Hi all,

We all know I love Arcs, and yes that's mostly why I'm putting this up. I wanna fly MORE DANG ARCS!

But I also want to highlight the really really weird disparity in point scaling among republic ships. The Torrent and the Arc, generally stiff and not-terribly-maneuverable ships that don't benefit as much from higher initiative as the Aethersprite (fine-tuned, dial; boost/roll on bar), cost a ridiculous amount of points to scale from initiative 2 to 3 (the torrent pays 4 and the Arc pays 5 !?)

It gets even weirder when you factor in the Delta-7b configuration

It takes 6 points to bump a Jedi Knight to initiative 4 Luminara (+1 I, +1 force; an ability). It takes 9 to bump a 104th to initiative 4 Wulf (+2 I; an ability), which is more than even taking a Jedi to Mace Windu (8 points)

Fortunately, the Delta scaling kicks into overdrive when getting into I 5 and I 6 (obiwan takes 16 to upgrade from a knight; anakin 24!!!!). Like I said, the combination of fine-tuned + dial + boost/roll on bar (before even taking 3 force into account) make the Aethersprite perhaps THE ship that benefits most from increased initiative, so this kind of scaling makes sense .

But uh...the **** is going on with the clone pilots?

I hope FFG will keep this oddity in mind with the upcoming points re-balance, because I really love the named Arcs but I don't like paying almost double-digit point increases for a ship that burns just as fast as its I 2 generic. The Arc (or Torrent for that matter) isn't an interceptor, it doesn't become a monster arc-dodger once you tack soontir fell on it.

Honestly I think most of the named Arc pilots are ok where they are. Maybe not Oddball, but Sinker, Wolffe, And Jag all have found success for me.

The Seventh Fleet not so much, and the non Goldie Torrents no as well. So I would be very cautious about dropping points on them. I wouldn’t mind a drop on the gunner though, but understandably I doubt they do that because 4x 104ths with the gunner may be a touch too much.

27 minutes ago, millertime059 said:

Honestly I think most of the named Arc pilots are ok where they are. Maybe not Oddball, but Sinker, Wolffe, And Jag all have found success for me.

Seconding this. The named ARCs might not benefit as much from their higher initiative (although initiative kills are a thing), but they make up for it with extremely strong pilot abilities.

Well, all of them bar Oddball, anyway.

The EPT generics and named V-19s are legitimately confusing, though. Maybe they thought Dedicated would be more popular and tried to avoid spam? But then why would they take that out on the ships instead of just making Dedicated cost 4 or 5?

Very weird.

Im right there with you! More Arcs! But yeah, I attribute it too to the lack of available ships in the republic still and growing pains. I'm sure we'll see some points adjustments soon

The torrents not of gold squadron definitely need help. I could see the I3 generic arc getting help too. I think Oddball is the only named one that is probably too high

Not-gold torrents toooooooo

Also they have shht abilities.

5 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Not-gold torrents toooooooo

Also they have shht abilities.

One of the Torrents actually has an excellent ability, but like the others, it's just not worth what you have to pay to get it.

However, if the Torrents drop in price like they should, then whenever General Skywalker charges into battle upon his trusty Republic Y-wing steed, you'll see faithful squire Tucker riding at his side.

Meanwhile at FFG headquarters:

To me it seems they have gotten a bit lazy with the pricing knowing they can just change it later.

^ This is what happens when your player base becomes your playtesters. "Get the ship's out, let them figure it out and we'll change the points accordingly."

it's just weird though, because no faction (not even CiS) has this bizarre jump in cost

other than the beeblebubble, which at least has focus instead of calculate when upgraded (and goes from I 1 to 3)

27 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

^ This is what happens when your player base becomes your playtesters. "Get the ship's out, let them figure it out and we'll change the points accordingly."

At risk of being snarky, what’s the alternative? Bulletproof advanced playtesting? First edition showed the pitfalls of relying on that. At least FFG built-in the ability to make adjustments based on how things play out this time.

However, I’ll grant that better advanced playtesting is an entirely reasonable thing to ask for.

2 hours ago, Maui. said:

One of the Torrents actually has an excellent ability, but like the others, it's just not worth what you have to pay to get it.

However, if the Torrents drop in price like they should, then whenever General Skywalker charges into battle upon his trusty Republic Y-wing steed, you'll see faithful squire Tucker riding at his side.

I hope you’re right! Named Torrents make me sad right now.

I wonder if there were spam lists that FFG was concerned about if the prices were lower. Otherwise, it is truly odd that the generic jump is so severe.

Only thing that I can see is that a BS Protector with Juke is exactly 34 points and the S7 Vet with Expert Handling is 51. Neither of those sound very scary to me...

my initial theory was they were worried about Dedicated making Jedi super duper strong and turning every I 3 generic into Biggs

but then...just jack up dedicated!?

Another strange Republic thing: I think it is kinda weird that the 7B cost scales with initiative, because all it does is alter the ship's raw stats. While it's true that stats generally scale better with initiative, I can't think of any other stat upgrades that have initiative-scaling costs, so I'm not really sure why it was decided to change that with 7B.

Also, on the subject of the Aethersprite and its configs, I think that the 7B must generally be too cheap and/or the Jedi too expensive, because you hardly ever see them without it. Generally I think that this is mostly because Jedi are relatively expensive at it is, and the 7B helps you protect that points investment while also improving your offensive output, while (by comparison) CLT only helps you offensively, and it takes up your mod slot, and it's a situational bonus only, and it further drains a resource already stretched thin trying to power a ship ability, Force talent, pilot ability, and other dice mods.

