1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

If the opponent is bullying in the way you guys mention later in the cast, then this right is imo forfeited.

I agree.

The idea isn't that it's carte blanche, it's that it's more about "how do you want to win." But that also has the implicit "how do you want your opponent to win" in it, and if they're being a bully/mean/etc, a lot of things go out the window.


Also, as noted, there are some things you can't give back, and some things that are genuinely pretty nebulous (a slipped dial on an a-wing between a 2-bank and a 2-turn, and the a-wing is going after your ships, and both moves are pretty good... how do you actually know which was what they meant?). Stuff like that.

All of that said... there's an AWFUL of of stuff that's really clear (hey, you didn't shoot! Oh look, we all forgot your action! Oh, there's no way you meant to turn off the board here when the rest of your ships were going in the other direction!) kind of stuff.

But yeah... not a rigid thing.

I wonder if Leia will get the N1 Anakin treatment: will have a force charge for being able to use the force, but having the talent slot for not knowing much about it.

I think the StarFortress might be a design issue. It seems like the intent of these was to have one in a list packed up with all the tools necessary to provide a moving fortress of damage dealing from multiple arcs and bombs. The problem is they don't have access to reinforce to help them stay on the board for any real amount of time. They take up so many points to build up and their base chassis doesn't feel effective enough on the board to consider taking. It's very hard to bring these ships and think they could do more damage to their opponent than they're worth. Sure they have cool bomb abilities and tools, but they cost so many points to get the bombs in optimal zones of the board to threaten. Vennie is the only one to have seen some amount of success, but even then it was gimmicky and eventually people just found out it wasn't enough.

14 minutes ago, RStan said:

I think the StarFortress might be a design issue.

High HP + 270 Degree Arc + 8 Upgrade Slots ( Gunner, Crew, Tech, Sensor, Crew, Gunner, Payload, Payload, Mod ) + Resistance Upgrade Options + Good Pilot Abilities = Visible Confusion on How To Cost

Just now, Boom Owl said:

High HP + 270 Degree Arc + 8 Upgrade Slots ( Gunner, Crew, Tech, Sensor, Crew, Payload, Mod ) + Resistance Upgrade Options = Visible Confusion on How To Cost

Yeah I look at all that and I think....I don't even know where to start on how to cost it "correctly" I feel like this thing could keep going down because it's not viable right now, but there could be a breaking point we don't see currently that then allows this thing to become a monster with all it's possible options.

4 minutes ago, RStan said:

Yeah I look at all that and I think....I don't even know where to start on how to cost it "correctly" I feel like this thing could keep going down because it's not viable right now, but there could be a breaking point we don't see currently that then allows this thing to become a monster with all it's possible options.

Its got so many possible builds its sorta tricky. And thats before we get the i5 Bomber.

19 minutes ago, RStan said:

I think the StarFortress might be a design issue. It seems like the intent of these was to have one in a list packed up with all the tools necessary to provide a moving fortress of damage dealing from multiple arcs and bombs.

all of the "dedicated bomber" style ships ave struggled in 2.0 except when roles unrelated to bombing have been available (vtag scurrgs, norra being norra, barrage bombers, etc)

edon and genius both exist to put action bombing back in the game and both never get used so either people just don't wanna bomb or bombs are just bad (both of which are probably preferable to bombs being good)

10 minutes ago, svelok said:

all of the "dedicated bomber" style ships ave struggled in 2.0 except when roles unrelated to bombing have been available (vtag scurrgs, norra being norra, barrage bombers, etc)

edon and genius both exist to put action bombing back in the game and both never get used so either people just don't wanna bomb or bombs are just bad (both of which are probably preferable to bombs being good)

Having played against delayed fuses trajectory Emon + Genius Nym lists using mini swarms a couple times its able to create some pretty devastating bomb turns. You can clearly see how strong and largely unavoidable it already can be in those moments and I assume FFG is aware that it walks a dangerous line with 1.0 bomb functionality. It seems they have a much greater tolerance for undercosted aces and turret aces then they do bombs, though delayed fuses seems like a statement of intent to make them more relevant. Either way they are more cautious about bombs in general, I think for good reason. For the most part bombs arent functionally mobile ace counters, you can just disengage more completely for more turns or use your rear arc boost mods. It counters things that arent hyper mobile or reactionary. Dont really see a benefit to it unless they really super hate sear swarm and want to suppress it via bomb power creep instead of a couple pt changes.

3 minutes ago, svelok said:

all of the "dedicated bomber" style ships ave struggled in 2.0 except when roles unrelated to bombing have been available (vtag scurrgs, norra being norra, barrage bombers, etc)

edon and genius both exist to put action bombing back in the game and both never get used so either people just don't wanna bomb or bombs are just bad (both of which are probably preferable to bombs being good)

Very true. Bombing hasn't been a viable full staple of a list, only a supplementary tool for lists that can take them to help in certain situations or in certain matchups. Anything that has been designed around bombs, hasn't seen play. Should the price of bombs go down? Should the price of the bombers go down? Should ablative plating go down? Is the line too fine between game breaking OP and just extra tools to hit with points? Do we want bombing lists to exist in X-Wing? I think bombing runs are cool...

