39 minutes ago, AceWing said:

1) You take the risk if the likelihood of the payoff is greater than the likelihood of the risk going south, not whether it's comfortable. That's easy to figure out.

2) I don't think it's smart to make decisions based on aggression/caution. You should determine them all by risk assessment. You should ask if you're getting more than you're giving up.

When I make maneuver decisions, I wonder if they're going to make a certain maneuver over another and I just break it down. If their list is doing such and such, how can I move my ships so it's better for me? There's usually only 1-3 real moves to consider for a ship. The rest are ridiculous. If it's too hard for me to figure out which of their moves is more likely, I say **** it and bail in a way to set up another set of moves where I can get an advantage. So, to me, all good maneuvers are simultaneously positional and coordinated.

In the context of the OP, coordination is referencing coordinated fire hitting an opposing ship with all your ships on the same turn. It's not just coordinated movement for your squad, which is assumed.

It depends on target priorities. If the ship you would be focusing on is the most important ship to target at that time and you're not giving up your most important ship to do it, concentrate fire.

Even if you would give up your most important ship, it's okay to concentrate fire as long as their ship is more important to them than your most important ship is to you.

That is to say, the most important ship in whatever engagement is going on. You just have to be more likely to get more out of the engagement than your opponent. If you get more out of concentrating fire, concentrate fire. If you get more out of re-positioning, re-position. You have to correctly identify how important certain ships are before you risk stuff, though. How else would you determine risk?

I guess what I'm trying to ask is wjen you have to deal, with uncertainties, which way do you hedge your bet?

The one where you have more to gain than lose. For example, if you're flying bombers and they're flying some kind of scum list with Boba or Fenn, focus your fire because even if they kill your best ship, it's marginally better than your other ships. Their Boba or Fenn is more important to them than your Jonus is to you.

If your best ships are about equal importance, figure the odds and determine if you're more likely to kill their best ship while keeping yours. For example, if you're both risking your best ships and they're about equally valuable to each side, you want to have dramatically better odds to take that, right? 60/40 is barely better than 50/50 in a game with eight-sided dice. If you think your opponent is better than you, it might be worth it to gamble there because you might not get a better spot. If you think your opponent is worse, you should probably try to find a better spot than a coin flip to determine the game.

If you're risking your best ship relative to your list and they aren't, forget it. You need to be that much more likely to win the encounter. It's probably not worth it.

Sound effects and repaints.

9 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

The question what to prioritize depends on the type of ship/list.

to expand a bit on that, now that I have some more time:

Obviously you should always have the ships pointing at the same target, and that should ideally occur at the same time to the same point. So the last three are all important. Mass is the odd one out, as it means on one way the combination or overarching theme of the other three, but on the other hand the actual physical massing is simply a beginner's way to converge the others.

The question on how and when to deviate from which tenet depends on the ship. I would say that non-jouster, non-alpha lists and ships do not care as much on tempo/timing. The movement/positioning and chipping away at the same target while of course prioritizing the arc-dodging is much more important than the timing. If a list also contains an alpha strike ship (e.g. Redline) you'd want to try to control the timing, but rather mess it up for the aces and fall back in tempo and position.

Conversely, a list with an alpha strike wants to make sure the tempo and firepower are correct - shooting the same guy in the same turn is most important. Jousters too, I'd say.

As a thought: converging in tempo (or timing, coordination) does not matter if you can't shoot the same target. So you could make different lists, but "firepower" is always at the top. Jousters/Alphastrikes prefer tempo over positioning, arc dodgers prefer positioning over tempo.

12 hours ago, Biophysical said:

I guess what I'm trying to ask is wjen you have to deal, with uncertainties, which way do you hedge your bet?

The way that makes most sense in the situation I'm in?

I mean, are you suggesting I should decide one way to make decisions and then apply that to all situations like a terrible computer AI?

Interesting, if somewhat confusing discussion. Exposes a chunk of my own ignorance on more strategic elements of the game.

I'll try to phrase the question as I see it...

If the future board state is highly uncertain, do you..

A) Coordination. Execute a plan that should give you coordinated fire on the target of your choice. Even if it leaves your subsequent positioning options a little uncertain.

Or B) Positioning. Look to position your ships to give you a better chance of beneficial trades over the course of the next few turns. Even if it diminishes the possibility of making a coordinated attack.

Yes/no?

Obviously it's entirely dependant on your list vs theirs. For my part, I favour 2/3 ship lists of unpredictable, repositioning 'aces'. Often I go up against high damage output, so I'm almost always looking to avoid direct confrontation and would prefer to take option B, 9 times out of 10.

However, early game, if my opponent has a lynchpin, I will be trying for A, but if it looks iffy, I'll still default to B.

