GaC time advantage....

Replies

  • No risk, no reward. The more comfortable you are in undermanning teams the more banners you’ll get. I attack first quite a bit and I intentionally underman as many teams as possible. Why? Because it sets a really high ceiling for the other person. Those times I’m unable to attack first due to real life stuff, I don’t bother to look at their banner count. Their banner count should have no affect on your own performance since you should always try to get the best possible score.
  • If you're so concerned about time advantages, why not wait until the last hour of GA to attack? At least then you're keeping your cards close to your chest. And I usually find I win close battles because often my opponents don't think to underdog battles.
  • el_mago wrote: »
    Chat wrote: »
    … or you could just learn which teams your teams are capable of undermanning while also still leaving defensive teams designed to steal banners or force the opponents to use full teams against them.

    Why are people so afraid of undermanning? Underman where you can, and if you can’t, then bring in a full team. Try to focus more on maximizing your own banners and learn from any stumbles you may make instead of focusing so much on the opponent.

    It's not that people are afraid of undermanning.

    It's that if you go first and underman and you screw up, I now know that I don't even need to bother undermanning myself. I don't need to risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I can play it safe. If it's safe to underman, I'll do it anyway for practice, but if it's an 90% shot which I can make 100% with an extra character that would otherwise sit on the bench, then why risk it?

    If I've seen that they've taken a few attempts at my Executor and failed, and subsequently did poorly against my second fleet because they tried to deal with Executor first, then I know that I don't even need to attempt their Executor if they have one of defense. I can deal with their other weaker fleet first, secure the win, and then maybe poke their Executor for some 5 minutes of pride.

    I don't need maximum banners to win. I only need more than you.

    but imagine being on the other side of the holotable when your opponent has gone first and scored well on efficiency and now you're stuck behind the 8-ball trying to underman as much as you can & taking risks because they did so well.

    i was once on the side of "advantage" to the second attacker, but then i tried it (going second) and it didn't help much. now i just attack when i can and do the best i can every time. i don't wait to see what my opponent does.

    Right, and I know I need to take that risk.

    Doing great as the first attacker can have some psychological affect, sure. But I think that 'shock and awe' strategy falls off pretty quickly. I can't speak for others, but I was only in awe for a minute or two when it first happened to me. After that, it's literally just told me how well I need to do, and what sorts of risks I need to take. The counters that will score me more banners but has a 70% chance of winning becomes the option to take. The hail mary attack with a 1 in 5 success rate becomes the play to make, because if you don't take it, you have a 0% chance of winning. The better they did, the more I know I need to risk. But on the flip side as mentioned already, if I saw that they made the riskier 70% chance play and it failed and they've now lost a fight, I know I don't need to risk anything. Simply playing safe will give me the win, and only trying to be fancy (or a crash) can take it from me.

    Depending on their roster, it can give me a decent idea on what their back line looks like too. If they did amazing, they more likely kept their best teams for offense, and aren't hiding anything too nasty in the back. Counters that I might have otherwise kept in case of lower back nastiness I can instead use on something on the lower front to open it more safely. Every time I've seen someone try 'shock and awe' style, their back line has been made up of weaker teams. And that knowledge makes it a lot easier to fight.
  • If you're so concerned about time advantages, why not wait until the last hour of GA to attack? At least then you're keeping your cards close to your chest. And I usually find I win close battles because often my opponents don't think to underdog battles.
    I think the whole point of this complaint is that this would mean playing swgoh in the middle of the night for some, or in the middle of the working day for others.

    Many swgoh players have other responsibilities or real life schedules that make attacking in the last hour of GAC impossible or at the very least impractical.
  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    Waqui wrote: »
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    In regards to undermanning, if you take the risk you can get rewarded with extra banners. If you don’t you won’t get extra banners. Take Geonosians as an example. It’s an easy team to under-man by using Darth Vader and possible a second character like Thrawn. Can you run a full team to positively nuke them? Sure, same as you being able to just take those 2 and doing the same. Then there are teams where under-manning is a ridiculous proposition, like if someone places JMK w CAT on defense.

    As for the argument of running a full team to get a guaranteed win or running -1 person, like the CLS v JKR fight mentioned earlier, I don’t get why you’d want to underman a team you only have a chance at beating down one character. If you lose congrats you just lost CLS’ team, which realistically should be used elsewhere.

