I encountered this situation last battle:

We played 150 pts each side, my friend and me played 75 pts each vs. two Imperials. We had 2 Y-Wings and 4 X-Wings vs. 6 TIEs and 3 TIE-Adv. (I let out the exact lists as they don't matter here much).

Our force was in a dense dogfight with the TIEs (the Adv. were quite far away on the other side of the board) as it happened. In two consecutive rounds the TIEs with piloting skill 1 moved in such a way, that they blocked with their sheer masses the space where I could fly to with my ships. So I were forced to bounce into a ship losing my actions and were unable to fire on the nearest TIEs. If I had been able to move first it would have been a great advantage because I had have the possibitity to do actions and deny them to the Imperials.

Of course firing first because of the higher skill was an advantage. In the end the Rebels won because of some lucky defending die rolls even without a focus action. But I came to the conclusion that moving first could often enough be an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

And if you take into account that the opponent will try to block in such a way that fact urges you to take up suboptimal positions which gives you a bad point to shoot from or do maneuvers which give you stress tokens limiting you even more.

What do you think?

P.S. I play the german version so please excuse me if I use some wrong keywords .

Yes, in that situation moving second can be a disadvantage, but didn't the Ties collide with their own as well, especially in a multi-player game?

Major Mishap said:

Joscha said:

Yeah, people around here tend to put too much weight on the value of pilot skill. I think it is because the difference between skill 9 and skill 1 looks huge on the surface to people that don't think about what the numbers actually do while they undervalue the numbers that have a huge impact but might only be different by 1 or 2 between ships.

You are completely correct, imperial swarm tactics can use this mechanic to its advantage.

The disadvantage is there are so many ships, even if you run into some ships, chances are a number of others will be in firing range. Since imps have to use pretty much all the same ships, specific targets will matter less. Once you knock a few down the advantage diminishes. Not that its easy with Tie evade actions…

Its another tactical aspect of the game that provides depth imo. If you load up reb with fewer but powerful ships, and your opponent goes swarm… there could be problems. If reb does the same, then it evens it out a bit.

There are advantages of higher pilot skill… Vader is a very good example, he has 2 actions and has the advantage of knowing everything before making his 2 choices.

low pilot skill is a real problem for target lock

Ellyrik said:

How is it a problem for target lock in particular vs. any of the other actions?

ShadowJak said:

because you move first and may not be in range. If the other player moved towards you, then you moved, youll be able to target lock.

Xploiter said:

Focus and target lock have the exact same offensive value except for being able to use torpedoes/missiles. I think pilot skill matters more for barrel roll.

The point is not just Target Lock, but missiles and torpedoes. If you move last, you can move into range 2-3, get a target lock, and release your payload in one turn. If you move first, they could move to range 2-3 after you've taken an action. Your next chance to target lock will likely put them too close to use torpedoes or they'll be out of your firing arc entirely.

ShadowJak said:

Budgernaut said:

I'm not ignoring the impact of concussion missiles/torps. I am implying they aren't very important.

Being at range 1 with a rebel isn't the worst thing in the world. Rolling 4 dice with a focus or target lock against 3 defensive dice is better than using a torpedo in that situation (if it were possible) anyway.

I think torpedoes/concussion missiles are over priced for the rebels. They cost almost as much as a hull point but do significantly less than an extra point of damage over the attack they replace even under optimal conditions for an X-Wing (range 3 attack). They are better for Y-Wings and Imperials, but still not spectacular.

KarmikazeKidd said:

Very true. Thanks for pointing that out. A crit is more than a 20% improvement (in damage, ignoring any nasty effects) over normal hits but that is only on 1 out of 8 sides. It is better but not dramatically.

ShadowJak said:

without digging out my old textbooks for probability, i think there is a 1/8 chance your going to hit with a crit if you focus. there is a 2/8 chance of getting a crit if you targetlock.. -thats per die rerolled-

ShadowJak said:

While I'm generally extremely good at math, the one area I was never good in was probability and stats. Mostly because some of the theory seemed counterintuitive and illogical to me. In theory, wouldn't target lock have slightly better odds than focus simply because it involves a second roll and a second chance to get positive results? I know the odds and such, but with focus you roll once and if it's blanks tough noogies (though if you get some focus results you're fine). With target lock regardless of the results you can reroll, giving you a second chance on whatever dice. I know the odds on any given roll are the same as any other. But if you're looking for X result, having two chances to get X seems like better odds to me.

