Edit: FACTION SPECIFIC PILOT* ABILITIES...

I had an interesting idea earlier this week of faction-specific pilot abilities, kinda like "Rebel/Imperial only." cards, but abilities unique to pilots themselves. Example:

Tam Blackstar

"When attacking a ship, if you are outside of the defender's firing arc and if the defender is Rebel, you may reroll up to two of your attack dice."

Or

Pash Cracken

"When defending, if you are beyond range one and if the attacker is Imperial, they may not spend focus or target lock tokens or reroll attack dice."

I think it would be interesting to see abilities like these now that we have S&V coming out. It offers a static buff to certain ships against certain factions, which does two things; It rewards players fighting against a specific faction, but also punishes them by risking having a ship without its effect in place when paired against the same faction or the other enemy faction. If Tam went against Imps or Scum, or Pash went against Rebs or Scum, neither of them would benefit from their potentially powerful abilities.

I think that now that there are three factons to choose from, limiting powerful abilities to only work against certain factions will give leeway to more dynamic kinds of list building in a competitive meta. People will have to build in mind of the positive and negative effects of bringing a Tam or Cracken-like pilot to the table. And I'm not saying it should be just Imperial-Rebel or Scum-Rebel/Imperial, things like Rebel-Rebel, Imperial-Imperial or Scum-Scum effects would be cool too. But I especially think Scum-Scum abilities would be fun to see.

What do you think of faction-specific pilot abilities?

This would be like tha Admiral in Armada, I guess.

Good idea for Armada; not so good for X-Wing.

There's already a lot of people who feel there's too much Rock-Paper-Scissors around.

Whilst I appreciate the flavour of the idea, I think introducing hard counters that are very effective against some lists, but do literally nothing against others, wouldn't be good for balance.

(Props for making manoeuvring important to both your example bonuses though, that's much preferable to just a flat boon).

We already have target-specific abilities in place, and they're never really used. Namely IPMs and Assault Missiles. Designed to work specifically vs large ships and swarms respectively, they're almost a complete waste of points when running against something other than their designed target, and so they're not used.

If it was something like 1-2% of your list, then it would be worthwhile, but it certainly isn't worth 4-5% of your list. Competitively, you want to make your list as all-comers as possible, so I don't think many players would choose a specific anti-faction pilot, and in casual games then it simply opens up the can of worms of "You knew I was going to be playing Rebels so you deliberately brought anti-rebel cards, and that's the only reason you won", which we honestly don't need.

The thing with anti-faction specific pilots is their cost-to-effect ratios. Their effects have to be strong enough that they are worth the points but the cost to field them have to be low enough to a generic of near equal PS vs the other 2+ factions. ("2+" in the unlikely event more factions occur; CW:Era standalone but is mechanically compatible).

Maybe Faction specific titles for pilots:

Empire:

Inquisitor - bonus vs Scum

Double Agent - bonus vs Rebels

Rebel Traitor - bonus vs Empire

Rebel:

Freedom Fighter - bonus vs Empire

Imperial Sympathizer - bonus vs Rebels

Liberator - bonus vs Scum

Scum:

Headhunter - bonus vs Rebels

Mercenary - bonus vs Empire

Hired Muscle - bonus vs Scum

as for what the bonus might be possibly Lone Wolf without the "1-2 Friendlies" restriction and any dice not just [blank]'s

I think it would be interesting to see abilities like these now that we have S&V coming out. It offers a static buff to certain ships against certain factions, which does two things; It rewards players fighting against a specific faction, but also punishes them by risking having a ship without its effect in place when paired against the same faction or the other enemy faction. If Tam went against Imps or Scum, or Pash went against Rebs or Scum, neither of them would benefit from their potentially powerful abilities.

It's bad design. You don't choose your opponents, so your ship's a dud. Your points are wasted. It doesn't create any decisions inside the game itself, it just discourages you from using that pilot just as you'd be discouraged from Autothrusters if it only affected turrets and turrets weren't super prevalent.

Why would you want to punish a player for their opponent's list? You punish players when you want to discourage something or add additional risk to it, but they've got no power at all over their opponent's faction choice.

It's like all these card suggestions we've been getting recently that specifically target the cloaking mechanic: one ship has that and if it's not there those points and that slot are wasted.

