Which of these do you think is a better list for a regionals? Any suggestions for improvements would be appreciated.

Ackbar’s Defiance (396/400)
Rebels

Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Objectives: Advanced Gunnery, Fire Lanes, Intel Sweep

[flagship] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114)
- Admiral Ackbar (38)
- Defiance (5)
- Electronic Counter Measures (7)
- Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
- Leading Shots (4)
- Damage Control Officer (5)
- Engine Techs (8)
- XI7 Turbolasers (6)
= 192 total points

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (63)
- Admonition (8)
- External Racks (3)
- Enhanced Armament (10)
- Ordnance Experts (4)
= 88 total points

CR90 Corvette B (39)
- SW-7 Ion Batteries (5)
= 44 total points

CR90 Corvette B (39)
= 39 total points

Squadrons (33/134):
1x Shara Bey A-wing Squadron (17)
1x Tycho Celchu A-Wing Squadron (16)

Ackbar’s Defiance 2 (394/400)
Rebels

Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Objectives: Advanced Gunnery, Fire Lanes, Intel Sweep

[flagship] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114)
- Admiral Ackbar (38)
- Defiance (5)
- Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
- Electronic Counter Measures (7)
- Leading Shots (4)
- Damage Control Officer (5)
- Engine Techs (8)
- XI7 Turbolasers (6)
= 192 total points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
- Jaina's Light (2)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 53 total points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 51 total points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
- Comms Net (2)
= 20 total points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
- Comms Net (2)
= 20 total points

Squadrons (58/134):
3x X-Wing Squadron (39)
1x Moldy Crow - Jan Ors (19)

Ackbar’s Defiance 3 (391/400)
Rebels

Commander: Admiral Ackbar

Objectives: Advanced Gunnery, Fire Lanes, Intel Sweep

[flagship] MC80 Assault Cruiser (114)
- Admiral Ackbar (38)
- Defiance (5)
- Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
- Electronic Counter Measures (7)
- Leading Shots (4)
- Damage Control Officer (5)
- Engine Techs (8)
- XI7 Turbolasers (6)
= 192 total points

MC30c Scout Frigate (69)
- Admonition (8)
- Enhanced Armament (10)
- Caitken and Shollan (6)
= 93 total points

CR90 Corvette A (44)
- Jaina's Light (2)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (7)
= 53 total points

GR-75 Medium Transports (18)
- Comms Net (2)
= 20 total points

Squadrons (33/134):
1x Tycho Celchu A-Wing Squadron (16)
1x Shara Bey A-wing Squadron (17)

I've run something similar to the third one and it works well I really think ordnance upgrades on the MC30 are better though

So you think I should just replace the enhanced armament with ex racks/ACMs? Or would you recommend dropping it down to a torpedo frigate?

I've run a scout with Int Officer and TRC's with Ackbar for 83 points (86 with Ex Racks). Then my MC30T with Enhanced Armament, Sensor Team/Ord Experts (either is good), and then Ex racks for 81/80 points. Be aware on the Torpedo variant that if your long range shot is obstructed then no Ackbar.

I find that any more than three red dice has too much variance for me to have fun throwing them without something to control them. Five is entirely too many. Therefore, an Ackbar MC30S needs TRC's much more than Enhanced Armament. You'll throw enough damage to kill small-medium prey, but only with at least one accuracy in the pool. Otherwise, they'll limp away or require you to ram them with your puny 4 hull for the kill. Sensor Teams can help with that.

MC30S, TRC's, ExRacks, Sensor Teams, Admonition: 92 points.

Its a small-ship hunting monster. Its also a glass cannon, but its a lot of fun when it goes off Just be mindful that to kill many small ships you'll need two accuracies to kill them in one shot. Examples include Yavaris' double-brace, or a Pelta's Brace+Redirect. You've got only slightly less than 50% odds to get one natural accuracy on a pool of 4x red dice, so, may the force be with you.

20 hours ago, jbrandmeyer said:

I find that any more than three red dice has too much variance for me to have fun throwing them without   something to control them.