Please, don't think I'm trying to argue with any of you, because I'm not. I'm just bringing this up as a question (albeit one I'm probably not explaining very well) since there are people present who actually do understand probability/stats. I just don't get it. A statistician would tell me that no matter what numbers I pick, my odds of winning the lottery are the same. But logic tells me that if I pick the same 5 numbers every time, probability should dictate that at some point that specific number should pop up, making it more likely for me to win if I stick with them. Because otherwise, picking the right number for the right drawing is even less likely. To me it seems when looking for a definite result in a random system, repetition ought tip the 'odds' in your favor.

KarmikazeKidd said:

Yep, all humans have this intuition, and it's completely wrong. (I promise I'm not criticizing! I'm the same way.) It's just a quirk of our evolution that we are really really bad at intuitively understanding probability.

I HIGHLY recommend reading the book "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives", by Leonard Mlodinow. You don't have to be good at math to understand it, either. It gives numerous examples of how the probability of an event happening versus the probability we *think* it has are vastly different.

KarmikazeKidd said:

The way the numbers in the damage chart I have work, The possibility of focus is made before the actual roll (i.e. it doesn't take into account saving the focus for defense or anything).

When just rolling attack 1 die, there is a 50% chance of it showing some sort of damage. When focusing, there is a 75% chance.

When Target Locking (with no focus), there is a 50% chance the die will roll a hit (or crit) the first time. That means there is a 50% chance of it needing to be rerolled. There is a 50% chance of that reroll showing something that will do damage. 50% happening 50% of the time is 25%. Add that 25% to the 50% chance it rolled correctly in the first place and we have 75% again.

They are the exact same when not taking into account crits.

"But logic tells me that if I pick the same 5 numbers every time, probability should dictate that at some point that specific number should pop up, making it more likely for me to win if I stick with them. Because otherwise, picking the right number for the right drawing is even less likely. To me it seems when looking for a definite result in a random system, repetition ought tip the 'odds' in your favor."

Nope, not at all. You just suffer from a common cognitive bias and are using a non-logical thinking process. Casinos in Vegas love it when people who think like that show up at the roulette table (that's why many have big screens showing the result history). Every lottery drawing is an independent event. The fact '1 2 3 4 5' was chosen yesterday has no effect on whether it will be chosen today. While you are right that when approaching infinity, the odds of your number showing up approach 1 (notice how I say they approach 1 but do not reach 1: important difference), there is no way to tell when that might happen and infinity is a long time to wait. The exact same is true for picking random numbers every day. The odds approach 1 just a slowly because there is no magical thread through time that lets the lottery know what numbers "should" show up.

To take a simple example, I used to always teach High School Algebra students using a coin flip. If you flip a coin ten times, can you get heads ten times in a row? You know the answer is yes, but you feel that this won't (or even cannot) happen. It is unlikely to happen, but not at all impossible.

We tend to treat probability as if it was a prediction. That such-and-such event WILL happen this amount of times. But no, experience should tell you that you could roll three blanks multiple times in a single X-wing game. The very unlikelihood is what makes it so maddening. But it COULD still happen again next game!

Getting heads ten times in a row happens with the exact same probability as getting HTHHTTTHTT. We just attach some significance to the former.

Absolutely, it seems to have "meaning" as opposed to the sequence you gave. Another thing that confuses is the fact that they are separate events, so the effect of one flip has no bearing on another. Even though we know that if pressed to answer the question, we tend to feel that there is some cosmic balancing effect that will make other things happen (the Force?).

magadizer said:

Don't ever play roulette in Vegas.

Explanations appreciated, and accepted. I understand the principle, but I fear I will never be able to reconcile it completely with my brain. Perhaps if the world could agree to dispose of the word 'probability'. It's just not transitive thinking. Since saying there's a %50 chance of getting 'heads' when flipping a coin is likened to saying "five times out of ten the result will be heads", it seems wrong to think that the odds of getting the same result ten times out of ten, or %100. I was always fantastic at algebra. Just not this. Like I said, I understand and accept what you're saying. I know it's correct. But I doubt I can ever get my brain or subconcious to function that way.

KarmikazeKidd said:

Blame human evolution. It's not your fault. Humans are so good at recognizing patterns that we see patterns in things when there isn't one.