42 minutes ago, LagJanson said:

Epsilon is pretty solid. Cartel Spacers aren't bad but hard to justify unless you're doing something janky with them.

They're good ships that are priced a little bit too high, that makes them "bad" efficiency wise, but they can certainly put in some work in mixed lists. (Don't try to spam them, the inefficiency becomes really apparent really fast, as they wither under fire).

2 minutes ago, Brunas said:

So the only motivation to "do well" otherwise has been prizes, but since I just want the FO faction stuff and that's always just participation anyways, I've mostly been free to just do silly stuff.

Has FO always been your faction of choice, even in 1.0, or did that evolve? Also, in doing so, you know that you sacrifice the "best" chance to win an event. Do you not care about that? Did you ever?

(impromptu interviews are fun)

44 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Also, A-Wing matchups are pretty silly. They're pretty much trash against any real list that isn't aethersprites/aces.

http://advancedtargeting.computer/pilot.html?pilot=tallissanlintra

Tallissan seems to be crushing rebel beef too.

11 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

They're good ships that are priced a little bit too high, that makes them "bad" efficiency wise, but they can certainly put in some work in mixed lists. (Don't try to spam them, the inefficiency becomes really apparent really fast, as they wither under fire).

Mostly agree. The ship itself is fine. The dial is fine. 28 seems a tad steep for the lowest generic for what you get but I don't think it's far off the mark. Swarming them is ok too, in very specific scenarios...

Just now, LagJanson said:

Mostly agree. The ship itself is fine. The dial is fine. 28 seems a tad steep for the lowest generic for what you get but I don't think it's far off the mark.

It's about two points off the mark, for both generics, and probably all the named ones bar Serissu. (As an aside, a two point drop would allow a 6x Tansarii ABS+MM list at 198 points, at that point the spam might become somewhat competitive).

These things are simultaneously possible and useful/interesting to discuss:

1. Design: Ship/Card design and preferences about the games ideal mechanical power level
2. Tactics: How to play and deal with matchups with/against everything in the game based on the design that exists

I play things based on how I feel about their design and what I know about everythings tactics.
Discussing cards doesn't nerf or buff them, only the Brooks Brothers can do that. Its going to be ok.

13 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

It's about two points off the mark, for both generics, and probably all the named ones bar Serissu. (As an aside, a two point drop would allow a 6x Tansarii ABS+MM list at 198 points, at that point the spam might become somewhat competitive).

• Drea w/Dorsal Turret
• 4x Cartel Spacer w/ Autoblaster Cannon
• 1x Cartel Spacer

Borderline competitive already. At two points less each things get a whole lot more interesting with that last ship.

That said, 1 or 2 points is my personal feelings. Not math'd anything though and my personal equations wouldn't matter even if I had spent time on it.

1 hour ago, Brunas said:

I feel like I'm losing my mind. Am I still having fever dreams?

...can anyone link me a list that isn't a joke with a cartel spacer?

...can someone link me a list that supports the idea that the epsilon squadron cadet is one of the best generics in the game?

I've been thinking about this a bit lately, mostly in regards to the E-Wing. Is it at all possible that the ship is actually better (perhaps much better) than is commonly believed, and we don't see evidence to the contrary because there's little to no overlap between stronger players using stronger builds of the ship in reasonable lists?

For the E-Wing, most discussions tend to immediately degenerate to a back and forth of "all good players know it's garbage" or "here's a bloated, inefficient build that I love to use, I just need a points decrease." I'm not seeing a ton of high-level players citing real experience with it, nor am I seeing lists mentioned using it that don't have other questionable choices. If your E-Wing test list is Thicc Thane and 2 Daredevil E-Wings and a Rebel TIE, can you really use that as evidence for the E-Wing being bad?

