The ordnance attack itself is fine, a proton torpedo's still better than a quad laser shot even with the reduced action economy. The problem is that ordnance costs way too much: a single proton torpedo is not four points better than the target locked primary attack that would have replaced it.

The ordnance attack itself is fine, a proton torpedo's still better than a quad laser shot even with the reduced action economy. The problem is that ordnance costs way too much: a single proton torpedo is not four points better than the target locked primary attack that would have replaced it.

FFG aren't going to reduce the price though - they've been absolutely unequivocal about that.

The only options are to make it much better or forget about it altogether

I recommend trying out giving each side a number of free ordinance points to inject missiles and torpedo's into your games. Squads will take bombers just to dip into these points. It defiantly changes up the balance probably too far towards ordinance but at least it will see some use.

The ordnance attack itself is fine, a proton torpedo's still better than a quad laser shot even with the reduced action economy. The problem is that ordnance costs way too much: a single proton torpedo is not four points better than the target locked primary attack that would have replaced it.

That depends on what it is on. There is only 1 ship with 4 firepower the Tie Phantom. Comparing the X-wing to the Tie Advanced shows exactly how valuable 1 increase in firepower is in terms of point cost. So increasing the firepower is well worth the points aka the HLC costing 7 points and being used everywhere. Also if you put it on a Y-wing that is a 2 firepower increase which is a real big deal for Y-wings. Sure that on X-wings and Decimators it is not that big of an increase but it is still an increase.

However you are correct the biggest draw back is removing the TL token. Even with the built in dice modification it doesn't quite make up for the lost target lock.

The ordnance attack itself is fine, a proton torpedo's still better than a quad laser shot even with the reduced action economy. The problem is that ordnance costs way too much: a single proton torpedo is not four points better than the target locked primary attack that would have replaced it.

That depends on what it is on. There is only 1 ship with 4 firepower the Tie Phantom. Comparing the X-wing to the Tie Advanced shows exactly how valuable 1 increase in firepower is in terms of point cost. So increasing the firepower is well worth the points aka the HLC costing 7 points and being used everywhere. Also if you put it on a Y-wing that is a 2 firepower increase which is a real big deal for Y-wings. Sure that on X-wings and Decimators it is not that big of an increase but it is still an increase.

However you are correct the biggest draw back is removing the TL token. Even with the built in dice modification it doesn't quite make up for the lost target lock.

Another thing to bear in mind is the base cost of the ship - an ordnance improvement that costs 9 points overall on a bomber or Y-wing (including the ordnance) and makes it roughly as good as a B-Wing with HLC is actually OK even though HLC is only 7 points - as the base cost of the ship is 4 points less than the cheapest ship of equivalent HP etc that can mount a HLC.

So if you're getting close to HLC performance for 27 points as opposed to a ship with HLC for 29, then it's not a bad deal.

You could fix the ordnance, but do you want to play with fixed ordnance? As you can't edit the cards without major hassle, titles are clumsy and you have to keep the balance between the different ordnance carriers, I see only one solution: a change of the rules.

A ship attacked by ordnance loses one green die. If it has no green die, the attacker rolls one red die more.

Enter the rule of the Z-95 and very short battles.

You could fix the ordnance, but do you want to play with fixed ordnance? As you can't edit the cards without major hassle, titles are clumsy and you have to keep the balance between the different ordnance carriers, I see only one solution: a change of the rules.

A ship attacked by ordnance loses one green die. If it has no green die, the attacker rolls one red die more.

Enter the rule of the Z-95 and very short battles.

It's all detailed a few posts back and fixes every shortcoming of ordnance.

Target selection - fixed

Dice modification - fixed

Reloads - fixed

Rules changed - zero

Upgrades recosted - zero

I think that is the most reasonable fix for ordnance anyone has come up with In terms of overall game balance. I'm gonna try play testing this tonight.

My fix of adding the ships attack to the attack of the ordnance is slightly over powered, but gives ordnance that deadly feel I think it should have. I still love throwing 7-8 dice with advanced proton torp still hard to set up the range 1 shot with tl, but man is it satisfying to fire.

I think that is the most reasonable fix for ordnance anyone has come up with In terms of overall game balance. I'm gonna try play testing this tonight.

My fix of adding the ships attack to the attack of the ordnance is slightly over powered, but gives ordnance that deadly feel I think it should have. I still love throwing 7-8 dice with advanced proton torp still hard to set up the range 1 shot with tl, but man is it satisfying to fire.

