I agree with your perspective here almost in its totality, but I do think there is one problem in terms of design space.

The droid upgrade.

Sure, the imperials have the bomb upgrade as unique to them, but it has a single function use. The droid slot allows for a lot more flexibility and tend to be cheaper for what they do. You can improve maneuver, shields, make your ship more agile, and on upcoming droids add stress to an opponent or even add an EPT to a pilot that doesn't have one.

There really isn't anything on an imperial ship that is going to make up for this kind of flexibility. Maybe they need to add a "Dark Side" upgrade or something to certain ships, I don't know, but the droid is providing them with some design flexibility on some of the rebellion ships that just doesn't exist on the Empire.

Maybe it's time for some Imperial Only modification cards to set this whole astromech inequality to rest...

Presently, you have to buy Imperial ships to get these two fantastic upgrades for the B-wing.

AdvSen comes with the E-Wing.

That's great... when the E-wing comes out. Point is, the Imperial Aces gave you everything you needed to run the Interceptor at its best. No need to buy anything else. If you owned the Interceptor expansion and the Aces, you can run 2 or 3 pimped out Interceptors.

With the B-wing.... you'll need to buy the E-wing, an A-wing, the Rebel Aces, and either the Slave 1 or a Lambda shuttle to get all it's popular upgrades.

So the question posed in the thread title isn't rhetorical. If this forum's frustrated Imperial players were in charge of FFG's design team, what would change about those current trends? What kind of upgrades, specifically, would make you more comfortable with the game's direction?

I'm a child at heart, and as every other child I want TOYS.

But it happens that my brother has much more toys than me. And on top of that, he also gets to play with MY toys... But I cannot touch his, Mom & Dad forbids me to touch their turrets and all his Astromech units because I have 3 bombs, which I seldom use.

He also has a lot of dolls to put inside his ships that say 'Rebel only'... I only have 2. And he has the BIG ships... While none for me.

So what do I want to be happier? MORE TOYS, as much as my brother currently has... And I want shiny new toys that say IMPERIAL ONLY, lots,... just to scrub them on his face.

I can honestly say that I don't need new stuff to be happy with FFG. Though a few more cards that are good wingmen would be nice (Duraham already made this point effectively enough) I would just like them to be even-handed about their spoilers. They started talking about new releases in January, and since then they've had two articles on the Tantive IV and Transport each, plus the z-95 spoiler article and generally just made many more of the rebel upgrades known first, as well as Rebel Aces. Meanwhile, it's taken them almost 4 months to acknowledge the Defender's existence, and they made one named Phantom pilot known a few few weeks ago. If they could just alternated what they spoiled, I'd be completely cool with that.

I would like to see more viable non swarm lists as well as turrets and unconvential ships. Why not give Imperial players the slew of specific bounty hunter ships like Bossk in Hound's Tooth or Zuckuss and 4-LOM in their ship for example? You can easily give these ships various upgrades and turrets that Rebel players take for granted while still keeping it lore friendly.

Since the Rebels win in the end, I like that they are getting the better ships.

Shuttle Aces

1: Offer an EPT or Upgrade that gives the TIEs more defence dice if they are outside of primary arc.

2: Do something about the TIE Advanced.

3: Reduce the "you have a good dial" points increase that keeps getting slapped onto every Imperial ship (you need only look at the backlash against the cost of the A-Wing and the response to that to see what happens when a Rebel ship gets costed the way Imperial ships do).

4: Increase the number of "Imperial Only" options for crew and add more bombs to counter the Astromech advantage.

5: STOP MAKING B-WINGS BETTER!

Shuttle Aces

I want to Barrel Roll that Beast!

1: Offer an EPT or Upgrade that gives the TIEs more defence dice if they are outside of primary arc.

2: Do something about the TIE Advanced.

3: Reduce the "you have a good dial" points increase that keeps getting slapped onto every Imperial ship (you need only look at the backlash against the cost of the A-Wing and the response to that to see what happens when a Rebel ship gets costed the way Imperial ships do).

