Just now, xanderf said:

?Not sure you're using LWF properly? Or Palpatine? I mean, Palpatine doesn't add a result, either way - he just modifies one.

Yes but what I'm saying is: when you roll two dice and see their result, you already know whether you should use Palp on the third or not.

Sure there's still a small chance to waste him, but you already have such good information that the difference to before is very small. You already know how you can use your tokens, you see everything but the last dice roll. That's not completely reactive, but quite reactive.

Especially with LWF even old Palp is strange. You also do not have complete information to use him reactively. Sometimes you didn't want to use Palp unless you got exactly a certain result - that is also not possible with LWF. I'm not saying we should put too much emphasis on such a rare case, but I also feel the same about your example. In most cases I have played with or against it was pretty clear in which situation Palp was going to be necessary.

The point is:
The more information you have the less you will waste Palp.
LWF gives you more information than no LWF, while old Palp gave more information than LWF.

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

The point is:

The more information you have the less you will waste Palp.
LWF gives you more information than no LWF, while old Palp gave more information than LWF.

Yeah, you got the mechanics right -- but using Palp with a Striker gets you maybe a break-even record at a competitive event with competent Nym/Dash/Dengar play. How's that for information lol

Or are we not talking competitive builds and Imperial viability...?

16 minutes ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

Yeah, you got the mechanics right -- but using Palp with a Striker gets you maybe a break-even record at a competitive event with competent Nym/Dash/Dengar play. How's that for information lol

Or are we not talking competitive builds and Imperial viability...?

My initial question before the tangent on how Palp+LWF work was: How would reversing the palp nerf change anything? What would you play him with?

Many good imperial ships have access to LWF and use it, and there the difference between old and new Palp is very small. And we still don't see Palp anyways.
So my point was precisely that using Palp, old or new, won't get you very far in the current meta.

35 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Yes but what I'm saying is: when you roll two dice and see their result, you already know whether you should use Palp on the third or not.

That's really not the case at all.

Your possibilities with LWF are roughly:

- You need to cancel more than one hit, and you blanked out on your regular agility, so LWF doesn't matter with nuPalp (but oldPalp might have helped as you could correct the roll before rolling LWF, so that LWF could then possibly save your bacon when it couldn't using nuPalp)

- You need to cancel more than one hit, and you got all but one required result with your regular agility, so LWF matters a lot - either oldPalp or nuPalp work here, although oldPalp is preferred as you've got more than one ship and burning Palp when you ended up rolling a native evade anyway is a waste.

- You need to cancel exactly one hit, and you blanked out with your regular agility, so LWF matters a lot - either oldPalp or nuPalp work here, although oldPalp is preferred as you've got more than one ship and burning Palp when you ended up rolling a native evade anyway is a waste.

- You need to cancel exactly one hit, and you got the result you needed with your base agility, so all is good

I can think of no situation where LWF intersects with Palpatine that the old Palpatine isn't a considerable improvement?

EDIT TO CLARIFY: The core of the examples of Palp+LWF is whether you need to cancel 1 result or 2+ results to survive. If 1 result, you will never use Palp on your native agility roll ever, either new or old Palp. Ever. With the new one, you may be stuck using him on your LWF roll to guarantee the needed result, but with the old one you aren't - you make the LWF roll and see what happens.

But when needing to cancel 2+ results, you are stuck using nuPalp on the LWF roll after hoping for the best on the first - no sense wasting him on the first if you whiff the second, as it's game-over and he's burned for the turn. If you DO get an evade on the first rolls with nuPalp, you then 'have to' use him on the second to get your safety. Old sparky is much better - you are never committed at all. If you roll the first set of dice and blank out - well, you're dead, and nothing lost. If you get a good result...still nothing wasted and you make the LWF roll. How's that going? You made that, too? Great - Palp not needed! If not, you can use him.

1 hour ago, xanderf said:

That's really not the case at all.

I don't want to derail the thread further, and I think this is just a minor point of my overall argument which I will repeat again because apparently I failed to communicate properly.

The question is: What other ships would you play Palpatin with in the current meta? And would they be competitive, even with the old Palpatine?

My answer is no, and hence I do not think that going back on the nerf would solve the underlying problem.

My reasons for my no are:

Best lists are currently RAC QD, Nettling imps, some Aggressor mixes and SFDefenderOL. (Strikers are missing, to my surprise)

Additionally, we probably agree that Defenders and SF are better in the current meta than lower health ships. One extremely maneuverable PS9 ace can not take down a list anymore as it could during the reign of the Mynock special.

