1 minute ago, Cuz05 said:

Same team. The things that did not fit with them, now do. It's a brave new world. You could say it's Fearless.

I mean, if you don't like Fangs or Sprays, you're maybe gonna struggle, but that's a thing with every faction in HS now.

Boba Fenn looks like the strongest thing that went untouched. And it kept all its tools for the format.

For me, HS all depends on how I get on with whoever our new 1 fwd to victory overlords turn out to be. I for one, do not welcome them, but 4 Fearless Skulls might do a thing.

Split the difference? Boba + 2 Fearless Skulls seems solid. Not every toy Boba might want, but most of them.

Hm. It just hit me that the rumor(?) of no more reprints for a bit might actually be tied to bumping down the barrier for so many generics.

Though i suppose that argument would make more sense if they hadn’t already reprinted most of those ships. 🤔

8 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

Boba Fenn pretty much stayed where they are while others got buffed. As for cheaper fangs, well 4 skull squadrons with fearless replacing 4 black sun assassins with crack shot, I don't think it's an upgrade. Not so sure on the effectiveness of scyks without their niche combo, though I guess Quinn Jast as a torp boat is alright.

Meanwhile Rebels can field 5 X-wings, or 4 double-tapping B-wings.

I think spamming stuff is a trap in Scum. 4 Fangs is probably real good, if you're good with them, but that's the exception. I think an assortment of ships is better in the case of Scum, take Fett, Fenn, or both, and use the remaining points to cover a gap or need.

I rarely used the niche combo with Scyks, I haven't used Tansarii Points and chose to save a lot of points and just use Cartel Spacers. The difference, since high initiative was so prevalent, was that I was spending something closer to 4-5 points for marksmanship. The combo isn't really necessary, because unless you have initiative advantage, your opponent is going to reposition anyway. That's fine. They don't get a mod to shoot you with now. If they don't reposition, they're gambling. Trading 4 dice both ways between a Cartel Spacer and a built up Nien Numb is fine in my books.

The advantage to autoblaster on a Scyk is the out of arc intimidation, not the bullseye. You're making the fragile aces look at your cheap filler ship instead of your power piece. If they ignore it, there's a very real chance you roll a critical naturally.

35 minutes ago, LagJanson said:

• Fett for the win is my thought

I am thinking Mag-Pulse Vonreg + 5 TIE FOs is going to be the real powerhouse. Pity I traded all my FO/Resistance for Empire, but I had to size down for budgetary reasons with all the new ships coming in.

Also, it could very well be that during this particular Hyperspace season in the game's history is where people realize that you don't need to line up a 6+ ships squad all together. True Swarm style, coming from all angles, is going to be more effective than many have realized.

13 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

As for cheaper fangs, well 4 skull squadrons with fearless replacing 4 black sun assassins with crack shot, I don't think it's an upgrade.

In the new HS, it doesn't need to be an upgrade. However, it's obviously a completely different thing anyway. The 4 Vipers will not get close to the destructive power of 4 Fearless I4 Fangs. They can control their engagements better, against a wider range of things, but they don't have the "hello, suddenly you're all dead" factor.

Just now, Cloaker said:

Also, it could very well be that during this particular Hyperspace season in the game's history is where people realize that you don't need to line up 6+ ships squads all together. True Swarm style, coming from all angles, is going to be more effective than many have realized.

And it's strangely fun to fly ships that way. Box is dull.

Just now, Cuz05 said:

In the new HS, it doesn't need to be an upgrade. However, it's obviously a completely different thing anyway. The 4 Vipers will not get close to the destructive power of 4 Fearless I4 Fangs. They can control their engagements better, against a wider range of things, but they don't have the "hello, suddenly you're all dead" factor.

There is nothing more disheartening than to roll up to a Fang at range 1 and do no damage.

6 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Split the difference? Boba + 2 Fearless Skulls seems solid. Not every toy Boba might want, but most of them.

It would not be bad. I used to do Boba, Swarm Terry and a Recruit. If everyone shooting at I5 is less necessary in this new world, it'll help.

