First of all I never suggested that every player should select "tier 2 or 3" characters. I merely suggested an alternative criteria by which the characters could be rated, that being autonomy as apposed to what they have to offer the fleet. If you don't like autonomy, for the purposes of team work and human win ratios, then fair enough.  The game is obviously designed, however, to incorporate characters that upset teamwork and create conflict between players (in fact this is its foundational philosophy and the reason why the game is so fun) and so the selection of such characters is IMO legitimate.

And BTW these characters (Tigh being the most extreme) are not only useful as cylons but as humans who know or have a good suspicion as to who the cylons are. They have the power to do something about it on their own without the support of other human players (a situation I've found myself in many times) even if it gets them executed. And for that they are called selfish characters. The fact is, if you can judge who the cylon is by their tone of voice and facial expression instead of just how they play then you have a major advantage by choosing these characters and can help the fleet a lot.

Another criteria overlooked is the fact that players are no longer only picked at the start but also after an execution. These "lower tier" characters are exceptional to use for revenge after having your former character's eyeballs sucked from their sockets.

Also in regards to starting as a human player, I've found that it is almost unwise to share and unleash all your best human strategies with players you regularly play with as it will come back to bite you at some point when you ARE a cylon. Keeping an element of spontaneity in ones general play helps to counteract the effect of other players getting used to you, cylon or not. 

Holy Outlaw said:

 Well Kushiel, regardless of whether we end up seeing eye-to-eye at the end of this whole discussion, know that you have my undying respect for successfully layering four separate quotes into an FFG forum post without blowing the formatting all to hell. 

It's not nearly as difficult as people want you to think it is. When you hit the "quote" button, you'll see the quoted text, preceded by a bracketed string of characters that looks something like this: "QUOTE efidm=473735". Copy that character string (including brackets). For each block of text you want to quote, paste that character string and add "/QUOTE" at the end of the text block, again in brackets. It's important that QUOTE be all caps. Do that for each block of text and you should be fine. (This instructional passage brought to you by much experimentation on my part.)

Holy Outlaw said:

Cylon Boomer can often do more damage to the humans without ever revealing than she can with a supercrisis and the cylon locations. (Haven't played her with the cylon fleet option to know if that's still true or not, though). Cylon Ellen can pass off Treachery cards "as a cylon detector," which either hurts the humans or helps the cylons, or can pass off low value non-Treachery cards that won't help much in order to draw better cards to hurt the humans. Cylon Saul can brig folks he thinks/knows are human while claiming that they're cylons. Cylon Baltar can draw colors which are useful to pass the current crisis card skillcheck and then play them on skillchecks in which they hurt the check. Cylon Roslin can make the crisis deck nasty, all while claiming that "the other card was worse." Cylon Zarek can do the same thing as Saul, but in reverse. I'm not going to go through the whole roster of characters, but there are plenty who can disguise their malice while remaining unrevealed.

Holy Outlaw said:

Well, I think that Zarek, Gaeta and Saul are all weak characters, regardless of which team they end up on, so I'm not sure that I can really answer the question in the way that you're asking it. I can say that if the hidden cylon players have done a really good job, the human team won't have a majority which can weigh in against a given course of action, but will rather be split into two more or less equally populated factions.

Holy Outlaw said:

Well, for instance, most of the time I don't play with four players, and I don't often play with Symps of any kind. About half the time that I play, it's 5p, and the other half, it's 6p. So in a 6p non-Symp game, there'll often be four humans at the end of the game.

Really, it's not something I wanted to make a big deal of. Just wanted to point out that it's not a universal way to judge character strength, and that there are better criteria which are more relevant to all games regardless of number of players, presence/absence of cylon leader, etc.

Holy Outlaw said:

Can you explain the supposedly fallacious nature of that distinction?

