Has anyone ever wondered how the costs of the deployment cards for the skirmish were calculated?

If so, does anyone have a reference sheet, an excel file or even an application to calculate this according to the chosen characteristics?

The objective is to find a way to create our own balanced characters with the right cost.

Any help is welcome.

I don't know how the actual developers of the game figured out Deployment costs. But by studying the existing cards, you can get a good feel of baselines for stats and ability powers. Sometimes its easier to start at a target Deployment cost and build your abilities & stats around it. Sometimes it's easier to take an ability you want and try to pick the appropriate Deployment cost for it. Finding the right Deployment card cost is much of an art as it is a science.

Here's some of the things I've noticed while studying the existing Deployment cards:

• Deployment cards created in Jabba's Realm and expansions since have a significantly increased power curve, not just in attack output but in action economy. Compare General Sorin & General Weiss' abilities to those of Emperor Palpatine & Thrawn. You'll need to figure out if you want your designs to be as strong as the newest cards, or somehow change/remove these newer cards so that the power curve is reduced. ( In the IACP , we do the former.)
  • In previous interviews, the original developers have said that the Stormtrooper deployment was their baseline Deployment. But if you study cards released since Jabba's Realm, you can tell the Elite Stormtrooper card is overcosted compared to those cards. I've found the Elite Jet Troopers as a better baseline card, but I don't necessarily compare every design I make to that card. (More about that below.)
• Generally speaking, a figure's Health is roughly 1.5 times the figure's Deployment cost. This is typically adjusted based on the role and Traits of the figure: Hunters, Smugglers, Spies, Droids, support figures & Deployments with multiple figures have a little less; Brawlers, Guardians, Melee attackers have a little more.
• Take some time using the IA Damage Calculator to check the percentages of attacks. You'll start noticing how a Deployment's potential attack output depends on its role and cost. For example, Elite Jet Troopers have about a 45% chance vs. 1 defense die of doing at least 3 DMG using their normal attack. But by using Fly-By, they have about a 55% chance vs 1 defense die of doing at least 4 DMG. Some Deployment cards will average more than 7 DMG per activation (like queen pieces: Darth Vader w/ Driven by Hatred, Luke Skywalker Jedi Knight, IG-88 w/ Focused on the Kill) and some will average less (like support figures: Gideon, Imperial Officer, Jabba).
• When you're designing your Deployment cards, use existing Deployments as a guideline but not as hard rules. For example, if your version of Elite Scout Troopers does more damage on average than Elite Sentry Droids, then your Scout Troopers shouldn't have Deployment & figure costs less than Sentry Droids UNLESS you have implemented weaknesses to counteract the strengths.
• Deployment costs are also different based on faction. Generally speaking, I've found:
  • Imperial Deployments are relatively costly to limit total activation count, but the abilities on their cards enable multiple figures or might be balanced or synergistic with common Imperial Skirmish Upgrades (Zillo Technique, Rule by Fear).
  • Rebel Deployments are built around getting Focused and having higher activation counts, but fewer figures.
  • Merc Deployments are built around getting Focused & having high Command card draw. Most newer Merc Uniques are cheaper than other Uniques but don't have a lot of defensive abilties. Because of the low cost of many of these Uniques, Merc can have the highest activation counts.
• It takes some significant testing sometimes to truly lock in a Deployment cost. Once you have a preliminary card designed with a Deployment/figure cost, you can start working through the potential list combinations and look for exploits. For example, in the IACP, we changed Kayn Somos' cost from 10 to 6. Our testers found that Kayn was borderline too powerful since, at 6 Deployment Points, he was now eligible to be activated by a Death Trooper using Squad Tactics. We raised him back up to 7 points, which might be a little too expensive compared to his abilities based on the numbers, but it shut down the Death Trooper exploit and kept Kayn playable.

Other folks might have notes that have more of a empirical study on Deployment costs and their abilities & stats. But I've been making cards for a while and I feel like folks don't need a formula or a spreadsheet to find the right Deployment cost for your new creations. It just takes a little research into the game you're wanting to create within.

I have a lot of fun making cards! I hope this helps you have fun making cards too.

@cnemmick Thank you very much for this very usefull experience sharing.

I find your approach very interesting! I think you are true! A pure scientific approach is not the solution here. Even if at one time, I thought to use Machine learning algorithms to help me in this goal...even if I am not a Data Scientist. Nevertheless, I thought : Maybe Amazon web services or Microsoft cloud Azur could be enough efficient to help me for this...?

The most important thing you say is for me: what kind of game we want !

This should lead the card cost evaluation. I'm now convinced of this!

Moreover, to look at existing cards and pleasure we have in playing them should inspire us too.

I discovered the IACP project only last week! I find the initiative terrific!

I'm a little sad that no new futur content are not being produced by FFG ( if I have well understood what I read). Otherwise, I think that the community of players can help to avoid this by creating new game material and approach. It is Why I'm fond of the IACP initiative!

I think that there is already a lot of star wars stuff created by FFG and Wotc that could help to this. I am a little disappointed that Legion miniature scale was not the same than IA one. But now I understand why and I bought some models too that I hope to use in home made scenario I would have great pleasure to share with the IA fan community in the future.

As new approchs, I dream to find a way to mix some of the FFG star wars stuff in many full new games concepts.

i.e. : x-wings + IA or Armada + IA + x-wings and even I try to find a way too to use stuff from the card game & role playing game... But I think that should be shared in other posts. 🙂

Once again, Thank you very much for your response!

Kindest regards,

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1379638/formula-calculating-threat-deployment-costs-figure

it's a bit messy/convoluted, but all in all it's reliable.

