12 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

27 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

TL;DR version

Paint me stoopud, but 1 year later and I still can't figure out what this abbreviation means.

It took me a long time to figure this one out. I believe it is: Too Long; Didn't Read.

Too long; didn't read.

While we're on the subject of not getting abbreviations...

What the hell is 100/6? I mean, I get that it's referring to the 100 point death match, but what's the 6?

26 minutes ago, Ailowynn said:

While we're on the subject of not getting abbreviations...

What the hell is 100/6? I mean, I get that it's referring to the 100 point death match, but what's the 6?

6 Obstacles.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

Paint me stoopud, but 1 year later and I still can't figure out what this abbreviation means.

"Too long, didn't read."

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

Paint me stoopud, but 1 year later and I still can't figure out what this abbreviation means.

Target Lock; Do Reroll

15 hours ago, Kdubb said:

Target Lock; Do Reroll

Something along these lines is what my brain wanted it to be!

Another insight on power creep:

Drawn from a dozen or so major regionals this season.

Wave 1 are TIEs, TLTY-Wings and maybe the occasional TIE Advanced I guess?

To be honest, this picture - if accurate - basically ends the discussion. Power creep is clearly happening.
If anything we could argue that the Top8 is too small, maybe the Top16 would be better? It depends entirely on the samplesize.

Graph fixed now. It's 289 ships, in total, from a bunch of major regionals around US/Europe

There was a grand total of one pilot from waves 2 &3 - and it was a Jan Ors HWK!

On 1/28/2017 at 6:30 AM, Panzeh said:

I would honestly be down with missions if the game were designed with them more integrally but it really isn't right now. Armada does fine with missions though I think in that game you tend to see the same ones competitively.

I have to admit that I don't understand what you mean by your comment. I don't get the idea of having the game designed more with missions in mind. It might be best to describe where I'm coming from, though.

Designing for Death Match is a great thing to do and should be done. If you can balance ships that are balanced for just killing each other, then pretty much any form of game you play should be balanced. The trick for missions is making them balanced well and that they can stand the test of time. I've played a number of the missions that FFG does and some are still good while many are not. They would probably need to refresh the missions every so often.

What makes missions different and people taking different lists is that there are different goals with each one. With Deathmatch, it's pure efficiency at killing each other. With a selection of missions, you can have some that reward you for taking lots of ships and others that punish you for having too many ships die. When you have objectives that need to be attended to, the whole concept of what works changes. For example, if you need to get somewhere on the board to accomplish an action, Arc Dodging might not be the best thing to go with. Soontir Fel works by getting out of firing arcs and finding the right spot to be in. If that spot to not get shot at is not close to where he needs to be, then it's not going to help him in accomplishing his objective. Sure, he might not get shot at, but he isn't getting closer to victory, either.

I believe that ships like the T-65 X-wing would do well with missions. The X-wing is a middle of the road ship that has many favorable aspects, but nothing really outstanding. If you were to put it in game where it's not about killing as efficiently as possible, the X-wing has a chance to shine. It's maneuverable, has good firepower, and decent survivability. It doesn't need to dodge arcs.

If you made a decent spread of missions, I think the ideal list would have between 4-6 ships in it. You would probably have at least one ace and then a mix of different types of ships. The entire meta of what was good would be different based on that. Right now it seems to be 2-3 ships way things are and that would most likely change. Less spent on expensive aces and more spent on middling guys.

4 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

I have to admit that I don't understand what you mean by your comment. I don't get the idea of having the game designed more with missions in mind. It might be best to describe where I'm coming from, though.

One aspect of X-Wing is that the ships have to keep moving, which makes taking objective locations difficult; you can't really entrench yourself in a spot. Also, the number of models on each side is small. This puts constraints on how complex mission objectives can be. And another aspect is that a game of X-Wing represents a skirmish that is probably part of a larger battle. This larger battle may have several strategic and tactical considerations, but the goal of three ships fighting another tiny squad of three ships will usually be simple: get rid of the opponents.

None of this means that X-Wing is unsuitable for missions. They just need special consideration. I was thinking about how GW's Lord of the Rings game at one point solved the objective issue: there was a list of six (?) general battle scenarios, like Take the Hill, Kingslayer, etc. and before a game you would roll a die (or "a dice" in the GW lingo) to decide which would be played, or so the tournaments went AFAIK. That is difficult to do in X-Wing - see above. But if it was done, I expect that ships like the X-Wing would become more attractive.

The big advantage here would be that maybe choosing a squad would become more like the decisions an actual military leader would have to make. As it stands, the player is more a mathematician than a captain. Some historical boardgames are really good at putting the player in the seat of the military leaders and making them face the historical dilemmas. X-Wing does not give the impression that it offers the problems that supposedly would come up in a Star Wars battle. Its problem/solution cycle is defined by fairly abstract game mechanics.

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Another insight on power creep:

Drawn from a dozen or so major regionals this season.

I'm curious what percentage of those Wave 1 pilots are named Biggs.