The swarmed up I1 blocker is a pretty nice double edged sword though. 2 I4s gains some flex, but loses some tricks. Might be a fair trade....

Especially with OT gone- cue floods of salty tears.

7 minutes ago, LagJanson said:

And it's strangely fun to fly ships that way. Box is dull.

Why you must be a fellow Scum player like myself, friend! It's SO much more fun. This is the way.

6 minutes ago, LagJanson said:

I think spamming stuff is a trap in Scum. 4 Fangs is probably real good, if you're good with them, but that's the exception. I think an assortment of ships is better in the case of Scum, take Fett, Fenn, or both, and use the remaining points to cover a gap or need.

I rarely used the niche combo with Scyks, I haven't used Tansarii Points and chose to save a lot of points and just use Cartel Spacers. The difference, since high initiative was so prevalent, was that I was spending something closer to 4-5 points for marksmanship. The combo isn't really necessary, because unless you have initiative advantage, your opponent is going to reposition anyway. That's fine. They don't get a mod to shoot you with now. If they don't reposition, they're gambling. Trading 4 dice both ways between a Cartel Spacer and a built up Nien Numb is fine in my books.

The advantage to autoblaster on a Scyk is the out of arc intimidation, not the bullseye. You're making the fragile aces look at your cheap filler ship instead of your power piece. If they ignore it, there's a very real chance you roll a critical naturally.

Scum's strength is indeed assortment of ships. It's knee-capped hard in HS with only 5 ships, and 5 ships that don't necessarily work too well together for list building.

Boba Fenn is still there, but the competition got buffed. I guess Boba Emon got slightly buffed.

For assortment lists we've got Fangs, MG TIE, scyks and jumpmaster. Even buffed, the jumpmaster is still iffy. Many staple scum jank ships are missing(Old T, Seevor, 4-LOM, etc). It's not exactly an easy list building space. we're left with.

4 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I recognize that the situation is a bit different because here things are changed and not newly released. I believe the traditional definition requires old stuff to get left behind. That doesn't happen here, so in a strict sense, yes, it's no power creep.

I think it is close enough to call it powercreep because the effect is the same: the baseline creeps upwards. Maybe more accurately the "average", even though that is of course very nebulous. So whatever that means, if everything gets better, the average ship and list gets better. And that is the same effect as for strict power creep.

"Bad" stuff makes the game better. It's why hyperspace will be the better format. Restrictions are great. High difficulties in games are interesting, godmode cheats get boring quickly.

Err, ok, so let's have the semantics argument. Here's an easy recent example of something that isn't powercreep:

was in the original core set for Hearthstone. A few expansions later, and this gets released...

Other than the ice rager clearly being the chadder, bigger card, was this power creep? No - the magma rager is unplayable. The ice rager was also bad and not played.

Like you said, price reductions in X-Wing aren't really the same thing as new releases, but let's stop and look at some actual power creep really quickly.

Actual power creep:

Stuff like this eventually leads to absurd things over time - here's some serious power creep:

For another game's example:

20 years apart, but you can see the numbers basically just getting bigger over time.

I'm arguing these changes are the first example, not the second. X-Wings at 41 points were deep into bad territory. At 39 points, they're 1 point over the cartel marauder. That seems... reasonable to me? TIE Aggressors were a joke at... 29? Whatever they were before. They still seem... maybe playable at 26? I guess a better question is, do you have a specific example of a change you'd call power creep?

The reason I ask because "baseline" isn't really a useful term. In games, there's a "good enough to be played" line. Bringing anything below the line, up to the line is not power creep. Pushing it above the line to something you'd call meta-defining would be power creep.

Actually, let me give a better example for pokemon, because charizard was never playable.

was meta defining in the base set of pokemon

was the reprint. The reprint is laughably unplayable, too. Here's a "real" card (at least last I played):

Rarely seen triple post on purpose!

Back to the concept of a "Baseline": If you want to use the term baseline, you can't include cards that aren't actually played. They effectively don't exist when discussing balance.

