10 hours ago, Makaze said:

At what point did anyone say that arcs were completely and utterly irrelevant? That's a strawman you're propping up.

Both of the worlds lists were happy to have a target in arc, no one is arguing otherwise. Both were also pretty happy to get arc dodged if it cost you actions, the K-wing ABed and bombed you to death while the J5Ks PWTed and blocked you next turn. As for the rest... frankly Biggs was there to die and make sure Miranda didn't get alpha'd off the board, of those ships only Jess really needs arc. So the point isn't that arcs didn't change the way the lists played or their offensive capability. Rather it's that they had sufficient tools both in and out of arc to the point that as long as it costs the opponent sufficient actions to get out of arc, thus cutting their offense and defense, then they still came out on top.

Not to mention they wanted you in arc because they had ordnance so thanks for backing me up on the premise that good ordnance makes arcs matter

Don't bother, the new guy is confused by the complexity of a decision tree with includes a double tap in arc and dodging an enemy arc while firing your PWT out of arc. That is just to much for him

39 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Don't bother, the new guy is confused by the complexity of a decision tree with includes a double tap in arc and dodging an enemy arc while firing your PWT out of arc. That is just to much for him

I am not confused at all. Stop the personal attacks (ad hominem). I will discontinue conversing with you until you apologize for your personal attack on my intelligence.

On 1/29/2018 at 1:35 PM, Blail Blerg said:

Yeah... it does. ... Would you want to try winning a large tourney with that list?

I'd pick something else. Yknow, like dash poe.

Like really think about it for a sec. I said the obvious. You think its obvious. We're actually on the same page.

Quick report from Atlanta: I went three and three through the day, which is about normal performance for me at regional level. I beat two harpoon centric lists (Kylo/Deadeye Rhos and QD Nus). My losses were to a non-harpoon imperial list, a harpoon Rebel list, and a harpoon/prockets list similar to my own.
My honest opinion on my losses were due to pilot error and poor tactics on my part rather than my list not being up to the task. I will continue to count the list as an option for tournament play and not feel like I am at a major disadvantage. In fact, I am more confident in my ability to deal with Harpoons in the future.
I would also like to report seeing plenty of non-Harpoon Imperial lists running the gambit of the standings. This also included at least 5 Palp Aces like the list that won Mandalore.

so a missile that wipes swarms and buffs already powerful ordinance carriers is good?

cant say I agree. alpha strikes are not fun to play against, and harpoons aside the game is way to heavily leaning towards ordinance right now. there are by my count about 30 "bad" chassis, aka nonviable ships, in game. the thing they all have in common is that they get killed by ordinance too quickly to be worth their points.

so which is more important:

1) playability of swarms, weaker cheap ships, support craft, og trilogy ships, expensive fighters, etc.

2) playability of 2 harpoons and cruise missiles

5 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

so a missile that wipes swarms and buffs already powerful ordinance carriers is good?

cant say I agree. alpha strikes are not fun to play against, and harpoons aside the game is way to heavily leaning towards ordinance right now. there are by my count about 30 "bad" chassis, aka nonviable ships, in game. the thing they all have in common is that they get killed by ordinance too quickly to be worth their points.

so which is more important:

1) playability of swarms, weaker cheap ships, support craft, og trilogy ships, expensive fighters, etc.

2) playability of 2 harpoons and cruise missiles

Let the past die, kill it if you have to.

If you make the harpoons out of Nerf how will they stick in the target?

What about instead of nerfing harpoons, everything else get buffed?

5 hours ago, BlodVargarna said:

What about instead of nerfing harpoons, everything else get buffed?

From a game design standpoint that doesn't really work for a few reasons.

1: A nerf for one element is less likely to backfire than a buff for everything else. The only way a nerf can really backfire is if the element you're nerfing was keeping something worse at bay, whereas buffing multiple elements at once has a high likelihood that something just as bad, if not worse slips through.

2: Buffing multiple elements at the same time is a lot of work. You have to break down and analyze exactly why they're underpowered and find a solution that doesn't swing the pendulum the other way making the playtesting requirement much higher. Conversely a nerf doesn't have to be precise. While making one element mostly useless won't endear you to the players, it won't reduce the overall viability of the game if you just nuke it from orbit to be safe especially for a game with as many other options as X-Wing.