In most situations, it's a pretty easy choice to invest the 8-11 points to upgrade from CLT to the simpler, safer, and more powerful 7B, which means either CLT needs to be a bit cheaper or 7B needs to go up a bit or both. I also think a few of the Jedi pilots could stand to come down a point or two (looking at you, Barriss).

oph, don't jack up the Delta Config when I 4 Jedi already hit Vader prices. It's also literally the only reason I bother with Jedi in the first place (stupid 3 agi non-deltas)...

we just have to accept that CLT is bullseye only, and will therefore always be incredibly situational

I think a lot of upgrades should scale with initiative. Not because they get better with board knowledge but because upgrades in general will almost always be a better value on more expensive pilots.

1 hour ago, Stoneface said:

^ This is what happens when your player base becomes your playtesters. "Get the ship's out, let them figure it out and we'll change the points accordingly."

I agree with you. We're the ones who are going to find the exploits better than play testers ever could; we have the numbers, the time and the fanaticism that someone working for FFG cannot match. I kind of expected this to be the case--at least partially, SOME play-testing has to happen internally to suss out obviously broken interactions, etc.

Having said that, couldn't we have adjustments more frequently please? Every 4 months, every three months--h ell, every time a wave drops would be something I wouldn't mind either.

14 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

It takes 6 points to bump a Jedi Knight to initiative 4 Luminara (+1 I, +1 force; an ability). It takes 9 to bump a 104th to initiative 4 Wulf (+2 I; an ability), which is more than even taking a Jedi to Mace Windu (8 points)

A point increase from a ship with a default of 3 attack dice is different from a ship with 2 attack dice. It also scales more with added agility. If you want to make more sense in terms of points, I suggest looking at those first. Example:

The increase from basic arc to Wolff is 9 points.

The increase from zealous recruit to Kad Solu (PS 4 and ability): is 10 points.

So it holds up pretty well as far as I'm concerned.

11 minutes ago, dotswarlock said:

A point increase from a ship with a default of 3 attack dice is different from a ship with 2 attack dice. It also scales more with added agility. If you want to make more sense in terms of points, I suggest looking at those first. Example:

The increase from basic arc to Wolff is 9 points.

The increase from zealous recruit to Kad Solu (PS 4 and ability): is 10 points.

So it holds up pretty well as far as I'm concerned.

The point jump from Jedi to mace is with Delta config factored in

As for Kad, not only are you going from I 1 to I4 (and getting an ability), but the fang scales MUCH better than the Arc with higher initiative due to manueverability and linked actions (and ability and potential fearless, which really help picking apart lower I pilots)

1 hour ago, CoffeeMinion said:

At risk of being snarky, what’s the alternative? Bulletproof advanced playtesting?

A system of points allocation that is based off of numbers rather than "feels". Come up with formulas that evaluate the overall value of a dial, make that result interact with the initiative of pilots and also the ship's stats. Assign point values based off of this type of formula and you'll at least have some baseline that you can work off of and revert back to. To make it true to the game, design the formula in such a way that Tie Fighters and T-65s are identically balanced per point and then adjust the numbers of all of the other ships in the game around them so that they too may be balanced. And if for some reason, an aspect of a ship is undervalued or overvalued in the formula and it results in a ship being spammed or completely absent, this will tell you that the formula needs further adjustment in order to be most effective. It would be a little work at first, but realistically, you could get something serviceability after a few hours in excel and you could just keep progressing from there.

It would be signifcantly better than the broken -> DOA -> broken -> DOA cycle that FFG is starting to develop for itself with the adjustments.

1 hour ago, ficklegreendice said:

my initial theory was they were worried about Dedicated making Jedi super duper strong and turning every I 3 generic into Biggs

but then...just jack up dedicated!?

But then, don’t do that because Dedicated is inferior to both Selfless and Heroic.

Dropping one agility to allow another ship a reroll is a fairly serious cost as is. And the restrictions on equipping it, and using it, are punitive.

They just boned it here. A BSP with Dedicated should be 30 points at most. I’d go so far to say 28-29.

1 hour ago, ThinkingB said:

A system of points allocation that is based off of numbers rather than "feels". Come up with formulas that evaluate the overall value of a dial, make that result interact with the initiative of pilots and also the ship's stats. Assign point values based off of this type of formula and you'll at least have some baseline that you can work off of and revert back to. To make it true to the game, design the formula in such a way that Tie Fighters and T-65s are identically balanced per point and then adjust the numbers of all of the other ships in the game around them so that they too may be balanced. And if for some reason, an aspect of a ship is undervalued or overvalued in the formula and it results in a ship being spammed or completely absent, this will tell you that the formula needs further adjustment in order to be most effective. It would be a little work at first, but realistically, you could get something serviceability after a few hours in excel and you could just keep progressing from there.

It would be signifcantly better than the broken -> DOA -> broken -> DOA cycle that FFG is starting to develop for itself with the adjustments.

I believe MajorJuggler offered to do this and was turned down.

I’m actually kinda hoping the scaling of Republic shows that they are finally realizing how powerful I4+ is and that other ships are going to change to match in the future. Generics need to have a place and that won’t happen while the higher initiative pilots are simply more efficient.

1 minute ago, Caduceus01 said:

I’m actually kinda hoping the scaling of Republic shows that they are finally realizing how powerful I4+ is and that other ships are going to change to match in the future. Generics need to have a place and that won’t happen while the higher initiative pilots are simply more efficient.

Yes, I am not a fan of how so much of the meta is cramming 3 I5/6 ships into a list. I like it you see the full range, and I3/4 are underrepresented currently. Jedi aside that is.