Thanks for everyone's input on my last post regarding Soontir Fel and Mini Swarm!!! I still have yet to put together and run my first 100 point list, got a TFA Core set yesterday from a local game store but have ordered some more ships from online and they are on their way. But down to the nuts and bolts of my question. Any game based on a set amount of points or resources boils down to efficiency, setting skill aside for the moment. I have played plenty of computer games and some TCGs a LONG time ago. Normally when playing a game you find certain cards or abilities as a baseline for cost efficiency. Typically you take the most simple cards you can find to assign a point value to the benefit it provides you. Three I can easily think of are Targeting Computer, Hull Upgrade, and Shield Upgrade. This would tell me that the Target Lock Ability is worth 2 points, 1 Hull is worth 3 points, and 1 shield is worth 4 points. I understand its not as simple as this i.e. 1 Hull isn't necessarily worth 3 points but it is when added to a ship that is innately designed to not have that additional hull. Shield being immune to critical hits (Damage cards) explains why a shield is worth 1 more point than an additional hull value. I have found in my history of gaming that in casual play ~75% of a matches outcome is dictated before the match begins based off of the deck/lists/preplanned strategy and understanding of a games cost efficiency. In competitive play this margin of victory typically drops considerablly and skill/experience takes its place but normally not more than a 50/50 split.

So for you experienced X-Wing player down to the heart of the question: What cards/benefits do you guys utilize when determining action economy/point efficiency? And for beginners what does that mean bottom line?

i.e. Hull Upgrade is a card that provides one additional hull value at the cost of 3 points. And then is there a way you can process this into the point value of certain pilots? i.e. Academy Pilot is 12 points as a 3 hull ship. stand alone the ship boils down to 3 hull at the 3 point cost = 9 points but it comes on a ship that can attack and perform actions, therefore those attacks, maneuvers, and actions are all worth ~3 points. Or on the flip side is Hull Upgrade a bloated cost at 3 points because of the innate cheapness of the Academy Pilot?

Thanks in advance for any/all information you can provide from your experience.

Hull Upgrade is 3 points

Hull upgrade is overcosted at 3 points in most contexts.

edited to reflect that mistake thanks @thespaceinvader

Obviously there is a huge variety of things going on with your question. In my experience, the heart of the answer you want is Action economy!!!! Things like: PTL and a lot of green on a dial. Free actions from crew/Pilot abilities/Systems etc. Attanni mindlink. There are a ton of ways to get there and point efficiency is important, thus the meta has moved to a lot of PS8 aces with great economy. If you take a hard look at the best net lists you are going to find at least one if not multiples of these factors: Action economy, lots of efficient green dice or lots of hull to chew, efficient 3+ dice attacks, synergy among the pilots.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE CARDS:

Autothrusters; Push the Limit; Titles...; Attanni; Juke; Snap Shot; Trick Shot; Prediter; Expertise

Hull upgrade is not just 3 points. It also cost your mod slot which is a rather important slot for most ships by equipping Autothrusters, Engine Upgrade, Guidance Chips, etc. If you are putting hull upgrade on a ship without boost, think about for 1pt more you can have boost to reposition for shots and arc dodge for high PS, and block and run away to survive for lower PS. A boost action on certain pilots can save a lot more than 1 hull.

You also have to consider the ships roll in the squad. An academy pilot is there to block mostly and is not a big threat to your opponent, so protect your more important ships with those 3pts, because elsewhere they could go a long way than a hull upgrade on an academy, like an ion missile on Quickdraw, or Lone Wolf on Pure Sabbac. Besides, for 3pts you get Epsilon Pilot in the F/O at a total of 15pts with a shield, target lock, and better dial in the same roll as an academy pilot.

Great lists just dont get 100pts from their squad. You look for abilities and upgrades that get more value than their printed cost. Palpatine, pre-nerf for instance cost 8pts, but for most matches easily was worth 16pts or more. Attanni Mindlink is 1pt (3-4pts total for you squad), and the damage it causes (allowing ships to TL or boost to range 1 one) and the damage it prevents (supplying a focus for defense, or allowing a ship to now barrel or boost out of arc) easily surpasses its 3pts for the squad. So those 100pt attanni mindlink squads end up getting around 120pts worth.

