So, the 18 page auto bumping whine-fest (both sides) has produced one interesting idea. Someone there suggested that, if FFG wanted to do something about fortressing, they could change deployment so that ships flew on from the board edge with their first move instead of being set up on the board.

I'm curious what impact this would have on the game in general? What repercussions would this have for strategy and list building? Do high PS pilots become even more important because you get to see the other guy's first move before you commit, or is it really 6 one way/half dozen the other and would have no substantive effect?

What do people think?

I don't see how that'd stop fortressing.

Seems like the only thing it would do is punish players for making first round dial mistakes. It would be overly harsh on inexperienced players while doing nothing to prevent a player from setting up a pillow-fort made of spaceships in the corner. It would take different first round moves than it does now but it would still have the same effect.

I don't see how that'd stop fortressing.

Apart from turrets like the falcon fortress, I think the idea is that someone who is going to set up a fortress is going to have to do so further from the board edge and so there will be more lines of approach that are not covered by the fortresses arcs of fire. If you look at the rebel fortress that is the topic of conversation in the other thread, he could not have set it up in the corner like that because ships have to be pointed in certain ways. He probably could have set it up, but it would have taken a turn or two and it would have been further from the board edge and not so much in a corner and so the enemy could have approached it without drawing fire. Yeah, 2 turret ships could still just fly on with hard turns and be facing each other (but still not in a corner) but Falcon fortress has never been particularly difficult to beat so not a problem.

Anyway, this thread is not about the fortress, but the other implications of the change.

Seems like the only thing it would do is punish players for making first round dial mistakes. It would be overly harsh on inexperienced players

How so?

I don't see how that'd stop fortressing.

Apart from turrets like the falcon fortress, I think the idea is that someone who is going to set up a fortress is going to have to do so further from the board edge and so there will be more lines of approach that are not covered by the fortresses arcs of fire. If you look at the rebel fortress that is the topic of conversation in the other thread, he could not have set it up in the corner like that because ships have to be pointed in certain ways. He probably could have set it up, but it would have taken a turn or two and it would have been further from the board edge and not so much in a corner and so the enemy could have approached it without drawing fire. Yeah, 2 turret ships could still just fly on with hard turns and be facing each other (but still not in a corner) but Falcon fortress has never been particularly difficult to beat so not a problem.

Anyway, this thread is not about the fortress, but the other implications of the change.

Seems like the only thing it would do is punish players for making first round dial mistakes. It would be overly harsh on inexperienced players

How so?

I'm assuming that if you deploy off board you'd need to make a move on the first turn that puts your ship entirely on the board or lose it. Anything that bumps in the first turn is likely to leave part of a ship out of play. Inexperienced players are more likely to make that sort of mistake. I'd have to check but I think a large base ship would need to do at least a 3 forward or 2 bank to end up completely in play.

What if you had to Setup at the board edge, and then progress as normal? It would have the minimum impact on play. Kinda like how Huge ships have to deploy but in reverse. At least part of the ship has to touch the board edge, and on the first turn has to move fully on the board edge. Of course we run into problems for Epic, but its not like that game type has any shortage of those.

If it takes an extra round or two for the fortress to get setup that's a benefit to the player setting up the fortress. The other player will have been moving for 2 or 3 turns before realizing that they need to storm a castle. That makes it harder to disengage and set up an approach.

Maybe, but i feel like it'll be really hard to move onto the board into a perpetual fortress, and that the setup required will be so obvious that your opponent will be able to catch wind of whats going on. And you'll probably be farther away from the edge and more vulnerable to a flanking attempt.

What if you had to Setup at the board edge, and then progress as normal? It would have the minimum impact on play. Kinda like how Huge ships have to deploy but in reverse. At least part of the ship has to touch the board edge, and on the first turn has to move fully on the board edge. Of course we run into problems for Epic, but its not like that game type has any shortage of those.

That seems to provide an advantage in deploying to squads with fewer ships to that aren't going to be flying in formation. If I understand what you are proposing setting up four ships in a square formation would not be possible. It would take two or three moves for a TIE swarm to end up in formation.

I'd have to set it up and try it out but I'd think something like a K-turn in the first round by your blocking ship followed by either a bank or a turn in the second would leave you setup nice and tight in the corner.

Ooooooo i didn't even think about swarms. Yeah that'll be a no go. They'd get hosed. that pretty much destroys the viability of moving on from the board edge. It would make swarms take too much time to get in formation and would require too many additional rules to allow them to set up "off edge". OH WELL.