I don't have the numbers to hand but I do remember it changed the modal number of hits rolled compared to a Target Locked (i.e unmodified) missile shot from 3 to 4 and increased average number of hits from about 2.8 to 3.7

An interesting side-effect was you don't get to spend focus on about 1 in 4 attack rolls so on average this will save you in the region of 0.13 points of damage per turn on your defensive rolls (assuming you're rolling 2 green).

If ordnance is generally overcosted by 1 point across the board, as the mathwingers say, then that is EASILY a point's worth of boost.

Obviously proton torps with their built in mini focus and the double shot cluster missile don't experience as large a boost as the Conc under the same model - but simply adding the ability to fire at a target of opportunity and being able to get off a shot at a higher PS target a turn earlier than you normally could is a pretty fair compromise.

Genuine comment: I love amateur design, some of my favourite threads on here are when people come up with cool ideas or additions to the game. And FFG do check these boards and undoubtedly have drawn some inspiration from time to time (or at the very least have had a good laugh at our expense - and a happy designer is a good designer ).

I quite like the idea behind the arm action - it's pretty thematic and it does aid ordnance. But I don't think it's a simple fix - in fact I see it as a very inelegant one. You're adding an extra action - which needs to compete with focus, target lock and boost, barrel roll. Meaning that if you want to "arm" a weapon, that means you're offense, defense and position for the turn is going to suffer. Yes, you can do it in the first turn before the real shooting begins, but after that we're back to square one, I feel. You're not gonna want to be wasting actions that can be better spent on a focus or arc-dodging with re-positioning actions. And you're not addressing the other issue behind ordnance - that they're overcosted. In fact you're making it a bit worse - your proposed "arm doom device" costs 9 points - that's almost a TIE or a Z-95 and if my time lurking has taught me anything, it's that most people would rather have the extra HP, attack and blocking capability, rather than sink 9 points on upgrading a single ship.

And if I recall correctly even the designers have admitted that ordnance was initially overcosted. And not only that, but you also have a knock-on effect on ships with ordnance icons on them - as the simple ability to load ordnance has increased the cost of these ships - without, as it later turned out, any justification. The X-Wing, the Y-Wing, the Bomber, the A-Wing, the Advanced are all overcosted a bit precisely due to the designers expecting ordnance to be a bigger deal.

So you have two issues - one, reduce the cost of ordnance; two - make it easier to fire. My proposal is:

Dumb Fire (Torpedo upgrade), 0 pts - gain an additional (torpedo) upgrade slot; you may equip a torpedo card at a -2 cost; you may ignore the (attack:target lock) text, but you may not use a blue target lock token to re-roll any dice on the attack.

And you make an identical Dumb Fire (Missile upgrade) card. So now you reduce the cost of all ordnance by 2 - meaning that flechettes, for example, are free; proton torpedoes cost 2; the big scary 5 cost weapons actually cost 3. And you can still use a focus to modify dice or Predator; but not a TL (as you're dumb firing them, meaning you're just point your ship at the direction of the enemy and hoping for the best). You get the cost reduction, but you also get a downside in that you can't have a TL + focus 4 dice attack. Or you could, but you'd have to wait a turn to set it up. And you're also bumping up the overcosted ships a bit - now they have a cheap surprise attack they can pull out in a pinch.

This isn't bad - and overall achieves more or less the same result as my suggestion (although you have now under-costed ordnance by a point if the mathwingers are correct)

The problem is that unless there is a XWM V 2.0 it's (probably) not going to happen.

FFG have been pretty clear on the fact that they really don't want to go down the road of negative cost upgrades again after the Chardaan Refit ...... until they did it again (sort of) with the TIE Advanced

So I'm trying to look at this from their perspective - how do you improve the mechanic and the value of ordnance without rule changes or negative points upgrades?

If you can't make it cheaper you have to make it better

I do have a suggestion to fix ordnance, with just one card.

“One Card to control them all, One Card to fix them,

One Card to make them work and have the player use them.”

“Weapons Reload” 1 point

“When a card states to “discard this card to perform this attack”, discard this card instead. (Discard the Weapons Reload instead.)

This means you get can get 2 Concussion missile or Proton Torpedoes for 5 points. If you have two “Weapon Reload card you have 3 Concussion Missile or Proton Torpedoes for 6 points. So on so forth. This works for each Missile, Torpedoes and even bombs!

