Move Over, Half Points

By ObiWonka, in X-Wing

Half points for large ships is an outdated rule. There are now several small ships that can be just as defensive and have just as much health. Half points for small ships would seem helpful at first glance, but also punishes ships that don't deserve it and just 'moves the goalposts'. There have also been suggestions of half points based on health, but that's ultimately arbitrary (7? 8? 9?) and has collateral damage, too (Hull Upgrade, TIE Punisher). Regen screws with every scoring system, but the effort to track it during a match slows the game down and just makes them all more fiddly. Ideally, partial points would be scored for every single ship, but that takes a lot of math and scores a bunch of fractional points. So it struck me this morning, why not just partial points for the entire list's health, which is reflective of the overall work put in by your squad?

Total damage done divided by total list health times total list points equals MoV

Here are some recent top lists. For ***** and giggles, I'll compare half ship points and half list damage, using "shields down" as an additional data point.

Miranda Doni + Twin Laser Turret + Long-Range Scanners + Bomblet Generator + C-3PO (41)
Lowhhrick + Trick Shot + Breach Specialist + Rey (31)
Jess Pava + M9-G8 + Integrated Astromech (28)

Half points per ship requires at least 1 Hull damage on Miranda and 2 on Low (13 total), for a total of 49 points (so you still lose 1 point because of odd ship totals).
Partial points on the list requires 12 damage anywhere and scores 50 (it's a 100-point list).
"Shields down" only scores 14 on a per-ship basis.
"Shields down" scores 10 (damage) / 24 (health) * 100 (points) = 42 (41.67)

Nu Squadron Pilot + Harpoon Missiles + Long-Range Scanners (22)
Nu Squadron Pilot + Harpoon Missiles + Long-Range Scanners (22)
Nu Squadron Pilot + Harpoon Missiles + Long-Range Scanners (22)
"Quickdraw" + Veteran Instincts + Fire-Control System + Special Ops Training + Lightweight Frame (34)

Half points per ship requires a Hull damage on each Nu (16 total), for 50 points.
Partial points per list requires any 15 damage, for 50 points.
"Shields down" per ship scores 17.
"Shields down" per list scores 44 (44.44)

Dengar + Expertise + Maul + Counter-Measures + Punishing One (55)
Asajj Ventress + Lone Wolf + Latts Razzi + Glitterstim + Glitterstim (45)

Half points per ship requires 1 Hull on Dengar, 2 on Asajj (10 total), for 49 points.
Partial points per list requires any 10 damage for 50.
"Shields down" per ship scores nothing.
"Shields down" per list scores 37 (36.84)

Someone will probably come up with some weird corner cases where this doesn't work the way you would want it to. Some people probably just won't like it. But to me, it much more accurately reflects how a match went, and doesn't punish your MoV with 0 points even though you did 8 damage to Dengar/Asajj (as an example; you'd get 42 'per list'). The math is one simple calculation at the end of each match (and it's easy enough to print up beforehand, too). Admittedly there are still fractional points, but not for up to 8 calculations. I'd love the community's thoughts.

Edited by ObiWonka
half per ship bad, partial per list good

I like the idea because of the new point fortresses showing up. It is so frustrating when the match has gone to time and my opponent has 3 ships left with 1 hull left but wins because he got half points on my BroBots, and I have only Killed Jess. He wins due to the half point rule.

7 hours ago, smccaughan said:

I like the idea because of the new point fortresses showing up. It is so frustrating when the match has gone to time and my opponent has 3 ships left with 1 hull left but wins because he got half points on my BroBots, and I have only Killed Jess. He wins due to the half point rule.

On the flip side, it means that aces can attrition generics to death with very little recourse. Takes a lot of the benefit away from being lower PS than your opponent.

7 hours ago, smccaughan said:

I like the idea because of the new point fortresses showing up. It is so frustrating when the match has gone to time and my opponent has 3 ships left with 1 hull left but wins because he got half points on my BroBots, and I have only Killed Jess. He wins due to the half point rule.

