I agree. Interceptors are amazing, as are A-wings. They ability to choose where and when you engage is critical, attack where they are weak avoid where they are strong. But again you can't account for maneuverability between two ships when you don't know what one can do beyond it's actions (Focus, target lock, and barrel roll in this case) and it's stat line. If you can't tell who'll have the positioning advantage it helps to assume a neutral one.

I never consider time limits in my theory crafting since I never have and am unlikely to ever compete in an official event. I'm also a status effect and turtling player by nature.

There, see, there it is. I'm a very…. timed aggressive player? I guess that's what I'd call it. I'm not completely suicidal, I'm certainly willing to break engagement for a round or two in order to sort things out, but I tend to do a few things:

Fly at least 1 interceptor: PtL Fel is my go-to guy, he's in almost every squad I fly (unless i'm experimenting or just sick of winning ) Other's include Fel's Wrath, or a VI'd Saber Squadron.

Focus on low-evade ships first: B-Wings and Y-Wings are my prey of choice. If someone boasts they can "take a beating" then I give them three. In a round. Which is fairly easy with two interceptors at range 1, and one of them being able to focus and still have an evade token left. Y-wings are especially delectable in this example because with all that hull and all those uncancelled attack dice, at least one is usually a critical.

Create mostly high-PS squads: I hate firing last. Screw Han, I FIRE FIRST.

Keep my actions: K-turns are extremely rare for me. I'd rather give up a shot and evade for a round then set myself up with predictable de-stressing runs and lose my evade token. With all those 1-turn ships, why would I even bother unless absolutely necessary?

Mostly, the only time I slow play is the approach. Stay out of TL range, then suddenly get to range 1. Once you know the math of approaches, it's very easy and almost universally successful.

Vonpenguin, I think a match between us would be a very interesting clash of ideals. But I agree wholeheartedly on your other point: screw tourney rules and time limits. Play for fun!

You start with "fact" but then proceed with a command, so it's not 100% clear what you're trying to present. Here is the data that I am aware of:

• In the top 18 Squads at Worlds 2013, there were ZERO Interceptors of any kind (let alone Alphas).
• I am not aware of any successful lists at Gen Con that included Interceptors. I could be wrong here, and I am genuinely interested in the top Gen Con lists.
• I am not aware of any of the national champions, or final tables, having used Alphas.
• I am not aware of a single successful Vassal squadron that used Alphas. Sabers with PtL have been used in at least one squad (Saber Rattlers) with some level of success.

So, if you're trying to say that there are factual examples of competitive tournament lists that include Alpha Squadron Pilots, then a citation is required. If no such example exists, then alternatively, you could be claiming to be better than hundreds of the best tournament players, but this is also unlikely.

just because something hasn't found it's way into worlds doesn't mean it's not viable. large tournaments such as worlds generally mean that people bring one of two types of lists!

which are safe and proven lists or out of the box thinker lists with one strategy type in mind which includes something nobody expects

you should also take into consideration that these waves of ships are coming out far too quickly and not allowing enough time to bring real set strategies to settle into the meta game before the next wave is released

wave 1 was bland and consisted of 3 types of lists that were competitive, tie swarms, 3 elite rebel builds and 4 ship rebel builds

that was it

wave 2 opened up a GIANT can of worms in terms of list building variety and there was no real consistency to any list building other than, oh what was the top 2 recent worlds finalists again? 3 ship rebel build vs tie swarm? seems to me that the safe lists from wave 1 ended up winning it because nobody was fully comfortable yet with wave 2 builds yet here we are well into wave 3 and wave 4 soon upon us and many people (myself included) are still grasping the real potency of wave 2 ships alone such as interceptors and how strong they truly are and which all i've really been flying lately and with truly significant results

these new ship releases are coming at us far too quickly for any tournament to really decide what is truly "best" in terms of ship quality and with each release of a new wave of ships and upgrade cards, this game gets that much more diverse and complicated

at this rate we will probably never see a true meta game and people will just bring what they think they can win with and no list will be determined the "king" of any meta game

i guess that's not a terrible thing, but you can't knock something you've clearly never played consistently before

i really encourage you to go balls to the wall and try out a 5 alpha squadron, and not just one game; several games to get the feeling of how to fly them correctly.. i guarantee you that you'll never look at them the same again

action denying capabilities combined with high firepower, high maneuverability and good survivability can make all the difference

p.s. i am not "alternatively claiming that i'm better than hundreds of tournaments players" but i will claim that i stand just as strong of a chance of winning any tournament as everyone else does, and should a worlds tournament come to the north west coast of US/Canada; you can be sure that i'll be there and depending on what else get released between now and then i will most likely be flying interceptors