2 minutes ago, Brunas said:

In games, there's a "good enough to be played" line. Bringing anything below the line, up to the line is not power creep. Pushing it above the line to something you'd call meta-defining would be power creep.

This seems to have been their primary approach for this update, and it promotes so much more confidence that they've learned some design lessons from 1st edition. When you bring up the floor to a more stable foundation, it gives longevity as you don't have to immediate dedicated all R&D intellectual capital towards coming up with the next big thing to chase and reach higher for. You've got time to fortify.

Also, I am just really happy for the retailers. More ships purchased keeps our game afloat, and helps them continue to work off their 1.0 inventory. They deserve to still see some return on investment, and this update hits those notes.

2 minutes ago, Brunas said:

I'm arguing these changes are the first example, not the second. X-Wings at 41 points were deep into bad territory. At 39 points, they're 1 point over the cartel marauder. That seems... reasonable to me? TIE Aggressors were a joke at... 29? Whatever they were before. They still seem... maybe playable at 26? I guess a better question is, do you have a specific example of a change you'd call power creep?

The reason I ask because "baseline" isn't really a useful term. In games, there's a "good enough to be played" line. Bringing anything below the line, up to the line is not power creep. Pushing it above the line to something you'd call meta-defining would be power creep.

I see where you come from. My disagreement is that the line of "good enough to be played" in part depends on the rest. If you bring down the things above the line, you bring down that line and previous crap becomes playable.

The ideal case in theory is of course to buff some and nerf others, but that's wishful thinking. I know. But in this case for once we've almost exclusively seen the bottom being buffed. That just solidifies the rest and makes it less likely for them to come down. Because now they are in turn seen in relation to the new playable 5X or whathever will turn out to be surprisingly good. And thus they seem less good in comparison.

The worst case at the end of this slipperly slope - which we don't have to go down - is that precog or SNR seem necessary. We've seen it happen in 1.0, so it's not unthinkable.

train for hyperspace is now boarding 🚂

extended problems stay in extended 🙅

I don't know if this was the intention or not, but it almost seem like they are trying two different experiments with extended and hyperspace regarding trip aces.

Extended seems to be the "what if we bring more stuff up to make trip aces work harder"?

With all the stuff that was ejected from hyperspace the format seems to be "what does a world were almost no trip aces is allowed look like"?

5 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I see where you come from. My disagreement is that the line of "good enough to be played" in part depends on the rest. If you bring down the things above the line, you bring down that line and previous crap becomes playable.

The ideal case in theory is of course to buff some and nerf others, but that's wishful thinking. I know. But in this case for once we've almost exclusively seen the bottom being buffed. That just solidifies the rest and makes it less likely for them to come down. Because now they are in turn seen in relation to the new playable 5X or whathever will turn out to be surprisingly good. And thus they seem less good in comparison.

The worst case at the end of this slipperly slope - which we don't have to go down - is that precog or SNR seem necessary. We've seen it happen in 1.0, so it's not unthinkable.

Right, which is why I was asking if what you meant is you don't like the current top of the power level stuff.

Same team! I think they should have nuked 7B from orbit, TA175 too. But, the fact that they didn't isn't power creep. They may have accidentally super buffed TA175 which would be power creep, but choosing to make more components playable isn't power creep.

15 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

Boba Fenn is still there, but the competition got buffed.

Some of the competition got buffed. Others got ejected to Extended.

Examples: Rebel Han Solo, Wedge, Soontir Fel, Inquisitors, Quickdraw, Upsilons, etc...

You can't say the competition got buffed in a blanket statement, because quite simply they didn't.

13 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Same team! I think they should have nuked 7B from orbit, TA175 too. But, the fact that they didn't isn't power creep. They may have accidentally super buffed TA175 which would be power creep, but choosing to make more components playable isn't power creep.

TLDR: Mechanical power creep is power creep.

Its usually pretty easy though to identify when someone is saying "Power Creep" but actually saying "they made something cheaper that I didnt want them to".