@MasterShake2 I probably should have indicated my sarcasm /s .

Just now, BlodVargarna said:

@MasterShake2 I probably should have indicated my sarcasm /s .

Granted, but you'd be surprised how many people think it's viable

13 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

Granted, but you'd be surprised how many people think it's viable

Well seeing as it's what's actually happening in real life...

So here’s my view; probably already been said but I’ve not read 6 pages of this sooo.... apologies if this is nothing new.

I like the relatively diverse meta right now but if harpoons are the only thing keeping arc’d ships relevant; there is something very wrong with the game. ALL acr’d ships should remain relevant. Unfortunately; they are not. This band aid is better than nothing but far from ideal.

The recent s&v interview with the devs showed they are there to sell new ships. End of. How do they do that? They make them better than the previous ships or include good cards in the pack. Imho; this is actually detrimental to the game in the long run as old ships won’t sell and people will get irked they can’t use their favourite ships. With any IP you need the big names relevant. Batman Miniatures went through a dark time when they power crept batman out the game. Fortunately errata helped there, in ways ffg simply cant/won’t do. So now we have a cycle of buy the new shine or loose. Then rush out for an aces pack to get those old ships back on the table until the next wave. It works, it sells! The Star Wars IP is inevitably not going to stay with ffg forever; they want to milk it. That’s fine but it’s a massive shame as it’s also so very detrimental to the fantastic game they have produced!

ill still keep playing but I’d love to get my b-wings out again. Favourite ship and was my first tournament list. Right now though; they simply can’t hang. And that’s a **** shame imho. Still; who knows what tomorrow may bring? Maybe sunshine or maybe the rain?

One thing for sure. I do enjoy the currently shorter games based on all that incoming damage and token denial.

Another one thing for sure: The designers don't play the same game we do, because they have no ******* clue about the game. They are just not as much invested, because they have a rather low amount of hours avaible for X-Wing and need to work on a lot of different games.
Furthermore even hiring a single guy to do automatic testing for their games is to expensive. That could replace meta knowledge, but they do neither and the feedback of their testers seems limited as well.

The s&v interview as highlights like the devs speaking about the harpoons accidently killing the "rebel convoy" and how not putting a crew slot on the new bomber makes the bomber AND it's trajectory simulator as well.
Everything points towards the designers not having enough work hours for X-Wing, nor pasion to invest their own time into the competitive side of things.

And yeah, ascretion as design choice has been mentioned in that podcast as well.

18 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Let the past die, kill it if you have to.

possibly the only good moment in that film, but a poor justfication for making the game boring and redundant.

21 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

how not putting a crew slot on the new bomber makes the bomber AND it's trajectory simulator as well.

Can you restate this please?

15 minutes ago, MrRip said:

Can you restate this please?

The devs speaking about how not putting a crew slot on the new bomber makes the bomber fine and balanced AND it's trajectory simulator as well. They totally ignored that you could use the trajectory projector on Nym. Almost like the designers of one wave are not aware of the design decisions of a previous (and not yet released) wave. They totally ignore as well that Sabine can be used on another ship.

It's super irritating to see a designer view his designs in such an isolated way.

Im all in for harpoons! My Vaksais need them, so does Scyks, Scurrg and Kimogila!

On 2/4/2018 at 7:39 AM, BlodVargarna said:

What about instead of nerfing harpoons, everything else get buffed?

I've read this a lot, and here's the problem with it:

At a certain power level, the underlying assumptions of the game will just shatter. We're already seeing cracks. Let me give you a (maybe the) simplest example: balancing attack and defense dice.

The game was designed around a baseline of 2-3 attack dice (with 4 as the max) against 1-3 defense dice (with 5 as the max). Everything around the game was designed with these numbers in mind: pilot abilities, hull and shield points, ranges, dials, and so on. Although it (very clearly, at this point) wasn't based on rigorous mathematics, there was a rough intuitive logic behind it: an X-wing's "powerful" 3-die gun could pop an unlucky TIE fighter at range 3 behind a rock, but two TIE fighters could simply not do the same to an X-wing, barring a 1-in-2000 event. There was a tension between red and green dice ... they had certain values relative to each other.