All the math in the world is based currently on completely incomplete data. There are just too many variables to do any reasonable math and call it accurate. You can pontificate on the "data", but keep in mind FFG does this for a living, and they do have play testers.

They make games professionally, but there is zero evidence that they have done statistical analysis approaching the level that I have. If they did, then the TIE Advanced, Expose, and R2-F2 would have been designed differently, at a minimum.

Math has correctly predicted that the following ships should see very little competitive tournament play: TIE Advanced (excluding Vader), TIE Interceptors, and A-Wings. None of these ships made the top 16 squads at Worlds.

If you have some specific issues with the analysis, please share! Others have done do and I have adapted the analysis to be better, which is the great thing about a community. But making blanket statements that math isn't useful for even general trends, in a very well defined dice rolling game, seems baseless to me, and contrary to the evidence.

A prediction for the "never before seen" maneuver: I do think it will be a variation on the K-turn, but not just having one be white. I think they'll change things up by using a template in a new way like with Lorrir, and have a K-turn type maneuver using a turn or bank template.

A prediction for the "never before seen" maneuver: I do think it will be a variation on the K-turn, but not just having one be white. I think they'll change things up by using a template in a new way like with Lorrir, and have a K-turn type maneuver using a turn or bank template.

I agree. A manuver that grants a free action would be odd at best, and simply letting it do without stress something nearly every ship can do isn't really "new". A banking Kiogram on the other hand is right along the lines of the Lambda's red 0, different, useful, exciting, but not game changing.

All the math in the world is based currently on completely incomplete data. There are just too many variables to do any reasonable math and call it accurate. You can pontificate on the "data", but keep in mind FFG does this for a living, and they do have play testers.

They make games professionally, but there is zero evidence that they have done statistical analysis approaching the level that I have. If they did, then the TIE Advanced, Expose, and R2-F2 would have been designed differently, at a minimum.

Math has correctly predicted that the following ships should see very little competitive tournament play: TIE Advanced (excluding Vader), TIE Interceptors, and A-Wings. None of these ships made the top 16 squads at Worlds.

If you have some specific issues with the analysis, please share! Others have done do and I have adapted the analysis to be better, which is the great thing about a community. But making blanket statements that math isn't useful for even general trends, in a very well defined dice rolling game, seems baseless to me, and contrary to the evidence.

Tell me how the maneuver dial figures into your calculations. Oh, that's right you can't. You don't know what it includes. Tell me about new upgrade cards included in the package. Oh, that's right you can't. You don't know what the pilot abilities will be. You really don't know anything other than the base statistics.

Your analysis is based on incomplete data. That's my specific issue with it. Your criticism is of a game component that you have almost no information about. You don't know how that ship will 'fly', nor does your model take that into account. You have this huge detailed take down about something you are utterly ignorant about. You have not played a single game with one. You are spending all this time and energy to ignorantly critique something before FFG even has a chance to share much information about it, let alone get it into people's games to play some round with it.

What's the point of all the partial-pseudo-analysis? Are you trying to convince people not to buy t? Are you just whining? Are you just living analysis paralysis? It doesn't make any sense to me.

All the math in the world is based currently on completely incomplete data. There are just too many variables to do any reasonable math and call it accurate. You can pontificate on the "data", but keep in mind FFG does this for a living, and they do have play testers.

They make games professionally, but there is zero evidence that they have done statistical analysis approaching the level that I have. If they did, then the TIE Advanced, Expose, and R2-F2 would have been designed differently, at a minimum.

