3 hours ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

I'm not saying Biggs' ability isn't powerful, or that it doesn't need some addressing at some level, but **** that is the most watered down, weakest change I've seen proposed for it. Ever. Oh no, I get a stress token but I kill your best ship in a single shot with my tricked out OP scum and now your squad can't even compete? Why not just ban the x-wing from competitive tournament play, because that's what's being proposed here.

Seriously, I do not understand how people hate on the one and only good ship the game is named for when we have issues like Scurgg Genius and Dengar double shot running rampant.

1. My general approach is to maximize player choice, and emphasize stress as the universal currency of tactical tradeoffs. This change accomplishes both.

2. Integrated Astromech is now dual sided and the first use can discard a dealt facedown damage card.

3. Biggs cost reduced to 44 (22)

4. OP Scum stuff is also getting nerfed, some mechanical and some to bring it in line with a consistent power curve.

5. Reverse rebel captive is still good, and punishes the highest PS ships in the opposing squad.

6. It's still pre-beta.

7. The developers have stated they would not have written Biggs ability as written if they were to redo the game.

2 hours ago, kris40k said:

You realize that change would prevent the big, bad Dengar and other current Expertise carriers from killing your best ship in a single shot? Also, a typical mindlinked Fenn Rau would be double stressed, actionless (except a gifted Focus) and then killed the following turn. PtL Aces would hate life. Thankfully, MJ's change is only once per round.

There is a reason why Rebel Captive is effective and worth 3pts and a crew slot.

Bingo. In Biggs case I priced him where he needed to be at PS5, then added about 6 (3) points for his reverse rebel captive ability.

In a world where the X-Wing is a good ship, that makes Biggs a good option; he's just not an auto-include. His greatest strength as-is is that he can protect fragile ships, allowing otherwise-useless pilots to see play. If you make those pilots useful in their own right, you don't need Biggs.

That said, I'm not sure if the ability as written is as good as Rebel captive, simply because it's useless if there are no ships at Range 1 (small bubble and no endgame capability). I would tend to eyeball it as being 2-2.5 points, but I'm no expert, and I'm sure playtesting will help sort that out

Quote

Another aspect that I would assume is extremely difficult to model is the aspect of time. With time as a finite element of the game, the size of the squad also plays into the number of rounds that can generally be completed (with marking of ships and setting dials for a 4 ship list typically taking a bit longer....). This also plays into favor for the Rebels. With the lethality coefficient capturing the relative offensive potency of the squads and the ability to disperse damage factoring into your 26% increase in JV, a player's ability to relinquish some of the short range synergies and start to manage points by "running" also starts to play into it....

Your model (if I am understanding it correctly) does maintain Yn as a constant (leading to the 1.41 factor), so wouldn't that increase the efficiency beyond the 26% increase in JV?

Wow, this is all fantastic. Thanks for putting it together, I'm curious how you got to your derivation but it intuitively makes sense if I'm reading it right.

The only thing I'm not sure I follow is this:

On 7/29/2017 at 2:29 PM, MajorJuggler said:

Captain Rex

Rex is a little trickier to value because he only has ATT2, but he's also lowering someone else's attack, likely from ATT3 to ATT2. So, in net, his total contribution is more as if he has an ATT3 attack: ATT2 from his own gun, and then the rest equivalently from debuffing an enemy. It can be reasonably argued that his incremental debuff is actually worth more than as having an offensive boost as modelled here due to Bigg's damage mitigation. For simplicity's sake however we will treat him as having a 3/3/3/0 statline, with the additional bonus that since he's not getting attacked for most the game, he gets to use his focus on offense, so his damage output will be modelled as having a 3/0/x/x statline. (MathWing 3.0 models a full action economy, based on stat lines and abilities.) This gives Rex an absolute JV of around 16.7, and 18-19 at PS4.

Can Rex really be simplified like this? I think he's a much higher force multiplier than this gives him credit for, and seems more like a worst-case approximation for the least valuable Rex could possibly be. Here's some examples for clarity:

Against attacks which are hyper-modified or ships that shoot more than once (Expertise Dengar, Title TLT Kanan) Rex's ability is a massive damage reduction - and once this list's interactions gets you under the damage threshold to actually hurt Biggs, the game mostly ends. Rex throwing his condition onto Dengar effectively makes him a 2 dice ship, and the difference between taking a 14 point 2 die primary to 3, instead of a 60 point 3 die primary to 2 is massive, and unless I'm missing something you may be understating this in your analysis.