That’s what Caitken and Shollan are there for. I just have to hope that, at close range, I won’t have to make a difficult choice between rerolling red and rerolling black.

People always recommend cards I don’t have 😢 😂 . Would H9s work instead of sensor teams or do you think that’s a wasted turbolaser slot?

21 minutes ago, rastahotep said:

Would  H9s work instead of sensor teams or do you think that’s a wasted turbolaser slot? 

That’s actually the more common way to generate accuracies IIRC. Although there is a mathematical argument to be made that Sensor Team is equally valid, it does destroy your rerolls.

With anybody but Ackbar, H9's on a torpedo frigate are definitely the standard (best?) way to get accuracies out of an MC30. Its only the combination of a large black pool and large red pool together that make sensor teams worthwhile - you can convert two readily-available blank dice into one desperately needed accuracy. Here's my justification in more detail:

The distribution of blank red or black dice can be generated by expanding the polynomial (0.75 + 0.25*b)^n_dice. The coefficients tell you the probability of each result, and the powers of b tell you how many blanks are in that particular result.

For four red dice, the distribution for blanks is (I'm rounding some), 0.32 + 0.42*b + 0.21*b^2 + 0.05*b^3 + 0.004*b^4. So, about one in four times you'll have two or more blank red dice, and about 2/3 of the time you'll have one or more blank red dice.

For five black dice, the result is 0.24 + 0.40*b + 0.26*b^2 + 0.09*b^3 + 0.015*b^4 + 0.001*b^5. So in the exracks-augmented black pool you'll have at least one blank die to burn 3/4 of the time.

How much damage does the black pool do? [0.25 + 0.5*d + 0.25*d^2]^n_black. In five black dice, the full distribution (skipping terms with probability < 0.01) 0.04*b^2 + 0.12*b^3 + 0.21*b^4 + 0.25*b^5 + 0.21*b^6 + 0.12*b^7 + 0.04*b^8. 83% chance of doing 4 or more damage. That's enough whallop that I'm usually happy with it versus small prey. TRC's practically guarantee 3+ damage in the red pool, even after converting one to an accuracy. So, reliably getting 7+ damage, frequently more.

Ordnance experts are also great stuff. Since they make every black die rerollable, the distribution is pumped up to (0.0625 + 0.625*d + 0.3125*d^2)^n_dice. Discounting extra-rare results as before gives 0.01*d^3 + 0.06*d^4 + 0.20*d^5 + 0.31*d^6 + 0.26*d^7 + 0.12*d^8 + 0.03*d^9. What does that mean? Don't be shocked when you smack down 8+ damage out of the black pool alone since that happens 1/6 of the time. But more tactically realistic is the 72% chance of doing 6+ damage. On average, you get +1.25 damage out of a 5-die pool by going with ordnance experts.

Looping back to the pool of red dice... Four red dice gives you zero accuracies 57% of the time. So the defender will usually get full use of their defense tokens. That Nebulon or Gladiator just braced down the damage to half. A CR90 just redirected away two damage, etc. Sensor teams will guarantee at least one accuracy in the pool, and 43% of the time you'll have two.

I've one-shotted an AF2B with an only slightly better than average roll in this configuration (2 accuracies and 8 damage into the rear arc). I wasn't *counting* on it happening. But at a bare minimum I knew that it was going to be down two zones of shields, have one face-up card, and 2-3 more cards on it.

PS: I use the Matlab/GNU Octave function 'conv()' to perform the polynomial expansions quickly.

What the math doesn’t cover is your opponent’s fleet composition; the value of accuracies is significantly reduced in an ECM-rich meta (given mine, I don’t even use H9s much) or in a meta with brace-less small ships, where the 2 damage they prevent with a redirect is often similar to your damage increase with OEs, which also reduces utterly disastrous dice rolls.