Holy Outlaw said:

I can't argue with your experience. In my own, cylon players who have picked a character who doesn't have anything to offer the cylon team while hidden (like Cain), but can only offer "not helping the humans," aren't as good as characters who can actively hurt the humans with their abilities. The reason for this is simple: if I play Cain and am a cylon, the only way I can use my OPG to hurt the humans (most of the time) is not to use it. But if I'd played Boomer instead, I'd still be hurting the humans just as much as Cain by not having the ability to Blind Jump, but I've also got other abilities which can actively hurt the humans.

Holy Outlaw said:

That's totally cool, but it's straight-up metagaming, which is a non-universal phenomenon. It doesn't really have anything to do with character strength, but rather playstyle and groupthink. That's not to say that it's not a factor in your games, but it doesn't really play a role in the baseline strengths of the characters.

Holy Outlaw said:

No argument from me. All I can say is that I don't think I've ever seen that kind of singling out of a given player based on his past experiences. People are always too worried about what's going on in the current game to do more than joke about that kind of thing ("You're always a cylon! I'm just going to brig you on turn one to get it over with"), but they don't actually act on those jokes.

Holy Outlaw said:

Never done PBF; BSG seems really ill-suited to it, and I've got video games for that kind of play. I've got a local group in my town that's made up of seven people, and various members of that group frequently play the game. There's another group about an hour away, which I actually play with more often than my local group, and that one is made up of about fifteen different people, with a core group of about half a dozen and the rest rotating in and out. And I often play the game at the few conventions I go to, and that's obviously with people outside my normal groups.

Well, Kushiel, both you and Jagonaut have made some important points and I feel I owe you more attention than I'm able to give right now so I won't respond to everything, though maybe the community has some thoughts.  Here are some of the interesting points you're causing me to consider:

1) Jagonaut argues that individual antagonism is part of the "fundamental philosophy" of the game.  He values characters' ability to unilaterally settle scores against other individual players.  On the other hand, Kushiel suggests it's "metagaming" and even "groupthink" to consider a player's past behavior and revealed tendencies when deciding how to respond to them in-game.  I'm leaning toward Jagonaut here but could be swayed.  I'll tell you this, though: it's either a fundamental game element and part of designer intent, or it's an optional outgrowth of playstyle that's outside of the game proper, but it can't be both.

2) Jagonaut says if you play your hardest for humans every time you box yourself in.  He argues that you need to hold back a little something, especially with your regular group, and sometimes play suboptimally and even irrationally, to conceal your tendencies.  I'm inclined to agree, though not sure how to factor this idea into a tier ranking system.

3) Kushiel suggests that it's possible to keep choosing bad crisis cards and burying good with Roslin and Boomer, and for Ellen to spread treachery cards around like a cylon Johnny Appleseed without detection.  The more I hear, the more I think our groups are really, really different.  My group strictly adheres to secrecy rules and I don't believe we're excessively "meta," but I have a very hard time picturing a character pulling off cylon antics like these for any period of time without detection.  What are other groups' experiences?  Are things like this plausible?

Kushiel said:

It’s a distinction without a difference.  Since no player can win the game in isolation—you win if your team wins and lose if your team loses—it’s wrong to assign additional value to “benefit me” abilities versus “benefit my team” abilities.  I *am* my team.  On the other hand, it’s entirely rational to do the opposite: to downgrade abilities that take from another, since these may lead to zero sum gains (taking from a team member to give to oneself with Saul Tigh, for instance), and to upgrade abilities that confer a benefit while taking from no one (like William Adama’s OPG, for instance) since I can always use them to net positive effect. 

Don’t get me wrong, if there was an ability that only benefited the humans, that would be a liability as I might wind up a cylon.  But I’m trying to imagine one of those and drawing a blank.  If you can remind me of one, I’d be the first to downgrade the character, but that’s still a separate point from what’s been discussed to date.  People have been suggesting that it’s rational to downgrade an ability that benefits every member of your team equally as compared to one that benefits you personally at the expense of others.  I’m arguing that’s a fool’s errand. 

For example, Helena Cain’s “Blind Jump” benefits the whole team.  For this reason, previous posts have compared her unfavorably to Saul Tigh, and you’ve suggested that the only way to use her ability to hurt humans is to not use it.  This is wrong-headed.  Allow me to pose an alternative.

HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO:

Humans are at 5 distance and just jumped.  There’s a full cylon fleet board, advanced pursuit track.  You, a cylon Helena Cain, remind the fleet that they can keep consolidating power and quoruming, or other such nonsense.  Maybe fix some vipers.  After all, you still have your blind jump that’s about to expire so you might as well use it to get the fleet out of this mess; let’s just keep paddling further down s*** creek.  Someone want to scout that destination deck and make sure it’s a 3?  No?  Well, let’s just keep on scouting it because that’s the only thing that matters.  Never mind the unholy conflagration that just dropped down on us.  What’s that, we got a 3?  Okay, Now!  NOW!  NOW!  WE GOTTA GO!  WHERE’S THAT XO?  At which point you either launch scout to bury the 3 or you nuke a random square full of civvies, and you reveal.

I’m not saying Helena Cain’s going to pull something like that off every time, but that’s devastating—and it’s a strategy that would never be available to someone like Saul Tigh.  “XO me to Blind Jump us out of this mess” simply rings in the human ear a little more sweetly than “XO me to steal the president’s title for myself.” 

In other words, the promise of mutual benefit regularly allows Helena Cain to reap tremendous *individual* advantage.  Show me a character with a strong but “selfless” OPG, and I’ll show you someone who can use that OPG to devastate whichever side they’re not on, leading me to argue for the following simplified formula:

STRONG = selfish

WEAK = selfless

 Show me a character with a strong but “selfless” OPG, and I’ll show you someone who can use that OPG to devastate whichever side they’re not on, leading me to argue for the following simplified formula:

STRONG = selfish

WEAK = selfless

I'm almost certain that's not quite what you're arguing for... 

Holy Outlaw said:

I don't see how what Jagonaut wrote and what I did conflict. I don't think he's talking about maintaining grudges from game to game, but rather responding to being executed by respawning as Cally and returning the favor, for example. Creating interpersonal conflict within one game session doesn' t have anything to do with basing your behavior on what's happened in previous sessions.

Holy Outlaw said:

Not sure what the secrecy rules have to do with either of those examples. It's perfectly legit to say something like, "This crisis card is better than the one I put on the bottom of the deck," as long as you don't go into any details of what was on the card.

Holy Outlaw said:

I don't think anyone's arguing against this. At least, I know I'm not. What your point here fails to take into consideration, though, is that until the sleeper phase is over, you don't know which team you're on. "Benefit me" abilities are a guaranteed way to also benefit my team, since they'll help my team no matter which one it is. "Benefit team X" are only good for me if I end up on team X.

Holy Outlaw said:

Bill Adama's all-the-time ability. With the exception of the rare crisis cards that can actually hurt the human team if the skillcheck is passed, that ability will always help the humans. And he can't even turn it off if he wants to.

Holy Outlaw said:

(Just as an aside, I like to avoid highly specific hypothetical situations like this one, because anyone can make one up that "proves" their point, but they're worth even less than anecdotal evidence. But I digress.)

Holy Outlaw said:

At which point good human players shrug and say, "Well, I guess it's a good thing we didn't forget that there was still a cylon loose, and so we weren't relying on that Blind Jump." Good human players will pressure other players to use their OPGs to benefit the humans, but they don't plan on other people using them, unless all the hidden cylons have already been revealed.The result of that is that stuff like Blind Jump can only be used to hurt the humans by not being used, which again, would be true of every character other than Cain as well.

Kushiel said:

I agree that Jagonaut’s not talking about carrying grudges over from game to game, and I’ve never talked about that either.  But I have advocated for remembering player tendencies (e.g., my opponent is a strategic player, or is risk averse, or routinely half-asses until sleeper) and using those to inform my current interactions with those players.  By way of example, I said if I found myself sitting across from Kushiel, who routinely comes up with ass-kicking strategies that destroy the other side 67% of the time, I’d be inclined to send him my extra cylon card so he could develop one of those ass-kicking strategies for my side.  However, you called me treating the smart player differently “metagaming” and, inexplicably, “groupthink.”  I call it sound strategic play, whether in BSG, poker, chess, or any other game of strategy or skill.  So if the bar for “metagame” is so high that I ought not remember you’re the smart guy, I only assumed I ought not remember you’re the guy who orchestrated my last character’s execution.  If players getting back at players through characters isn’t “meta” but the other thing is, I’m as confused about your definition of “metagame” as I am about your definition of “groupthink.” 

