zero9300
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Posts posted by zero9300
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Biggs and a fringer with tactical jammer. Throw in a blue with hlc and whatever upgrades you like.
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Multiple shots in a round could tell a different story. Another element lost is that simply dividing the health by the average damage are overkilling shots and double damage critical hits. For this case of low expected net damage, it may be close enough though.
The problem is that the defender is only in control of half the equation. As the opponent's dice increase on individual ships, the less durability a mitigation-build gets you.So as a card carrying member of the not that good at advanced math club is there any way to create a measure of durability, similar to jousting values, to operate a way of evaluating defensive efficiency? I realize jousting values aren't perfect but they do provide a simple way to evaluate ships against each other.
Fel struggles quite a bit vs 4 Sigmas, for instance, but completely owns against a Bomber Swarm.
I'd calculate it as the full set of odds, collected to determine the damage distribution, and divide the total health of the ship in question by those odds, to determine an average number of attacks required to kill the ships.
The full set of odds, incidentally, is "The ability of my ship to produce a damage threshold of X" multiplied by "The failure rate of the defender to mitigate that threshold". Each individual mash-up of those will simply be added to each other.
E.G.: An Advanced TIE with an Accuracy Corrector is attacking Baron Fel.
The odds of the Adv. TIE of producing at least 2 damage is 100%.
The odds of the Adv. TIE of producing 3 or more hits is 0%, except at Range 1.
The odds of Baron Fel being hit by this, with his full combo up, is appx 2%.
The odds of Baron Fel being dealt 2 damage by this, with his full combo up, is 0% (he will have either a natural evade, focus, or blank).
Therefore, the first HP will take around 50 attacks to penetrate, on average.
Following that, the Baron's numbers falter a bit, due to the loss of the Stealth Device.
His new odds of being hit by 2 damage, with the full combo up, is approximately 5%.
Appx 40 attacks will kill both of his remaining HP.
The moral of this story? If you're flying a TIE Advanced with Accuracy Correctors vs SuperFel, you NEED to be either at Range 1, or remove some of his combo through blocking, or it will take you around 90 attacks to destroy his measly 3 health.
Of course, when you're dealing with such long odds, you will encounter wild swings of variance. It takes 50 attacks on average, but sometimes it only takes 1 attack if he's unlucky, or 300 if he isn't. -
Read in post 3 of mjs joust thread; joust values are calculated from an expected damage output number and an expected durability. Durability is just a calculation of the average shots to kill a ship. It does not account for evade actions, regeneration, or autothrusters, but you can incorporate those elements if you recreate the calculation.So as a card carrying member of the not that good at advanced math club is there any way to create a measure of durability, similar to jousting values, to operate a way of evaluating defensive efficiency? I realize jousting values aren't perfect but they do provide a simple way to evaluate ships against each other.
Punning Pundit reacted to this -
Oh well, another boring movie about boys.
Where do you think you are?
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Defender deficiency from mjs numbers is deeply seated in the valuing of the 4k turn. The joust value is a simple numerical analysis of the stat line, which is arguably the least disputable aspect of the method. What the white k-turn does to the non-jousting coefficient is less concrete. Mj highlights those numbers in orange, acknowledging that the numbers are suspect or imprecise, mostly because there is little precedence or direct evidence for the feature.
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B2 and B3 hard 2, targeting corran if in range. B1 takes a 1 bank and barrel roll to avoid rock. Y-wing 2 banks and also takes target lock if in range. If corran horn is tagged by ion this turn, he cannot regen shield and is likely to be eaten alive the following turn, sans divine intervention.
Best chance for awings is to get into range before corran is dead. Getting the awings into that triangle of asteroidswould be good to deter the enemy from flying directly at the awings after corran horn gets loving. Tycho can 3 hard and boost (ptl and tl if possible) before a hard turn. Jake could either 2 hard focus + barrel roll or 2 bank boost right. Corran should try to stay alive if possible, but not put a roid in hos 1 forwards as his chance of getting ioned are high. A slow move and evade token would go a long way to giving corran a fighting chance. Save his ability for the second round of combat(if he survives it) for a closer range shot.
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Decoy has three main 'advantages' over swarm:
1) range 1-2 instead of range 1 only. However, most lists that exploit these sorts of cards tend to stay tight anyways, but the range increase might matter sometimes.
2) if your high PS wants to shoot later in the turn order, but swarming the rest of the list isn't viable, decoy can be of use.
3) your high PS doesn't need to equip decoy, in case you wanted a different ept.
