20 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:Someone is quick to forget Parking Brake Han and Double Tap Dash.
There will always be Rebel Fat Turret Combos.
Difference between a meta with good big ships in, and a meta dominated by big ships. A majority of the X-Wing community has probably never seen either build in person, which cleaves between institutional and personal knowledge. (AKA, what percent of a blogs readership shares the authors understanding of a topic?)
3 hours ago, pheaver said:No, I'm saying cut rate, not play rate. Generally, roughly 20% of the people make the cut at an event. Less if it's a System Open, with the 5-1 or better requirement, but more if it's a 16 player regional. I want to see all the factions make the cut at a reasonable rate. If one faction is only making the cut 5% of the time, but another is at 30%, that's a problem. I don't care as much that the faction play rates are 14%, give or take. Some factions are going to be more popular, and that's fine.
I guess the better way to phrase that is "Each faction makes the cut at the average rate, +/- 5%."
The next potentially more complicated question is whether or not we want all archetypes to be represented equally.
I think if the goal is quality gameplay the answer is definitively no.
Basically what is the ideal archetype cut rate mix to target?
1. Trip Jousty
2. Trip Dodgey
3. Fat Turrets ( Han, Boba )
4. Diet Turrets ( rz2as, ys, etc )
5. Ace + Mini Swarm
6. Ace + Support
7. AOE Bombs
8. The Ocho Swarms
9. Word Jousters ( Inferno, Rebel Beef )
Or we can keep the archetype list smaller to simplify or complicate the question. Not sure if this easier or more difficult...
1. High Init Mobility ( Trip, Support )
2. High Init Jousters ( Alpha Strikes )
3. AOE ( Turrets, Wookies/Yvs, SFs/AWings, or Bombs )
4. High HP Low/Mid Init Jouster
5. Low HP Low/Mid Init Jouster
There are a defineable number of archetype cut rate % timelines that are actually fun and healthy for the game. This isnt strictly Opinion based either. I think there are a couple correct timelines and none of them have equal sides.
We are probably currently playing in one of the correct timelines. Or we will at least look back on it as one.
It will be cool to see archetype cut rate data ignorant of faction after 12 point adjustment cycles.
Edited by Boom Owl4 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:9. Word Jousters ( Inferno, Rebel Beef )
jesus
the attack on my dictionary has left me scarred and deformed...
Edited by Brunas26 minutes ago, Brunas said:jesus
the attack on my dictionary has left me scarred and deformed...
We must remain vigilant.
The 2.0 attack on 80-90 degree forward arcs has already begun and never ends. Some even celebrate it.
Words are not the real enemy. If I had to name one archetype/mechanic that is most likely to destroy 2.0 over time it would be repositioning AOE, not just words.
Edited by Boom Owl36 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:Basically what is the ideal archetype cut rate mix to target?
There are a defineable number of archetype cut rate % timelines that are actually fun and healthy for the game. This isnt strictly Opinion based either. I think there are a couple correct timelines and none of them have equal sides.
If we had 3 month metas instead of 6 month metas, getting that right is much less important.
1 minute ago, svelok said:If we had 3 month metas instead of 6 month metas, getting that right is much less important.
I dont think its necessary to go to that kind of interval though.
Just hunt down and artificially suppress Boost Multi Arc, Passive Mod Rotates, and Clear Info Bomb Droppers at all times.
Do that and the biggest remaing challenge is how to keep defense bad enough so things can be destroyed within 75 min and ship counts high enough to threaten low ship count mobile high init. A much more nuanced mix to balance.
I think we want to get to a point where there aren't well defined archetypes. In my own strange head, I usually group things into 4ish groups: Jousters, Killboxes, Aces, and Turrets. Which group a particular list falls into is just defined by it's most critical component: Hot Rod, Han are obviously Turrets. Biggs 4 Ship and TIE Swarm are jousters. Most people play Rebel Beef as a jouster for some reason but it could also be a Killbox . 5A - killbox. 2 Jedi 2 Torrent - Aces. TIE Salad? Killbox. Vader/Soontir/Bombers? Aces. 3 Arc + Jedi? Jouster (even though it has a flanker the main component is the joust)
Basically, it's all on how the list wants to fly. Jousters want to joust, Killboxes want to come in at a bunch of angles and converge on a single target, Aces want to arc dodge and get shots, and Turrets want to orbit the enemy like some kind of moon with guns.
