Ordnance fixes are a dime a dozen these days. I want to collect a list of the various fixes proposed by everyone and throw in a few of my own, and I figured a good first step would be collecting everyone's thoughts on why ordnance is bad. So for right now, let's think about what is 'wrong' with ordnance.

So, why is ordnance bad?

As far as I can tell, these are the fundamental problems with ordnance in general:

• It's one-shot. How much is the one-time damage boost from ordnance worth?
• They cost an action to fire (only applies to some ordnance), or require having a token to fire (like proton rockets and homing missiles). This action cost can be prohibitive, especially to low-PS ordnance carriers. In most cases, the need to spend a target lock token just to make the attack also reduces overall damage output.
• Limited range. Your ability to fire ordnance is limited by range, reducing overall damage output as you lose opportunities to fire.
• Liability of cost. By making a ship more costly without increasing its durability, that ship becomes a liability in terms of squad durability and determination of victory at the end of the match.

I think any ordnance fix needs to address most of these issues, if not all of them.

Why do YOU think ordnance is bad?

Are there any other problems with ordnance that I am overlooking? If you can think of any, please list them below. If you don't think that the problems I've listed are legitimate/real, let me know.

But for this thread, I ask that you focus on identifying the problem, not proposing solutions. I want to clearly identify the problems with ordnance before I try to engineer a fix, and I want to make a separate thread to collect everyone's proposed fixes, so we can compare and evaluate them.

They're too situational for the point cost, barring the cheap stuff like flechettes. Ordinance shines in epic games, when you know you're going to facing the proper target. In a 100 pt game, not so much.

I'd just like to chip in and say that (for me) ordnance is unattractive because it doesn't feel like ordnance. I would have preferred a more complex system than 'attack and discard', perhaps like battlefleet gothic where torpedoes actually move on the battlefield and have their own movement dial. Perhaps then missiles could chase ships for a few turns, forcing it to make high speed or stressful turn manoeuvres to stay alive.

It could have been a nice method of board control.

I don't like ordnance much because they make my A-wings way more expensive. It's basically an extra 2 points for any missile because I can't use Chardaan refit.

Also the damage of ordnance is dice based, when I'm spending a significant amount of points to boost 1x attack I want consistency in damage or a larger reward for beating the dice.

I think they're simply overcosted.

When you compare Homing Missiles to Heavy Laser Cannon, it's kind of silly...

• Homing Missiles
  • + 2 points less
  • = 4 dice attack at range 2-3
  • - Single use
  • ​- Requires having a TL, even if it isn't spent
  • + Defender can't use evade tokens
• Heavy Laser Cannon
  • - 2 points more
  • ​= 4 dice attack at range 2-3
  • + Multiple use
  • + No requirements for firing
  • - Critical Results on the initial roll are turned to Hit Results

That said, I brought a list with 2 x Homing Missiles and 1 x Cluster Missiles to a recent tournament and it was not only super fun, it won me my first Store Championship. Yay for ordnance!

Baba, you hit the nail on the head with your reasons.

In general, munitions are overcosted and don't allow for modification of the same attack, creating a double whammy.

Homing Missiles, Ion Pulse Missiles and Proton Rockets are the exception here. They have requirements but you can use that action to modify the attack.

Except for these exceptions, I feel they are inferior to cannons. Cannons benefit from a variety of ranges and effects and do not have to be discarded.

I also feel munitions are bad because they are weak when compared to your primary attacks, for the most part. There is also a lack of utility with munitions. An Ion Pulse or Flechette isn't enough for utility or variety. There is a lack of in depth missile effects that you cannot achieve elsewhere. They need to give me something that I cannot achieve from a cannon, a turret, or pilot ability to make them relevant.

Adding to the reasons you already listed:

Versatility: When you declare a target lock on a higher-PS ship, you are basically saying "If you give me the chance, I will shoot this missile at you." Similarly, if you put a lock on a ship, but don't spend it, then you're probably going to be angling for a focused ordinance shot next turn. That makes you predictable. It also means you have less defense, because you won't have a focus token to spend on your evade dice.

Reliability: During one of the store championships I attended, my opponent had literally the best shot he could have wanted: I was flying a clustered squad of PS2, AG1 ships, two of which were facing towards the same rock, and he moved up with an Ion Torpedo on a PS5 Mandalorean Merc. It was probably the most ideal chance to use that torpedo in the game. He moves up, takes his lock, fires the torpedo, and rolls three blanks and an eyeball. He spent five points and an action for that.

The end result is you're often paying 1/3rd the cost of a ship for a single-use attack that adds one attack die but forces you to take more damage and likely averages to less damage than you would get from a focused primary attack, while telegraphing what your intentions are going to be for at least the next turn or two, and isn't even guarenteed to hit.

There are ways to make them better. In the Battle Reports forum, one player lists a championship squad he ran that incorporated two Assault Missiles and a Concussion Missile, using Airen Cracken to give his PS2 pilots their Target Locks.