Admittedly, these advantages are kinda weak, but they are what you have to work with.
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Mathematical models are not what destroy the variety. Reality does. The variety of options that never make it to table simply do not give the player enough use for the cost when you can spend them elsewhere. No one is forcing you to play efficient options, but not doing so could put you at a disadvantage in a tournament setting. Depending on degree, you might still be successful on the table, but unused ships stay unused whether or not anyone looks at a thread saying this or that ship is efficient--experience will draw similar conclusions.The TIE Interceptor's stat line cost efficiency is actually a hair higher than the X-wing.
And the TIE Interceptor has boost and barrel roll, so if the PS1 Interceptor isn't viable, then the PS2 X-wing certainly is not either.
So, it seems as though (inherently flawed and limited in scope) mathematical models are once again declaring ships to be entirely "not viable".
It's this kind of cynical, statistic-driven analysis that has led - over the last 12 months - to a self-fulfilling prophecy of a meta. Entire ranges of ships, pilots and upgrades are ruled out wholesale because they're considered (under the said inherently flawed and limited in scope model) to be marginally less "efficient" than their cousins.
New players pick up the game, gaze in awe at the wealth of options available, join a forum to find out more and are told "yeah, don't use that unless you want to lose."
TIE swarms became the norm because we're told they're "efficient". BBBBZ becomes the norm because we're told it's "efficient". At the expense of everything which is apparently not.
This (incredibly well designed and balanced) game is packed to the brim with an absolute wealth of options and variety, and yet the dogged pursuit for perceived optimum "efficiency" appears to be stifling those options and killing off that variety. So here's a novel approach: to hell with so-called mathematical efficiency; whatever happened to fun?
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A lot of "old" models are still very competitive in-game. Nothing is explicitly keeping OG tie fighters off the board. The addition of the outrider and decimator as big turret ships didn't obsolete the falcon, but provided other options. Soontir fel is still seen on the board as best in class even after aces. B-wings are not new ships at this point, and they do quite well. Y-wings got the update they need to be good substitutes for b-wings with BTL-A4, with some tradeoffs to consider.
A lot of the newer models are not super competitive or game-changing on their own. Starvipers aren't seeing too much use. M3As don't seem to have quite the impact that was probably expected of them. IG-2000 is great, but I don't see it forcing entire lists out of meta right now.
Most of what is part of the "in-crowd" now has been around for a while, maybe with some updates to help them reach par (refit, BTL-A4, autothrusters, C3-p0, etc.)
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From elven eyed posters in another thread:
The PS6 k-wing allows friendlies at range 1-2 to spend the k-wing's focus tokens while attacking.
The turret appears to be a 6 point range 2-3 option rolling 3 dice. The card text says to perform the attack twice, each time cancelling all dice results if it hits and causing the defender 1 damage.
Bombadier was, as predicted by several of the oracles on the forums, allows you to use a longer template when dropping bombs (I think it is a 2-forwards template).
Rhoaran and MegaSilver reacted to this -
I really doubt that the k-wing is undercosted, though admittedly I have not run numbers for anything yet.
I also doubt that the punisher will be overcosted.
Both ships are really up in the air in terms of how nice the dial may be.
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Target the closest thing that is most likely to die. If there are any serious threats that you have the opportunity to attack, take that into consideration. Even if you are facing down an end-game juggernaut, don't take a disadvantageous position just for the chance to take him down earlier. If his ships are together and diverse, aim for the glassiest cannon of the bunch.
More times than one have I seen someone put corran horn a distance from his teammates to make shooting him the worse choice. This is not a terrible choice for corran, but if he gets too far from his friends, though, the rest of your list can take a local superiority over the 50-60pts he left hanging. Also more than once I have had most or all of my ships left chasing corran horn and taking forever to knock him out if hes playing evasively, but he is nowhere near as big a threat if you just slow down and get your ships back together.
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I would say not so. Good players should size up what is on the board and play the other side, make decisions as if they were the other player based on the most beneficial move for them. If indeed their opponent picks a different move and it somehow counters, then the "good player" didn't really make a genuine effort. Sometimes an excellent player just needs to fall back on basics of winning the game: shooting up the enemy ships.
In real fighter combat, there are a ton of complicated maneuvers that get crazy names, but you don't just perform those maneuvers because you are skilled or that is in your hand. If an F-18 is coming up behind a bandit who hasn't seen him, there is no maneuver to do other than fly into range and attack.