Suggestion:

Maybe an interesting option for ordnance errata would be that you are allowed to fire them additionally after your primary weapon attack at the end of the combat phase (then dealing a stress )? Similar to Corran Horn but with stress and just once and then discard the torpedo or missile etc (and eventually you have to skip attack next round like Corran Horn). I think it would make ordnances far more popular.

Suggestion:

Maybe an interesting option for ordnance errata would be that you are allowed to fire them additionally after your primary weapon attack at the end of the combat phase (then dealing a stress )? Similar to Corran Horn but with stress and just once and then discard the torpedo or missile etc (and eventually you have to skip attack next round like Corran Horn). I think it would make ordnances far more popular.

It does put more punch into ordnance weapons in a turn but here are the complications.

1. Most torpedoes and missile weapons require a target lock or focus (as in dead eye and proton rockets) in order to use them. Having them fire after a primary weapon places the attacker in a difficult spot. Do they need to spend the TL to modify attack dice or for an extra attack. Having to chose between dice modification or potentially a slightly more powerful attack is already the issue with torpedo and missile weapons as they are now. Crunching it down into a single phase of combat doesn't solve the problem. FCS may mitigate this but then that would make this upgrade only useful to a couple of Rebel ships and the Star Viper Title.
2. As with additional attacks they give the defender another roll of the green dice. Sure sooner or later green dice will fail (just like red dice fails) but having extra green dice makes it that much more difficult against high agility ships like phantoms and interceptors. Even more so with range 3 autothrusters.

Also with the people who question how such a simple fix such as a universal reload action be so hard to implement. Let me clarify exactly how difficult and unfeasible this suggestion can become . Take a look at every tile and pilot card and what do you see in every action bar. The focus icon which indicates that it can do the focus action. The game is already well structured with their actions in place. Sure adding new actions is possible but they also come printed on the cards and tiles.

Now sure it is very easy to simply type in on paper that all ships can have this new action and it will make a real simple house rule, but typing it on paper doesn't print the action icon on the cards and tiles. Yes upgrades allow for additional actions to be placed in the action bar but it also specify that they are added directly to the action bar. So when a critical hit comes that disables the action bar you know which upgrade is disabled with it.

There is a big difference with typing instructions and putting them into practice. Take a close look at X-wing and you would start to see a format not only with the rules but with all the pieces of the game from the cards to the models. All actions and stats are printed on both tile and pilot card. There is a reason for this, FFG is very good at making instructions and formatting pieces in a way that can even cross language gaps with euro-game style iconography.

You would also find that such a simple fix could have balance problems that backfire. Remember there is no "munitions" or "ordnance" in X-wing just an upgrade and a critical damage card with the word "munitions" in the title. If not worded carefully this could allow for Outrider Dash to fix his HLC after a munitions failure critical hit landed on him. Now of course you could specify to only missile and torpedo upgrades but this argument is here to make aware the fact that "simply" is seldom that simple!

I'm sure there are game testers at FFG that had already tested this out, and just like the 11 other cloaking systems that didn't make it into the rules, I'm certain that an action similar to this reload suggestion has met the same results.

I do have a suggestion to fix ordnance, with just one card.

“One Card to control them all, One Card to fix them,

One Card to make them work and have the player use them.”

“Weapons Reload” 1 point

“When a card states to “discard this card to perform this attack”, discard this card instead. (Discard the Weapons Reload instead.)

This means you get can get 2 Concussion missile or Proton Torpedoes for 5 points. If you have two “Weapon Reload card you have 3 Concussion Missile or Proton Torpedoes for 6 points. So on so forth. This works for each Missile, Torpedoes and even bombs!

I came up with something almost identical in another thread. I limited mine to torps and missiles though. I think it would be a great modification card as it cuts the cost of at least one ordinance in half by doubling its uses...... just imagine a-wings with double the proton rockets. Yes please.

Suggestion:

Maybe an interesting option for ordnance errata would be that you are allowed to fire them additionally after your primary weapon attack at the end of the combat phase (then dealing a stress )? Similar to Corran Horn but with stress and just once and then discard the torpedo or missile etc (and eventually you have to skip attack next round like Corran Horn). I think it would make ordnances far more popular.

It does put more punch into ordnance weapons in a turn but here are the complications.