Same goes for ships like the generic FO ships. How much are these actually being tested to confirm what people seem to strongly suspect but might not be testing? Isn't it reasonable to conclude that the tournament results thus become a bit of a feedback loop for these preconceptions? I mean, I can give you sound lists using them, but I can't cite high level tournament results because I usually feed into the feedback loop and bring more "proven" lists to bigger events. I can give you anecdotal experience but that's basically me shouting "no u" into the void. I could show on a MathWing model why they might be good, but there's not a ton of love for those models (and some outright vitriol towards such models by some).

TL;DR - I appreciate where you're coming from and you're right to be skeptical, but "squad list (presumably from post-cut) or it isn't true" seems a bit unfair.

EDIT: For what it's worth, here's what I have been doing with FO generics lately. This is not fully optimized and Optics feel a bit pricey but this absolutely wins games, both casual and tournament (although slightly meme format tournament so don't @ me). I am not at all convinced it's better than non-Optics spam, nor am I convinced that AB Quickdraw is the best answer for the 'I don't want to instantly lose to Jedi' part of the list, but this list is at the very least viable. I know, I know, it's Zeta and not Epsilon FO's but I wanted the I2 to be able to kill I1 drones, feel free to run it with Epsilons, I have and it works fine too.

https://raithos.github.io/?f=First Order&d=v8ZsZ200Z243X181WWW182W113W105Y259X186WWWWY259X186WWWWY268X186WY268X186W&sn=Unnamed Squadron&obs=

10 minutes ago, LagJanson said:

• Drea w/Dorsal Turret
• 4x Cartel Spacer w/ Autoblaster Cannon
• 1x Cartel Spacer

Borderline competitive already. At two points less each things get a whole lot more interesting with that last ship.

That said, 1 or 2 points is my personal feelings. Not math'd anything though and my personal equations wouldn't matter even if I had spent time on it.

Drea's doing the heavy lifting there.

you can also fit:

• Drea w/Dorsal Turret
• 2x Cartel Marauder
• 3x Mining Guild Sentry

• Drea w/Ion Turret
• Cartel Marauder
• 2x Cartel Spacer w/Autoblaster Cannon
• 2x Binayre Pirate

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

SOTL made the case here:

http://stayontheleader.blogspot.com/2019/12/rule-32-enjoy-little-things.html

I just asked him about the M3A, and he thinks there might be three possible reasons why it sees less play: 1. 2pts of 26 or 28 is still relevant, 2. it's probably better than we think, 3. and imo the most important one, there is a lot of competition with seevor at 30, quads at 32, Zs at 24 or escape craft at 26. FO does not have that competition.

Every "study" that uses generic imperial tie fighter as their benchmark starts on incredibly weak premises... It's basically running a contest of blind to find who is only one-eyed

55 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Example: I don't think Luke is that much worse than Obi-Wan, but why bother flying Luke if he's even *a little* worse.

Except Luke is far worse than Obi, not just a little... Fine tuned controls makes already make Obi more efficient than what luke could ever be... Obi is one of the best aces in the game, Luke is a glorified jouster who costs just 4 points less than the jedi master

1 hour ago, Cerebrawl said:

Drea's doing the heavy lifting there.

you can also fit:

• Drea w/Dorsal Turret
• 2x Cartel Marauder
• 3x Mining Guild Sentry

It's probably better.

PS: I've played this list:

• Drea w/Ion Turret
• Cartel Marauder
• 2x Cartel Spacer w/Autoblaster Cannon
• 2x Binayre Pirate

True. My point wasn't that you can't do better, and in fact I implied you could. I was stating that you could spam Scyks currently and still be competitive. And yes, Drea is doing a lot of heavy lifting...

Curious how you did with the last list. I'm betting it flies much more... 'normal' than the style I had to adapt to.

2 hours ago, gennataos said:

Has FO always been your faction of choice, even in 1.0, or did that evolve? Also, in doing so, you know that you sacrifice the "best" chance to win an event. Do you not care about that? Did you ever?

(impromptu interviews are fun)

No, and mostly I just like the color scheme for prizes.

