Regionals Data - The Impact of Flotillas

[shmitty 3,315]

Been looking through the 3 seasons of Regionals data for a blog post.  As Flotillas have been a hot-button issue I was looking to see what can be said of their impact.

The most obvious would be that since their introduction fleet size has increased by a little less than 1 ship per fleet.  (.6 ships over all and .8 ships in the Top 4).

But I was curious how that change was manifesting.  We weren't getting ridiculously larger fleets on the top end.  For Wave 2, the average largest fleet was 5.75 and for Wave 5 it was 6.

So, if the top end wasn't moving much where is the change?  This data is for the Top 4 finishers:

# of Ships	Wave 2	Wave 3/4	Wave 5
2	15%	7%	2%
3	32%	11%	7%
4	28%	39%	44%
5	20%	27%	37%
6	5%	14%	7%
7	0%	2%	3%

Since the arrival of the flotilla, the 2 and 3 ship fleet has essentially disappeared.  Everything is now clustered in the 4-5 ship range.  The high activation fleets have not grown as fast as the low activation fleets have shrank.  Things have pushed towards the middle.

Flotillas don't seem to have made swarms any swarm-ier than they already were, but have helped the low activation fleets to better compete.

The large ship numbers seem to agree with this.  Fleets with Large ships are doing much better since the release of the flotilla:

Large Ships	All	Top 4
Wave 2	52%	39%
Wave 3/4	52%	43%
Wave 5	51%	49%

Taking a large ship no longer hampers your activation count nearly as much as it used to.

More to come as I continue writing and crunching numbers, but thought I would share this bit now.

[Ardaedhel 10,840]

Wait wait wait.

So you're saying the mechanic that was introduced to mitigate the impact of activation advantage of MSUs...

WORKED??

[thecactusman17 3,192]

3 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Wait wait wait.

So you're saying the mechanic that was introduced to mitigate the impact of activation advantage of MSUs...

WORKED??

What it's done is taken the 2-3 ship list and made it the 3-4 ship list by replacing 1 ship with 2 Flotillas.

[Ardaedhel 10,840]

Just now, thecactusman17 said:

What it's done is taken the 2-3 ship list and made it the 3-4 ship list by replacing 1 ship with 2 Flotillas.

Yes.  Keeping large ships viable in the face of MSUs by providing them with an option to take L + M/S + F + F.

Working as intended.

[Snipafist 7,536]

All I have to say is thanks for this and I've always been impressed with the data collections efforts of @shmitty, who does this community a great service. Data is always useful and this more or less matches my subjective experience. It's been a very long time since I played against a 2 activation fleet and 3 activation fleets are very rare since flotillas arrived. I haven't seen MSU activations go up past about 6 with any regularity* and 4-5 seems to be the average for most fleets nowadays.

*I had a 7-activation MSU build for a while but I found that with 7 activations I was usually sacrificing fighter coverage or ship attack power and the results weren't as consistent as I would've liked against better players. One of our top players (the guy who won the Sunday Adepticon tournament) has a 7 activation all-smalls Rieekan MSU fleet I've played against easily a dozen or more times. It's good, but now that the better locals are used to it, it's not doing as well as it used to and has been more or less retired for a 5-6 activation Rieekan build with a Defiance HMC80 (which is what he won the Sunday Adepticon event with).

[thecactusman17 3,192]

Just now, Ardaedhel said:

Yes.  Keeping large ships viable in the face of MSUs by providing them with an option to take L + M/S + F + F.

Working as intended.

Yeah.  It's hard to argue with it.  On the Imperials, for example, you can replace 1 raider with 2 gozantis.  on the Rebel side, you can replace a Cr90b with two GR-75s.  The flotilla has simply taken the place of the "spare ship" n everybody's fleet for the combined purposes of activation control and fleet support.

I know there's concern about the ubiquity of Flotillas, but that's because everyone was looking for that utility ship and these are the options presented.  Depending on the cost of the Hammerhead, we might see certain rebels replace flotillas with those.

[geek19 6,557]

I am so happy about this.  You CAN make a reliable fleet with 4 or 5 activations and be fine.

3 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

Yes.  Keeping large ships viable in the face of MSUs by providing them with an option to take L + M/S + F + F.

Working as intended.

Or L+S+S+F (if you count the MC30 as a small and all).

[Ardaedhel 10,840]

Just now, geek19 said:

I am so happy about this.  You CAN make a reliable fleet with 4 or 5 activations and be fine.

