Yes, Anakin and other Jedi are also far too cheap.

11 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

A 53+3+6+3 = 65pt Soontir should not be as good as a 88 or 96pt Anakin . Even if you add 3pt on top of Soontir he's 20pt below. That should matter. Conversely, that Soontir would be extremely above CLT Anakin at 67pt.

So who here says that a 68pt Soontir is not better than CLT Anakin?

e: The point was never that Soontir is equal to a 88pt Anakin. The point was that he is too close to him than he should be. For some weird reason @ClassicalMoser decided on a 68pt Soontir and I just ran with it. The truth is of course that such a ship would be a bad choice. Why would you ever want to run that? But even if you did choose that suboptimal build and compared it to CLT Anakin, then Soontir would be much better than Anakin. And that is despite Anakin as 3force user being way too good.

It is such a bewildering thing. Who would want the endgame of those two ships against each other? Soontir vs CLTAnakin? And now how good do you see your chances with that Soontir against an 88pt Anakin? If your answer is anywhere close to "uphill but ok" then something is wrong.

I’ve only proc ed anakin ability twice in my life. Kind of meh.

I will admit it’s rather nice in a joust vs a I6 that took the bid.

Gonna assume hopefully that most of you have played Soontir and anakin more than once recently. I’ve played both about 10-20 times in the last 6 months.

9 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

Yes, Anakin and other Jedi are also far too cheap.

We need another thread about Anakin...

34 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I’ve only proc ed anakin ability twice in my life. Kind of meh.

I will admit it’s rather nice in a joust vs a I6 that took the bid.

Gonna assume hopefully that most of you have played Soontir and anakin more than once recently. I’ve played both about 10-20 times in the last 6 months.

Something I've come to realize over the course of this thread is there's a very big gap between people who say "overpriced" and mean "vs the other good stuff right now", and people who say "overpriced" and mean "vs all the bad stuff right now", and they keep ending up talking past each other (see: "anakin needs to go up" vs "anakin isn't tremendously strong right now" perspectives)

Can I just step in to correct the assumption that Soontir will be stressed every turn and that it is some kind of factor.

It's only if you can get away with it. Sensible people will punish your continued reliance on blue moves. Unless you get the job done really fast- that's more of a Fenn thing.

The continually open dial on a Jedi is a bigger factor than the force. Otherwise you see the pattern, peg the restricted options and interrupt/avoid it repeatedly. Repo doesn't really matter then and passive mods only offer some padding.

(Despite all the complaining, I find the lack of stress and regen are the 2 things that make Jedi hard to deal with)

If Soontir wants to compete with that, he can, but not if he stresses himself every single turn.

.....He doesn't have regen to help when he's being obvious.....

Anyway, it's all too abstract to compare them, which is generally why comparisons work better in faction and according to success, it can be tested and seen. So this Anakin-Soontir thing seems a little aimless to me, they are only roughly comparable, which is no good for exact point differences.

It's completely bizarre. Even to say that "the comparison is absurd" means these persons have a certain comparison in mind. I don't know which one that is, because it was never stated.

Xwing works at the level of squads, so any 1v1 situation is very arbitrary. Comparing Anakin and Soontir has the rather rare situation that both are comfortable end game pieces. That means we could take a look at a direct 1v1. It is a rare case where this comparison is not a completely arbitrary situation. It should be obvious that Soontir punches above his weight points, even against an amazing ship like Anakin in the Aethersprite!

The alternative might be ATC where Soontir vs Anakin is at 56:44. Of course we don't know the rest of the squads, but we can make the educated guess that Soontir was always cheaper than Anakin.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

So who here says that a 68pt Soontir is not better than CLT Anakin?

I do, with reservations. I expect they're on a vaguely similar level, but as has been repeatedly stressed, it's hard to make direct comparisons in a vacuum, and it's all conjecture anyway. A lot comes down to 2nd player. 1v1 I'd typically give it to whichever got 2nd player. Even if 68pt Soontir had bid against 96pt Anakin I'd probably still give 96pt Anakin 10 to 1 odds. But that's kind of silly because second player is OP anyway.

