I know this might be a step back in the discussion, but from a design perspective, I'd like to revisit what the objectives are for the match from a player's perspective, and objectives for design of tournament scoring models. The objective of the match for each player is to destroy the enemy's ships (call this the player objective). For a game that does not go to time, you have a simple evaluation of the winner: who has ships left standing? However, before elimination rounds or in matches that go to time, some scoring model is necessary to break ties (in both individual matches and in overall win-loss for the elimination cut). Perhaps these two situations need to be slightly separated, perhaps they don't. The Primary objective of the scoring model is to determine which player performed best with regard to the goal of destroying all of the enemy's ships. A Secondary objective of the scoring model is to evaluate as fairly as possible so that no particular playstyle in pursuit of the players' main objective is relatively disadvantaged by the scoring model itself. A Tertiary objective of the scoring model is to mitigate exploitation of playstyles that will seek to maximize scoring model outcomes but subvert the player objective (if any exist). The scoring model needs to be simple enough to understand and calculate between matches. The only information that can realisticly be gathered for this are ships destroyed and ending health. Trying to figure from positions, target locks, actions, critical effects, etc. formulaicly who the winner would be is simply not possible. Remember the primary objective: the model looks at the snapshot of an endgame outcome and gives rank to who would have won and by how much. Reality could mean that the scoring model is wrong in some cases, but it should have a reasonable rate of certainty and seldom have counterexamples. Current MoV has a bit of a blindspot to ships that are very high points, and particularly those that may last a long time. For an oft-cited and illustrative example, in a game that goes to time with a 4 tie swarm left (or otherwise reasonably healthy equivalent points) on the field versus a low-health Fat Han. It might be said with a degree of certainty that if time were available to continue playing, the Fat Han would be the loser. This is a failure of the Primary Objective of the scoring model to accurately determine which player was closer to destroying all of the enemy's ships. Having high point ships that last long being counted as full points at full health or low health (moving away from just the Fat Han example, but others, too) is also the core reason for the failure of the Secondary Objective: many playstyles or list compositions accept damage taken, even ships lost, to win a war of attrition. Joust-efficient ships are brought with an expectation that you will be taking damage but--when played successfully--at least dishing out enough damage to justify its point cost. Nuanced into the joust-efficient playstyle is the composition of ships: there are cheap jousters like z-95s and ties (call them type A), and some that are more expensive but bring higher stats to justify (call them type B). Type A is more frequently losing ships than type B even in a winning game, and thus, under current MoV, losing points more often. There are big steps of MoV points given relative to the percentage of a squad's health. A type A squad that lost 60% of their health might have lost more points than a type B squad that also lost 60% of their health (assuming the degree of focus fire was the same). Put this way, both successful results appear similarly well-played but MoV would favor the type B squad slightly. This can be a larger disadvantage than it appears because before elimination rounds you are not only losing points to your MoV score but also giving points to a competitor. One thing that I think MoV does reasonably well is the Tertiary Objective, at least a lot better than strength of schedule. Before elimination rounds, players who try to snipe early points and slow play or play "not to lose" in an attempt to explot MoV might not be able to maximize their MoV. The players' main goal is to destroy all the enemy's ships and MoV only gives points to destroyed ships. From my limited sample of experiences, I have not seen many players who decide to disengage while ahead and burn time for the sole sake of saving MoV points, and I am skeptical that such a playstyle is really rewarded all that often under MoV. Certainly holding onto a few ships by playing this way might give you a small consolation in MoV, but I also don't think any scoring model could completely eliminate all incentive of this kind of play. I could be wrong, and would be receptive to someone proving it to me.

I haven't used it, but I feel like it could hurt anyone. The problem is that there is not a very good way of determining exactly how close a match really was (Especially if it went to time). These scoring methods are attempts to approximate it. A lot of the alternatives have been explored and tested and scrapped. Strength of schedule had issues. MoV was a proposed alternative. MoV is proven to have some problems. Partial point scoring is a proposed alternative. Undoubtedly, some problems are likely to pop up, but have they been identified yet? I'm not sure we know yet. Do we know who is worst off amongst high health, high points big turret ships, low health high points arc dodgers, low health low points swarmy ships, or anything inbetween?

