So, @MajorJuggler , maybe I didn't pay much attention when you explained it, but is the upgrade cost "tier" thing of each pilot determined in a case by case basis or is it the result of some function with their attributes?

Generally speaking everything is either 1 or 2. Cheap stuff is 1, more expensive is 2. There's some adjustment based on pilot ability though, for example Corran synergies so well with any of the good upgrades for him that his upgrade stat is tier 3. Which is bad for him, but his base cost ends up being lower to hit the same net target point cost.

So what is the mathematical reasoning behind this feature? It seems to make sense if you want to increase the cost effectiveness of some ships, since it's kinda like a Vaksai title for them. But it also kind of says that "Ship B is always better than Ship A, and the gap increases by adding more upgrades enough that their base point difference is no longer accurate." What made you come to that conclusion?

The other point of view would be: "Ship B has potential to be good, but is dependent certain upgrades that would make it cost too much, so it gets some leeway". But the Corran example seems to contradict that, since he is pretty garbage without max upgrades.

5 hours ago, Chibi-Nya said:

So what is the mathematical reasoning behind this feature? It seems to make sense if you want to increase the cost effectiveness of some ships, since it's kinda like a Vaksai title for them. But it also kind of says that "Ship B is always better than Ship A, and the gap increases by adding more upgrades enough that their base point difference is no longer accurate." What made you come to that conclusion?

The other point of view would be: "Ship B has potential to be good, but is dependent certain upgrades that would make it cost too much, so it gets some leeway". But the Corran example seems to contradict that, since he is pretty garbage without max upgrades.

It starts with the fundamental goal of trying to increase build diversity. In this case, by making upgrades actually useful on cheaper ships. By and large, this is definitely not the case in the stock game. If you were to keep the upgrade costs constant but still wanted to make upgraded generics viable, you're going to end up with a massive cost difference between the two pilots before upgrades. The cost difference would be so large that the generics might still just be better off getting spammed without any upgrades anyway. And the named pilots would still want to pile on as many upgrades as they can, because the effect is multiplicative, for relatively cheap cost. Basically, if you want Expensive Ace ComboWing, then the stock game already does that pretty well. If you want something else, then you kind of have to nuke the system from orbit and rebuild from the ground up.

On the flip side, pilots that see a massive benefit from upgrades should have to pay an appropriate cost for that. FCS is absurdly undercosted for most named pilots, it's just silly. This should also have the side effect of allowing more viable build options for some of those top tier pilots. You can drop an upgrade or two if you want, and still be reasonably cost effective. So using your example, Corran could be OK even if you didn't load him up with every possible upgrade. But this is mostly a side effect of trying to make the generics useful again.

On 16/07/2017 at 5:29 AM, MajorJuggler said:

Yeah, any electronic application at this point should be working with the XWS spec IMO, and certainly anything that serves as a squad builder app for these house rules will need to be.

Googledocs can output to a standard .csv format, so I have just been entering data like this:

(spoiler alert, X-wings get buffed!)

Hi Majorjuggler, I'm really happy to hear about that project.

Just based on this little spoiler, are you actually gonna buff most ships in resilience ? Your new xwing is now virtually a 3 hull 4 shields ship, I'm wondering what is gonna happen to the b-wing to catch up with this. Then, isn't IA even more an auto include for T65 now? How does that concur with making more upgrade cards viable ? (Basically, you think X-wings must remain basic jousters?)

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to know a little bit more about your work !

6 hours ago, Giledhil said:

Hi Majorjuggler, I'm really happy to hear about that project.

Just based on this little spoiler, are you actually gonna buff most ships in resilience ? Your new xwing is now virtually a 3 hull 4 shields ship, I'm wondering what is gonna happen to the b-wing to catch up with this. Then, isn't IA even more an auto include for T65 now? How does that concur with making more upgrade cards viable ? (Basically, you think X-wings must remain basic jousters?)

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to know a little bit more about your work !