    “Let’s stay on subject to this post” can be applied to any post made on the forums. Tagging the devs in a lot of your posts doesn’t mean you can magically summon them. So yes this is on topic since it’s being posted here…

    The first player assumes all the risk by trying to maximize banners since they don't know their opponents outcome. The second player has that information and can use it in their gameplan, which is the advantage.

    If I know I just need to win against geos ,I will 5 man that battle every time and take the win. Why take the unnecessary risk?
    If you are forced to take unnecessary risks in order to win then you are losing at the roster &/or match strategy level.

    I almost always attack first and I have almost 1.1m lifetime banners and never failed to make Kyber.

    I continue to attack first and am 5-1 so far, with my 1 loss being vs an opponent with comparable lifetime stats, +1 GL and faster mods. The fact that he attacked second was less significant than those advantages and the fact that he was able to 1-shot both my fleets. Just one fleet hold would have flipped the outcome but even if he had gone first, I would have had a very hard time picking up more banners from under-squadding due to his mod speed advantage.

    My point is knowing that information is an advantage and could be a difference maker. Its not the only deciding factor. I am not going to beat a 6 GL opponent because they went first. But in a battle where it is close, and where the stakes are higher now (CC income), I would think they would want to eliminate any/all advantages.

    If you go first and score high you can put pressure on your opponent. That has been proven by one of the youtubers in a stream of his round. He tried to prove that going second was an advantage for him but all he proved was that he was clearly under pressure as he talked a lot of nonsense while trying to figure out how many banners he needed in his final fleet battle. He ended up miscalculating, went in more undersized than needed and almost lost. If he hadn't been under pressure he probably wouldn't have miscalculated (it's a quite simple calculation) and would probably not have tried to undersize by that much and he would have had a more comfortable win.

    Going first can be an advantage too.

    My best advice is to just attack whenever you have the time for it, do your best, and if you lose improve your roster.

    Going first has zero advantage.
    [...]

    The YouTuber proved otherwise.

  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    Chat wrote: »
    … or you could just learn which teams your teams are capable of undermanning while also still leaving defensive teams designed to steal banners or force the opponents to use full teams against them.

    Why are people so afraid of undermanning? Underman where you can, and if you can’t, then bring in a full team. Try to focus more on maximizing your own banners and learn from any stumbles you may make instead of focusing so much on the opponent.
    [...]
    If I've seen that they've taken a few attempts at my Executor and failed, and subsequently did poorly against my second fleet because they tried to deal with Executor first, then I know that I don't even need to attempt their Executor if they have one of defense. I can deal with their other weaker fleet first, secure the win, and then maybe poke their Executor for some 5 minutes of pride.

    I don't need maximum banners to win. I only need more than you.

    I completely agree that going second can help you to a less stressful attack phase. If your opponent scored low you can win even if you don't score your best possible score.

  • I do think going second has an advantage. But I’m not sure how big. If you go first and do well you put pressure on the opponent in the first 2 zones. He might make a gamble in the first zone, since he can’t know your second zones. That gamble might give you a win,, you wouldn’t have gotten if he went first and played normally.

    This of course doesn’t work if you put your Defence the same everytime.
  • Antario
    996 posts Member
    edited December 2021
    Everyone here is talking about risks of undersizing counters etc. but the real example is so obvious:

    Just take the Executor fleet battle. Apart from the mirror, there is currently only one "reliable" one-shot counter using Malevolence with high RNG factor. The safest counter is doing a double-shot using a burner fleet and then go in with Malevolence, which is almost a guaranteed win, but this way you lose 30ish banners.

    Now let's say both of us have our Executor on defense.

    If I go first, I have to try the one-shot luck. because if I do two-shots, I lose banners, which could cost me the win.

    If I go second, I have the choice on my end dependent on the opponent performance.

    Therefore yes, going first or second is game-changing (at least in the top leagues).
  • papaofmom
    163 posts Member
    edited December 2021
    I still don’t see what the advantage is. Just do the best with what you can to max banners, underman where you can.

    Also is there a reason you tag a dev in almost every post you make?

    the advantage is really significant in lower leagues where there are only 4 teams. I understand that people that play longer doesn't understand that but as someone that started GAC from 600k I can see the advantage.

