15 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

PRS is the easiest example to highlight the underlying problem of a bad fix that‘s tempting for its simplicity. I don‘t think that TLT has to stay the same because of HWKs, and similarly regen does not have to stay the same because of PRS.

I‘m saying that there are better ideas than using the initial shield value as hard cap, and PRS is an example why.

It might be a good idea to review why and where regen is actually a problem. R5D8, PRS or Gonk are not. R2D2 is only on Poe (maybe Corran, but....) and Miranda has her ability. Does regen really need a fix, or does the problem actually lie in point calculation and point fortresses?

Both!

These ships are really good because they are are very cost efficient, which is enabled by once per round regen. Trust me, you don't even want to know what the cost efficiency of Corran+PtL/R2D2/EU/AdvancedSensors (or FCS) was "back in the day", it would make you cry. Likewise, Miranda getting a shield back every round factors directly into her cost efficiency, which is why she's so good. Even if she gave up half points she would still be on top tables.

In addition to that, it's well-known that if I can kill two-thirds of your list's hit points, the game goes to time, and I have scored zero points, then there's a serious scoring problem.

This is why my fixes for Community Mod are as follows:

• R2-D2 can only regenerate a shield every other round (green move = regen and pull a shield off R2-D2 like Gonk, then next turn any move will put a shield back on R2-D2 to a max of 1).
• Miranda's ability now only works in arc. (Make arcs matter!!!)
• Any ship that's over a quarter of the list building limit gives up half points. It doesn't matter if they are small or large base. I.e. 26+ points at stock 100 point scale, or 51+ points with a more granular 200 point scale like Community Mod.
• If a regen ship goes below half points and then regens back up, you don't get half points for it. This scoring is an accurate reflection of the board state (you let it get its health back!), so if you're worried about this scenario then look at the fundamental problem, which is regen itself.
• [edit / P.S related to Miranda] TLT also gets nerfed so TLT only gives the 2nd attack if the target is either in-arc, or at range 2.

2 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

This is why my fixes for Community Mod are as follows:

• R2-D2 can only regenerate a shield every other round (green move = regen and pull a shield off R2-D2 like Gonk, then next turn any move will put a shield back on R2-D2 to a max of 1).
• Miranda's ability now only works in arc. (Make arcs matter!!!)
• Any ship that's over a quarter of the list building limit gives up half points. It doesn't matter if they are small or large base. I.e. 26+ points at stock 100 point scale, or 51+ points with a more granular 200 point scale like Community Mod.
• If a regen ship goes below half points and then regens back up, you don't get half points for it. This scoring is an accurate reflection of the board state (you let it get its health back!), so if you're worried about this scenario then look at the fundamental problem, which is regen itself.

Stop using logic @MajorJuggler , it's far to beautiful.

So what does the community mod do to our TLT demon?

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Miranda's regen is the only truly troublesome regen in the game, and that's only because of it's synergy with TLT.

R2-D2? Limited to green moves which makes the target predictable. There's a couple of players who absolutely get the best out if it n E-Wings or the T-70, but not many.

R5-P9 isn't seen that often. Pulsed Ray Shield and Gonk are hardly meta-warping. Chopper has a hard limit.

Fix Miranda's ability and you fix regen.

5 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

Stop using logic @MajorJuggler , it's far to beautiful.

So what does the community mod do to our TLT demon?

I realized after I hit post that I forgot to mention my TLT nerf, which is related to Miranda. Updated:

9 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

• [edit / P.S related to Miranda] TLT also gets nerfed so TLT only gives the 2nd attack if the target is either in-arc, or at range 2.

100% agree, and I'm not even entirely convinced Miranda is a problem.

I'd nerf her more to just freshen things up a bit than because I thought it was was urgently needed for balance.

The rest of regen is entirely a non-issue.

4 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Both!

[...]

This is why my fixes for Community Mod are as follows

I completely agree, and especially want to emphasize again that these are great solutions on how to fix regen. Using the initial shield value as hard cap is not one of them

You'll see that I also mentioned "[a]ny solution similar to gonk seems much more reasonable" on the previous page and even though I would prefer a method that can be blocked/stressed (action-part of Gonk), the main takeaway from Gonk should be that he has to build up the regen pool first before using it.

The reason I mentioned points and pointfortressing is that this part gets all too often ignored and forgotten, and I'd rate it more important than specific card fixes.