There's also the Ghost, which has a weirder sense of fortressing in that the opposing player gets no points for a docked shuttle.

To be honest, the more I think about this, the more I don't like it. It really, really punishes generic lists, which can often expect to lose a ship before it fires and are most reliant on intentional blocks and the like to keep wounded ships alive. It places such a huge value on damage mitigation and/or not taking shots-- something many ships simply can't pull off. PS wars would skyrocket, since having a ship survive with 1hp has practically no benefit to you anymore if a couple damage on one of your other ships pushes you to the half-points threshold.

Edited by RampancyTW

i'd rather just have halfpoints become a universal thing. You hit my Academy twice but didnt kill it? Enjoy your 6pts....
Lost a game in a tournament that went to time simply because all 3 of his small ships were at 1hp and i simply could not finish the fricker off while 2 of my ships were dead with the 3rd being near full hp. While i would have still lost that match (most likely anyway) i wouldnt have dropped from top table down to freakin 8th since i didnt score anything at all technically.

12 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

i'd rather just have halfpoints become a universal thing. You hit my Academy twice but didnt kill it? Enjoy your 6pts....
Lost a game in a tournament that went to time simply because all 3 of his small ships were at 1hp and i simply could not finish the fricker off while 2 of my ships were dead with the 3rd being near full hp. While i would have still lost that match (most likely anyway) i wouldnt have dropped from top table down to freakin 8th since i didnt score anything at all technically.

But it also disproportionately hurts fragile aces even more than they currently are. Soontir Fel might only take a single critical damage all game, but drew a Direct Hit? That's instantly giving up 17-18 points. You're just going to push things further into the realm of the high-HP fortresses than they already are.

And? No offense but if Soontir gets hit he's usually done anyway. Once the SD is gone hes a ton easier to take out.

And even still, its only half points. Halfpointed soontir is 17.5(18)pts. If you only look at him suffering from it, yeah it sounds terrible, but at the same token the enemy is likely to be in the same boat where one of his moderately expensive small bases got whacked but not dead yet so he lost that much if not more too.

I dont see any unusually unfair scorings based on your list if half points went to all ships. Either both of you are scoring it, or one of you got roflstomped anyway. It would also make it incredibly difficult to get a 100-0 victory, which im fine with.

Usually it takes a lot of work and planning (and/or poor flying) to put a crit through on to Soontir. It makes sense to get some points for that.

The problem is that there are PS 10 bombs and auto-damage, so sometimes its laughably easy to kill low health aces.

ah, casual, how I love you. Where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

13 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Usually it takes a lot of work and planning (and/or poor flying) to put a crit through on to Soontir. It makes sense to get some points for that.

Exactly. It's not punishing aces, it's rewarding fighting against them. Currently you only get rewarded for killing him, but you bet your *** a wounded Soontir is going to fly differently, which to me seems like it should be worth something at the end of the game. (And Soontir is one of my favorite pilots.) And this goes for all ships, really.

Additionally, with the current half-point rule (and if that rule was extended to more/all ships) any damage between half-dead and all dead doesn't matter at all (points-wise). You dealt 8 damage to the Ghost? Great, take half its points. You dealt 7 more damage and it was literally a single die away from death? Screw you, take half its points. Again, seems to me that someone who did fifteen damage to a ship put in a lot more effort toward killing it than whoever did eight, and should be rewarded appropriately.

I think doing half points for all makes sense, but what do you do with regen? It's easy to get shields off of Corran, Poe, Miranda...then a few turns later their full health again. In Poe and Corrans case, that's half. Do you record that fact?

14 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Usually it takes a lot of work and planning (and/or poor flying) to put a crit through on to Soontir. It makes sense to get some points for that.

Vader crew says hello!