There's already a lot of people who feel there's too much Rock-Paper-Scissors around.

Whilst I appreciate the flavour of the idea, I think introducing hard counters that are very effective against some lists, but do literally nothing against others, wouldn't be good for balance.

(Props for making manoeuvring important to both your example bonuses though, that's much preferable to just a flat boon).

That's the whole point though. If you're going to arm yourself with a hard counter, you're also running the risk of that counter doing nothing against another list. The whole point is to reward players deciding to run with or against the meta. Fat Han or 3A Dash bullying the local meta? Tam Blackstar. As I said, it rewards players by giving them an edge against a specific faction, but punishes them by making it faction specific as well. I think it's a balanced way of granting powerful abilities to pilots.

We already have target-specific abilities in place, and they're never really used. Namely IPMs and Assault Missiles. Designed to work specifically vs large ships and swarms respectively, they're almost a complete waste of points when running against something other than their designed target, and so they're not used.

If it was something like 1-2% of your list, then it would be worthwhile, but it certainly isn't worth 4-5% of your list. Competitively, you want to make your list as all-comers as possible, so I don't think many players would choose a specific anti-faction pilot, and in casual games then it simply opens up the can of worms of "You knew I was going to be playing Rebels so you deliberately brought anti-rebel cards, and that's the only reason you won", which we honestly don't need.

This is different though. Ordnance isn't worth it because its a one-off. These abilities offer a faction-specific "bane" to your potential enemies and your enemies have that potential to run it against you. One match it could be utterly useless, the next match it could be the comeback that saves you the game. Regardless, these abilities promote list building by careful study of the meta and deciding whether or not it is worth it to include a faction bane in your list, rather than the vast and spread ideology of "turrets beats phantoms beats swarms beats turrets..."

You can easily make your last argument about the current meta. Why play to have fun if they're just gonna fly turrets or phantoms?And yeah, casuall play will be affected, but the same pros and cons appear there as well. A casual Imperial bane runs the risk into running into Imperials or Scum or the Rebel player will fly differently because of it. I think it's much more fun to promote these kinds of abilities for the development of flavor and strategy rather than "360 Dash to your face" all the time. Now it'll be "360 Dash? Okay, I have a built-in-Predator-Tam Blackstar, come at me bro!" Or "Nice Tam Blackstar! I have Tam too..."

The biggest problem would be that they are competing with already-established pilot abilities that are in constant effect no matter the faction, which is why the ability has to be so good that it would be appealing for a competitive AND casual meta to consider playing that ship.

I don't mind faction specific pilot abilities (such as ruthlessness) but the upgrades need to do something against every faction and not only be applicable to when you play against certain factions. Upgrades should always be useful against every list. Sure, there might be cases where they're more useful than others (e.g. predator against a PS1-2 pilot compared to a higher-PS pilot) but paying points for an upgrade that can't be used at all in certain match ups is a waste of points.

The only exception I can think is if an upgrade is worth 1 point and *might* have an amazing effect, such as determination.

On the other hand, I do think that we should have more ship specific abilities, if not full on gimmicks. Phantom has cloak, Falcon has primary turret, IG-2000 has hive mind, Y-Wing has the new BLT upgrade, and many people have suggested linked cannons for the Defender for example.

I think it's a balanced way of granting powerful abilities to pilots.

You do?

I think it's throwing more undesirable guessing game into list building.

It's called color hate in magic and has been generally shown to be a really bad idea and leads to unfun games.

It's a flavor of rock/paper/scissors meta and it creates games that are played during list building instead of during actual play.

There's already a lot of people who feel there's too much Rock-Paper-Scissors around.

Whilst I appreciate the flavour of the idea, I think introducing hard counters that are very effective against some lists, but do literally nothing against others, wouldn't be good for balance.

(Props for making manoeuvring important to both your example bonuses though, that's much preferable to just a flat boon).

That's the whole point though. If you're going to arm yourself with a hard counter, you're also running the risk of that counter doing nothing against another list. The whole point is to reward players deciding to run with or against the meta. Fat Han or 3A Dash bullying the local meta? Tam Blackstar. As I said, it rewards players by giving them an edge against a specific faction, but punishes them by making it faction specific as well. I think it's a balanced way of granting powerful abilities to pilots.

