55 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

You misunderstand what it means.

There are 5 base stats, with values between 0 and 9. Then there are several slots for upgrades, plus pilot abilities, plus maneuver dials. To top it off there are three factions which provide different wingmates and different upgrades.

If two ships have the exact same thing of all these factors then yes, then they will be the same.

But what MajorJuggler is doing is something else. He assures that these factors get an appropriate point cost, which OPENS your options! So I heavily disagree with everyone who sees a race to the same builds with appropriate balance. Much to the contrary, better balance will allow more different builds to become viable.

Why is anyone against that?

No, I don't.

I work in medicine. We have books, rules, and protocols. We have science and research and probabilities for outcomes. We know that this molecule goes here and that molecule goes there.

So a diabetic is a diabetic is a diabetic? Calculate a dose of insulin, and everything falls into place?

Nope.

I think that XWM is more like a biological system than a bridge.

Math will help, but I don't think it is going to be the saviour everyone hopes it will be. I suspect some abilities will be always be unquantifiably off kilter, and players with always gravitate towards the perception of superiority, newness of product, and proven success, thus reducing overall variability.

And I'm fine with it if you can prove me wrong.

3 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

...players with always gravitate towards the perception of superiority, newness of product, and proven success, thus reducing overall variability.

...this. Always this.

And if Math Wing has contributed anything to the game, it's been to amplify this effect.

I think part of the problem of the anti-mathwing crowd is that they don't quite know what goes into the calculations. Here's an example:
When Wave 7 was spoiled, MJ did some calculations based around what had been announced, and assigned a value of 2 points to Guri's ability, predicting "expect it to see quite a bit of use." So what happened?

It turns out that it's easier to prevent a PS 5 ship from getting into Range 1 than it is to get a PS 5 ship into Range 1. I mean. It can happen. But. It's not nearly as likely as you need it to be in order to get the full value out of the pilot. (Obviously this might change in a couple weeks.)

And _that_ is the thing that makes the game interesting. In an ideal game, both sides show up with a game plan that gets their lists to 100 points of efficiency. And whoever executes their game plan the best- with the requisite bit of luck- is the winner.

As it currently stands, there aren't all that many ships or lists that can get the required efficiency. Part of that is a lack of math as the starting point. And the other part of it is that they're not playtesting their "table feel" enough. That's a bit frustrating.

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

...this. Always this.

And if Math Wing has contributed anything to the game, it's been to amplify this effect.

... The comprehensive mathwing data hasn't been publicly updated since Wave 7, and what individual snippets we've gotten of late have been aimed at explaining metagame trends.

5 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

No, I don't.

I work in medicine. We have books, rules, and protocols. We have science and research and probabilities for outcomes. We know that this molecule goes here and that molecule goes there.

So a diabetic is a diabetic is a diabetic? Calculate a dose of insulin, and everything falls into place?

Nope.

I think that XWM is more like a biological system than a bridge.

Math will help, but I don't think it is going to be the saviour everyone hopes it will be. I suspect some abilities will be always be unquantifiably off kilter, and players with always gravitate towards the perception of superiority, newness of product, and proven success, thus reducing overall variability.

And I'm fine with it if you can prove me wrong.

But isn't the problem you describe due to the sheer number of variables involved? X-wing has far fewer moving parts than even a single person's life, and unlike real life, many of those traits have measurable numeric values. That makes simulating results much simpler.

19 minutes ago, Squark said:

But isn't the problem you describe due to the sheer number of variables involved? X-wing has far fewer moving parts than even a single person's life, and unlike real life, many of those traits have measurable numeric values. That makes simulating results much simpler.

Type 1 Diabetes = Body does not make insulin. One problem. Just add insulin?? If only it were that easy.

My point would be that just giving everything the right point value with a formula might not be the miracle cure everyone is hoping for. I am not saying it won't help, and I'm not saying balance isn't good, but I am saying that a vigorous application of math might not make the game that much better. There are a lot of moving parts, and new ones are added all the time that changes the whole dynamic.

Also, what I see on these boards is complaints about the latest hotness. And the complaints change with each wave. When is the last time someone groused about TLT? Now, it's all Nym and bombs. And, as the devs pointed out, everyone complained about Palps, then complained they wanted him back the old way. Math won't fix psychology.

Besides, I honestly think it is impossible to make every component of the game equally useful. Which is the claim of MathWing adherents.