Or L+S+S+F (if you count the MC30 as a small and all).

Yup.  More accurately than what I said, I guess, is that they give people who want to take large ships options and flexibility in doing so, without having to strip all the sweet upgrades off of them.

[shmitty 3,315]

2 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

All I have to say is thanks for this and I've always been impressed with the data collections efforts of @shmitty, who does this community a great service. Data is always useful and this more or less matches my subjective experience. It's been a very long time since I played against a 2 activation fleet and 3 activation fleets are very rare since flotillas arrived. I haven't seen MSU activations go up past about 6 with any regularity* and 4-5 seems to be the average for most fleets nowadays.

Been my experience as well.  It's not that ALL fleets are now roughly one ship larger.  It's that the low activation fleets now have a good option to mitigate that disadvantage. 

3 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

I know there's concern about the ubiquity of Flotillas, but that's because everyone was looking for that utility ship and these are the options presented.  Depending on the cost of the Hammerhead, we might see certain rebels replace flotillas with those.

That kinda bears out when you look at the ship type data that I am working on now.  The counts for Raiders and CR-90s dropped and have had them replaced with flotillas.  It is an easier option for a small ship to fill out numbers.  The CR-90 and Raider just aren't taken for filler like they sometimes were.

I have no real issue with their ubiquity given that it supports a variety of fleet types.

[thecactusman17 3,192]

3 minutes ago, geek19 said:

I am so happy about this.  You CAN make a reliable fleet with 4 or 5 activations and be fine.

Or L+S+S+F (if you count the MC30 as a small and all).

One of the reasons Medium ships have disappeared from the current meta is that it's easier to get a small ship with high support or combat capability plus a flotilla to ensure it activates at the appropriate time.

-edit- And I'd like to point out that this isn't because small ships mysteriously got better, it's that medium ships either got worse in competitive play or got stagnant waiting for new releases.  See the Victory, Interdictor and Assault Frigate.

Edited April 5, 2017 by thecactusman17

[geek19 6,557]

5 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

One of the reasons Medium ships have disappeared from the current meta is that it's easier to get a small ship with high support or combat capability plus a flotilla to ensure it activates at the appropriate time.

-edit- And I'd like to point out that this isn't because small ships mysteriously got better, it's that medium ships either got worse in competitive play or got stagnant waiting for new releases.  See the Victory, Interdictor and Assault Frigate.

Well ive been of the opinion for a while now that what FFG calls Medium and what IS medium are different things.  Command stack is the ship size.  3 dial assault frigates and VSDs are larges, mc30s/glads/nebs/peltas are medium, cr90s and raiders are smalls.  If you look at the ship like THAT, its a lot easier to make a fleet with varied options in it in my mind.

i dont disagree with you about the FFG Mediums getting stagnant or waiting though.

[Snipafist 7,536]

26 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

One of the reasons Medium ships have disappeared from the current meta is that it's easier to get a small ship with high support or combat capability plus a flotilla to ensure it activates at the appropriate time.

-edit- And I'd like to point out that this isn't because small ships mysteriously got better, it's that medium ships either got worse in competitive play or got stagnant waiting for new releases.  See the Victory, Interdictor and Assault Frigate.

I can't really argue with that. With how upgrades are costed in the game, larges are generally better recipients for heavy upgrade suites and the medium sized ships are kind of looking for a role to fill. You can still run medium ships (at least VSDs and Assault Frigates, Interdictors are useful but fairly niche at 400 points) and do all right but their presence has notably decreased overall and @shmitty's Regionals data has backed this up. There were literally zero medium ships present in all of the Regional-winning fleets for wave 5 and the % of them went down overall as the placements got higher. If there's something I think might deserve a full-fledged forum freakout (TM), it's the issues medium ships are having at the moment.

Edit: I wanted to add that the only ships that didn't show up in at least one wave 5 Regional-winning fleet were the 3 medium ships. Seriously. Every other ship in the game showed up at least once, but all three mediums not even once in a wave 5 Regional-winning fleet.

18 minutes ago, geek19 said:

Well ive been of the opinion for a while now that what FFG calls Medium and what IS medium are different things.  Command stack is the ship size.  3 dial assault frigates and VSDs are larges, mc30s/glads/nebs/peltas are medium, cr90s and raiders are smalls.  If you look at the ship like THAT, its a lot easier to make a fleet with varied options in it in my mind.

i dont disagree with you about the FFG Mediums getting stagnant or waiting though.