18 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

• Any ship that's over a quarter of the list building limit gives up half points. It doesn't matter if they are small or large base. I.e. 26+ points at stock 100 point scale, or 51+ points with a more granular 200 point scale like Community Mod.

Gotta admit, you lost me here. This is doubling down on an already bad and lazy change.

On 3/30/2018 at 9:22 PM, sozin said:

Agree, this is Amateur hour misdirection fake news bs. They are worried and telegraphing it. Can imagine a panicked pointy hairnblss meeting meeting after Adepticon triggering the article.

The PR out of FFG has always been rainbows and unicorns. "OMG EVERYTHING IS AMAZING BUY OUR STUFF!"

Nothing has really changed in that regard, they are just doubling down on the same corporate marketing strategy. For me it's a massive deterrence in buying into any of their other games, because it is clear that they can't be trusted. I'm fully into X-wing but I don't think I'll dive into any of their other games. Legion looks interesting and I think Alex is a pretty good developer / designer. However the Corporate approach to game balance seems to be " lets stick our heads in the sand about any problems, maybe fix it in 8-16 months, and then we're always adding more power creep to sell new stuff anyway! ", which actively discourages me from buying into more of their game systems.

11 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

100% agree, and I'm not even entirely convinced Miranda is a problem.

I just spit tea all over my computer; thanks for the laugh @Stay On The Leader , priceless!

17 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I‘m saying that there are better ideas than using the initial shield value as hard cap, and PRS is an example why.

I'm open to some of those ideas as well. Limiting regen by placing regen tokens on the card that causes it has the advantage of there already being a mechanic exactly like that, Gonk. But as far as that limit being equal to the ships shield count or some number specific to the regen card... meh. I can honestly see arguments on both sides, PRS is just a poor reason to decide to do it one way or another.

22 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

It might be a good idea to review why and where regen is actually a problem. R5D8, PRS or Gonk are not. R2D2 is only on Poe (maybe Corran, but....) and Miranda has her ability. Does regen really need a fix, or does the problem actually lie in point calculation and point fortresses?

All of the regen cards that aren't currently a problem are only a ship or upgrade card away from becoming one. That's why it's probably better to fix regen in a systemic way rather than only targeting the handful of specific cards that cause issues today.

No disagreement on MoV calculation leading to points fortressing being a core part of the problem. I guess I'm just not aware of a relatively simple fix there that doesn't cause a whole host of other externalities. The one example of them making a change like that, large base half points, sort of fixed the issue right in that moment but in hind sight is part of what is causing the current problem. It temporarily swept the problem under the rug since only big ships cost that much but is coming back to bite us now that we have small base ships in the same cost and survivability range. That's not to say that there isn't a reasonable solution here that doesn't cause other problems, I just don't know what it is or suspect it's not a tweak so much a complete sea change in tournament scoring. But I'm going to guess that having half of your list be effectively unkillable in many common situations is going to be a problem in any scoring system.

1 minute ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Gotta admit, you lost me here. This is doubling down on an already bad and lazy change.

One of the over-arching goals of Community Mod is to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible. The best solution from a technical sense is to go full blown partial points scoring, which is possible with a squad builder that gives you the exact point breakdowns for each hit. But, that can be a turnoff for a lot of people just because it is so different. Partial scoring based will be an optional scoring method and fully supported by the squad builder, but it won't be the default.

It's a good change to have ships give up some points if they are damaged at time. The more you can minimize the scoring variance on a per-shot basis, the better. I.e. if I can only score points 50 point increments against your list, but you can score points in 12 point increments vs my list, then I am at a massive disadvantage. Unless you can achieve the ivory tower solution where games always go to completion, the scoring method will strongly "distort" which lists do well in timed games.

13 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

For me it's a massive deterrence in buying into any of their other games, because it is clear that they can't be trusted. I'm fully into X-wing but I don't think I'll dive into any of their other games. Legion looks interesting and I think Alex is a pretty good developer / designer. However the Corporate approach to game balance seems to be " lets stick our heads in the sand about any problems, maybe fix it in 8-16 months, and then we're always adding more power creep to sell new stuff anyway! ", which actively discourages me from buying into more of their game systems.