    Yes, you could argue that you could have done AND TAKE RISK. There's a difference between unnecessary risk and necessary risk. I remember back in a day I went second and saw that I needed 61 banners to win - because of that I knew I had to risk by undermanning instead of taking full squad. By going second you just know what you have to do to win and either risk something or not. The more teams on defense the less and less it matters but sometimes help

    That being said seeing that your opponent failed an attempt makes you take less risk. I still think there's advantage and its pretty clear BUT the longer you play the less it matters.
  • el_mago wrote: »
    Chat wrote: »
    … or you could just learn which teams your teams are capable of undermanning while also still leaving defensive teams designed to steal banners or force the opponents to use full teams against them.

    Why are people so afraid of undermanning? Underman where you can, and if you can’t, then bring in a full team. Try to focus more on maximizing your own banners and learn from any stumbles you may make instead of focusing so much on the opponent.

    It's not that people are afraid of undermanning.

    It's that if you go first and underman and you screw up, I now know that I don't even need to bother undermanning myself. I don't need to risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I can play it safe. If it's safe to underman, I'll do it anyway for practice, but if it's an 90% shot which I can make 100% with an extra character that would otherwise sit on the bench, then why risk it?

    If I've seen that they've taken a few attempts at my Executor and failed, and subsequently did poorly against my second fleet because they tried to deal with Executor first, then I know that I don't even need to attempt their Executor if they have one of defense. I can deal with their other weaker fleet first, secure the win, and then maybe poke their Executor for some 5 minutes of pride.

    I don't need maximum banners to win. I only need more than you.

    but imagine being on the other side of the holotable when your opponent has gone first and scored well on efficiency and now you're stuck behind the 8-ball trying to underman as much as you can & taking risks because they did so well.

    i was once on the side of "advantage" to the second attacker, but then i tried it (going second) and it didn't help much. now i just attack when i can and do the best i can every time. i don't wait to see what my opponent does.

    That isn't pressure, that is a gameplan they gave me on how to win and how many teams I need take more risks and when not to.

    I completely understand the "do your best philosophy", but when I know my opponents outcome, the risk is in my control. That is the advantage. If maximizing banners mattered, then I would agree to always push for max banners, but all I need is to get 1 point higher than my opp.

    For those that think there isn't an advantage, ask yourself: which section do you attack first? And why?

    Do you
    A) go straight to the top, then ships, then bottom front then bottom back?
    Or
    B) go bottom front first, to get a look at the full board, then make your game plan for the rest of the battles?

    My guess is most of the competitive players choose option B because that information helps maximize their win rate. Why bother hiding the back wall at all then if it doesn't effect the outcome of the game?

    Knowing my opponents score before hand does the same thing, it effects the outcome of the game and is only given to the opponent that goes second.

    I don't believe the pressure argument at all, if anything all the pressure is off since my gameplan has been given to me by my opponent. And if I know they did very well, I can with almost certainty know if there are any gls on the back wall.. Also giving me more of the advantage.

    And knowing GL placement and how many is why I believe this is more than just a slight advantage. Esepcially since there are so few off meta gl counters.
  • TVF
    36489 posts Member
    My favorite thing about this thread is that we're up to three pages now of the exact same arguments made on both sides every other time this thread has been made.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • TVF wrote: »
    My favorite thing about this thread is that we're up to three pages now of the exact same arguments made on both sides every other time this thread has been made.

    I disagree 😉
  • GAC has nothing to do with who goes first or second. Because of executor, it's nothing but an RNG thing now. If you can beat their executor more efficiently than they beat yours, you win.

    ONE fleet deciding the outcome of GAC is garbage. Not as bad of garbage as conquest, but that's all it comes down to if you have executors against each other. If the AI decides you are going to lose, you lose. (When my fleet can get 10 dodges in a row and/or 14 of 15 attacks on my fleet are "dodged" then fine, you can say it's even. But that's happened to me {10x more than once} and I've never gotten that kind of luck. The AI gives itself advantages, plain n' simple.)

