1 hour ago, clanofwolves said:

I too hope Store Championships bring new life to the meta.......but it will not. Not until the current meta isn't so d*** better than anything in the Imperial wheelhouse.

Scum is the New Empire. Rebels are still the Rebels.

The Imperials are just a side faction relegated to stealing sandwiches from blind men on the outer rim. They will win one or two small SCs here and there.....h***, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Have you followed the SC thread? There is a suprising amount of imperials (and Palpatines, even on Lambdas) placing well and winning. The season is still fresh and we will see how it developes, but so far the lists look rather nice. Of course it remains to be seen where we end up once we get to the higher competitions again, but maybe there are imperial lists that stick.

I think it's difficult to see these results coming in from the first rounds of Store Champs and criticise the metagame, it seems wide open.

Just now, Admiral Deathrain said:

Have you followed the SC thread? There is a suprising amount of imperials (and Palpatines, even on Lambdas) placing well and winning. The season is still fresh and we will see how it developes, but so far the lists look rather nice. Of course it remains to be seen where we end up once we get to the higher competitions again, but maybe there are imperial lists that stick.

Yeah, I know I say 'according to meta-wing' a lot, but... according to meta-wing the TIE/sf and TIE Defender are ranked above any Rebel ships in these first Store Champs.

1 hour ago, CRCL said:

It's just the stupidity of the Scum faction and all it's power creep that's hurting the game for me. Any time I get to play an Imperial vs Rebel, Rebel vs Rebel, or Imperial vs Imperial match-up, I have a great time.

I'm still of the opinion that the biggest mistake FFG made with X-wing was adding the third faction instead of just divvying it up in to the original two factions, Armada style.

You are my hero.

I find it interesting the dogpile of nerfs people want to put on things nowadays. Some complain it's whining, some are confused on what to, some want a dictionary sized book of fixes. It boils down to this game period is just poorly balanced and ffg has proven pretty well, with xwm at least, they can't balance a game with 3 factions that was created to support 2. The core mechanics themselves were made to be point/counterpoint between reb and imp. Then people cried I want bh's and pirates and they had to shoe horn a third balance that turned into power creep. So many bad choices have been made dancing around scum or buffing them to be playable. Scum was the death of this game it is just dying slowly and painfully over it.

15 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

You are my hero.

I find it interesting the dogpile of nerfs people want to put on things nowadays. Some complain it's whining, some are confused on what to, some want a dictionary sized book of fixes. It boils down to this game period is just poorly balanced and ffg has proven pretty well, with xwm at least, they can't balance a game with 3 factions that was created to support 2. The core mechanics themselves were made to be point/counterpoint between reb and imp. Then people cried I want bh's and pirates and they had to shoe horn a third balance that turned into power creep. So many bad choices have been made dancing around scum or buffing them to be playable. Scum was the death of this game it is just dying slowly and painfully over it.

Hogwash.

Imbalanced cards made the game imbalanced, not that those imbalanced cards have a brown back instead of a red or black back.

3 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Hogwash.

Imbalanced cards made the game imbalanced, not that those imbalanced cards have a brown back instead of a red or black back.

Believe what you like and I don't disagree imbalanced cards AND ships are the problem but it really is basic physics that balance is much easier to achieve with a single fulcrum and only 2 sides. It becomes a matter of only needing to give the other side a counter or removing the poor mechanic all together. How many times does a nerf come up and someone argues that x ships are not broken with this combo? It really is a moot point when you only have to add or subtract weight against a fixed counterpart.

3 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

Believe what you like and I don't disagree imbalanced cards AND ships are the problem but it really is basic physics that balance is much easier to achieve with a single fulcrum and only 2 sides. It becomes a matter of only needing to give the other side a counter or removing the poor mechanic all together. How many times does a nerf come up and someone argues that x ships are not broken with this combo? It really is a moot point when you only have to add or subtract weight against a fixed counterpart.

Tripods are so inherently unstable, I know.

It's absolutely worse. For everybody who really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really likes Parattanni.

It's really not that much worse for people who like Parattani.

30 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Tripods are so inherently unstable, I know.

What exactly does a fixed structure have to do with balance? Stability is the goal of balance not an inherent property of it. A tripod is a fixed point in space supported by 3 axises on the most unstable points of that fixed point. You didn't unstand what I was saying at all.

Game is in a much better place now imo. A few tweaks I would make still:

- Roll back the Palp nerf that forces him to call his shot and implement a range 3 restriction instead.

- Add a tradeoff or limitation on Sabine and/or Advanced Slam. For Sabine maybe make her ship take a damage in order to deal the one additional damage. Could also make her faction independent. Have Advanced Slam use incur a stress.

- Add a restriction to Mindlink so that ships have to form a continuous chain at range 1 of each other in order to share tokens

I think there's a big problem of the delayed-action nerf. The time between FFG realising there is a problem and the implemented changes is so long, there is a delayed effect leading to new problems. Palp aces for example. This was clearly an issue. FFG came up with a number of solutions to the problem. They can bring out upgrades that specifically seem to counter the meta (e.g. hotshot co pilot). They can directly nerf the offending cards. They can buff crappier units (e.g. the Defender boost which then needed a nerf - sigh). The problem seems to be they did all these things, which just pushes the meta too far against the top lists and the delay means we're still seeing the fixes. A TLT/missile chassis that can deny autothrusters?

5 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

What exactly does a fixed structure have to do with balance? Stability is the goal of balance not an inherent property of it. A tripod is a fixed point in space supported by 3 axises on the most unstable points of that fixed point. You didn't unstand what I was saying at all.

