: cr90s apparently consist of wins 78%, ISDs drop in success over each step, but Mc80s are up, by large swings, meaning that there's really not enough data...

Which makes it really hard to use these for numbers.

Rhymerballs are over performing, and Imps win 66% of the time.

Secondly, some of the labels don't really correspond to information we need.

What is Rebel Swarm? How many lists had BCC?

Anyway, if you wanted it. Squadron average size gets progressively larger and larger on each step.

Highest winners and top4 are Rhymerball, then rebel carriers. So... I think that does exclaim that with our little data, squadrons are doing statically better than normal.

Page 2 again, average number of squadrons simply increases, look at the graph.

Are you looking at last season's data?

Because this season its the rebels that are winning 66% of the regionals, and only 49% of the Top 8 Rebel lists contain a CR-90 thus far.

So, i'm just curious if we're all on the same page data-wise.

Apparently this is last seasons.

To be fair, your analysis of last season's data is spot on.

The new data (and to a lesser extent my personal observations) give me hope that the meta is changing and pivoting away from the extremes to one in which more possibilities are available.

I just posted with this seasons. And combining the two I think makes it even more apparent. (I have bias though).

I don't disagree with your analysis of the data, but there are a few aberrations in the methodology and data itself that I want to point out.

Firstly, we have overrepresentative data of the winners, since some of the tournaments reported only provided us with winning lists. Since there are only so many winners, in terms of "calling the meta" I wouldn't necessarily say that the winners are representative of the meta. Maybe more the "counter-meta".

Now, there are a few tournament reports that have come out that skew the other way than the current data and they haven't been added yet due to shmitty being busy. We'll see how the analytics change after that.

Best as I can tell, the average number of squadrons brought is 6. That seems to hold about true all the way up through Top 4, and then seems to shoot up to around an 8 for winners. (7ish for Rebs, 8 for Imps).

You pointed out that slightly over half the winning lists had a BCC, but 67% of winning lists had APT as well, and not all of that can be attributed to Demo, but rather it seems to be pretty popular everywhere.

33% of Winning lists contained a big ship. I know that metric has gone up because there have been a few regional winners since this date that contained a large ship, notably in Detroit.

I'll agree that squadrons are powerful, but I think that with Wave 5 (which is largely unreported in this document so far) there will be some equalization and new things to try out.

Doesn't someone on the Death Star say "But they're Evading our Turbolasers" ?

Sure they were evading them. But it's also not like they just got to only fire once. Like I said about the ISD, it has ton's of turbo laser emplacements. It's kind of silly to say that you can only shoot a squadron once, right? I don't mind squadrons, but I think that ships should just be able to defend themselves a little better. I'm pretty new to Armada, so I don't exactly have a solution other than maybe some kind of point defense, defensive retrofit that would maybe be an upgrade in a future expansion that would let you roll against multiple squadrons at the same time, roll several times against squadrons that are in range, etc. But at the same time, I hate upgrades that become auto includes like that (like auto thrusters in X-wing).

Doesn't someone on the Death Star say "But they're Evading our Turbolasers" ?

Sure they were evading them. But it's also not like they just got to only fire once. Like I said about the ISD, it has ton's of turbo laser emplacements. It's kind of silly to say that you can only shoot a squadron once, right? I don't mind squadrons, but I think that ships should just be able to defend themselves a little better. I'm pretty new to Armada, so I don't exactly have a solution other than maybe some kind of point defense, defensive retrofit that would maybe be an upgrade in a future expansion that would let you roll against multiple squadrons at the same time

I bring this up because you said you're new, but you are aware that when a ship attacks enemy squadrons, it attacks all enemy squadrons in that arc, correct?

I agree that focus-firing down a specific squadron is not something ships do well, though. An Instigator Raider with Kallus can do all right at it, but otherwise... not really.

Kallus and CF commands can burn through squadrons pretty rapidly.

2 blue die anti squad dice can usually be pretty reliable, especially if leading shots is on the ship.

The best hope though is a mix of anti-squadron and squadrons of your own.

That's one of the reasons Defenders are so nice, because they are good dogfighters and still pose a 75% chance of a threat to a ship.

Doesn't someone on the Death Star say "But they're Evading our Turbolasers" ?

