7 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Strikers are probably the worst example to use for your opinion on prices. Strikers moving last are incredibly degenerate - countdown and sabacc are lower initiative and more expensive than duchess presumably for a reason. But, ailerons makes them one of the very few ships where you'd actually consider paying 4 points to move up to i3. If 5 ship rebel starts to be common, opinions on black squadron scouts should (but probably won't) invert.

Right. I'd argue that "right now", all of the higher init generics are basically wasted points, other than cases where you "need" to waste those points to get a talent slot for a talent that is - by definition now - too cheap (trick shot, juke).

The fact that only i1, i5 and i6 matter much right now doesn't *have* to the case, but conversely I don't see it changing any time soon. FFG doesn't seem to want to give us i5/i6 generics, nor restrict powerful pilot abilities to lower initiatives. Thus even if we do have a few powerful abilities on i1's and i2's, the fact is you can "have it all" and get an i5/i6 with a great ability, and many of those pilots/abilities/chassis get stronger at high initiative as well, making it a pretty easy win-win. It's not shocking that this is the majority of what we're seeing fielded even outside the "I'm an ACE" effect.

FFG certainly *could* price these super-aces through the roof, but it seems pretty clearly by design that stuff like Luke, Poe, Boba, Vader, etc. feels strong in all aspects *and* sees significant table time. Given that, I'm not sure how we really dig out way out of the "generic initiatives don't matter" situation, and realistically I can't call FFG wrong for the balance they have struck here since I imagine the current setup appeals more to the majority of players.

I'd personally be curious in a balance that was more about powerful abilities on low initiatives and high initiatives "just" getting the board knowledge advantages. That seems much easier to balance against one another than trying to figure out how valuable ex. Luke is against all combinations of 1-7 Tie Fighers then trying to pick a middle-ground that works "okay" for both the start and end of the game... Unfortunately there's significant thematic issues with that solution so I doubt we'll see it.

This is one of the reasons why I think people need to get over the notion that there's some sort of "one correct/balanced price" for things. In reality there are tons of covariant factors in the game that prevent this simple notion of pricing being the case. For almost every case where someone can come up with a clear example where something is the "wrong" cost, you can come up with another one where it's clearly "wrong" in the other direction. At a certain point you have to accept that most upgrades for instance need to just be priced for somewhere just under their peak utility... that means they are going to be garbage on a lot of ships and stapled to a few still, but that's okay.

And no, variable pricing is not the solution to everything...it's tempting, but the "there's no true correct price" argument strikes even more fundamentally the more you try and break things up; you're just creating the illusion that you have some idea of the complex optimization space.

Let's be real for a second: the most important thing is that the meta gets shaken up every once in a while. All our grandiose notions of "everything is viable" (and don't try to define what that means too clearly else it falls apart) don't even pass the smell test in hyperspace, let alone extended. Honestly if every few months we just got a points update that randomly increased and decreased most upgrades by a few points with a bias based on how commonly it was fielded, that would probably accomplish the goal nearly as well as whatever the process is now

1 minute ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

You know they won't play 5 ship rebel in mass, since it's not 3 ship and they don't move last.

And my point is that as Strikers benefit from init more than other ships, why is I1 to i5 linear, with a free ability thown in at i5? Surely then either Duchess should cost more, or Scouts should cost less.

Duchess should not cost more. The problem isn’t the named strikers, or their prices, it is that the genetics are hard pressed to return their value. Same as the Alpha Squadron interceptor. They are both 34 points for an I1, because they didn’t want 6 3 dice ships possible. But they are basically insta gibbed by high I torp carriers.

Heck, so are the named strikers if you fly them poorly.

No, the issue is that generics with high maneuver and low health just don’t work. The only genetics you see doing well tend to be those who can take a few shots reliably. This means X-wings, Y-wings, Bombers, or even Lambdas do fine as generics. But ships that rely on green dice and shot avoidance just do not work at I1.

You can get 5 double tap Y’s in a list, and 5 strikers in a list. Higher initiative ships can easily remove 1+ strikers before they even shoot. Not so with the Y’s. Heck even the infamous Tripsilons would struggle to remove one before it shot.