In aerial combat, one of the most common uses of a barrel roll is to retain energy while in pursuit of a slower, more agile opponent. Taking a brief moment to suspend disbelief and consider what use that might have in dogfighty space combat...You would have to be in low enough orbit of some celestial body to make a "climbing" turn retain energy, but it might be useful.

I'd prefer something added to its value at low to no cost rather than a baseline discount. Discounted modifications would probably do it, allowing players to decide if it will get a durability boost or an mobility boost with EU. Another idea would be to offer something that improves its damage output, to cement the role of glass cannon--a tradeoff to the b-wing counterpart who would keep it's superior longevity.

I have found mandalorian merc to be really good. Bounty hunter is also undoubtedly good from every match I've seen with 3x firespray. The generics need to work with the rest of their squad to cope with bold arc dodgers. The way I see it, the unique pilots need to take advantage of PS while generics can bully ships around with the rear arc.

There is a lotta little tactics you might use in different situations. For example, pay attention to who moves first and where k-turns land. If you move second, park your ships in your opponent's k-turns the turn you joust, and then k-turn yourself after. Your opponent is forced to turn about, slow boat forwards, or bump. Your k-turn should land after his ships move. Other tricks I like to use is to place asteroids such that deploying in the middle of the edge is unsuitable and to protect a horizontal lane through the middle. Deploy to get in file or double file, fly straight to the horizontal lane and turn. Your formation should be in a line formation moving towards the enemy. If your opponent cant shuffle his formation, you will meet his squad in file or double file.

I was inspired by echo's card art and painted some grey ties and blue solar panels. I only have crappy pictures, I might get a better one today, but I painted 3 tie fighters, an interceptor, and a phantom these colors. Crappy pictures:

It should also be noted that in an ordered list of each ship's durability, rarely will changing attacker composition change rank unless their durabilities are quite close to begin with.

Ordnance is not being so widely shelved because cannons are a better value for the cost. Ordnance is being so widely shelved because virtually anything else you could put in your list for the points is a better value for the cost.

Reality is that which, if you don't believe in it, doesn't go away. X-wings do not last as long as b-wings under fire. You can do the comparison with 2-dice attackers or 3 or 4 or 5, and while the gap between their relative lifespans may change slightly, the x-wing will always be more likely to die first. And whoever mentioned that "all numbers are infinite" quote should read up on L'Hopital.

More tolerable criticism of the method would probably be more along the lines of what is being approximated in the model, which seems acknowledged in MJ's explanation post. But that is the nature of any model, and the interpreter needs to either intuitively take that into account or use a different model to make decisions.

My fuzzy recollection of the numbers are that a normal ship on first draw has ~20% of getting a pilot card discarded by determination. Maarek against a normal ship drops this to some hopeless percentage. Leebo normally gets ~40%. Maarek on leebo ends up dropping the rate back to ~20% with like 1% over the normal ship. Over multiple draws, maarek will end up winning out numerically, mostly because he likely ends up depleting the damage deck of pilot cards.

That depends on the turret. Admiral has an efficiency around 80%, provided you are willing to bid to PS8. I'll update my House Rules soon with what makes sense for the Patrol Leader and Kenkirk. For a ship that is only 80% efficient, it sure is popular. Maybe you should revisit that benchmark. That is joust efficiency. Equal points of more efficient jousters would be expected to win in a slug out. However, with a turret and his PS, throw EU on there, he will avoid being targeted by enemy ships while still getting shots in.

I don't think ordnance changes alone make or break the utility of the crit resistant freighters. I also would have to dig through to find the numbers/evidence, but leebo and maareks abilities practically cancel each other out on the first draw, and I think maarek wins out in multiple draws.

