2017 Nationals Championships

By MajorJuggler, in X-Wing

Just now, Oldpara said:

It's Dydu. He made top16 in French Nationals 3 weeks ago with the same list.

It's a really good idea - with a lot of low agility, small base ships around at the moment (Miranda, Nym especially) a bit of Ion control can be very useful - and Sunny with Heavy Scyk and Ion Cannon is probably as cheap and efficient as Ion control is going to get!

3 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

By the way, here's the current overview for the polish nationals. So far 51 players have entered their lists, and it is quite a difference from NOVA

CAcYYnm.png

Can you plz make this chart for every national tourney? The visuals are really nice to see what everyone is bringing and how they relate.

Also, I find it amusing how limited the scum builds are compared to the other factions.

Edited by Gibbilo
57 minutes ago, Gibbilo said:

Can you plz make this chart for every national tourney? The visuals are really nice to see what everyone is bringing and how they relate.

Also, I find it amusing how limited the scum builds are compared to the other factions.

I would love to. The problem are the missing lists :/

8 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

By the way, here's the current overview for the polish nationals. So far 51 players have entered their lists, and it is quite a difference from NOVA

CAcYYnm.png

I assume the size of the dots is relative to the number of each ship that was fielded.

My question is; why is it not based on points?

8 minutes ago, MrAndersson said:

I assume the size of the dots is relative to the number of each ship that was fielded.

My question is; why is it not based on points?

Two reasons:

1. ship points are not (yet) included in listjuggler, neither in the json nor in the csv. However, for NOVA, I did in fact enter them manually. That's how I created the ship point plot. But I won't do that for every tournament. E.g. all wave11 nationals so far are 120 different archetypes, consisting of 428 squadrons. I would have to check every single one myself to make sure that the one point creativity does not skew things.

2. At best I could use average or median ship points for the dots. There are some wide ranges for some ships, and it's not very clear which is the most useful to take. Another option would be to adjust the label size based on ship points, or change the dot color based on ship points. Or the other way around - color the number of fielded ships and have the size depend on the point cost. Or I could introduce a weird new metric dependent on "number fielded" times "average/median ship cost". But that would also remove comparability as far as I see it.

In any case that would be figure with an entirely different message.

But yes, I had the same idea, too.

Simply adding up the points of all builds would be another possibility - this would show us just how much was spent on Miranda compared to e.g. Ezra.

17 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Simply adding up the points of all builds would be another possibility - this would show us just how much was spent on Miranda compared to e.g. Ezra.

I think that would give the best representation of how relevant different ships are in the meta.

Let's say the top 8 of a tournament consisted of one TIE swarm and seven lists with Miranda + friend. Just counting the number of each ship would be massively misleading in terms of how relevant they are in the meta.

2 minutes ago, MrAndersson said:

Let's say the top 8 of a tournament consisted of one TIE swarm and seven lists with Miranda + friend. Just counting the number of each ship would be massively misleading in terms of how relevant they are in the meta.

While that is true, you'll also note that a vast vast majority are unique ships. What you want is exactly the "squads" stat on metawing, which gives you the amount of squadrons with a certain pilot, but won't tell you how many of this pilot were in the squad. That's only relevant for non-uniques though.

Anyways, I won't add up all the points myself, manually, and I didn't have the time yet to get into json and xws. In that sense I don't see it happening soon.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

While that is true, you'll also note that a vast vast majority are unique ships. What you want is exactly the "squads" stat on metawing, which gives you the amount of squadrons with a certain pilot, but won't tell you how many of this pilot were in the squad. That's only relevant for non-uniques though.

Anyways, I won't add up all the points myself, manually, and I didn't have the time yet to get into json and xws. In that sense I don't see it happening soon.

That is true. I didn't think of the fact that generics are almost extinct. I just noted that the dot named Scimitar squadron pilot was bigger than Dash Rendar and thought "that can't be right".

I didn't mean to critique your work, other than constructively. Sorry if it came across as negative. I appreciate what you put into this.

1 minute ago, MrAndersson said:

That is true. I didn't think of the fact that generics are almost extinct. I just noted that the dot named Scimitar squadron pilot was bigger than Dash Rendar and thought "that can't be right".

I didn't mean to critique your work, other than constructively. Sorry if it came across as negative. I appreciate what you put into this.

Oh don't worry, I didn't take any offense at all, and I'm very happy to get suggestions.

I did write " edit: my next idea is to combine this with the average build cost. Could be interesting, but might get too much at once " on September 12th, so I think the idea is at least something I should try once. But as I said, it is a bit too much work at the moment to make it in a larger scale.

That‘s what, 34 lists in total?

I really hope we can eventually get a fuller picture

Unfortunately there isn't any data that can be imported directly so these results were all input by hand. Anything outside of the top 32 will have to be put in by players themselves.

Edited by apoapsis

So 1 imperial list in top 16 at UK nationals, none in polish.