I did, I was just being facetious.

I think you've got a very specific view of what balance means in this context (equal faction weighting), which isn't necessarily the desired goal of game design as you could have two broken ships, one Rebel one Imperial, and have 50/50 split between the two factions that's still a **** example of game balance as they're all you ever see on the table. Whichever faction got the Jumpmaster would become a problem faction because the problem is not remotely related to which faction symbol they printed on the card but that they got the design of the card horrifically wrong.

5 minutes ago, The Inquisitor said:

I think there's a big problem of the delayed-action nerf. The time between FFG realising there is a problem and the implemented changes is so long, there is a delayed effect leading to new problems. Palp aces for example. This was clearly an issue. FFG came up with a number of solutions to the problem. They can bring out upgrades that specifically seem to counter the meta (e.g. hotshot co pilot). They can directly nerf the offending cards. They can buff crappier units (e.g. the Defender boost which then needed a nerf - sigh). The problem seems to be they did all these things, which just pushes the meta too far against the top lists and the delay means we're still seeing the fixes. A TLT/missile chassis that can deny autothrusters?

This is classic FFG - oversteer to the left to correct the fact that a year ago you were oversteering to the right.

Look at Kestal and tell me that it's not been designed as a counter to Dengaroo - not needing to keep getting arc on the opponent, ignoring Lone Wolf blanks and Overclockable focus tokens... it's a silver bullet for something they already cut the head off.

51 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

Believe what you like and I don't disagree imbalanced cards AND ships are the problem but it really is basic physics that balance is much easier to achieve with a single fulcrum and only 2 sides.

Paper

Scissors

Rock

3 sides of existential balance.

Basically, the game is much worse since Wave 8 released.

5 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

This is classic FFG - oversteer to the left to correct the fact that a year ago you were oversteering to the right.

Look at Kestal and tell me that it's not been designed as a counter to Dengaroo - not needing to keep getting arc on the opponent, ignoring Lone Wolf blanks and Overclockable focus tokens... it's a silver bullet for something they already cut the head off.

She does screw over that, true, but there is more to her. I do like the prospect of having an ICT that is actually able to hit things. Too bad they gave large bases an advantage against ions...

5 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Too bad they gave large bases an advantage against ions...

This.

It seems anti thematic as Rogue One had a few Y-Wings Ionize a massive Star Destroyer; they or other fighter/bombers should be able to one-shot ion a toilet seat or VCX without issue.

1 minute ago, clanofwolves said:

This.

It seems anti thematic as Rogue One had a few Y-Wings Ionize a massive Star Destroyer; they or other fighter/bombers should be able to one-shot ion a toilet seat or VCX without issue.

They did it by dropping tons of bombs on the thing. You need precisely one bomb (or a dedicated missile/torp) to do the same to a large base. It would be way too easy to walk a large ship out of the map if a single ion turret could ionize it every turn.

2 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

They did it by dropping tons of bombs on the thing. You need precisely one bomb (or a dedicated missile/torp) to do the same to a large base. It would be way too easy to walk a large ship out of the map if a single ion turret could ionize it every turn.

It would be such a shame too. Everyone would stop playing big ships and we'd be back to playing all the small base, arced fighters. I shudder at the mere thought

For OT:

Before the "grand nerf" Paratanni was on the verge of winning almost every single large tournament that season. That was worse than what u-boats did at the height of their glory. At least back then palp aces did manage to stop them if played well.

What changed since the nerf is that scum still have many strong options, some of the sources of rebel power (most notably Sabine) remained untouched while imperials briefly found themselves in a limbo where the lists that used to work just a while ago weren't that competitive anymore, yet old-style aces weren't viable either (thanks Sabine!).

Early SC results suggest that Imperials have once more found their footing though and even if Scum are more dominant than you might wish, the variety between the winning Scum lists is way, way better than it used to be.

So no, nerf didn't make the game worse. It didn't make it perfect either, but it's in much better place now.

7 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

They did it by dropping tons of bombs on the thing. You need precisely one bomb (or a dedicated missile/torp) to do the same to a large base. It would be way too easy to walk a large ship out of the map if a single ion turret could ionize it every turn.

This would be sweet!

2 hours ago, Cusm said:

There are so many more dials that need to be replaced over this one.

I am definitely of the mind that the biggest cause for concern are the dials of the 3 strong Scum ships (Protectorate, JM5K, Lancer, but especially JM5K), especially compared to their cost effeciency and dials of similar ships in other factions. Add in the Boosts and Barrel rolls, and these ships become incredibly tough to out play and out action economy when they run Attani Mindlink.

It is like FFG made the JM5K without factoring the dial and barrel roll into the cost. Just the opposite of the the 4 White K-Turn of original Defenders.

2 minutes ago, phild0 said:

I am definitely of the mind that the biggest cause for concern are the dials of the 3 strong Scum ships (Protectorate, JM5K, Lancer, but especially JM5K), especially compared to their cost efficiency and dials of similar ships in other factions. Add in the Boosts and Barrel rolls, and these ships become incredibly tough to out play and out action economy when they run Attani Mindlink.

It is like FFG made the JM5K without factoring the dial and barrel roll into the cost. Just the opposite of the the 4 White K-Turn of original Defenders.

This.

...cannot pen any better.

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Yeah, I know I say 'according to meta-wing' a lot, but... according to meta-wing the TIE/sf and TIE Defender are ranked above any Rebel ships in these first Store Champs.

Probably because those are both really good ships, despite what people think about Imperials.