What I do think the game needs is a way to make every component useful in some way, at some point . Playing 100/6 over and over will not do that.

X wing is a mathematically based game. Every single component of the game is based on a number. The idea - that applying mathematics to it's initial creation is inorganic and a potential source of spikes trouncing casuals - is silly.

There is theory and reality. Major juggler works in theory. On the competitive side of the game, no matter how well he perfects a numerical system it will not be able to account for the anecdotal nature of reality. I think this is shown by Major Jugglers sub 100% win percentage (I'm assuming here. Correct me if I'm wrong MJ).

I appreciate the fear of these mathematical endeavors squeezing the unknown from the game but if they are able to do that the game was lacking in its original form. I think that fear exists here - that the game could become so charted that choice is forgone in favor of efficiency in competition.

I think we see that in action, at a small scale, on a daily basis when you see a new player play their first list and each experienced player comes by and explains the upgrades they should have used. By the end of this process the new player, can rarely un-see the advice given him... Why choose hull upgrade when he can have integrated astromech? Why choose synced turret when he can have TLT?

We can all see the superiority of TLT to synced turret right? No one wants to challenge that? Okay... So why is it better? Just as important, if not more, how much is it better?

It is better because it performs better in a wide variety of circumstances. Our best manner of comparison is to isolate those circumstances and juxtapose the two turrets within them. The TLT outperforms the competition through a preponderance of circumstances (different ranges and obstacles and such). It is therefore better and a part of the game trends towards maximizing the circumstances in which tlt succeeds - repetitive range 3 shooting out of arc.

So, without delving into how something like TLT then in turn goes on to shape the meta, what if that synced turret was tweaked? What if as that circumstantial mathematical comparison was made between the two turrets, the synced turret was then altered to far exceed the value TLT provided in certain circumstances - thus reducing the preponderance of circumstances in which TLT was superior, thereby providing a niche for synced turret to be effective and used in lists which strive to create those favorable circumstances.

There was an opportunity for synced turret to exist side by side with TLT as a viable option. As it is, I am unaware of anyone successfully using synced turret.

This is what people talk about when they pine for a more nuanced mathematical undertaking at the creation point of the game. Why are cards made that so entirely miss the mark when it comes to evaluating their opportunity cost? Yes this can be done with simple logic, know how, effort and care. But it is not being done. Math would be the way to ensure that things are better balanced.

@Ohnoeszz gets it. But I’m sure it’s only moments until someone says we just haven’t looked hard enough to find a use for synched turret...

So here are some other comparisons that are pretty directly comparable that you can look at to show how some math (even simple math) could help out the team.

>>Operations specialist to Captain Rex

>> IG88B to the other IGs

>> Unkar Plutt to Chopper crew

I don't understand the objections here.

Maths is a useful tool. You use a mathematical model to cost a ship/upgrade, then hand it over to the playtesters to make sure it's costed correctly. It just saves time and effort, and I assume FFG already does this to a degree. @MajorJuggler just seems to be advocating a greater, more rigorous model.

I don't understand how that could be a bad thing.

I feel like there's been a huge misunderstanding to what a 'mathematical' approach to the game would imply.

At no point does it imply you can't have ships that feel interesting or have interesting abilities. And MathWing is only 'bad' when it shapes the meta, but I feel I must note it does this by helping spread knowledge that was already quickly enough worked out in practice - a ship with certain stats should be 'worth' a certain number of points; if it costs more than that it's going to struggle, if it costs less than that it's going to upset everything.

Let's try this with 'feel' - what if B-wings, all stats as they currently are, were priced at 30pts for a Blue Squadron? You don't need math to tell that it's not as good as the other contemporaries. Likewise, what if we priced it at 12 pts? Wait a minute, B-wings are way better than a TIE Fighter, aren't they? Goodness, that'll upset the apple cart to no end.

All MathWing does, did, and wanted to do, was quantify how a ship was priced, or should have been priced, at least. By way of example: for the points on the card, a Turreted ship should be considerably more expensive that one that must fire within its forward arcs - when TLTs came out, and the math suggested they were (and I'm pulling these numbers out of memory, here) like, 80% as 'efficient' as a simple jouster, that was worrying - because a turreted ship can afford to be less efficient points-per-stat, it's got a turret . Lo and behold, TLTs showed up and we've not seen an awful lot of other generics since. Then Jumpmasters showed up, and the math was a little crazy on them too. Lo and behold, we don't see many small-based generics at all until they got nerfed.

