I know it's been done to death, but I was inspired by posts here and here. Remember this is a houserule idea. So if you're here to post "the game ain't broke don't fix it", don't. If you're here because you find ordnance lacking either in your local games or just at home, give this a try and see how it goes!

The change is simple, as a rule: "Defenders cannot modify defense dice against missile and torpedo secondary weapon attacks." (I'm no X-Wing wording expert, but you get the idea.)

This would make ordnance in general a bit more potent for the points as a one-shot, but it has a few other useful implications as well, IMO.

1. Ordnance is used more widely, adding variety to the game. It has some uses now, no doubt, but with wider application there would be more diversity in the secondary weapon department.

2. Evade becomes a more desirable action. Since Focus would modify the dice, it's useless on defense against ordnance. Evade tokens can still be used, however.

3. Most importantly, multiple less popular cards (and some more popular ones) become more attractive (even if just a little):

• R2-F2: X's and Y's can't take the Evade action, but if they're being shot at with R2-F2 aboard, he can give them an extra die.
• R4-D6: Without being able to modify your defense, it's more likely you'll take hits from a powerful missile or torpedo, meaning this 1 point could translate into a couple extra hull points (and stress) easy.
• R5-K6: Not much of a boost, but if you're going to need a Target Lock to fire ordnance, you may as well try to get another one for free.
• R7 Astromech: You can't modify your defense dice, but you can still modify the attacker's!
• Lando Calrissian (Crew): Gamble on getting 2 Evade tokens to dodge incoming fire.
• Fire-Control System: See R5-K6.
• Sensor Jammer: See R7 Astromech.
• Counter-Measures: Large ships can be hurt by heaps of ordnance firing at once, so shed one of those Target Locks and increase your Agility against the rest!
• Deadeye: For obvious reasons.
• Elusiveness: See R7 Astromech.
• Expert Handling: See Counter-Measures.
• Outmaneuver: What's worse than defense dice that can't be modified? Why, having even fewer of them, of course.
• Ruthlessness: With an attack that's even more likely to hit, this is even more likely to trigger. Becomes even bester friends with Cluster Missiles.
• Homing Missiles: "But it's already getting the boost," you say. Ah, but without being able to modify dice, Evade tokens become one of the only defenses against ordnance...and against HM's you can't even use those!
• Millenium Falcon (Title): In use already, but gives access to the now-more-important-than-ever Evade action.
• Slave I (Title): Finally, a reason to put a Torpedo on the Firespray-31!

I'm sure there are other examples I haven't thought of, as well as related unreleased content (ATC would also be hurt by increased CM's and EH's; R4-B11 like Outmaneuver is brutal on defense dice). Anyway, just an interesting thought that could be fun to experiment with!

It's an interesting idea, but in essence you are penalising highly manoeuvrable ships more so than bricks (read 1 agility ships). Ships with low agility tend to have more HP to make up for it. Ships with high agility have low health and roll more dice. High agility ships benefit more from the focus action relative to a brick, so they get penalised far more.

This is pretty much counter to how ordnance should work. Mechanically it makes ordnance better but in such a way as to be counter intuitive. To be fair ordnance is pretty counter intuitive enough in this game.

To be fair if X-wing were a larger scale game and included Epic ships right from the start we probably wouldn't be having this conversation because ordnance is actually extremely effective at bring down huge ships. We probably wouldn't worry so much about using ordnance against dog fighters (unless you just watched Top Gun that is).

I wonder if something like the following would work. Going for the opposite of the HLC effect.

"After rolling to hit immediately change all "hit" results to "crit" results".

It has potential to make them more devastating and doesn't really favour any particular ordnance over one another. In a way it rewards good natural rolls rather than modified rolls, so it maintains some variation in overall output. One potential downside is that they become even more brutal versus epic ships who have a worse crit deck (but have the potential to regen shields to avoid crits).

I have presented ideas before about using new ordnance dice, I think this idea maintains a lot of the theme of that idea, but fits into the existing structure of the game.

My preferred fix is to simply have ordnance ignore shields. In universe explanation, fighters have ray shielding, like what protected the death star exhaust. This makes ordnance a true capitol ship killer. Coupled with the limited nature of ordnance, the one shot, you have a desirable reason to take these expensive if unreliable weapons.

Create a 1 or two point upgrade called particle shields.

Particle shields.

1 point

Must have shield tokens

Missiles do not ignore your shields, and you may not fire ordnance with this upgrade

The only way to avoid a missile (or torp) is to out fly it (dodging) or the pilot (staying out of the arc/removing target locks.

Many of the reasons ObiWonka mention also apply to this fix.

A one point upgrade for ships is also useful for those folks that get list up to 99 points and don't care about initiative.

Now, another similar fix is to go the other way and have the 1 point upgrade be:

Shieldcracker warheads.