WITH THAT BEING SAID, Rex does actually have to shoot to do this, so just statting him at 3 attack does capture some of that.

Oh my god forums

Why have you done this to me

1 hour ago, Brunas said:

Wow, this is all fantastic. Thanks for putting it together, I'm curious how you got to your derivation but it intuitively makes sense if I'm reading it right.

The only thing I'm not sure I follow is this:

Can Rex really be simplified like this? I think he's a much higher force multiplier than this gives him credit for, and seems more like a worst-case approximation for the least valuable Rex could possibly be. Here's some examples for clarity:

Against attacks which are hyper-modified or ships that shoot more than once (Expertise Dengar, Title TLT Kanan) Rex's ability is a massive damage reduction - and once this list's interactions gets you under the damage threshold to actually hurt Biggs, the game mostly ends. Rex throwing his condition onto Dengar effectively makes him a 2 dice ship, and the difference between taking a 14 point 2 die primary to 3, instead of a 60 point 3 die primary to 2 is massive, and unless I'm missing something you may be understating this in your analysis.

WITH THAT BEING SAID, Rex does actually have to shoot to do this, so just statting him at 3 attack does capture some of that.

Absolutely right, Rex is almost certainly undervalued here, modelled as 3/0/x/x for attack and 2/3/3/0 For defense. That really should be the minimum of his value. His value changes so much from matchup to matchup that it's also hard to pin down a precise value for his contribution to the squads overall defense, which is essentially Hawk's comment above about needing to look at squad X vs squad Y directly, instead of the blender approach I use.

Related to this, there is another method for determining the overall squad value which should be more accurate, and would actually make the squad look like it's worth MORE on paper in this case. Instead of adding up the jousting value of all the individual pieces, first just add up all the durabilities, and also add up all the attack outputs, and treat THAT like a gigantic singular unit. If all the units in a squad were the same, then this would, not coincidentally, increase the squad's value by the same (2N / (N+1))^0.5 ratio in the OP, because you just modelled them as dying all at the same time, as if the opponent had defocused fire. So, to be fair you would then need to divide by the 1.26 number for a 4 ship squad, at which point the squads jousting efficiency would be identical to the individual ships' jousting efficiency... but that's true if and only if they are all identical.

So, where this is leading into, is that normally mixing tanks and glass cannons is bad. The enemy chooses target priority and destroys your glass cannons first. But with the Biggs squad, they all get protected. If I take one individual unit and double it's attack power, but halve it's durability, its absolute jousting efficiency remains exactly the same. All you have done is changed the ship to be more of a glass cannon - this does change the PS adjusted jousting value, but not the absolute. BUT - if we add up all the durabilities and attacks and treat it as a giant singular unit, then suddenly mixing glass cannons and tanks is a huge advantage, because the squads output damage is brought up by the glass cannons, and it's durability is brought up by the tanks. This is why we have tanks in the front and spellcasters in the back in WoW: put the aggro on the tank and let the cannons go to town.

I'm on mobile in an airport, so can't run those numbers now for the Biggs squad, but it's on my short list. So, consider the above a giant teaser.

@Mad Chemist The jousting equations assume that the game will eventually end, but since the power curve is based on linearized deterministic damage from each unit, time as a variable ends up falling out of the equation entirely if you're just finding the condition that causes the two forces to be equal. Think of it like Newtonian physics, where time can go either forward or backwards.

The 'lethality coefficient' is a nod to the term as used in some academic literature, but in this case it is actually a units attack power times it's durability.

Y_N is the initial condition of how many units you have at the start of combat. The 26% advantage quoted refers to the advantage that you would gain if your damage output goes down only ONCE when your squad is totally destroyed, as opposed to going down in a 4 step staircase fashion like it normally would. I can make some graphs to illustrate this later.

20 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Absolutely right, Rex is almost certainly undervalued here, modelled as 3/0/x/x for attack and 2/3/3/0 For defense. That really should be the minimum of his value. His value changes so much from matchup to matchup that it's also hard to pin down a precise value for his contribution to the squads overall defense, which is essentially Hawk's comment above about needing to look at squad X vs squad Y directly, instead of the blender approach I use.

<a lot more>

I'm on mobile in an airport, so can't run those numbers now for the Biggs squad, but it's on my short list. So, consider the above a giant teaser.