Overall, though, my biggest issue with Sensor Team is still one of reliability; although the accuracy will always be there, it’s meaningless without damage, and that damage is left vulnerable to significant swings. Knowing you didn’t get an average roll is cold comfort when it was preventable and cost you the game, especially when the turbolaser slot for that accuracy you wanted is open or used for dice control that couldn’t meaningfully help. I never find myself wishing I had guaranteed myself an accuracy with the weapons team slot, on the other hand; not having it can be planned for ahead of time.

So, how about those twins? Well, that's a trickier question to answer. We'd like to ask the question: "how often would I want to fix one pool, but not the other". To answer that, we need to set up a polynomial in two variables (evaluated in Octave as a 2D convolution), with a matrix of results. I'm also going to use "number of blank dice" as a proxy for "want to reroll some dice", which isn't necessarily true, but I think its true enough for this assessment. The full matrix of blank dice, with the 4-die pool of red in rows, and the 5-die pool of black in columns is this:

7.5085e-02 1.2514e-01 8.3427e-02 2.7809e-02 4.6349e-03 3.0899e-04
1.0011e-01 1.6685e-01 1.1124e-01 3.7079e-02 6.1798e-03 4.1199e-04
5.0056e-02 8.3427e-02 5.5618e-02 1.8539e-02 3.0899e-03 2.0599e-04
1.1124e-02 1.8539e-02 1.2360e-02 4.1199e-03 6.8665e-04 4.5776e-05
9.2697e-04 1.5450e-03 1.0300e-03 3.4332e-04 5.7220e-05 3.8147e-06

Fewer blanks are to the left and top, more blanks to the bottom and right. On-diagonal elements and in the lower right corner are hand-wringing ones where I'd like to reroll some of both pools. Elements in the top right and bottom left are places where I'd like to reroll only one pool, and the top left corner I'm happy with.

I ... can't actually extract much value from that matrix, so I'm going to simplify it somewhat. Lets get simpler polynomials that capture 2+ blanks in the pool exactly one blank in the pool, and zero blanks.

For the 4-die pool, thats [0.32 + 0.42*r + 0.26*r^2] and for the 5-die pool, that's (0.24 + 0.40*rb + 0.37rb^2). Turn the crank, and we get this matrix:

0.075938 0.126562 0.117500
0.099668 0.166113 0.154219
0.061699 0.102832 0.095469

That's a little bit easier to work with. Again: zero blanks on the top-left, 2+ on the bottom-right. We can see that

• 9.5% of the time we've got two blank dice in each pool at the same time, for which C&S can only help somewhat If only we had leading shots...
• 16.6% of the time we'd like to reroll one from each pool, which C&S also can't do.
• 30.3% of the time we've got one or less blank die in total. Yay!
• 16.4% of the time we'd definitely want to reroll the red pool and the black pool has one or fewer blank in it.
• 27.4% of the time we'd definitely want to reroll the black pool and the red pool has one or fewer blank in it

I don't think that's a slam-dunk case for using C&S in this configuration, but its not bad.

Re: math versus the meta

Crunching the numbers like this is very much a micro-optimization. It can certainly help compare one ship to another in a strict A/B comparison sort of way, but I agree that it doesn't help you break out of the rock-paper-scissors battle. It also doesn't help you navigate your ships, or coordinate your attacks, which is where most of your benefits will come from.

It can give you a range of reasonable expectations, though, and that's what I love about cranking through dice statistics like this.

I would suggest list 3 with the Scout with Int Officer, TRCs and Ex Racks (86 points). Then if you haven’t got the card, ask to borrow Strategic Advisor instead of DCO (equivalent of 5 activations). Try to go first. If you are out activated, concentrate on one enemy ship until you can last/first. Then launch the Scout in close to off load 4 red and 5 black (At least one red dice will be a double hit/crit!). Plus the Int Officer can stop the defender from using a token (brace!). Don’t do this in front of an ISD. That last statement is important. (Although I did with an Enhanced Armament Torp plus Conc fire and scored 12 hits).