    GAC is a pain and un-fun because of ONE coin-flip meta. Just one. It's a good thing we're getting a "shipload" of content in 2021 though! (At this point that shipload seems to be a sanitation barge filled with something very unsavory and smelly.)
  • I’ll throw in my two cents: going second really only gives a functional advantage when it lets the second player choose between taking a risk or playing it safe to win, and choosing the wrong choice will lead to a loss. There’s no need to over-do banners now. So in the instance of playing it safe, often there’s space for some risks. And if risks fail, that would likely result in the “original” result of the match without second-place advantages.
  • Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    In regards to undermanning, if you take the risk you can get rewarded with extra banners. If you don’t you won’t get extra banners. Take Geonosians as an example. It’s an easy team to under-man by using Darth Vader and possible a second character like Thrawn. Can you run a full team to positively nuke them? Sure, same as you being able to just take those 2 and doing the same. Then there are teams where under-manning is a ridiculous proposition, like if someone places JMK w CAT on defense.

    As for the argument of running a full team to get a guaranteed win or running -1 person, like the CLS v JKR fight mentioned earlier, I don’t get why you’d want to underman a team you only have a chance at beating down one character. If you lose congrats you just lost CLS’ team, which realistically should be used elsewhere.

    “Let’s stay on subject to this post” can be applied to any post made on the forums. Tagging the devs in a lot of your posts doesn’t mean you can magically summon them. So yes this is on topic since it’s being posted here…

    The first player assumes all the risk by trying to maximize banners since they don't know their opponents outcome. The second player has that information and can use it in their gameplan, which is the advantage.

    If I know I just need to win against geos ,I will 5 man that battle every time and take the win. Why take the unnecessary risk?
    If you are forced to take unnecessary risks in order to win then you are losing at the roster &/or match strategy level.

    I almost always attack first and I have almost 1.1m lifetime banners and never failed to make Kyber.

    I continue to attack first and am 5-1 so far, with my 1 loss being vs an opponent with comparable lifetime stats, +1 GL and faster mods. The fact that he attacked second was less significant than those advantages and the fact that he was able to 1-shot both my fleets. Just one fleet hold would have flipped the outcome but even if he had gone first, I would have had a very hard time picking up more banners from under-squadding due to his mod speed advantage.

    There hasn't really ever been much strategy in GAC. Either you have the right characters upgraded or you don't. You've either been fortunate with mod upgrades or you haven't. You either look at people's GAC history or you don't.

    It's too bad most of a player's crystal income is tied to this now. They'd do the game and their bottom line a favor by spreading out crystal income to all parts of the game (both PvE and PvP). Hey... maybe even release some new playable content. Many don't like GAC at all and like more collaborative efforts with their guild or individualized content. Players are continuing to fall off due to the decisions that have been made over the last year. This game should also have far more robust PvE content for the amount of money they've raked in.

  • HokieFiend wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    In regards to undermanning, if you take the risk you can get rewarded with extra banners. If you don’t you won’t get extra banners. Take Geonosians as an example. It’s an easy team to under-man by using Darth Vader and possible a second character like Thrawn. Can you run a full team to positively nuke them? Sure, same as you being able to just take those 2 and doing the same. Then there are teams where under-manning is a ridiculous proposition, like if someone places JMK w CAT on defense.

    As for the argument of running a full team to get a guaranteed win or running -1 person, like the CLS v JKR fight mentioned earlier, I don’t get why you’d want to underman a team you only have a chance at beating down one character. If you lose congrats you just lost CLS’ team, which realistically should be used elsewhere.

    “Let’s stay on subject to this post” can be applied to any post made on the forums. Tagging the devs in a lot of your posts doesn’t mean you can magically summon them. So yes this is on topic since it’s being posted here…

    The first player assumes all the risk by trying to maximize banners since they don't know their opponents outcome. The second player has that information and can use it in their gameplan, which is the advantage.

    If I know I just need to win against geos ,I will 5 man that battle every time and take the win. Why take the unnecessary risk?
    If you are forced to take unnecessary risks in order to win then you are losing at the roster &/or match strategy level.

    I almost always attack first and I have almost 1.1m lifetime banners and never failed to make Kyber.

    I continue to attack first and am 5-1 so far, with my 1 loss being vs an opponent with comparable lifetime stats, +1 GL and faster mods. The fact that he attacked second was less significant than those advantages and the fact that he was able to 1-shot both my fleets. Just one fleet hold would have flipped the outcome but even if he had gone first, I would have had a very hard time picking up more banners from under-squadding due to his mod speed advantage.