Looking forward to what more comes out of it! Also, it makes me so happy to see you note how underpriced FCS is on ships that actually use it - I can't believe it's two points, and everyone looks at me like I'm crazy for even bringing it up.

Also, it makes me so happy to see that you aren't just throwing around pilot abilities for free as a side effect of purchasing PS in your rebalance - it's been a long source of frustration for me. Of course we don't see generics used except for cases where odd things are happening - pilot abilities are free, and the best "slot" in the game. (In addition to upgrades being worth more the more you put on a ship, separate issue!)

It really bothers me that we see so many generics released that are completely worthless. 4BZ made sense as a great list back in the day, because it was hard to fill a squad out with exactly 100 points of reasonably efficient stuff. With how many releases we have now, for literally any number of points over 12 there's something that's at least somewhat decent you can slot into a space, it's no wonder generics have completely disappeared.

The well used named pilots, even the arc dodgers, are actually better at jousting than generic TIE Fighters, or heck PS2 Lambda shuttles for that case.

And they happen to be able to reposition at PS8+ too. Basically for free. Even Soontir Fel needs to get nudged up to around 36.5 points in his current form, even with a massively increased power curve baseline for my house rules. Don't even ask about Fenn Rau! :-P

How well does the list math out when you stick your ships between Biggs and his friends? I hate jousting efficiency because it ignores what makes this game great flying.

I have 100-0 crushed a Biggs/Jess/low list with new chewie and 2x crack snap protonrocjet a-wings... You would be surprised how little those a-wings care about Biggs ability. **** I killed Biggs last.

Biggs can be blocked out and separated making his ability and increase to jousting value useless.

The list fly's like total crap, it better have a great jousting value because that's all it does...

16 minutes ago, Icelom said:

How well does the list math out when you stick your ships between Biggs and his friends? I hate jousting efficiency because it ignores what makes this game great flying.

I have 100-0 crushed a Biggs/Jess/low list with new chewie and 2x crack snap protonrocjet a-wings... You would be surprised how little those a-wings care about Biggs ability. **** I killed Biggs last.

Biggs can be blocked out and separated making his ability and increase to jousting value useless.

The list fly's like total crap, it better have a great jousting value because that's all it does...

Anecdotal.

I beat Dengaroo the first time I played against it back when it was mathematically "perfect". Then that list won Worlds. The list is winning more than not. Most good players won't allow a block or two to lose them a game.

Fair warning @MajorJuggler: While I sympathise with the desire for 200pt squads for granularity purposes, I feel the shift is drastic enough that it leaves the rebalance 'one change too far' for the format in question - you'll end up explaining the points changes over and over ad infinitum, and it makes it that much harder to mentally compare your ruleset to 'old' X-Wing when relearning the ruleset, and/or trying new stuff just released.

All for the ability to price at half a point? I'm not at all sure it's worth the inevitable thousand-cuts aggravation, even if it's mathematically preferable.

I figure my one post is far too little too late to make any difference... But in the interests of wishing you well in the goal I just had to try. With that said: genuinely, good luck. If you want a spare set of eyeballs, feel free to poke me. ?

11 minutes ago, Reiver said:

Fair warning @MajorJuggler: While I sympathise with the desire for 200pt squads for granularity purposes, I feel the shift is drastic enough that it leaves the rebalance 'one change too far' for the format in question - you'll end up explaining the points changes over and over ad infinitum, and it makes it that much harder to mentally compare your ruleset to 'old' X-Wing when relearning the ruleset, and/or trying new stuff just released.

All for the ability to price at half a point? I'm not at all sure it's worth the inevitable thousand-cuts aggravation, even if it's mathematically preferable.

I figure my one post is far too little too late to make any difference... But in the interests of wishing you well in the goal I just had to try. With that said: genuinely, good luck. If you want a spare set of eyeballs, feel free to poke me. ?

Alex Davy did say that if he were to redesign the game he would have done it at 200 points. For the low cost ships it can definitely make a difference.

Plenty of people are going to flip out on every little change I do anyway, and being at 100 or 200 points is not going to change that. I'll need to put on my flak armor before posting anyway, and I'm under no obligation to provide excruciating detail on my reasoning for all 250 ships. I would spend all my time replying at that point and none actually balancing.

