Playing without the Guides - No 'Nubs'

I was looking at the game and wondering what they would do to fix it once it goes into a second edition if ever. The mechanics are pretty strong and except for some thematic concepts I find them very capable. One of the mechanics though has bugged me slightly for a long time and I wondered if it was simply a fault of making the game easier for beginner players was why it was created that way. This is the Guides mechanic.

The Guides by default keep the ship on rigid mappable paths until an overlap or bump occurs. But in reasonable interpretation of reality the pilot could and would make adjustments on his intended direction of flight, a slight jink port or starboard, or relaxing or tightening in on that sharp turn.

The Barrel roll mechanic is free of guides and gives the pilot an awesome level of flexibility allowing the range adjustment of up to a half base or 2 bases coverage whereas the boost mechanic always puts you in the same 3 spots or not at all.

If I was to make a 2nd edition, I'd be cutting the guides off of everything and allowing manoeuvres and really anything that uses the manoeuver templates to place the template flush with the intended edges anywhere along that edge.

Imagine taking a straight 4. by placing the template flush on the extreme edge of the base you could pan slightly to line up with your wingman directly behind you doing a straight 5, Real team and formation flying. Imagine a boost that could be place a bit off to the left or right to steer around an asteroid just like a real pilot would.

I haven't had a chance to test this with anything other than solo play as I don't have enough risers and don't intend to destroy bases (yet) but am wondering what the community thinks about this and if a dev reads it maybe get some detail back as to why they went with guides.

In writing this I'm also wondering if this has something to do with the old engines we played going back some 30 years that showed their heads in wings of war and other naval and air combat games. In those games we used cards not dials and planning was a few turns ahead. We played 3 cards in Naval wars and Wings of War also used a 3 card system for the WW1 planes.

I have. It seems fine , no worse than a small base doing the same. I'll draw up some examples when I get back from nats.

Inertia would suggest that the large ship would slide to the outside. The "Magic Nipples" really sacrifice true formation flying.

It gets rather annoying when you accidentally bump a ship you were just next to. My peer group allow calling "in formation" prior to moving but after dial reveal so that the formation stays. Once the formation breaks, however, the "Magic Nipples" rule again.

Imagine ding a hard 1 turn with a large base.

It breaks the game. You can literally spin 90 degrees with the Falcon if you could move the template all the way to the left and then place the ship all the way on its back left edge. Add Expert handling and it gets even nuttier.

I've wondered about that a bit myself. It would be a really neat thing to try out for casual games, at least.

Hmmm, I have way more bases than I'll ever need in a standard tournament squad... (And, you know, I don't play tournaments anyway...)

The point of the guides and nubs isn't to reflect 'how something would fly' its an abstraction for the sake of turning flying skill into a game that can have rules applied to it.

for another more common one, people in real life do not have hit points. What does someone at 30 hit points looks like in the real world? cancer? bullet?

I dislike the nubs because ever so often they get in the way.

I won't want a barrel roll/decloak style drift for every move, but sometimes I think Attack Wing bases with their slot instead of nub works pretty well.

How about using a slot but having it a little wider than the template? Allows some more control but isn't totally game breaking. Note could then have front and rear slots of different sizes for more fun. Also could have large ships have more constrained options.

How about using a slot but having it a little wider than the template? Allows some more control but isn't totally game breaking. Note could then have front and rear slots of different sizes for more fun. Also could have large ships have more constrained options.

This isn't a bad idea, but I doubt FFG is going to totally change a core mechanic of the game at this point.

I could see going to a slot for Version 2.0 X-Wing. It would stop the (if only occasional) arguments/questions about whether the nubs count for overlap, or if the ship is considered "off the map" if just the nubs are over the edge, or should the nubs count as part of the base when setting up on the edge of the deployment zone.

I think learning to formation fly is a really important part of the game.

calling 'in formation' would feel a bit weak to me.

I think learning to formation fly is a really important part of the game.

calling 'in formation' would feel a bit weak to me.

It more or less negates the thickness of the play surface interference. If two wing-tipping TIEs move at the same speed forward, it should mean they both end up side by side again. If this were a digital game, the human error/felt/neoprene bumping would never happen.

It certainly helps when our offspring and li'l droids ****** something or bump the table.

Also, there's nothing weak about feline intervention or Cat-ex Machina.