Kushiel said:

My point is that the cylon tactics you’re describing would get you busted at my table fast.  And since lax enforcement of secrecy rules is often the big difference between tables where cylon malfeasance gets detected and those where it doesn’t, I wanted to get out in front of that question by saying it in advance.  Humans don’t talk about face-down cards or use coded language to say more than they should at my tables.  But secrecy rules do not preclude me from pointing out that there is only a 12.5% chance of Roslin pulling two non-jump icons, or a 4% of both crises having a heavy raider, a 3% and 2% respectively of doubling up on the basestar icons.  And secrecy rules also don’t preclude me from asking Boomer if the card she left on top was “bad” or “good.”  It’s been my experience that spiking the crisis deck or sending treachery “cylon feelers” around with Ellen is risky as hell at a table full of competent and attentive players.

Kushiel said:

If I am a worse player, or a worse-equipped character, than the sitting president who is on the same team, then Saul Tigh's "benefit me" OPG just hurt my team.

Kushiel said:

Good call.  Downgraded.

Kushiel said:

I'm afraid we're at an impasse then, because I like to avoid categorical rules that dismiss evidence types I don't like.

Kushiel said:

I'm seriously mystified that you can categorically say  “good human players never rely on one player to do something” as if you’re always able to control it. I can't count the number of times this amazing game of ours has forced me into positions where I was at the mercy of a single character, a single die roll, top-decking a single card.  I mean, I know you win *a lot*, but if you’ve seriously never been in a position where you were down to your last straw, you are an even better player than I already gave you credit for.  My hat's off to you for that, but speaking on behalf of lesser mortals, let me assure you we sometimes find ourselves falling back to contingency plans.

Holy Outlaw said:

If that works for you, great. It seems oddly metagamey to me to base your decisions on what's happened in past games, rather than what's going on in the current game, is all. I don't really see the point in caring whether Player X played very cautiously last game, if he's not doing so now, etc.

Holy Outlaw said:

Then why would you use it? It seems to me that you're failing to make a distinction between "good character abilities" and "good play" here. In order to for ratings of the former to have any merit, you have to assume that they'll be used well. Yes, if I use Character X's abilities in a way that hurts my team, then those abilities hurt my team. But that's just as true if I'd used Character Y's abilities to hurt my team, or Character Z's, etc. That doesn't mean anything at all when it comes to judging how good those characters' abilities are when used well.

Holy Outlaw said:

You: "In order to prove to you what a badass martial artist I am, allow me to relate the following story. One day, while walking home alone from school, I was ambushed by an entire clan of ninja. Because I'm so amazingly skilled in asskickery, I defeated them all with my open hands."
Me: "Wow! That's incredible. Did it really happen?"
You: "No."
Me: "Um...not really seeing how that proves that you're an amazing martial artist, then."
You: "Well, it could have happened."

Holy Outlaw said:

Well, no, obviously there are elements of the game that are out of your control. But since they're out of your control, worrying about them is pointless and doesn't have any bearing on good or bad play.

It occurs to me that I didn't really answer HO's indirect question of what I mean by metagaming and groupthink.

For a game like Galactica, metagaming is basing your decisions on factors which lie outside the current game. So if you pass me extra loyalty cards because you've seen me win in the past, regardless of what's going on in the current game, that's metagaming. Or if Jane has often/always attempted to gain titles in prior games you've played with her, and you play assuming that she's going to do so again during the current game, that's metagaming.