[edit] There is another really, really good reason to be at 200 points: there can't be any confusion about what ruleset someone is using. I don't need someone walking into a Store Championship with a printed out houserules list at 100 points and trying to pass it off as legal for FFG tournaments.

Just now, MajorJuggler said:

Alex Davy did say that if he were to redesign the game he would have done it at 200 points. For the low cost ships it can definitely make a difference.

Plenty of people are going to flip out on every little change I do anyway, and being at 100 or 200 points is not going to change that. I'll need to put on my flak armor before posting anyway, and I'm under no obligation to provide excruciating detail on my reasoning for all 250 ships. I would spend all my time replying at that point and none actually balancing.

So i'd heard, and like I say, I agree with it mathematically... but that one change *does* fundamentally break comparability with the base game in ways that make comparisons extremely awkward. The relative opportunity cost there is high, and likely to make lessons learned in one format to be much harder to translate to the other.

Unless your goal is a game that has sufficiently little resemblance to the original that this isn't a concern, I guess, at which point go nuts? ?

Just my two cents, speaking as someone that used to play with balance mods before, and who learned my lessons in fundamental changes to unit pricing the hard way. ?

5 minutes ago, Reiver said:

So i'd heard, and like I say, I agree with it mathematically... but that one change *does* fundamentally break comparability with the base game in ways that make comparisons extremely awkward. The relative opportunity cost there is high, and likely to make lessons learned in one format to be much harder to translate to the other.

Unless your goal is a game that has sufficiently little resemblance to the original that this isn't a concern, I guess, at which point go nuts? ?

Just my two cents, speaking as someone that used to play with balance mods before, and who learned my lessons in fundamental changes to unit pricing the hard way. ?

On one hand I want to make a reasonably polished mod for the community.

On the other hand I don't like the idea of doing FFG's job for them for free.

Making a well polished community mod is winning out. However, comparisons between the base game and mine will be hard mostly because I'm establishing an entirely new power curve from the current game. It's somewhere between the original wave 1 launch and the current PowerCreep level we have now. If it turns out to be difficult for FFG to reverse engineer what I have done, then that's more of a feature than a bug from my perspective. Dividing by two isn't terribly difficult though.

9 minutes ago, Reiver said:

So i'd heard, and like I say, I agree with it mathematically... but that one change *does* fundamentally break comparability with the base game in ways that make comparisons extremely awkward. The relative opportunity cost there is high, and likely to make lessons learned in one format to be much harder to translate to the other.

Unless your goal is a game that has sufficiently little resemblance to the original that this isn't a concern, I guess, at which point go nuts? ?

Just my two cents, speaking as someone that used to play with balance mods before, and who learned my lessons in fundamental changes to unit pricing the hard way. ?

The core of the game is plot dials, resolve movement in ascending pilot skill order, then resolve attacks in descending pilot skill order. The core mechanic is unique, complex, and very fun.

Points have nothing to do with that. All points do is make sure that there can be more choice, without one choice being so superior to the others that you would never take anything else.

And that's the inherent flaw in the current points system. EVERY faction has a limited, tiny fraction of viable units for a 100 point/6 rock deathmatch. There are dozens of possible ways to handle this - missions where you'd want Hutch's ability to create more target locks? Other game modes like Heroes of the Aturi Cluster or Kessel Kup that changes the value structure? Banning or restricting the more powerful units so you would have to take the weaker ones? Rebalance the points structure? - but FFG has adamantly refused to do any of the possibilities, instead focusing on a churn-and-burn sales philosophy that doesn't bode well for the future of the game.

What will X-Wing look like in 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? Unless they move to a new edition or make other serious changes, it's doomed.

Games that wait until they're dead to change stay dead. Games that change while they're popular generate whining, but also stay alive.

Of course, this might be a feature rather than a bug. Perhaps FFG knows they're not getting the license renewed, and are simply getting as much money while they can rather than thinking about where the game will be in 2020 or 2025.

As much as I do think giving Rebels a second Biggs was a huge mistake, I think of all the super charged 120-130 point lists, it's the most balanced one.

You just joust it at your opponent.

What about flying a 120 point squadron is special? I can't believe I just said that sentence, but that's power creep for you. Palp Defenders and Parattanni got to that insane efficiency too, except on ships that triple modded attacks after consecutive white 4 K-Turns. Asajj has stress control/super defense and your Jumpmaster can block things very easily and Fenn gets infinite Proton Rockets.