    There hasn't really ever been much strategy in GAC. Either you have the right characters upgraded or you don't. You've either been fortunate with mod upgrades or you haven't. You either look at people's GAC history or you don't.
    * building a strong roster is strategy
    * farming, developing and assigning mods effectively is strategy
    * scouting your opponent informs your strategy
    * deploying effective defense and offense for a given opponent is strategy

    But if you ignore all of those things and just do whatever or do nothing then yeah, I guess there isn't much strategy. You'll lose of course but that is clearly the matchmaker's fault. #ForumLogic
  • Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    In regards to undermanning, if you take the risk you can get rewarded with extra banners. If you don’t you won’t get extra banners. Take Geonosians as an example. It’s an easy team to under-man by using Darth Vader and possible a second character like Thrawn. Can you run a full team to positively nuke them? Sure, same as you being able to just take those 2 and doing the same. Then there are teams where under-manning is a ridiculous proposition, like if someone places JMK w CAT on defense.

    As for the argument of running a full team to get a guaranteed win or running -1 person, like the CLS v JKR fight mentioned earlier, I don’t get why you’d want to underman a team you only have a chance at beating down one character. If you lose congrats you just lost CLS’ team, which realistically should be used elsewhere.

    “Let’s stay on subject to this post” can be applied to any post made on the forums. Tagging the devs in a lot of your posts doesn’t mean you can magically summon them. So yes this is on topic since it’s being posted here…

    The first player assumes all the risk by trying to maximize banners since they don't know their opponents outcome. The second player has that information and can use it in their gameplan, which is the advantage.

    If I know I just need to win against geos ,I will 5 man that battle every time and take the win. Why take the unnecessary risk?
    If you are forced to take unnecessary risks in order to win then you are losing at the roster &/or match strategy level.

    I almost always attack first and I have almost 1.1m lifetime banners and never failed to make Kyber.

    I continue to attack first and am 5-1 so far, with my 1 loss being vs an opponent with comparable lifetime stats, +1 GL and faster mods. The fact that he attacked second was less significant than those advantages and the fact that he was able to 1-shot both my fleets. Just one fleet hold would have flipped the outcome but even if he had gone first, I would have had a very hard time picking up more banners from under-squadding due to his mod speed advantage.

    There hasn't really ever been much strategy in GAC. Either you have the right characters upgraded or you don't. You've either been fortunate with mod upgrades or you haven't. You either look at people's GAC history or you don't.
    * building a strong roster is strategy
    * farming, developing and assigning mods effectively is strategy
    * scouting your opponent informs your strategy
    * deploying effective defense and offense for a given opponent is strategy

    But if you ignore all of those things and just do whatever or do nothing then yeah, I guess there isn't much strategy. You'll lose of course but that is clearly the matchmaker's fault. #ForumLogic

    It doesn't matter much what you do with mods if you are unlucky on mod rolls. There can be a vast disparity in mods from one person to the next even considering equal commitment to farming and upgrading them. Making what use you can with characters you have based on what an opponent has involves limited strategy. Looking at a GAC history when most people generally throw down the same stuff and just don't care about the mode... kudos.

    If they wanted to see who's "the best" in this mode they would give each participant equal rosters and mods for a match and say go at it much like they did with devs vs content creators. Of course that might cause certain players to spend less so we'll never see it.




  • WD_40
    113 posts Member
    edited December 2021
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    In regards to undermanning, if you take the risk you can get rewarded with extra banners. If you don’t you won’t get extra banners. Take Geonosians as an example. It’s an easy team to under-man by using Darth Vader and possible a second character like Thrawn. Can you run a full team to positively nuke them? Sure, same as you being able to just take those 2 and doing the same. Then there are teams where under-manning is a ridiculous proposition, like if someone places JMK w CAT on defense.

    As for the argument of running a full team to get a guaranteed win or running -1 person, like the CLS v JKR fight mentioned earlier, I don’t get why you’d want to underman a team you only have a chance at beating down one character. If you lose congrats you just lost CLS’ team, which realistically should be used elsewhere.

    “Let’s stay on subject to this post” can be applied to any post made on the forums. Tagging the devs in a lot of your posts doesn’t mean you can magically summon them. So yes this is on topic since it’s being posted here…

    The first player assumes all the risk by trying to maximize banners since they don't know their opponents outcome. The second player has that information and can use it in their gameplan, which is the advantage.