Oh, missed the second half of the question. Do I care? I don't know. Yes? I guess? That sounds like a no to me.

2 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

Tallissan seems to be crushing rebel beef too.

yep, didn't scroll down far enough to see that, good catch

1 hour ago, DoubleDown11 said:

I've been thinking about this a bit lately, mostly in regards to the E-Wing. Is it at all possible that the ship is actually better (perhaps much better) than is commonly believed, and we don't see evidence to the contrary because there's little to no overlap between stronger players using stronger builds of the ship in reasonable lists?

For the E-Wing, most discussions tend to immediately degenerate to a back and forth of "all good players know it's garbage" or "here's a bloated, inefficient build that I love to use, I just need a points decrease." I'm not seeing a ton of high-level players citing real experience with it, nor am I seeing lists mentioned using it that don't have other questionable choices. If your E-Wing test list is Thicc Thane and 2 Daredevil E-Wings and a Rebel TIE, can you really use that as evidence for the E-Wing being bad?

Same goes for ships like the generic FO ships. How much are these actually being tested to confirm what people seem to strongly suspect but might not be testing? Isn't it reasonable to conclude that the tournament results thus become a bit of a feedback loop for these preconceptions? I mean, I can give you sound lists using them, but I can't cite high level tournament results because I usually feed into the feedback loop and bring more "proven" lists to bigger events. I can give you anecdotal experience but that's basically me shouting "no u" into the void. I could show on a MathWing model why they might be good, but there's not a ton of love for those models (and some outright vitriol towards such models by some).

TL;DR - I appreciate where you're coming from and you're right to be skeptical, but "squad list (presumably from post-cut) or it isn't true" seems a bit unfair.

EDIT: For what it's worth, here's what I have been doing with FO generics lately. This is not fully optimized and Optics feel a bit pricey but this absolutely wins games, both casual and tournament (although slightly meme format tournament so don't @ me). I am not at all convinced it's better than non-Optics spam, nor am I convinced that AB Quickdraw is the best answer for the 'I don't want to instantly lose to Jedi' part of the list, but this list is at the very least viable. I know, I know, it's Zeta and not Epsilon FO's but I wanted the I2 to be able to kill I1 drones, feel free to run it with Epsilons, I have and it works fine too.

https://raithos.github.io/?f=First Order&d=v8ZsZ200Z243X181WWW182W113W105Y259X186WWWWY259X186WWWWY268X186WY268X186W&sn=Unnamed Squadron&obs=

Oh, maybe it came off more dismissive than I meant. I don't mean "top tier squad list or GTFO" - as far as I know, there isn't one. It was meant as a good faith "is there some squad making the rounds that I'm not aware of", because like you note, just because it hasn't worked yet, doesn't mean it's not good.

That being said, yes, I've been messing around with FO generics a lot in my free time. I've been incredibly disappointed across the board. For example, in the squad you listed you've spent 134 points on 2 FOs and 2 SFs. I would argue something like this is strictly (or as near to strictly as possible) better than those generics for the same price:

Iden Versio (40)
Crack Shot (1)

“Howlrunner” (40)
Crack Shot (1)

Gideon Hask (30)
Crack Shot (1)

Del Meeko (30)
Crack Shot (1)
Total: 144

I would also argue that we don't see mini swarms for a reason - the empire version of those 134 points is better than the FO points, and it's still not particularly competitive. Soontir is definitely better than Quickdraw, yet we don't see miniswarm + soontir competitively either. Why? My pet hypothesis is when you have aces it's better to have more aces at current prices, because having three aces ends with you having more points at time more often than "giving away" points with a miniswarm.

20 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Why? My pet hypothesis is when you have aces it's better to have more aces

Angry hux

3 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I think there's a lot of stuff which isn't so much "bad," but rather

1. marginally worse than something else which is OK
2. so there's no reason to fly it
3. so the folks who do fly it tend to be less-bothered players
4. who possibly make a few more mistakes on the table
5. which brings down the overall performance of the ships
6. which brings us back to #1

This.

