1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

I think your missing my point. The idea that undercosted jedi aces are being 'held back' by the fact that other ships in the faction are over costed is like saying Boba Fett was being 'held back' by the fact that the Scum YT was overcosted. The fact that the scum YT is overcosted is true, but you can just make a list with all your 'good stuff.'

Who said Jedi aces are being held by back other ships in the faction? I'm saying the other Republic archtypes are being held back because their Aces are cheap and their not-aces are expensive. It kind of shoehorns the factions into Aces when they are your only cost effective ships.

I always thought Obi-Wan’s release price was fine. PLO might be a little low, but the rest are mostly fine.

Maybe CLT could be a touch more. 2-primary aces are an interesting curiosity that the game could surely do with more of.

Regarding R2 and regen, I still think it’s 100% because game scoring is dumb. Points preserved isn’t even anything like thematic for a Star Wars game. What happened to sacrificing your whole list to pull off something heroic? Surely if victory conditions were different and running to time weren’t a winning strategy, regen wouldn’t feel bad at all.

5 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Regarding R2 and regen, I still think it’s 100% because game scoring is dumb. Points preserved isn’t even anything like thematic for a Star Wars game. What happened to sacrificing your whole list to pull off something heroic? Surely if victory conditions were different and running to time weren’t a winning strategy, regen wouldn’t feel bad at all.

this is probably a blog post i will never write, but regen is neither interesting nor fun and as currently designed is about as uninteresting and unfun as possible for the sake of balance, and the game loses pretty much literally nothing by it not being used

7 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Regarding R2 and regen, I still think it’s 100% because game scoring is dumb. Points preserved isn’t even anything like thematic for a Star Wars game. What happened to sacrificing your whole list to pull off something heroic? Surely if victory conditions were different and running to time weren’t a winning strategy, regen wouldn’t feel bad at all.

Regen is just more health, but instead of points, you pay an in-game cost of requiring actions like R5 or disarms like R2. Heck, Evade actions are just more health that you gain by using an action. Regen is a bit different, since it'll stick but an Evade token won't. But mostly yeah, this.

If it weren't for scoring, I think regen wouldn't really be a problem.

3 hours ago, svelok said:

this is probably a blog post i will never write, but regen is neither interesting nor fun and as currently designed is about as uninteresting and unfun as possible for the sake of balance, and the game loses pretty much literally nothing by it not being used

These options were ported for a reason. They were put on iconic characters that help sell the game line use these mechanics. These mechanics got buffed multiple times because they were not being used. Regen was super clearly meant to 'be a thing,' it is just transaperntly false to say they are 'deliberately not a thing.' Remember, the update before they got a nuclear tier nerf, they were dirt cheap after being buffed in every points update before that, and still saw nearly no play.

If they are 'meant to be bad' why would they be working so hard to make em work? They just took the fall for the Delta-7, because it was a new ship in a new faction.

Archetype and mechanical that variety forces you to learn different skills and handle different challenges in different ways is a core aspect of any game where you are allowed to define your own abilities. Regen forces lists that traditionally try to win by points outs to actually commit to longer engagements, meaning that aces can't just constantly poke someone in the butt for 1 damage and run away because that is self defeating. But if your willing to commit to engagements the ship basically gave up its ability to attack to get 1 evade token which is an awful deal.

The problem with Delta-Regen was it gave a tool that exists mostly to punish 'skittish aces' for creating a window where neither side really fights to the skittish ace who wants to create that window so they are rewarded for it, rather than punished for it.

8 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Regarding R2 and regen, I still think it’s 100% because game scoring is dumb. Points preserved isn’t even anything like thematic for a Star Wars game. What happened to sacrificing your whole list to pull off something heroic? Surely if victory conditions were different and running to time weren’t a winning strategy, regen wouldn’t feel bad at all.

This is is low key the actual problem. X-wing is a weird dumb deathmatch with very little actual strategic play that, combined with the lack of usable control options and high value systems phase choices, heavily encourages hyper-conservative play.

I get that objectives can be random in some wargames, but even something as simple as swapping out the deathmatch for a 'control the objective' system as the default mode would do a lot to a lot of problematic repercussions of X-wing's system: Swarms couldn't blob as hard if they had to care about more than one thing, 3 ship aces lists wouldn't have as much control over engagement and would actually have to take risks, jousting lists need to split up their fire lines and evaluate what to fight over and what not to fight over, ect.