The biggest issue with any sprt of change made to prevent a player from build a fortress in the corner is that it is likely to have ramifications beyond what you are trying to stop. I don't feel like the problem is big enough to have to deal with the unintended impact from the change.

If there is a change to the deployments rules, I would think requiring ships to be at least outside of range 1 of the side edge would leave a big enough hole to the coverage provided by the arcs in the fortress for an opponent to exploit without chinging much else. It will make dealing with asteroids in the first round or two a little trickier since you'll be starting closer to the center.

The biggest issue with any sprt of change ...is that it is likely to have ramifications beyond what you are trying to stop.

Which was why I started this thread. The "deploy from edge" suggestion seemed the most sensible suggestion presented in the thread but I figured it would have all sorts of repercussions on the rest of the game and wanted to see which ones we could spot easily.

Formations getting hosed is a pretty big dealbreaker, and Huge ships wouldn't be able to fully move onto the field without exceptions being made. And i dont want shenanigans like 40k Apocalypse had where you could hold superheavies in reserve but then couldn't legally move them onto the board since their movement wasn't high enough.

There's always that one guy who does it, then the whole community blows up about it. It's happened before with twin Falcons, and now this guy does it and the community is in an uproar. It'll die off. Fortresses aren't perfect.
I don't think FFG is going to change game mechanics just to prevent this

Formations getting hosed is a pretty big dealbreaker, and Huge ships wouldn't be able to fully move onto the field without exceptions being made. And i dont want shenanigans like 40k Apocalypse had where you could hold superheavies in reserve but then couldn't legally move them onto the board since their movement wasn't high enough.

Well huge ships and epic is always going to have exceptions and special rules so I don't consider that a big deal, but yeah, if it hoses formations it isn't viable.

There's always that one guy who does it, then the whole community blows up about it. It's happened before with twin Falcons, and now this guy does it and the community is in an uproar. It'll die off. Fortresses aren't perfect.

I don't think FFG is going to change game mechanics just to prevent this

It won't be a mechanic change. If anything it'll be something about how TO's can warn a player to knock it off or be DQed. Its such a rare and nonviable tactic that all it really does its ruin 2 players time in a match.

But yeah i think the formation flyers just knocked the viability of off the edge setup right out. It would get too messy to start measuring R1 off the board edge as the deployment zone. Much simpler to just make it a judgement call on the TO's part.

Besides making the first turn long you would have to factor in what your dials are doing. In a matter of fact it would make movement correction that much harder. How would you have them fly one and would you need dials set before or after? I mean there is some sort of high pilot skill adjustment based on how ships are moved as placing them directly across or placing on the opposite quadrant of the play area but now imagine if you add dials to that mix. Not only could you figure out where to place it on the fist turn but where to place a 5 straight.

Not a bad idea and I see why you felt necessary after that 2 page long thread mad me have to blink twice before reading it again. Although I really think that it is only an argument between 3-4 people is what is making it so long.

"Pillow Fort" is the name of my next list!

I'm going to say it now. Despite this idea having some problems as well, this is still the best idea of whole bunch of utterly crap ideas. This "off the board" is streamlined and does not involve extra tracking.

Anything that involves "for two consecutive turns"-wording is utterly dumb in my opinion. I don't like to include stupid "x-turn tracking" to a game that is very streamlined to "permanent until spent" and "remove after end phase". Corran Horns ability is pushing it a bit. All this "track this behaviour for a set amount of turns" is bad bad bad bad.

Ready to receive flak for this opinion.

Doesn' t MOV already punish this tactic? I agree there will always be "that guy" but to be honest it is annoying at best. Once people are more familiar with this dumb trick, people willl eventually see its weakness. It's not like that strategy is valid every game. I am willing to bet that the person who did it actually thought he can get away with the whole thing but doing that. Highly unlikely to win Worlds doing that.

kind of OT .....my anti fortressing idea probably got lost in the many pages but my idea was that bombs have momentum and travel in a line until they impact something. They move at the speed and direction they were dropped until they fly off the board or hit something. including a friendly ship!! this would allow for extremely LONG shots across the board that you could potentially dodge. Dont know if its a stupid idea or not but it would potentially break up side flyers and fortresses..also the bomber would NOT be allowed to pre measure the firing arc... so long shots would be harder to pull off but a large squad shooting a spread would make things interesting.