Our group was in the midst of another 'whats broken' debate and comparing and contrasting several ships in the discussion when a good friend and experienced gamer from other games who hooked up with us back at the beginning brought up a very unique point. As many of you will recall one of the things that distinguishes the play of a TIE fighter versus an X-wing is the difference in their 1-speed maneuvers. TIE's can turn, but X-wings can go straight. And that at the time was important. And as the game evolved each ships dial was a uniquely restrictive component of the ships design. And while some ships in more recent releases are still that way, like the TIE Defender, others as he claimed quite poetically are "Whitewashed". His complaint was that too many of the ships aren't restrictive enough on the dials design.

And I had to agree with him. My favorite ship the Outrider can perform every maneuver speed one through three, goes four straight, and has a K-turn to boot. For all those moves only the K-turn is red. The Y-wing wishes it had that dial. The Aggressor that is coming out is another example where it not only has some nine green moves, three special turn moves, five actually with a certain list build, it is only missing the 3-turn, and 4-straight moves. In all seriousness, it wont really be 'missing' those moves at all with the options available to it. Quite interesting. Phantom too, only losing a 5-straight over the basic TIE fighter, after receiving the benefit of cloaking technology. Again, not really losing much, or making the ship very 'interesting' in the way it flies.

I've been pondering his commentary for a week now and would like to open the forum to a thread on the subject. In response to the above comments, how do you respond?

...while some ships in more recent releases are still that way, like the TIE Defender, others as he claimed quite poetically are "Whitewashed". His complaint was that too many of the ships aren't restrictive enough on the dials design.

And I had to agree with him. My favorite ship the Outrider can perform every maneuver speed one through three, goes four straight, and has a K-turn to boot.

I agree that the Outrider's dial is both good and bland. Ditto the Decimator, really.

The Aggressor that is coming out is another example where it not only has some nine green moves, three special turn moves, five actually with a certain list build, it is only missing the 3-turn, and 4-straight moves. In all seriousness, it wont really be 'missing' those moves at all with the options available to it. Quite interesting.

I do think it's an interesting dial, though. It's so good that it's unprecedented, and it also has brand-new maneuvers on it.

Phantom too, only losing a 5-straight over the basic TIE fighter, after receiving the benefit of cloaking technology. Again, not really losing much, or making the ship very 'interesting' in the way it flies.

The Phantom has plenty of interesting-ness without having a groundbreaking dial as well.

I've been pondering his commentary for a week now and would like to open the forum to a thread on the subject. In response to the above comments, how do you respond?

My last response is that (as far as I know) FFG hasn't made the dials for the Starviper and Scyk public yet, so we can't talk about those--but I suspect they're going to be more on the "interesting" side of things. I think overall there's more to be done with Scum dials than Rebel and Imperial dials, if only because so much territory has already been mined for the original factions (and, more to the point, so many precedents already set).

We know the dial for the StarViper. I find it... interesting. I think people may be in for a shock adapting to a ship with S-loops instead of K-turns.

I think part of what you have going on with Scum is that you are bringing over 3 ships with pretty limited dials (HWK, Y-Wing, Z-95). The ships that they have spoiled the dials for are that faction's quick and maneuverable ships.

Looking at Wave 5, you overlooked the Decimator. It has a pretty interesting dial. No red, no k-turn, no 1 turn, 2 & 3 straight and 2 banks are green. The Outrider is a really agile ship with a great dial but has fairly limited green maneuvers. This gives a higher opportunity cost to taking PTL.

If you want to see the design space for really interesting "dials," check out FFG's other dogfighting game Blue Max.

Historically, some WWI planes turned better in one direction than another, this is represented in an asymmetrical dial where the Sopwith Camel has more options when turning right.

So far, every type of ship has a "unique" dial based on color and availability. It will be interesting to see just how crazy a dial can get (and conversely, more limited), especially with s-loops getting added in:

A ship where its right maneuvers are red but its left maneuvers are white or green.

A ship that can make hard left 1,2 and 3 but doesn't have a hard right 1 or 2 at all.

A ship where it only has 3's and the 4 and 5.

There are opportunities for truly interesting dials in addition to the ones with hyper mobility.

I think they've realised how awkward the shuttle's dial is and have vowed not to make it that hard to move around a large based ship ever again.

Kinda off topic, but I have always thought that the current dial for the Millennium Falcon and the Outrider represents the capabilities of those ships, but not their generic counterparts. I think it would be better if both ships had a more restrictive dial(think Lambda) and that you would get the current dial with the title card. Adjust points of all things accordingly. To late now, but would have been cool. Maybe if and when the Scum versions come out.(if ever)

Our group was in the midst of another 'whats broken' debate and comparing and contrasting several ships in the discussion when a good friend and experienced gamer from other games who hooked up with us back at the beginning brought up a very unique point. As many of you will recall one of the things that distinguishes the play of a TIE fighter versus an X-wing is the difference in their 1-speed maneuvers. TIE's can turn, but X-wings can go straight. And that at the time was important. And as the game evolved each ships dial was a uniquely restrictive component of the ships design. And while some ships in more recent releases are still that way, like the TIE Defender, others as he claimed quite poetically are "Whitewashed". His complaint was that too many of the ships aren't restrictive enough on the dials design.