This is precisely why I'm not buying into Legion. I have little doubt that it will be a broken mess several waves in once they run through the stuff they playtested during initial development. Largely due to a complete lack of resource dedicated to making sure that doesn't happen. Though I'm less on the same page regarding Alex. I think he designs a lot of interesting and creative stuff, but one of the debut videos for Legion had him use the phrase "cinematic experience" umpteen times excusing sloppy model placement and range. That cemented to me that he regards the game as something played just for fun, not competitively. So the rules and balance will always be a bit loose since the assumption is that certain strategies and loopholes just won't be exploited.

13 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

One of the over-arching goals of Community Mod is to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible. The best solution from a technical sense is to go full blown partial points scoring, which is possible with a squad builder that gives you the exact point breakdowns for each hit.

Maybe from a technical sense, but not from a tactical wargame sense. Partial scoring -- of any sort -- encourages behavior that is diametrical to any reasonable goal when playing a fighting simulation.

To put it another way: X-Wing already has partial scoring, in every case except when a squadron is composed of only one ship.

Partial scoring is simply bad. It was bad when FFG did it, and it's bad when you're doing it.

Just in case it's not clear, this is actually a deal-breaker for me. I was in hoping for better design than FFG, but this is doubling down on one of the stupidest changes they made to the game(*). I just can't support it.

(*) And not even actually to the game. It's a tournament rule. Ships for the game are forced to be balanced -- okay, "balanced" -- for a rule that doesn't even exist in the actual game rules-set.

Just now, Jeff Wilder said:

Maybe from a technical sense, but not from a tactical wargame sense. Partial scoring -- of any sort -- encourages behavior that is diametrical to any reasonable goal when playing a fighting simulation.

To put it another way: X-Wing already has partial scoring, in every case except when a squadron is composed of only one ship.

Partial scoring is simply bad. It was bad when FFG did it, and it's bad when you're doing it.

Not doing anything is worse. I don't mean to come across as rude or condescending, but how often do you play on top tables at tournaments? The scoring dramatically affects the in-game tactics in timed games, and I'm not even talking about slow play. Scoring differences can force one person to take a poor engagement even if they are 90% certain they will win an untimed match, because they are 100% certain to lose otherwise when the game inevitably goes to time.

10 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Unless you can achieve the ivory tower solution where games always go to completion, the scoring method will strongly "distort" which lists do well in timed games.

4 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Not doing anything is worse. I don't mean to come across as rude or condescending, but how often do you play on top tables at tournaments?

The majority of tournaments I play in, actually. I don't get the relevance.

I'm not saying that point-fortressing isn't a problem. I'm saying that partial points is a stupid way to fix it. You were well on your way to fixing the actual problems leading to it and stemming from it, and then you took this turn into horrible design.

2 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Maybe from a technical sense, but not from a tactical wargame sense. Partial scoring -- of any sort -- encourages behavior that is diametrical to any reasonable goal when playing a fighting simulation.

Why...? Do damaged tanks magically repair themselves for free? Does care for wounded soldiers not have a cost? Or sometimes more of an effective cost then a dead soldier? It's maybe different than some other classical tactical sims that strip it out for a variety of reasons but that's not a priori a bad thing.

1 minute ago, Makaze said:

Why...?

Just as one simple for-instance, it de-prioritizes actually taking opponents' guns off the table. That is prima facie ridiculous.

Meh

10 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Just as one simple for-instance, it de-prioritizes actually taking opponents' guns off the table. That is prima facie ridiculous.

Taking guns off of the table is a means, not an end. Given the lack of secondary objectives this conflict can only really be viewed as a war of attrition where maximizing materiel damage to the enemy while minimizing your own is the goal. Fully eliminating a ship and thereby preventing it from damaging you is very often the correct choice to achieve that goal but it is not in and of itself the goal. In a hypothetical conflict between the Empire and Rebels where the Empire loses a single TIE entirely while inflicting sufficient damage to multiple X-Wings to require weeks of repairs is a win for the Empire and I have no issue with the scoring system reflecting that.

5 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

The majority of tournaments I play in, actually. I don't get the relevance.

I'm not saying that point-fortressing isn't a problem. I'm saying that partial points is a stupid way to fix it. You were well on your way to fixing the actual problems leading to it and stemming from it, and then you took this turn into horrible design.

So what's your scoring solution then?