1 point modification

Any ordnance fired from this ship may ignore shields.

This may be the best way to implement the houserule. Ordnance still remains a gamble with one shot, you get the underused cards being considered more under fear of what might happen, you get a one point modification for the 99 build, and manoeuvring becomes king, with large low agility ships fearing a torpedo.

Also, the only ship that could take the shield cracker mod and munitions failsafe is currently the interceptor, who lacks the capability to carry ordnance.

How about:

"When defending against a Secondary Attack that instructs the attacker to discard to perform it, you Focus Tokens can only modify 1 Result per Token"

-- wording is clunky but 1st draft. --

Makes Focus less effective for defense against Secondary Weapons but less reliable than Evades

When you attack with a Torpedo secondary weapon, Large ships roll an additional defensive die and Small ships roll two additional defensive dice. When a Torpedo secondary weapon attack succeeds, every hit deals two face down damage cards, and every critical hit deals two face up damage cards.

When you attack with a Missile secondary weapon, reduce the defender's Agility by 2 to a minimum of 0 for this attack.

Torpedos become harder to hit with against Small and Large ships, but if they do connect they hit like trucks. Missiles become more effective against a great number of ships, but most especially nimble ones.

I like what you are trying to do (make ordnance worth taking) but everybody seems to for get that in the SW universe, guns (whether they be lasers, blasters or whatever) are a starfighter's primary weapon, used in dogfights vs other starfighters or for strafing runs against ground targets. Ordnance (like proton torpedoes and concussion missiles) were expensive and used (primarily) for attacking heavy targets -usually slow moving, large, unmaneuverable, heavily shielded targets.

Most of the complaints about ordnance (and I'm not going to get into those here) center around Torps & Missiles being too expensive and ineffective against against the types of ships that see common use in tournament-style games, in other words... fighters and larger (but still relatively small) freighters and patrol ships. Most (but not all) Torps & Missiles are simply not designed for these targets.

In all the SW movies, how many times did we see anyone use any kind of ordnance? What was the situation? What type of ordnance was used and what was the target? Were ant of these targeted on a fighter? I cannot think of a single time when ordnance was used in a dogfight against other fighters (if you ignore Buzz Droids, which I prefer to do).

What I'm trying to say is... if you are going to modify ordnance for your games, think about what you are talking about, what the purpose of these weapons are, what types of targets they were designed for and make them what they should be... not what you wish they were.

Then, again, it's your game... you bought it... you play it the way you want. Have fun!

I'm thinking an easily applicable fix for torpedos via scum;

Illegal Torpedo Dispenser (0 points).

Modification

Reduce the cost of all equipped torpedos by 2 (to a minimum of 0). If a torpedo attack requires you to spend a target lock, you may gain a stress token instead. If your attack misses roll 1 attack dice and suffer any damage rolled.

So cheaper torpedos benifit more from the price drop but also run a higher chance to misfire and damage yourself. Also bigger ships with more options may not want their mod slot filled up but a bomber, x or y probably won't mind and are more in need of a fix.

I think simply being able to use your target lock to reroll dice is a good house rule.

An interesting idea and some very concise and considerate responses. I, along with the OP, also would like to breath a little life into ordnance in my home games.

I understand we don't see a lot of ordnance used in the original trilogy and that it isn't (and shouldn't be) a primary form of offence in the game, however, most fighters in the real world air combat do not rely on guns as their primary weapons. How to make ordnance fun, realistic and maintain balance?

In this post we began to explore the possibility of extending the range of ordnance. I really believe that the solution to breathing some life into munitions (I'm avoiding the term 'fix' here) is down this road. It conforms to a real-world scenario and to what we saw in those wonderful X-Wing / TieFighter games ... the SW universe.

There are a few wrinkles (acquiring target locks at longer range, etc) to iron out but I feel it is a more 'realistic' solution.

It also adds a new element to list design and game play. For example, a tie bomber may now be very lethal when at range 4 or 5. The Imperial player would do well to keep him/her at the longer ranges whilst engaging Rebel forces with the remainder of their own force. The Rebel player, realising this very real threat has to consider taking down the Bomber ASAP whilst contending with the Imperial's fighter escort.

[/i]... not what you wish they were.

What would be interesting to see is maybe ordnance that reduces your agility for the rest of the round if you manage to completely evade it. Cause, you know, you're still busy evading it? Maybe as a modification even?

Here we go: Mod, 1 point. Radar guidance: once per round, if you missile or torpedo attack fails to hit, reduce the defender's agility by one.

