Concerning fine tuning of dice it would be fun to have an additional die (e.g blue one) for some new ships. This could be for example an additional attack die. But compared to red die the blue one could have only half of the amount of "hits" on it (maybe focus symbols should stay as usual). So if you have a ship with say 3 red attack dice and 1 blue attack die, you would have a more or less 3.5 attack. Like this fine-tuning I think the game would be more elegant (otherwise you have real big difference in impact between 2 and 3 red dice).

What do you think? Good or bad idea? Similar thoughts?

Looking forward for some nice opinions

Greetings

I think it's too late for it, but the other FFG Star Wars games do this.

Why too late, you can always introduce a die with a ship that includes this attack

I'm not thrilled with the idea.

The last think we want is a game caught up on increasingly minute distinctions between unit stats. Dials, upgrades, and squad cohesion offer more than enough versatility. Predator or Outmaneuver offer far more elegant firepower increases, without adding in minute variations. The genius of X-Wing is in its mechanical simplicity. You roll X numbers of Red or Green dice for every ship, move according to the dial, and have only a limited number of possible moves. Adding more and more special rules or rule variants will get in the way of that cleanness.

grettings

This has been discussed before. I believe it typically comes up as a black upgraded die, where either a ship, or a mod, allows you to roll either 1, or all of your dice as "black" attack dice. This way the maximum damage rolled isn't increased, however the consistency of the attack is increased, making the ship more likely to roll 3 hits.

Actually, now that I think about it - this would be a pretty good fix to the X wing. If it got a black die upgrade that replaces the standard red dice, and let's say they have 2 <kaboom>, 4 <boom>, 1 <eye>, 1 <blank>, then they would have a basic 2.25 average <boom> rolled, which is comparable to a B wing with a Focus or TL. If they were to TL, then they would have 2.81 <boom>, which is basically a TL+F.

Now they're free to use their action on R2-F2, or R5-P9, or Expert Handling, or... you get the point.

Yes thats also a kind of fine tuning. Also the other way round, where there are circumstances or specific upgrade cards from the defender where the attacker has to roll "other" dice. I think things like that would make the game even more flexible.

Attack: 3 red dice > 2 red dice, 1 blue > 2 red dice. Or like you mentioned with the black dice

IMO, one of the flaws of X-Wing is the low values they use for stats. I think the game would of been better if they had gone with stats like...

Rookie X-Wing PS2, Attack 6, Defense 4, Hull 6, Shield 4

Academy Pilot PS1, Attack 4, Defense 6, Hull 6

May of made the game take longer to play, but with more dice, the amount of factor luck would of had would be reduced greatly. Plus then you have more room for other ships.

A B-Wing for example could of been Attack 7, Defense 1, Hull 8, Shield 10.

You are right, but thats definetly something which is not changeable anymore. So the next plan would be additional, but different dice for SOME of the new ships

I'd like to see a ship have a blue die for its primary attack, but the blue die means its primary attack is an ion weapon. Say a hit with it can be cancelled normally but a crit can't be cancelled, meaning a direct Ion hit.

I got all the rng I want in the other dice, thank you very much

I got all the rng I want in the other dice, thank you very much

I agree, but I'd be all for a die/dice that remove a little Random from the game.

I got all the rng I want in the other dice, thank you very much

I agree, but I'd be all for a die/dice that remove a little Random from the game.

If you're adding dice, you're adding random

The only things that remove random from the game are:

1.) maneuvers

2.) The evade action

3.) upgrades such as the immaculately beautiful Accuracy Corrector or the heinously annoying C3PO

4.) certain mechanics that are more tied to maneuvers than dealing damage (such as Wes' ability only requiring that an attack be made, or R3-A2 only requiring that an attack against an enemy within your firing arc is declared)

If you're adding dice, you're adding random

I'm not sure doubling the number of dice would have as big an impact as he thinks it would, but that is what he was trying to say.