20 minutes ago, MrAndersson said:

So 1 imperial list in top 16 at UK nationals, none in polish.

Which doesn‘t mean anything by itself.

4 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Which doesn‘t mean anything by itself.

Correct, but, compared to their performance this season it doesn't mark a change in their decline.

Quite the contrary.

Edited by Keffisch
1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

Which doesn‘t mean anything by itself.

True, but it's not like these are some isolated results. The other big nationals/continentals paint the same picture.

Discounting the lists that aren't entered in ListJuggler, I count 35 imperial lists making the cut in this years nationals/continentals so far (nationals in Germany, France, South Africa, UK, Poland and US, and the North American championships). The number of Nyms present is 48.

So a single pilot outflies an entire faction.

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

Which doesn‘t mean anything by itself.

Yup, looking at the data for Polish Nationals there were plenty of Imperial lists doing the rounds in Swiss, and I know first hand there were a lot of Imperial lists doing the rounds at the UK Nationals in Swiss as well.

People try to minimise their risk at major events. That means taking high health platforms to soak damage, bombs to guarantee damage, turrets to guarantee shots, preferably in combination, and preferably alongside useful pilot abilities and high PS. The Empire isn't short on any of those things individually, but it is light on effective combinations of them.

The Empire's low-risk platforms are:

• TIE Defender (good health)
• Special Forces TIE (good health, auxillary arc)
• TIE Punisher (good health, bombs)
• TIE Bomber (good health, bombs)
• TIE Aggressor (good health, turret)
• Upsilon (good health)
• Lambda (good health)
• Firespray (good health, auxillary arc, bombs)
• Decimator (good health, turret, bombs)

Out of those ships, the Defender, Special Forces TIE, Decimator and Aggressor are probably seeing the most use due to their combination of low risk, pilot abilities, upgrade potential and cost. (just because a ship's platform is relatively low risk doesn't mean it's particularly good or competitive).

Vessery, Ryad, Quickdraw, Backdraft, RAC and maybe Kestal are probably the most effective low-risk platforms the Empire has right now (although I did see a lot of Vader at Nationals as well). A lot of their better pilots (Soontir, Howlrunner, Carnor, Turr, the Inquisitor, Omega Leader, Wampa etc) occupy high risk platforms, and so you see less of them. A kitted out Omega Leader is objectively better than a TLT Gold Squadron Pilot or Hired Thug and will win the battle one-on-one, but he represents a bigger risk when it comes to the environment in general (more vulnerable to bombs, can't shoot out of arc), so you're going to see less of him than you are the other.

It takes real courage to be an Imperial player in this game. Niche builds asde (Double Decimator, Space Cow Herd etc), the playstyle of Imperial ships is simply put more risky than that of Rebels or Scum. Low health, high agility ships want to ignore damage altogether - either by avoiding shot completely or through the luck of the dice. High health, low agility ships simply tank it and try to win through attrition. You can't really change the Imperial's style without destroying their theme - the vast majority of TIE's are fragile ships, and relay on speed and agility to survive!

The Gunboat - when it arrives - will give the Empire another relatively low risk option with high health to tank damage and SLAM for maneuverability, but it won't have guaranteed shots from a turret or guaranteed damage from bombs, and it certainly won't offset the issues the rest of the Imperial fleet have. You need to lower the risk (or lower the perception of risk) in taking what are inherently high risk platforms. So what to do? I have my own ideas, but not everyone will like them.

6 minutes ago, MrAndersson said:

Discounting the lists that aren't entered in ListJuggler, I count 35 imperial lists making the cut in this years nationals/continentals so far (nationals in Germany, France, South Africa, UK, Poland and US, and the North American championships). The number of Nyms present is 48.

So a single pilot outflies an entire faction.

It's way easier when that pilot figure in 2/3 of the factions.

Anyway yes, Empire needs some boost.

Just now, Cerve said:

It's way easier when that pilot figure in 2/3 of the factions.

Anyway yes, Empire needs some boost.

There are also 35 Mirandas in those same cuts. She is only for one faction.

1 minute ago, MrAndersson said:

There are also 35 Mirandas in those same cuts. She is only for one faction.

Slam+Bombs is the only real broken thing in this game. But it will be faqqed soon.

Wow, polish nationals for 66 players:

Empire: 20 players, average squad size 3.5

Rebels: 32 players, average squad size 2.56

Scum: 14 players, average squad size 2.28

That is both fascinating and depressing

edit: that‘s in total 2.77, same as worlds. But Empire has a very high amount of players at 1/3 and a very high average.

Edited by GreenDragoon

Polish Nats only had 66 players? Or is that all we have entered? If the latter then we're working on very incomplete data.

8 minutes ago, defkhan1 said:

Polish Nats only had 66 players? Or is that all we have entered? If the latter then we're working on very incomplete data.

Polish nationals had 156 players. Similar situation to the UK, we've got most of the top 32 but the rest needs people to add their own lists.