I've watched A LOT of ships die to that 2 dice butt arc on lambdas. Sometimes you don't have to turn around. Just bank enough to catch something.

12 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

But why dont you like Shuttles?

they're rough, coarse, and can't get anywhere.

3 minutes ago, viedit said:

I've watched A LOT of ships die to that 2 dice butt arc on lambdas. Sometimes you don't have to turn around. Just bank enough to catch something.

Assuming you didnt wait too long, like I did.

14 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

they're slow, plodding masses that dont turn around, so I need to be "right" far more in advance.

I have little experience playing them, and usually don't enjoy it when I do.

Im definitely much more comfortable with stuff like Whisper/Correct Line/Soontir to.

The thing iv learned to appreciate about Forward Only shuttles though is exactly what you referenced, it need to be correct in advance over multiple early game turns.

As long as I have a couple things around the Giant Damage Blob that are semi mobile it can end up being a fun puzzle.

Tavson has been semi interesting simply because he "sorta" rewards correctly aggressive play to get to the lane you want.

Lots of 2.0 ships fall into the plodding blob category, not dumb versions of the VCX, Lancers, Decimators, Upsilons, etc.

Opens up tons of list options if you figure out the right in advance thing.

Oddly enough though it also loops back into the stalling conversation, though I very rarely and pretty much never turn 1 stall my Damage Blobs. Which means im probably wrong alot.

I guess the big picture is knowing how to play a shuttle that cant turn around makes playing the things that can or have "rear arcs" a **** ton easier to use well.

Yeah I feel like I almost always race down the board edge with Tavson to set him up for the 3-bank and then 2-hard into the fray past the rocks. The white 2 hard really does seem to make him able to get time on target IMO.

maybe comes back to your maps of different kinds of battles and the fact that 90% of my games are the "come at me bro" one though

4 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

maybe comes back to your maps of different kinds of battles and the fact that 90% of my games are the "come at me bro" one though

Correct and rarely direct joust on side of the board, Tavson almost always is racing to get to the inevitable angled joust lane that we are contractually obligated by fortressing rules to participate in.

21 minutes ago, jagsba said:

you set up to joust after me, I turn to disengage along my board edge, you rush down into my board edge and force me to flip and engage you. you call the judge over halfway through the match because despite being engaged, I haven't left the deployment zone yet.

If you were forced to flip for engagement, or forced out of your deployment zone, then you failed to exploit a static game state and need to fight or run. Seems mostly OK, although I’ll admit that this already sounds like a miserable game. It should take less than 37 minutes to hit this state assuming a reasonable pace of play.

27 minutes ago, jagsba said:

alternatively, I move one ship out the deployment zone once, then go back in and durdle around. I've moved from my deployment zone.

This is a semantic argument. If you only leave your deployment zone with one ship within the first 50% of match time, then go back in, I don’t know what other conclusion to draw than that you’re seeking to exploit the game state of non-engagement.

If you were really trying to push the boundaries of this as a bright line, you’d ask “what if I broll my ships outside the deployment zone, and then k turn while brolling in and out of the deployment zone.”

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

I don't understand what you mean here.

The way I see it, a ship altering the play area with seismics, or placing mines, is absolutely 'engaging' because the player does something. Same for a ship passing by, taking a potshot and then running+regenerating.

A ship decloaking or 1hard+bendyroll in its deploy area (or anyway on a board edge!) is clearly different?

They're different execution, but to some extent two sides of the same coin in result.

I remember a bunch of folks onhere and on podcasts complaining about the way that 1e Miranda (before seismics would impact the play area... Seismic Torpedoes were rare) would by and large not-fight. I'm pretty sure she was specifically name-checked by the several podcasters who put together the objective formats as the enemy of what they were hoping to accomplish. My understanding was objectives as a means to force players to get in and fight, rather than wander about for most of the game.

I dunno. A lot of this seems like questioning whether what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I think I've seen some folks say that Phantom/Starviper hovering isn't "waiting for an opponent to make a mistake" and I don't really agree with that. It's a different kind of waiting, and it's baiting different kinds of mistakes. But there has been a roughly-equivalent tactic from Aces forever. Or maybe better said an inverse tactic from Aces. Are folks upset that generics have figured it out their own version of it?

1 hour ago, svelok said:

This and a lot of other posts basically ask "what about aces avoiding head on engagements", but I don't think that's something anyone considers as being in the same genre as self bumping in a corner or k-turning along a board edge.

I think it goes in degrees. Self-bumping is the most extreme. Then k-turning is another degree, then the floating-around style of Phantoms and Starvipers. I don't think it's fully appropriate to flatten them all down to one level.