Real fighter combat is actually a really good analogy. You never "perform maneuvers" with fancy names as your objective. Your goal is to kill the opposing pilot as quickly and brutally as possible. The best way to do that is to fly in low and behind him where he can't see you, preferably after a dive out of the sun to keep your speed up, squeeze off a murderous burst, and leave. If you do your job, the dead man will have never even known you were there. Maneuvers happen when the other guy is a jerk about it and tries to keep you from brutally killing him. But the maneuvers are never an end-goal in themselves, they are always designed to solve one of the four problems of BFM (Range, Closure, Aspect, and Angle-off) and solving those four problems puts you in the six o'clock position you're describing.
X-Wing works very differently from aerial combat, but I think the principle of simply trying to murder your enemy as brutally and efficiently as possible is probably a good one nonetheless.
I look to other sources of inspiration to draw parallels and analogy, but the mechanics at play differ to such degree that taking any strategy or tactic that is too specific would be worthless. A lot of basic and general parallels can still be drawn to other wargames or examples of combat. Aerial combat as an example, it holds in the philosophy of attack the enemy without retaliation if possible, be able to retaliate if attacked. The parallels do mostly dissolve when you start to consider strategy and tactics dictated by how planes fly and shoot.
To take another example, particularly from ground combat, you need to consider force concentration when trading shots in x-wing and how the strength of 4 units spread across the board differs from those same units in groups of 2 or in a single group. A lot of the philosophy of x-wing formation flying has been influenced by the principle that your concentrated force, so long as it does not become unwieldy, will defeat the mirror of itself spread thin across the board. Again, details of how x-wing ships move and shoot will make x-wing diverge from the example I draw this parallel from.
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I would say not so. Good players should size up what is on the board and play the other side, make decisions as if they were the other player based on the most beneficial move for them. If indeed their opponent picks a different move and it somehow counters, then the "good player" didn't really make a genuine effort. Sometimes an excellent player just needs to fall back on basics of winning the game: shooting up the enemy ships.
In real fighter combat, there are a ton of complicated maneuvers that get crazy names, but you don't just perform those maneuvers because you are skilled or that is in your hand. If an F-18 is coming up behind a bandit who hasn't seen him, there is no maneuver to do other than fly into range and attack.
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I'm doing it, too. I really want to make the scum x-wing work, and I like its style.
For more vanilla squads, I think 3x z-95, 2x cartel kihraxz, and Serissu could be fun. Still in the dark about kihraxz dial and base cost, but its kinda safe to infer it can't be worse than an x-wing or cost more than 21 points. If it is cheaper than 21 points, then perhaps some small PS bids could be done with the squad.
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It is on par with a tie swarm, but has a few advantages in keeping fire concentrated, maneuvering, and MoV considerations.
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lets see what wave 8 comes up with. I think bombardier will fix weapons that require spending tokens.
There is a clear scan of Bombardier. All it does is let you drop bombs using a 2 Straight Template.
That Sounds like it could be useful if you could manage to pair it with "Genius" on a ship in the future. I already Use "Genius" on my Scum Y-wings to drop a bomb after a 4 K-turn to slingshot bombs at people. Being able to increase the range on that would be really fun. Dropping a bomb about the equivalent of 7 1 straight maneuvers ahead of my position would certainly help me get off some unexpected bombs. Maybe it will be doable when the Scum equivalent to the K-wing and Tie Punisher come out.
It is unlikely we will see a crew slot and (salvaged) astromech slot on a bomb capable ship.
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Look at the distributions. As a precursor, let's just look at red dice, so we don't consider the effect of green dice right away. Also, do not discriminate between hits and crits for the moment:
3-atk dice | naked | focus | focus+TL 3 hits | 12.5% | 42.19% | 82.4% 2 hits | 37.5% | 42.19% | 16.48% 1 hits | 37.5% | 14.06% | 1.1% 0 hits | 12.5% | 1.56% | 0.02%
The accuracy corrector vs the 3-atk ship needs to have context of what kind of action you have. The raw information plopping out is shown in the table above. Also not taken into account are the effects of adding range bonuses, which the accuracy corrector will not directly help with--but do not discard the notion that it can help you.
Compared against the naked, no dice modifying 3-atk, the accuracy corrector provides a better result 50% of the time, a worse result 12.5% of the time, and the same result 37.5% of the time.
Against a focused or target locking 3-atk ship, the accuracy corrector provides a better result 15.62% of the time, a worse result 42.19% of the time, and the same result 42.19% of the time.Against a focused and target locking 3-atk ship, the accuracy corrector provides a better result only 1.12% of the time, a worse result 82.4% of the time, and the same result 16.48% of the time.
