Carolina Krayts is the best X-Wing podcast

By SaltMaster 5000, in X-Wing

1 minute ago, Biophysical said:

I totally admit that Sloane is really good, just not as good as most high passive mod ace lists. By your metric, Boba is even worse than Sloane because it was widespread competitive when Nantex were not nerfed, and even won a tournament. We've known Boba is this good for ages, yet one peek of Sloane making ships that have been pretty bad competitive and she's got to be nerfed.

I'm not saying that she's not good. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be looked at closely, but I don't see how she can be priority over the continually dominating passive mod, repositioning, high initiative ships.

I never said they are mutually exclusive.

I said that the current data tells us Sloane's peak is higher than Boba's - after Boba just got nerfed a bit in August while Sloane did get buffed. Why is that controversial?

30 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I never said they are mutually exclusive.

I said that the current data tells us Sloane's peak is higher than Boba's - after Boba just got nerfed a bit in August while Sloane did get buffed. Why is that controversial?

What I take exception to is people that object to Sloane and Scyks and Mal despite the fact that we have things that have passive mod aces that have always been top tier that are still top tier, and we have 2 whole tournaments worth of data (i.e. not a lot of data) on Sloane/Scyk/Malswarm/whatever swarm people hate. If that's not you, no worries.

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

Focusing on"generics" is a - sorry - lazy way to dismiss the entirely justified criticism of individually broken pieces by focusing of one possible common feature that is not actually relevant. Like much discrimination it just picks out one that is outstanding. And like much discrimination it is the wrong one.

Terex and Sloane should not be as defining as they are, to name two obvious examples.

It just feels like ship racism.

  • Sloane on the reapest cheaper is 48 points.
  • Drea without dorsal is 49.
  • Howlrunner is 46.
  • Malarus in the Xi is 43.

Obviously this is comparing apples to oranges to pears to casaba melons but I'm pretty confident in saying that FFG overestimated the take a strain penalty on Malarus and clever players are getting way more mileage out of Sloane than they figured.

Sloane is at least a little bit too cheap and I hope she never makes in to Hyperspace.

Boba Fett is at least a little too cheap and I hope they release a new version of Boba and remove the current version from the game Hyperspace format.

My position: Nerf it all unless there's a $#@% good reason not to.

2 minutes ago, gamblertuba said:

My position: Nerf it all unless there's a $#@% good reason not to.

It's the only way to be sure.

3 minutes ago, gamblertuba said:
  • Sloane on the reapest cheaper is 48 points.

i lol'd

For actual content:

What do we think of no Republic lists in the Galaxies cut? Couldn't find data on how many were taken. Obviously the cut rate is 0% but is that 0/16 or 0/3 lists taken? Are they actually bad or just slightly worse than other options right now?

9 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

How do you guys fly your Ints? Divide and conquer? double flank? joust?!?

I've been tending to split into wide pairs and push Rampage through the middle, but I don't think it gives him much time. The talon roll/fly-by choice is a pretty critical juncture.

I haven't run them with a heavy yet, but basically "controlled chaos."

I imagine with a heavy, it'll be similar.

Start them together, then starburst them on the first turn to divide them up.

Have them converge on the first target from several directions.

2 minutes ago, gamblertuba said:

For actual content:

What do we think of no Republic lists in the Galaxies cut? Couldn't find data on how many were taken. Obviously the cut rate is 0% but is that 0/16 or 0/3 lists taken? Are they actually bad or just slightly worse than other options right now?

Nothing because it's "2 whole tournaments worth of data (i.e. not a lot of data)"

Dismiss it for all questions or for none.

1 minute ago, gamblertuba said:

For actual content:

What do we think of no Republic lists in the Galaxies cut? Couldn't find data on how many were taken. Obviously the cut rate is 0% but is that 0/16 or 0/3 lists taken? Are they actually bad or just slightly worse than other options right now?

I think many republic players are multi-faction players and something else was much more interesting to play right now.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

Nothing because it's "2 whole tournaments worth of data (i.e. not a lot of data)"

Dismiss it for all questions or for none.

That's a reasonable thing to do.

2 minutes ago, gamblertuba said:

For actual content:

What do we think of no Republic lists in the Galaxies cut? Couldn't find data on how many were taken. Obviously the cut rate is 0% but is that 0/16 or 0/3 lists taken? Are they actually bad or just slightly worse than other options right now?

I am sad. Hoping 7th fleet gunboi gets a good buff to open up some options. I think that if the ETA is the fix that Republic needs, people will be mad at Jedis again, leading to a nerf not long after.