But now, because of power-creep (i.e., "buffs to everyone") that has been thrown massively off. Red dice creep has been so pervasive that it's now common to throw 5 red dice. Accordingly, green dice have become increasingly devalued, barring massive modifications. So we now see the "best dogfighters" in the ostensible Star Wars universe being 1- or even 0-green dice ships, because they have more HP.

To put it another way, if I'm going to lose my 3 AGI, 3 HP ship to your 5-die gun, if we both roll average, then I'm not going to rely on rolling average -- and God forbid I roll poorly. I'm going to take a ship that has lots of HP and (even better) maybe even a way to regain HP. I will survive your hit, and get to fire back.

The underlying assumptions about the balance between red and green dice -- assumptions baked into how the game was balanced -- are very nearly dead.

Without that foundation, X-Wing is a tower that is oscillating back and forth, with one fix adding weight to one side, pulling the tower top back to the other side, even more strongly, which needs another fix to keep the tower standing (barely), which pulls it even farther in the other direction ...

Buffing everything will just accelerate this. The problem is that the lower floors are not build to handle the weight of the upper floors. So you have two choices: knock off lots and lots of the upper floors, and hope the game can survive that.

Or take the lessons you learned building the first building, and make a broad, strong foundation for X-Wing 2.0.

It's not that bad, x7 defender can deal okish with 5 dice attacks, other token stacking aces as well, even Quickdraw deals with them in his own way (rolling two times 3 or 4 dice in return).

You definitely have a point about the foundation and the tower, but 5 offensive dice seems to be included in a very early stage of the game, as the phantoms did not break the game because of the dice creep, but only because how they suppressed anything below PS10.

Speaking of that: Some people are talking about removing the phantom nerf, which personally I think is a bad idea, but I would love to see the two cloaking enhancing mods merged into one.

On 2/5/2018 at 2:13 PM, SEApocalypse said:

The devs speaking about how not putting a crew slot on the new bomber makes the bomber fine and balanced AND it's trajectory simulator as well. They totally ignored that you could use the trajectory projector on Nym. Almost like the designers of one wave are not aware of the design decisions of a previous (and not yet released) wave. They totally ignore as well that Sabine can be used on another ship.

It's super irritating to see a designer view his designs in such an isolated way.

I see. Thanks.

@SabineKey, thanks for your report. Read it. Though I don’t know what to make of it.

9 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

@SabineKey, thanks for your report. Read it. Though I don’t know what to make of it.

Fair. I’m a middle of the road player, so my variance makes my data not super solid.

On 2/5/2018 at 5:13 PM, SEApocalypse said:

The devs speaking about how not putting a crew slot on the new bomber makes the bomber fine and balanced AND it's trajectory simulator as well. They totally ignored that you could use the trajectory projector on Nym. Almost like the designers of one wave are not aware of the design decisions of a previous (and not yet released) wave. They totally ignore as well that Sabine can be used on another ship.

It's super irritating to see a designer view his designs in such an isolated way.

Omg so much this. It’s like they forgot how to....make lists?

But yeah, it seems each expac is its own project until sometimes someone has the idea of a themed wave, so disparate ships and upgrades are swapped around and then forgotten.

Of course the rumor of play testers pushing through OP upgrades for tournament play is floating around too.

1 hour ago, GrimmyV said:

Of course the rumor of play testers pushing through OP upgrades for tournament play is floating around too.

I must admit, this is one the ideas i am subscribing to.

On 3/10/2018 at 11:00 AM, SabineKey said:

Fair. I’m a middle of the road player, so my variance makes my data not super solid.

In an attempt to be less apathetic about the situation. I’d like to ask your detailed opinion on: are non harpoon imperials viable at the extreme competitive range? Why is that? Are there counter examples and or complexity in the situation?

If one wanted to win the whole tournament would you recommend your build or a similar one? Or is it incredibly easier to manage better results with a rebel or scum super power list (or harpoons)?