Math has correctly predicted that the following ships should see very little competitive tournament play: TIE Advanced (excluding Vader), TIE Interceptors, and A-Wings. None of these ships made the top 16 squads at Worlds.

If you have some specific issues with the analysis, please share! Others have done do and I have adapted the analysis to be better, which is the great thing about a community. But making blanket statements that math isn't useful for even general trends, in a very well defined dice rolling game, seems baseless to me, and contrary to the evidence.

Tell me how the maneuver dial figures into your calculations. Oh, that's right you can't. You don't know what it includes. Tell me about new upgrade cards included in the package. Oh, that's right you can't. You don't know what the pilot abilities will be. You really don't know anything other than the base statistics.

Your analysis is based on incomplete data. That's my specific issue with it. Your criticism is of a game component that you have almost no information about. You don't know how that ship will 'fly', nor does your model take that into account. You have this huge detailed take down about something you are utterly ignorant about. You have not played a single game with one. You are spending all this time and energy to ignorantly critique something before FFG even has a chance to share much information about it, let alone get it into people's games to play some round with it.

What's the point of all the partial-pseudo-analysis? Are you trying to convince people not to buy t? Are you just whining? Are you just living analysis paralysis? It doesn't make any sense to me.

That is not entirely true. He has been up front that it's about the base ships not the pilots. And he has also worked out what the ship would have to do maneuver-wise to hold even against base TIE/Ln. IE. 1/3 of the Ties must not be able to get a shot off on the Defender each turn to make it comparable. SO he is saying the Dial has to be good enough to allow you to do that to make the ship balanced.

None of the cards in the ship are Defender Only, or use an icon that only the Defender has, therefore they can't be included in balancing the Defender as they can be taken by other ships.

The thing about the "math" predicting what ships would not show up is complete hogwash. I'm sorry, but predicting what people will play is more psychological than mathematical. Given that double Falcon was still being hailed as a great squad, it's no surprise people may have shied away from it. And with Wave 3 still new to a lot of people, the more subtle options were not ready for the big tournament.

And really, you don't even need the math to feel what we know about the Defender feels off. I love the Defender, and what we know does disappoint me. The stats are great, but if it started at PS 3 (like the Firespray or Phantom), I would be a bit happier. It just doesn't feel like an elite ship, with only 2 upgrade options, and not even a full action bar. Which is why I think the dial is going to be absolutely insane. Remember how everyone was crying about how overpowered the Shuttle was when the stats and cost first came out? This is kind of in reverse of what I'm feeling right now.

All the math in the world is based currently on completely incomplete data. There are just too many variables to do any reasonable math and call it accurate. You can pontificate on the "data", but keep in mind FFG does this for a living, and they do have play testers.

They make games professionally, but there is zero evidence that they have done statistical analysis approaching the level that I have. If they did, then the TIE Advanced, Expose, and R2-F2 would have been designed differently, at a minimum.

Math has correctly predicted that the following ships should see very little competitive tournament play: TIE Advanced (excluding Vader), TIE Interceptors, and A-Wings. None of these ships made the top 16 squads at Worlds.

If you have some specific issues with the analysis, please share! Others have done do and I have adapted the analysis to be better, which is the great thing about a community. But making blanket statements that math isn't useful for even general trends, in a very well defined dice rolling game, seems baseless to me, and contrary to the evidence.

This game is only half math. How you fly is the other half of the game.

The thing about the "math" predicting what ships would not show up is complete hogwash. I'm sorry, but predicting what people will play is more psychological than mathematical. Given that double Falcon was still being hailed as a great squad, it's no surprise people may have shied away from it. And with Wave 3 still new to a lot of people, the more subtle options were not ready for the big tournament.

And really, you don't even need the math to feel what we know about the Defender feels off. I love the Defender, and what we know does disappoint me. The stats are great, but if it started at PS 3 (like the Firespray or Phantom), I would be a bit happier. It just doesn't feel like an elite ship, with only 2 upgrade options, and not even a full action bar. Which is why I think the dial is going to be absolutely insane. Remember how everyone was crying about how overpowered the Shuttle was when the stats and cost first came out? This is kind of in reverse of what I'm feeling right now.

