That's a quote from TheHutts in the SHNN chat. I think the topic deserves its own thread.

The theory of accomplishing that is not that difficult. Designing pieces to make it happen might be, though. Think of 7 different 'types' of squads:

Extreme Rock, Paper, Scissors
Moderate Rock, Paper, Scissors
Pure balance

In an ideal world, none of these squads have an auto-win or auto-loss against any other. Instead, given equally skilled players, you'd have a grid something like this, where the left squad beats the top squad the given percent of the time. For example, Extreme Rock beats Moderate Scissors 65% of the time:

IDEAL BALANCE


If you bring a balanced squad, you have an equal chance against anything. Even if you're risky, you could have a strong advantage or disadvantage, but you still have at least a 25% chance of a win. Such balance is probably too much to hope for, though. This is probably more like what we have now:

WHAT WE CURRENTLY HAVE


Extreme Rock/Paper/Scissors have near auto-losses amongst themselves, but overall they each have an advantage over the moderate and balanced squads. If this is not what we want (and sentiment seems to be that it isn't), then we should probably try to overshoot the balanced matrix (the first one) and actually strive for "imbalance" in the meta where balanced squads have the advantage. Something like this:

WHAT TO SHOOT FOR TO REDUCE LIKELIHOOD OF SEEING EXTREME SQUADS


In this third matrix, the Extreme squads still have auto-losses amongst themselves, but versus the moderate squads, their advanatages are less and the disadvantages are greater. And a truly balanced squad has a strong advantage over them. The moderate squads have the advantage over a truly balanced squad because otherwise a truly balanced squad is the clearly optimal choice - which means every squad needs every type of damage/defense and in balanced amounts. That severely restricts squadbuilding - kind of the way door control is already a must-include in a squad. True balance is still a good choice because it has the least-bad worst matchup (if that made sense). But it has the slightest disadvantage against all the moderate squads.

So how do we get there? One way is pieces (that aren't costed too high) that are just a pain to take down if you don't have the right type of counter. Another is to have pieces that take down one squad type easily but do nothing against the other two.

Facing Extreme paper? A piece that is nearly impervious (+10 defense?) against lower-cost enemies.
Facing Extreme rock? A piece that chooses one enemy and ignores attacks from that enemy.
Facing Extreme scissors? A piece that lets the enemy only damage one character per turn.

Obviously, there's a lot of testing/designing that would need to be done to get those things to work, and those are just examples (and probably unworkable ones at that), but it illustrates the idea.

Designing pieces to make exactly this happen is virtually impossible at this point. That is what we strive for, we continually try and push it in that direction, but there are too many variables to make it an exact science.

TJ - I like your post, it is well thought out. It's just that when it comes down to the actual design, it's not that simple.


There are elements of this theory that many of us do use when designing, but to actually push it to these numbers is impossible. I don't know how you'd even accurately measure it in real life.

These numbers should only apply to players of equal skill. Player A and player B have equal skill, then extreme paper should beat extreme rock x% of the time. And really, the variance comes down to dice at that point. If extreme rock wins at that point it's extreme dice luck, right?

So how do you factor in variance in skill level of players? I know I have won games that I shouldn't have on paper, because I outplayed someone. I know the flipside has been true too. I've made bone-headed moves and lost to someone I shouldn't have.

Some of these factors are intangible. And other in game factors hard to categorize.


TJ - make no mistake - I am not putting your work or theory down. I actually like it. Putting it into practice successfully is the hard part.

I think perhaps it is something that designers can have in the back of their mind as they are designing.

Yes - in a way extreme scissors has been an NPE for awhile, (My squad NPE Extreme is named for that fact). It almost won it all last year, and was taken down by being outplayed by an a-typical rock squad. To me it did prove that Extreme scissors needed to be taken down a notch. And that was before Vehicles of War.