If you dont get more than 3pts from your hull upgrade, for instance, just tossing it on a Ghost. All you are getting is 3pts. Your 100pt squad is worth 100pts.

So where is Hull upgrade good?

Ships that can protect it, either by green die or repositioning. Soontir Fel for instance. When you do land damage, it's usually only a single point of damage. 1 Hull upgrade can keep Soontir alive for quite awhile and strengthen more than 1/3 of your list. And with bombs everywhere, that hull upgrade can at least negate the Sabine effect for one of them.

Sabine Attack Shuttle. I've been recently flying this with VI + TLT + Chewie + Hull Upgrade. Her repositioning pilot ability is amazing as she can end up in a hundred different spots and still attack, enabling her to protect that hull upgrade. Her ability gives her boost, so I dont need engine upgrade, cant take autothrusters, so it was between Targeting Computer and Hull Upgrade. And with just a single action from my action bar, focus is the obvious choice, so no real need for TC. Just played a game with her and that hull upgrade let her survive another 3 rounds and push 4 more damage into my opponent. Not bad. Not only did I do 4 additional damage with Sabine with that hull upgrade, but my opponent was trying to kill her, letting my other ship be safe for the most part from attacks. I got 10+ pts from that single Hull Upgrade.

Don't forget veteran instincts. I think it is one of the most used cards in the game and is a bargain at one point

Stop theorizing and play some games!

@wurms Chew crew on your Sabine Shuttle is crazy good.

I second Calibri's sentiment. The cards can't do all the work for you; you have to test yourself in open "combat".

Understood that you learn from playing the game... Doesn't mean you don't learn from researching the game and taking in experienced players input.

I will get out and test myself in open combat as you call it. I will also play with random lists and cards people don't use because that is one of the only ways to truly learn the ins and outs of it all. But community discussion is just as vital thanks so far for the Input from everyone. @wurms @JSwindy

If you're trying to reconcile ship cost vs. upgrade cost there are several "cost formula" threads that lay down some serious math to make sense of it. My favorite version is by @ShadowJak ( here ), the one by @f0rbiddenc00kie is also good ( here ) and illustrates how different two formulas can be with the same answers.

Personally the way I started the game was nothing but TIE swarm so I have a persistent comparison in my mind of "is this ship+upgrades going to do more for me than spending that many points on academies?" Single Academy Pilots are definitely not cutting edge efficiency these days, but using them as a baseline still seems to work out for me.

16 hours ago, wurms said:

Hull upgrade is not just 3 points. It also cost your mod slot which is a rather important slot for most ships by equipping Autothrusters, Engine Upgrade, Guidance Chips, etc. If you are putting hull upgrade on a ship without boost, think about for 1pt more you can have boost to reposition for shots and arc dodge for high PS, and block and run away to survive for lower PS. A boost action on certain pilots can save a lot more than 1 hull.

You also have to consider the ships roll in the squad. An academy pilot is there to block mostly and is not a big threat to your opponent, so protect your more important ships with those 3pts, because elsewhere they could go a long way than a hull upgrade on an academy, like an ion missile on Quickdraw, or Lone Wolf on Pure Sabbac. Besides, for 3pts you get Epsilon Pilot in the F/O at a total of 15pts with a shield, target lock, and better dial in the same roll as an academy pilot.

Great lists just dont get 100pts from their squad. You look for abilities and upgrades that get more value than their printed cost. Palpatine, pre-nerf for instance cost 8pts, but for most matches easily was worth 16pts or more. Attanni Mindlink is 1pt (3-4pts total for you squad), and the damage it causes (allowing ships to TL or boost to range 1 one) and the damage it prevents (supplying a focus for defense, or allowing a ship to now barrel or boost out of arc) easily surpasses its 3pts for the squad. So those 100pt attanni mindlink squads end up getting around 120pts worth.

If you dont get more than 3pts from your hull upgrade, for instance, just tossing it on a Ghost. All you are getting is 3pts. Your 100pt squad is worth 100pts.