Exactly!!! Thank you. I don't run joust list, I run chess list and the Int fits nicely into that slot.

MajorJuggler, don't you think your model looses something through the assumption of a continuous rather than discrete behaviour for the small number of ships typically involved? I tried to approximate a turn by turn sequence using the squads you suggested and your value for the expected damage of a defender. Assuming the defenders have initiative, the result is actually pretty close, though the regular Ties still come out on top. However, in their first salvo, the Defenders just barely miss killing a second Tie (3*1.9 for 5.7 expected damage) whereas the 6 surviving Ties just reach the expected value for killing off one Defender. This means a slight run of good luck early on swings the battle towards the Defenders. While the Ties still appear to be the better deal, the difference is not so big that it could not be accounted for by the maneuver dial.

Could your model be adapted to give a distribution of likely results to take the variance of the dice into account?

The thing about the "math" predicting what ships would not show up is complete hogwash.

To counter, your straw man argument is complete hogwash.

I never said anything about what ships would show up. I said that math has some predictive power in which ships will do well (or in this case do poorly) in a competitive environment.

I'm sticking with evasive maneuver that adds an evade token. They didn't give the most advanced fighter in the galaxy, known for its evasive nature, the evade action...yet packaged it with evade tokens AND are going us a "new maneuver". Not a new speed, not a new bearing, not a new combo... New maneuver.

They are liking new movement options and ways of giving us "double actions" without giving us 2 actions: lorrir, new Astromech... Makes too much sense, feels unique, feels advanced, and makes it worth the points.

I think these bad boys will probably have a set of bank turn K's, probably still red, maybe even a hard turn K. Fits in with the idea of a highly advanced dog fighter.

MajorJuggler, don't you think your model looses something through the assumption of a continuous rather than discrete behaviour for the small number of ships typically involved? I tried to approximate a turn by turn sequence using the squads you suggested and your value for the expected damage of a defender. Assuming the defenders have initiative, the result is actually pretty close, though the regular Ties still come out on top. However, in their first salvo, the Defenders just barely miss killing a second Tie (3*1.9 for 5.7 expected damage) whereas the 6 surviving Ties just reach the expected value for killing off one Defender. This means a slight run of good luck early on swings the battle towards the Defenders. While the Ties still appear to be the better deal, the difference is not so big that it could not be accounted for by the maneuver dial.

Could your model be adapted to give a distribution of likely results to take the variance of the dice into account?

Yes, good thoughts and thanks for asking.

The continuous time quick simulation is what I would consider a "second order" approximation. It's better than a "first order" approximation, which would be squad combat figure of merits from Lanchester's Laws. An even better approximation, say a "third order" approximation, would be a round-based combat simulator that takes into account the actual probability density functions for each individual attack, and generates the resulting squad-based damage probability density functions after each round. You would then recompute from each data point until one squad is completely dead. The final output would tell you the probability of how much life each squad would have. I.e. If squad 1 has 21 hit points and squad 2 has 18 hit points, then the x-axis will go from -21 to +18, and the y-axis is the probability of ending up with that particular result.

I did this for Axis and Allies, and what you get out is a bimodal Gaussian distribution: there's one peak centered around a positive x-axis value, corresponding to a squad 2 victory, and there's another peak centered around a negative x-axis value, corresponding to a squad 1 victory. The squad that is more likely to win will have the larger peak. If they are both about equal, then the two peaks sometimes start to converge in the center. I say sometimes, because many times it is actually more statistically likely that even if two squads are evenly matched, the first round or two will randomly favor one side, at which point the whole thing snowballs into a decisive victory.

I will undoubtedly end up creating a similar sort of program for X-wing, but not for a while. I have other things to work on in the meantime that I need to get wrapped up.

A fourth order approximation would be to somehow change the attack / defense values over time, using some sort of heuristics to figure out what range shots would likely be made based on how long into the game you are. You can keep going to the nth degree, but ultimately, the question is

1. How much confidence do you have in the model, i.e. does it even reflect reality.
2. Is it sufficient for the task at hand.