1 minute ago, millertime059 said:

You can get 5 double tap Y’s in a list, and 5 strikers in a list. Higher initiative ships can easily remove 1+ strikers before they even shoot. Not so with the Y’s. Heck even the infamous Tripsilons would struggle to remove one before it shot.

Right, it's hard to overstate how warping initiative-killing is on the ability to cost things appropriately. I personally wish they had entirely done away with it in 2.0 rather than just make "bands", but certainly that would have been a more fundamental change.

But indeed the fact that one or even more generics can get wiped off the board before even getting a return shot is part of what warps the notion of "efficiency" squads being able to counter aces with deep bids. Obviously if I have *so many more* ships than you that I don't even care if I lose one or two before they shoot you can still swing the pendulum *eventually*, but I think it's clear that having 1-3 more "efficient" ships than a strong triple ace squad is still not enough since by the time you're into turn 2-3 of combat you are usually looking at pretty even numbers again and the aces are just hilariously better ships.

Iden is the only really solid counter to this problem, and honestly we still haven't seen Tie Swarm do particularly well so far competitively compared to aces. And even in Iden squads people tend to run the named guys with abilities rather than "generic efficiency" because the abilities (read: sometimes I can throw 3 dice! but 2 dice totally matter guys, believe me :P) are almost always worth it even over another body.

Oh God battle meditation...I guess I was a republic warrior all along?

I think spare parts are hilarious! What could possibly go wrong

2 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I think spare parts are hilarious! What could possibly go wrong

They're trying to get me to put BB-8 on Poe, aren't they?

Or, more likely, SLAM to drop a debris cloud on someone from where ever and dump the locks they just acquired.

That's a pretty limited view, though. How about on a bunch of generic BB droid T-70s? Debris clouds for everyone! More Trickshot triggers!

I think people are going to really hate it.

1 minute ago, gennataos said:

I think people are going to really hate it.

..and that's why we love it.

Depending on pricing... Luke with R2D2 seems REAL good.

I just want to say welcome to page 777.

16 minutes ago, gennataos said:

I think people are going to really hate it.

Thanks, I hate it.

1 minute ago, Brunas said:

Thanks, I hate it.

"Now I have to buy out of faction to run my Spare Parts Poe/Luke/Kavil! #ffggreed"

It'll probably be 4-6 points.

2 minutes ago, impspy said:

"Now I have to buy out of faction to run my Spare Parts Poe/Luke/Kavil! #ffggreed"

Thanks, I needed the chuckle.

Just now, Bucknife said:

It'll probably be 4-6 points.

2? 😋

2 minutes ago, impspy said:

"Now I have to buy out of faction to run my Spare Parts Poe/Luke/Kavil! #ffggreed"

Oh crap, I didn't think about scum Y's!

I think I saw a very similar token in the spread for that funky Resistance transport thing, so Poe might be safely in-faction.

37 minutes ago, punkUser said:

Iden is the only really solid counter to this problem, and honestly we still haven't seen Tie Swarm do particularly well so far competitively compared to aces. And even in Iden squads people tend to run the named guys with abilities rather than "generic efficiency" because the abilities (read: sometimes I can throw 3 dice! but 2 dice totally matter guys, believe me :P) are almost always worth it even over another body.

Is that why people are running 6? I was under the impression that 6 ties is easier to fly than 7 and people pick the one you can just fly in an easy box.

8 minutes ago, jagsba said:

Is that why people are running 6? I was under the impression that 6 ties is easier to fly than 7 and people pick the one you can just fly in an easy box.

Never heard that... it's pretty easy to fly regardless at the start and once **** hits the fan 6 vs 7 doesn't make much difference in my opinion.