The primary goal from a tactical wargaming scenario is to kill 100% of the other guy's stuff. How do you determine a winner if both players still have ships? I'll make the strong argument that removing ships from the board is irrelevant if the game goes to time.

Scenario: Miranda / Nym vs 8 TIE Fighters: Miranda and Nym both have 1HP left, one TIE is dead, and the other 7 TIEs are at full health. How should the scoring system handle this? This is an extreme example but the tactical repercussions in more "normal" scenario play out in 100% of the games that I have played.

4 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

So what's your scoring solution then?

Fix the problems that arise by properly balancing the ships.

Quote

I'll make the strong argument that removing ships from the board is irrelevant if the game goes to time.

And I'll make a strong argument that it isn't. First, if ships are balanced correctly, the game-state in a game that goes to time will, all else being equal, actually approximate the advantage one squadron has over the other. (This is what I had assumed was your entire goal with the Community Mod.) Second, in the rare cases where it wouldn't ... just apply a retroactive mind-tweak to the effect that the space superiority conflict was actually just a gambit to buy time (or whatever).

It doesn't matter much ... corner-cases are going to happen in a simulation with an artificial time-limit. But partial points is actually building in "corner cases" into every single game. And that's bad design.

Look, this problem first arose with Fat PWTs, and it primarily arose because of the sheer power of Engine Upgrade, which lets Large ships have incredibly disproportionate control over the terms of engagement. Before the power of Engine Upgrade on Large ships was discovered, PWTs -- however one might feel about their presence in a dog-fighting game -- were balanced because they were easy to get guns on and kill, and when you did kill them, you got many more points than for a snub-fighter. Engine Upgrade changed that, and changed it hard.

FFG -- because of really, really stupid reasons -- did not follow their own model with the barrel roll, and chose instead to kludge together a stupid tournament-only rule, in the hopes that would solve the issue. It obviously didn't.

There are now many more problems with balance in the game, and point-fortressing has metastasized beyond Large ships ... but the actual best fix for that remains the same: balance the ships and upgrades . Again, this is exactly what I assumed you were trying to do, which is why I've followed Community Mod.

43 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

First, if ships are balanced correctly, the game-state in a game that goes to time will, all else being equal, actually approximate the advantage one squadron has over the other. (This is what I had assumed was your entire goal with the Community Mod.)

So how does the scoring system determine the game state? The entire point of a scoring system is to determine the game state, but you haven't defined how the scoring system should function and why it works well for games that go to time.

Here is the scenario again:

1 hour ago, MajorJuggler said:

Scenario: Miranda / Nym vs 8 TIE Fighters: Miranda and Nym both have 1HP left, one TIE is dead, and the other 7 TIEs are at full health. How should the scoring system handle this? This is an extreme example but the tactical repercussions in more "normal" scenario play out in 100% of the games that I have played.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

I completely agree, and especially want to emphasize again that these are great solutions on how to fix regen. Using the initial shield value as hard cap is not one of them

You'll see that I also mentioned "[a]ny solution similar to gonk seems much more reasonable" on the previous page and even though I would prefer a method that can be blocked/stressed (action-part of Gonk), the main takeaway from Gonk should be that he has to build up the regen pool first before using it.

The reason I mentioned points and pointfortressing is that this part gets all too often ignored and forgotten, and I'd rate it more important than specific card fixes.

Gonk already has a super hard tradeoff: it costs an action to regen. If instead of GONKing you focused and you rolled a usable eye on defense, it's the same result anyway. R2-D2 and Miranda's ability have no such drawbacks.

1 minute ago, MajorJuggler said:

Gonk already has a super hard tradeoff: it costs an action to regen. If instead of GONKing you focused and you rolled a usable eye on defense, it's the same result anyway. R2-D2 and Miranda's ability have no such drawbacks.

I agree. But there is a middleground based on the x7 nerf: R2D2 can stay on greens - if you did not overlap an obstacle or ship.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

I agree. But there is a middleground based on the x7 nerf: R2D2 can stay on greens - if you did not overlap an obstacle or ship.

Stopping regen on bumps is tactically really good design but that alone doesn't prevent the many common scenarios of Corran running away for infinity turns, regenerating the entire time.

I thought about further restricting R2-D2 to be only every other round, and only if not overlapping, but decided to just start with every other round. But it's still in alpha, not even beta yet, there is plenty of time to get test data and tweak it. :-)