Felt matt

nothing moves about.

its the way forwards rather than changing a core game mechanic

I think learning to formation fly is a really important part of the game.

calling 'in formation' would feel a bit weak to me.

The problem is that oftentimes bumping and human error leads to positioning that is technically illegal or impossible.

For example, two ships that both start the game exactly parallel with the table edge, and execute maneuvers in the same direction for several consecutive turns, should end up with *exactly* the same facing at the end of all the moves. However, in actual practice this almost never happens. Because of natural human imprecision and the imperfect size and shape of templates you'll tend to see ships slip millimetre-by-millimetre over the course of the game into facings that they technically should not be able to occupy at that point.

At that point they either require interventive adjustment, or for the players to take an "it's just part of the game" attitude. I can sympathize with both perspectives, but I'll admit my personal preference would be for us to whip out the protractors after every activation phase and make sure each ship is occupying a perfectly legal facing.

I'll be honest I looked at this at first and was like no. just no. Then I started actually considering it and your reasoning to why it would be great and I think you are absolutely correct. It would make those high skilled pilots mean a bit more when they're the last to move, and it in theory could make the game more strategic since there's more maneuverability afforded by not sticking to the nubs. I'd be curious to hear how a play test works out.

The thing is yeah if you're flying base to base, yeah you are going to collide.

Thats why its best to learn to formation fly with either half a base width between ships or a full base chequerboard

I think you'd break the game without the nubs... it's 'flightpath' for a reason

But by all means try it for ten or so games and let us know how it plays out?

Imagine ding a hard 1 turn with a large base.

It breaks the game. You can literally spin 90 degrees with the Falcon if you could move the template all the way to the left and then place the ship all the way on its back left edge. Add Expert handling and it gets even nuttier.

Hey, no more need for Falcon Fortress as a single Falcon can just hold its position by spinning in a tight little circle!

Now if we were talking about straight maneuvers I could actually support including a little side-to-side drift but when you start getting into turns and banks you open up a huge range of possible ending points and flight paths. How bad is it? Have you considered how big the "box" is that Echo could decloak in just moving to one side? You've got the "start on the top and end on the bottom that can move to top to top, bottom to top, and finally bottom to bottom giving you a pretty large area. Now image every ship could do that with every bank or turn.

At the very least I believe you'd need to keep the nubs for either the starting or ending point of the maneuver. I'm not sure which one as they produce slightly different results but the idea would be that one end of the template must fit into a specific position but the other end would be free to slide.

Best thing to do is to mark the overlapped ship with say a 1 guide then just proceed as far as you can go.

It would stop the (if only occasional) arguments/questions about whether the nubs count for overlap, or if the ship is considered "off the map" if just the nubs are over the edge, or should the nubs count as part of the base when setting up on the edge of the deployment zone.

Luckily all of those are covered in the FAQ and that they count for everything but measuring range from ship to ship

The point of the guides and nubs isn't to reflect 'how something would fly' its an abstraction for the sake of turning flying skill into a game that can have rules applied to it.

for another more common one, people in real life do not have hit points. What does someone at 30 hit points looks like in the real world? cancer? bullet?

I killed a mouse today

Went up a level and now I can move around my house faster, and have gained 5hp.

I feel great!!

Going off of what Steve O said, removing the rear nubs would make the most sense. The starting point remains the same which seems physically correct, but allows for a slight drift during the course of the move. It also helps with the "human imprecision" also mentioned.

Makes sense removing them until we get some wierd ship that can make reverse moves!

I think learning to formation fly is a really important part of the game.

calling 'in formation' would feel a bit weak to me.

It more or less negates the thickness of the play surface interference. If two wing-tipping TIEs move at the same speed forward, it should mean they both end up side by side again. If this were a digital game, the human error/felt/neoprene bumping would never happen.

It certainly helps when our offspring and li'l droids ****** something or bump the table.

Also, there's nothing weak about feline intervention or Cat-ex Machina.

Haha! S_N_A_T_C_H got censored?! It means steal or weird Brad Pitt movie.

It's also uk slang for female genitals.

It's also uk slang for female genitals.

Well, yeah. Same here in the States, but a word used in the correct non-offensive context shouldn't be censored. I guess there's an auto-censorer? How many attack dice is it?