We already have target-specific abilities in place, and they're never really used. Namely IPMs and Assault Missiles. Designed to work specifically vs large ships and swarms respectively, they're almost a complete waste of points when running against something other than their designed target, and so they're not used.

If it was something like 1-2% of your list, then it would be worthwhile, but it certainly isn't worth 4-5% of your list. Competitively, you want to make your list as all-comers as possible, so I don't think many players would choose a specific anti-faction pilot, and in casual games then it simply opens up the can of worms of "You knew I was going to be playing Rebels so you deliberately brought anti-rebel cards, and that's the only reason you won", which we honestly don't need.

This is different though... One match it could be utterly useless, the next match it could be the comeback that saves you the game. Regardless, these abilities promote list building by careful study of the meta and deciding whether or not it is worth it to include a faction bane in your list, rather than the vast and spread ideology of "turrets beats phantoms beats swarms beats turrets..."

Well, from what I see that makes it exactly the same as Ordnance - it's either really good, or useless, depending on your matchup. It's just a few points cheaper.

And what you're suggesting instead of Phantom vs Turret vs Swarm is instead Phantom (plus Rebel Hate) vs Turret (plus Scum hate) vs Swarm (plus Imperial Hate), which is just adding a slightly different flavour to the R/P/S design we're currently experiencing. It doesn't make people suddenly NOT use Phantoms or Turrets just because a card is available that hates on Scum, or whatever. Imperials having access to a ship that says "reroll 1 dice vs Rebels" isn't going to invalidate Fat Han or Super Dash, and it certainly isn't going to bother double IG-88 lists at all. It isn't even going to affect how Imperials create lists, because you've got a 66% chance of it being useless in a competitive game, so why would you spend the points?

As other people have already said, it just adds to the "Winning in the list writing stage" that is already possible. The reason I've essentially stopped playing 40k after roughly 20 years is due to that precise reason. I put my army on the table, my opponent puts his army on the table, and we can pretty much tell exactly who's going to win without even playing the game, because the composition is so skewed. I don't want to see X-Wing go the same way after only being a part of it for a few months.

I am not a big fan of faction targeted abilities. Now take a look at Hearthstone which has certain faction targeted cards. The GvG Kezan Mystic. It is a neutral card but its battle cry to take away secrets only work against 3 classes. Palidins, Mages, and Hunters. I know completely different game but it still serves as an example. Having a card that only works against 1/3rd of your opponent's list (assuming it is factional equal) just doesn't have the competitive potential. Those abilities will still be expected to cost points but 2/3rds of the time it will be useless.

Does the faction targeted card have to be competitive?. Many people play themed, story games and not 100pt, 6 asteroid, battles that need lists to be optimised to meet all-comers. I think that having cards to gain advantages over other factions is a good thing when used in thematic games, following a narrative thread where the opponents are trying to best a known enemy. I also think this applies somewhat to all ships in the game. Do they need to all be competitive in the 100pt game or are some produced for those gamers that like themed, narrative, missions and games?

Wouldn't mind an effect along the lines of Predator, the more I think of Anti-Faction abilities and what it should entail.

If you look at Predator It's effect primarily works against everyone but it has a secondary bonus against PS 2 or lower. Which is every single Tier 0 Generic with the exceptions of the Phantom, Decimator, and Firesprays (Aggressor also; although not generic).

Predator's pool for secondary bonuses is quite large when comparing numbers 20/70 (25 + Unique Pilots) which is under a 1/3. But if you factor in the likeliness a PS 1-2 ship is selected as "points-filler" it should equal or exceed that 1/3 chance for extra bonus. (for the record this is rough calculations)

Should anti-faction specific abilities occur I'd hope it would be stylistic of Predator where a minor effect occurs against everyone and a major effect against main focus.

The biggest issue with anti-faction specific is that it hurts the casuals more than the competitive. If you go into a casual game knowing the faction of your opponent they are at a disadvantage if you did not disclose your faction for the match; which could potentially turn into "not fun, going home" for that player. On the competitive side of things it would spice things up a fair amount. If the local meta is Empire at the next tournament anti-Empire ships get played, next tournament at the same location the more people will bring anti-anti-Empire lists or whatever faction is strongest for the month. And the cycle repeats.

Great for the competitive side not so great for the casuals, and I don't think the game is ready for catering to the competitive side should over take the casuals. Not yet anyway.