Since my Ship Efficiency Model is a reflection of how I evaluate ships, these articles will also explain how it works and what it looks at. You can always find the latest version linked at the beginning of this page.
Evaluation and Calculation series index:
- What is best in X-Wing? (1v1 effectiveness)
- Heroes on that mission (Focus fire effectiveness)
- Gains from trade (Efficiency)
- It's time for action (Actions)
- Stayin' alive (Durability)
- Dealing the damages (Damage)
- Dial me up (Maneuver dials and firing arcs)
- If you can dodge a wrench... (Arc-dodging)
Gains from trade
The point cost is the single most important piece of information when evaluating any ship or upgrade.
People may talk about how Obi-Wan is bad because his force runs out too quickly, or how bullseye effects are bad because they rarely trigger, or how the mid-initiative TIE Advanced/x1 pilots are bad because they can't reliably get target locks for Advanced Targeting Computer. They sound very different, but really they're saying the same thing: these ships and upgrades cost too much for their effectiveness.
People may talk about how Tallisan and L'ulo are good because they have a rear turret, or how Hate is good because it bends the rules on 1 force per turn, or how VTG Y-Wings are good because they roll lots of red dice. They sound very different, but really they're saying the same thing: these ships and upgrades are too cheap for their effectiveness.
Once upon a time, there was a pilot with 3 Force. He saw some play but wasn't considered one of the strongest pilots. People usually left him in their binders in favor of his friends. One day, his full loadout got a 5%-10% discount and he now consistently makes top cuts at tournaments. To put that in context, a 10% difference in efficiency is roughly the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile of ships and between the 75th and 97th percentile of ships. His name? Darth Vader. Obi-Wan would love to regenerate multiple force every turn, but that's not what he needs to be viable. He just needs a point cost decrease. (Note Hate was also released at this time, but many players are succeeding with different upgrades on Vader.)
Y-Wings with Veteran Turret Gunner have been part of the game since the beginning, but they saw little success at first. An 11% discount later and people are asking whether the ship is healthy for the game.
These examples show point costs are the single most important factor for determining a ship's strength. The ship with the worst attributes can be wildly overpowered if it's too cheap, and the ship with the best attributes will never see play if it's too expensive. Ships feel satisfying mostly when they can do their job, and the job they need to do depends on how much they cost.
So what does that mean for evaluating ships? What we really care about is bang for the buck: what we get for the points we spend. In other words, we care about efficiency.
If we define efficiency as the ship's effectiveness divided by its point cost, we usually end up with a very small number that's hard to work with. Since we have 200 points in a standard list, let's define efficiency as effectiveness per 200 points:
We can summarize this section as a few guidelines:
- If you are considering whether a ship is strong or weak, you must consider the ship's point cost.
- If you are discussing unreleased content which doesn't have point costs, it's more helpful to discuss how many points the ship or upgrade should cost to be average or strong, rather than only considering the effectiveness of that ship or upgrade.
Come Get Your Armor
At first glance, the efficiency equation seems absolutely useless for people who'd rather play X-Wing than do math for X-Wing 😊. A ship's effectiveness isn't easy to calculate! Fortunately for us non-droid carbon-based lifeforms, there's an easy way to use the efficiency equation to compare ships and evaluate upgrades.
Let's start with upgrades. An upgrade will change a ship's efficiency by increasing both its effectiveness and its point cost:
Thankfully, since most upgrades increase a ship's effectiveness by a percentage, we don't need to calculate the ship's effectiveness! We just need to figure out the percent change in effectiveness and point costs.
By the properties of multiplication, it doesn't matter whether the increase in effectiveness comes from stronger attacks or greater durability (although this may be important for other aspects of list-building). A 20% increase in offense or a 20% increase in durability both increase the ship's effectiveness by 20%.
With this in mind, let's get down to evaluating upgrades. We want something easy to use instead of something precise, so here's a simple "good enough" method:
- Find what the upgrade does in the list below. Adjust the percent changes by the percent of the time you'll get the benefit.
- Add all the adjusted percent changes together.
- Divide this by 2. This is the percent increase in effectiveness (roughly an 90% weight on focus-fire and 10% weight on 1v1 effectiveness).
- Divide the cost of the upgrade by the ship's cost. This is the percent increase in cost.
- Take the increase in effectiveness and subtract the increase in cost. This is very roughly the increase in efficiency, although this will be imprecise for large changes in effectiveness and cost.
Value of attack upgrades:
- 2 -> 3 attack: +80% effectiveness
- 3 -> 4 attack: +50% effectiveness
- unmodded -> single-die mod (force or 1 reroll): +60%, +55%, +50% effectiveness for 2, 3, and 4-attack
- unmodded -> one mod (focus or TL): +80% effectiveness
- one mod -> one mod + single-die mod: +30%, +25%, +20% effectiveness for 2, 3, and 4-attack
- one mod -> double mod: +40% effectiveness
Value of defense upgrades:
- Extra hull/shields: percent of previous total hull/shields
- 0 -> 1 agility (assume no mods): +17% effectiveness
- 1 -> 2 agility (assume no mods): +18% effectiveness
- 2 -> 3 agility (assume no mods): +20% effectiveness
- Unmodded -> calc: +15%, +25%, +30% for 1, 2, and 3 agility
- Unmodded -> focus: +15%, +27%, +40% for 1, 2, and 3 agility
- Unmodded -> evade: +25%, +33%, +40% for 1, 2, and 3 agility
- Unmodded -> calc+evade: +30%, +40%, +50% for 1, 2, and 3 agility
- Unmodded -> focus+evade: +30%, +45%, +55% for 1, 2, and 3 agility
There's a bunch of shortcuts here so this method gives you an imprecise answer, but the important thing is it's easy to use and it's usually close enough. These are also rough numbers based on some assumptions about the meta and 2 attacks received per round, but they should be pretty reasonable.
If you care about precision, then for step 2, multiply (1 + the percent changes) together and subtract 1 at the end instead of simply adding the percent changes together. For step 5, divide (1 + total percent increase in effectiveness) by (1 + percent increase in cost) and subtract 1 afterwards for the percent change in efficiency.
Example 1: Suppose we're looking at Advanced Optics on an RZ-2 A-Wing. The benefit of Advanced Optics for a 2-attack ship is probably lower than adding a single-die mod to the ship (especially at Range 1), so let's put it around 24%. We'll say the A-Wing probably gets focus on attack about 2/3 of the time. That puts the increase in effectiveness at 18%. Divide by 2 for focus fire, and we're at 9%. If Advanced Optics costs less than 9% of the A-Wing pilot's cost, then it improves the ship's efficiency when taken.
Example 2: Consider the Delta 7-B configuration on a Jedi Knight or other pilot without support abilities. Going from 2 to 3 attack is +80% effectiveness, going from 3 to 2 agility is -20% effectiveness, and the 2 extra shields is +50% effectiveness for a 4-health ship. Adding it all up, we have a +110% increase in effectiveness, or +55% after dividing by 2 for focus fire. If the Delta 7-B configuration costs less than 55% of the pilot's cost, then it improves the ship's efficiency when taken.
Ships with support abilities are tricky because the value of support abilities usually don't scale with attack upgrades. You'll have to reduce the effectiveness increase of attack upgrades by your best guess at the fraction of the ship's value the support abilities represent. To evaluate support abilities, you can figure out how valuable it'd be as an upgrade for the ship you're supporting, and then discount it by some fraction because it requires both ships to be alive (I currently discount the value of support abilities by a third).
That one's garbage
We can compare ships using the same process. Treat one ship as the baseline and upgrade it until it turns into the second ship. Find the list of differences between the two ships, add up the total percent change in effectiveness, and compare that to the percent difference in point costs.
It's important not to use the official point cost for things like Hull Upgrade to value differences in statistics. There's no guarantee the official point costs properly reflect the value of those upgrades for that ship. For example, Hull Upgrade costs the same for an Academy Pilot and Soontir Fel, but there's no way Hull Upgrade is worth the same on both ships.
The most important thing is to pick an appropriate benchmark. If you use one of the most efficient ships in the game as your benchmark, then of course most ships are going to look bad compared to it. Pick the benchmark to suit your purpose. If you want to find ships that are competitive, then compare it to other ships that do well in tournaments. If you want to see if a ship is good for casual play, then compare it to an average ship.
No comments:
Post a Comment