2 hours ago, svelok said:

this is probably a blog post i will never write, but regen is neither interesting nor fun and as currently designed is about as uninteresting and unfun as possible for the sake of balance, and the game loses pretty much literally nothing by it not being used

This'll be a good blog post and it will go really well with my eventual hypothetical blog (that's totally a way to teach people about X-Wing and not at all a means of stroking my own ego) about how the Evade action is a boring mechanic that offers nothing to the game except the NPE of watching damage that I rolled, and paid points to modify via upgrades, getting completely nullified by a token spend that I have no agency over. Watching a dice roll that does enough damage to get me half points either be reduced in effectiveness or even fail to hit because of an unblockable token is not fun, and I fail to see what interesting benefit it adds to the game when the focus token already exists and is actually balanced because it at least requires you to roll paint.

Then maybe we'll get on to how unfair it is that some ships get to block all the negative effects of crit results just by having a different health type that some ships don't even have access to. It's anti-fun, and it's unbalanced.

7 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

about how the Evade action is a boring mechanic that offers nothing to the game

mostly same team - in most cases the evade action would be better off removed from ships entirely; but in some cases, it allows fragile "glass cannon" type aces a way to bring their defensive profile closer in line with their offensive profile, which makes them easier to play / enjoy / balance than if they remained highly skewed in favor of offense (just as ships too highly skewed in favor of defense are hard to play / enjoy / balance); and the existence of the evade action/mechanic in absence of action bar evade is useful for design and balance (eg fang ship ability) and the tradeoff between good defense vs a single shot but bad defense vs multiple shots can be interesting but requires very careful design

I am falling into Poe's law hard because I can't actually tell if that was meant to be a parody of 'X is NPE' posts or not.

Evades are a known quantity, they are actually LESS frustrating than a rolled defense, because you know exactly what to expect when the defender evades: 1 less hit, no more, no less. A focused defense roll is more random and while in some scenarios it offers more consistent 0 hit attacks, in others it offers less. But the actual variance is only a few percentage points in evade's favor whenever it is beneficial, and its far more than a few percentage points when it is not, so the times evade makes an attack do 0 is not the kind of thing a player would really notice: When your already missing 60% of the time are you really going to notice that 3%? An evade pushes the expected result towards the middle, while a focus 'blobs out' more. It is a perfectly serviceable mechanic that doesn't even contribute to most ships that actually are problematically defensively strong.

Calling the existence of shields 'unbalanced' is uhh... an interesting take to say the least. As for the point of their existence, they help differentiate how ships relate to damage, and at what point a ship should be 'scared.' They are also a good way to make tough ships that are easy to push damage on not instantly become garbage the second they are shot at: large ships would be terrible if you only needed to poke them with Vader once to start mucking with their dial. Shields are so integral to how damage functions that it is sorta baffling to say they shouldn't exist, especially because most ships in the game DO have shields, and the ones that don't tend to be cheap swarm pieces that are meant to feel fragile, like TIEs and Droids, or are so hard to hit in the first place any damage on them at all should be heavily rewarded, like Fang Fighters.

On 8/11/2020 at 10:28 AM, 5050Saint said:

But combine the rise in droid cost, every named Torrent and nearly every Y-Wing went down in cost and with the addition of the LAAT, perhaps we'll see some more archtype diversity in the Republics future.

Yes. This a thousand times yes. Players have gotten hung up on Delta 7B Jedi, followed by Ric with CLT Jedi for so long that the rest of the faction has been looked over except the odd GST and 104th blocker/filler. There is so much potential within the faction and I'm hopefully it's finally explored by others with the recent price drops. Jedi still have a place but they're not all the Republic has to offer. Quad missile Torrents with Ahsoka is an old stand by for me. Triple Y-Wing lists are amazing. Odd Ball ARC with an R4-P is stellar. Seventh fleet gunner is HS legal now; that on RSB and a dorsal turret is just 40 points. LAATs with 7thFG are going to be insane support pieces.

On the whole, I'm comfortable with where CLT Jedi and nearly everything else for the Republic is currently priced. Except Swoop.