1 hour ago, SirCormac said:

I think doing half points for all makes sense, but what do you do with regen? It's easy to get shields off of Corran, Poe, Miranda...then a few turns later their full health again. In Poe and Corrans case, that's half. Do you record that fact?

Did you read my posts? I addressed Regen and proposed an alternate solution to half points for all, which would at least be better against Regen, if still not perfect.

Can something like just counting damage cards/shields down work? Not sure on balance of points, but something simple like: Total Points of ship / Hit points of ship = damage card/shield value rounded down. Multiply the damage card/shield value by damage done and you get the points you scored on that ship. So lets take 43 point Poe:

43 points / 6 Hitpoints = 7.16666... round down to 7 points. So Poe has 2 damage cards on him and 1 HP remaining. So you have done 5 damage to him. So 7 * 5 = 35 points scored on Poe. This would be regardless of how many shields on him.

I understand it is terribly fiddly, but shouldn't take too long to figure out. Everyone has a calculator on their phone. Regenning ships still have an advantage if they do not suffer a damage card (unless the solution is to track shield damage too), but once you pierce shields you score on them, or you can score if they cannot regen all the way back to full shields.

3 minutes ago, Jo Jo said:

Can something like just counting damage cards/shields down work? Not sure on balance of points, but something simple like: Total Points of ship / Hit points of ship = damage card/shield value rounded down. Multiply the damage card/shield value by damage done and you get the points you scored on that ship. So lets take 43 point Poe:

43 points / 6 Hitpoints = 7.16666... round down to 7 points. So Poe has 2 damage cards on him and 1 HP remaining. So you have done 5 damage to him. So 7 * 5 = 35 points scored on Poe. This would be regardless of how many shields on him.

I understand it is terribly fiddly, but shouldn't take too long to figure out. Everyone has a calculator on their phone. Regenning ships still have an advantage if they do not suffer a damage card (unless the solution is to track shield damage too), but once you pierce shields you score on them, or you can score if they cannot regen all the way back to full shields.

Fractional points are a good idea in theory, and would work great if FFG updated their tournament software to calculate them automatically. Without such an upgrade, however, it's not practical because it relies on humans doing lots of math repeatedly without an easy way to check their math, which history has proven is impractical in the long term. And yes, I realize the majority of the playerbase has a calculator in their pocket. Without a central system checking everyone's math, people will still screw it up, especially in a loud and rushed environment like a tournament.

3 minutes ago, Squark said:

Fractional points are a good idea in theory, and would work great if FFG updated their tournament software to calculate them automatically. Without such an upgrade, however, it's not practical because it relies on humans doing lots of math repeatedly without an easy way to check their math, which history has proven is impractical in the long term. And yes, I realize the majority of the playerbase has a calculator in their pocket. Without a central system checking everyone's math, people will still screw it up, especially in a loud and rushed environment like a tournament.

You do have to have two opponents agree on the maths before the scoring is submitted to the TO. I am also certain the community will come up with a quick calculating app in a week.

Edited by Jo Jo
52 minutes ago, Jo Jo said:

You do have to have two opponents agree on the maths before the scoring is submitted to the TO. I am also certain the community will come up with a quick calculating app in a week.

Opponents checking math would help, as would a community app, but without the tournament software double checking, a lot of mistakes would creep through. I don't trust dozens of people to do multiplication and division under stressful conditions- Anyone who remembers high school math tests should know how many mistakes can creep in.

And to be fair, altering the tournament software wouldn't take a ton of work (in theory. I've heard a lot of bad things about the official tournament application). I genuinely would like to see FFG implement it. But I wouldn't get my hopes up given how much OP drags their feet.

To be clear, I was just using "shields down" as a quick way to say "4 damage to Miranda, 3 to Low, 3 to Jess", "4 damage to Degnar, 3 to Asajj", etc. And as I noted in the OP, full fractional scoring is the truest way to account for all the damage done, it just takes a lot more calculation, which is why I was proposing this alternative as a way to not slow games down too much, but still get a better score.