Also. Scyk are decent.

Give me 2pt discount now please.

But also, also. It's more than possible to make a lot of these BAD things competitive, with lots of right stuff applied. Sometimes the marginal is almost neglible. But it's a bit weird to try. So it also happens less.

I have no examples.

28 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Soontir is definitely better than Quickdraw, yet we don't see miniswarm + soontir competitively either. Why? My pet hypothesis is when you have aces it's better to have more aces at current prices, because having three aces ends with you having more points at time more often than "giving away" points with a miniswarm.

I think part of this is that Soontir is more prone to die when played badly (or even just imperfectly). If you just roll Quickdraw in there like a common jouster, there's a decent chance you get a nice outcome. If you do that with Soontir, there's a decent chance Soontir is dead (and if he's not, his next turn might still be very ugly).

I don't think I'm an awful player but when I dabble with 2.0 Soontir, I sure look like one. There's an interesting art to nibbling at the edges and playing for long-term position vs. short-term attack gains with Soontir that seem deceptively nuanced to me. There can be nuance to Quickdraw too, of course, but the ability and durability mean that you don't always need to practice that art to still get positive outcomes

34 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Oh, maybe it came off more dismissive than I meant. I don't mean "top tier squad list or GTFO" - as far as I know, there isn't one. It was meant as a good faith "is there some squad making the rounds that I'm not aware of", because like you note, just because it hasn't worked yet, doesn't mean it's not good.

I don't think it was dismissive, I think it was constructive. I just occasionally feel there is some tunnel-vision on winning lists, tournament results and ship winrate performance here and that this approach (especially when used on its own) can be as flawed as anything else. But mostly I just think of all the times I see lists with ships/builds that are surprising which come out of nowhere and win tournaments, and try to remind myself that just because we're not seeing it doesn't mean it's not good.

Except for Jaycris Tubbs, he's not good. 😂

4 hours ago, Brunas said:

That depends on what you mean by "best". By most reasonable definitions of best, I don't think I can agree that the epsilon is one of the best generics in the game. It seems generally better than most two die generics which are already demonstrably bad, isn't widely played, and when it is played has very middling results.

I'm hesitant to even put any weight into the performance because there's so little information - it's 99% "not enough information", it's just the 1% isn't interesting enough to even raise an eyebrow.

what is 'is'?

4 hours ago, Brunas said:

I missed something - did he lose to a scyk?

enjoy

When?

32 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

When?

So in on the ETA interceptor

1 hour ago, Boom Owl said:

When?

Glitterstim TIE Interceptors?

Super Cheap RZ2s (edit, w/Regen)?

More Faster Jedi?

...............

Errr.........

I want to say I want it, but...

Errr .....

5 minutes ago, Bucknife said:

Glitterstim TIE Interceptors?

Super Cheap RZ2s (edit, w/Regen)?

More Faster Jedi?

...............

Errr.........

I want to say I want it, but...

Errr .....

Look. It might be busted as heck, and will get overnerfed later, but that ship is beautiful and I want one

15 hours ago, Managarmr said:

Obi dropped 7 points at last points update, which nobody understood why one would do that, knowing what that does to balance.

Because, they "never found a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

...but they were not cautious.

4 hours ago, Brunas said:

My pet hypothesis is when you have aces it's better to have more aces...

Winner of Best Quote of the last 212 Pages award; nicely done.

And quite true.

Notwithstanding the color commentary.

...now I know where my tea is, and I best curb it now.

2 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

My pet hypothesis is when you have aces it's better to have more aces at current prices, because having three aces ends with you having more points at time more often than "giving away" points with a miniswarm.

4 hours ago, Brunas said:

I don’t know how to Internet, that quote is all messed up.