44 minutes ago, svelok said:

mostly same team - in most cases the evade action would be better off removed from ships entirely; but in some cases, it allows fragile "glass cannon" type aces a way to bring their defensive profile closer in line with their offensive profile, which makes them easier to play / enjoy / balance than if they remained highly skewed in favor of offense (just as ships too highly skewed in favor of defense are hard to play / enjoy / balance); and the existence of the evade action/mechanic in absence of action bar evade is useful for design and balance (eg fang ship ability) and the tradeoff between good defense vs a single shot but bad defense vs multiple shots can be interesting but requires very careful design

Oh my god you took that seriously...

14 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

I am falling into Poe's law hard because I can't actually tell if that was meant to be a parody of 'X is NPE' posts or not.

It was, yes.

Well, more specifically a parody of hot take posts that offer zero justification or explanation for any opinion.

1 minute ago, GuacCousteau said:

It was, yes.

Well, more specifically a parody of hot take posts that offer zero justification or explanation for any opinion.

I literally deleted that sentence hoping you didn't see it because it felt like it would be way too mean if it wasn't a Poe's law situation. Glad I was right.

Sometimes I wonder how much people want a strategy game and how much people want a Star Wars game.

I absolutely 100% believe you can have both but... sometimes concessions have to be made from either side.

28 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Sometimes I wonder how much people want a strategy game and how much people want a Star Wars game.

I absolutely 100% believe you can have both but... sometimes concessions have to be made from either side.

Not going to lie, I think also some people just don't understand that effects in games exist to create a difference between your desired board-state and your opponent, and a tension between what you want to do and what you can do.

Option limiting effects that in some way punish your opponent's optimal game plan and force them to play around it and only into it when the rewards are great are understood to be important and vital effects in every competitive community I have ever seen besides X-wing.

So it isn't even just 'It is kinda super questionable why X-wing even has the Star Wars brand if all of the Star-Warsy stuff is meant to be bad' but 'Also, that stuff being bad on purpose actually makes competitive play worse, not better, because healthy competitive metas test different skills.' The fact the game so often skews balance towards a desire of aces (and to a lesser extent swarm) players to never have to deal with anything that may make them consider if it is smart to do what they are doing is... kinda terrible?

Obviously some interactions are toxic, but in general those are specific scenarios where a given ship really shouldn't have gotten a certain capability anyway.

For example, ion gets a bad rap as a 'fundementally bad' mechanic when in reality it is a super compelling and awesome mechanic that creates a high stakes and tense moment for both sides when done well, because the entire board becomes 'about' one specific ship and how both sides are going to react: The defender gets as many awesome choices as the attacker. But ion turret spam was a bad implementation because ion turrets require no set up allowing this to trivially hit multiple ships with no effort, which sucked and really DID make it a 'your not playing X-wing' effect, rather than 'your down one ship temporarily and this next turn is gunna be super intense, hold onto your butts cuz THIS is podracing X-wing!'

Ion missiles, torps, and bombs however, require either setup, or a hard read, meaning it isn't realistic for half your list to eat ion unless you REALLLLLY made a mistake, and are a more appropriate place for Ion to be 'good' which is why those got a price reduction.

19 hours ago, gennataos said:

You'd think that I4 would be worth a point over a generic...?

I have had great success with plo obie ahsoka and barriss. barriss's ability is great!

On 8/10/2020 at 4:22 PM, svelok said:

CLT Lumi/Saesee - 46
CLT Mace - 49

base Grevious - 44
attackshuttle Ezra - 40
Turr Phennir - 44
Ved Foslo - 44

:thonk:

you are also comparing 3 attack ships to an essentially 2 attack ship. (with 3 for very skilled flying) The others don't need skilled flying to get the 3rd attack die. This does make a massive difference.....

34 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Sometimes I wonder how much people want a strategy game and how much people want a Star Wars game.

I absolutely 100% believe you can have both but... sometimes concessions have to be made from either side.

Yeah, pretty much this.

I would much rather have "R2 divert power from weapons to shields" be in the game and have to work out some balance issues later than have a system where you strip out any mechanic that doesn't meet some (probably subjective at best) definition of balance one by one until you're left with chess, because it's a perfectly balanced game that hasn't seen a rules update in hundreds of years.

Also, this game really, really needs Armada style objectives. I might actually have to branch that into a separate topic at some point.