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NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Can't IG88B use Accuracy Corrector if you do hit, to turn them all blank but two two direct-damage, and then use his ability to now fire a HLC shot?

I don't think that works. It's not something like Darth Vader where it says, "to cause the enemy ship to suffer damage." The Accuracy Corrector says, " add 2 <HIT> results to your roll." - So, in the technical language of the game, it's more like an Evade token.

Also, in the technical language of the game. - An "Attack that does not hit" (unless you're Lieutenant Blount etc), means, an attack that does not remove any shield tokens or assign any damage cards. Even though you didn't roll any successful dice, and added the results, the attack would still have hit (assuming no successful defence dice or not enough evade tokens etc)

Yeah, what would happen is that you would replace your original attack with two {hit} results, and then your opponent would roll defense dice and use other abilities normally. It happens in the same way that spending a focus token modifies the results on the red dice. However, adding the two {hit} results is optional, so if you get a bad roll and you are worried that your target will only take one damage you can use AC to cancel all dice, decline to add the {hit} results, and trigger the second cannon shot since your first attack did not hit.

I'm not particularly accepting of the idea that "All crits are useless" except for a Direct Hit. All crits affect your ship in some way, and they all reduce it's effectiveness.

A fundamental flaw in the logic here is that a ship will retain 100% of it's effectiveness throughout the entire match until it's destroyed. That's not true at all.

Another assumption is that attack dice = defense dice. Not true. The attack die has 3 [hit], 1 [crit] and 2 [focus]. The defense die has 3 [evade] and 2 [focus]. An attack die has 4 possible damage results (on a d8), or 50% of the dice will result in a hit. The defense die has only 3 evades on a d8, or a 37.5% chance of evading per die. Without taking the focus into consideration, I have to roll 3 evade dice for every 2 attack dice in order to nullify the hits. If you are really conservative (and I am, plus my luck with dice is atrocious), you can make the ratio a 2:1 defense to attack die ratio. If you start adding in focus vs. no focus, target locks, re-rolls, evades, etc. etc., well, it all gets horribly complicated. My rule of thumb? An evade token is worth one defense die, so if I'm going to be shot at with 3 attack dice, then two defense dice and one evade should be enough to nullify the hits. Large grain of salt here: It's random dice, and sometimes you roll a 7, and lose. And sometimes you make the hard 6 and win. /shrug

A ship with shields- well, it really doesn't matter if it's a hit or crit now, does it? All it will do is strip shields. However, crits are counted last, so there is the possibility of still being able to strip the shields, and getting a crit. A ship with no shields (like so many imperial ships)- then yeah, I want crits. If the choice is a hit or crit, and the ship won't blow up, then I want a crit. If it's a huge ship, I want a crit.

A second rule of thumb: Because we have two thumbs, right? And you should always have a second rule of thumb: If you are facing a ship with a lot of evades, or one that will be difficult to get into an arc and stay in an arc- then you want as many [hits] as possible. If that means more attack dice, so be it. If that means converting your 3 attack dice into all hits, then so be it. Remember the above math? If I can convert 3 attack dice into 3 [hits] or [crits], that's the equivalent of 6 attack dice. Using my other rule of thumb, my opponent would need 9 evade dice to cancel all the hits. But he could evade all 3 hits with 2 defense dice and 1 evade token. Such is probability and stats.

The point values are significant between the MC and HLC. As in, I'm really, really hesitant to put a 7 point upgrade on a 20 point ship. I can readily see the advantages of the MC, as my basic premise is that any crit is better then no crit, as it's still a point of damage with extra effects, and those effects diminish the ship as play progresses. Plus, I'll save 4 points for another upgrade somewhere else (PTL or something?).

In competitive play? There are so many variables, that you can't come up with hard and fast rules. Match one, you could be facing the Fat Han, Chewie, C3-PO combo. Or you could be facing three Firesprays (not that it's competitive, but that's a hard fleet to chew through in a timed event). So you prepared for the Fat Han match up, and encounter the good old Tie Swarm instead. Or, it's Tycho in his untouchable A-Wing and a couple B-wings...

It's really hard to boil down a game like this to a simple spread sheet with a few simple "If this, then this" rules. There is more to it then that- action economy, maneuverability, crits, ship abilities... and the player themselves.

Last relevant thought on this topic: Against Imperials, I'd want the Mangler Cannon. Vs. Rebels, the Heavy Lazer Cannon. Vs. S&V... probably a toss up.

For me, I'm kind of excited to see the maneuver shenanigans the S&V will get with the S-turn. I'm thinking it's going to be a lot harder for Tie Phantoms to get around on the board now. It will also mean more turret weapons and/or expanded fire arcs to deal with them. Just when I thought the game became stagnant, the introduction of a few more equipment cards and the S-Turn, turns the whole game around. Couldn't resist that one. Sorry.