    If I know I just need to win against geos ,I will 5 man that battle every time and take the win. Why take the unnecessary risk?
    If you are forced to take unnecessary risks in order to win then you are losing at the roster &/or match strategy level.

    I almost always attack first and I have almost 1.1m lifetime banners and never failed to make Kyber.

    I continue to attack first and am 5-1 so far, with my 1 loss being vs an opponent with comparable lifetime stats, +1 GL and faster mods. The fact that he attacked second was less significant than those advantages and the fact that he was able to 1-shot both my fleets. Just one fleet hold would have flipped the outcome but even if he had gone first, I would have had a very hard time picking up more banners from under-squadding due to his mod speed advantage.

    There hasn't really ever been much strategy in GAC. Either you have the right characters upgraded or you don't. You've either been fortunate with mod upgrades or you haven't. You either look at people's GAC history or you don't.
    * building a strong roster is strategy
    * farming, developing and assigning mods effectively is strategy
    * scouting your opponent informs your strategy
    * deploying effective defense and offense for a given opponent is strategy

    But if you ignore all of those things and just do whatever or do nothing then yeah, I guess there isn't much strategy. You'll lose of course but that is clearly the matchmaker's fault. #ForumLogic

    It doesn't matter much what you do with mods if you are unlucky on mod rolls. There can be a vast disparity in mods from one person to the next even considering equal commitment to farming and upgrading them. Making what use you can with characters you have based on what an opponent has involves limited strategy. Looking at a GAC history when most people generally throw down the same stuff and just don't care about the mode... kudos.

    If they wanted to see who's "the best" in this mode they would give each participant equal rosters and mods for a match and say go at it much like they did with devs vs content creators. Of course that might cause certain players to spend less so we'll never see it.




    There can be some disparity sure, but statistically over a very large set of mods, you should end up with about "equal" mods. It's all math, you will eventually get a mod with 25+ speed secondary, it just might take a whole bunch of trash mods to get there. So over a large sample size of developing mods, good luck will balance out bad luck

    Exact same thing with character shard drops, overall good luck will balance out the bad luck and you will probably farm an accelerated hard node character (from 0 shards to 330) in about 825ish attempts on the node. So you can farm what you think will be viable, and use roster planning strategy
  • Going second is an advantage but not as big as those that argue for a change believe. Very rarely are you going to get two opponents with similar rosters, who both scout each other. Quite honestly if you get into an efficiency battle you are either setting too easy a defense or it was always going to come down to execution. If it’s always going to come down to execution I feel your pain but rng is rng.

    Even in the example of executor and whether to try for the one shot mal or two shot mal kill the “advantage” of going second is small. If you two shot, you still can force your opponent to try the one shot depending on the efficiency of the other battles in play. If you try to one shot and succeed you force them to take the riskier route.
  • Drathuk916 wrote: »
    Going second is an advantage but not as big as those that argue for a change believe. Very rarely are you going to get two opponents with similar rosters, who both scout each other. Quite honestly if you get into an efficiency battle you are either setting too easy a defense or it was always going to come down to execution. If it’s always going to come down to execution I feel your pain but rng is rng.

    Even in the example of executor and whether to try for the one shot mal or two shot mal kill the “advantage” of going second is small. If you two shot, you still can force your opponent to try the one shot depending on the efficiency of the other battles in play. If you try to one shot and succeed you force them to take the riskier route.

    Saying this only provides advantages in efficiency matches is false.

    It provides bigger advantages in defensive matches.

    If you know your opponent is stuck and can’t clear the board, you can purposefully ignore parts of their defense and focus on beating just enough to win.

    If you both can’t clear JMK/Cat, your opponent may send his entire roster to clear it and you can simply ignore. Huge advantage.
  • You know there is a strategy of a person attacking just once to see if the other person will attack back at all? As the person attacking second, you’d have no idea what team they used out of their roster to defeat your defensive team. What would you do at that point? You can’t definitively calculate the minimum banners needed for a victory anymore.
  • WD_40 wrote: »
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    HokieFiend wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    LukeDukem8 wrote: »
    In regards to undermanning, if you take the risk you can get rewarded with extra banners. If you don’t you won’t get extra banners. Take Geonosians as an example. It’s an easy team to under-man by using Darth Vader and possible a second character like Thrawn. Can you run a full team to positively nuke them? Sure, same as you being able to just take those 2 and doing the same. Then there are teams where under-manning is a ridiculous proposition, like if someone places JMK w CAT on defense.