Well, amongst the meta ships... Big ships aren't super bothered because they aren't likely to die before they normally would (youd have to not run out of ordnance before the ship died or else be forced to chug through shields per normal play) with maybe a couple exceptions. B-wing lifespan becomes shockingly cut down. Z-95 too. A-wing, three. Phantoms might be a little bothered, or at least given a smaller margin of error. Corran horn becomes frightened. The rest wouldn't care about the change at all.

Depends on the matchup. Ships with low hull, high shields could get zoned out of meta from such a hard counter. Ships without shields are unphased. Ships with shieldsand high hull might not be as bothered.

Bwings and z95s are the most economic choices for pure damage and survivability rebels have. By not paying points for turrets, boost, pilot skill, or other tricks, bbbbz becomes a tight juggernaut that becomes the predator that other lists need to approach cautiously.

Backstabber can be a good flanker and a good choice in a turret-rich meta, too.

Defender or firespray would probably be able to be a good hard hitter in support of a miniswarm. Interceptor and phantom are good, too, but will more often shy away from the fray if caught in a bad spot, possibly leaving behind the swarm to avoid getting gibbed in a slugfest. If you do go with firespray or defender, a cannon might help them keep up damage as you stay further back so that your swarm takes the punishment instead of your spendy ships.

I don't think they are worth the points currently. They without a doubt are giving you an improvement in damage output, however their single use nature and difficulties in launching guarantee that their adding benefit is almost never going to be 4+ points. I am convinced that if they were cheap enough, they would be worth bringing. However, they are not all created equal. Take proton rockets, one of the arguably best ordnance choices in a vacuum, though certainly not suitable for all ships: -3 points puts them on the low cost side of ordnance. A check in favor of the proton rockets. It still may be too much, but its better than the 4+ price tag almost all other high damage ordnance options have. -On an agility 3 ship, they have one of the highest damage potential of a single attack in-game. Certainly this would be worth something... -Only requires focus. Any ships can take a focus. The lowest action requirement for a piece of ordnance. However, this also means that you need to have gotten your action the same round. [whereas a TL could have been gotten at any previous turn] -Replaces a range 1 primary attack. If you have agility 2, you aren't getting any bonus unless you have a primary attack less than 3. Below agility 2, no ship is seeing a benefit from bringing these. Without a PS bid to guarantee an early shot, your ship needs to survive being a range 2-3 at least a turn, and possibly even a volley from range 1 by anything firing before. These criterion give you a short list of ships that could even get any benefit from this ordnance being on the ship: -Z-95s. Only given 1 extra dice over a primary at range 1. With how easily easily they die, it could be difficult to land rockets before the ship is dead. Not to mention that you are only adding 1 extra dice once. Not really a suitable choice. -A-wings. Thankfully gets 2 extra dice. With the added agility and better maneuvering options, might be one of the best ships for delivering rockets. Unfortunately, the opportunity cost is then going without your refit, which is practically necessary to justify the ship on its own. If refit didn't take up this slot, I think we'd have seen more proton rockets on a-wings. -Tie advanced. Thankfully gets 2 extra dice. Without the title from the raider, these ships do not make it to the table in the first place. Once the upgrade cards start arriving, we may see some proton rockets on these guys. ATC + 5 focused attack dice is going to be a brutal attack. AC players might not be as thrilled to be using their actions for offense, but still might like the opportunity to do more than 2 damage at a time. -Tie defender. Only getting 1 extra dice. The points are also competing with the cannon slot options. -Tie bomber. Rarely seen on the table in the first place. Only getting 1 extra dice. Not quite as maneuverable as the other ships, and the high PS ships are more overpriced than the generics, making them poor choices to compensate. The points are also competing with every other ordnance choice in-game. -YT-2400. Only getting 1 extra dice. Having opponents in the range 1 forwards arc is exactly the opposite of how this turret ship is flown. So amongst the few ships that get any kind of benefit, there is one ship that might be suitable in the future, one ship that would be very suitable were the missile not taking up its discount slot, and a bunch of ships that certainly aren't getting enough benefit to bother fitting. Remember this is one of the ordnance choices that a lot of players use as a counter-example to ordnance being not worth its points.