Groupthink is the set of assumptions that a given group has decided to agreee on, often without realizing that they've done so. "It's always better to discard skillcards rather than lose resources" is a common groupthink that I've seen, for example. Violating groupthink tends to make those who subscribe to it suspicious of those who don't, and in a team-with-traitors game like Galactica, that can often lead to accusations and paranoia

Well, Kushiel, I could probably go back and forth with you a bit longer on a few of these points, particularly the definition of metagame.  (Is it really metagame in chess for me to remember that my opponent's sneaky good with knights and to keep an eye out for it?  Do I really have to fall for the same trick once each game before I begin to adjust for it?)

But on the other hand, I started this thread to hear how different players rate the relative strength of different characters, and you've answered the OP thoroughly, and then some.  I really do appreciate it.  I know I've been sort of tongue-in-cheek about your stated win percentage, but I really do believe you're a very good player and I've enjoyed the back-and-forth.

Which is not to say I'm done going back-and-forth with you on some of this that remains unresolved.  Feel free to keep it going, by all means.  I'm still here.

P.S. Would you, or anyone else, care to try your hand at a Tier ranking list, similar to the OP?  Or do you have a sort of fundamental objection to ranking the characters in that manner?  Curious to hear another perspective on this ... 

Holy Outlaw said:

Metagaming in chess would be very different than metagaming in Galactica, if the former is even possible. Hence why I began my definition with "In a game like Galactica..." Chess is about as unlike Galactica as I can imagine.

But, yes, we can let this go.

Holy Outlaw said:

It's entirely intentional that I've kept my comments to be about the ways in which characters are ranked rather than the specific rankings. I'd be happy to share my thoughts on character rankings, though I doubt I'd use a strict tiered system the way that you've done, but I've only played two games using any of the Exodus components. As you've no doubt realized by now, I'm not so much interested in abstract and theory as I am in concrete and practice, so I didn't want to proffer opinions which weren't backed by experience.

For a game like Galactica, metagaming is basing your decisions on factors which lie outside the current game. So if you pass me extra loyalty cards because you've seen me win in the past, regardless of what's going on in the current game, that's metagaming. Or if Jane has often/always attempted to gain titles in prior games you've played with her, and you play assuming that she's going to do so again during the current game, that's metagaming.

So... what I'm not quite getting here... are you saying metagaming is bad? Because with a game like this one, I don't believe anyone will completely avoid metagame unless they're playing their first round with total strangers. Knowing a person's tells is metagame. Knowing how much they usually value certain things like jump markers, ressource losses, quorum cards or a cylon-free galactica is metagame. Even knowing how many of their bad decisions can be blamed on ignorance due to being new instead of malice is metagame.

BSG is largely about psychology, about assessing other people's talk and decisions and deducing something from those. I don't think many people can shut out what they know about others well enough to not let that influence their conclusions.

  This.  I made a comparison to chess because I consider BSG a strategy game, and chess is sort of the hallmark strategy game.  But maybe a better comparison would be to poker, where I have to use my opponents' behavior to guess their hole card while they do the same back and whoever does it better sooner wins.  I'd argue it's a universal phenomenon and critical game component to remember player tendencies in such games.  The common definition of metagaming is bringing considerations outside of the game into the game.  I'm not sure analyzing player tendencies is outside of the game; I'd argue it's baked into the cake.

To me, there's a significant difference between basing your decisions on someone else's personality and on how they've played the game in the past. The former makes sense, the latter doesn't. If you want to conflate the two, I don't see any need to argue with you. Neither point of view is right or wrong; I just don't see any advantage in making decisions based on data that might not be applicable to the current situation.

EDIT: Oh, FFG forums. One missed endtag, and what's done can never be undone. I'll never stop coming back to you, no matter how badly you treat me, but a little consideration now and then would go a long way.

Kushiel said:

Try using Cain's jump, just prior to the cylon fleet arriving. That resets the human jump prep to zero, just at the point when they needed to jump.

I have seen Galactica explode within one round when Cain does that.

Of course smart human opponents will consider that jump as proof your a Cylon. But since galactica is not likly to survive. Whatever the humans think is now moot. This action by Cain can leave the humans in a position so desperate, that that can't even afford the action to brig/shoot Cain.