1 hour ago, RStan said:

Very true. Bombing hasn't been a viable full staple of a list, only a supplementary tool for lists that can take them to help in certain situations or in certain matchups. Anything that has been designed around bombs, hasn't seen play. Should the price of bombs go down? Should the price of the bombers go down? Should ablative plating go down? Is the line too fine between game breaking OP and just extra tools to hit with points? Do we want bombing lists to exist in X-Wing? I think bombing runs are cool...

Fully Bomb centric lists arent popular or effective but bombs are still absolutely used and are useful. Tools to help with some board control or a couple matchups are the right place for them. Seismics are generally useful, proton bombs, and prox mines to. Players use this stuff, you just cant take a bunch of stationary AOE turrets as your list and win reliably. That seems like a feature to me.

49 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

High HP + 270 Degree Arc + 8 Upgrade Slots ( Gunner, Crew, Tech, Sensor, Crew, Gunner, Payload, Payload, Mod ) + Resistance Upgrade Options + Good Pilot Abilities = Visible Confusion on How To Cost

Give anything enough slots, and it becomes a costing nightmare. Sure, those slots are worth points, as no option should be literally free, but the vast majority of ships have the majority of their slots empty to stay efficient. Now overall that's very much a good thing, given that we don't want combo-wing or to read a Tolkien chapter just to get the gist of what lists do, but an unfortunate side effect is that ships that were built with the expectation of filling those slots suffer from both ends of the balancing act. Leave the slot empty, and you are inefficient by what the ship was designed to do. Fill that slot and its other necessary slots, and your overall list efficiency dramatically suffers.

It's perhaps best that this problem doesn't get a "real" resolution, considering it is the cost for a significant benefit to the game: every ship is mortal. If more and more ships had the longevity to load themselves up more and more, be that through upgrades or a Rube Goldberg machine of abilities, then we will devolve into some nasty stuff from 1st e that we'd like to keep behind us.

3 hours ago, Hoarder of Garlic Bread said:

Give anything enough slots, and it becomes a costing nightmare. Sure, those slots are worth points, as no option should be literally free, but the vast majority of ships have the majority of their slots empty to stay efficient. Now overall that's very much a good thing, given that we don't want combo-wing or to read a Tolkien chapter just to get the gist of what lists do, but an unfortunate side effect is that ships that were built with the expectation of filling those slots suffer from both ends of the balancing act. Leave the slot empty, and you are inefficient by what the ship was designed to do. Fill that slot and its other necessary slots, and your overall list efficiency dramatically suffers.

It's perhaps best that this problem doesn't get a "real" resolution, considering it is the cost for a significant benefit to the game: every ship is mortal. If more and more ships had the longevity to load themselves up more and more, be that through upgrades or a Rube Goldberg machine of abilities, then we will devolve into some nasty stuff from 1st e that we'd like to keep behind us.

Most slots aren't really worth points, yet we're paying for them. They only see use in extreme edge cases(eg: Aces High). One problem is that most upgrades are severely overcosted, and by most I mean over 90%, and it's just better to have another ship in most cases, or spend the points on better pilot abilities and initiative. The caveat is that some upgrades would become obscenely good for a particular pilot if they were costed fairly for most everyone else.

Resistance bombers could all take a 5pt drop across the board. Edon and Finch are best abilities but they are way overcosted for their points.

Then take 4pts from Paige and Agile gunner as well. This helps the bomber and the jumpmaster at same time.

The bomber can stay bad and should stay bad.

The world in which the BSF/MG-100 is a bad ship is a much happier world than the one where the BSF/MG-100 is a good ship.

Trajectory Bombs are traditionally beating by disengaging and baiting out the bombs, which is done best by aces, esp. regenerating ones. Further, the act of disengaging slows the game down more, and we already struggle to have games finish on time.

It's a decent ship, and bombs are already highly underrated (OR maybe traditionally used by those with room-temp IQs?) Buffing either is a recipie for cancer and disaster.

Just stop building Fat Vennie.

7 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

The bomber can stay bad and should stay bad.

The world in which the BSF/MG-100 is a bad ship is a much happier world than the one where the BSF/MG-100 is a good ship.

Trajectory Bombs are traditionally beating by disengaging and baiting out the bombs, which is done best by aces, esp. regenerating ones. Further, the act of disengaging slows the game down more, and we already struggle to have games finish on time.

It's a decent ship, and bombs are already highly underrated (OR maybe traditionally used by those with room-temp IQs?) Buffing either is a recipie for cancer and disaster.

Just stop building Fat Vennie.

Trajectory bombs are also easily beaten by beef. I can tell you from experience that punishers don't like being brawled by a firespray and G-1A.

Yeah, I'm @Kaptin Krunch on this one: it's entirely possible FFG have painted themselves into a corner and can never let this ship actually be playable. The bomber isn't like Leia crew, where having it be too cheap for 6 months would only cause a few headaches. The bomber is more like Dash, where there is little-to-no room between good and broken, and if we cross over that second line the result will be 6 months of meta-warping despair for all of us.