Personally, I'm more of an ace-player. I like the benefits of high initiative, and how much easier I find it when I move last and shoot first. Do we need also a set of "get in there and fight" rules which benefit aces against generics, too? Wouldn't it be better if the "get in there and fight" rules applied kind of equally to aces and generics? Different folks may see it differently, but I don't see a massive difference between the "I won't fight you until you're in a bad position" from aces who run and "I won't fight you until you're in a bad position" from floating generics. Just feels kind of off to say generics can't float, but aces can still run. Go after "I won't fight you until you're in a bad position" in general, or not at all.

Again, I've seldom seen a need for "get in there and fight" in the games I've played in.

A smaller, more casual scene to be sure. Maybe part of that is also asking for the judgement of TOs and such. Not every X-Wing scene needs "get in there and fight" guidance, but some do. And still, I'd prefer for whatever guidance is given along these lines to be not solely aimed at generics using one of the few tools they've got against aces.

If the ace player demands "Chase me into the rocks before I pounce!" I don't really know why a generic player should be prevented from responding "No, fight me here."

8 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

maybe comes back to your maps of different kinds of battles and the fact that 90% of my games are the "come at me bro" one though

This too.

There doesn't seem to be a major issue for how most players play X-Wing.

5 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

They're different execution, but to some extent two sides of the same coin in result.

I remember a bunch of folks onhere and on podcasts complaining about the way that 1e Miranda (before seismics would impact the play area... Seismic Torpedoes were rare) would by and large not-fight. I'm pretty sure she was specifically name-checked by the several podcasters who put together the objective formats as the enemy of what they were hoping to accomplish. My understanding was objectives as a means to force players to get in and fight, rather than wander about for most of the game.

I disagree in the sense that they are different problems that require different solutions.

It is perfectly fine to make a fortressing rule that affects only one of those.

In chess, you are forced to move a piece in a legal fashion along the grid of the board, but many pieces can essentially move back and forth and never "engage".

In X-Wing, we don't use a grid, but I think something like a rule relating to ships moving out of their respective deployment zones could fix a lot of this nonsense.

We need a Fortnite storm for X-Wing

5 minutes ago, Bucknife said:

In chess, you are forced to move a piece in a legal fashion along the grid of the board, but many pieces can essentially move back and forth and never "engage".

In X-Wing, we don't use a grid, but I think something like a rule relating to ships moving out of their respective deployment zones could fix a lot of this nonsense.

5 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I disagree in the sense that they are different problems that require different solutions.

It is perfectly fine to make a fortressing rule that affects only one of those.

This conversation is getting close to going in circles, but basically just this:

22 hours ago, pheaver said:

If I was the marshall in this particular case, I'd tell the players in question to either skip ahead to final salvo, or make some effort to engage their opponent.

On 6/10/2019 at 11:34 AM, skotothalamos said:

Hockey has a rule against passive play. If you're loitering in your own end just passing the puck from defenseman to defenseman, waiting for the other team to come and get the puck, the ref can call a penalty. I've never seen this penalty called. The ref just has to say "move it out" or "play the game" and suddenly people will play the game. I hope this same vague threat (with some pre-defined penalties for ignoring me) will be enough to get action out of players.

12 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

They're different execution, but to some extent two sides of the same coin in result.

I remember a bunch of folks onhere and on podcasts complaining about the way that 1e Miranda (before seismics would impact the play area... Seismic Torpedoes were rare) would by and large not-fight. I'm pretty sure she was specifically name-checked by the several podcasters who put together the objective formats as the enemy of what they were hoping to accomplish. My understanding was objectives as a means to force players to get in and fight, rather than wander about for most of the game.

I dunno. A lot of this seems like questioning whether what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I think I've seen some folks say that Phantom/Starviper hovering isn't "waiting for an opponent to make a mistake" and I don't really agree with that. It's a different kind of waiting, and it's baiting different kinds of mistakes. But there has been a roughly-equivalent tactic from Aces forever. Or maybe better said an inverse tactic from Aces. Are folks upset that generics have figured it out their own version of it?

I think it goes in degrees. Self-bumping is the most extreme. Then k-turning is another degree, then the floating-around style of Phantoms and Starvipers. I don't think it's fully appropriate to flatten them all down to one level.

Personally, I'm more of an ace-player. I like the benefits of high initiative, and how much easier I find it when I move last and shoot first. Do we need also a set of "get in there and fight" rules which benefit aces against generics, too? Wouldn't it be better if the "get in there and fight" rules applied kind of equally to aces and generics? Different folks may see it differently, but I don't see a massive difference between the "I won't fight you until you're in a bad position" from aces who run and "I won't fight you until you're in a bad position" from floating generics. Just feels kind of off to say generics can't float, but aces can still run. Go after "I won't fight you until you're in a bad position" in general, or not at all.

Again, I've seldom seen a need for "get in there and fight" in the games I've played in.

A smaller, more casual scene to be sure. Maybe part of that is also asking for the judgement of TOs and such. Not every X-Wing scene needs "get in there and fight" guidance, but some do. And still, I'd prefer for whatever guidance is given along these lines to be not solely aimed at generics using one of the few tools they've got against aces.