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Another insight on power creep:

Drawn from a dozen or so major regionals this season.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

To be honest, this picture - if accurate - basically ends the discussion. Power creep is clearly happening.

Just to play devil's advocate, one other possible explanation would be that players gravitate towards the newest ships simply because they are new. OTOH, I don't believe my own refutation for a minute.

1 hour ago, Verlaine said:

One aspect of X-Wing is that the ships have to keep moving, which makes taking objective locations difficult; you can't really entrench yourself in a spot.

Unexplored design space!!!

28 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

I'm curious what percentage of those Wave 1 pilots are named Biggs.

Very few, it's mostly TLT Y-Wings and a handful of TIE Fighters.

1 hour ago, Verlaine said:

One aspect of X-Wing is that the ships have to keep moving, which makes taking objective locations difficult; you can't really entrench yourself in a spot.

But "entrenched" is not the same as "controlling."

For example, imagine a 3"x3" token on the playmat. (Or two of them, one placed by each player.) At the end of combat, count the ships for each player with that token in-arc (i.e., "controlled"). Whichever player has more ships on the token wins the round and 5 VP.

One strategy would be to have a good number of ships and take "control" of the token in waves. Another strategy would be to have two highly maneuverable ships that can maintain constant control. And so on.

And there are lots of variations possible; e.g.; whomever has control may move the token by X increment. And so on.

1 hour ago, Verlaine said:

One aspect of X-Wing is that the ships have to keep moving, which makes taking objective locations difficult; you can't really entrench yourself in a spot. Also, the number of models on each side is small. This puts constraints on how complex mission objectives can be. And another aspect is that a game of X-Wing represents a skirmish that is probably part of a larger battle. This larger battle may have several strategic and tactical considerations, but the goal of three ships fighting another tiny squad of three ships will usually be simple: get rid of the opponents.

Your background in historical war games comes out! Jeff Wilder does make good points. You don't really need to take and hold objectives such as in historical war games. It becomes something different and very do-able. Maybe it's escort the Senator's Shuttle off the map. Maybe it's claiming ownership of satellite tokens that then switch back and forth. It could be kill a specific ship of the enemy's. Blow up specific objectives. Capture the tokens and get off board. There are a number of ways to do it. They would have to be play tested very well and there can be safeguards in there to stop things like Suicide Runs. People who know more than me and are better than me (like Babaganoosh) know of a number of tools and tricks you can throw in to establish some pretty fair and reasonable mechanics that are not too easy to bypass.

One comment that someone else posted on the page before stated that if this was done then there would just be a new meta that dealt with the various missions. I do agree with this....but....think it would be a lot wider open than it is. Right now, it's really about destroying the other ship in the most efficient manner. With a number of different objectives and missions...there are a number of ways to do things. It's not just about finding the one way to beat something. There should be a lot more possible ways to make something work and sort it to your own strength. You can have some offensive minded lists that do better by destroying a significant portion of the enemy and then having the speed to get to where you need to and finishing the mission. There can be mini swarms that try to outflank and capture objectives while other parts of the list joust the enemy. Having 4 solid ships like 4 T-65's would be viable. Utility ships that use things such as bombs, ion weapons, etc become more useful as they can assist in the overall mission. I can see HWKs becoming a bigger deal as their special buffs make a bigger difference (such as going at PS 12). Yes, there will be a new meta and some "netlists", but it would be a wider variety of list types that could work.

40 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Unexplored design space!!!

Hera U-Wing.

1 hour ago, numb3rc said:

Hera U-Wing.

Slightly explored design space!!! We need more hairy u-wings!!!!

5 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Another insight on power creep:

Drawn from a dozen or so major regionals this season.

Like Darth Meanie one of my first thoughts was you need to account for people wanting to play new stuff. E.g. meta vibe seems to be like Brobots OK, but boring. Still probably the greater effect is power level (more tokens, more red dice).

As for the graph. Why are there so few wave 2 and 3 (This wave contains Lambda)?

Well firstly it's a nice theory but holds no water - this is what made cut at 60/70/100+ player Regionals not playing the new stuff just for funsies.

And as previously stated, i count Lambdas with Palpatine as dating from release of Palp, and Defenders with /x7 as at release of /x7. Similarly any scum versions of Y/Z etc count as from Most Wanted.

No wave 2 at all, 1 Rebel HWK from wave 3.

2 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Well firstly it's a nice theory but holds no water - this is what made cut at 60/70/100+ player Regionals not playing the new stuff just for funsies.

And as previously stated, i count Lambdas with Palpatine as dating from release of Palp, and Defenders with /x7 as at release of /x7. Similarly any scum versions of Y/Z etc count as from Most Wanted.

No wave 2 at all, 1 Rebel HWK from wave 3.

How much of that graph is just Scum?

Faction split is not hugely out of whack. I think I shared that on page 16 of the Regionals results thread, along with pilot/upgrade breakdown

4 hours ago, numb3rc said:

Hera U-Wing.

Already been running that