They will have no choice. It's simply not possible to balance a game as big as this perfectly to the point that every ship and combination of ships will always be equally competitive.

There will always be a best list, and there will always be a worst list. There will always be combinations of ships and upgrades that go well together, and combinations that don't.

The hope is that what's on top and what's at the bottom will not get as far apart as they did in 1e, and that they will be changed more regularly and with more fine control.

On 5/19/2018 at 8:24 AM, Sciencius said:

"..But point-costs in the App was the Chosen One, the one that will bring Balance to X-wing!! You speak of the prophecy of the One App."

As the title says, with point costs moving to the App, FFG can change the point costs and adjust the costs of Pilots, Upgrades (and combinations there-off), and hypothetically everything will never be overpowered or underpowered, as point costs can just be adjusted down or up accordingly, until everything will be in balance, but is this in fact true?

Of course by making the cost ridiculously low or high a Pilot/Upgrade may be "Fixed" or "Nerfed" to oblivion, but that does not necessarily bring balance and make perfect/good/fun lists and games.

I will argue that adjustments to point-costs cannot solve everything and not bring perfect balance: The problem is list-building with a point-limit, which basically turns the game into a discrete optimization problem i.e. the KnapSack problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem).

Let me try to argue this using a few examples (using 1'ste edition costs):

1. The "Imperial Trainee" (lowest cost TIE striker) is 17 points, with a 100pt limit that allows you to fly a maximum of 5 ships. ie. a mini-swarm. You can build other mini-swarms using Kihrax, Fang, TIE Interceptors, Scycks etc. Now, swarms of TIE strikers have not been dominating the meta lately, primarily due not due to 1st edition turrets, in particular TLT, and the inability of the TIE Striker to take autothrusters. No I know TLT and turrets are gone for 2nd edition, but for the sake of argument, these are just as valid constraints as other to-this-date-unknown 2'nd edition problems, which we will now solve by adjusting the point cost.

So the "Imperial Trainee" is under powered -> ok let us change the cost 1 point down to 16 points. For the individual ship and using Math-wing etc. the efficiency has been improved by adjusting the cost. So Fixed? Balance achieved? Nope, we are now able to field 6 Tie Strikers in a 100pt limit. That 1 tiny point adjustment gave us one additional ship, the power of the list has jumped in a huge step. 6 times 3 attack dice and 6 ships to kill is a lot harder than 5. Notice there is no middle ground here..

2. Dengaroo: The old unnerfed Dengaroo actually had up to 8 free points to "squander" as you please without breaking the core mechanic of the list that gave it such huge dominance. Changing the point costs slightly on the different cards or pilots would never be enough, you had to break the list to curb it.

Other cases can be made, but I hope this brings my point across: Even with the point costs in the App, it is important that FFG thinks very hard about the game-mechanics they introduce into the game and how the different ships and upgrades have to be balanced against each other, otherwise the same type of meta dominated by a few archetype lists will evolve in 2'nd edition, as we have seen in 1'st edition. Just now dominated by some new NPE mechanic.

That, being said, I think they have taken steps in the right direction: here I am in particularly thinking about the "charge" mechanic which seems to be linked to the majority of mechanics that gave us problems in 1'st edition, fixed Initiative (Pilot-skill), removal of bonkers-action economy, and also the removal of 360 turrets. However there are also some signs like "Luke" (crew), and the 4-dice Rebel bias which has me slightly worried, and even though the TIE Punisher seemed improved, I was missing some "core-special" ability that made it interesting, but we will see.

(Note this is in NOWAY meant as a negative post about 2'nd edition. I have pre-ordered 1 Core-Set and 2 of each of the 3 Conversion kits and I am SO psyked for this game and cannot wait until 13'th Spetember. Actually, the 2 hour unboxing yesterday was to me more intertaining and had be glue to the screen more that "The Last Jedi", I have have already watched it a second time).

As others said moving to a 200 point game makes it where you have re room for points adjustments and allows points now to be more of a fix/balance than low points. Lets use the striker as an example but lets say the game went to 500 points. in that the theoretical Striker would cost roughly 85 points, still only getting 5 in a list. Difference is that at such points you now have room for upgrades and such because they are so far under the cap at that point, 5 85 point ships is 425, leaving 15 points of upgrades per ship. at this point adjusting the Strikers point cost just 2 points down means you pick up much needed room.

My example is rather poor but the point is that if you have a larger window to work with you can do more. By upping points to 200 it allows points to be more of a fix. To borrow your example of the Napsack problem dropping a 2Kg object to 1 doesnt help that much in a 10 KG sack, but if you up the sack to 20 then that 1 change is much more significant.

