3 hours ago, Ginkapo said:You have to go into close range to do that. You can only get there once before death.
Unless you dodge out the way. ;-)
As the person who beat it, the list is well put togther. While I had a superior squadron ball, engaging under all that flak is a fools errand. Rather I chipped at the flanking transport trying to apply pressure, as gink committing to the fight would pull the squads from the mc80. In the end it came down to a good manoeuvre or two and some luck.
4 hours ago, Undeadguy said:Swapping Yavaris for Salvation still gives you the same dice but your dice are weaker. You trade that for better squad attacks which you can do via Relay.
RS should be used on the VCXs, not Y-Wings. I run 1 Scout HH with RS. Nothing else because it's too expensive and I prefer the natural Relay synergy.
Ah, but then in two of the missions you're over-tasking the VCX's. Do they stay near the other squadrons to provide Relay and mix it up in the squad battle? Or do they do their primary task of using Strategic on those vital points-grabbing tokens? I would say the tokens get priority, which leads to no Relay for the squads, which leads to Yavaris up close, which leads to a dead Yavaris.
3 hours ago, Irishmadcat said:The D Caps seems a bit overkill for just the one dice. I like the squads load out and its ability to hurt ships. I have foudn the squads needs to carry a lot in this type of list.
It's not one die. It's the potential of four black dice at long range, with Opening Salvo and a CF. From a transport. In my list, from three transports.
Really, it's 9 points to try and get people to choose Fire Lanes or Sensor Net instead.
Edited by Maturin2 hours ago, anothermorat said:Unless you dodge out the way. ;-)
As the person who beat it, the list is well put togther. While I had a superior squadron ball, engaging under all that flak is a fools errand. Rather I chipped at the flanking transport trying to apply pressure, as gink committing to the fight would pull the squads from the mc80. In the end it came down to a good manoeuvre or two and some luck.
It makes me think that JJ could help me if I find something like this.
Dont forget that Salve concentrates fire whilst yav spams eng and is also cheaper.
34 minutes ago, Maturin said:Ah, but then in two of the missions you're over-tasking the VCX's. Do they stay near the other squadrons to provide Relay and mix it up in the squad battle? Or do they do their primary task of using Strategic on those vital points-grabbing tokens? I would say the tokens get priority, which leads to no Relay for the squads, which leads to Yavaris up close, which leads to a dead Yavaris.
How is Yavaris any different than Salvation in this scenario? Salvation still needs to get in range to attack. If you are using Yavaris to only Relay and not engage, you are severely cutting into the effectiveness of your fleet. Regardless, both are Nebs which are prone to dying.
Plus, Relay is range 3 and you can drag the tokens with your fleet into engagement. I'm not one to run away with tokens to win. It's cheap and a boring way to play.
From my perspective, if you aren't utilizing every facet of your fleet, you're not playing it at 100%. So I'd use Relay and Strategic from the same squad, Yavaris is getting into the fight. Toryn Farr is at medium of my squads. I'm getting up in your face.
Gink asked for criticism and I gave it. At this point it is a difference of play styles. I prefer Paragon to MC30s and I like RS HH with VCXs in my Sato lists. I think Salvation is a waste despite the huge power spikes. It's not consistent where as Yavaris is. I like Targeting Beacons with Sato as well, despite it being one of the weakest objectives. How I play Sato is not incorrect to how Gink plays Sato. But we both agree crit gimmicks is the incorrect with Sato. It's interesting seeing how we came to the same conclusion with a number of things and where we differ.
1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:How I play Sato is not incorrect to how Gink plays Sato. But we both agree crit gimmicks is the incorrect with Sato. It's interesting seeing how we came to the same conclusion with a number of things and where we differ.
I don't fully agree with this, as he's using crit gimmicks to up the damage. I think it's more fair to say "long range crit gimmicks" aren't the right way to Sato, especially as everything has an Evade token now a days. Forcing them to close on you is a much easier way to ensure your crit gimmicks trigger more than anything.
11 minutes ago, geek19 said:I don't fully agree with this, as he's using crit gimmicks to up the damage. I think it's more fair to say "long range crit gimmicks" aren't the right way to Sato, especially as everything has an Evade token now a days. Forcing them to close on you is a much easier way to ensure your crit gimmicks trigger more than anything.
Correct. This goes back to one of my more contensious beliefs.
Ordnance Crit upgrades are not good value for salvos less than 4 black dice. I firmly believe that for a generic MC30 that the odds of rolling hit crit are too low to justify the cost of APTs or ACMs.
Sato allows me to roll six black dice where the odds of a hit crit are substantially higher.
12 minutes ago, geek19 said:I don't fully agree with this, as he's using crit gimmicks to up the damage. I think it's more fair to say "long range crit gimmicks" aren't the right way to Sato, especially as everything has an Evade token now a days. Forcing them to close on you is a much easier way to ensure your crit gimmicks trigger more than anything.
Ginks list has no gimmicks in it. You are getting 2 extra blacks on an MC30 which already has an Ordnance and 3 blacks. You're just increasing the odds of rolling a crit.
The only gimmick is using Sato at long range to proc crits. That's just a bad strategy with Sato even if it appears the most obvious combo to do.
12 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:Correct. This goes back to one of my more contensious beliefs.
Ordnance Crit upgrades are not good value for salvos less than 4 black dice. I firmly believe that for a generic MC30 that the odds of rolling hit crit are too low to justify the cost of APTs or ACMs.
Sato allows me to roll six black dice where the odds of a hit crit are substantially higher.
Normal MC30 side arc, natural roll: .75^3 = 58%
Normal MC30 side arc, after full OE if no crits: .75^6 = 82%
Sato MC30 side arc, natural roll: .75^5 = 76%
Sato MC30 side arc, after full OE if no crits: .75^10 = 94%
There's obviously a reliability difference, but is 12% dramatic enough to warrant a substantial decrease in average throughput for 5-7 points?