I remember doing some rough calculations and playing 134 point games with Palp Defenders.

Speaking out of my *** by the way, I've only faced it once and it was a 3 ship version and I had my own turbocharged regen 4 ship version, haha. But look at the Lambda for example, it's an efficiency monster but it lacks mobility. Does that analogy not work for Fairship Rebel?

Do Jess's Primed Thrusters and Lowhhrick's 180 make up for the mobility problem? I feel like you could block with a Jumpmaster and come around with Fenn and Asajj.

9 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

On one hand I want to make a reasonably polished mod for the community.

On the other hand I don't like the idea of doing FFG's job for them for free.

Making a well polished community mod is winning out. However, comparisons between the base game and mine will be hard mostly because I'm establishing an entirely new power curve from the current game. It's somewhere between the original wave 1 launch and the current PowerCreep level we have now. If it turns out to be difficult for FFG to reverse engineer what I have done, then that's more of a feature than a bug from my perspective. Dividing by two isn't terribly difficult though.

I had misunderstood your goals then; in this case godspeed and good luck in careening off into this spinoff system.

And should you ever need an extra pair of eyes attached to a (mostly) functioning brain, just say so. ?

On 7/29/2017 at 2:46 PM, MajorJuggler said:

Certainly every model has its limitations. If time and resources were unlimited, I could direct a team of programmers to go implement a bunch of ideas, heck, we could work together on it for kicks. But its just me in my spare time, so I have to come up with something that's good enough to be useful, but not so good that it's my entire life's work. Arguably it already takes up far too much of my spare time as it is already!

With the x-wing fix now in play, this looks again to be a helluva build.

The net result to the list is basically just 2 points less on Biggs (and he can barrel roll, which is nice but less meaningful for this list flying in formation). The power curve increase has slightly outpaced the -2 point buff (aka ghost/Fenn, and Fenn in general). But, it's obviously still a very strong list.

// resumes re-analyzing all the X-wings.

IS there information on Ghost Fenn?

And quickdraw? Just because she's so useful and fun

1 hour ago, MajorJuggler said:

The net result to the list is basically just 2 points less on Biggs (and he can barrel roll, which is nice but less meaningful for this list flying in formation). The power curve increase has slightly outpaced the -2 point buff (aka ghost/Fenn, and Fenn in general). But, it's obviously still a very strong list.

// resumes re-analyzing all the X-wings.

But now Biggs can take Selflessness and be @ 24 points. Magva crew on Low which encourages more people to shoot at Biggs.

We’re Back (98)

•Biggs Darklighter (24) - X-Wing (T-65)
•R2-D6 (1), Renegade Refit (-2), Integrated Astromech (0), Servomotor S-foils (0), Selflessness (0)

•Lowhhrick (33) - Auzituck Gunship
Draw Their Fire (1), •Magva Yarro (2), Rey (2)

•Captain Rex (14) - TIE Fighter

•Fenn Rau (27) - Sheathipede-class Shuttle
Veteran Instincts (1), Hotshot Co-pilot (4), •R3-A2 (2)

19 minutes ago, Tbetts94 said:

But now Biggs can take Selflessness and be @ 24 points. Magva crew on Low which encourages more people to shoot at Biggs.

We’re Back (98)

•Biggs Darklighter (24) - X-Wing (T-65)
•R2-D6 (1), Renegade Refit (-2), Integrated Astromech (0), Servomotor S-foils (0), Selflessness (0)

•Lowhhrick (33) - Auzituck Gunship
Draw Their Fire (1), •Magva Yarro (2), Rey (2)

•Captain Rex (14) - TIE Fighter

•Fenn Rau (27) - Sheathipede-class Shuttle
Veteran Instincts (1), Hotshot Co-pilot (4), •R3-A2 (2)

You forgot the disrespect GC on Rex but yeah, pretty much.

Fennship 1.0 thread

Biggs Darklighter (25)
R2-D6 (1)
Selflessness (0)
Integrated Astromech (0)
Renegade Refit (-2)
Servomotor S-foils (0)

Jess Pava (25)
Flight-Assist Astromech (1)
Integrated Astromech (0)

Lowhhrick (28)
Draw Their Fire (1)
Wookiee Commandos (1)

Fenn Rau (Sheathipede) (20)
Adaptability (0)

Total: 100

I will be trying this. Just replacing rex with fenn.