As of now the only competitive ships/pilots are Decimator (unique pilots only) YT-1300 (unique pilots only) Whisper Tie Fighter (non unique and Howlrunner) Aggressors Dash Rendar 12 point ships like Bandit, BP, and Academy (which was already mentioned in Tie Fighters) All the top tier lists are built around these competitive ships. Everything else is filler and that is the thing with all the stat min-maxing and jousting values and what not. There will be ships that have better power curves over their value because of the stats. Having additional upgrades might not do that good of a job. The raider might not propel 4 Tie Advance lists in the worlds top 8 when it comes out. But that is the nature of competitive play in customizable games. In order to be competitive there has to be optimization which meant there will be good pieces, bad pieces, and middle of the ground pieces which will often be thrown in the bad piece category so more good pieces can be played. The trick is to avoid great pieces that dominate the game and brings in stagnation. The second trick and one of the hardest is the meta shift. Often you want to try and have the meta move from the different dominating roles such as switching from aggressive play to a more passive play and visa versa. This is done partly by FAQ/errata but mostly by additional content that provides boons to certain unused pieces or protection from popular pieces. However as this is done one ship may increase in popularity and become competitive but others will still decrease in popularity and become no longer competitive. Still the optimization nature is exactly what makes the X-wing the least competitive piece. It is a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none but for optimization in turn based games you don't want jack, you want the masters. The X-wing has good offensive capabilities average range of movement and decent suitability all for a medium-low price range, but you got cheaper options, you got more aggressive options, more maneuverable options, and more tanky options. So with that I will conclude that the X-wing will never be fixed unless it gets such a ridiculous boon it becomes more powerful than Fat Hans and pre-nerf Whisper put together. It is still a good piece and a great start for new players, but it won't be competitive. I really don't think it needs a ridiculous boon, just to either bring more to the table or cost less to do so. B-wings aren't a crazy piece on the board, they are just on par with their benefit/cost, and yet BBBBZ is a monster list that has gotten lots of attention competitively. No frills, no special ability, no upgrades, but just good in the same way and for (most of) the same reasons why a big tie swarm works from wave 1 to today. If x-wings brought as much plain firepower and survivability for its cost as the b-wing, we'd also be seeing XXXXZ or BBXXZ or any combination of them being talked about in the same way.

I'd like to have the same optimism, but frankly Prox mines can whiff and on average result in one or two hits. I love them but I use them for board control, placing them between obstacles on the board. Giving me more mines is fab, but more missiles means more work to get those shots away and also translates to higher threat. Maybe that's what FFG intended: bombers with EO pull more aggro. Still, a pretty lousy fix. Depending on the target, one or two hits can be unacceptable (for the defender), particularly when your opponent can't directly do anything to stop you. Hypothetical squad: 4x Scimitar squadrons with proximity mines, some 4-point missile or torp, and extra ordnance. In our current meta, (or at least around the release of phantoms) I could see a squad like this being somewhat competitive. Against the high PS arc dodgy ships that may also rely on high agility, proximity mines are a larger threat than anything else for the cost. The alpha strike of the torps could tip the match in their favor against more jousty ships, though the bombers might not have enough longevity. The numbers and hard hitting nature would probably let them contend with turret ships, too. Without extra ordnance, they'd have half the stamina at the same cost.

Then you are luck sir. Perhaps you have not heard of a new thing called Wave 7 and Extra Munitions? Bombers are better than they look, and cheaply increasing their payloads could mean you'll see lists dropping multiple proximity mines directly onto your ships, killing them before they reveal dials. As someone earlier made a Jurassic park bit, perhaps learn a little respect.

The point I don't see people making is that accuracy corrector does let you more freely take actions...for offense, too. Meaning you could be taking target locks at distance and saving them for range 1 exchanges without a huge sacrificing in damage output before then (while also being more flexible than FCS).

I cope mostly by building x-wing lists in secret that I just want to play but never actually go through with it.