I would reframe the “problem.” It’s really the Knapsack Game. One of the delights of X-Wing 1.0 was when new content was spoiled and we all raced to whatever list builder app managed to update the fastest so we could all start theorizing. Now it might not be quite the same, but an announcement of a points adjustment or of an official format for a set amount of time that re-weights the costs will likely send us racing back to the new app to play the Knapsack Game.

Thank you @Sciencius for bringing some balance to the forum!

1 hour ago, Glucose98 said:

This is an interesting take on it as well.

Do you think they'll allow certain metas to form and run for awhile instead of attempting to balance everything completely? I think it's inevitable that people will still flock to certain types of lists (though hopefully not identical pilot layouts). And now, instead of having to issue FAQs and Errata, they can just point adjust and cycle through the ship lists? Would people get burned out on that or would it keep it interesting?

I know that some lists will always be more popular and more powerful than others. What I'm hoping, though, is that no list gets so powerful that I have to build my entire list just to counter it. It gets really frustrating when the match is decided before it even begins.

Silly idea! Make the point system truly dynamic like a stock market. All official tournaments must use the app. Have a tournament submission button, or require TOs to submit all lists involved in a sanctioned event. The app pulls in the data and for every 100 submissions of a card the point cost of said card increases by one point, any card with zero submissions decreases by one point to a minimum of one point. Point adjustments are pushed to the app once a month/quarter/whatever. Cards and combos constantly shifting stagnation eliminated! Just spit balling numbers to get the idea across.

45 minutes ago, zingerwhip said:

Silly idea! Make the point system truly dynamic like a stock market. All official tournaments must use the app. Have a tournament submission button, or require TOs to submit all lists involved in a sanctioned event. The app pulls in the data and for every 100 submissions of a card the point cost of said card increases by one point, any card with zero submissions decreases by one point to a minimum of one point. Point adjustments are pushed to the app once a month/quarter/whatever. Cards and combos constantly shifting stagnation eliminated! Just spit balling numbers to get the idea across.

Maybe I am assuming too much, but I thought this exact mechanic is part of why they’re doing an official app.

28 minutes ago, J1mBob said:

Maybe I am assuming too much, but I thought this exact mechanic is part of why they’re doing an official app.

I think it is, but I don't think it will be so crazy as just allowing the submissions to auto adjust values. There will most likely be large chunks of time in between updates, and most likely all point adjustments will be carefully considered by the developers. I just like the idea of the control for values being solely driven by use. I think the constant shift of monthly points adjustments would be insane, but would make sure nothing would fall to obscurity for long.

If you can make an app that changes card configuration, I’m sure you can also make the app react to some things that would create problems for the game.

If you agree with the OP’s Tie swarm is great at 5 ships, but OP at 6 ships, if this actually proves to be true, chances are that you could change your app so the first 5 ships cost X, but the 6^th ship cost X+2, or so.

Chances are they should do this anyway, to promote diversity it builds and ship types. 2 Ties might cost 10 points (fictional, but go with it) but the 3^rd might cost 12, and the 4^th might cost 14.

This also is a win as it will cause some people to freak right out, proclaiming that they own X many ridiculous number of X ships, and any change to the game that invalidates the 5 for the cost of 1 deal they got in 2014 when that one store was closing is Right Out.

3 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

They will have no choice. It's simply not possible to balance a game as big as this perfectly to the point that every ship and combination of ships will always be equally competitive.

There will always be a best list, and there will always be a worst list. There will always be combinations of ships and upgrades that go well together, and combinations that don't.

The hope is that what's on top and what's at the bottom will not get as far apart as they did in 1e, and that they will be changed more regularly and with more fine control.

Minimizing the spread in effectiveness is all you can really do. However, it is possible to get that spread low enough that no ship becomes a near auto-loss vs a similar level of opponent playing an S-tier list. FFG hasn't been able to get anywhere close to this with printed costs though, historically over half the ships (and probably 80% of individual pilots) have always been near auto-loss vs the top tier lists.

4 hours ago, Handler said:

Let's call the goal 'dynamic equilibrium' rather than 'perfect balance' and I think we'll be OK

Yes, as long as that dynamic equilibrium results in all of the pilots being "reasonably viable" then I think that's a great goal. And it should be possible with adjustable points, it's just a matter of how fast FFG can hone in on the goldilocks values. Realistically, I do not expect this to happen as fast as people would like, and possibly never to the level of precision that I would like to see. I emailed Alex, Frank, and Max offering consulting services to help get point costs off to a better start on initial release, it would probably save them 2-6 months of calendar time. Unfortunately they never replied back, they are almost certainly handcuffed by their management.