9 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:like some kind of moon with guns.
@pheaver actually touched on a related topic too: when it comes to practicing, watching streams, and learning about how to play archetypes I can track my progress as an X-Wing player using these archetypes too:
Prior to literally 2019, I was exclusively an Aces player. While most people think that reposition and high initiative are what makes aces, for me its the ability to look at the game state and choose a maneuver that has a high probability to get out of the enemy arc and still have a shot. Obviously, the more access to reposition and high init you have the easier this is, but really all a ship needs to do this is have a really open dial. I got pretty good at it, because my mind was taught to see the various positions on the board. And while Aces is arguably the "easiest" to play with the high init and reposition, you also need to have a fundamental understanding of where the opponent can go.
I took a Sloane Swarm to Phoenix, which had a lot of elements of ace play, but because of the way the list was designed it wasn't really trying to dodge arcs but rather needed to get guns on the same target, making it a Killbox list instead. This was purposeful, because I had been practicing it anticipating a points change. After that I started playing 5A because it utilized a lot of those Ace skills as well as the Killbox skills, and I've done decently with it.
I'm still hot garbage with jousting lists and turret lists. You'd think that they are easy, but the maneuver trees are quite different. More recently in the fun games I've been playing I've been playing 2 Jedi 2 V19s, which while still are an Aces list have the jousting component with the V19s to try to ease myself into learning to figure out where my jousters need to be to take on the opponent and I like to think I'm learning it.
27 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:Basically, it's all on how the list wants to fly. Jousters want to joust, Killboxes want to come in at a bunch of angles and converge on a single target, Aces want to arc dodge and get shots, and Turrets want to orbit the enemy like some kind of moon with guns.
Right. At the end of the day FFG point adjusts ships and upgrades. Those tend to actually fit neatly into one primary archetype if you break it down ( thing that ship do categories ).
Yt1300s, Rz2As, and Firesprays are boosting Turrets. They do many things but that is the main thing they do. I think of them as efficent Arc Dodgers. Zero Disengagement Aces. Not just orbiting satellites. They are ships that can drive by. Passive Mod Rotate Only Turrets fit this category as well but are less concerning in spots. Bob and Nym are clear info AOE Bombs.
Real Aces are mobile forward arc things that regularly fully disengage as part of their gameplay loop.
Jousters are immobile or mobile punchy things that like all players/archetypes seek to care less about initative at all times and optimize shots per game. High HP can be found three ways...High Init, Beef, or Tokens. This is the least definable category because similar to pooping “Everybody Jousts”
Edited by Boom Owl
I want to key into a specific question here that occurred to me in one of the PANIC PASSIVE SENSORS threads. If it's 2-4 points, Passive Sensors seems worth exploring on Blackout, right? With the current prevalence of gas clouds, you can fly right toward it and not have to make a decision about which way to go until you engage...
If I'm doing my math right, if you're behind a gas cloud with AGI 3, against 3 incoming hits, you still have a 49% chance to walk away with 0 damage. And you get to decide where you'll be relative to enemy ships at I5. Still vulnerable to I6, but for a single piece of your list, this seems like a surmountable problem.
I'm comfortable asserting it's not S tier, but I wanted to check in and see if anyone here was going to check into this on their own? I'd appreciate someone else's headsim (or table experience in a few weeks) with this.
Thanks @Kieransi for reminding me I mixed up slots!
Edited by PaulRuddSaysI feel like the worst gameplay situations are the ones that take all the agency out of the hands of one player.
If someone gets to choose at higher initiative with a giant bid whether to double reposition out of all arcs or just token stack and joust and be fine, and then next turn run away and the other person can't catch them, that's seriously a problem. It's similarly a problem if one list is so jousting efficient that it always wins a joust against the other list and includes dust clouds or other obstacles that it can just fly over and be fine, meaning that there's really nothing the opponent can do to avoid eventually having the formation block facing at least one of their ships and nuking it.
Thing is, these are matchup dependent. If you're flying a similarly good list against one of the lists that does this, it doesn't look like a problem, but if you're trying to fly something that's more average against them, you see the problem more easily.
