I have a few questions about different ship characteristics (maneuverability, and weighted value of dice by color, and defense token value) for your consideration:

1) Maneuvering: clicks at the low end of the maneuver tool effect a ships direction to a greater extent, but the clicks at the top of the speed effect the facing (ie pointing the nose of the ship where you want it) of the ship more. So based on that assumption, which do you find to matter more - the direction control or facing?

2) what do you think the expected damage value of a single red vs single blue vs single black die is? (I already know the probabilities of the die results, I am asking for a subjective look at their benefit, ie: since red dice are long range, and black are only short range, does the extra salvo of red dice make the expected damage value of a single red die matter more than the expected damage value of a single black die?

3) can you provide a subjective rank order of all 5 defense tokens? (Scatter, Brace, Evade, Redirect, Contain)? And can you provide a relative value between them on a 1-10 scale. (IE: Scatter is 10/10 because it eliminates an attack, Brace is 7/10, Evade 6/10, Redirect 5/10, Contain 3.5/10 [without DCO]).

Thanks for your help, if you can provide answers in a numbered format it would be appreciated! I'll offer my initial thoughts:

1) facing is more important, especially for high speed ships trying to flank larger, slower ones.

2) Dice importance: Red, then Black, then Blue. Red dice get an earlier salvo which means they can use it to make up for the lower damage per salvo in comparison to black dice, blue dice support the damage of Red or Black, and have a limited range band where they are added and black are not.

3) Scatter is 10/10 because it eliminates an attack, Brace is 7/10, Evade 6/10, Redirect 5/10, Contain 3.5/10 [without DCO]).

Thanks for your help!

6 hours ago, Cap116 said:

2) what do you think the expected damage value of a single red vs single blue vs single black die is? (I already know the probabilities of the die results, I am asking for a subjective look at their benefit, ie: since red dice are long range, and black are only short range, does the extra salvo of red dice make the expected damage value of a single red die matter more than the expected damage value of a single black die?

I don't think a generalized value for dice that includes their distances is a particularly valuable metric. Their value would highly vary on particular ships depending on its top speed, maneuverability and other factors.

6 hours ago, Cap116 said:

3) can you provide a subjective rank order of all 5 defense tokens? (Scatter, Brace, Evade, Redirect, Contain)? And can you provide a relative value between them on a 1-10 scale. (IE: Scatter is 10/10 because it eliminates an attack, Brace is 7/10, Evade 6/10, Redirect 5/10, Contain 3.5/10 [without DCO]).

Again this seems useless because the value of a defense token is highly dependant of the specifics of the ship its on. (Except scatter. That's always the best)

I was thinking about the same exact things a while ago. I was wondering if you could brake down the point cost of maneuver charts, defense tokens, upgrade slots, armaments, shield values, hull strength etc. but there are just to many variables and relative factors. Things that are very valuable on one ship might be extremely useless on another ship. So when deciding by how many points you need to increase the cost of a ship if you were to add defense token X you would end up with a calculation that needs to factor in many other aspects of the ship. But their point value would in return also be influenced by the selection of defense tokens on the ship. So you have a circular dependency in their value. I have given up on coming up with values for the value of different attribute of ships. I wonder whether FFG has internal design documents for this stuff. If they do I hope they release them when they drop support for the game (but I doubt they would do that)

Yep dice interact with the speed of a ship.....look at the black dice on a victory vs the black dice a your gladiator..... also what sort of reroll mitigation a ship can take... red dice with a good set of rerolls ( well tooled mc80 assault) nasty buggers... red dice on a gladiator....... blank city.

same with defence tokens... those evades on a red dice based CR90....lovely....evade for the gladiator....sort of pointless beyond a limited early game set up...

Redirect on small ships with ( that CR90) not so good...on an MC80 with advanced projectors and ECM.... that’s a ton of damage not hitting your hull....

For transparency, I don't expect to get some hard and fast value for the different aspects of the game pieces, instead I am trying to set up an estimate initial values that can be a useful starting point for a linear regression (or perhaps non-linear, the costs could scale differently based on ship size) with a ML program to modify the variables in an effort to adjust the modifiers in different iterations to determine a ship cost model.

Ive initially planned to use ship base size, a command value modifier, Hit point modifier (with discrete breakdown between shields and hull), damage dealt, defense token suite modifiers, and upgrade availability modifiers.

Since the dependant stat is the ship's cost, i will use the linear regression model to find an "average stat" ship at each base size, and then use the coefficients from the composite independent stats to determine the point differentials between the average model and the actual ships, which could then be examined to reveal which ships are overcosted or undercosted on their base stats.

1. I prefer more clicks early on because it gives a much larger area you can land in.

2. Blue, Black, Red for me. Blue's always do something useful. Blacks have crazy damage potential with all the easy access to rerolls they have. Reds do have good range but are also unreliable.

3. Scatter 10/10, brace 8/10, redirect 7/10, evade 4/10, contain 1/10 (or 7/10 with dco)

16 hours ago, Cap116 said:

I have a few questions about different ship characteristics (maneuverability, and weighted value of dice by color, and defense token value) for your consideration:

1) Maneuvering: clicks at the low end of the maneuver tool effect a ships direction to a greater extent, but the clicks at the top of the speed effect the facing (ie pointing the nose of the ship where you want it) of the ship more. So based on that assumption, which do you find to matter more - the direction control or facing?

2) what do you think the expected damage value of a single red vs single blue vs single black die is? (I already know the probabilities of the die results, I am asking for a subjective look at their benefit, ie: since red dice are long range, and black are only short range, does the extra salvo of red dice make the expected damage value of a single red die matter more than the expected damage value of a single black die?

3) can you provide a subjective rank order of all 5 defense tokens? (Scatter, Brace, Evade, Redirect, Contain)? And can you provide a relative value between them on a 1-10 scale. (IE: Scatter is 10/10 because it eliminates an attack, Brace is 7/10, Evade 6/10, Redirect 5/10, Contain 3.5/10 [without DCO]).

Thanks for your help, if you can provide answers in a numbered format it would be appreciated! I'll offer my initial thoughts:

1) facing is more important, especially for high speed ships trying to flank larger, slower ones.

2) Dice importance: Red, then Black, then Blue. Red dice get an earlier salvo which means they can use it to make up for the lower damage per salvo in comparison to black dice, blue dice support the damage of Red or Black, and have a limited range band where they are added and black are not.

3) Scatter is 10/10 because it eliminates an attack, Brace is 7/10, Evade 6/10, Redirect 5/10, Contain 3.5/10 [without DCO]).

Thanks for your help!

1) I prefer more clicks on the first.

2) I value them in this order Red/Blue/Black, range is the most important factor in their value to me, second is accuracy.

3) Scatter is 0/10 it never works either it is locked down by an accuracy or it is a little hit, with a larger ship about to shoot you (who locks it down). Brace 10/10 the best defense in the game. Evade 4/10 very nice at long range, but sucks at short range and most ships I use that have it are short range ships. Redirect 7/10 OK on its own, but really shines with a Brace. Contain I will go with a 4/10, but I am just starting to figure this one out and the more I use it the more I like it, so maybe higher but not sure.

Full disclosure I am mostly an Empire player who goes with the theory of slow and steady. I rarely go faster than speed 1, I think I am somewhat cursed with Scatter/Accuracy's and like to fight at long range.

See I would just about be the opposite of the above as I’m a speed obsessed glad and raider player, so it’s the last clicks all the way and black dice, then blue and last red.......