2 hours ago, svelok said:

Like, the canonical example was 5X, and then they broke the 5X breakpoint and... nothing happened and nobody plays it and it's mediocre? Out of curiosity I just checked on i1 Defenders, and basically nobody played them either, but of the 11 people that did 3 made their cuts.

Re. Breakpoints. No I don't have, nor will I find examples, it was a passing thought.

We all know well enough that breakpoints exist and their reason for existing. My thought was merely that if a theoretical ship is a few points dearer than it could be, purely because fitting one more in would result in an OP list, then points across the board must be a little off.

But I also said that the ships are all so very different that it's not necessarily even a widely applicable thought.

So :shrug:

I really don't know why there is ace vs generic animosity going on. I thought the easy consensus was that both are problematic when they're too cheap. And both kinda have been.

Nerf some generics doesn't instantly translate into let me trip ace/word salad with no fear, or vice versa.

Honestly, I think this is a min/max thing. All games are nicer when that aspect is reigned in.

Nerf both ends, let me show my leet unique I3/4 skills.....

I'm curious how far FFG is willing to go with their PDF's. For example, I'd love to see struts get the "Standardized" keyword. If they are willing to do that, would they be willing to just errata a couple dots on the TIE Defender generic?

17 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

What I take exception to is people that object to Sloane and Scyks and Mal despite the fact that we have things that have passive mod aces that have always been top tier that are still top tier, and we have 2 whole tournaments worth of data (i.e. not a lot of data) on Sloane/Scyk/Malswarm/whatever swarm people hate. If that's not you, no worries.

What I take exception to is the attitude of "f* you I have mine now" or "time for these other guys to be hurting"

As always, diversity is the antidote. Here diversity in factions and playstyles.

I'm still in awe of the mental gymnastics behind "these 3 agility turrets are destroying the game, but these 3 agility turrets are ok"

2 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

What I take exception to is the attitude of "f* you I have mine now" or "time for these other guys to be hurting"

As always, diversity is the antidote. Here diversity in factions and playstyles.

In X-Wing and in Life.

This is The Way.

1 minute ago, theBitterFig said:

In X-Wing and in Life.

This is The Way.

It might be a Baader Meinhof illusion, but maybe it's no surprise that current Xwing mirrors other things in that regard.

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

What I take exception to is the attitude of "f* you I have mine now" or "time for these other guys to be hurting"

As always, diversity is the antidote. Here diversity in factions and playstyles.

If that's what you're getting from me, that's weird. I want the best things to be made less good, no matter what they are. I think passive mod high initiative repositioning ships have been the best and are still the best, so this new focus on generic efficiency, which has a very low rate of adoption, doesn't make sense to me.

1 minute ago, Biophysical said:

so this new focus on generic efficiency, which has a very low rate of adoption, doesn't make sense to me.

If you wouldn't dismiss data from 1122 lists, or way more if adding Spacejams, then you would add facts to help you make sense of it. However good you think those numbers are - they are better than nothing. Which is what all the other feelings around here are based on...

What is a low rate of adoption to you? Ask Mark, he has seen the numbers. I was happy to share but have since deleted it because facts apparently don't matter anymore.

1 hour ago, S4ul0 said:

I don't like play against lists where there are so much arc coverage that almost every position is a bad position and the game is about trading ships.

Okay, so I read this as "I don't like to take damage" or "I don't like it when my ships die". Every position isn't a bad position - if a swarm is spreading its arcs to ensure it has a shot everywhere, than it doesn't have good shots anywhere. A swarm that spreads its arcs is hoping to do maybe one damage to something; ships don't die unless it gets multiple arcs on target.

That means that you can create massively favorable situations by pointing a bunch of your arcs at the single swarm arc facing you. Or you can have one shot that's high quality (more dice / mods) vs the swarm ship's single low quality (fewer dice / mods) shot. Bringing TIEs and Wookies into the same mixing pot is super not the case - the strong point of Wookies is how easily they mass shots, and how little the arc coverage makes their dials matter. TIEs are the opposite - every game is about getting arcs on target.

16 minutes ago, gamblertuba said:

What do we think of no Republic lists in the Galaxies cut? Couldn't find data on how many were taken. Obviously the cut rate is 0% but is that 0/16 or 0/3 lists taken? Are they actually bad or just slightly worse than other options right now?

Did you mean Coruscant specifically? That was 11 lists. If Republic performed exactly average, they'd have only 1.8 lists in cut, 0 is pretty much a meaningless gap from that, so yeah, just nobody played them there.