4: Increase the number of "Imperial Only" options for crew and add more bombs to counter the Astromech advantage.

5: STOP MAKING B-WINGS BETTER!

#5... really!!!

Ohh... thought of another thing:

New damage deck-

-3 less direct hits replaced by "sheilds down". It would still function like direct hit against most ships but wouldn't punish ties so much.

-more pilot specific debuffs

-discard x upgrades... there are lots of new ones to choose from.

Not that a new damage deck would be and Imperial Player's wishlist. Bringing a little less fluctuation to the game for the defender is nice for everyone; just a tich better for imperials.

Ohh... thought of another thing:

New damage deck-

-3 less direct hits replaced by "sheilds down". It would still function like direct hit against most ships but wouldn't punish ties so much.

-more pilot specific debuffs

-discard x upgrades... there are lots of new ones to choose from.

Not that a new damage deck would be and Imperial Player's wishlist. Bringing a little less fluctuation to the game for the defender is nice for everyone; just a tich better for imperials.

Yeah, SOMETHING that didn't favour shields over hull would be nice.

Technically that should be Ion weapons... heck I'd even take an EPT that let you get multiple hits with Ions if they were against shields.

Imperials need the Assault Gunboat. That is all.

I think that for imperial players to be happy they need for people on this forum to stop assuming that they are whining and complaining when they point out (real or perceived) imbalance in FFG releases.

If FFG is going to play the synergy=rebels game - which I actually like - then they need to make the imperials better on an individual basis. Imperial pilot skills should be slightly better than comparable, non-synergistic rebel abilities.

But they aren't. So now rebels have better individual pilots AND better synergistic options.

That's the real problem.

To me, it just seems that FFG is very careful when they give the imperials cool toys, but not as careful with their rebel counterparts. Examples:

-shuttle abilities all have range one, hawks all have range three. Why?

-Lorrir; sweet ability, but let's make him take a stress for it

-Kanos; sweet ability, but it only works at range three

-Vessler; sweet ability, except you have to have another target lock...

And we can keep going.

Vs.

-Farlander; incredible ability, eats the downside to other abilities...what?

-Wes; doesn't even have to hit? Why?

-Blount; again?

-Hobbie, Tarn, Porkins, etc, etc, etc

I think that for imperial players to be happy they need for people on this forum to stop assuming that they are whining and complaining when they point out (real or perceived) imbalance in FFG releases.

If FFG is going to play the synergy=rebels game - which I actually like - then they need to make the imperials better on an individual basis. Imperial pilot skills should be slightly better than comparable, non-synergistic rebel abilities.

But they aren't. So now rebels have better individual pilots AND better synergistic options.

That's the real problem.

To me, it just seems that FFG is very careful when they give the imperials cool toys, but not as careful with their rebel counterparts. Examples:

-shuttle abilities all have range one, hawks all have range three. Why?

-Lorrir; sweet ability, but let's make him take a stress for it

-Kanos; sweet ability, but it only works at range three

-Vessler; sweet ability, except you have to have another target lock...

And we can keep going.

Vs.

-Farlander; incredible ability, eats the downside to other abilities...what?

-Wes; doesn't even have to hit? Why?

-Blount; again?

-Hobbie, Tarn, Porkins, etc, etc, etc

Rebels have the least amount of synergy. Most of the 'synergy' comes from named HWK pilots which are flying a ship that is only marginally above dead weight. They have very good individual pilots but that's about it. Rebels rely alot on the baseline 'quality' of their ships.

Imperials have Howlrunner, Jonus and the Shuttle to provide synergy and are actual force multipliers which make the rest of the squadron better.

Also Kanos' ability works at range 2 as well.

-shuttle abilities all have range one, hawks all have range three. Why?

First of all they don't. Yorr is range 2 and Kagi gets the whole **** table.