Anyway, that’s my advice. There are far better players out there than me (probably everyone in this thread is in that list!) that can offer better advice, but that’s mine. 🤪

9 minutes ago, jbrandmeyer said:

Re: math versus the meta

Crunching the numbers like this is very much a micro-optimization. It can certainly help compare one ship to another in a strict A/B comparison sort of way, but I agree that it doesn't help you break out of the rock-paper-scissors battle. It also doesn't help you navigate your ships, or coordinate your attacks, which is where most of your benefits will come from.

It can give you a range of reasonable expectations, though, and that's what I love about cranking through dice statistics like this.

Out of interest @jbrandmeyer , If a MC30 Scout has TRC’s, and is able to spend an evade token, how does that change your figures, if you select a double hit ( if it has Int O, TRc and ex Racks vs a Torp with enhanced Arm, OE/Sensor team and Ex Racks. I do apologize as I don’t mean to keep you up half the night with this lol! But I use a list with a mix of 3 MC30’s and Ackbar, and can never work out what’s the best mix (I think 1 Scout and 2 Torps is the favourite at the moment).

thanks in advance!

Fortunately, I'm on US Mountain Time, so it isn't quite "half the night" yet

It doesn't change the figures in a super-complex way, since the red pool and black pool are mostly orthogonal to each other. Best fleet composition is a matter of how you fly your ships, its objectives, and so on. I've only got two MC30, so I can't really comment on "best 3+ MC30 list", and that's getting pretty far away from the OP's list anyway. Some of my best activations with an Ackbar MC30S have been to take one short-range side shot and a long-range second side shot from the same MC30, nuking one ship and supporting another attack. Its harder to make the MC30S work this way now that TRC's are exhaust cards, but I think it still adds some versatility that isn't available in the MC30T.

How much more damage do you get from TRC's?

The probability that the red dice all come up double-hits (ie, the chance that you get zero advantage from TRC's) is (1/8)^n_dice. In a four-dice pool thats about one in 4000 throws. Its as close to "never" as makes no difference (and we'd already be suuuper thrilled by it), so lets just ignore it.

The number of times you get +2 damage from TRC's is related to the number of blanks in the red pool, and the other abilities to fix those blanks. Sensor teams is one way to fix a blank. So are Intensify Firepower and Home One. So we go back to the distribution of blanks from my earlier post: 0.32 + 0.42*b + 0.21*b^2 + 0.05*b^3 + 0.004*b^4. Neglecting other dice fixes, 32% of the time TRC's add +1 (by converting a hit to a double) and the remaining 2/3 of the time they add +2.

But since you only have one blank to fix a whopping 42% of the time, the impact of TRC's greatly depends on how many other dice fixes you have, and how many shots you are taking this round. Like I said in the first paragraph, you may want to save the TRC for a second side shot.

19 hours ago, Herr Style said:

S  cout  with  Int Offi  ce       r,   TRCs and Ex Racks

Thanks @Herr Style . I think this is a good idea, though it’s pretty expensive with Admonition (which seems obligatory) and either ordnance experts or Caitken and Shollan. I have the points but it reduces my bid to 5/3 depending on weapons team I take and if I swap out DCO for SA.

@jbrandmeyer Thanks for breaking all that down. I appreciate all the effort, especially the extra effort to clarify it for non-mathematicians like me. I think you’ve convinced me that using C&S is worth it.

Hmmm, I think 94 points on a MC30 is too much. I recommended a scout as they are easier to get into range for a target as you can throw 4 dice with Ackbar at long range, have TRCs and lock down a defence token with Int O. Unless you are prepared to drop blast doors off your MC80, or drop Tycho down to an A wing then you are going to lose your bid. You could always try a Torpedo variant with Sensor Teams, Ex Racks and Admo? This is 2 red (not at long range though as you have no battery dice available) 2 blue and 5 black for 79 (cheap variant) or OE, Admo, H9’s and Ex Racks for 86. These would leave you with decent bids for first so you can try to last/first someone with Admo. If you haven’t already, try looking at Cannot Get Your Ship Out website. They have done good info on MC30’s so you can mix and match them with how you see fit.

Thanks. It’s that website’s Ackbar page that gave me the idea for Scout, Enhanced Armament, and Caitken and Shollan in the first place.