I don't really know what the answer is honestly, because there's always going to be jank lists that just autolose to actual good lists. But I think that there's some things that have a tendency to feel bad more frequently than other things. I guess it does sort of come down to what Boom is saying about it doing multiple things well.
HowlInfernoswarm feels bad because it can 5-straight over dust clouds and outjoust pretty much anything, meaning that against slower ships, it pretty much forces the joust. It has i1 blockers so it's hard to block, but it fires at high initiative allowing init kills (sort of the crux of the list). It bugs me that it's faster, joustier, better at blocking, and shoots before so many lists. When I'm flying an actual good list I don't care that much even though I've never beat it... in the games I've played I've seen where I messed up in deployment and with a bit of luck could've beaten it. But it's still not very fun. I put it in the same category as triple upsilons.
Similarly I personally don't find Boba any fun. He's essentially an arc-dodger that has multiple arcs (close to a turret now in 2.0) and also gets passive mods so he can joust well. Yes he's been toned down a lot points-wise but I just think that he's good at too much stuff so he's cursed to always be either overpriced or not fun. Jousting arc-dodging turrets feel bad. And yes now there's other stuff that outdoes him, but I still feel like there's plenty of lists against which Boba would be no fun. I think he's approaching fair now that his token stacking upgrades are more expensive but I'd still like to see all the titles go to extended just to be safe.
Maybe I'm deluding myself, but Soontir Fel feels "fair" design-wise. He gets an insane advantage repositionally but basically only gets away with being shot at a maximum of once or twice per game. Similarly, L'ulo feels relatively "fair", just horribly underpriced right now. Poe feels fair. Generic Z-95s, B-Wings, and X-Wings feel fair. Jury's out on Y-Wings but I feel like they are only really good at turreting and bombing, their jousting is just sort of there and their positioning is pretty bad, although red barrel roll feels weird. TIE/x1 feels fair. Vader really can't joust because he has no evade. Although I don't like Hate design-wise. Not sure what I think of Strikers and Reapers, supernatural reflexes can be a feels bad man... I think they all die fast enough when shot at that they're probably fine though. Bombers are fine (except maybe Jonus), Decis are fine, Falcons seem ok other than the rube goldberg device fat han that does everything well. I really just don't see a lot of things that fundamentally would feel bad if they were good (at least in hyperspace, because I don't spend a lot of time on extended so I can't speak for it).
TL;DR, to answer "what should the cut be skewed towards", I think that there's a few things that I don't really think should be good (the two examples I gave, ion control, stress control, etc.), but honestly I feel like all the archetypes are pretty fun to play against all the other archetypes. Since most people have a few they enjoy more than others, I think the main goal, after keeping the things that just aren't fun when they're good out, is to just make sure that none of the archetypes is hideously underrepresented.
Edited by Kieransi5 minutes ago, PaulRuddSays said:I want to key into a specific question here that occurred to me in one of the PANIC PASSIVE SENSORS threads. If it's 2-4 points, Passive Sensors seems worth exploring on Blackout, right? With the current prevalence of gas clouds, you can fly right toward it and not have to make a decision about which way to go until you engage...
If I'm doing my math right, if you're behind a gas cloud with AGI 3, against 3 incoming hits, you still have a 49% chance to walk away with 0 damage. And you get to decide where you'll be relative to enemy ships at I5. Still vulnerable to I6, but for a single piece of your list, this seems like a surmountable problem.
I'm comfortable asserting it's not S tier, but I wanted to check in and see if anyone here was going to check into this on their own? I'd appreciate someone else's headsim (or table experience in a few weeks) with this.
yikes I just finally understood why this card is going to be a problem on Vader. Silencers don't have the slot though. We're safe... for now
Edited by Kieransi15 minutes ago, Kieransi said:yikes I just finally understood why this card is going to be a problem on Vader. Silencers don't have the slot though. We're safe... for now
Vader using PS to barrel roll at i7 is vastly quite worse than actually moving at i7. Poe moving after Vader because Vader took PS instead of bidding still has plenty of agency preserved, and gets to see Vader's dial and use of Afterburners, etc, before responding with his own 1-2 actions. And all the i5- stuff doesn't even notice the difference.
1 hour ago, Boom Owl said:Do that and the biggest remaing challenge is how to keep defense bad enough so things can be destroyed within 75 min and ship counts high enough to threaten low ship count mobile high init. A much more nuanced mix to balance.