In this case, for the TIE Defender, it's an off-the-cuff estimate that points us in the right direction. On a completely made-up scale of 1 (yuck I would never fly 5 naked HWKs!) to 10 (wow this ship is absolutely awesome and broken overpowered), the TIE Defender, from what we know so far, is probably sitting somewhere around the 2-4 range, with a big "but wait... there's more" that could push it higher. Like if it gets a free evade every round, or something absurd like that.

Edit: Also, a VERY important note: going to a round based model (3rd order example), you wouldn't use the normalized attack numbers (I.e. 1.9 in this case). You would use the actual damage numbers per attack/defense roll. Incidentally they are pretty close to that anyway, so you would already be in the ballpark.

i hate the overprized points cost with the phantom and the defender

make the phantom start with 20 points up to 26

and the defender from 25 up to 35

just sayin and where the **** is the evade ?? its a friggin tie the best of them all if u read the fluff about it the lore !!

i hate the overprized points cost with the phantom and the defender

make the phantom start with 20 points up to 26

and the defender from 25 up to 35

just sayin and where the **** is the evade ?? its a friggin tie the best of them all if u read the fluff about it the lore !!

Defender's new evasive maneuvers will take care of it.

i hate the overprized points cost with the phantom and the defender

make the phantom start with 20 points up to 26

and the defender from 25 up to 35

just sayin and where the **** is the evade ?? its a friggin tie the best of them all if u read the fluff about it the lore !!

Defender's new evasive maneuvers will take care of it.

I surely hope so, I surely hope so.

i hate the overprized points cost with the phantom and the defender

make the phantom start with 20 points up to 26

and the defender from 25 up to 35

just sayin and where the **** is the evade ?? its a friggin tie the best of them all if u read the fluff about it the lore !!

It makes perfect sense to give a ship with a 4 attack a price less than an X-Wing. /sarcasm

Tell me how the maneuver dial figures into your calculations. Oh, that's right you can't. You don't know what it includes. Tell me about new upgrade cards included in the package. Oh, that's right you can't. You don't know what the pilot abilities will be. You really don't know anything other than the base statistics.

See Rodent's response.

The list of things that we DO know about the TIE Defender is longer than the list of things that we DON'T know at this point. So, do you believe the analysis is based on "somewhat incomplete", or is it "almost no information at all"? You don't seem to have any notion of degrees of certainty; you just want the entire conversation chucked out with the trash.

Here is another perspective on looking at the TIE Defender.

How does a PS3 Defender compare to a Bounty Hunter?

Defender Pros:

• It's one point cheaper (32 vs 33)
• It has one more agility.
• It has a more maneuverable dial (assumed).
• No evade action, but at least one of the pilots has some way to get an evade token. Assuming that this is available for all pilots, this is almost certainly a pro.
• It has a small base, which is probably more well-suited to dogfighting.

Defender cons compared to the Bounty Hunter:

• It has 1 less shield.
• It has 3 less hull.
• It has no rear arc.
• It has no Crew slot.
• It has no bomb / mine slot.

My impression is that the list of Cons outweighs the list of Pros. The 4 less hit points should give it less effective health even with an extra agility die.

We don't know how much better the dial is but I'm guessing the answer is significantly. And don't forget barrel roll. And, as I've said on just about every new thread now, pretty sure defender gets "yellow" maneuvers- evasive manuevers:when it reveals them it gets an evade token.

Even if my last speculation is not right it flys like a completely different ship. Cannon and missiles are a lot different on a small maneuverable base with barrel roll.

the new manouver could be a white K-Turn.

We won't know of the new unseen movements until we see it, unfortunately . However, I find barrel roll to be more useful than boost.

I'm sticking with evasive maneuver that adds an evade token. They didn't give the most advanced fighter in the galaxy, known for its evasive nature, the evade action...yet packaged it with evade tokens AND are going us a "new maneuver". Not a new speed, not a new bearing, not a new combo... New maneuver.

They are liking new movement options and ways of giving us "double actions" without giving us 2 actions: lorrir, new Astromech... Makes too much sense, feels unique, feels advanced, and makes it worth the points.

I have to ask, is this a hunch, or have you heard something?