So where is Hull upgrade good?

Ships that can protect it, either by green die or repositioning. Soontir Fel for instance. When you do land damage, it's usually only a single point of damage. 1 Hull upgrade can keep Soontir alive for quite awhile and strengthen more than 1/3 of your list. And with bombs everywhere, that hull upgrade can at least negate the Sabine effect for one of them.

Sabine Attack Shuttle. I've been recently flying this with VI + TLT + Chewie + Hull Upgrade. Her repositioning pilot ability is amazing as she can end up in a hundred different spots and still attack, enabling her to protect that hull upgrade. Her ability gives her boost, so I dont need engine upgrade, cant take autothrusters, so it was between Targeting Computer and Hull Upgrade. And with just a single action from my action bar, focus is the obvious choice, so no real need for TC. Just played a game with her and that hull upgrade let her survive another 3 rounds and push 4 more damage into my opponent. Not bad. Not only did I do 4 additional damage with Sabine with that hull upgrade, but my opponent was trying to kill her, letting my other ship be safe for the most part from attacks. I got 10+ pts from that single Hull Upgrade.

I'd say Hull Upgrade is only really good when you have a pilot ability that makes specific use of it, such as Countdown or Tel Trevura. OTherwise, you're probably better off paying the extra point for Shield Upgrade.

23 hours ago, wurms said:

Palpatine, pre-nerf for instance cost 8pts, but for most matches easily was worth 16pts or more.

Well, if you want to go on the subject of "virtual" cost and reward, Palpatine was costing 29 points, not 8 points. Most list were using him on a Lambda Shuttle, and most of the time, the shuttle was not doing a lot except blocking. You needed to be really good to make the Shuttle worth something during a game.

Dial is something "huge" to take into account in making a ship useable at a given cost. Even if the stats of the Lambda Shuttle are really good, its dial make it so it is totally useless. Same thing with the new Epsilon Shuttle, yes the dial is marginaly better, but this is still not useable for Standard play. They should have included a way to make it do 180. The disapointing part is, they probably made it so because of Palpatine that they ended up nerfing anyway.

And this is also the reason why the "new" Palp is way over costed, because the only ship that can carry him are so bad, that the package is not worth it anymore.

If the stupid TIE Shuttle upgrade was not limited to 4 cost

30 minutes ago, muribundi said:

Well, if you want to go on the subject of "virtual" cost and reward, Palpatine was costing 29 points, not 8 points. Most list were using him on a Lambda Shuttle, and most of the time, the shuttle was not doing a lot except blocking. You needed to be really good to make the Shuttle worth something during a game.

Dial is something "huge" to take into account in making a ship useable at a given cost. Even if the stats of the Lambda Shuttle are really good, its dial make it so it is totally useless. Same thing with the new Epsilon Shuttle, yes the dial is marginaly better, but this is still not useable for Standard play. They should have included a way to make it do 180. The disapointing part is, they probably made it so because of Palpatine that they ended up nerfing anyway.

And this is also the reason why the "new" Palp is way over costed, because the only ship that can carry him are so bad, that the package is not worth it anymore.

If the stupid TIE Shuttle upgrade was not limited to 4 cost

No, Palp being around 16pts a match means the Lambda shuttle with Palp is worth 37pts on the battlefield. So, if Palp was a pilot for the lambda for 29pts, that would totally be worth it because the shuttle with a Palp pilot should be worth 37pts. That is the value you are getting with Palp. Now, with the Palp nerf he is towards his true value, maybe still a tad undercosted, but not ridiculously so.

He is not undercosted, he is over costed now at 29 points... He is a glorified C3P0, this does not deserve 29 points of ship just for that

@nitrobenz thank you for the links to some great write ups. I think both have their merits and are a great tool. I have read both a couple times now and have favorites them for future reference

Here's an advanced analysis of what makes up the points of certain ships by taking their stats and abilities into account in terms of cost and which ships are underpriced and point effeivient rather than overcosted.

definitely check this out for the most effeiciently costed ships

As for upgrades I'm not sure the same pricing scheme exists...