I'd simply rather spend points on something that will help my ship the entire game rather than for a single attack.

I agree with everyone above.

I would like to add that not being able to use Target Lock to re-roll attack for ordnance really makes it weak.

Our group house rules: That all ordnance Missiles and Torp, that require a target_lock, may use that target lock to re-roll dice in that attack once. Since we house ruled this Ordnance is much better. It's a shame they didn't make Munitions Failsafe contain your target_lock too. I know I would use it a lot more if that were the case.

Anyway, I don't think we will see ordnance get a boost, unless they come out with a card that allows it to cost less or keep the target lock.

I ran some numbers while I was watching the cricket the other afternoon (watching cricket gives you time to do other things)

I over a few hundred dice rolls (cricket matches can take a long time too) I compared the results of a concussion missile (supposedly the most reliable missile in the game) fired without a modifier, to a Conc fired with a focus on top.

The results were interesting - albeit not exhaustive.

Without focus you score 4 hits about 7% of the time - with focus it's more like 71%

For 3 hits without focus - 54% - with focus 25%

So that's a 61% chance of getting 3-4 hits (most often just 3) without any additional modification to the built-in modifier of the conc, compared to 96% (most often 4) with a focus.

So you REALLY want that focus.

Now for a high PS pilot with PTL, or some other method of increased action economy, TL + focus isn't too difficult to achieve.

But in general your high PS pilots are powerful enough to get by without any ordnance. It's your low PS MookMeatshields^TM who would benefit most from an offensive boost, and they are the ships that struggle most in gaining target locks on a reliable basis - let alone stacking a focus on top. You might be looking at 3-4 turns to reliably set that up, and that's a long lifespan for a Mook.

With other ordnance - particularly proton torps, focus isn't a great deal of use due to the built-in mini focus - what you want is the ability to reroll your blanks - but you just spent the one thing you can reliably use for a reroll just to take the shot.

What I think it boils down to is in order for ordnance to be worthwhile it needs a reliable method of dealing damage - to deal damage you first need to score a hit - to score a hit you need to have a reliable method of getting the shot off in the first place.

In other words - fix the targeting and dice modification mechanic.

The thing I would do is this:

- Target Lock can be made up to range 5

- Torpedos can be fired between range 4 and 5, the same for missiles.

- Advanced Torpedoes and proton rockets can be fired at range 2 and 3.

This way Missiles and Torpedoes would be useful because, apart adv torpedoes and proton rockets, the other ones would be fired from farther range than primary weapons, and, unless your enemy makes very aggresive movements to reach you very quickly, you would normally fire with TL and focus.

So, although expensive (4-5 points for one shot) it would be a good weapon, that worths the price.

I think the problem is not being able to modify the dice after you fire for most ordnance. You spend points for a weapon that has no reliability.

I don't mind that low PS have a hard time getting that TL as that is what keeps a low PS swarm from loading up on missiles to dominate.

I still think being able to use the attack requirement in the roll to be the best fix, in my humble opinion.

I think the problem is not being able to modify the dice after you fire for most ordnance. You spend points for a weapon that has no reliability.

I don't mind that low PS have a hard time getting that TL as that is what keeps a low PS swarm from loading up on missiles to dominate.

I still think being able to use the attack requirement in the roll to be the best fix, in my humble opinion.

Having lots of experience with this method. I believe it's a great quick fix. I love my proton toprs when we house rule, being able to re-roll is nasty. At range 3 you can actually down some enemies or at least knock down shields and possible get a crit. Which makes the fight up close more in your advantage. Also, helps balance the X-wings again.

One of the other things we did was state that ordnance fires before any other shooting in the combat phase. Using Pilot skill order as normal. So a PS 1 rookie with a torp, will fire before Wedge with primary weapon. This also helps boost generics, but it did have the effect as you stated of making low PS swarms nasty, so we stopped it.

So, why is ordnance bad?[/center]

As far as I can tell, these are the fundamental problems with ordnance in general:

• It's one-shot. How much is the one-time damage boost from ordnance worth?
• They cost an action to fire (only applies to some ordnance), or require having a token to fire (like proton rockets and homing missiles). This action cost can be prohibitive, especially to low-PS ordnance carriers. In most cases, the need to spend a target lock token just to make the attack also reduces overall damage output.
• Limited range. Your ability to fire ordnance is limited by range, reducing overall damage output as you lose opportunities to fire.
• Liability of cost. By making a ship more costly without increasing its durability, that ship becomes a liability in terms of squad durability and determination of victory at the end of the match.

Limited range is an appropriate constraint on individual secondary weapons: no one suggests, for instance, that the Heavy Laser Cannon doesn't work because of its Range 1 blind spot. The liability associated with additional costs is an issue for all upgrades, but again that doesn't hold back cannons.

So it's the first two items I'd say are critical, and they interact with each other. The marginal value of ordnance in comparison to primary attacks is relatively low, because of the way most ordnance interacts with the action economy; that's okay if (like the HLC) you gain that marginal benefit multiple times in a given match.