7 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

But in this case for once we've almost exclusively seen the bottom being buffed. That just solidifies the rest and makes it less likely for them to come down. Because now they are in turn seen in relation to the new playable 5X or whathever will turn out to be surprisingly good. And thus they seem less good in comparison.

This is exactly the argument I made last night when we recorded, being the only one of the three of us who is on the, " ... Hey, it might work" train for this latest change: FFG has decided they are fine with the existence, numbers-on-the-board, and mechanics of high-Init ships and Force. They're fine with trip-Imps. They're fine with Jedi. They're fine with I-5s (meet Gina, Leia, and Zizi)! It's all good, 'cept maybe less Regen, 'kay?

So, if all that is fine, by definition they're not going to lower that top line ... so, if they want more in the case, they absolutely have to raise the bottom line. And that's what they did.

And it might work. Newly efficient generics, allowing a whole extra three-dice gun, might be enough to spread arcs and catch Jedi. I'm not sure it will be, but it might be, and since they're fine with high-Init and Force where it is, this is what they need to do.

I'm okay with the change. I'm not thrilled with the change, because I find my heart usually lands with named I-3s and I-4s, not so much as with spammable ships, and it sorta feels like those named mid-Init ships are still the red-headed step-children a little bit (albeit with notable exceptions, like Braylen and Holo).

Anyway, we did a marathon three-hour recording basically just reading and discussing every change (and we still didn't get to Generic Upgrades), and this was my through-line the whole time: "This is what FFG is doing, and it might be just fine." Vince and Drew are significantly more down on the change.

11 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Right, which is why I was asking if what you meant is you don't like the current top of the power level stuff.

Same team! I think they should have nuked 7B from orbit, TA175 too. But, the fact that they didn't isn't power creep. They may have accidentally super buffed TA175 which would be power creep, but choosing to make more components playable isn't power creep.

Consider my view changed. I still think it's an effect distinct and frequent enough to get its own name.

It's close enough to colloquial usage of power creep to be apparently misunderstood as such, shown by myself here.

Why is the difference important and meaningful? (If you care to elaborate)

15 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

And it might work. Newly efficient generics, allowing a whole extra three-dice gun, might be enough to spread arcs and catch Jedi. I'm not sure it will be, but it might be, and since they're fine with high-Init and Force where it is, this is what they need to do.

Isn't the precedent of 1.0 a very strong argument against this?

Whether it is false to call it power creep or not: the slow increase of power over time kind of led to stuff like Finalform, no?

We can have faith that FFG won't let it get there again. But I expect the 5 generics with few upgrades to slowly turn into 5 generics with more upgrades. "To keep up". If everyone gets improved to keep up - as shown in this points update - then it escalates rather sooner than later.

(e: also, nice to have you back. For the whole episode then, I guess?)

33 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Consider my view changed. I still think it's an effect distinct and frequent enough to get its own name.

It's close enough to colloquial usage of power creep to be apparently misunderstood as such, shown by myself here.

Why is the difference important and meaningful? (If you care to elaborate)

Haha, well cool. The difference is important, because let's say you are personally in charge of making let's say, a card game.

Let's use pokemon for an example. First, it was initially a card game without a rotation (for the first few sets, then they introduced one to solve problems we'll hit in a sec). But, what does that mean for making new cards. If you want people to buy cards that exist in a pool of ever growing cards, what do you do? They've consistently chosen to just slightly raise the power of cards that release over time. This guarantees that people playing always want to buy new product. This is textbook power creep - we want people to keep buying our product, so we'll keep (purposefully) making better and better cards so players have to keep buying them to keep up. The main thing is, the average power level of decks increases every set. Like the cards I linked above, it's clear over long periods of time that old cards are laughably worse than new cards.

Sometimes, power creep isn't really an option. Again, let's look at pokemon - base set has a few cards that were uhh, let's just say problems (sorry the sizes don't match).