It depends on the ship. The TIE Advanced only gets cost adjustments.

TIE Fighters get an effective increase to their damage output.

TIE interceptors get some cost changes, and most will want to take a new title to get a cheap hull upgrade, although you can still outfit them with SD+AT As before.

IA is going to be basically auto include on the X-wings, and each faction needs one ship that is just a pure jousters even at high PS. So in that regard less build options for X-wings because the mod slot will be called for, but then you'll have some options with the pilots now. Porkins with PtL and an updated version of his droid will be good.

Basically, I had to buff everything by quite a bit. It was either that or make Fel cost over 40 points, which really messes with list building. Kind if a choose your poison scenario.

I'm definitely aware that B-wings are now less durable in their current form. Still thinking only how to tweak them aside from just cost changes.

I agree with X-wing being a Jouster, you make it sound kinda like a bad thing, @Giledhil , which I guess it's true in the current game. Jouser is supposed to be a perfectly valid role! B-wing is different enough to not be redundant, I think.

What worries me is that no matter how good the stats of a ship are, it's useless if it can't point towards enemies. Soontie era taught us that it's actually pretty easy to never be in arc. I'm kind of a new player (about year and a half), maybe there's ways to cover all options with good flying with the amount of ships you'll be able to field now ... Or maybe these X-wings will have some new trick for mobility.

17 minutes ago, Chibi-Nya said:

I agree with X-wing being a Jouster, you make it sound kinda like a bad thing, @Giledhil , which I guess it's true in the current game. Jouser is supposed to be a perfectly valid role! B-wing is different enough to not be redundant, I think.

What worries me is that no matter how good the stats of a ship are, it's useless if it can't point towards enemies. Soontie era taught us that it's actually pretty easy to never be in arc. I'm kind of a new player (about year and a half), maybe there's ways to cover all options with good flying with the amount of ships you'll be able to field now ... Or maybe these X-wings will have some new trick for mobility.

I'm not saying jouster isn't a valuable role. But fluff-wise, I was under the impression xwings were more like multi role fighters.

Anyway, that was just a question because I am really interested in the outcome of MJ's work.

17 minutes ago, Chibi-Nya said:

I agree with X-wing being a Jouster, you make it sound kinda like a bad thing, @Giledhil , which I guess it's true in the current game. Jouser is supposed to be a perfectly valid role! B-wing is different enough to not be redundant, I think.

What worries me is that no matter how good the stats of a ship are, it's useless if it can't point towards enemies. Soontie era taught us that it's actually pretty easy to never be in arc. I'm kind of a new player (about year and a half), maybe there's ways to cover all options with good flying with the amount of ships you'll be able to field now ... Or maybe these X-wings will have some new trick for mobility.

I'm not saying jouster isn't a valuable role. But fluff-wise, I was under the impression xwings were more like multi role fighters.

Anyway, that was just a question because I am really interested in the outcome of MJ's work.

15 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

It starts with the fundamental goal of trying to increase build diversity. In this case, by making upgrades actually useful on cheaper ships. By and large, this is definitely not the case in the stock game. If you were to keep the upgrade costs constant but still wanted to make upgraded generics viable, you're going to end up with a massive cost difference between the two pilots before upgrades. The cost difference would be so large that the generics might still just be better off getting spammed without any upgrades anyway. And the named pilots would still want to pile on as many upgrades as they can, because the effect is multiplicative, for relatively cheap cost. Basically, if you want Expensive Ace ComboWing, then the stock game already does that pretty well. If you want something else, then you kind of have to nuke the system from orbit and rebuild from the ground up.

On the flip side, pilots that see a massive benefit from upgrades should have to pay an appropriate cost for that. FCS is absurdly undercosted for most named pilots, it's just silly. This should also have the side effect of allowing more viable build options for some of those top tier pilots. You can drop an upgrade or two if you want, and still be reasonably cost effective. So using your example, Corran could be OK even if you didn't load him up with every possible upgrade. But this is mostly a side effect of trying to make the generics useful again.