18 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

We all know well enough that breakpoints exist and their reason for existing. My thought was merely that if a theoretical ship is a few points dearer than it could be, purely because fitting one more in would result in an OP list, then points across the board must be a little off.

Yeah, my point was just that I think that might be more of a myth than an actual problem. I don't agree with this specific line of thought though - one of the things about X-Wing is that it's almost always better to double down on one sort of thing rather than to take lots of different things.

If it's a swarm, take more swarm ships. If it's highly defense aces, take more highly defensive aces. There's even a tendency for large turrets to just take more large turrets (double falcon, double firespray, etc). So sometimes, you have situations like 5X, where we could look at 4X + Basically-An-X-Wing Attack Shuttle, and have that rendering the 5X breakpoint not super relevant. On the other hand, there's not always a similar ship that fits into the point bracket, so a small (~5pt) swing can make an outsize impact on the list by forcing it to replace one of its ships with a different kind of ship, in the sense that eg an RZ-1 isn't just cheaper than a T-65 but also very different.

18 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

If you wouldn't dismiss data from 1122 lists, or way more if adding Spacejams, then you would add facts to help you make sense of it. However good you think those numbers are - they are better than nothing. Which is what all the other feelings around here are based on...

What is a low rate of adoption to you? Ask Mark, he has seen the numbers. I was happy to share but have since deleted it because facts apparently don't matter anymore.

I'm open to being convinced by numbers. I just don't think the Nantex meta is a good indicator of the current situation.

Edit: Let me put this out there. Starting with the next points (starting soon, I think), we'll use 2-3 ship passive mod (Force, Boba, Soontir, etc.), high initiative (5-6), repositioning ships as the baseline. This type of squad is what I'm saying is the best thing right now, and what has always been the best thing. If 6-8 ship lists, call them "Efficiency", have an equivalent cut rate to that "Ace" cohort of ships and have 50% of the adoption rate or more of the "Ace" cohort, then I'll agree that 6-8 ship lists are as good as ace lists. Is this a reasonable comparison? If not, what would be?

Edited by Biophysical
9 minutes ago, svelok said:

. Yeah, my point was just that I think that might be more of a myth than an actual problem. I don't agree with this specific line of thought though - one of the things about X-Wing is that it's almost always better to double down on one sort of thing rather than to take lots of different things.

If it's a swarm, take more swarm ships. If it's highly defense aces, take more highly defensive aces. There's even a tendency for large turrets to just take more large turrets (double falcon, double firespray, etc). So sometimes, you have situations like 5X, where we could look at 4X + Basically-An-X-Wing Attack Shuttle, and have that rendering the 5X breakpoint not super relevant. On the other hand, there's not always a similar ship that fits into the point bracket, so a small (~5pt) swing can make an outsize impact on the list by forcing it to replace one of its ships with a different kind of ship, in the sense that eg an RZ-1 isn't just cheaper than a T-65 but also very different.

Fair.

I'm not sure if it's really doable, min/max will always be a competitive approach, no matter how fine the margins, but I'd like the doubling down on a thing to be less of a thing. I've got no problem with oops all aces, or oops all filler, but I much prefer oops wtf is that mess.

It's a clever mess that's about to pull your pants dow- oh dang it, meta too tough...

Like to point out, as usual, that clever doesn't just mean max words. The right dials and the right marginal abilities can be combined for positional/damage and fire control advantages....

Unless the aces and swarms are just too efficient....

16 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

I'm open to being convinced by numbers. I just don't think the Nantex meta is a good indicator of the current situation.

Maybe you don't want to include the Nantex meta and that leaves only Coruscant and some minor events of data which isn't a lot.

That doesn't mean we should say high I passive mod have been good all of 2.0 so they are still op now. As they had some nerfs were other things got buffed. Data pre July point update is also no longer a good indicator of the current situation.

Disclaimer: not saying something is or isn't here, but find which data ok to include and which not a bit off

38 minutes ago, svelok said:

Did you mean Coruscant specifically? That was 11 lists. If Republic performed exactly average, they'd have only 1.8 lists in cut, 0 is pretty much a meaningless gap from that, so yeah, just nobody played them there.

Exactly. Have not been able to find the lists for Coruscant. So the question becomes why weren't they played more? Is Galactic Republic unpopular because it's bad? Is it a bad faction because it's unpopular? Is it only popular with bad players?

Or is this just noise and we'll see plenty of them in the next big tourney?