Within the context of the rest of the game, I'd say they're on par, more or less. I think they're both a little OP, Anakin probably more so, especially when you consider his upgrades.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

The point was never that Soontir is equal to a 88pt Anakin. The point was that he is too close to him than he should be. For some weird reason @ClassicalMoser decided on a 68pt Soontir and I just ran with it.

Not exactly. I just said double-talent seems likely, and a commensurate increase to Soontir's cost would balance it. 3 points was conjecture but kind of misses the point anyway.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

The truth is of course that such a ship would be a bad choice. Why would you ever want to run that?

I think I'm lost now. I thought you were saying he's OP? Or that that was why he shouldn't ever get a second talent slot? Daredevil Predator Soontir is awesome. Outmaneuver Soontir is used sometimes as-is. Combining two of the three and using your mod for the effect of the third seems reasonable to me. Or how would you build it?

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

But even if you did choose that suboptimal build and compared it to CLT Anakin, then Soontir would be much better than Anakin. And that is despite Anakin as 3force user being way too good.

To be fair, a naked CLT Anakin is also suboptimal. But I don't think there's anyone else on this thread that agrees with you that Soontir would be better than Anakin if he had a second talent slot and commensurate price increase. It has none of the fundamental bustedness that High-I Regen Jedi have. Or anything like it.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

It is such a bewildering thing. Who would want the endgame of those two ships against each other? Soontir vs CLTAnakin? And now how good do you see your chances with that Soontir against an 88pt Anakin? If your answer is anywhere close to "uphill but ok" then something is wrong.

It's not. It's nothing like "Uphill but okay." If Anakin has second player, he wins every single time and it's nowhere near close. if you give Soontir second player (100% removing a significant source of Anakin's cost – he might as well be I1) I'd still give the game to Anakin as often as not. I suppose I would describe that situation as "uphill but okay". But I don't know why we're considering these things in a vacuum in the first place.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My main point from the first post I made on this thread: Soontir and the Interceptors seem like they could get an added talent slot (and possibly lose a mod slot). In that scenario, Soontir's price needs to go up, probably around 3 points or so. I don't understand most of the arguments that have been made against this, or why the reactions to them have been so strange. Maybe you're just saying that in that scenario his price should go up by more than 3? I don't know. I might agree with you. But I don't think that Soontir with two talents and one mod would be any more fundamentally busted than he is now, and certainly not more busted than High-I 3-Force Regen 7B Jedi.

40 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

It should be obvious that Soontir punches above his weight points, even against an amazing ship like Anakin in the Aethersprite!

But is it? Do you mean Soontir now, or Soontir with two talents and a cost increase? I agree he's strong for his cost right now. Even without a second talent I would probably increase his cost by a smidge. I would nerf Anakin by more than that, and his upgrades by a certain amount as well.

40 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

It's completely bizarre. Even to say that "the comparison is absurd" means these persons have a certain comparison in mind.

But you made the comparison in the first place! I'm completely lost now.

Edit: I was incorrect in the above statement. I technically did mention Anakin first. When @Hiemfire suggested that a 2-talent combo could theoretically delete a ship for zero effort, I said that it still wouldn't be as strong/broken as Anakin. I was speaking in terms of NPE and allowable game mechanics, not in terms of cost. I think it's starting to make sense to me now where this got off the rails. It was after that that @GreenDragoon initiated the direct cost comparison, saying "Conversely, that Soontir would be extremely above CLT Anakin at 67pt." And then things got weird/ugly when I tried to defend my position.

Sorry everyone; that was never the point I was trying to make anyway.

So let's just redo the original comment completely:

Add Talent

Increase Price by 7 points

Calling it now

In an endgame of Soontir vs Anakin, Anakin is already in the lead unless he's been halved already. Doesn't matter who first player is or what initiative they are, in ace vs ace the player in the endgame who has points advantage is in the driver's seat. This makes it all very arbitrary, because the data we would actually need is points destroyed per turn.