And I had to agree with him. My favorite ship the Outrider can perform every maneuver speed one through three, goes four straight, and has a K-turn to boot. For all those moves only the K-turn is red. The Y-wing wishes it had that dial. The Aggressor that is coming out is another example where it not only has some nine green moves, three special turn moves, five actually with a certain list build, it is only missing the 3-turn, and 4-straight moves. In all seriousness, it wont really be 'missing' those moves at all with the options available to it. Quite interesting. Phantom too, only losing a 5-straight over the basic TIE fighter, after receiving the benefit of cloaking technology. Again, not really losing much, or making the ship very 'interesting' in the way it flies.

I've been pondering his commentary for a week now and would like to open the forum to a thread on the subject. In response to the above comments, how do you respond?

The Outrider's dial is maybe a little too good. It has everthing the Falcon has, plus the hard three turns? Though, as a large-base ship, it also can't move quite as slow other ships.

After playing with the Aggressor, its dial is good, but it has to be with a large-based ship. The first time I tried using the Boost-SLoop combo, I nearly flew myself off the board. As it is, I had to prematurely spend my Inertial Dampers to correct myself, and my IG was never able to recover from that error against an R3A2 Luke. He kept me stressed for the rest of the game until IG went up in a cloud of droid parts.

The Phantom may have the same dial as the TIE, but it's a mistake to compare the two ships. The requirement of shifting position by a full 2-speed template makes it impossible to slow-play that ship, and it's easy to overshoot your target as you do the cloak/decloak dance.

I actually think the Decimator's dial is very interesting. It's basically a Firespray dial without the K-turns, and it only clears stress on relatively fast maneuvers. Its inability to K-turn also makes it fairly predictable in terms of where it's going to go.

I still find the X-wing/Zs 1 banks to be incredibly important, since it's almost the only maneuver I have to use when keeping fat turrets at range 3

The Ties' 2 bank takes them a little bit closer

I do think that the Decimator's dial is some incredibly bland ****, though. A lot of users at my scene remark about the lack of k-turn, almost as if it had a firing arc or something.

I have, however, seen the Yt-2400's dial put to fine use, just never Dash. Dash is too busy only doing his four green maneuvers to constantly trigger kyle and doesn't care how he faces because turret. The generic accompanying him, though, has a 2 dice bonus for actually using his arc and that leads to some interesting scenarios that really show case the power of probably the best dial in the game (Aggressor pending).

So yeah, YT-2400 dial I find is excellent fun, it's just completely wasted on the current super Dash build

Honestly, I think FFG's been trying too hard to make interesting dials. Wave 4 and 5 are interesting in the number of ships that have their greens at speed 2 while the 1s are white. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, at least IMHO, except as a very artificial step away from "slow and straight = green".

I do think that in isolation, a number of dials simply become uninteresting. Both YTs are just insanely good for a ship that doesn't care which way it's pointing. The Decimator is just bleh. IG-2000 I actually find interesting - not in isolation, but it raises an interesting question of whether a large ship can function as a pure dogfighter in this game with no support arcs, of if there's literally no dial good enough to do so.

In the end, I don't think it's a "lately" kind of a thing. I don't see any particular trend in one direction or the other with the dials. It's more that it's a pretty limited design space - you've got 11 possible maneuvers plus a few Ks. You can play with colors a bit, and whether ships have the maneuvers, obviously, but there aren't really many logical patterns in there. Especially when they want to make a dial "better" than what's out there, or different just for the sake of it, they're running out of interesting and intelligent combos to try.

This is why this ship should be made:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/JumpMaster_5000

This ship has a turret on its port side. Now before you start whining about 'another turret', remember I said port side. You see the hull blocks the ship from firing 360°. Give it port and aft secondary arcs.

Now what does all this have to do with interesting dials? Well if I were creating the dial foe this ship it wouldn't have any koiogran turns or segnor's loop. There would be green maneuvers, but only with a port bearing. The ship would be designed to fly like a circling shark, occasionally taking a bite out of the prey.

Also, this class of ship is that of the Punishing One, the ship the bounty hunter Dengar flew.

This is why this ship should be made:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/JumpMaster_5000

Unfortunately, that sane ship is burdened with the dumbest name I have seen in a long time

sounds more like a children0friendly pogo-stick product

This is why this ship should be made:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/JumpMaster_5000

This ship has a turret on its port side. Now before you start whining about 'another turret', remember I said port side. You see the hull blocks the ship from firing 360°. Give it port and aft secondary arcs.