Not only can they change the points, but the ability to add and remove upgrade slots is HUGE.

11 minutes ago, Boba Rick said:

Not only can they change the points, but the ability to add and remove upgrade slots is HUGE.

I think this will be as important as the changing of points. And with the half points technically in play due to the new 200pt limit, I think the changes will work.

I'm thinking that mixed lists of 4-6 ships will become the most optimal. Probably a mix of Iniative.

On 5/20/2018 at 3:59 PM, Astech said:

The app also presents the opportunity to limit specific upgrade cards from a ship. Like no VI on any ships of PS 7 or above, as a 1.0 example. Or no engine upgrade on high PS ships. It can give you way more finesse about what to do with the limitations of point adjustments.

The other thing to remember is that FFG wants to maintain the ability of players to build a list without the app, using the published points values on the PDF that they've mentioned. Adding too much functionality to the app (points cost scaling over a range of pilots, upgrade slots changing, certain upgrades prohibited on certain ships etc) makes it too difficult to build a list by hand and so restricts FFG to more simple, granular changes.

7 hours ago, Glucose98 said:

This is an interesting take on it as well.

Do you think they'll allow certain metas to form and run for awhile instead of attempting to balance everything completely? I think it's inevitable that people will still flock to certain types of lists (though hopefully not identical pilot layouts). And now, instead of having to issue FAQs and Errata, they can just point adjust and cycle through the ship lists? Would people get burned out on that or would it keep it interesting?

I agree with the OP that perfect balance is realistically not achievable. What point adjustment will allow them to do is to prevent stagnation of the meta. If one list comes to dominate the scene, they can adjust point costs and upgrade slots to make other lists more viable, and make problematic lists not possible. But to expect perfect balance is asking too much. There are simply too many variables in play.

As an engineer, what I truly appreciate about it is that they don't have to worry nearly as much about attempting to future-proof point costs. Set the point costs based on what's currently available. If new product would make a previous upgrade/pilot a problem, point costs can be adjusted based on the new product, instead of just making the new product too expensive to be viable out the gate.

Personal experience tells me that when you try to engineer for things you might do, you end up with a system that causes problems for the things you are definitely doing. And likely doesn't end up working for the other thing if and when you get around to it after all, due to other changes that happened in the meantime.

I think we overestimate what FFG can do on their app

They can do all these things! I think I'd better keep my expectations low else I might be really disappointed

4 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

Minimizing the spread in effectiveness is all you can really do. However, it is possible to get that spread low enough that no ship becomes a near auto-loss vs a similar level of opponent playing an S-tier list. FFG hasn't been able to get anywhere close to this with printed costs though, historically over half the ships (and probably 80% of individual pilots) have always been near auto-loss vs the top tier lists.

Yes, as long as that dynamic equilibrium results in all of the pilots being "reasonably viable" then I think that's a great goal. And it should be possible with adjustable points, it's just a matter of how fast FFG can hone in on the goldilocks values. Realistically, I do not expect this to happen as fast as people would like, and possibly never to the level of precision that I would like to see. I emailed Alex, Frank, and Max offering consulting services to help get point costs off to a better start on initial release, it would probably save them 2-6 months of calendar time. Unfortunately they never replied back, they are almost certainly handcuffed by their management.

This is where I hope someone steps in and makes their balanced X-wing "mod" of point costs, and gets some attention.

2 minutes ago, Glucose98 said:

This is where I hope someone steps in and makes their balanced X-wing "mod" of point costs, and gets some attention.

I already told them I'm not doing public analysis of 2e, because that would defeat the purpose of offering consulting services. They have spent around 10 to 15 man-years of time on developer labor (maybe more?) over the life of X-wing, and they admittedly still don't know how to get costs tuned in well at launch. (It's a difficult challenge!). Doing such an analysis / mod has significant business implications for them, so I'm happy to keep things under wraps. I don't really feel like giving away for free what would likely take them 10-20 man-years of developer time to figure out themselves (if ever). I may publish the methodology and some examples in the academic literature eventually, but I still wouldn't expect to just hand them all the source code and tuned models.