Its quicker, but you open us up to the Crimson Sqd. Pilot x 4 Meta. 48 hitpoints and 24 damage to get half points. :P

Edited by Jo Jo

I just want to reiterate how much these suggestions punish jousters and make major dice swings crippling. The only thing that keeps lower PS ships viable at all is the fact that they can take a beating long enough to set up a killbox on higher PS ships. If taking that beating is now a direct point loss regardless, they lose their ability to compete.

If a dice swing turns 1 expected damage into 3 or 4 damage, that dice swing is now potentially responsible for scoring half-list MoV with very little the player on the unfavorable end can do about it.

Removing the reward for keeping ships alive with good flying is just not a good idea, and the narrower you make the MoV resolution across all players, the less control an individual player has over their performance relative to the field.

4 hours ago, Jo Jo said:

Its quicker, but you open us up to the Crimson Sqd. Pilot x 4 Meta. 48 hitpoints and 24 damage to get half points. :P

You don't need to get half points, though. You can do 12 damage and still get 25 points.

2 hours ago, RampancyTW said:

I just want to reiterate how much these suggestions punish jousters and make major dice swings crippling. The only thing that keeps lower PS ships viable at all is the fact that they can take a beating long enough to set up a killbox on higher PS ships. If taking that beating is now a direct point loss regardless, they lose their ability to compete.

If a dice swing turns 1 expected damage into 3 or 4 damage, that dice swing is now potentially responsible for scoring half-list MoV with very little the player on the unfavorable end can do about it.

Removing the reward for keeping ships alive with good flying is just not a good idea, and the narrower you make the MoV resolution across all players, the less control an individual player has over their performance relative to the field.

Except that they also get rewarded this for a failed killbox that simply damages an enemy without killing it. And it's not like only low PS ships can take a beating, ships like Han, Miranda, and Asajj can take very defensive builds. Either way, the point is the player beating up those ships should be compensated for their damage as well. If the low PS ships are likely to lose, then at least this scoring method gives them something for doing damage. If they manage to pull out a win, why should the high PS player lose out on MoV when they did damage, too?

As far as dice swings, that happens with current scoring methods, too. This method would reward any retaliatory damage with MoV, not just kills or half-points-on-large-ships.

Keeping ships alive with good flying is still rewarded, just not as much. They still have points left in them to give up, they've just given up some already. Currently, crap can happen like Miranda SLAMing away at 1 Hull to keep 40+ points. If she's so badly damaged that her player has taken her out of the fight so she doesn't die, why does the player scaring her away get nothing ?

MoV as it is currently has also been a bit ridiculous to me. It effectively doubles your lead if you win, when you've already gotten the benefit of recording a victory instead of a loss. So narrowing that gap only makes sense to me.

38 minutes ago, ObiWonka said:

You don't need to get half points, though. You can do 12 damage and still get 25 points.

Except that they also get rewarded this for a failed killbox that simply damages an enemy without killing it. And it's not like only low PS ships can take a beating, ships like Han, Miranda, and Asajj can take very defensive builds. Either way, the point is the player beating up those ships should be compensated for their damage as well. If the low PS ships are likely to lose, then at least this scoring method gives them something for doing damage. If they manage to pull out a win, why should the high PS player lose out on MoV when they did damage, too?

As far as dice swings, that happens with current scoring methods, too. This method would reward any retaliatory damage with MoV, not just kills or half-points-on-large-ships.

Keeping ships alive with good flying is still rewarded, just not as much. They still have points left in them to give up, they've just given up some already. Currently, crap can happen like Miranda SLAMing away at 1 Hull to keep 40+ points. If she's so badly damaged that her player has taken her out of the fight so she doesn't die, why does the player scaring her away get nothing ?