Thing is with giving him a 2nd talent, it's not so much 'is he better than X' or 'is he worth this much', so much as 'ok, now we have something that's kind of broken against a vast array of stuff'.

I'm actually not terribly unhappy with that sort of thing tbh, as long as it's horrendously expensive and not quite competitive as a result.

So yes, I would happily pay a random 90pt for a Super Soontir and yell 'come at me bro'. I'd compare it to nothing. Equally I'd probably very enjoy playing against it with a much more balanced squad.

It's kind of a different beast. Small increments are best when something is close . Soontir is nice as he is. People would despise 90pt Soonts.

But an extra talent would be very helpful for generics. They're such an Init platform, a lot of their value is permanently wasted.

10 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

Thing is with giving him a 2nd talent, it's not so much 'is he better than X' or 'is he worth this much', so much as 'ok, now we have something that's kind of broken against a vast array of stuff'.

I just ... don't see it I guess. What two talents do that?

Crack and Outmaneuver? Crack is 1-time and he already has Outmaneuver.

Daredevil and Outmaneuver? It's kinda mean but neither has shown much competitive promise on him yet.

Predator and Daredevil? I'd say that could be pretty competitive and still lets you take shield, but I can't see how it would be stratospherically powerful by most measures.

Outmaneuver and Juke? That's some very powerful defensive denial, but a total waste of points against beef lists.

Or are people more worried about the talents yet to come?

This isn't 1.0 where you can stack PTL on top of Veteran Instincts or anything like that. Talents are kinda weak. I daresay they're weaker than mods in general. Giving up a mod slot for a talent seems like a slight improvement on Soontir and a vast improvement on all the others (who never want to shell out for modifications anyway).

Or is there just some terrifying combo I'm missing?

9 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

I just ... don't see it I guess. What two talents do that?

Or is there just some terrifying combo I'm missing?

I'm really just hyperbolicizing.... Can I have 3 mod slots as well?

But still, I'd wager a Daredevil, Outmanoeuvre, TC Soontir at 68pt, with Duchess, Vader and a 10pt bid at the other end of it, will be a little bit broken if numerous other trip ace options are reduced in effectiveness.

Shuttle back up would make him even worse. He'd hit like Vader whenever he wanted. For less.

The point is really just that he doesn't need more power. He already has a lot.

@ClassicalMoser I'm not sure I want to do this because the whole argument is a bit long and has several moving parts.

0. Aethersprites in general and Anakin with 3 force in particular are also currently too good. That means that any points-increased Soontir should be compared to points increased Anakin. Anything else skews the result towards Anakin. Soontir is currently OP. But obviously less so if going against other, similarly OP things. (edit: even your own model has both Soontir and 7BAnakin go up by 3)

1. What did you compare? What scenario did you think of to say the comparison is absurd? You must have had something in mind. What was it?

• As mentioned, a 1v1 against same cost CLT Anakin makes at least somewhat sense.
• Against 96pt Anakin is strange, but maybe Soontir came with a 20pt bid and Anakin didn't.
• As third option, we can compare a situation where the imperial player is 10-20 points down. That starts skewed towards Anakin, but does make some sense.
• Fourth, it could be aces high.
• Fifth, it is a situation between two friends settling a discussion.
• Others?

In most of these situations, Soontir should have the larger bid . We know from data that he has the larger bid in 69% of games against Anakin . For all games, the question of time or round limit is crucial. I don't know why you would give 96pt Anakin 10:1 odds as first player, especially if you also say you "give it to whichever got 2nd player". These two statements seem extremely at odds with each other for me, because somehow equal points cost (e.g. with a non-initiative-bid) would mean a 50:50 if it depends on a coin toss for first player. It should probably be a 10:1, but I doubt that it is.