1 minute ago, MajorJuggler said:

I already told them I'm not doing public analysis of 2e, because that would defeat the purpose of offering consulting services. They have spent around 10 to 15 man-years of time on developer labor (maybe more?) over the life of X-wing, and they admittedly still don't know how to get costs tuned in well at launch. (It's a difficult challenge!). Doing such an analysis / mod has significant business implications for them, so I'm happy to keep things under wraps. I don't really feel like giving away for free what would likely take them 10-20 man-years of developer time to figure out themselves (if ever). I may publish the methodology and some examples in the academic literature eventually, but I still wouldn't expect to just hand them all the source code and tuned models.

Don't underestimate the value in playtesting. If a large enough audience was using someones numbers and getting ample testing in, you'd prove out a lot of the balance just with enough iteration and random tweaking I agree that your academic analysis is valuable -- especially as a starting point -- but the dynamics of the action economy / ship dials / and 200 pt list building is going to open up a lot of edge cases in predictive models. The ultimate system would be a reasonable model to baseline everything and work on relative balance + significant playtesting.

1 minute ago, Glucose98 said:

Don't underestimate the value in playtesting. If a large enough audience was using someones numbers and getting ample testing in, you'd prove out a lot of the balance just with enough iteration and random tweaking I agree that your academic analysis is valuable -- especially as a starting point -- but the dynamics of the action economy / ship dials / and 200 pt list building is going to open up a lot of edge cases in predictive models. The ultimate system would be a reasonable model to baseline everything and work on relative balance + significant playtesting.

Oh, believe me I'm not underestimating playtesting. I'm a huge proponent of analytical playtesting, which can get you 90% there to correctly pricing known combos before launch. I'm just saying that ideally you would already be pretty close for all the basic pilot options before you toss the design into the gauntlet of a full release, so when you do start getting more data you already have a huge head start. It's probably going to be difficult for the developers to respond as fast as we would like them to, for a variety of reasons. There's still no substitute for truly understanding the underlying mechanics of the game system that they have created.

PERSONAL HILL TO DIE (?) ON: I would really like it if there was a dedicated effort in 2e to tamp down on the variety of upgrade slots available to any individual chassis. Ships that can take turrets AND bombs AND missiles AND torpedoes AND crew turn into strong generalists that lack well-defined weaknesses, and they're also always relatively tanky (at least enough that it usually takes several rounds of shooting to bring one down). I would much rather face one ship with three missile slots, a second ship with three torpedo slots, a third ship with three bomb slots, and a fourth ship with a crew and turret than have to deal with two ships that are both carrying everything.

I know that there are ships that had all these capabilities in canon (or whatever source material) but gameplay > canon. Use titles (like they did with gunboats!) to allow variable loadouts that keep options open without allowing you to stuff absolutely every kind of upgrade onto a K-wing or a Scurrg. Or, failing that, price it so that if one ship can carry an entire list's worth of ordnance, then it costs an entire list's worth of points to field one.

Three or four different upgrade types on one ship? OK. Six or eight or ten? O lordy please no

7 minutes ago, nexttwelveexits said:

gameplay > canon.

Negative, ghost rider. If a ship is included in the game then it should always reflect, to the best of the rules capability, it's role and abilities as outlined in the canon. If the ship must be significantly altered in terms of role and abilities in order to fit in the game, then that ship should not be included in the game at all.

This is a Star Wars game. If we have to significantly alter the roles and abilities of the ships in order to make them interesting gaming pieces then the game stops feeling like Star Wars. And if the game stops feeling like Star Wars, then what's the point?

Canon/lore must always be the first consideration.

On ‎5‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 3:29 PM, nexttwelveexits said:

PERSONAL HILL TO DIE (?) ON: I would really like it if there was a dedicated effort in 2e to tamp down on the variety of upgrade slots available to any individual chassis. Ships that can take turrets AND bombs AND missiles AND torpedoes AND crew turn into strong generalists that lack well-defined weaknesses, and they're also always relatively tanky (at least enough that it usually takes several rounds of shooting to bring one down). I would much rather face one ship with three missile slots, a second ship with three torpedo slots, a third ship with three bomb slots, and a fourth ship with a crew and turret than have to deal with two ships that are both carrying everything.

I know that there are ships that had all these capabilities in canon (or whatever source material) but gameplay > canon. Use titles (like they did with gunboats!) to allow variable loadouts that keep options open without allowing you to stuff absolutely every kind of upgrade onto a K-wing or a Scurrg. Or, failing that, price it so that if one ship can carry an entire list's worth of ordnance, then it costs an entire list's worth of points to field one.

Three or four different upgrade types on one ship? OK. Six or eight or ten? O lordy please no

1 evade die = well-defined weakness.