X-wing and Information Flow:
The following is something I’ve been thinking about. It’s still in a rough form, there’s probably a lot of stuff wrong or missing.
The advantages of Piloting Skill are well known. The higher your PS, the later you move and pick your action, and the sooner you shoot. I’ve see lots of discussion about the merits of Piloting Skill, but there are some ramifications of Piloting Skill in a squad that I haven’t seen discussed very thoroughly, so I thought I’d lay them out here. This might mean I haven’t been party to the right discussions, it might mean that I’m totally off base, or it might mean that what I’m about to discuss is so self-evident that nobody bothers to mention it. Regardless, I’ll lay the ideas out in the case that discussing them might be helpful.
Piloting Skill is all about controlling information. The higher the piloting skill, the more information you control during deployment, maneuvers, and actions. Obviously, information is only important if it allows you to do something about it. Positional modification options (Barrel Roll, Boost, De-Cloaking) are much better on ships with a high PS than they are on ships with low PS, because you have more information about the field by the time important decisions are made. Conversely, higher PS is also about information denial. The actions of low PS pilots are taken in a void of information. Good analysis and accurate prediction of opponent’s plans can mitigate this information advantage.
Control of information flow is important at the ship level, obviously, but also at the squad level, particularly with squads that gain benefits from being in formation. For example, a Howlrunner mini-swarm might have several different piloting skills in its ships, but its destination will likely be revealed as the lowest PS ship makes its move. Similarly, a formation of Biggs with a Rookie Pilot will have its destination made less uncertain once the Rookie Pilot moves. This is one of the reasons I don’t personally like tight formations, as the overall plan is revealed as soon as the lowest-skilled pilot moves. The other reason is that asteroids limit good routes for tight formations, and this restricts a formation’s good moves even further, giving even more information to your opponent.
This idea is perhaps most important in deployment. Many players deploy ships near each other to aid in focusing fire, even if no range-dependent support is used. Even one low PS ship deployed early can give an indication of where the rest of the opposing ships will deploy. When considered with asteroid placement, knowing the location of the opposing ships gives a good indication of the initial movement strategy. Conversely, the more high PS ships a squad brings to the table, the more of the opponent’s strategy can be observed before revealing one’s own plans. A dispersed, high PS formation reveals little about one’s own plan and has more options to react to an opponent’s maneuvers.
On a less basic level, one can use a low PS ship to feed false information to the opposing player. Deployment of a pair of Academy Pilots separate from the squad’s main effort can give a false indication of where the main effort will take place. Likewise, a low PS pilot in formation can suggest a false route that isn’t followed by the rest of the formation in an important turn.
Finally, during the combat phase, the information flow is reversed. Players must make decisions about spending tokens and target selection for high PS pilots before they know where enemy attacks are directed. For example, a player must decide whether to spend a Focus token to boost Wedge’s offense before knowing if it will be needed to boost defense. A Rookie Pilot, on the other hand, will probably know whether a Focus token is needed for defense before the choice comes to use it on the attack. This information advantage is compounded with multiple low-level pilots. Generally only one will be the target. It may spend its token for defense, while the untargeted pilots spend theirs on attack. A group of high PS pilots would have to all hold their token for defense for any one of them to get a defensive advantage from a token (otherwise the opposing force will simply target one of the high PS pilots without a token, all other things being equal). I don’t mean to suggest that this advantage outweighs the advantage of firing first, but it is an advantage that should be taken into consideration while planning a squad.
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