Oh my, I made a suggestion on how to fix ordnance... I was so trying not to!

if one goes by the books then ordnance was used much more often and it usually resulted in a one shot one kill.. (for fighter sized ships).. just saying... Yeah I think something needs to be done that doesn't skew the power in one way or another BUT makes ordnance more effective or useful. something that also address that bombers carried MORE ordnance. also amount of ordnance should could be better reflected based on the carrying capacity of the spacecraft involved. Bombers should have massive ordnance capacity and the ability to do heavy damage to capital ships etc. perhaps adjust munitions so that they are easier to dodge evade wise but if they do hit they do massive damage.. IDK or have some kind of balance/weight penalty for each munition carried your ship losses a little agility? i like the simpleness of the house rule though. my take was to make it even simpler and have the munitions do "Auto" damage..if they hit...that way it still rewards agile ships BUT if you do hit its guaranteed damage. or is this exactly what the obi was talking about..lol also we need some kind of munition that does TWO ion damage.. just saying that alone would make them waaaay more viable...it is hard to NOT make suggestions for ordnance fixes!!! I also like the all crit auto damage idea!

Spending an evade token counts as modifying defense dice, according to the core rulebook.

Thanks for the great responses, guys (and gals).

I like what you are trying to do (make ordnance worth taking) but everybody seems to for get that in the SW universe, guns (whether they be lasers, blasters or whatever) are a starfighter's primary weapon, used in dogfights vs other starfighters or for strafing runs against ground targets.

Have fun!

Guns still would be the primary weapons. Ordnance would be more powerful, but still just a one-shot ...in fact lasers are literally the primary weapons, lol. But yes, the goal is just to have fun.

I think simply being able to use your target lock to reroll dice is a good house rule.

Simple and effective, but would require tweaks to Homing Missile and Ion Pulse Missile, and I was trying to avoid changing any actual cards.

my take was to make it even simpler and have the munitions do "Auto" damage..if they hit...that way it still rewards agile ships BUT if you do hit its guaranteed damage.

I've read that idea before and think it's a neat solution as well. Again, would probably need some changed to the cards themselves, though.

Spending an evade token counts as modifying defense dice, according to the core rulebook.

Is it? I figured since it was just "adding" something it wasn't "modifying" something that was already there. Oh well, the spirit of the change is to still allow Evade tokens, so "real" wording would reflect that.

Simple Fix: This is our house rule, ordnance has found a place again.

Ordnance: Target locks spent to fire ordnance are maintained until the end of the attack, and may be spent after attack dice are rolled

We have played tested this several times. It works well.

Another one we use is:

Ordnance: Target locks spent to fire ordinance are not spent and may be used after attack dice are rolled.

As noted above, not a terrible idea, but it would require changes to Homing Missiles and Ion Pulse Missiles (not to mention Proton Rockets) because part of their utility would be redundant.

All I have to say is thank you for spelling ordnance correctly.

I've been of the opinion that some form of reload mechanic would be good. Mainly because it would encourage loading bombers (Y-wing, B-wing and Tie Bomber) with a mix of torps making for more versatility when choosing what to fire.

The problem with that is it seems to come down to a modification that adds reload counters or it's an infinite reuse option which needs constraints to prevent reusing the torps every turn.

@eagletsi111: I think the first house rule where you discard the target lock at the end of the attack is better or the two. It doesn't impact ordinance that already allows you to keep TL, it just alters the point in the attack that you must discard the TL if the ordinance requires you spend the lock.

Heh, posted and saw that my comments went in direct contradiction of ObiWonka. As I read eagletsi111s rule, you only discard the TL if the ordinance requires it. With Ion Pulse Missiles as an example, you'd fire in one attack and assuming a successful set of hits, be able to preserve the TL into the next turn for a follow up attack. You wouldn't be able to do that with Proton Torpedoes.

I've been of the opinion that some form of reload mechanic would be good. Mainly because it would encourage loading bombers (Y-wing, B-wing and Tie Bomber) with a mix of torps making for more versatility when choosing what to fire.

The problem with that is it seems to come down to a modification that adds reload counters or it's an infinite reuse option which needs constraints to prevent reusing the torps every turn.

If you're going to allow munitions reuse, simply requiring an action to reload ought to be good enough. That makes them different from cannons, without making too much of a mess on the bookkeeping. A pilot with PTL (or Vader) could still fire a missile or torpedo every round, but they'd be paying for that in another way.

Another way to do it might be requiring an action + 1 turn to reload. So you're still have value in putting 2 of the same torpedo on a Y-Wing, B-Wing, or Bomber, but there would be equal value in putting different types of torpedoes into those slots.

Counters are good too, but I don't want to have to keep track of things like that.

Another way to do it might be requiring an action + 1 turn to reload. So you're still have value in putting 2 of the same torpedo on a Y-Wing, B-Wing, or Bomber, but there would be equal value in putting different types of torpedoes into those slots.