If I can't safely coordinate my attack, going for a succession of beneficial trades, via positioning, is a viable route to winning on points.

For a little more context. I run Rex, if the opposing list is sufficiently softened and confused, and I've kept him safe in the mean time, he will eat them all in the end game.

18 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

Interesting, if somewhat confusing discussion. Exposes a chunk of my own ignorance on more strategic elements of the game.

I'll try to phrase the question as I see it...

If the future board state is highly uncertain, do you..

A) Coordination. Execute a plan that should give you coordinated fire on the target of your choice. Even if it leaves your subsequent positioning options a little uncertain.

Or B) Positioning. Look to position your ships to give you a better chance of beneficial trades over the course of the next few turns. Even if it diminishes the possibility of making a coordinated attack.

Yes/no?

Yes. This is what I've been trying to ask, and the question that most have been answering.

My head says that I should focus on positioning, that it is smarter to pull off and retry for a favorable engagement. My memory tells me that I over pursue and usually risk bad trades.

19 hours ago, Biophysical said:

In the context of the OP, coordination is referencing coordinated fire hitting an opposing ship with all your ships on the same turn. It's not just coordinated movement for your squad, which is assumed.

I guess I see this like an Ikea instruction manual.

Tools required: 4 Interceptors + Friend

Assembly time: 4-8 rounds

Step one: Place ships staggered across bottom of deployment zone

Step two: Wait for enemy to place higher initiative ships

Step three: decide which 2 of your ships will try and flank

Step four: Stall out dials with non-flankers

Step five: Flankers begin flanking maneuver

Step Six & seven: wait and see where where enemy is going to commit

Special instructions - please see special bag of parts labeled "Kill Box"

Step 8: Assemble Kill box

Step 9: Assess remaining parts, hope you have enough left over

Step 10: Try and make another kill box

Step 11: Repeat until no parts are left

-----------------

Now like all instruction manuals, they are usually harder to understand than they should be. I don't speak engineer. Or whatever assembly documentation language these things are created in. So sometimes you have to fudge things here and there. You might miss a step. Something might be pointing the wrong direction and you have to take a bit to undo and fix it. Sometimes you are just short the parts to make the appropriate kill box and you just have scrape it together with whatever you have left. But overall there is usually the directions, and then the actual assembly.

In context of this discussion I generally feel like positioning (directions) give way to more effective assembly (coordination). But again, this is coming from the mindset of a list with 4+ ships that intend to kill things faster than they are killed. My mentality and approach would be vastly different playing a supernatural ace or a fat turret.

22 hours ago, AceWing said:

that doesn't work against something like Ghost Fenn

Shhhhh!

Im all about positioning and preparing for the next few rounds to maximize my ships abilities/upgrades. My opponent may get 1 good round with a coordinated attack, but the next few rounds are mine.

2 hours ago, Biophysical said:

Yes. This is what I've been trying to ask, and the question that most have been answering.

Sorry. I tried to be helpful.

12 minutes ago, AceWing said:

Sorry. I tried to be helpful.

No, you definitely did answer the question and you definitely had helpful answers.

32 minutes ago, AceWing said:

Sorry. I tried to be helpful.

I found your answers very helpful to my thinking.

As for me, as a bad player, I think I heavily favour (individual) positioning. My thought process is something like:

1. Can I avoid bumping into my own ships and asteroids?

2. Can I face the vague area I expect my opponent's ship will be in?

3. If not, what's the most defensive move I can make?

But this emphasis on positioning doesn't come with any sort of forethought. I'm already the slowest player imaginable.

Since i only play with HOTAC missions, for ME it goes "does my move, push one of the mission priorities".

then - Does it open me up to getting a shot on an imperial?

then - Does it open me up to get shot?

3 minutes ago, TheHumanHydra said:

I found your answers very helpful to my thinking.

As for me, as a bad player, I think I heavily favour (individual) positioning. My thought process is something like:

1. Can I avoid bumping into my own ships and asteroids?

2. Can I face the vague area I expect my opponent's ship will be in?

3. If not, what's the most defensive move I can make?

But this emphasis on positioning doesn't come with any sort of forethought. I'm already the slowest player imaginable.