 Tamwulf wrote:
I'm not particularly accepting of the idea that "All crits are useless" except for a Direct Hit.

But that's not what I said. Crits that don't inflict extra damage are useful, but the best-case scenario is usually a double-damage crit. After all, a dead ship is better than one that treats all turns as red or moves at PS 0 instead of PS 1. So the HLC is essentially a mangler cannon that says "instead of drawing a face-up damage card you may automatically apply a 'direct hit' result"*. Except, unlike the mangler cannon's crit, the special HLC "crit" works against shields/Chewbacca/etc and makes it more likely that you inflict damage at all.

*Not quite accurate, but with focus a red die has a 75% chance of success and with a focus + TL stack it's even higher. So if you're doing X damage with three red dice you've got a pretty good chance of doing X+1 with four.

Another assumption is that attack dice = defense dice.

That's not an assumption, it's a rough approximation (and I clearly labeled it as one) that I made to illustrate a point that some people don't understand about X-Wing math. There's a huge difference between a 40k-style system where each die of offense is a separate attempt to inflict damage (and therefore increasing the number of dice means a linear increase in damage) and a system like X-Wing where each player totals their results and you have to get more successes than the target to inflict damage. If you're used to 40k math you might look at a 4-dice HLC compared to a 3-dice primary weapon and think that it's a 33% increase in firepower because it rolls 33% more dice. But in reality the increase in firepower is much larger because X-Wing's expected damage vs. dice rolled graph is not linear.

If you want a model that gives you predictive results instead of illustrating a point to X-Wing newbies then you can just do the math instead of relying on inaccurate rules of thumb. And when you do that math you discover that the mangler cannon is, at best, a niche-role weapon that will see very little use in competitive games.

A ship with shields- well, it really doesn't matter if it's a hit or crit now, does it? All it will do is strip shields. However, crits are counted last, so there is the possibility of still being able to strip the shields, and getting a crit. A ship with no shields (like so many imperial ships)- then yeah, I want crits. If the choice is a hit or crit, and the ship won't blow up, then I want a crit. If it's a huge ship, I want a crit.

Yes, obviously a crit is better than a hit and you'd (almost) never want to trade a {crit} result on a die for a {hit} result unless you're getting something in exchange. But that's not the question here. What we're really asking is how many points are we willing to pay to turn a single hit into a crit. And the fact that the extra effect of a crit often doesn't happen (or, when it does happen, doesn't do much) decreases the value of abilities that turn hits into crits. Are you willing to pay 4-5 points (or more!), the amount by which a mangler scyk is overpriced by its stat line alone, to turn one hit into a crit? I don't think you should be.

The point values are significant between the MC and HLC. As in, I'm really, really hesitant to put a 7 point upgrade on a 20 point ship.

Except, again, you have two situations (at least for a generic ship with no special abilities that care about cannons or crits):

A ship with a 3-dice primary weapon should either take the HLC or no cannon at all. Regardless of what you think about the value of the HLC we know that the mangler cannon does not add 4 points worth of value to a ship that already rolls three attack dice.

A ship with a 2-dice or 1-dice primary weapon could in theory get 4 points worth of value from a mangler cannon. But only one such ship exists right now, and we know that the mangler scyk is not a viable option. So, like the other ships, the scyk has a choice of a HLC or nothing at all (and it looks like 'never take scyks in competitive games' is the correct one).

It's really hard to boil down a game like this to a simple spread sheet with a few simple "If this, then this" rules. There is more to it then that- action economy, maneuverability, crits, ship abilities... and the player themselves.

No, actually it's quite easy to do so. Look at the math thread I linked, and compare its predictions to how well each ship performs in real games. You'll see a pretty clear correlation between ships with good math and ships that people are winning tournaments with.

@Peregrine:

Well, we both made a lot of assumptions about a lot of things. /shrug

I'd like to see the expected damage vs. dice rolled graph you are referring to. It sounds pretty interesting.

For crits- yeah, destroying a ship is always preferable to just crit'ing it. I look at it this way- if I only do 1 [hit] to a ship, it's only 1 [hit]. If I have a chance of doing a [crit] that could add an extra [hit] or affect the ship in some way, I'd rather have that (this is after all dice modifiers and such of course). There are what, 6 Direct Hit cards in the damage deck? Meaning you have a 18% chance of drawing a Direct Hit every time you draw from the damage deck. So you can go with the 2 [hits] of a HLC, or go for the Mangler Cannon [crit] with a 100% chance of affecting the enemy ship, with a 18% chance of getting an extra hit. Again, /shrug

The discussion is "Mangler Cannon vs. Heavy Lazer Cannon" and I think that's been pretty much exhausted. It's been a fantastic discussion and I love it! But I think some people just need to make their point and let it be instead of replying to everything and anything that is contrary to their post.

The rest of this is just general commentary on the "Mathwing" post from the FFG forums.

