I have no idea why you would assert OR figures can't hit the enemy. They have a lot of good attack scores, and this was never an issue in play testing of the concept. Is there a particular mini you are talking about or what?

To me, extra damage or extra attack are the same thing, making attacks more effective. The choice of one over the other is not a reflection of "accuracy" but a direct correlation to balance issues within the game play. As it were, it was determined that a damage boost was more helpful to the faction than a stat boost in this case.

But as I said, you must be talking about one particular mini, so let me know what it is.

If you really don't think that higher damage value effects overall effectiveness of attacks (even with a very low attack value), you clearly don't understand how expected values work. On average, what's more effective, an attack needing a 2 to hit for 10 damage or an attack needing an 11 to hit for 20 damage? The average damage for the first situation is 9.5; the average value for the second is 10. The second situation is better on average. A piece in the second situation is more effective in combat.

Of course, statistical outliers and tactical analysis mess with this some (is a 5% chance to do 200 damage really better than a 95% chance to do 10?), but in most realistic situations, the expected value of "chance to hit" times "damage per hit" is the best way to measure "effectiveness" in combat, at least for attacking.

So yeah, a damage boost DOES make an ally more effective in combat.

Yep, I view damage and attack bonuses as part of the same coin, and more importantly, that's how WotC viewed it. See all the +4 +10 attack and damage boosts for proof.

But as to upping the attack bonus of ABM, it wouldn't have worked nearly as well in terms of balance, which is what I was saying earlier. The OR needs higher damage output, not higher attack scores. And since the two can be (and should be IMO) as parts of the same thing in terms of flavor, there is no objective reason that ABM should be only for attack ratings - when both are abstract ways of representing an attack in general.

Further, there was no intention to make ABM a simple upgrade to BM - as BM was a very poorly designed force power to begin with, and was not even close to being a good representation of Battle Med. We decided to scrape it and come up with a new version altogether.

When you actually play with ABM, it feels much more like BM should than BM ever did. So in that light, it's much more accurate than the original. You are grasping as straws on this one I think.

As to your choice of mini - lol nothing more to say.

I'll second Bill's "lol" at your example. First off, to do 130 damage, it takes approximately 87 attacks needing a 20 for 30 damage each, so I'm not sure why you chose 100 attacks. Secondly, I mentioned that statistical outliers messes it up. You picked almost the farthest out statistical outlier imagineable. Lets do a more realistic example, shall we?

Atton Rand vs Revan, getting Cunning Attack

with +4 attack: Attacks at +20, needs 2s. 0.95*40 damage = 38 damage per shot
with +10 damage: Attacks at +16, needs 6s. 0.75*50 damage = 37.5 damage per shot.


Mira vs Revan

with +4 attack: Attacks at +20, needs 2s. 0.95*20 damage = 19 damage per shot
with +10 damage: Attacks at +16, needs 6s. 0.75*30 damage = 22.5 damage per shot.

No one will play a Klatoonian Enforcer with either version of ABM so it's not really a good example. Try some pieces with the more typical +8 or better Attack values that actually might get played and you'll see the math turns around. It can be fairly modest either way, so their isn't too much point in arguing that it really should do 3% more average damage in case X to be a "true" representation of the concept.

Both methods give an increase to average damage when compared to the baseline vs compared to either other.

Yeah I know the Enforcer is terrible (I forgot just how bad they were until I traded for some for customs), but I wanted to pay homage to his extreme lack of enforcement, so I've used him in my example.



Since SWM (and I doubt you're going to be using Bastila's ABM outside of SWM) does not deal with damage outside of multiples of 10 rounding these numbers would give Atton 40/40 and Mira 20/20, also the reason I used 100 (which granted may not be entirely fair) in my example as at 30 damage per shot he'd deal 150 Damage before chewing through Revans 130 HP, but even at your 87 that's more than the 65 it'd take in the other case.

Yes, SWM does deal with multiples of 10, but that doesn't mean you should round the numbers off. Doing so simplifies the equations, but makes it less accurate. And rounding at this point is especially dangerous.

For example, translate the damage per shot into how many shots it takes Mira to kill Revan. At 19 damage per shot, it takes 130/19 shots to kill him, or 6.84. At 22.5 damage per shot it takes 130/22.5 shots, or 5.77. These numbers are much safer to round, so you can say it takes ~7 shots to kill Revan with +4 attack and ~6 with +10 damage. That means it takes a whole extra round to kill Revan with +4 attack instead of +10 damage, which can be very very significant.

Don't ever round numbers until the very end of the calculations.

To be fair, Echo just showed that they're about the same in most circumstances. The one that is actually better really depends on the situation. If you have a very low chance of hitting (like a Klatooinian Enforcer) then an attack boost is more helpful. If you are always hitting then a damage boost is more helpful. (+4 attack doesn't do all that much for GMLS in most circumstances.) Also, if you do enough damage to kill something already, more damage does nothing for you.

Chance of hitting * Damage = expected damage. As an analogy, picture Chance of Hitting and Damage as two sides to a rectangle... Expected Damage is the area inside the rectangle. You increase the expected damage most by increasing whichever of the two sides is smaller.

Also, there's more to probability than just expected value. There's also the variance (standard deviation). Higher attack and higher damage both increase expected damage, but higher attack produces more consistent damage than a damage bonus.

In some cases, low variability (with the same expected value) is better. If you're facing a bunch of 20 HP pieces, it's better to consistently do 20 damage than to sometimes do 40 (where the extra 20 is wasted) and sometimes do 0.

In other cases, high variability (with the same expected value) is better - for example, if facing an AT-ATs DR20 you'd rather hit hard every once in a while than hit for 20 damage every time... since the lower damage amounts are negated anyway.

Basically, determining which is better between +4 attack or +10 damage is very situational. Not just to the character getting the bonus but also to the opponent being attacked.

Its a cost issue. The uniform backing saved us like $500. Given that, I doubt we are going to change it (even if we agree with you, which we all pretty much do).

Wait, I forgot something else. The extra $500 was to go to a color uniform backing, not a different one for each card. To do color different backgrounds for every card was more like double the money or something (another $1500 I think it was). So yeah, you can see why we went that way. Sorry I misspoke a moment ago :)