Sure they were evading them. But it's also not like they just got to only fire once. Like I said about the ISD, it has ton's of turbo laser emplacements. It's kind of silly to say that you can only shoot a squadron once, right? I don't mind squadrons, but I think that ships should just be able to defend themselves a little better. I'm pretty new to Armada, so I don't exactly have a solution other than maybe some kind of point defense, defensive retrofit that would maybe be an upgrade in a future expansion that would let you roll against multiple squadrons at the same time, roll several times against squadrons that are in range, etc. But at the same time, I hate upgrades that become auto includes like that (like auto thrusters in X-wing).

The Anti-Squadron battery dice is representative not of a single turbolaser blast, but of a bunch of attacks that are made with point defense, turbolasers, missiles, countermeasures and screens.

"Hit" symbols tell us how effective they were at that point in time.

For the most part, unless you're dedicated for it - the answer is most likely to be "not very".

The Victory Star Destroyer does its best to bring ALL of its battery guns to bear on the squadrons that are flying down its flank - and that includes the massive anti-ship turbolasers that are mounted on the side (this is why its not firing those guns at an enemy ship, right?)

The thing is, they're so unsuitable for the task, that they only grant a fraction of a die each - so when you add everything up. Ohey! A Die worth!

I mean, you could basically say that the Death Star had only 1 Anti-Squadron battery die... It could kill fighters... Eventually, if they were lucky, and had enough shots that they were able to line them all up (as they did, when the X-Wings were suddenly flying in a straight line)...

But it had a bunch of Turbolasers, that were probably representative of a massive hull battery... But terrible anti-squadron effectiveness.

In short.

Dice used =/= Shots made

Dice used = Relative effectiveness.

We havn't evne agreed how many Ships are in a Squadron represented on the base - that hit that took a hull point off those X-Wings might have been a Turbolaser vaporising one X-Wing, and a second X-Wing detonating by flying through the debris - or even a third taking a hit from smaller battery fire at the same time...

Perhaps the X-Wing wasn't destroyed? Perhaps it was damaged and had to peel off, ala-Wedge Death-Star-One.... Still reduces the overall survivability of the Squadron, as the squadron has fewer members...

When you boil things down to averages and probabilities and fractions - keeping the dice and the game mechanics as mere representatives rather than hard translations.... Things make more sense.

I am all for different upgrades to go ahead and shape things in the game. I think the difference is I'm willing to give things goes right now.

Because mostly, this seems like the "debacle" we had raised when the MC30 Torpedo variant dared to have a Turbolaser Slot, instead of the Ion Cannon Slot that people assumed should be there... That the Turbo was just a big mistake.....

Things exist for the game creators reasons - we are not privvy to those reasons, or the decisions to come. I'm reluctant to "fix" things that may be intended, or, possible, even an oversight that has already been corrected......

Abstraction!

Wilfully admit, I'm a huge biased fan of Abstraction...

Because this stuff is so cool when I think of the action scenes and space battles of the movie in my head

Agreed. As a fan of both crunchy mechanics in games, and super thematic games in general, abstraction is the best.

And really, really hard for some people to get.

I don't disagree with your analysis of the data, but there are a few aberrations in the methodology and data itself that I want to point out.

Firstly, we have overrepresentative data of the winners, since some of the tournaments reported only provided us with winning lists. Since there are only so many winners, in terms of "calling the meta" I wouldn't necessarily say that the winners are representative of the meta. Maybe more the "counter-meta".

Now, there are a few tournament reports that have come out that skew the other way than the current data and they haven't been added yet due to shmitty being busy. We'll see how the analytics change after that.

Best as I can tell, the average number of squadrons brought is 6. That seems to hold about true all the way up through Top 4, and then seems to shoot up to around an 8 for winners. (7ish for Rebs, 8 for Imps).

You pointed out that slightly over half the winning lists had a BCC, but 67% of winning lists had APT as well, and not all of that can be attributed to Demo, but rather it seems to be pretty popular everywhere.

33% of Winning lists contained a big ship. I know that metric has gone up because there have been a few regional winners since this date that contained a large ship, notably in Detroit.

I'll agree that squadrons are powerful, but I think that with Wave 5 (which is largely unreported in this document so far) there will be some equalization and new things to try out.

Well, you're kind of extrapolating here for wave5. Whereas we now have two strong correlating data points for TWO seasons.

So, I would say the "don't worry" tacked on seems to be... premature?

Please take a look at the points I mentioned also. Can you refute that is what they describe? Either way, even if you get the winners, the winners are largely reporting more squadrons.