One of the hallmarks of first edition was that lists towards the end always doubled down, never hedge. I’m not positive that is a rule yet in second edition, but aces next to aces and cutting everything for the extra swarm body, and 130 point Hans all point in a direction.

Just now, AEIllingworth said:

i am screenshotting that so we have it for posterity

peak forums

4 hours ago, Brunas said:

That being said, yes, I've been messing around with FO generics a lot in my free time. I've been incredibly disappointed across the board. For example, in the squad you listed you've spent 134 points on 2 FOs and 2 SFs. I would argue something like this is strictly (or as near to strictly as possible) better than those generics for the same price:

Iden Versio (40)
Crack Shot (1)

“Howlrunner” (40)
Crack Shot (1)

Gideon Hask (30)
Crack Shot (1)

Del Meeko (30)
Crack Shot (1)
Total: 144

I would also argue that we don't see mini swarms for a reason - the empire version of those 134 points is better than the FO points, and it's still not particularly competitive. Soontir is definitely better than Quickdraw, yet we don't see miniswarm + soontir competitively either. Why? My pet hypothesis is when you have aces it's better to have more aces at current prices, because having three aces ends with you having more points at time more often than "giving away" points with a miniswarm.

Aces are definitely underpriced, and 2 dice fighters won't really be the right choice as long as they are. That's not exactly an insightful comment, of course.

I've messed around with both the FO and Imperial miniswarms, and while there's an argument that the Imperial swarm is better, the FO's extra shield (and the other little bonuses ot gets) makes a huge difference in avoiding one-shots.

In retrospect if maybe two dozen games with the Kylo+4 FO miniswarm, the most annoying part of flying it was that it never had a meaningful bid. This meant Kylo was very often a simple jouster agaisnt some of the best lists out there. It ended up being weird, because he hit harder and was more points than a pair of FOs, but was a lot less defensive, it produced imbalances because the FOs couldn't always punish people going after Kylo and couldn't always generate the mass necessary to bully aces. Soontir + miniswarm had the opposite problem. Soontir was cheaper and less durable, so has to spend some time not engaged. The TIE Fighters aren't really tough enough to stand against opposing squads without him, though.

Oddly, it feels like Soontir wants FOs to not die while he's maneuvering and Kylo wants a Howl miniswarm to punish ships that go after him. Consequently, I'm pretty curious about points on the Red Interceptor, because 5 FOs + Vonreg feels good in my head. This might just be grasso always greener, though.

3 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

Aces are definitely underpriced, and 2 dice fighters won't really be the right choice as long as they are. That's not exactly an insightful comment, of course.

I've messed around with both the FO and Imperial miniswarms, and while there's an argument that the Imperial swarm is better, the FO's extra shield (and the other little bonuses ot gets) makes a huge difference in avoiding one-shots.

In retrospect if maybe two dozen games with the Kylo+4 FO miniswarm, the most annoying part of flying it was that it never had a meaningful bid. This meant Kylo was very often a simple jouster agaisnt some of the best lists out there. It ended up being weird, because he hit harder and was more points than a pair of FOs, but was a lot less defensive, it produced imbalances because the FOs couldn't always punish people going after Kylo and couldn't always generate the mass necessary to bully aces. Soontir + miniswarm had the opposite problem. Soontir was cheaper and less durable, so has to spend some time not engaged. The TIE Fighters aren't really tough enough to stand against opposing squads without him, though.

Oddly, it feels like Soontir wants FOs to not die while he's maneuvering and Kylo wants a Howl miniswarm to punish ships that go after him. Consequently, I'm pretty curious about points on the Red Interceptor, because 5 FOs + Vonreg feels good in my head. This might just be grasso always greener, though.

5 FOs you say? Here's my skepticism.

Do you want Vonreg and:

Kylo Ren (76)

“Quickdraw” (45)
Special Forces Gunner (10)
Total: 131

or

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (26)

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (26)

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (26)

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (26)

Epsilon Squadron Cadet (26)
Total: 130