The reasons why I fly 6 instead of 7 are mostly:
1) You can't not take Wampa. You need 3 dice for some stuff - especially after howl dies - and he also confuses their targeting priority somewhat.
2) Gideon is similarly solid especially later in the game.
3) Having everything but howl shoot at i4 (with double swarm) is good. Let's you defer Wampa and Gideon to shoot last which does slightly more damage, or pick activation order appropriately if you think a target might die or is only in some of your arcs, etc.
4) Del Meeko's ability is pretty solid and critically not R1 so tends to work nicely once you get into the crazy K turning madness mid-game phase where no one has any mods anyways.
5) You probably win the ~mirror vs. 7 tie swarm most of the time since you can init kill stuff. There's one case where i4 matters a bit.

Certainly don't care about arc dodging at i4... it occasionally comes up but with just BR and ties really wanting to take some sort of offensive action most of the time it's not super relevant.

🤔🤔

@punkUser if the N1 is 90s CGI personified, all of these are 00s CGI personified

jokes on you, I'm in for both, it's all beautiful.

6 minutes ago, punkUser said:

Never heard that... it's pretty easy to fly regardless at the start and once **** hits the fan 6 vs 7 doesn't make much difference in my opinion.

There's some sort of mythos on swarms being tough, that being said, 6 go in a block and you're good. 7 you have to put some minimal amount of thought into setup which is off putting, and usually involves a block with howl sneaking in behind it. the block just does block things (straights and turns) with the 7 you have to worry about getting how in the right positions as the trailing occurs. I don't think its that much harder, but it is harder.

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The reasons why I fly 6 instead of 7 are mostly:
1) You can't not take Wampa. You need 3 dice for some stuff - especially after howl dies - and he also confusing their targeting priority somewhat.

wampa is the thing i miss flying 7.

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2) Gideon is similarly solid especially later in the game.

I see the appeal with Gideon as well

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3) Having everything shoot by i4 (with double swarm) is really good. Let's you defer Wampa and Gideon to shoot last which does slightly more damage.

in the 7 you don't have the 'closer' shot relegated to a certain ship, its based on position and who has shots on what. It's a minor point though.

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4) Del Meeko's ability is pretty solid and critically not R1 so tends to work nicely once you get into the crazy K turning madness mid-game phase where no one has any mods anyways.

I can see the strength in this as well

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5) You probably win the ~mirror vs. 7 tie swarm most of the time since you can init kill stuff. There's one case where i4 matters a bit.

Here's where I disagree. The 7 ties get to get all up in the 6s face and get blocks off. higher i and fancy abilities <<<< having actions.

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Certainly don't care about arc dodging at i4... it occasionally comes up but with just BR and ties really wanting to take some sort of offensive action most of the time it's not super relevant.

I'm going to try the 6 at some point. But there's something nice with knowing you can have a ship just die and still be at the same ship count as a 6 tie swarm.

Back the **** up this is Rigged Cargo Shoot & Countermeasures & Robot Jabba?

9 minutes ago, Brunas said:

@punkUser if the N1 is 90s CGI personified, all of these are 00s CGI personified

jokes on you, I'm in for both, it's all beautiful.

You're not wrong, but it's sort of asymptotic That said, I've still never really gotten the love of any of the prequel ship designs. They're not as offensive as "LOOK GUYZ WE CAN DO REFLECTIONSSZZZZ. RAY TRACING IS COOL RIGHT", but they're just "fine" for me.

Interceptors are still the best. Most pointy bits wins final salvo rules when?

5 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Back the **** up this is Rigged Cargo Shoot & Countermeasures & Robot Jabba?

And it's not faction limited #dank

5 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Back the **** up this is Rigged Cargo Shoot & Countermeasures & Robot Jabba?

Kinda, but each of those things require you to use your action on it and it's only usable once as of now. So I'm not as worried about this as others seem to be. It's a worse countermeasures since that was Start of Engagement in 1st ed and didn't require an action as well.

1 minute ago, RStan said:

Kinda, but each of those things require you to use your action on it and it's only usable once as of now. So I'm not as worried about this as others seem to be. It's a worse countermeasures since that was Start of Engagement in 1st ed and didn't require an action as well.

They're going to have to price it out as an option on my T-70s, no matter what droid is flying copilot.