The idea is not to hammer everything into being flat and identical. The idea is to be able to calculate that the basic Scyks are, on average, 12.5pts before you do anything special with them. It could be up to the Designers to then look at them, look at TIE Fighters priced at 12pts, and go "Okay, so do we make them a little bit worse and price them at 12pts, or a teeny bit better (say, in the dial!) and price them at 13?"

The eventual patch card made them a little-bit-worse at 12, with the Heavy Scyk errata making them quite-a-bit-better at 14. The thing is, this could've been told before an expansion pack needed releasing... because the math was already there.

That's what MathWing is: Using math to work out what a ship is worth in squad points. It is not an approach to flying, and has no bearing on whether any given ship is or should be 'boring'.

11 minutes ago, Reiver said:

That's what MathWing is: Using math to work out what a ship is worth in squad points. It is not an approach to flying, and has no bearing on whether any given ship is or should be 'boring'.

So much this

Additionally, the math doesn't go away if you stop believing in it. This game has a strong mathematical component which allows anyone to calculate which ships are more effective by the numbers regardless whether the designers also did this calculations or not.

However, the game also has a strong less mathematical component, which means fully mathing-out the game won't happen any time soon (or ever).

Yes, you've guys just hit on it upstream. MathWing is a way of costing the pieces. MathWing's approach is largely static, based on Lanchester's Square Law . It doesn't tell you how to play well with them though :-) There is an analog to chess here -- Queens are worth 9, Rooks 5, Bishops 3, Knights 3, pawns 1. Some folks thing knights are actually worth 2 or 2.5, but regardless, none of that helps you play chess any better, other than to inform material differences like trading a rook for a knight or a piece for a pawn. And even then its largely situational, as there are lots of times you'd sacrifice an exchange or sacrifice a piece. X-wing is no different.

18 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

yes, the game should be mathematically balanced. this isn't even a question

that way, you get to **** around with ship capability based on how inefficiently they are priced. The less efficient they are, the cooler the stuff they do

example, the X-wing should not be **** awful because all it can really do is joust (or be Biggs). It should win just about every fight when it does the literal only thing it's good at (trading dice).

by contrast, high PS pilots should cost more for their advantages on platforms that can better abuse them (i.e, ships that are incredibly maneuverable) so those ships aren't the obviously best ships in the game at any given moment

Pretty much this.

X-wing is a dice game (yes, I know, but it is).

It's not a purely random dice game, because the purely statistical rolls, rerolls and dice modification is subject to the 'table-top' bit; ships may or may not get the actions you rely on, and may or may not get to shoot (or at least not get to shoot at their 'preferred range').

The ability to outmanoeuvre people on the table based on out-thinking and outguessing is how you get the dice 'loaded' in your favour.

This element isn't readily subject to statistical weighting, because it's dependent on the specific PS of a pilot matchup and the skill of the players but it clearly exists, and therefore some whack of the ship's price should account for it.

Equally, there's a degree of compound interest in the value of abilities. A Zealous Recruit has the boost action, but will rarely use it - because (a) using it whilst within combat range means no token and hence potential death, and (b) a better shot with unmodified dice is generally no better than a worse shot with a focus token so you might as well stay where you are. AM/PTL Fenn Rau, by comparison, has the action economy to boost or barrel roll and still get a focus token, and - because you've moved first - knows for definite that the boost will get him a better shot and leave you with no shot in return.

Finally, with the more powerful pilot abilities also turning up on the highest PS pilots (normally, anyway - think Vader, Fenn Rau, Miranda Doni, Nym, Dengar), the value of a higher PS pilot feels like it should increase exponentially, not linearly, over the generic. About the only one who actually does is Major Rhymer, and he's forever mocked for it.

The X-wing should be on the other end of this; all you can do is joust, advance along a pre-planned line, and K-turn (possibly getting a lock on the K-turn if you have a targeting astromech). So, as noted, being caught by those guns in a straight line should hurt like heck, but it's firepower is frankly just above mediocre these days.

I think, by comparison, the Unguided Rockets/Lightweight Frame TIE Bomber is a good example of this: in theory (if you look at the stats only) it's a TIE defender for 20 points - 3 red dice, 3 green dice, and 6 hit points. In a straight head-on pass, the weight of fire is terrifying.