1. Most torpedoes and missile weapons require a target lock or focus (as in dead eye and proton rockets) in order to use them. Having them fire after a primary weapon places the attacker in a difficult spot. Do they need to spend the TL to modify attack dice or for an extra attack. Having to chose between dice modification or potentially a slightly more powerful attack is already the issue with torpedo and missile weapons as they are now. Crunching it down into a single phase of combat doesn't solve the problem. FCS may mitigate this but then that would make this upgrade only useful to a couple of Rebel ships and the Star Viper Title.
2. As with additional attacks they give the defender another roll of the green dice. Sure sooner or later green dice will fail (just like red dice fails) but having extra green dice makes it that much more difficult against high agility ships like phantoms and interceptors. Even more so with range 3 autothrusters.

Also with the people who question how such a simple fix such as a universal reload action be so hard to implement. Let me clarify exactly how difficult and unfeasible this suggestion can become . Take a look at every tile and pilot card and what do you see in every action bar. The focus icon which indicates that it can do the focus action. The game is already well structured with their actions in place. Sure adding new actions is possible but they also come printed on the cards and tiles.

Now sure it is very easy to simply type in on paper that all ships can have this new action and it will make a real simple house rule, but typing it on paper doesn't print the action icon on the cards and tiles. Yes upgrades allow for additional actions to be placed in the action bar but it also specify that they are added directly to the action bar. So when a critical hit comes that disables the action bar you know which upgrade is disabled with it.

There is a big difference with typing instructions and putting them into practice. Take a close look at X-wing and you would start to see a format not only with the rules but with all the pieces of the game from the cards to the models. All actions and stats are printed on both tile and pilot card. There is a reason for this, FFG is very good at making instructions and formatting pieces in a way that can even cross language gaps with euro-game style iconography.

You would also find that such a simple fix could have balance problems that backfire. Remember there is no "munitions" or "ordnance" in X-wing just an upgrade and a critical damage card with the word "munitions" in the title. If not worded carefully this could allow for Outrider Dash to fix his HLC after a munitions failure critical hit landed on him. Now of course you could specify to only missile and torpedo upgrades but this argument is here to make aware the fact that "simply" is seldom that simple!

I'm sure there are game testers at FFG that had already tested this out, and just like the 11 other cloaking systems that didn't make it into the rules, I'm certain that an action similar to this reload suggestion has met the same results.

Another point to consider with a reload mechanism is that instead of addressing the issue as to why ordnance generally performs poorly, you just end up making something that already isn't very cost-effective more expensive.

If I buy a tool that isn't much good at the job it's supposed to do, I won't see the offer of being able to buy a second identical tool for an additional 25% cost as a particularly attractive deal.

I'm either going to want a different and better tool, or have my existing one modified to make it work as it should

A reload is only any good if the ordnance is worth taking in the first place.

I think the "Arm" action is one of the most elegant fan created solutions to a problem I've seen in a long time, most make me groan, some even nauseous. Cudos to you.

But what ever the solution that FFG has come up with is being sent to the printers, so as nice as this is, they've either already thought of it and it's in print (And your probably being investigated for breach of NDA) or in the grand scheme of things ultimately irrelevant.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the answer to my thread title is - NO.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the answer to my thread title is - NO.

Not necessarily no - more like - doesn't go far enough

The answer was always 42.

I think the "Arm" action is one of the most elegant fan created solutions to a problem I've seen in a long time, most make me groan, some even nauseous. Cudos to you.

But what ever the solution that FFG has come up with is being sent to the printers, so as nice as this is, they've either already thought of it and it's in print (And your probably being investigated for breach of NDA ) or in the grand scheme of things ultimately irrelevant.

Just to clarify a breach of NDA doesn't necessary mean investigated. First it depends on what the NDA is protecting and what is being breached.

Now in terms of personal information, privacy, and national security breaching those types of NDA will send you to prison.

Selling corporate secrets to a competitor, that depends. If it is a foreign company a case for industrial espionage can be made especially with so many nations that constitutionally own all corporate entities inside their country. If not then it is up to the corporation to prove a loss of profit due to said actions in order to make a legal suit. Otherwise the company will likely fire the individual.

However even though legal penalties for breaching NDA may be lacking there is a social and professional backlash that will happen. For example breaching a reviewers embargo will result in the reviewer being on a blacklist as someone who is known for breaching embargoes. The company will never send anything to that person to review again and may share that information with other companies. The end result is that person will have a reputation of not be trusted with confidential information and likely be cut out of such insiders loop.

FFG has had issues with NDA breaches before. I think the most recent one was with a leak of a net runner pack when people started asking about a card named "stone skin" (which was actually false name for "I Had Worse") in order to identify a playtester who was leaking information. I don't know exactly what the outcome of that was but the joke is "The runner has just been tagged".