One of the most important parts of X-Wing is the ambiguity in the choices you make. A quote I remember from the Jake Solomon discussions when X-Com: Enemy Unknown was coming out is "a choice without ambiguity is not a choice." He was mainly speaking about player choice in video gaming (and I think even quoting someone else), but I think it applies to board games as well.

X-Wing has two fantastic pieces that introduce ambiguity into player choice: the dial and the dice. I worry that adding a new die that reduces some of the random element, or adding more dice per shot/evade which would also decrease randomness, you make the choices for the player more clear, but also remove the impact and importance of the choices.

If you're adding dice, you're adding random

The more dice you roll the more likely the roll is to match the statistical average and so the roll will, over time, be more consistant and therefore less random.

I'm not sure doubling the number of dice would have as big an impact as he thinks it would, but that is what he was trying to say.

That explanation does make sense, but X-wing never struck me as a game where you could roll enough to truly expect a statistical average, not to the degree that I could be surprised by the treachery of my green dice, (mathwingers feel free to prove me wrong) especially not with the majority of squads consisting of only 2 ships. Re-rolls and gunner do increase the number of dice thrown, but not by a whole lot.

Playing Warmachine, where certain outlying models could make a maximum of ten attacks rolling two sets of two d6s to determine whether you hit and whether you hurt respectively, it felt like the dice hit a little closer to their expected outcomes

not to suggest that the game is an rng fest or that rng doesn't have any place in these games when it leads to such incredibly variance, not by any means, just that the only times "rng" isn't truly a factor is in the cases I outlined above.

I suppose in summary, I'd say that enhancing the factors that don't rely on dice would have a far more marked impact than introducing more dice when the number of rolls made in this game is already fairly limited by most table-top wargame standards.

For example, if we want to reduce the impact of dice in X-wing, we'd have to take a page out of Armada's guaranteed defense tokens

(just stating a hypothetical, I believe the game is fine the way it is)

Insidious form of power creep.

IMO, one of the flaws of X-Wing is the low values they use for stats. I think the game would of been better if they had gone with stats like...

Rookie X-Wing PS2, Attack 6, Defense 4, Hull 6, Shield 4

Academy Pilot PS1, Attack 4, Defense 6, Hull 6

May of made the game take longer to play, but with more dice, the amount of factor luck would of had would be reduced greatly. Plus then you have more room for other ships.

A B-Wing for example could of been Attack 7, Defense 1, Hull 8, Shield 10.

I'd like to see something like this playtested. Double all values, see what happens...hmmm...

Please do not sink into statistical analysis and discussions. My first mention was not to decrease randomness, rather I mentioned the idea in order to make some fine-tunings in the game for a few following ships by introducing "half-attacks", so I presented a possible way to make this possible (by introducing "half-dice" explained in the first post). I think this would be very charming for the game and fun to play

If you're adding dice, you're adding random

No you're not. If you put in a dice that has 8 sides and 6 of them are hits, and use that instead you have less random chance then you did before.

I'm not sure doubling the number of dice would have as big an impact as he thinks it would

I'm not sure how big of an impact it would have, but it would in fact make the rolls closer to avg.

Why too late, you can always introduce a die with a ship that includes this attack

The issue is the practicality of distributing said die. Each expansion is designed to be played with the core and said expansion. I have a very high stack of rules cards. And don't even begin on the number of tokens I have. And while they have started to deviate from that a tiny bit with Most Wanted having stuff for 3 other ships not included a few expansions not having some of the number tokens, something as vital as a required die would need to be included in each and every ship that uses said die. That would easily be an increase of at least $2 per expansion. And we would end up with an excess of these new die. As the designers have said, there are physical limitations that they have to adhere to.

IMO, one of the flaws of X-Wing is the low values they use for stats. I think the game would of been better if they had gone with stats like...