I just wanted to make a couple comments on the excellent link that was posted MathWing: Comprehensive ship jousting values and more. The author did a fantastic job of breaking down a lot of concepts and ideas into a chart. He even admits though, that he had to make several assumptions to make certain ships fit within the expected outcome of his spreadsheet, and the ships taken in tournaments. Specifically, he stated

"For ships that have common functionality such as a TIE Fighter, X-wing, B-wing, and E-wing, the predicted point value correlates very closely with reality. For ships that have unique capabilities, such as the TIE Defender's white K-turn, the result is less certain. For these pilots, the value is highlighted orange, with an explanation in the commentary section describing why. The model's accuracy in predicting a pilot's total fair point value largely depends on how unique the pilot and ship is. However, the "required efficiency" still puts a mathematical restriction on the total predicted point value's possible range, and is extremely informative in determining a ship's overall cost effectiveness."

I consider this a pretty big flaw in his entire model. How can an accurate "required efficiency" be computed when the unique value of an ability cannot be determined unless you arbitrarily assign a value to it? Then, it becomes which unique abilities are worth more than others, what kind of point value is it worth, etc.

What the author has basically done is assigned a mathematical value to a baseline ship, and then developed a formula to calculate the "required efficiency" of other ships. The problem is that his formula does a very poor job of taking into consideration the unique abilities of ships. While the formula does a great job quantifying direct abilities such as Wedge Antillies, it can't calculate Biggs Darklighter, where the author has to explain the costs he assigned to it. The author even says so in his "Limitations" section:

1. The cost predictions for the "total" efficiency work best on ships that have no unique capabilities. Thankfully, 8 of the 16 ships through wave 4 should have a very high degree of confidence, so overall the approach should still have utility.
2. The game has an element of paper-rock-scissors, so the "total value" does not necessarily predict that one ship is universally better than another. For example, more maneuverability inherently increases a ship's fair value, but it's nearly useless against a turret list.
3. The fair point value does NOT consider the opportunity cost associated with target priority, which in this game is generally determined by the attacker. Therefore, mixing glass cannons and tanks together in the same squad generally does not work very well. For example, spending a ton of points on a glass cannon that will likely get killed first (Alpha TIE Interceptors + Targeting Computer), or conversely, spending extra points on very durable units that your opponent simply waits to kill last (A-wing + Stealth) are both generally bad ways to spend points. Again, these factors are not considered in the fair points value, so you still need to consider tactics and specific squad composition to really determine a ship's situational usefulness.

It's a fantastic RESOURCE that attempts to predict how a ship might perform on the table. So much more goes into it though. The relative skill of the players, a scenario, and terrain effects on the table. The author did a great job, and it's pretty detailed using a lot of Mathematical Theorems that make sense. However, you can't use it to just say "Two PS-1 TIE Fighters are better then Biggs Darklighter" without fully knowing what Biggs Darkligher does, and how the author himself said

"Biggs is the exception, and his ability is almost impossible to mathematically model, but he clearly has a disruptive ability that is one of the best in the game."

The "Jousting Value" developed by the author has the following notation:

"The absolute value of a ship based purely on its (attack/agility/hull/shields) stat line and cost, compared to a 2/3/3/0 stat line. Pilot skill, maneuver dials, and named pilot abilities are not considered unless the named ability can be directly translated to an increased expected damage output (like Wedge) or increased durability (like Kenkirk)."

In my opinion, you might as well throw this column and the "Jousting Efficiency" column right out the window unless you are playing a PS1 generic ship versus the PS1 2/3/3/0 stat line ship (PS1 Tie Fighter), and remember, if it's unique, he can't quantify it's cost vs. the TIE Fighter except for a few circumstances.

Finally,

"The predicted total point cost is less certain than computing the jousting value, because mathematically costing the dial, actions, and upgrade slots is difficult to directly quantify, unlike the probabilistic computation that can be done with rolling dice. For ships that have common functionality such as a TIE Fighter, X-wing, B-wing, and E-wing, the predicted point value correlates very closely with reality. For ships that have unique capabilities, such as the TIE Defender's white K-turn, the result is less certain. For these pilots, the value is highlighted orange, with an explanation in the commentary section describing why. The model's accuracy in predicting a pilot's total fair point value largely depends on how unique the pilot and ship is. However, the "required efficiency" still puts a mathematical restriction on the total predicted point value's possible range, and is extremely informative in determining a ship's overall cost effectiveness."

makes me circumspect the entire attempt to quantify the ships in X-Wing. It's a great attempt that falls short of the mark, but is probably the closest the player base has so far to this kind of resource. The author does say that the reason he attempted this model in the first place was to explain the points imbalance he observed on many ships in an attempt to explain why certain ships should be re-costed based on tournament results and his own observations.

That was an excellent thread, and I loved it!