2 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:Normal MC30 side arc, natural roll: .75^3 = 58%
Normal MC30 side arc, after full OE if no crits: .75^6 = 82%
Sato MC30 side arc, natural roll: .75^5 = 76%
Sato MC30 side arc, after full OE if no crits: .75^10 = 94%
There's obviously a reliability difference, but is 12% dramatic enough to warrant a substantial decrease in average throughput for 5-7 points?
Remember I would also choose not to take OE either.
6 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:Remember I would also choose not to take OE either.
Sensor Teams instead?
1 minute ago, Undeadguy said:Sensor Teams instead?
https://archiveofossus.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/ackbar-mc30-star-destroyers/
16 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:Remember I would also choose not to take OE either.
You did take OE here, and I'm comparing this build (in which you thought ACM was worthwhile) to a more standard OE/APT build (which you contend is not).
We've already done the comparison on the Ackbar SDs, and pretty much came to the lawyer conclusion: it depends. 
28 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:
Is the Acc really worth it though, besides attacking a flotilla? You get to roll 4 blacks and 1 blue. That's about 68% to roll a hit/crit and an average of 4 damage. Assuming you roll 1 hit/crit, 2 hits and a blank, you end with 4 damage, ACM, and no Brace.
Where as taking OE, Ard has 94% to crit, and I have an average of 6.9 damage if you only reroll blanks. An average damage of 7, you still Brace to 4 and get ACM but you have a higher max damage.
ST is probably great on the Ackbar MC30 where you have plenty of dice to spare. But unless your opponent picks OS, which I certainly would not, you don't have a large enough dice pool to use ST and deal damage reliably.
9 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:Where as taking OE, Ard has 94% to crit, and I have an average of 6.9 damage if you only reroll blanks.
Just for clarity, the 94% is Sato MC30s rolling all blacks with OE, which @Ginkapo agrees warrants OE/ACM. A normal OE/crit effect MC30 gets only 82%, and that's with aggressively fishing for the crits by rerolling all dice if there is no crit in the first roll (almost always worth doing).
The math is a little involved then, because you get slightly lower overall expected damage if you roll the crit in your first shot of 3, since then you're usually only rerolling blanks instead of everything.
Also, I suspect Gink is off right now looking for the thread in which we compared the his Ackbar MC30s to my OE/APT/H9 build, which has a lot more math in it.
2 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:Just for clarity, the 94% is Sato MC30s rolling all blacks with OE, which @Ginkapo agrees warrants OE/ACM. A normal OE/crit effect MC30 gets only 82%, and that's with aggressively fishing for the crits by rerolling all dice if there is no crit in the first roll (almost always worth doing).
The math is a little involved then, because you get slightly lower overall expected damage if you roll the crit in your first shot of 3, since then you're usually only rerolling blanks instead of everything.
Also, I suspect Gink is off right now looking for the thread in which we compared the his Ackbar MC30s to my OE/APT/H9 build, which has a lot more math in it.
A few months ago I made a calculator that gives average damage and includes rerolls. So I think 5 blacks with OE gives 6.9 damage. I don't have a degree in stats so it's possible my calculations are slightly off. I have 8.8 damage if you reroll blanks and hits, which I think is a bit high but I'm not sure. I read all the math threads at the time and searched the internet on how to do dice rolls and rerolls.
Haha, nice. I have a Monte Carlo script I wrote for much the same purpose, but I don't have it in front of me atm and I have actual work to do today, heh.
The problem with not having OEs is that REAL LIFE happens.
Your 76% crit becomes:
Blank Blank Hit Hit Blank.
Probably way more accurate than mine. I did it in excel.
5 minutes ago, CaribbeanNinja said:The problem with not having OEs is that REAL LIFE happens.
Your 76% crit becomes:
Blank Blank Hit Hit Blank.
Welcome to my life. 
The only reason I dig into the stats of it is to feel better about those games where I throw 26 black dice straight without a single crit (true story). It turns out 99.94% chance of getting at least one crit is just not high enough for my dice luck...
That was tough to find. Luckily its mow on this thread I have archived.
On 9/19/2017 at 7:56 AM, Ginkapo said:I am somewhat surprised that there is no real critisicm of the article at all. Surely someone has played him enough to have an opinion!
Actually, I've been playing the **** out of a bomber based Sato fleet myself (something like 20 games now), running 2 Mc30's some GRs and a squadron ball and I found that your article was inherently true. While the long range crits and awesome wrexly bomber synergy certainly doesn't hurt, my best attacks are on a poor double arc'd ship throwing that disgusting 6 black and then an additional 3 (or visa versa) with reolls and ACMs, it's brutal.
I think you nailed this one right on the head @Ginkapo!
Actually I rembered my critsim of this list. Opening Salvo will scare off most people. Those people be wrong. Picking it seems to me the way to beat it. Those 2 red are much more lethal than you think. Most wanted might not be the best but if you want those Mc30 close at a battleground of your choosing I would conside blockade run. But I'm crazy.
On 20/09/2017 at 6:16 PM, Maturin said:It's not one die. It's the potential of four black dice at long range, with Opening Salvo and a CF. From a transport. In my list, from three transports.
Really, it's 9 points to try and get people to choose Fire Lanes or Sensor Net instead.
Wait what. I thought you meant on my list on the hammerheads. Totally picked that up the wrogn way. Sorry.
14 minutes ago, Irishmadcat said:Wait what. I thought you meant on my list on the hammerheads. Totally picked that up the wrogn way. Sorry.
Nope, my bad. I clearly wasn't following the thread-within-the-thread. Sorry sorry! 