For reference, decks are 60 cards, limited to 4 copies of the same card per deck, cards cost nothing to play, and you start with 7 in your hand. I assume you don't care to do the math, but this basically means that

1. you can easily find any card in your deck turn one ~100% of the time

2. you easily deck yourself in the first or second turn.

There's no way to power creep your way out of this situation. What are they going to do, let you draw your whole deck twice per turn? They had to introduce a new type of card that you could only play one of that type per turn to slow this down, basically rewriting the rules of the game.

Despite this, we would still say that pokemon has and uses power creep, because they steadily release better and better cards to sell product.

24 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Isn't the precedent of 1.0 a very strong argument against this?

Whether it is false to call it power creep or not: the slow increase of power over time kind of led to stuff like Finalform, no?

We can have faith that FFG won't let it get there again. But I expect the 5 generics with few upgrades to slowly turn into 5 generics with more upgrades. "To keep up". If everyone gets improved to keep up - as shown in this points update - then it escalates rather sooner than later.

I think this is the basis of the misunderstanding. The changes that were made in this set appear to not be power creep in any way, because the best lists didn't get any better. There are more lists that may be competitive with the best lists. If it comes out that the new 39 point X-Wings are above the power level of current lists, then the game will have power crept. Looking at the points changes, I don't see anything that looks to be better than the current top tier lists, though the 31 point strikers/interceptors are a little eyebrow raising for concern. If they end up dominating the competitive scene, they'll be power creep. Accidental power creep, but still power creep.

So I think the issue is here, you're falling into a slippery slope argument. This points release is the equivalent of them releasing new product that are just cheaper versions of old cards. This is only power creep if they are better than the current power lists. If, for example, X-Wings end up still not being competitive with top meta lists, and they make them even cheaper to compete, it still wouldn't be power creep. If X-Wings end up being competitive at these prices, and then they make them cheaper for whatever reason, that would be power creep.

You asked for why the difference matters or is important. There's two main reasons.

1. Power Creep is both a strategy and an effect which makes old content obsolete, and slowly drives up the average power level of the game over time. It doesn't need to be purposeful to be power creep, but generally games know what they're getting into.

2. It has a very negative connotation, for obvious reasons. Generally related to companies chasing profits by forcing new product sales.

X-Wing fails to hit both, in terms of the specifics of power creep mattering. More specific examples are probably useful. 7B Aethersprites were doing really well prior to the wave 4 points adjustments - they got adjusted slightly such that 7B anakin became the most expensive small ship base in the game. Despite this, Aethersprites are still absolutely tearing it up. It's likely that the developers don't want to get into a situation where small ships start costing 100+ points, so their options are to either errata the cards, or try to balance the game around this stuff. They can't really errata 7B without either changing the rules for force, or doing something way out of left field like errataing the base stats of the ship which would be really ugly. The aethersprite problem is very similar to the deck searching mechanics in the base set of pokemon. I don't think it's a coincidence that 7B is banned in hyperspace.

What I'm trying to say is, X-Wing did have huge power creep, but it was during wave 3, and there's no real solution for it other than trying to make it fit into the game. No one was complaining when aethersprites released, everyone found out they actually loved aethersprites the whole time (@FranquesEnbiens).

For the second - FFG is clearly not chasing profits on these point changes. All the new stuff would be underpriced, and they wouldn't buff things we already have if so. Most of the hotshots and aces stuff seems... aggressively bad, in fact.

9 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Isn't the precedent of 1.0 a very strong argument against this?

Whether it is false to call it power creep or not: the slow increase of power over time kind of led to stuff like Finalform, no?

We can have faith that FFG won't let it get there again. But I expect the 5 generics with few upgrades to slowly turn into 5 generics with more upgrades. "To keep up". If everyone gets improved to keep up - as shown in this points update - then it escalates rather sooner than later.

(e: also, nice to have you back. For the whole episode then, I guess?)

Overall, I kind of feel top-end nerfs are safer for limiting future powercreep, than buffs on the low-end.

Mostly, it's six of one, half dozen of the other, and the update is a net good, but I have a slight preference for nerfs.