I can't say I altogether disagree with that and it's somewhat helpful to think of Assault Frigates and VSDs as "baby large ships" rather than medium ships given their roles and similar usage problems (how do I get this big relatively expensive but not very responsive or maneuverable ship to do important things in the game?). The Command X split of ship roles is a bit oversimplified but the basic concept is solid. Command 1 ships are generally more agile (and fragile) corvettes or small support flotillas; Command 2 ships  are more "ship of the line"-style combat vessels and Command 3 ships are more "here comes Bubba" heavier ships that you can't really bring too many of before your fleet gets weird and top-heavy due to a lack of adequate support.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Snipafist
clarification that we're talking about wave 5

[geek19 6,557]

Assault Bubba is my new name for the frigate/space whale/dolphin/potato.  He's doing his best!

[geek19 6,557]

3 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I can't really argue with that. With how upgrades are costed in the game, larges are generally better recipients for heavy upgrade suites and the medium sized ships are kind of looking for a role to fill. You can still run medium ships (at least VSDs and Assault Frigates, Interdictors are useful but fairly niche at 400 points) and do all right but their presence has notably decreased overall and @shmitty's Regionals data has backed this up. There were literally zero medium ships present in all of the Regional-winning fleets for wave 5 and the % of them went down overall as the placements got higher. If there's something I think might deserve a full-fledged forum freakout (TM), it's the issues medium ships are having at the moment.

Sloan helps the Quasar, and Leia CAN run an Assault Frigate, but is there any hope on the horizon for them? Konstantin and Sato sure are Commanders....

[Irokenics 1,365]

I will assert with my anecdotal evidence that schmittys conclusions from his data are correct!

I find it odd that assault frigates arent appearing in the regional data but do well on the national and world level.

[Ardaedhel 10,840]

7 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Edit: I wanted to add that the only ships that didn't show up in at least one wave 5 Regional-winning fleet were the 3 medium ships. Seriously. Every other ship in the game showed up at least once, but all three mediums not once in a wave 5 Regional-winning fleet.

Now this is an interesting observation that I honestly hadn't noticed at all.

I do have to say that I think there is some amount of anomaly in this, only because I happen to know that @Brikhause TO'd the San Antonio Regionals and thus wasn't able to roll his way through a Wave 5 regionals with his Gallant Haven build.  

That said, that anecdote doesn't really detract from the point that medium ships really seem to need some love.  I wonder how much of this is attributable to their position in a sort of optimization valley between the highly efficient upgrade use and crushing single activations of the large ships, and the highly efficient base stats and activation advantage of the smalls.

[shmitty 3,315]

I will pull out the data on the mediums as a group and see what it looks like.  But yeah, they aren't looking so hot.

[xanderf 6,778]

1 hour ago, Ardaedhel said:

Yes.  Keeping large ships viable in the face of MSUs by providing them with an option to take L + M/S + F + F.

Working as intended.

It's not "an option" if it's literally the only thing you can do to address the problem.

I don't hate flotillas AS an option - I think they should totally be here, exactly as they are, for people who want to solve this problem in this way.  But they shouldn't be the ONLY way to solve the 'activation disadvantage'.  And, at the moment, they are.

[Ginkapo 9,320]

Cheers Shmitty.

I have a comment for those who still object to flotillas, however its probably unprintable so shall refrain. 

[Ardaedhel 10,840]

1 hour ago, xanderf said:

It's not "an option" if it's literally the only thing you can do to address the problem.

I don't hate flotillas AS an option - I think they should totally be here, exactly as they are, for people who want to solve this problem in this way.  But they shouldn't be the ONLY way to solve the 'activation disadvantage'.  And, at the moment, they are.

I don't object to more options.  I'm totally on board with more options, and fully expect that they'll be coming down the pipeline.  Hell, one of them is already at the printer:  Sloane counters flotillas hard.

What I object to is people raising a big stink and acting like the sky is falling, or like flotillas somehow caused the game mechanic of activation advantage when they demonstrably ameliorated it, or like activation advantage as a mechanic is this awful gamebreaking thing when it's just... not.

[TheCallum 758]

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

Cheers Shmitty.

I have a comment for those who still object to flotillas, however its probably unprintable so shall refrain. 

I'm suprised 'uncreative' wasn't censored.

To throw my ancedotes into the mix- everything the data says matches what I've seen happen in my area over the last few waves.  Thanks Smitty.