Third, you can take the arguments about how off the data is exactly your opposite side also, so in this case, we either agree to use the data cuz its the best we have, or we simply determine that we don't want to make observations from the data, especially when it tells something we might not want to hear, and that there is no point in bringing up evidence, which is what people all screamed about when we talked without data.

circular.

As for APTs: You raised this point. I'd point out that nearly any build can have APTs. Bomber lists use them for small ships like MC30s and Raiders. deMSU uses it. Mothma Rebel swarm uses them. Heck, even VSDs and things can use them.

I'd say the prevalence of APT is relatively irrelevant to our discussion about squadrons, although its nice to point out that this is an incredibly strong upgrade.

Also, I'm not very fond of how people don't respond to the data now that's its here for you to see.

Yes, the data does support that this is​ a fairly decent model of the "squadron heavy" Star Wars universe. ​

To be fair with the Imperial fleets, there are only 5 Regional winners so far and 8 squadrons average means you've likely got some 10+squadron true Rhymerballs in there alongside some bog-standard 6ish TIE Fighters and the like. I'd love to see all the Regional-winning fleets posted combined together somewhere so there's less guesswork involved in combining them together for averages.

In my meta it's pretty common for newer/less experienced players to roll with very few squadrons and then get rolled by squadron-heavier approaches. I saw some of that at the Regional I attended. You can't really factor player skill into a spreadsheet or quantify it well, though, so there's a lot of guesswork that can easily be shrugged off involved in that. In short, it's very easy to draw the conclusions you want to draw from the data available.

I'm very curious to see where it goes as we get more wave 5 Regionals under our belts. Back in wave 2 it was initially lots of Ackbar, then lots of Clonisher, then lots of Rieekan all within the timeframe of a single wave of Regionals season. The overall meta tends to adapt very slowly and it seems obvious from the numerous fights we have on this forum about flotillas that people still aren't taking the threat they pose seriously and equipping their fleets to destroy them, hoping they're just a passing thing. Once the meta starts to catch up with that and new archetypes emerge, that may very well change.

Yes, the data does support that this is​ a fairly decent model of the "squadron heavy" Star Wars universe. ​

Greatfrito, there's been a large amount of discussion about this point, and its not relevant to the discussion at hand. Its also an opinion. Since we got to talking about data. Go Bring up some data to support your point. Images, and books and resource materials.

To be fair with the Imperial fleets, there are only 5 Regional winners so far and 8 squadrons average means you've likely got some 10+squadron true Rhymerballs in there alongside some bog-standard 6ish TIE Fighters and the like. I'd love to see all the Regional-winning fleets posted combined together somewhere so there's less guesswork involved in combining them together for averages.

In my meta it's pretty common for newer/less experienced players to roll with very few squadrons and then get rolled by squadron-heavier approaches. I saw some of that at the Regional I attended. You can't really factor player skill into a spreadsheet or quantify it well, though, so there's a lot of guesswork that can easily be shrugged off involved in that. In short, it's very easy to draw the conclusions you want to draw from the data available.

I'm very curious to see where it goes as we get more wave 5 Regionals under our belts. Back in wave 2 it was initially lots of Ackbar, then lots of Clonisher, then lots of Rieekan all within the timeframe of a single wave of Regionals season. The overall meta tends to adapt very slowly and it seems obvious from the numerous fights we have on this forum about flotillas that people still aren't taking the threat they pose seriously and equipping their fleets to destroy them, hoping they're just a passing thing. Once the meta starts to catch up with that and new archetypes emerge, that may very well change.

You can never factor player skills, its not intended to. And its circular logic. If you're good, you pick lists you think have an advantage. Please don't make this your arguments. Can we talk about the data?

I've played Xwing also, we had these talks about what the data meant in Xwing as well. Everyone understand we work with imperfect and small sets of data. And if you'd want to do more, we would need to collect it, but no one is that invested nor paid to do so here. So, we try and make use of what we have.

Is this irrevocable proof? Heck no! But I would definitely not discount it because you can find reasons to that aren't data based.

You also have here two seasons of wave3 and wave4 that seem to say they were strongly influenced by squadrons. By combining the two data sets you have much more than 5 winners. And the graphs are exactly similar, for TWO DIFFERENT TIME PERIODS of the same wave 3 4 material.

I can agree with you wave5 may change, but that doesn't undermine (and that's what I think you intend) my analysis of the data saying that squadrons are winning more than their average weight over the entirely of the last release.

Everyone wants to argue when its opinion. Well, here's some data, and you know how the best way to counter data is? To ignore it and let it get buried. Maybe that reminds you of some current world events.