Rebel Beef says 'hi' - they technically don't have traditional defense in agility but rather the ability to just soak damage while firing with 3 dice (usually modded).
It's that last one that has made the game feel like more like I'm grinding mobs in an MMO than playing x-wing (but like, wow Classic, where pulling multiple mobs is scary)...
1 hour ago, Boom Owl said:Jousters are immobile or mobile punchy things that like all players/archetypes seek to care less about initative at all times and optimize shots per game. High HP can be found three ways...High Init, Beef, or Tokens. This is the least definable category because similar to pooping “Everybody Jousts”
Which brings me the "issue" with rebel beef - right now, it gets the high HP, it gets decent mods, AND it gets high initiative. It doesn't really make sacrifices, it's a slog to kill, and it hits back hard and even initiative kills things.
Like, in the olden days, people were mad at 'arc dodgers', but they didn't arc dodge - they got shot and didn't die, and usually still hit back.
So, I think people hear my gripe and hear that I think all jousting lists should be bad, or something, where im mostly just not having fun against these iterations because of the above, AND they're everywhere - the archetype is about as common as all jumpmaster archetypes were at their hayday (double +1 and triple), so I dont even get the reprieve of just seeing it occasionally.
My regional was 4/6 rebel HP list variants, and 1 resistance 4X list. It all just felt the same, and a slog. But that's my personal experience, and it's way above the curve.
I'm going to Atlanta steeled with the knowledge that probably at least 3/6 games will be against a 3+ phantom list or rebel HP variant.
(The "steel" are flasks of grey goose, btw).
(edit - and flasks coincidentally made of steel).
Edited by Tlfj20023 minutes ago, Kieransi said:yikes I just finally understood why this card is going to be a problem on Vader. Silencers don't have the slot though. We're safe... for now
I did a quick test game with my Vader having Passive Sensors instead of FCS. Passive Sensors burns the opponents actions a lot to make sure to account for Vader’s roll. But FCS on Vader I think is still better, he can do reds, spend force for defense more often and not be force drained. FCS also helps in every matchup, whereas Passive Sensors only helps versus i6.
Hay day? hey day?
...
...hey dey?
Edit:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heyday
Edited by Tlfj2001 minute ago, svelok said:Vader using PS to barrel roll at i7 is vastly quite worse than actually moving at i7. Poe moving after Vader because Vader took PS instead of bidding still has plenty of agency preserved, and gets to see Vader's dial and use of Afterburners, etc, before responding with his own 1-2 actions. And all the i5- stuff doesn't even notice the difference.
This is true, and if I'm building the ultimate agency-removal Vader I'm going to take Supernatural and Collision Detector (even with the new points). I just think that it's an unforeseen consequence of the card, and if it really is only 2 points, I'm probably going to use it on Vader a lot, if only for the games where I do get outbid by like 20 points and don't get to move last.
51 minutes ago, svelok said:Vader using PS to barrel roll at i7 is vastly quite worse than actually moving at i7. Poe moving after Vader because Vader took PS instead of bidding still has plenty of agency preserved, and gets to see Vader's dial and use of Afterburners, etc, before responding with his own 1-2 actions. And all the i5- stuff doesn't even notice the difference.
42 minutes ago, Kieransi said:This is true, and if I'm building the ultimate agency-removal Vader I'm going to take Supernatural and Collision Detector (even with the new points). I just think that it's an unforeseen consequence of the card, and if it really is only 2 points, I'm probably going to use it on Vader a lot, if only for the games where I do get outbid by like 20 points and don't get to move last.
If bidding is tight, then this feels like a way to routinely lose the bid in a lot of I6 engagements to make one of them occasionally less bad, right? I would just go for the straight bid and leave the slot empty if you're within a few points of the average bid for a given archetype / list.
49 minutes ago, Quack Shot said:I did a quick test game with my Vader having Passive Sensors instead of FCS. Passive Sensors burns the opponents actions a lot to make sure to account for Vader’s roll. But FCS on Vader I think is still better, he can do reds, spend force for defense more often and not be force drained. FCS also helps in every matchup, whereas Passive Sensors only helps versus i6.