2. The problem arises as soon as you both bring in "for his points" as argument as well as inflate those points arbitrarily to get to the same amount. Soontir is 53, but should probably be 56-58. If we compare current naked Soontir in a 1v1 to 67+ points of any CLT Anakin or 88+ points of DeltaAnakin, then there are several things to be said:

• Soontir should be much worse, as he's between 14 and 35 points cheaper. More if you complete Anakin's respective builds.
• Even if you inflate his cost to 68, he's as expensive or 20 points cheaper
• In both cases, does way too well in a 1v1 endgame against them - if you ignore that his player is behind on points and very likely does not have enough time remaining, and under the assumption of 2nd player.
• He should not have an ok fight.

Currently, such a build with TC, Daredevil and Shield would not be too bad, actually. No shields for me, but some like it and it does well in cuts. The point here is: comparisons are already difficult (see 0.) but get even worse if we add the "for his points" qualifier into that. What does it mean? Should naked 53pt Soontir at 55% of Anakin's cost be able to take 3 shields off the 96pt Anakin and then he did his job? Should he get half points, which is rather 5 shields? Should he get more points (there is only none/half/all) or hp (5hp) with TC, daredevil and shields?

3. I really do believe that this Soontir would do well against both Anakins in situations 1-5 described above, if he's second player and has enough time. It wouldn't mean anything if the two of us tried that, but I'm honestly curious now if I'd not win more than 1 out of 10 games. But instead of playing it ourselves, we should look at a larger number of games and from different players to remove the player component. Unfortunately metawing has only 2 games of 2xAethersprite+N1 against imperial trip aces. Both went in favor of the imperials. That's by far not the best way to look at it though. I would have been able to tell you more exactly for wave 2 when I was still doing these things on a more detailed level. As mentioned, Soontir vs Anakin is 56:44 on ATC. That's based on 75 games, but we don't know how many of those had reasonable squads or builds, or even how often it was clt Ani or delta Ani. Still, the data we do have is in favor of Soontir.

TL;DR: It doesn't matter what you - or I - think.

12 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

But you made the comparison in the first place!

The initial comparison was this bit right here from you:

On 1/7/2020 at 5:32 AM, ClassicalMoser said:

Even Daredevil Outmaneuver Soontir isn't anywhere near Anakin levels of power.

Unclear which Anakin you meant, which is why I mentioned both, saying that such a Soontir is above CLTAnakin and closer than he should be to 88/96pt Anakin "levels of power". Though I admit I don't know what you were talking about.

12 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

The initial comparison was this bit right here from you:

18 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Even Daredevil Outmaneuver Soontir isn't anywhere near Anakin levels of power.

Unclear which Anakin you meant, which is why I mentioned both, saying that such a Soontir is above CLTAnakin and closer than he should be to 88/96pt Anakin "levels of power". Though I admit I don't know what you were talking about.

I noticed that and posted a subsequent edit. Sorry about that.

41 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

We know from data that he has the larger bid in 69% of games against Anakin .

nice

41 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

TL;DR: It doesn't matter what you - or I - think.

this thread's tl;dr as well

Ummmm ..... 9 pages???

I walk away for 1 day?!?!

27 minutes ago, JBFancourt said:

Ummmm ..... 9 pages???

I walk away for 1 day?!?!

1 hour ago, JBFancourt said:

Ummmm ..... 9 pages???

I walk away for 1 day?!?!

I know right? I'm disappointed in myself for reading it all.

7 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

@ClassicalMoser

I propose a tournament.... CLT Ani or 68 point Soontir. Submit your results and the discussion will be over.

we all know it will never be over...

Here's another thing I'm thinking about: what if it's not just about how hard or easy Soontir is to play, but how hard or easy it is for players to counter him.

So for "Casual Night" > "Small Kit" > "Medium Regional" > "Top Tables Large Tournaments" maybe each step up the skill ladder might bring two steps worth of skill at beating Soontir. It gets easier to set traps and killboxes, to block him, to just put yourselves in positions where Soontir can't cut in on you.