MoV as it is currently has also been a bit ridiculous to me. It effectively doubles your lead if you win, when you've already gotten the benefit of recording a victory instead of a loss. So narrowing that gap only makes sense to me.

Since you used her as an example: Let's talk Asajj.

Say I have 5 heavy swarmers vs. a Timewalk Asajj list.

The way it currently is, I have to survive 2 rounds of maximum Asajj defense while having enough leftover to take on the list when the Timewalk is over. We'll keep things super simple. Turn 1, one of my ships gets lit up. Turn 2, I rotate that ship into a blocking position to prevent an Asajj evade and keep it alive. another ship gets lit up.

Asajj is now out of timewalk. I have a ship that can block, a ship that's likely to die, and 3 fresh ships that can lay into her for a couple of rounds.

Asajj dies. I have three ships on 1 hull and 1 fresh ships against Asajj's wingman.

With the current system: I'm winning! I've lost 20 points, and the opponent has lost a little less than half. I have 4/5 combat-capable ships, and I can either bail with the hurt ones or use them to try to killbox the remaining ship depending on the siutation

With half list points, I am currently losing (sitting at 40 MoV), because I've dropped below half my health, and the opponent's list is at half (50 MoV). I now 100% have to kill the other ship to win, since I have no way to get ahead. Even though I have 80% of my ships that can still shoot, and my opponent has lost the toughest jousting nut to crack in the game, I am losing. There is nothing that I could have done to prevent this-- the only absolution here that puts me in a better spot is pure and simple dice luck.

Ships that move first and shoot last get really, really boned by a system that rewards their opponent for simply damaging them. For example, I run a triple Silencer list that relies on the open dial and Autothrusters to spread damage around and avoid taking too many direct confrontations. Most victories end with two or three silencers left at 1 or 2 hull each. This takes EXTREMELY careful flying and decision-making, and is only viable because there is pressure on the opponent to pin at least one of my ships down to take it out, or to pin down a second one if I managed to take down a point fortress/multiple wingmen. The matches tend to be extremely even and decided by whoever flew better. Under a half-list MoV system, it would be much more difficult to eke out a win, because pinning down aces or chewing through the Wookies and Lancers and Ghosts of the world is HARD, and you have to take damage to do it. It's easy for a lucky shot to take off half of the health of your 6HP ship. It's less easy and far less statistically likely to get a ship completely taken off the board by bad luck.

Under a half-list system, there's no way I don't run anything that doesn't have crazy high damage mitigation or a tremendous ability to arc-dodge, because taking any damage at all goes from being a regular part of the game to a massive points risk.

8 hours ago, Jo Jo said:

Can something like just counting damage cards/shields down work? Not sure on balance of points, but something simple like: Total Points of ship / Hit points of ship = damage card/shield value rounded down. Multiply the damage card/shield value by damage done and you get the points you scored on that ship. So lets take 43 point Poe:

43 points / 6 Hitpoints = 7.16666... round down to 7 points. So Poe has 2 damage cards on him and 1 HP remaining. So you have done 5 damage to him. So 7 * 5 = 35 points scored on Poe. This would be regardless of how many shields on him.

I understand it is terribly fiddly, but shouldn't take too long to figure out. Everyone has a calculator on their phone. Regenning ships still have an advantage if they do not suffer a damage card (unless the solution is to track shield damage too), but once you pierce shields you score on them, or you can score if they cannot regen all the way back to full shields.

If you use this, proton bombs would be OP against most small based ships (imp especially) as a direct hit could easily take half points on a ship

1 hour ago, RampancyTW said:

With half list points

I see the problem. I mistakenly referred to this system as "half list" when it's really "partial list". I called it correctly in the first paragraphs, and you'll notice in my examples there are scores of 37 and 44, etc. My bad. I'll edit the first post to be less confusing.

So, just so everyone's clear, I'm proposing scoring points for all damage dealt , not "half the list or nothing". So for my typos causing confusion.

Edited by ObiWonka