Start considering your realistic options for action economy. If you think your 3-atk ship would not often have actions available for offense, your accuracy corrector will have the same or better result 87.5% of those times. If you think your 3-atk ship will have just a single dice modification (focus or target lock), accuracy corrector will have the same or better result 57.81% of those times. If you think your 3-atk ship will have both focus and target lock, accuracy corrector will have the same or better result only 17.6% of those times.
You can continue in this vein for the range 1 or 3 situation. You can also begin to consider the effects of defense dice. You can do any kind of analysis on your own. If you want to look at MJ's work (which have assumptions for range, defender agility, and action availability), his numbers come out to the following damage output coefficients:
2-atk: 1.000
2-atk + AC: 1.4630
3-atk: 1.7058
3-atk + AC: 1.9349
AC added to a 2-atk ship improves its output by 46.3%, while a 3-atk ship sees a 13.4% improvement. 2-atk with AC is not quite as high as 3-atk, but also not really explicitly portrayed is the more free action economy. Those actions could mean more focuses, evades, barrel rolls, or boosts on the defense without sacrificing offense. This doesn't really get brought up that often I read about it, but AC could also give you a bit more freedom in offensive actions, too.
Crazy talk? Well, if you are anticipating a range 1 encounter in the near future, you might want to take a target lock and hold onto it. AC will let you compensate offensively by assuring a good damage output. At range 1, you let loose a TL + focus attack. Then the following round, you may k-turn and still have AC improving your damage output despite the stress. FCS will admittedly let you do something similar for a point less, but with the added restriction that you will have to keep attacking the same target. I don't believe this strategy is being taken into account for directly in MJ's calculations (his numbers treat range and action availability as independent). I haven't bothered to calculate with these assumptions, but they could be interesting.
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It is an interesting squad, but it probably could still be taken in a joust by more vanilla squads. Almost all your control is within range 1. Your upgrades on the ceptor and the advanced are doing little outside that range and will not fare much better than a regular advanced and interceptor in a joust there(which is to say, not well against rank and file jousting ships). I think the strengths of the squad would be outside the joust, using the maneuverability to split the enemy's jousters' arcs up and picking off what you can at close range.
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Re: how willing you are to spend on the game.
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Just build your ships up over time. Budget your spending with your income and how willing you are to spend on the game.
ScruffyJedi and Far Wanderer reacted to this -
Juno's ability will give a lot of range control in a jousty situation, and improves the effectiveness of making subtle plays to tip the scales in your favor.
For example, Juno with PTL could use her ability to inch right onto the edge of range 3, take a target lock, then barrel roll out of range 3. Next turn, green maneuver into closer range, get a focus, and possibly PTL an evade, too.
Juno can more easily plop herself into a lower PS opponent's K-turn to block that option the subsequent turn.
It is pretty safe for Juno to pick a bearing and dial in the speed 2 maneuver for it with confidence.
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I think the support pilots are interesting. I could see guys like Zertik and Colzet being useful for having cheap tools that would be good against 2-atk swarms and big hulled ships, respectively.
From my experience using ~4 z-95s or ties, the goal is typically get into range 1 to improve chances of dealing damage to 3 agi targets whenever I can and make use of numbers. Zertik would become a challenge to deal with from there.
Colzet is really neat because he could be flying around at the edge of range, just flipping damage cards over. Not super great, I mean no one uses saboteur, but at least it can be done at any range with certainty that a card will flip over. Shennanigans with steele could be done to pick out cards that are resolved when flipped facedown. For example, steele picks thrust control fire, it gets flipped down, Colzet flips it faceup again at the end phase.
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Proton rockets kick ass, but they are situational and depend heavily on which ships you put them on. They are amongst the cheapest, offer one of the highest improvements in damage (for adding up to 2 dice over a regular attack without forcing you to spend your action to do so), have the easiest action requirement, and even have one of the highest damage potentials of any single attack. The only drawback is range 1 requirement, adding to the risk/reward, but still quite usable.
However, the choices of ships suitable for them are a short list, with most seeing little table use as it is. (A-wing is reluctant to give up their refit to mount these, advanced won't see a lot of use until raider is around)
Why is nobody talking about Kavil?
in X-Wing
Posted
Kavil is great. The reason I see a lot of people might not like him (compared to generics) is that his ability shoehorns him into a niche that is not really demanded right now. I want to love him as the only ept capable y wing out of the box, but btl-a4 generics are killer.