The OP reverse engineered the formula and for the most part it works out. Where it gets more tricky/unreliable is assigning threat-values to esoteric abilities (guessing how effective sorin's ability is actually worth, for example).

On 10/31/2019 at 12:23 PM, lrobert1402 said:

Has anyone ever wondered how the costs of the deployment cards for the skirmish were calculated?

If so, does anyone have a reference sheet, an excel file or even an application to calculate this according to the chosen characteristics?

The objective is to find a way to create our own balanced characters with the right cost.

Any help is welcome.

This has been going on for a while, an attempt to find a surefire formula. I have tried, and others have tried, and there are some not bad attempts, but you quickly learn that most games are written with arbitrary points assignments and are probably, though sometimes one has to wonder, decided on due to play testing and not a pre determined formula.

On 11/2/2019 at 5:55 AM, thinkbomb said:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1379638/formula-calculating-threat-deployment-costs-figure

it's a bit messy/convoluted, but all in all it's reliable.

The OP reverse engineered the formula and for the most part it works out. Where it gets more tricky/unreliable is assigning threat-values to esoteric abilities (guessing how effective sorin's ability is actually worth, for example).

Created in 2015, so it will probably not work for the current power curve of IA, which was raised pretty significantly with the release of Jabbas Realm.

For me, the rough starting formula would be to take a figures cost, multiply by 1.7 rounded up to get its health, then give it the ability to deal max damage in a round equal to its cost +2. This counts abilities too. Then tweak from there.

14 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Created in 2015, so it will probably not work for the current power curve of IA, which was raised pretty significantly with the release of Jabbas Realm.

For me, the rough starting formula would be to take a figures cost, multiply by 1.7 rounded up to get its health, then give it the ability to deal max damage in a round equal to its cost +2. This counts abilities too. Then tweak from there.

uhhhh ... don't be so dismissive just 'cause it's an old formula. 8\ Do at least put the effort to test it out rather than writing it off.

I just ran a couple of figures through it using best estimations for new mechanics...

• Death Trooper: 3.305 (power tokens are conditionally useful, but also conditionally a total waste given the timing involved. I priced the freebie token, given the restrictions, at only 0.125 value. The Field Tactics perk is negligible and conditional, priced that at zero)
• Loth-cat elite: 3.125 unit, 6.25 group (spending a full action for a power token is poor action economy. I priced "fresh catch" at zero)

Going back to the core set, there's actually a couple of findings ... (I only picked a couple I remembered being notable at while refining and verifying this formula)

• Royal Guard are accurate priced (both common and elite).
• Stormtroopers (vanilla common) are not. They're honestly worth 1.5 per unit, which makes them 4.5-> 5 group cost optimally ... which honestly feels right.
  • A note on this price change is that I suspect FFG put a value on the squad-training re-roll. What happened is that because of both the tactical limitation this imposes AND the use of cleave and blast ... I honestly don't think this has a threat value. So if you price squad training at zero? you get 1.5 per unit.

There's also other abilities in characters that were over estimated in their worth (sorin and kayn's actions were both too conditional to be of much use) and other abilities that proved to be broken underpriced (like everyone's favorite card: spectre cell).

The formula works great as a whole ... but as stated before: where the problems occur (and where FFG themselves failed) was in understanding and pricing how valuable certain abilities ACTUALLY are in use.

Ok, I'll bite. Since you've only looked at figures that cost less than 4, let's look at something that costs a little more. CT-1701 is a figure that has been out for a year, been tested and played in tournaments, and now gets zero consideration from serious competitive players in skirmish. I figured this would be a good figure to test this formula on, since we know that he is not competitively played, but he is also from the latest batch of figures, and we can plainly see that he is just better than a figure from the Core set which used to be very competitively played is now undeniably inadequate since the power shift, Farmboy Luke. CT is also pretty straightforward as a figure as far as quantifying his abilities goes.

Using the formula in the thread:

12 Health = +6 points
Black defense = +0
GGB atk, surge: +1, w/ 2 surge abilities valued at 0.5 damage = +1.54
Accuracy modifier = +0.41
Barrage modifier (used same bonus as brutality): +0.7725
Pin them Down: +0
Total: 8.7225

According to this formula, CT-1701 should be undercosted at 7 points and be a major player in the Rebel faction, but he has been played a lot since he was released and been found lacking compared to other figures in his price range like Sabine and Ezra from the same wave. What this does show is that this formula is perfectly calibrated for 2015 costs. Farmboy Luke is 10 points and has just slightly better stats and abilities than CT, so in 2015 CT would have totally made sense as an 8 or 9 point figure.

Interestingly, if you play with the numbers a bit and go against the Appendix by valuing his 2 non-damaging abilities as 0 instead of 0.5, his EV comes out to 7.775, closer to his printed value, but still higher, and much higher than what his real value should be, which is probably 6.

Maybe there is a way to use this formula to create a balanced figure if you take a figure that we know is balanced and run it through the formula, like maybe an EWeequay, see what the formula says it should be compared to what it is, and then take that discrepancy and apply it to whatever else you run through the formula.

Alright so to run with this idea, I took an elite Weequay and ran i through the formula and got 5.235 per figure. elite Weequays cost 3.5 per figure in the real game and are currently considered to be neither overpowered or underpowered.

So divide 5.235 by 3.5 to get ~1.49, round up to 1.5. So now just divide whatever cost the formula spits out by 1.5 to get a more contemporary cost. If we take old CT and divide his 2015 cost of 8.7225 and divide by 1.5, we get 5.815, which feels a lot closer to his actual value in-game. This probably only works for figures that cost 4 or more though, but IME that's the range that most people create custom figures in.

You're right, I was too dismissive, this 2015 formula just needed a simple 2019 modifier.