3 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

Trajectory bombs are also easily beaten by beef. I can tell you from experience that punishers don't like being brawled by a firespray and G-1A.

Not my experience -- at least, not before the July update. When you've got a pair of Proton Torpedoes following the bombs in, beef is not that much of a problem at all. Also see Nymiranda from 1.0, which didn't mind beef at all because they had a pair of Harpoons to send in after the bombs. Over-buffed BSFs following the bombs with VTG double-taps would be pretty similar.

As a rule of thumb, you want the best ships to be the simplest ones. When the meta is Scum or Hard R factions with rube goldberg machines, you know it's going to be miserable at big events for a while.

Words need to be worse, as do purple and orange numbers.

On 11/21/2019 at 12:37 PM, PaulRuddSays said:

Amusingly the dice calculator does not allow double reinforce. @punkUser, was this intentional, a weird edge case you didn't consider, or just too difficult to code?

IIRC there's some edge cases that @Brunas just decided to ignore With reinforce the logic of how many and what tokens to spend actually gets a lot more complicated because there are sometimes/often two defense die results that both give you equivalent damage (i.e. 1 remaining hit after canceling or 2). With more reinforce tokens the number of cases that need to be searched gets even higher although there may be some opportunities for optimization. With crack shot it all goes to **** even more

I believe at launch in 2.0 there was no way to get two reinforce tokens on the same ship so it seemed wisest to just dodge this whole issue. If it becomes something commonly seen we can of course reconsider...

StarFortress doesn't have 270 degree arc. It has 90 degree normal attack and 2x90 degree 2 dice attack, like Lancer's mobile arc.

For additional 2 points Upsilon has 1 dice more attack, coordination and reinforce. Slaver has true 180 degree arc, reinforce and is cheaper by 2 points.

All of these ships are bad and StarFortress is the worst.

1 hour ago, Boreas Mun said:

StarFortress doesn't have 270 degree arc. It has 90 degree normal attack and 2x90 degree 2 dice attack, like Lancer's mobile arc.

For additional 2 points Upsilon has 1 dice more attack, coordination and reinforce. Slaver has true 180 degree arc, reinforce and is cheaper by 2 points.

All of these ships are bad and StarFortress is the worst.

🤨

6 hours ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

When the meta is Scum or Hard R factions with rube goldberg machines, you know it's going to be miserable at big events for a while

Pfft. The worst meta thus far in 2.0 was the quad phantom meta.

6 hours ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

When the meta is Scum or Hard R factions with rube goldberg machines, you know it's going to be miserable at big events for a while

Pfft. The worst meta thus far in 2.0 was the quad phantom meta.

Apparently I felt so strongly about that I posted it twice...?

1 hour ago, gennataos said:

Pfft. The worst meta thus far in 2.0 was the quad phantom meta.

Apparently I felt so strongly about that I posted it twice...?

Wasnt that also the Rebel beef meta, where they got to dominate in HS, as well as Extended. (Cassian with 2pt Leia, Braylen, Wedge, Ten)

And Inert Han...🙄

Edit: and drea scurgg?

[I disliked quad Phantoms too, just trying to remember what the top lists were.]

23 hours ago, RStan said:

What does the Star fortress need to be good?

Reinforce.

The health is high, but goes fast, unless building Fat Vennie.

Barring that, @Boom Owl pointed out that both Delayed Fuses and "a way to reduce bomb damage" would help it. If the MG-100 got a second Mod Slot, and Ablative Plating wasn't so dang expensive, that'd also help.

8 hours ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

The bomber can stay bad and should stay bad.

The world in which the BSF/MG-100 is a bad ship is a much happier world than the one where the BSF/MG-100 is a good ship.

Trajectory Bombs are traditionally beating by disengaging and baiting out the bombs, which is done best by aces, esp. regenerating ones. Further, the act of disengaging slows the game down more, and we already struggle to have games finish on time.

It's a decent ship, and bombs are already highly underrated (OR maybe traditionally used by those with room-temp IQs?) Buffing either is a recipie for cancer and disaster.

This is probably correct, but I think there's a middle ground between good and bad.

Bomber (and other similar ships) should serve a meta-game role of being a backstop against excessive swarms. But right now, they just aren't really good enough at it. Slightly-but-not-significantly cheaper Trajectory Simulator and Ablative Plating help ships like this be a hair better, but probably don't really make them top-tables-large tournaments.

Preferred Counter Options:

• Mobility and Rocks counter Swarms
• Jousting, Blocking, Rocks, Forced Stress and Forced Re-positions counters Mobility

In Case of Irreversible Power Creep Break Glass For the Following:

• AOE counters mobility, swarm, and defensive token stack
• Defensive Token Stack or HP Equivalents counters AOE
• Alpha Strike counters Defensive Token Stack, HP Equivalents, and AOE
• Whatever thing combines all of the above into one counters everything
• Also known as 1.0