I played what was essentially a two large ship list.  If flotillas hadn't existed to make it four activations, there was no way it would have been as successful.

I'll throw this out there:

Has what the flottila done for large ships also led to the downfall of the medium?  Have they mitigated the advantages two mediums had over one large?  

 

 

Edited April 5, 2017 by TheCallum
Typo

[thecactusman17 3,192]

2 minutes ago, TheCallum said:

I'm suprised 'uncreative' wasn't censored.

To throw my ancedotes into the mix- everything the data says matches what I've seen happen in my area over the last few waves.  Thanks Smitty.

I played what was essentially a two large ship list.  If flotillas hadn't existed to make it four activations, there was no way it would have been as successful.

I'll throw this out there:

Has what the flottila done for large ships also led to the downfall of the medium?  Have they mitigated the advantages two mediums had over one large?  

 

 

No, because nobody was running two mediums instead of a large, they were running a medium or two smalls.  Or one small decked out like a medium.

The game hasn't had a regular medium in every competition fleet since Wave 1.  Nothings wrong with the size or the fleet price, it's the selection.  Since the Assault Frigate started to go downhill, there weren't many people despertely looking for a medium ship except for thematic reasons.  When the flotillas arrived and took the one job that both Mediums at the time really excelled at, squadron activations, the medium as a major element of the ship game disappeared.

Assault Frigates are the only Medium ship potentially adding to a list, thanks to a combination of speed, firepower, and squadron support.  The Interdictor is specialized as a support tank, and the VSD is....

Well, the Victory Star Destroyer just is what it is.

If the Quasar Fire is well-costed for its statline, you'll see them plenty.  But if it's not bringing something to the table Gozantis don't for the same price or less, it's going to stay a difficult sell.

[Blail Blerg 7,585]

... What exactly is wrong with medium ships?  

They don't feel particularly underpowered to me.  Except the Interdictor, that thing really feels under gunned and under-whelming special effects.  Is the AF's problem that it really was designed too much with Ackbar in mind?  Is it too much tanky and not enough firepower?   I actually was thinking the VSD was going to be in a great place in the uber-squadron meta:  it can dish out a good squadron alpha, Moffy J really ups its mobility, DTT is a welcome help.  In this time ISDs as guns aren't really needed when you can squadron bash someone.  

[thecactusman17 3,192]

56 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

... What exactly is wrong with medium ships?  

They don't feel particularly underpowered to me.  Except the Interdictor, that thing really feels under gunned and under-whelming special effects.  Is the AF's problem that it really was designed too much with Ackbar in mind?  Is it too much tanky and not enough firepower?   I actually was thinking the VSD was going to be in a great place in the uber-squadron meta:  it can dish out a good squadron alpha, Moffy J really ups its mobility, DTT is a welcome help.  In this time ISDs as guns aren't really needed when you can squadron bash someone.  

With the Assault Frigate and the Interdictor, nothing's really wrong with either of them aside from the fact that the Interdictor has a really specialized role.  The problem is that other ships in the fleet excel at the things they are "merely" good at, and often you can spend the same or even fewer points to get those ships plus maybe a few extra squadrons, or a flotilla to add an activation, etc etc.

Example:  Which would you rather take A VSD that can dish out 3 red dice at long range, or an Arquitens that does the same thing plus a Gozanti?  If you get the command Arq, you basically get two ships with just as much firepower, more squadron activating potential, and that bonus activation.

For a lot of people, this isn't too difficult a choice.  Remember, a fully kitted out Intel Officer Demolisher is only about 10 points more than a VSD2.  And if flown right, it will kill far more than the VSD2 and it will also enable many more fleet build options for the rest of the list.  You could leave it as the sole major gunship in a squadron list, or focus all on large and small gunships, or dedicate it to anti-squadron duties, etc.

[AegisGrimm 284]

I agree.  Though some of the worth of medium ships is also their hull points.  Unless a player plays the coward and hides a flotilla in the corner and relays, they are relatively easy to swat down in close-in combat.

Although probably I'm jaded from my gaming situation.  I only play with a couple close friends and I own both fleets, so each side only has an option for a single flotilla as originally I got them because I primarily like how they visually make fleets bigger.  Spam really doesn't exist except for when my three CR-90's are in a fleet.  So I can do relatively novel things like doggedly stick to 1x ISD, 2x Vic fleets, or Rebel fleets where an Assault Frigate might be the biggest ship when not using either MC80.

Edited April 5, 2017 by AegisGrimm