If the ace player demands "Chase me into the rocks before I pounce!" I don't really know why a generic player should be prevented from responding "No, fight me here."

Agree on this point, but I would be remiss in not pointing out that generics typically benefit from refusing to engage on any but their own terms due to (Generally ) better salvo dice.

The 12 salvo dice on my Vipers pretty much forces Ace players into the rocks. Part of the reason I hang back with vipers vs aces is the board edge protects them just as much as the rocks.

Thanks for the breakdown!

16 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Why does it work on every shot that every ship in arc takes or defends against? That seems ultra unnecessary.

Care to expand? Seems about right to me. Calc is almost as good as focus, it needs broad applicability to do anything

Upsilon shuttles with a Rear Arc When?

Flying a non-tavson Upsilon is way less fun than a Lambda.

17 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I disagree in the sense that they are different problems that require different solutions.

It is perfectly fine to make a fortressing rule that affects only one of those.

Fair. But to add, if there's multiple problems, there ought to be multiple rules.

9 minutes ago, Crimsonwarlock said:

Agree on this point, but I would be remiss in not pointing out that generics typically benefit from refusing to engage on any but their own terms due to (Generally ) better salvo dice.

Yep.

I mean, the game needs to have some way to resolve a draw. Any method will have advantages and disadvantages, and one player will have more incentive to resort to draw-resolution than their opponent.

28 minutes ago, Crimsonwarlock said:

Agree on this point, but I would be remiss in not pointing out that generics typically benefit from refusing to engage on any but their own terms due to (Generally ) better salvo dice.

The 12 salvo dice on my Vipers pretty much forces Ace players into the rocks. Part of the reason I hang back with vipers vs aces is the board edge protects them just as much as the rocks.

I mean, that's true in that tournament, but going to be harder to utilize at NOVA.

42 minutes ago, PaulRuddSays said:

If you were forced to flip for engagement, or forced out of your deployment zone, then you failed to exploit a static game state and need to fight or run. Seems mostly OK, although I’ll admit that this already sounds like a miserable game. It should take less than 37 minutes to hit this state assuming a reasonable pace of play.

that whole description was a decidedly non static game where i never left my deployment zone. The point is that situation is decidedly not either of us castling, but I don't leave my deployment and therefore, am castling by your suggested rules. That seems super not okay to me.

42 minutes ago, PaulRuddSays said:

This is a semantic argument. If you only leave your deployment zone with one ship within the first 50% of match time, then go back in, I don’t know what other conclusion to draw than that you’re seeking to exploit the game state of non-engagement.

If you were really trying to push the boundaries of this as a bright line, you’d ask “what if I broll my ships outside the deployment zone, and then k turn while brolling in and out of the deployment zone.”

yes? that's the point. Whatever rule you establish, no matter how well written, will have an exploit that can be taken advantage of.

19 minutes ago, jagsba said:

Whatever rule you establish, no matter how well written, will have an exploit that can be taken advantage of.

Which is exactly why abusing or exploiting the rules is covered by unsportsmanlike conduct, and can be flagged by a judge with a spine.

There's a reason that Paul didn't call for "fix this by airtight rules," but rather, "fix this by the conduct rules that already exist."

48 minutes ago, Bucknife said:

In chess, you are forced to move a piece in a legal fashion along the grid of the board, but many pieces can essentially move back and forth and never "engage".

In chess you actually lose the game if you keep looping the same moves

2 hours ago, wurms said:

You dont need objectives. You need incentive to engage.

snipping not to dismiss your point, but just point out that the only reason objectives exist in games is to give you a reason to engage. It's actually a really hard problem to solve.

1 hour ago, Boom Owl said:

But why dont you like Shuttles?

Asking the real questions.

10 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

In chess you actually lose the game if you keep looping the same moves

I believe you're force to offer a draw if you repeat the same move... 3 times? But yeah, similar.

For Chess What if I loop my move twice, then do a different piece to loop another 2 moves?

Not fortressing?

2 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

For Chess What if I loop my move twice, then do a different piece to loop another 2 moves?

Not fortressing?

In the meantime I found the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threefold_repetition

In chess, in order for a position to be considered the same, each player must have the same set of legal moves each time, including the possible rights to castle and capture en passant. Positions are considered the same if the same type of piece is on a given square. So, for instance, if a player has two knights and the knights are on the same squares, it does not matter if the positions of the two knights have been exchanged. The game is not automatically drawn if a position occurs for the third time – one of the players, on their move turn, must claim the draw with the arbiter.

tl;dr kinda. You can't alternative moving bishops back and forth and pretend you're playing.

27 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Which is exactly why abusing or exploiting the rules is covered by unsportsmanlike conduct, and can be flagged by a judge with a spine.

There's a reason that Paul didn't call for "fix this by airtight rules," but rather, "fix this by the conduct rules that already exist."

This is what I'm arguing, yes. But I like it better when you're the judge and you're ******* jacked.