Lastly, and that's the minor point we are arguing about here: many of those currently played ships use LWF, usually QD or Backdraft. LWF gives you more information than directly rolling 3 dice together. That necessarily means you make a better informed guess on whether newPalp will be necessary or not. You can still waste him, but you are better informed. In your examples, nuPalp worked in 3 of them and can ensure at least one evade if you need it. But you will use him on ships with 6 Hp, as many of the lower Hp ships are not viable anymore for reasons where Palp can't affect the outcome in any way. So the one time you waste your palp is not as disastrous anymore, while saving them is still amazing.

And these examples could be specified further as there are several factors that inform your decision to palp or not to palp:

Are more ships shooting or is that the last shot? How much hull do you have left? Which tokens do you have? Did you shoot already? What weapons are you facing?

There are some situations where you HAVE to evade, eg against Harpoons or Plasmatorpedoes. But there are also many situations where one damage more or less is not that time-sensitive. And both heavily depend on the circumstances. In which, in my opinion and limited experience at least, the difference between old palp and new palp is not as crucial as it's claimed, and where another 29pts are better anyways.

4 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I don't want to derail the thread further, and I think this is just a minor point of my overall argument which I will repeat again because apparently I failed to communicate properly.

The question is: What other ships would you play Palpatin with in the current meta? And would they be competitive, even with the old Palpatine?

Well I think at least part of the 'current' answer is easily seen in the meta-wing analysis. IE., nothing Imperial is viable (obviously 'with the current Palpatine').

With old Palpatine...well, yeah, nothing is still viable in the current meta. But I did hit that point - the rumored/leaked FAQ nerfaganza is a core component of anything Imperial coming back at all, as I noted.

IF those nerfs all get applied? Then I see old-Palp opening up the Commonwealth Defenders and Palp-Aces lists again (with/without the x7 nerf reverted). And I do think old sparky works pretty well with LWF (point of the argument), allowing the TIE/SF lists seeing some small success to possibly achieve greater results.

But the Empire, even with the leaked nerfs, limited to nuPalp? Still DOA.

Palp/x7 nerf being rolled back would make very little difference.

Cluster Mines errata being rolled back would help more.

The direction the game mechanics have been pushed in pretty much remove Imperials as a viable faction. Changing one or two cards will have minimal impact, you'd need to roll back 18 months of expansions.

10 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Cluster Mines errata being rolled back would help more.

You think so? Wouldn't people just move even more towards Bomblets? And other types of bombs work mighty fine, too. IMHO, the Cluster Mines errata mostly brought these up to the power level of other options available for the slot at the time, while Bomblets are slightly more powerful now.

5 minutes ago, haslo said:

You think so? Wouldn't people just move even more towards Bomblets? And other types of bombs work mighty fine, too. IMHO, the Cluster Mines errata mostly brought these up to the power level of other options available for the slot at the time, while Bomblets are slightly more powerful now.

It would help. Not everyone can take Bomblets so anything that trims bombs back a bit would help. I mean anytime you've still got Sabine around the Clusters are a problem pre/post errata anyway.

Like I went on to say you can't solve the problem by fixing one or two cards, it would take FFG recognising that their design direction for 18 months has been one big mistake. It's not just bombs, it's not just ordnance, it's a whole host of things - the fundamental strength of upgrade/squad synergies that the Imperials are largely blocked away from because their ships have fewer upgrade slots. The Imperials were largely dead as a faction long before bombs turned up.

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Like I went on to say you can't solve the problem by fixing one or two cards, it would take FFG recognising that their design direction for 18 months has been one big mistake. It's not just bombs, it's not just ordnance, it's a whole host of things - the fundamental strength of upgrade/squad synergies that the Imperials are largely blocked away from because their ships have fewer upgrade slots. The Imperials were largely dead as a faction long before bombs turned up.

I noticed sonething similar when drafting my Errata that I intended to release for public playtesting. There were 16 cards that were either too powerful, combo prone, or un-fun to fly against. Most of them were from wave 8 or later.

In the actual FAQ/rules re-wordings section (changes that make stuff work as intended) every single card is wave 10 or 11.

FFG clearly needs to increase testing prior to release, or at least increase the testing of the FAQ- the current leaked FAQ nerfs mindlink (a card that has been pushed out of the meta), but not Biggs or Nym.

Combined with FFG's strategy for game design/Business model, they are increasingly vulnerable to designer burnout as time goes on. (Mynock Squadron- Dragon's Lament covers this in-depth)

I'm just wishing that FFG realize or admit that they know something is wrong, at least to themselves, and start working on a fix. Be it 2.0 or a nerfageddon.