    As for the argument of running a full team to get a guaranteed win or running -1 person, like the CLS v JKR fight mentioned earlier, I don’t get why you’d want to underman a team you only have a chance at beating down one character. If you lose congrats you just lost CLS’ team, which realistically should be used elsewhere.

    “Let’s stay on subject to this post” can be applied to any post made on the forums. Tagging the devs in a lot of your posts doesn’t mean you can magically summon them. So yes this is on topic since it’s being posted here…

    The first player assumes all the risk by trying to maximize banners since they don't know their opponents outcome. The second player has that information and can use it in their gameplan, which is the advantage.

    If I know I just need to win against geos ,I will 5 man that battle every time and take the win. Why take the unnecessary risk?
    If you are forced to take unnecessary risks in order to win then you are losing at the roster &/or match strategy level.

    I almost always attack first and I have almost 1.1m lifetime banners and never failed to make Kyber.

    I continue to attack first and am 5-1 so far, with my 1 loss being vs an opponent with comparable lifetime stats, +1 GL and faster mods. The fact that he attacked second was less significant than those advantages and the fact that he was able to 1-shot both my fleets. Just one fleet hold would have flipped the outcome but even if he had gone first, I would have had a very hard time picking up more banners from under-squadding due to his mod speed advantage.

    There hasn't really ever been much strategy in GAC. Either you have the right characters upgraded or you don't. You've either been fortunate with mod upgrades or you haven't. You either look at people's GAC history or you don't.
    * building a strong roster is strategy
    * farming, developing and assigning mods effectively is strategy
    * scouting your opponent informs your strategy
    * deploying effective defense and offense for a given opponent is strategy

    But if you ignore all of those things and just do whatever or do nothing then yeah, I guess there isn't much strategy. You'll lose of course but that is clearly the matchmaker's fault. #ForumLogic

    It doesn't matter much what you do with mods if you are unlucky on mod rolls. There can be a vast disparity in mods from one person to the next even considering equal commitment to farming and upgrading them. Making what use you can with characters you have based on what an opponent has involves limited strategy. Looking at a GAC history when most people generally throw down the same stuff and just don't care about the mode... kudos.

    If they wanted to see who's "the best" in this mode they would give each participant equal rosters and mods for a match and say go at it much like they did with devs vs content creators. Of course that might cause certain players to spend less so we'll never see it.




    There can be some disparity sure, but statistically over a very large set of mods, you should end up with about "equal" mods. It's all math, you will eventually get a mod with 25+ speed secondary, it just might take a whole bunch of trash mods to get there. So over a large sample size of developing mods, good luck will balance out bad luck

    Exact same thing with character shard drops, overall good luck will balance out the bad luck and you will probably farm an accelerated hard node character (from 0 shards to 330) in about 825ish attempts on the node. So you can farm what you think will be viable, and use roster planning strategy

    I would agree with that assuming a properly coded system.... and at the rate with which mods can be farmed and upgraded you could be looking at a very extended amount of time for things to equal out. Long stretches of terrible luck could take years to even out.

    I would call the current GAC what it is. It's not a measure of skill/strategy as much as it is luck/monetary investment. Some people dig that though and it's what currently keeps the game alive. It's a shame because it's been proven by other mobile gaming companies without a golden goose franchise that a great, fun, extremely profitable game and a less aggressive monetization strategy is not binary. With the SW label on this game, there is an ocean of players that would have supported this game at a sub-whale level in perpetuity had another path been taken long ago. Even with how things are, I think if there was more content (playable content not just more characters) released regularly people wouldn't have been as quick to drop the game. The revenue this game has generated and the playable content don't line up imo.


  • Drathuk916 wrote: »
    Going second is an advantage but not as big as those that argue for a change believe. Very rarely are you going to get two opponents with similar rosters, who both scout each other. Quite honestly if you get into an efficiency battle you are either setting too easy a defense or it was always going to come down to execution. If it’s always going to come down to execution I feel your pain but rng is rng.