Maybe if there was a way just to track upgrade combos and then add a tax to those ships. (I.E. PTL being +1 point on Soontir Fel) As for ships that are good naked (or in boxers since there is a lot of 0 point upgrades) put in a automatic minimum point increased but allows them to equip upgrades up to the new point at no cost. (example an Academy pilot is 13 points but putting on a 1 point modification does not increase the point cost and putting hull upgrade it only becomes 15 points (not 16) but a naked or 0 point mod will still be 13 points). So far the best thing I can come up with is just use the top tables at tournaments.

55 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Maybe if there was a way just to track upgrade combos and then add a tax to those ships. (I.E. PTL being +1 point on Soontir Fel) As for ships that are good naked (or in boxers since there is a lot of 0 point upgrades) put in a automatic minimum point increased but allows them to equip upgrades up to the new point at no cost. (example an Academy pilot is 13 points but putting on a 1 point modification does not increase the point cost and putting hull upgrade it only becomes 15 points (not 16) but a naked or 0 point mod will still be 13 points). So far the best thing I can come up with is just use the top tables at tournaments.

I thought of this too, but complex costs is, well, too complicated. Current idea is a more approachable simplification, even if the generalization will cause some sacrifices here and there.

7 minutes ago, Chibi-Nya said:

I thought of this too, but complex costs is, well, too complicated. Current idea is a more approachable simplification, even if the generalization will cause some sacrifices here and there.

"perfect is the enemy of good enough"

9 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

"perfect is the enemy of good enough"

Never heard this before, but can't say I haven't learned it the hard way anyways. Very true for developers.

So is it a tier system for both upgrades and pilots? Like basically every pilot has a list and it says what each upgrade would cost? For example, PtL on Soontier costs 4, but on Leebo, it costs only 1?

32 minutes ago, piznit said:

So is it a tier system for both upgrades and pilots? Like basically every pilot has a list and it says what each upgrade would cost? For example, PtL on Soontier costs 4, but on Leebo, it costs only 1?

That is the result, but the system is that a pilot is either Tier 1, 2 or 3. And all upgrades cost more the higher the tier, doesn't matter which specific one.

5 hours ago, Chibi-Nya said:

I thought of this too, but complex costs is, well, too complicated. Current idea is a more approachable simplification, even if the generalization will cause some sacrifices here and there.

agreed, so the best rebalancing simplification I can come up with is top tier combinations get +1 point (just pull from the top cut at the most recent tournaments) and top generics get a minimum cost. But then again re-costing every pilot and upgrade card in the game isn't any less complicated.

5 hours ago, piznit said:

So is it a tier system for both upgrades and pilots? Like basically every pilot has a list and it says what each upgrade would cost? For example, PtL on Soontier costs 4, but on Leebo, it costs only 1?

Each pilot has an "upgrade" stat that I have yet to name specifically, but "tier" keeps sticking, so lets run with that. If we use the convention that "lower numbered tier = better", then each upgrade card equipped to this pilot costs:

Tier 1: the upgrade card's high value

Tier 2: the upgrade card's medium value

Tier 3: the upgrade card's low value

So, for example, on page 1 I showed Hull Upgrade, which is 4 / 5 / 6.

On a tier 1 pilot like Soontir, the upgrade costs 6 points.

On a tier 2 pilot like Biggs, it costs 5 points.

On a tier 3 pilot like a Rookie Pilot or Academy TIE, it costs 4 points.

The cost gradients on the cards tend to be fairly gradual, but when you start taking a bunch of upgrades on a tier 1 pilot it can start to add up quickly.

Now that I have typed it out, I like the above convention and calling this new stat "tier", it seems fairly intuitive, at least to me. What do you all think?

45 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

agreed, so the best rebalancing simplification I can come up with is top tier combinations get +1 point (just pull from the top cut at the most recent tournaments) and top generics get a minimum cost. But then again re-costing every pilot and upgrade card in the game isn't any less complicated.