2ndly shuttles are a large base and so their range 1 & 2 abilities get pretty reasonable coverage.

Thirdly, shuttles are extremely durable by cost. They can get into the thick of things and slug it out. The HWK is reasonably fragile for the cost of it's named pilots - it prefers to chill on the edges of a battle and support.

Fourth, when was the last time you saw an actual HWK in competitive play?

I like the fact that the two sides have different play styles. If I want swarm, I play imperial. If I want a few synergistic ships, I play a rebels.

Heck, one of the things that pushed me away from Magic the Gathering was when any colour could build any deck style.

I want more ships for both factions that reinforce the differences. Not make them the same.

And, has others have said, the fact that the tournament winning fleets are pretty evenly split Rebel-Imperial implies a balance in differences.

Sorry. Minor factual errors aside: I didn't feel like looking up every single card here at work.

The point is, that rebels are substantially better at both synergy and individual pilots. With few exceptions.

And I don't know how you can say the rebels don't have synergy.

Off the top of my head, empire has 5 ships: (3 shuttles, Jonus, Howlrunner)

Rebels have: Garven, Biggs, Dutch, Lando, Cracken, Jansen, 3 Hawks, and I'm probably missing a couple.

It's plain wrong to say that Empire has more synergy.

Imperials need the Assault Gunboat. That is all.

The only problem with this post is I can only like it once.

Just play both Imperials and Rebels...no matter what FFG releases you will be happy, just like me.

All imperials need is more options, like making the Tie Advance viable. They do not need rebalancing...regular ties are powerful enough...we don't need to make them stronger with a new damage deck.

Take the 72 man Hi-Lo Vassal tournament...only 10 out of 72 lists were swarms (6+ ships)...and guess who is in the finals right now...2 swarms...

Personal, I'm tired of swarms myself, and I'm an Imperial player. I wish FFG would raise the price of the Academy, Obsidian, and Black pilots by 1 point in hopes to water down the strength of swarms some, maybe go as far as raise all Tie Fighters by 1 point.

I get the feeling like FFG underpriced the low end Tie Fighters initially and don't want to fix the real problem so now they seem to be a lot more cautious as to what they give the Imperials, more so than the Rebels. It also starts to make it feel like everything else is over costed when you look at how much of a bargain the Tie Fighters are.

I agree with ties being good, but subtract howlrunner and I think they behave like a 12 pt mosquito it's viewed as.

Ummm, the traditional TIE Swarm just got multiple major hits. Predator alone is going to force changes in many people's lists. Add in the Phantom being really, really annoying against a swarm with the Advanced Cloaking Device. And finally, Blount and the Z-95 armed with Assault Missiles and the Munitions Failsafe.

Ummm, the traditional TIE Swarm just got multiple major hits. Predator alone is going to force changes in many people's lists. Add in the Phantom being really, really annoying against a swarm with the Advanced Cloaking Device. And finally, Blount and the Z-95 armed with Assault Missiles and the Munitions Failsafe.

Yes, this is true but I'm not sure combating one swarm with another is the direction we all want the game to go.

Another thing that should be noted is that it's possible to take a group of Black Squadrons each with Predator and then they never really have to rely on Howlrunner anymore.

Ummm, the traditional TIE Swarm just got multiple major hits. Predator alone is going to force changes in many people's lists. Add in the Phantom being really, really annoying against a swarm with the Advanced Cloaking Device. And finally, Blount and the Z-95 armed with Assault Missiles and the Munitions Failsafe.

Did I miss something between Blount and the munitions failsafe? I thought it was a no-go.

I guess it depends on your definition of Swarm is. You are talking about groups of 5. All those Missiles and Elite Talents add up. But the old 8 and 7 (w/Howlrunner) Swarms are going to face some very difficult situations.

EDIT: I was referring to the Z-95 with Munitions Failsafe. The Munitions Failsafe is still a waste of points on Blount.