^ This (I think). When we hit the second reckoning of the Ace Meta next month, I would guess that the straight up bid might be the correct choice for that slot.
48 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:So, I think people hear my gripe and hear that I think all jousting lists should be bad, or something, where im mostly just not having fun against these iterations because of the above, AND they're everywhere - the archetype is about as common as all jumpmaster archetypes were at their hayday (double +1 and triple), so I dont even get the reprieve of just seeing it occasionally.
I dunno, I think the few people who actually think we all want Rebel Beef to die are purposefully being melodramatic to hopefully counter the idea that FFG reads this place and goes "well time to murder another archetype so the plebs stop moaning"
But really nobody wants rebel beef to go away completely, we just want it shoved back down to 15% of the meta instead of 40%. Taking a little off the top, be it Leia, HP, or initiative (and hopefully as a list builder you get to choose which of those things gets sacrificed) will allow some lists to have a good matchup against it (and again, if you get to choose where you take that off the top you can make meaningful meta decisions) and leave it as a very solid choice to take to a tournament.
Honestly, Rebel Beef is so close to being exactly what I want out of X-wing: A mostly modular list where you pick 4 pilots out of 20, and the way you fly it and what it is good and weak against is affected by those list building decisions. Its just a tad too good.
I would 100% be okay with raising the power level of the other factions to meet Rebel Beef if that wasn't 100x more work than just slightly nerfing the one faction.
Doing some beef counting, thanks metawing. Here's some numbers for hyperspace since wave 3:
BBXY: .3%
TIE Swarm: 3.8%
BBUX: 2.8%
BUXYL 1.7%
XXUY: 2.2%
BUXX (dank): 1.5%
ABUX: 1%
Obi+3ARC: 1.1%
UXXX: .7%
XUYY: 1.5%
BBUY: .6%
UYYY: .6%
4V19 2ARC:.4%
4X: .8%
5Y: .9%
3X2Y: .1%
3XB: .4%
4U: .2%
2U2B: .2%
4T70: .3%
5 Bomber: .3%
4 ARC: .6%
4Y: .5%
That sums to about 22.5%
Dunno if these count:
Wat + vultures: 1.6%
ocho vulture: .4%
If you count them, you get to ~25%
Is that too high? Assuming all archetypes are equal, which they aren't, over the course of 9 rounds or whatever to win a hyperspace trial you're expecting ~2.5 games against beef of some sort. Maybe this changes if you change the scale to more recently than wave 3.
1 minute ago, Brunas said:Doing some beef counting, thanks metawing. Here's some numbers for hyperspace since wave 3:
BBXY: .3%
TIE Swarm: 3.8%
BBUX: 2.8%
BUXYL 1.7%
XXUY: 2.2%
BUXX (dank): 1.5%
ABUX: 1%
Obi+3ARC: 1.1%
UXXX: .7%
XUYY: 1.5%
BBUY: .6%
UYYY: .6%
4V19 2ARC:.4%
4X: .8%
5Y: .9%
3X2Y: .1%
3XB: .4%
4U: .2%
2U2B: .2%
4T70: .3%
5 Bomber: .3%
4 ARC: .6%
4Y: .5%
That sums to about 22.5%
Dunno if these count:
Wat + vultures: 1.6%
ocho vulture: .4%
If you count them, you get to ~25%
Is that too high? Assuming all archetypes are equal, which they aren't, over the course of 9 rounds or whatever to win a hyperspace trial you're expecting ~2.5 games against beef of some sort. Maybe this changes if you change the scale to more recently than wave 3.
What are the parameters and filters for those numbers?
Edit: oh, all tournament entries.
No - use actual tournaments.
5 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:What are the parameters and filters for those numbers?
Edit: oh, all tournament entries.
No - use actual tournaments.
so what you are saying is....
If I run 4 player tournaments 7 times a week and everyone plays rebel beef every time
I can seriously mess with Metawing?
2 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:so what you are saying is....
If I run 4 player tournaments 7 times a week and everyone plays rebel beef every time
I can seriously mess with Metawing?
yes, and I encourage you to lose repeatedly with CIS until Vultures are 0 points
3 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:so what you are saying is....
If I run 4 player tournaments 7 times a week and everyone plays rebel beef every time
I can seriously mess with Metawing?
If people continue to not filter the noise out - yes.