Wave 10, scenarios, squad creation with new metrics, guide and more

Back to Squadron Benchmark, after a few months of hard work !
Quite a few new features in this release. Many thanks to Ynot for keeping the simulator alive was I was away from it.

In brief, this release has the following features:

• New design for the page: All in one page, with 4 main areas, a home showing main features of the web app, one screen for squad building, for combat and for the hangar.
• Wave 10 units: Nearly all units have been implemented. New units, upgrades and condition cards. That's 238 pilots and 248 upgrades working (or nearly working, depending on bugs). Many bugs have been corrected. Now the AI is starting to move in formation. That's a start.
• Squad builder: I integrated small parts of the Beginner Strategy Guide from Flipperoverlord. There is much more in the guide than what you will see in the squad builder. Upgrades and pilots are given stars and a small advice to guide beginners is integrated. For each pilot, you have access to 2 graphs: one is the "Hitmap", a nice 2D display of both the maneuverability of a pilot and its capacity to hit an enemy, the other, titled "Moves", just shows the set of positions that can reach a pilot after a maneuver and an action. Finally, you can print the lists, export them as a link or as XWS JSON.
• Combat: Now there are scenarios ! To begin with, there are 4 scenarios. Expect different areas of play, some challenges (I hope) and moving asteroids...The page shows also the lists of the latest 5 tournaments entered in X-Wing List Juggler web site. It's updated automatically, so it will be modified regularly. Edit, modify, print the recent lists. 
 

EDIT: Hangar page no longer exist, merged with Combat page to minimize the clicks.

 

Squad Builder Screen
 For each pilot and upgrade, you now have access to the advice given in the Beginner's Strategy Guide from Flipperoverlord. Stars are also given. The stars given to the pilots are mine, deducted from the advice in the Strategy Guide. This guide is a great source of advice for all players.
For ships, you can now see if it has a primary weapon that is a turret, a simple laser or another weapon with auxiliary firing arc.
You can filter pilots and ships according to their cost, their maneuver, their upgrade, action or their wave number. You can also filter by text: For instance, if you put "additional attack die" in the top text line, you will see only pilots that have "additional attack die" in their explanation.


Once a pilot has been selected, you have access to different menus: Upgrades, Moves, Hitmap and Dial. Upgrades is for selecting upgrades, dial shows the dial (dynamically updated according to upgrades), Moves displays the different positions that the pilot can reach after one maneuver and one action. No slam yet.
The red square shows the starting position.

The Hitmap is a bit more complex and this will be discussed in details in the future post: The objective of this graph is to show if your pilot, with his upgrades, is a strong jouster, and at which range. Assume your pilot is firing at an Academy Pilot. The Academy Pilot has no upgrade, no modification, no focus, nothing and he has already moved.  How much chance do you have to inflict at least 1 damage to this ship after one move, one maneuver and one shot ? The Academy Pilot rolls green dices. Of course, it depends on where the Academy Pilot is.
The plot shows this. The initial position of  your pilot is given by the small square, marked with a red cross. For the different positions of the Academy Pilot, there is one pixel of color representing the % of chance to hit him. For instance, the white cross shows that if the Academy Pilot is at this position, you have a 72.23% chance to hit him. In order to have this percentage, a possible maneuver is 3 straight and choosing a target lock.
You can see there is some gradient of colors. The orange one shows the highest %, because you shoot at the Academy Pilot at range 1, with a Target Lock. Greener zones indicate a higher range, or positions that can be fired at after an acceleration (no target lock), boost or a red maneuver.  The scale goes from intense red (nearly 100% chance to hit) to dark green (0%).  When several moves and actions allow to shoot at the same position, only the best % is shown. For instance, a 5 straight + targetlock and a 3 straight + a boost leads to the same location, but the target lock improves greatly the % to hit, so only this value of % is shown.


The hitmap is a  tool to compare different pilots, the effects of upgrades, new weapons, titles, ...Of course, only the offensive effects are shown here. Support pilots have a value but this is not shown here. Only one shoot is shown (cluster and TLT shoot twice however). Finally, the actions considered are only target lock, focus, evade, roll, boost and cloak, so far. Additional actions provided by crew, astromech, ... are not taken into account. Push the limit should work, but this may increase dramatically the time to compute the hitmap. All these images are computed in your browser (nothing is precomputed), so it's probably better to test this with a recent enough computer, and a powerful enough.
Feel free to play  and comment this new feature !

Combat Screen
You can still make a free combat, choosing both team 1 and 2, either building them, typing them directly in the text area, pasting there an XWS export or selecting one of the teams available in the Hangar.
You can also play a scenario. For this, simply select your team 1 and press "play" for the scenario. A scenario is only a particular setup, where one of the team is predefined (the one played by the AI). You can still choose your  squadlist , as you wish. For "A secret trench", it's possible to do it with only one fast ship. For large ships, this will be a bit challenging. For the battle of Yavin, 3 ships (X-Wings ?) are nice. For the 2 other scenarios, any 100pts squad list can be chosen. Remember that the zone of play is indicated by dotted white points. Going outside of this zone after a move means instant death. This is particularly true for the 2 Death Star scenarios, for both sides. And for the "Pirate Magic Roundabout", only the scum pirates have a very limited zone.

You can also design new scenarios. Up for now, it is not possible to publish them, but you can replay them as you wish and they will be saved in your browser. Next version, it will be possible to publish them and maybe to make campaigns.

A scenario is just defined by its title, a short introduction, a squad list for the opposing force and a setup (background and limits of play). You have access, for scenario, to a few additional setups and to moving asteroid option.

Now the combat screen itself, in the simulator. You can change asteroids by clicking on them and then clicking on the "change" button. Just select the asteroid you wish. There are new tokens now, including for tractor beam and stress ! Thanks to the new x-wing font ! The top menu allows to go back to the home screen, to go back to any previous turn (and then, just reload the web page to go back to this round again), to import a new background image or to save the current game and export it as a link.

EDIT: Hangar page has been removed. Now in Combat Screen

Tournament lists

Find the latest tournament lists directly in Squadron Benchmark ! There are automatically imported from X-Wing List Juggler, so they change daily.

So far, only the flag of the country where the tournament took place, and its date and type are displayed.

Using the top button "Saved Squads" and "Latest", you can switch between tournament lists and your own.

Cheers !