    Even in the example of executor and whether to try for the one shot mal or two shot mal kill the “advantage” of going second is small. If you two shot, you still can force your opponent to try the one shot depending on the efficiency of the other battles in play. If you try to one shot and succeed you force them to take the riskier route.

    Saying this only provides advantages in efficiency matches is false.

    It provides bigger advantages in defensive matches.

    If you know your opponent is stuck and can’t clear the board, you can purposefully ignore parts of their defense and focus on beating just enough to win.

    If you both can’t clear JMK/Cat, your opponent may send his entire roster to clear it and you can simply ignore. Huge advantage.

    I didn’t say it’s advantage was only in efficiency battles. It’s always advantageous to go second. It’s just not that big of an advantage. This is true for many reasons but the two biggest.

    1) few matches come down to efficiency due to poor mm.
    2) too few people actually scout you even less are changing their defense. so any advantage you give them by not waiting is more than overcome by scouting.

    So every match that isn’t a forgone conclusion comes down to execution. If you plan accordingly and execute your plan well they have no to little advantage. Will it cost you a match here and there? Sure but not as often as all who hate the advantage think. Certainly far fewer battles now than the old system when you could consistently go 10-2 or better in a season. Regardless of whether they change this, you’re going to lose as often as you win now.
  • The perception of an advantage is far bigger than any actual advantage. Especially now that people just need participation and size of loss doesn’t matter. Smash your opponent in the first hour or two and they’re more likely to say eff-it and do their one attack than to min-max calculate the exact right number of undersizes and whatnot to use.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • NicWester wrote: »
    The perception of an advantage is far bigger than any actual advantage. Especially now that people just need participation and size of loss doesn’t matter. Smash your opponent in the first hour or two and they’re more likely to say eff-it and do their one attack than to min-max calculate the exact right number of undersizes and whatnot to use.

    Yup, my first attack against their bugs with my Traya, hard lock. I didn't try hard at all after.
    Make Bronzium autoplay opening an option.
  • TVF wrote: »
    My favorite thing about this thread is that we're up to three pages now of the exact same arguments made on both sides every other time this thread has been made.

    Don’t be shy and just say you want to get back to the dev tag.
  • I'll never understand how people don't realize that going second is an advantage. Any top tier GAC player will tell you that it is. People that don't say it is just don't understand the depth of GAC and its mind games. They simply can't see that it's an advantage because they don't know how to use the information. Going second doesn't mean you will win obviously, but the information you get from the enemy going first can help your planning a lot. If you're a good player, execution is a given, so a lot comes down to planning (if the rosters are fairly equal). By letting your opponent go first you can even tell what they will have in their backwall, which then allows you to plan better for the front walls. If you go first you will have no idea what's in the backwall until you get there. I could honestly write a book on the advantages of going second, and some people still wouldn't understand.
  • I'll never understand how people don't realize that going second is an advantage.

    No, we realize it, we just don't care because it's not enough of an advantage to get worked up over.

    Let me put it to you another way--if you want to get totally jacked and ripped just stop eating carbohydrates. There is an advantage to looking like that. But we all of us don't do it because we prefer pasta.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • NicWester wrote: »
    I'll never understand how people don't realize that going second is an advantage.

    No, we realize it, we just don't care because it's not enough of an advantage to get worked up over.

    Let me put it to you another way--if you want to get totally jacked and ripped just stop eating carbohydrates. There is an advantage to looking like that. But we all of us don't do it because we prefer pasta.

    Maybe that's your take, but there are plenty here who have said that going 1st is an advantage.

    I agree it's not worth getting too worked up over unless you are one of the top 100 or so players in the game gunning for those bragging rights.

    That said, CG's response suggests they don't actually play the game at a high level. And the ease of making this change suggests they just don't care. If this were the only way CG were dismissive of their player base, it'd be a blip. Instead, it's just another log on the pile.
  • NicWester wrote: »
    I'll never understand how people don't realize that going second is an advantage.

    No, we realize it, we just don't care because it's not enough of an advantage to get worked up over.

    Let me put it to you another way--if you want to get totally jacked and ripped just stop eating carbohydrates. There is an advantage to looking like that. But we all of us don't do it because we prefer pasta.

    Maybe that's your take, but there are plenty here who have said that going 1st is an advantage.

    If going first is an advantage and going second is an advantage then maybe there isn't anything that needs to be fixed.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
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