Yeah, something like that, basically the action restores the used Torpedo or Missile but you can't use it in the same turn it's reloaded. Would also have to specify that you can restore only ordnance that was discarded as a result of being used to attack by the ship reloading the ordnance. Just to prevent things like, ship x has fired the ordnance and ship y will reload it or ship x got hit by a critical hit (munitions failure) and had discard the torp, but now I can reload it.

Counters are good too, but I don't want to have to keep track of things like that.

Pretty much the reason I don't like the idea of reload tokens.

I'm curious about ID X Ts comments, as I haven't played against or with epic scale ships, would multiple use missiles and torpedoes be seriously bad for those large ships and would it unbalance epic?

Also, turns out ordinance means an authorative edict or a religious rite. Ordnance is the correct spelling for what we're discussing here. Thanks to SniperSnake28, I doubt I would have found that out otherwise.

Huge ships have zero agility, and thus torpedoes can do quite a bit of damage if they can be delivered properly. A Tie Bomber with predator and a Lambda feeding it TLs can do quite nicely. Ion weapons directly sap the Energy that a Huge ship needs to do anything in combat. So an Ion missile delivering 2 ion tokens + 1 damage will force a Huge ship to start making some uncomfortable decisions.

The flip side of the zero agility thing is that Huge ships get an action called "reinforce", which allows them to cancel 1 incoming damage per attack for an entire round. So it takes a bit to get any damage through at all.

Granted: making Torpedoes a bit more reliable than an HLC would be a great thing for epic play as well. And A-Wings would pretty much _need_ missiles to take out bombers quickly. Right now, Epic kinda demands HLCs + gunner or the like to really take down the biggies.

Whatever the fix, I think most people are in agreement that it's best implemented by an errata to the core ruleset, not through the addition of an upgrade card or through an errata of each individual ordnance card.

Disallowing modifications to evasion dice is unfairly weighted against high Agility ships. Only applying hits against hull points is unfairly weighted against any ship with more than 2 shields. Therefore, the solution for me is to implement both.

Missiles are of course fast, agile projectiles with tracking capabilities that are ideally suited for use against fast, agile targets. To represent this, we could say that Focus tokens may not be spent to modify Agility dice when defending against a missile hit. This successfully increases their firepower while leaving the effectiveness of any current astromechs, talents, ordnance, etc. intact.

In Episode IV we see that a targeting computer is necessary to create a firing solution for the unguided proton torpedoes, which IRL probably translates into an unreliable munition to use against fighters but one that's ideally suited to targets whose movements are more easily predicted. To represent the devastating nature of a torpedo hit, we could say that uncanceled Criticals are applied directly to a ship's Hull value, while uncanceled Hits are applied first to the target's Shields as normal.

In my opinion these changes accurately reflect the value and optimal use of each type of ordnance while increasing their effectiveness and desirability. They also provide the player with yet another choice to make during list creation: missiles to take down interceptor and gunship-style craft, or torpedoes for dealing with the big gribblies.

I've been of the opinion that some form of reload mechanic would be good. Mainly because it would encourage loading bombers (Y-wing, B-wing and Tie Bomber) with a mix of torps making for more versatility when choosing what to fire.

The problem with that is it seems to come down to a modification that adds reload counters or it's an infinite reuse option which needs constraints to prevent reusing the torps every turn.

@eagletsi111: I think the first house rule where you discard the target lock at the end of the attack is better or the two. It doesn't impact ordinance that already allows you to keep TL, it just alters the point in the attack that you must discard the TL if the ordinance requires you spend the lock.

Heh, posted and saw that my comments went in direct contradiction of ObiWonka. As I read eagletsi111s rule, you only discard the TL if the ordinance requires it. With Ion Pulse Missiles as an example, you'd fire in one attack and assuming a successful set of hits, be able to preserve the TL into the next turn for a follow up attack. You wouldn't be able to do that with Proton Torpedoes.

Exactly. Those missiles already cost a fortune, so allowing them to keep their target locks and not spend them is an action economy. Homing missiles are 5 points, not really worth it now. But this fix has brought all the other missiles and torps in line and boosts homing missiles, because you keep the target lock. So now 1st turn fire homing missiles second turn fire another missile. It's kinda a boon to those.

As for reloading, maybe a modification that allowed it so as not to step on the Munitions Failure Modification card.

Modification:

Extra Ammo:

3 Pts

All Missiles and Torps count as 2 less squad points minimum of 1.

This makes ships with multiple slots better, but does cost 2 extra points. Which really only makes it cost effect if you take multiple ordnance weapons. It still allows you one shot, but makes them much cheaper and thus the trade off

As noted above, not a terrible idea, but it would require changes to Homing Missiles and Ion Pulse Missiles (not to mention Proton Rockets) because part of their utility would be redundant.

Not sure I understand. These missiles don't require you to spend your target lock to fire them, just have a target lock at the time of the attack. Protons don't even use a target lock.