In reality, they're quite awful, because they lack the free evade token of a TIE/x7, the moment you lose your action, barrel roll, or want to do one of a TIE bomber's many, many red moves, that firepower collapses, target lock becomes next to useless, lightweight frame stops working in a disconcerting number of circumstances, and when you're talking about 15 hit points across your squad being hull rather than shields (because you're 6/0 not 3/3), you will notice the difference.

But that's why you can fit 5 of the things in your squad, not 3, and if you get them all pointed the right way you can still quite realistically turn a scurrg to scrap metal at range 3 in a single turn.

49 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I think that XWM is more like a biological system than a bridge.

As a biologist: I disagree.

X-Wing is way less organic (hah!) and way simpler!

51 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I suspect some abilities will be always be unquantifiably off kilter, and players with always gravitate towards the perception of superiority, newness of product, and proven success, thus reducing overall variability.

No, and I don‘t understand why you would think so.

Even if most people would - having more viable lists means that more people compared to now can fly a different list, increasing variability and more importantly viability of such lists.

So what are you comparing to?! Clearly not to the math-free approach we currently have, because that‘s way way worse.

This discussion reminds me to that episode in The Simpsons where the Springfield's local observatory detects an asteroid in collision course with the city, and during the whole chapter and this leads to a lot of drama in town. At the end of the episode a crowd goes with torches to burn down the observatory, "to prevent this from ever happening again".

By denying the mathematical analysis of the game, that are just tools that allows us to find problems and defects in it, some people think that the game will be saved from the very defects that such analysis would find. It's like those people that don't want to get checked by the doctor, just in case they find "something". To obscure and ignore the problems so that they don't show, and they can pretend that they don't exist.

The thing is that nobody can keep anyone from performing this mathematical analysis at home and share it in the Internet. For all we know, some crazy fan might be at this very moment implementing a super advanced sci-fi AI to analyze the game (first, then take over the world).
Moreover, you don't even need advanced math for this. Just by exposing the game to the hundreds of thousands that play it every week all around the world, broken combos and ships will sooner or later be found and refined. Optimal builds found, and in the end, driving most other people to try the same or very similar builds.
Look at it as it was a genetic algorithm, that by pure evolution and mutation ends finding optimal points. Well, that is what the community is.
You don't even need to give the community a lot of time to find this optimal builds. Nym was declared broken and the whole Scurrg undercosted 5 minutes after the preview went online.

Also, some people are complaining that math, as a tool, cannot solve or predict 100% of the game. Of course it can't. As any tool, it's good at doing a few things. That is why you have several tools in your toolbox, right? Or you look at your screwdriver and say "Bah, this sucks at drilling" and discard it into the trash bin?

Now the big problem is that, while the community has both its math tools to quickly estimate what is broken good or broken bad and that huge organic neural network that is the community itself, the developers seem to openly dismiss the mathematical tools, and make use of an obviously reduced pool of playtesters.
What we are talking about is that we have better tools than the devs, and even when they are offered to them, they don't want to use them because they don't believe on them.

Sure there might be edge cases like "There doesn't exist precise equations for the cost of a high PS arcdodger!". Even if the tool doesn't cover 100% of the cases, that is no reason for not using the tool for all other cases that it covers.
Otherwise we will keep getting cases of ships that are Dead-on-arrival. How many of those we have already? And how many of perfectly living ships were killed when the devs released something so broken good that virtually killed lots of previously fine ships?

5 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Clearly not to the math-free approach we currently have, because that‘s way way worse.

Do you really think the devs have absolutely no formula for designing ships?? I really find that hard to believe.

Accuracy and layering serendipity are different discussions, of course.

I have heard that there is a formula in an FFG spreadsheet for baselinibg cost. Someone here on the forums claimed to have reversed engineered it and fit the curve last year? Can’t find the link though :/

6 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Sure there might be edge cases like "There doesn't exist precise equations for the cost of a high PS arcdodger!". Even if the tool doesn't cover 100% of the cases, that is no reason for not using the tool for all other cases that it covers.

It's worth mentioning that within the broad umbrella of "math", there are several different kinds of tools at your disposal. Some math tools look like a screwdriver, some like a drill, and others a hammer. This point is lost on many that just lump all math together. A carpenter has more than one tool, so do mathematicians and statisticians.