Not expecting the meta for this thing to look anything like the current real meta. Who knows what will end up being the best? Think most "good" stuff today deserves a chance in this new environment.

EDIT: Upgrade Tier does sound like a good term. Maybe "tier" alone can work since it's not really a word used in this community to evaluate pilots/lists anyways. Could be misleading elsewhere.

14 minutes ago, Chibi-Nya said:

Not expecting the meta for this thing to look anything like the current real meta. Who knows what will end up being the best? Think most "good" stuff today deserves a chance in this new environment.

Yes, most of the "good stuff" will either get some nerfs via card text change, and won't get the same cost adjustment buffs that many other pilots are getting. I didn't want to overly nerf the 'good stuff' based on point values alone, because then it literally precludes you from being able to make the most common squads that are out there today. Mind you, some pilot configurations are seeing a marginal increase in points, but as a general rule I want you to be able to continue to play with whatever you have been playing, within reason. But you'll be fighting against a diverse range of stuff that should all have a decent chance of beating a current tier 1 list now, even if its mostly all X-wings! (At least that's the goal).

I.e. this is what will happen to the meta:

Buff updates are always better than nerf updates. Nobody likes when their stuff doesn't work anymore, but I think most people enjoy variety! It's why I agree that many good ships don't need nerfs unless they have stupid mechanics like old Manaroo. It's more exciting to see how they fare against the shiny new stuff!

If this does catch on, though, expect to see all old lists abandoned since new stuff is always more exciting than old.

I am SO interested in this and would love to see the point adjustments for everything. Sounds like an amazing project!

15 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

IA is going to be basically auto include on the X-wings, and each faction needs one ship that is just a pure jousters even at high PS. So in that regard less build options for X-wings because the mod slot will be called for

On second thought, if in the meantime you fix ordnance so that it doesn't require some modification upgrade to be interesting, that should be perfectly nice.

Speaking of the b-wing, maybe the problem lies in yhe cannon upgrade. Have you thought about pricing cannons differently depending on your primary weapon value?

Making canons interesting, especially those with secondary effects (ion, stress, tractor) may be the key to giving some ships an interesting role, and not just making them a slightly different type of jouster.

If you're looking for beta testers, my little group of players is highly interested, as it's been a while that whe're tampering with the rules, trying to make more ships/pilots viable (but obviously whe never changed ships and upgrade costs because we like to rely on squadron builder programs).

FYI

I am currently implementing a what I call it "list-checker" purely in Javascript for YASB to check the lists for my custom rules tournament.

in the tournament I am using following rules:

a - every Named card - the ones with a dot- is forbidden (pilots and upgrades)

b - every ship is unique (so no swarms of the same ship)

c - every other (other than the ones already banned from a) upgrade cards are unique (so for example no TLT spam or attanni)

these rules are influenced by the MtG formats Pauper and Highlander

maybe when I am done with by script (which adds a button to YASB) you could utulize it with your rules?

11 hours ago, Chibi-Nya said:

Not expecting the meta for this thing to look anything like the current real meta. Who knows what will end up being the best? Think most "good" stuff today deserves a chance in this new environment.

EDIT: Upgrade Tier does sound like a good term. Maybe "tier" alone can work since it's not really a word used in this community to evaluate pilots/lists anyways. Could be misleading elsewhere.

Well again I don't want to focus on just upgrades but mostly upgrade/pilot combos. Someone said that certain upgrade pilot combos become more valuable, for example VI on Whisper is more valuable than VI on Shadow Squadron Pilot even though it is the same ship.

14 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Well again I don't want to focus on just upgrades but mostly upgrade/pilot combos. Someone said that certain upgrade pilot combos become more valuable, for example VI on Whisper is more valuable than VI on Shadow Squadron Pilot even though it is the same ship.

Would require compiling the list of popular combos for every single pilot, which would be big and a mess. Why I said that just seems awfully complicated.