Now what does all this have to do with interesting dials? Well if I were creating the dial foe this ship it wouldn't have any koiogran turns or segnor's loop. There would be green maneuvers, but only with a port bearing. The ship would be designed to fly like a circling shark, occaisionally taking a bite out of the prey.

Also, this class of ship is that of the Punishing One, the ship the bounty hunter Dengar flew.

I would absolutely love to see that ship implemented in that way!

Yep.

You raise a good point. Since wave 4 the dials haven't been very interesting--due to lack of restriction.

Since wave 4 the dials haven't been very interesting--due to lack of restriction.

Not interesting?

The Z-95 and E-wing have X-wingesque dials but the greens are on the twos, not the ones. This is actually a wider design shift, but it also encourages them not to crawl.

The Phantom decloaks. I can't believe someone said it had an unintersting flying style.

The Decimator has the first dial to have no reds.

The Outrider has a Falconlike dial but a very unusual arc, making it fly very differently.

The Aggressor has an incredible dial because it's the first properly expensive large base ship with only a forward arc.

The Aggressor and Star Viper have the Segnor, a completely new maneuver.

The Decimator has the first dial to have no reds.

The Decimator not having reds is irrelevant. When was the last time you saw Han k-turn?

Well, maybe auto-thrusters might change that. Amazing to think that turrets might actually have to care about facing.

(agreed with the rest, the dials have been nice)

When was the last time you saw Han k-turn?

The Decimator has the first dial to have no reds.

The Decimator not having reds is irrelevant.

Irrelevant to what? It's a first.

I think a lot of this discussion is missing the spirit of OP's point, focusing instead on subjective parsing of the word "interesting."

It does seem to be the case that we have begun to see less and less red on dials (excepting the Defender), instead moving stress to unique actions or even attacks (Mara Jade, Stressbot, etc...). I'm not sure if this has a dramatic effect on the game, but it does seem to shift some of focus of the game if modern pilots are more concerned with externally imposed stress than their own actions.

I would guess that this shift in design was inspired by PTL interceptors. Their greatest strength isn't the ability to avoid stress, but to shed it. X-Wings, on the other hand, don't really generate stress either, but can't stress it as easily and so are limited. Y-Wings generate lots of stress to keep up in a dogfight, but hopefully make up for it by being cheap and tough.

The Decimator has the first dial to have no reds.

The Decimator not having reds is irrelevant.

Irrelevant to what? It's a first.

Technically, yes

In reality, I have never experienced a turreted ship ever having to K-turn (title-less YT-2400s excepted) so that part of the dial is completely irrelevant until the front arc starts to matter (autothrusters, maybe)

Look at a Lambda and then tell me red maneuver = K-turn.

This is why this ship should be made:http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/JumpMaster_5000

This ship has a turret on its port side. Now before you start whining about 'another turret', remember I said port side. You see the hull blocks the ship from firing 360°. Give it port and aft secondary arcs.

Now what does all this have to do with interesting dials? Well if I were creating the dial foe this ship it wouldn't have any koiogran turns or segnor's loop. There would be green maneuvers, but only with a port bearing. The ship would be designed to fly like a circling shark, occasionally taking a bite out of the prey.

Also, this class of ship is that of the Punishing One, the ship the bounty hunter Dengar flew.

I would pay good money to have Dengar in this game. You're right - this ship needs to be made!

Nope, so far I am amazed at how FFG is able to make each ship's dial feel unique in the game. I guess it's not that surprising when you actually count up all the different possible maneuvers available in this game (currently 105 different maneuvers with just 11 templates!) Even ships with similar dials, like the Z-95, E-Wing and X-Wing, have slight differences that make them play differently, specifically the different speed k-turns and different speed green bank maneuvers, and the 5 straight on the E-Wing. Even the YT-2400 and YT-1300 which have nearly identical dials, have a key difference in the 3-turn, a maneuver that the YT-1300 rarely uses because it wants to stay at range 1, while the YT-2400 wants to use lot so it can create more space for it's HLC. And even with PTL, the YT-2400 can still get 2 actions a turn while having access to it's white maneuvers every other turn.

Whenever FFG gives 2 ships a very similar dial, they make sure that other aspects of those ships are very different so that the same dial will be used very differently. A-Wings and Interceptors have almost identical dials, but they use them very differently because of A-Wings having better generic Pilots while Interceptors rely on high PS and PTL. The same can be said about TIE Fighters and Phantoms, TIE Advanced and Firesprays, etc.

Even looking at the Aggressor and Starviper, they look they should play just like Interceptors with those 3 attack and 3 agility with native boost and barrel roll action (starviper), but then you realize there's no green turn maneuvers on either ships, something that the Interceptor heavily relies on to clear its stress from PTL. Each new ship is a new puzzle that, even though it might look similar to what we've seen before, is it's own puzzle to figure out how to best utilize the dial with the ship's abilities.

Another cool one would be a ship that can only go fast, with no 1 maneuvers and red short distance maneuvers.

I agree with the sentiment above, the interesting dials are the ones that limit you in some way.