Don't think of your ships as individual units. Move them in a cohesive way to accomplish a specific goal. What I try to do is think of my opponent's "candidate moves" first, that is their range of most likely maneuvers. Come up with a combination of maneuvers you can make to stop them from accomplishing what you think they're trying to do while still developing. Sometimes developing means getting in a position with no shots but that they can't handle on the next turn. Sometimes it means coordinating an attack on one of their ships that they left too open. Be careful about attacking ships too aggressively. Think about where their ships will be the turn after and if it's worth putting yourself in that position. It may sound hard to do at first but it's not. Out of a dial, at any given time, there are only a handful of reasonable maneuvers your opponent can make. Make sure your combination of maneuvers aren't blindsided by one of their sets of likely maneuvers. That doesn't mean try to never get shot at. Just try to get more out of that engagement than your opponent should. If the position really is hard to figure out, because sometimes that happens, just bail. It's almost always better to create a different position that you can exploit than to risk dice results. Obviously, this isn't some fool-proof plan because oftentimes, you're trying to get slightly better attacks than your opponent and dice happen or you overlooked an important move they could make. Regardless, I think it gets you thinking about the right way to move your ships. As you get more experience, you'll get better and better at it. More of your turns will look orchestrated and be more productive. X-Wing has a lot of similarities to chess. Just work through the position.

The game is always about placement, so the real question seems to be flying formation vs purely reactionary flying, which do you prefer?

to me its always about focusing on your enemies list and comparing its win condition to yours. if your win condition is swarm ability synergy then you obviously need to keep it tight... flying a defender and decimator, that same thinking will kill you

For example if im playing jousters against arc-dodging oppenents, arcs are all that matters. if everyone on both sides has shots, I win. if my guys dont get shots, I lose. so i try slow roll to keep them at range 3 an extra turn, because i know they want to flank, and the closer my ships are the easier it is to reposition out of my arcs, etc. if they expect me to move quicker they might signors loop or something and lose arc entirely too. then i might try to blast out of the fight at speed line up another run later

7 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

The  game is always about placement, so the real question see  ms to be flying formation vs purely reactionary flying, which do you p  refer  ?   

This feels like a good way to put it.

I’m definitely much better with reactionary flying, though learning when my lists allow for that—and learning how to use formations better—would probably benefit me considerably. I think I could do so if I got to play more, but it doesn’t happen too often...

13 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

The game is always about placement, so the real question seems to be flying formation vs purely reactionary flying, which do you prefer?

What do you mean by "flying formation"?

19 hours ago, AceWing said:

Don't think of your ships as individual units. Move them in a cohesive way to accomplish a specific goal. What I try to do is think of my opponent's "candidate moves" first, that is their range of most likely maneuvers. Come up with a combination of maneuvers you can make to stop them from accomplishing what you think they're trying to do while still developing. Sometimes developing means getting in a position with no shots but that they can't handle on the next turn. Sometimes it means coordinating an attack on one of their ships that they left too open. Be careful about attacking ships too aggressively. Think about where their ships will be the turn after and if it's worth putting yourself in that position. It may sound hard to do at first but it's not. Out of a dial, at any given time, there are only a handful of reasonable maneuvers your opponent can make. Make sure your combination of maneuvers aren't blindsided by one of their sets of likely maneuvers. That doesn't mean try to never get shot at. Just try to get more out of that engagement than your opponent should. If the position really is hard to figure out, because sometimes that happens, just bail. It's almost always better to create a different position that you can exploit than to risk dice results. Obviously, this isn't some fool-proof plan because oftentimes, you're trying to get slightly better attacks than your opponent and dice happen or you overlooked an important move they could make. Regardless, I think it gets you thinking about the right way to move your ships. As you get more experience, you'll get better and better at it. More of your turns will look orchestrated and be more productive. X-Wing has a lot of similarities to chess. Just work through the position.

Thanks for taking the time to write all that. Also helpful!

Right or wrong, when I do well I typically play not to lose as well as to win. Making sure all my ships Firepower is not wasted, while denying my opponent a kill box shot.

I think positioning is the more important of the two. I'd rather nibble at an opposing squad than go toe to toe, especially if I'm out PS'd. Grabbing a couple of hits with no return fire is usually better, IMO, than exchanging hammer blows.

Looking back over some of the games i won that weren't the result of Divine Dice Intervention or a Faux Pas by my opponent, it was usually positioning that carried the win. The round just before combat begins and the first round of what's to become a fur ball are probably the most important.

Of course this plan goes out the hatchif you're opponent chooses to joust your Alpha Strike and you out PS him. If you stand a better than even chance to kill or cripple two or more of his ships,go for it.

8 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

What do you mean by "flying formation"?

um, flying in a formation? like if you have 5 ties positioned around howlrunner to get the bonus, you move them with attention mantaining their position in relation to eachother. you might then perhaps pivot to the right with your 6 ships by doing a 1 right bank to with the 2 right most, a 2 right bank with the middle 2 , and a 3 right bank with the left most, and thereby keep them in a formation around howl.

weren't you posting about this very topic 2 years ago?