Rookie X-Wing PS2, Attack 6, Defense 4, Hull 6, Shield 4

Academy Pilot PS1, Attack 4, Defense 6, Hull 6

May of made the game take longer to play, but with more dice, the amount of factor luck would of had would be reduced greatly. Plus then you have more room for other ships.

A B-Wing for example could of been Attack 7, Defense 1, Hull 8, Shield 10.

I'm not so sure about that. That seems to be a major flaw of Attack Wing. Granted, the costs are stupidly assigned, but from what I've observed, not everyone is fond of such high health going away so quickly due to super high attacks. I kind of like that some things can stick around a little bit.

I'm not so sure about that.

It's not a serious suggestion, clearly the boat has sailed on that a long, long time ago. Just something I never quite understood... So many games do it too, they use small values and in many cases 6 sided dice... As if people playing these games don't have access to d10's, d12's and d20's.

Why too late, you can always introduce a die with a ship that includes this attack

The issue is the practicality of distributing said die. Each expansion is designed to be played with the core and said expansion. I have a very high stack of rules cards. And don't even begin on the number of tokens I have. And while they have started to deviate from that a tiny bit with Most Wanted having stuff for 3 other ships not included a few expansions not having some of the number tokens, something as vital as a required die would need to be included in each and every ship that uses said die. That would easily be an increase of at least $2 per expansion. And we would end up with an excess of these new die. As the designers have said, there are physical limitations that they have to adhere to.

Yes I agree with that, although if they sell lets say Rebel Aces for 25 Dollars, one Dollar more should not affect the buying rate that much. And I am sure more people would buy them because of this special skill of the ship, like the cloaking device of phantoms etc. It would be an eye-catcher and simply fun to have additional dice included

Yes I agree with that, although if they sell lets say Rebel Aces

A aces pack could work. Most people don't buy many more than 1 or 2 of them, and if the die was tied to an upgrade it could be useful for a number of ships.

Why too late, you can always introduce a die with a ship that includes this attack

The issue is the practicality of distributing said die. Each expansion is designed to be played with the core and said expansion. I have a very high stack of rules cards. And don't even begin on the number of tokens I have. And while they have started to deviate from that a tiny bit with Most Wanted having stuff for 3 other ships not included a few expansions not having some of the number tokens, something as vital as a required die would need to be included in each and every ship that uses said die. That would easily be an increase of at least $2 per expansion. And we would end up with an excess of these new die. As the designers have said, there are physical limitations that they have to adhere to.

Actually, if you follow my suggestion of a black die to help the X wing (while still capping it's max damage), then it wouldn't be too difficult. The devs have already saying they're working on helping the X wing be more competitive, so it's not unreasonable to suggest that they have a "Rogue Squadron" pack or a "Battle of Yavin" pack (with X and Y wing improvements) in the work.

If that's the case, then you can include 3 black (or blue, or purple or whatever the color) dice in the $30 expansion pack, as well as the following cards:

2x "Rogue Squadron" Title, 2pts: You may roll up to three black dice instead of red dice on each attack. You cannot equip this card if you're pilot skill is "2" or lower.

3x "Modified Blasters" Mod, 1pt: You may roll a black die instead of a red die on each attack.

So now when you buy the $30 Battle of Yavin pack, you get an X wing, Y wing, Pilot Cards, Upgrade Cards, Dials, Tokens, and 3 Black dice. Even if the restriction of "up to 3 black dice" is removed, and you take a R1 or an APT shot or whatever, you can reroll as an additional die, just like you would if you only bought 1 core set.

And the modified blaster mod allows other ships to use the black dice, but at a much reduced efficiency, so the X wing still has an unique advantage in consistency, but it opens up options for other ships to use it. Furthermore, it fills in the current gap of 1-2 pt mods.

But again, it has been against FFG policy to make such a Rebel Aces pack required for any new ships that would use the die. I mean, they added a die in Descent. And, it is a bit of a contention that the separate monster/leuatenant/ally packs have released stats that don't use said die, or even new conditions that are introduced in the expansions.