5 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Or is there just some terrifying combo I'm missing?

Crack Shot and Predator would be great. That's a lot of cheap punching power, very much a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Two great tastes that go great together.

Lone Wolf and anything. Nasty combo? Not really. But it's a lot easier to justify spending a bunch on a talent that's intended to be used defensively, and one that has those range restrictions, if you've also got, like, Crack Shot.

That said, I'm probably more in favor of two-talents than two-mods. Half-points-threshold manipulation is kinda frustrating, and going Hull/Shield makes an Interceptor too close to a Silencer, and I like the differences. It'd be cool to change it around for a points cycle, and maybe change it back if it got too frustrating.

9 hours ago, svelok said:

Something I've come to realize over the course of this thread is there's a very big gap between people who say "overpriced" and mean "vs the other good stuff right now", and people who say "overpriced" and mean "vs all the bad stuff right now", and they keep ending up talking past each other (see: "anakin needs to go up" vs "anakin isn't tremendously strong right now" perspectives)

I don't think I made either of those statements. I made a separate statement lol. And now wonder why I'm being quoted as saying either of those.

Despite the weird detour for the past 3 pages, I hope that at least something worthwile came out of it:

Meaningful direct cross faction pilot comparisons are difficult if not impossible.

15 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Targeting computer is not just a thing, it's the thing.

It has significant cost to use - because whilst focus/locked attacks are great, not having focus/evade is risky if you're likely to be shot back at at all.

It does offer something important in that it's a modification which is actually worth having .

Shield/Hull is nice but eye-wateringly expensive.

Stealth is....okay? I guess? Might be better justifiable - looking at previous comments with a Palpatine shuttle?

Afterburners is cool but once you start using autothrusters you have limited options to use it as you tend to be nailed to speed 2.

11 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

It's completely bizarre. Even to say that "the comparison is absurd" means these persons have a certain comparison in mind. I don't know which one that is, because it was never stated.

Agreed. As noted, a big part of Soontir's effectiveness is moving last, so he's awesome at murdering I5 aces and I6 aces-if-he-has-initiative-control. But if you're already investing in a bid you might as well take other pilots who also want a bid, whilst you can as an alternative take ships who actively don't care about a bid (sense/passive sensors Vader, for example, isn't especially put out by moving first).

I agree, by the way, about the 'too good/not good enough' argument. If you judge whether something is too good based on the current top of the meta, you get a continuous upward waterfall of powercreep that eventually goes out of control like 1st edition X-wing and Star Trek Attack Wing. What you need is an agreed yardstick that stuff is buffed relative to or reined in relative to - because arguing if soontir is good or not relative to something else that may also be hit with the bat come tomorrow is irrelevant as that's arguing balance off a moving datum.

Agreeing what those 'balanced' archetype examples are is a different matter entirely. "What we're looking to balance the points relative to" would be a long discussion before you actually start doing the balancing, I feel.

44 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I agree, by the way, about the 'too good/not good enough' argument. If you judge whether something is too good based on the current top of the meta, you get a continuous upward waterfall of powercreep that eventually goes out of control like 1st edition X-wing and Star Trek Attack Wing. What you need is an agreed yardstick that stuff is buffed relative to or reined in relative to - because arguing if soontir is good or not relative to something else that may also be hit with the bat come tomorrow is irrelevant as that's arguing balance off a moving datum.

Actually surprise, a lot of data sets seem to just float in unreferenced space. We've now moved the Tie Fighter. That used to be the reference. No longer.

Anyway, you have one. 5Xwings AND Bwings at 40pts each is considered too powerful. So is 3x Deltas. (The argument over 6 Ints or Strikers is a bit more complicated)

It used to also be the Tie Fighter at 1e 12 points. (Not the Z surprisingly)

And Howl swarm (until that got powercreeped)

Currently Howl swarm is not allowed to have 8 ships.

I think one can conceivably come up with a model of costs/breakdown from that.