The issue is that turnaround time for development for them is glacial. Wave 11 had Soontir counters. Wave 12 is full of Dengaroo counters.

Short of the community trying to take balance into their own hands(which I'm trying to facilitate), I'm drawing a blank.

I agree with most of the things Dee said in Dragon's Lament. In many ways I think he pulled his punches, in fact.

I don't see any solutions. FFG can't/won't change it. The community is too splintered to change it outside of isolated pockets, which won't be able to sustain themselves.

It is what it is.

/conspiracy theory

What if FFG breaks new releases on purpose - to drive sales?

conspiracy theory/

21 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I agree with most of the things Dee said in Dragon's Lament. In many ways I think he pulled his punches, in fact.

I don't see any solutions. FFG can't/won't change it. The community is too splintered to change it outside of isolated pockets, which won't be able to sustain themselves.

It is what it is.

That leaves 2 ways to try and fix this-

1. Either convince FFG to change their methods (petition to allow public playtesting for rebalance, or just get more development man-hours)

2. Make a fan-made errata/ruleset/comp system and hope that the community doesn't fracture too badly.

And as for the community fracturing- it is already started. Due to differences in powerlevel in listbuilding, there are 2 or more distinct power levels in the game- because the differences are so large between casual and competitive lists, they are effectively different games.

I don't think either of those options are plausible.

It is what it is, and it's staying what it is.

4 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Palp/x7 nerf being rolled back would make very little difference.

Cluster Mines errata being rolled back would help more.

@Cr0aker

Coffee on screen!

This is the kind of deep insightful content this forum needs to see more often. Keep up the good work.

I do understand as someone who tries to enjoy every faction that without robust FAQ's your imperial list might feel like it is solid but....

Do you require medical assistance?

9 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

How would reversing the palp nerf change anything? What would you play hin with?

If that wingman has a LWF: I hope you know that this effectively works the same way as an unnerfed palp?! By the time that you roll this third die you already know if you need him or not.

For one, defensively, Stealth Devices can be kept up with old palp- the reactive nature of Palp letting you fix rolls that you blanked on. Doesn't solve bombs or auto-damage, but does really help vs. Alpha Strikes, which are pretty common. Regardless, being able to react to bad rolls rather than try to predict them makes Palp a LOT better. And seriously, at 8 points 2 crew, he's just not very good now. I'm not saying current Palp is bad, but he really should be like 5 points max as he is now.

Personally the changes to Emperor(Don't own) and x7(Fly a lot) are okay. Scum received waaaaayyyy too much power creep and needs

not...

Rebels are in an odd place with the Biggs effect. Lowhhrick accentuated the condition.

21 minutes ago, Scumwing Apologist said:

And seriously, at 8 points 2 crew, he's just not very good now. I'm not saying current Palp is bad, but he really should be like 5 points max as he is now.

Yeah, it's not just the cost of the upgrade card and the slots it takes up either; it's the cost of the limo he's riding in.

21 points for an Omicron Group Pilot, minimum. That's 29 points for the basic Palpmobile, or almost a third of your squad.

Even at the height of Imperial Aces/Commonwealth Defenders power I was always of the opinion that x7 and Palp didn't actually need nerfing. They were tough, they were powerful, but they were beatable, and they already had significant weaknesses - low health and vulnerability to autodamage, which subsequent releases have further exploited.

Just now, FTS Gecko said:

Yeah, it's not just the cost of the upgrade card and the slots it takes up either; it's the cost of the limo he's riding in.

21 points for an Omicron Group Pilot, minimum. That's 29 points for the basic Palpmobile, or almost a third of your squad.

Exactly. It's HUGELY limiting- to the point where I really don't ever play with Palp anymore, and when I do he's tacked onto the Decimator with Kylo- that's it. I never feel good about spending 8 points on him- his ability is too easy to waste now.

He's still pretty solid on a Decimator, but you've got to spend a lot of consideration on whether to bring him or HotShot Copilot/Gunner for the same two slots and one more point.

E: and you've got to use his ability more aggressively. It'll almost never be wasted calling 'crit' on an attack.

4 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Yeah, it's not just the cost of the upgrade card and the slots it takes up either; it's the cost of the limo he's riding in.

21 points for an Omicron Group Pilot, minimum. That's 29 points for the basic Palpmobile, or almost a third of your squad.

From my bank of custom card ideas: