Right! If I replace (hull-3) by (hull-6) in the formula (assuming they count double) I obtain 42pts for the Falcon and 36 for Slave-1. This could be it.

But I don't understand for the a-wing

 Fascinating under-the-hood look at things ShadowJak. Good stuff! Thanks for taking the time to write it up!

Ellyrik said:

Yeah, the model I came up with seems to work great for the current ships but that might just be some sort of coincidence. The different base sizes might affect it some how.

The picture of the A-Wing skill is way too pixelated for me to see the ones digit. The tens is obviously a 2 but the ones looks like a blob to me. It is possible they didn't add a +1 to the 8 Skill A-Wing for being unique (or rounded down) and it only costs 23.

For the larger ships, maybe they didn't or didn't add the +1 for being unique, subtracted 10 for being large, and rounded down instead of up. That would make the skill 9 Falcon cost between 44 and 46. The skill 8 Slave I would then be between 38 and 40.

Their images kind of look like a 44 and 39 to me, but after staring at the pixels long enough they can start to look like anything.

EDIT: We are referring to these pictures for anyone that hasn't seen them:

New Starfighters

 Fascinating that the maneuver dials also do not factor into ship cost either.

From wave 4, The super borken ship:

Techno Union Starfighter

Pilot Skill 1

Cost 3

At 2

Ag 2

Hl 3

Sh 0

Actions: Evade, Focus, Barrel Roll

http://moseisleyradio.com/category/x-wing/

Use these images for higher resolution

R5Don4 said:

I'd use 33 of those.

The model isn't complete but I imagine they have some sort of minimum ship point and stat values they follow or else they could end up with ships with negative values.

Skill 1 W2 A2 H1 S0 would end up costing -6 squad points.

R5Don4 said:

This is my problem too.  I actually did the math on this weeks ago and came up with the same numbers, but it just didn't feel right.  The manuever dials add and detract so much value to the different craft.   The lack of value for abilities bugged me also.  I keep thinking something's missing.

I suppose they may have just decided to throw some of that stuff to the winds, but it feels so wrong mathmatically to ignore factos that make such a big difference to ships.

 Yes it seems they went out of their way to force the point cost of the basic ships to correspond with Pilot Value to Point cost which is really quite detrimental.  TIE with Skill X will be 10+X, X-Wing with Skill X will be 20 +X.  And they were trying to fit it all in a 100 point squad because it is a nice sounding number.  If it was say 500, point costs could have been much more "accurate" as to actual effect in the game.

 Interesting stuff. Thanks

kmanweiss said:

That's a bit of a facile view of the balance of the game. Just because the model doesn't take into account things like Action Bars, upgrade icons, the difference between Attack and Defense dice, etc. doesn't mean that the people at FFG ignored those factors as well.

That they didn't ignore those factors is obvious. For example, the Xs look like they are worse than the TIE/ADs on the surface but the Xs have more attack dice instead of defense dice. Each attack die is more than 15% better than a defense die. How should that be factored into action bar abilities and upgrade icons? My model doesn't go into any of that but the people at FFG obviously did or else Xs would have more icons on their bars than they currently do.

Take a look at the difference between the X's movement dial and the Y's. The X's is strictly better. How did FFG take that into account? I'm not sure myself but I think they took into account how powerful the Ion Cannon is (it really is an auto-include).

Part of doing modeling is knowing the model's limitations. The model I came up with is incomplete. It isn't an theory of everything in the game and doesn't claim to be. It models one part of the game, the effect of Ship stats on squad point values. Like I said before, it doesn't take into account action bars, icons, movement dials, abilities, or anything else. It doesn't make sense to say the game is balanced or imbalanced based on it.

R5Don4 said:

Not at all.

 Not to demean the work you've done or the excellent work FFG has done with this game, but I really think you're all over-thinking this and missing some important insights into game design.

Typically we design systems with high and low ends, 1-9 seems to be the range on everything so far other than ship cost.  Who knows if anything will exceed that, but it hasn't so far.  Then it's often good to establish a baseline.  In my mind that would be the X-Wing.  So we guess the stats within out limits.  Keeping in mind we know we'll have larger ships, tougher ships, more heavily armed ones, faster ones, etc.  So we guess where we think the X-Wing stands in that range.  Then, we generally just say to ourselves, how much should it cost or how many should we be able to field in a standard point game.  So, we might say, 4 seems good (without upgrades of course), so let's make them 25 points each.  Oh, but with a great pilot like Wedge, it should cost more, or with a crappy Rookie Pilot it should cost less.  You then make more and more ships with that baseline established, making sure to test and balance with play as certain innocent-looking combinations that are balanced for their points can sometimes break things.  So, since some things might be too powerful, you boost their points up or lower their stats accordingly.  The key is that it's tested, repeatedly, until you and your testers all feel it's good.  It's generally far more trial and error and subjective feeling than science.  Not to say a good designer can't get you much closer to the mark initially, but rarely is any designer, no matter how good, going to get it exactly right the first time.

I love the work you're all putting into trying to find some formula for ship point costs, but I don't think I've ever seen a game where that effort pays off quite right.  Usually fans can get close and that's good enough for homebrew stuff, but like I said, the problem is likely that the ships aren't balanced by some magical point formula and more than likely balanced by intuition and repetition.  Initially there is probably a formula and your efforts have probably gotten you close to that starting point.  But there's a lot of variables to account for however, the maneuver dial as others have mentioned is definitely a big one.  I think there has to be some kind of point increase for ships that can take more upgrades as that makes the ship more versatile and that's a big advantage.

I guess that's the end of my rant, like I said, I appreciate the effort you've all put into trying to break this stuff down.  To be honest, I'm pretty good at math and I don't understand most what you're doing… regressions? I think I slept in that day. lol  In the end, though, with design, it's more of an art than a science in my experience and there's always a fudge factor that I think you're forgetting to account for.  Keep up the enthusiasm though, discussion like this is good and keeping the online community alive and excited with it will definitely help the game out in the long term.

DangerousFat said:

Who is "we"?

ShadowJak said:

I'm curious about that as well.  Considering that most of the rant seemed fairly counter-intuitive to a successful game design formula.  There are always factors that aren't as easily accountable for, and variables, but I know from years of experience in discussion with designers, most designers nail down the math as hard as they can everywhere they can.  'Guessing' and 'Estimating' is called 'Playtesting' and where the designers try and balance out those factors and variables. 

 I mean we as game designers, I do video games, so maybe the world of board games is completely different.  I didn't mean to insinuate that we don't try our best to nail down numbers at the start, of course we do.  Like I said, the better the designer, the closer those numbers will be.  But everything has to be playtested and things often change.  I'm not going to blow smoke at you guys saying how awesome I am or most designers are and I'm not going to tell you that we're awesome and can just get numbers exactly right the first time and anyone who says they can or do is either way better than any designer I've ever met, is luckier than anyone I've ever met, or is lying.  

I don't know how anything I said was counter-intuitive to good game design, however.  I'm sorry nothing I said jelled with the experiences you've had.  Maybe video games are different, maybe my methods are different, maybe the designers I've learned from are different.  

The ultimate point of my "rant" was simply that your math may never line up exactly with every ship as there is most certainly a core that all ships are balanced by initially, but if a ship is a tad too powerful, they may have just added a point or two to the total to bring it in line or knocked down the total is the ship is too weak.  Playtesting ultimately decides how good the initial design was and I've never seen some aspect of the initial design not get changed once the game hits playtesting.  I know Warhammer 40k works exactly like this, they work out the point total for a unit based on tons of factors and playtest it.  Sometimes it's just too powerful or too weak, based on how it plays and despite the numbers, and something has to change.