Once again - when you really boil down what an NPE is, it's frequently a squad that makes you feel like your squad (or the types of squads you like to run) has no chance. Daala has never bothered me that much since I like to run scissor squads (and I'm pretty decent at it). But no doubt if I was a big rock squad player I'd be much more up in arms about her.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds. Very minor spoiler - there have been some changes on pieces in vset 9 in the past few weeks that make some very interesting options that can help rock compete with paper. Look forward to seeing how that plays out

Not making something broken in the first place is clearly the best way to go, but that should be obvious. Also easier said than done. Most mechanics already existed. In NPE extreme, the only thing I had in that squad outside of vset 1 and earlier was 1 Klat Assassin, and frankly it didn't do much. Lancer, Sidious and Lobot were key to my squad, and they have been around a long long time. (BTW, imo Panaka of Theed is the issue for Naboo, Take him out and they are fine.)

And really Rock Paper Scissors is a grand oversimplification, but it does serve a purpose.

Good point. I think we need to design figures that don't enhance extreme paper or scissors squads. Rock squads are a favorite of mine, but they are in no way unbeatable. There are just to many coutners to them that have been in the game since the game was first created. It doesn't matter what your defense is when a special ability can do dmg on a save of 11. Or auto-damage can just kill stuff without saves (force lightning, flamethrower, etc). Rock squads face an uphill battle at the moment, with new Force powers such as Brutal Strike seeing play a lot more.

I wouldn't worry to much about the Neo Crusaders tho. +10 attack won't hit your high point pieces quite so easily. Geonosian drones, Tantive 4's, and Daala's troopers on the other hand die in waves. Mouse droid swarms will still be annoying to deal with. WotC messed up big time giving a 3pt piece 20 defense.

That is a good point about NPE Extreme, but you guys did a good job at putting some solid reinforcement nerfs to strafe and gallop so the rest of the mix would stand more of a chance. Strafe and gallop to me aren't NPE's to me any more, but them again I have never played against double lancers or NPE Extreme.

Do you think steps should be taken to take away the power of the dominant swarm squads then? IE Daala and Naboo?

I played a jedi rock squad at the PA Regional (Cin, Quin, Aayla), and faced Jason's Double-Lancers in the first round. I brought a LIN as a reinforcement, which gave him fits for a while...that is, until I did a boneheaded move that let Jason's Assassin Droid shoot both the LIN and Lobot in the same phase. Even still, the LIN helped me quite a bit, since it severely limited Jason's strafing options. He never took the risk of flying over it, and Aayla (with Twin and Djem So) was on the other flank to protect against strafes. I "won" that game by 1 point (on tiebreakers).

I haven't tried the LIN's or Buzz droids, but I played a Vong squad with 4 Tsa'su against a Durge on Lancer and regular Lancer with poggle bombs squad and effectively scared both of them away from touching my main squad. The problem was i couldn't kill the darn poggle bombs effectively without killing my own stuff. That and he was blowing them up left and right with the Muun Broker.

For the purposes of this thread I believe that "paper" refers to swarms, "scissors" refers to mass-kill squads/pieces like Lancers, Yobuck, and Anakin Solo, and "rock" refers to individual big beatsticks, usually with a lot of health, but not a lot of pieces in the squad.

Paper beats Rock because Rock can't keep up with all the attacks, and usually will get whittled down because it can't kill the swarm quickly enough. Scissors beats Paper because it can kill a whole lot of pieces at once, decimating the swarm. Rock beats Scissors because the mass kill abilities don't work too well against beatsticks, so your squad is less efficiently built because you've spent points on stuff you aren't using.

It's not very well defined, because there is a lot of in-between, but that's the general concept.

This is how I think the game works. Major Scizzors squads have hate that most squads can bring in through Lobot or are built in naturally. Major Rock squads are at a naturally disadvantage in this game due to the fact that most have lower activations than average, they don't have as many ranged weapons and in most cases can't take out multiple pieces consistently in 1 turn.(they do have a some great movement breakers than can be helpful.

Major Swarms are the oddball of the group. To compete with the major swarms you almost have to build a hate squad right now. Either yobuck, Durge, lancer or Bastilla.(Bastilla is not always the best choice...) You also have to be able to out activate them in some cases.(such as Durge on Speeder and maybe Luke and Leia) When they lose they do lose hard though. The problem I see with them is you either build for them or you don't. If you don't build for it you normally won't have a chance.

I don't have a problem with partial paper squads. About every squad I build has a minor paper aspect. My issue is with major paper squads. To get a full win is very difficult if you don't have a hard counter. Swarms in general are more than an NPE in my opinion, they are not good for the game.