8 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Equally, there's a degree of compound interest in the value of abilities. A Zealous Recruit has the boost action, but will rarely use it - because (a) using it whilst within combat range means no token and hence potential death, and (b) a better shot with unmodified dice is generally no better than a worse shot with a focus token so you might as well stay where you are. AM/PTL Fenn Rau, by comparison, has the action economy to boost or barrel roll and still get a focus token, and - because you've moved first - knows for definite that the boost will get him a better shot and leave you with no shot in return.

Every ship loadout has a "target metric" for what its straight-line jousting efficiency should be. If you can identify what the target values are, this becomes an extraordinarily powerful design tool. For example, a ship's ideal efficiency is going to be a function of it's arc coverage, its ability to leverage pilot skill + repositioning capability. Application of Lanchester's Law (i.e. one particular MathWing tool) only tells you how efficienct the ship is, but it can't tell you how efficient the ship needs to be. To determine the target metrics you need data analytics based on hard game data, or you can look at historical tournament data and identify at what efficiency levels certain ships become viable. When I asked the developers the question of " But what if there were a costing method for identifying PS9 arc dodgers...? " I already knew the 'correct' answer but I wanted to give them the opportunity to give their thoughts. This was one of the questions that we gave them ahead of time, so it didn't catch them unaware.

Related specifically to the Zealous Recruit example: to calculate jousting values for every ship, you need to identify its tank vs glass cannon level, and also factor in its Pilot Skill, because if its low PS it's likely to explode before shooting, but conversly, if it's high PS it's likely to destroy the enemy before it can shoot. MathWing 3.0 takes this into account, so each ship has both an "absolute" jousting value that assumes everyone gets simultaneous fire (so PS1 and PS9 are worth the same), but also the "PS adjusted" jousting value -- so PS1 glass cannons' adjusted value is actually lower than their absolute value.

Once you normalize for a ship's PS-adjusted jousting value, a PS1 ship with access to boost/barrel roll has a target efficiency suprisingly close to 100%. There's no historical data for this archetype because pretty much all the examples in the stock game are terrible, so it's going to take some beta testing of Community Mod to get good data on what this number really is, but initial estimates put it around 95%. High pilot skill dual action arc dodgers with access to hard turns (Soontir Fel, Vader, Inquisitor, etc) are a completely different archetype even though the base chassis is the same. Thankfully we have a lot of data on these kinds of ships, so its pretty clear the efficiency 'goldilocks zone' is in the 87% - 92% range at PS9, and we'll further refine this number once we get beta testing Community Mod.

You can follow a similiar process for determining the target efficiency for other archetypes too, like turrets, mobile arcs, rear arcs, etc.

1 hour ago, sozin said:

I have heard that there is a formula in an FFG spreadsheet for baselinibg cost. Someone here on the forums claimed to have reversed engineered it and fit the curve last year? Can’t find the link though :/

I believe Jay Little has said that they had an approximate equation set that they were working with at launch, but they pretty quickly got away from it. I think Alex has said that by wave 4 they were certainly not using it. Which is good, because whatever original equation set they were using did not reflect reality, and resulted in massive power disparities bteween ships, like the TIE Advanced vs the TIE Fighter.

Several people have attempted to "reverse engineer" the formula, but unfortunately this a meaningless excercise. If you can reduce it to N equations and N unknowns then it's mathematically trivial to cast it as a linear equation and find the costing coefficients for each of the input parameters. (Assuming the matrix is invertible, but I digress.) The problem in using this method and concluding " Eureka I have found it! " is that:

1. FFG has not stuck to a single formula, so it has little predictive measure on what they are going to do in the future
2. It will almost certainly result in some coefficients that, while they technically do solve the N-dimensional matrix, are clearly the wrong values for actual costing, which is a direct side effect of the original costing values being garbage to begin with.

11 hours ago, sozin said:

Yes, you've guys just hit on it upstream. MathWing is a way of costing the pieces. MathWing's approach is largely static, based on Lanchester's Square Law . It doesn't tell you how to play well with them though :-) There is an analog to chess here -- Queens are worth 9, Rooks 5, Bishops 3, Knights 3, pawns 1. Some folks thing knights are actually worth 2 or 2.5, but regardless, none of that helps you play chess any better, other than to inform material differences like trading a rook for a knight or a piece for a pawn. And even then its largely situational, as there are lots of times you'd sacrifice an exchange or sacrifice a piece. X-wing is no different.

Totally agree.