To put it another way, a ship's expected contribution toward the game's most common win condition is (average damage per round) x (expected lifespan). Increasing damage by a little bit for one round has a pretty small effect on the ship's overall impact.

But I want to caveat all this by emphasizing the risks of relaxing either of those two constraints. If you fix ordnance by increasing its expected damage, you risk making the game into rocket tag (the first person to pull the trigger wins). Fairly obviously, a torpedo that said "if this attack hits, the target is destroyed" would be broken at any point level. If you fix ordnance by allowing it to be used more often, you risk unbalancing the game's fundamental (and fairly fragile) underpinning of attack and defense expectations.

I don't mean that it can't be done, but that it's a pretty difficult needle to thread, and possibly not one that should be attempted by a massive committee of amateurs...

First off, I agree with everything else that has been said. But there is one other thing that also bugs me.

So after you've gone through the trouble of target locking that squirrelly interceptor, and after you've taken the time to get a focus token and all the dice modifiers you can find, and after you get your shot off, and after your red dice roll hot enough to beat the interceptors 3 green dice + focus + evade, you end up hitting for 1, maybe 2 damage.

Whaaaaaaat?

You just hit a fragile little TIE with a freaking torpedo and it flies away intact?? That doesn't seem right to me. It doesn't feel like how ordinance should work. With lasers it makes sense: you fire a barrage of lasers at your enemy and he dodges 95% of them, well that's okay, you score his hull a bit but he carries on. But a missile seems like it should be more towards the all-or-nothing side of things. If you hit that TIE it should pop like a balloon in a porcupine mosh pit. As soon as that TIE pilot gets the red target lock token placed on him he should be sweating and/or panicking.

So in short, the "fix" I would like to see is for all ordinance to carry a clause along the lines of "if this Attack hits cancel all the defender's dice results." Then, even with the high cost and action requirements it would make things a lot more interesting and fun.

So, why is ordnance bad?[/center]

As far as I can tell, these are the fundamental problems with ordnance in general:

• It's one-shot. How much is the one-time damage boost from ordnance worth?
• They cost an action to fire (only applies to some ordnance), or require having a token to fire (like proton rockets and homing missiles). This action cost can be prohibitive, especially to low-PS ordnance carriers. In most cases, the need to spend a target lock token just to make the attack also reduces overall damage output.
• Limited range. Your ability to fire ordnance is limited by range, reducing overall damage output as you lose opportunities to fire.
• Liability of cost. By making a ship more costly without increasing its durability, that ship becomes a liability in terms of squad durability and determination of victory at the end of the match.

Limited range is an appropriate constraint on individual secondary weapons: no one suggests, for instance, that the Heavy Laser Cannon doesn't work because of its Range 1 blind spot. The liability associated with additional costs is an issue for all upgrades, but again that doesn't hold back cannons.

So it's the first two items I'd say are critical, and they interact with each other. The marginal value of ordnance in comparison to primary attacks is relatively low, because of the way most ordnance interacts with the action economy; that's okay if (like the HLC) you gain that marginal benefit multiple times in a given match.

To put it another way, a ship's expected contribution toward the game's most common win condition is (average damage per round) x (expected lifespan). Increasing damage by a little bit for one round has a pretty small effect on the ship's overall impact.

But I want to caveat all this by emphasizing the risks of relaxing either of those two constraints. If you fix ordnance by increasing its expected damage, you risk making the game into rocket tag (the first person to pull the trigger wins). Fairly obviously, a torpedo that said "if this attack hits, the target is destroyed" would be broken at any point level. If you fix ordnance by allowing it to be used more often, you risk unbalancing the game's fundamental (and fairly fragile) underpinning of attack and defense expectations.

I don't mean that it can't be done, but that it's a pretty difficult needle to thread, and possibly not one that should be attempted by a massive committee of amateurs...

So, why is ordnance bad?[/center]

As far as I can tell, these are the fundamental problems with ordnance in general:

• It's one-shot. How much is the one-time damage boost from ordnance worth?
• They cost an action to fire (only applies to some ordnance), or require having a token to fire (like proton rockets and homing missiles). This action cost can be prohibitive, especially to low-PS ordnance carriers. In most cases, the need to spend a target lock token just to make the attack also reduces overall damage output.
• Limited range. Your ability to fire ordnance is limited by range, reducing overall damage output as you lose opportunities to fire.
• Liability of cost. By making a ship more costly without increasing its durability, that ship becomes a liability in terms of squad durability and determination of victory at the end of the match.

Limited range is an appropriate constraint on individual secondary weapons: no one suggests, for instance, that the Heavy Laser Cannon doesn't work because of its Range 1 blind spot. The liability associated with additional costs is an issue for all upgrades, but again that doesn't hold back cannons.

So it's the first two items I'd say are critical, and they interact with each other. The marginal value of ordnance in comparison to primary attacks is relatively low, because of the way most ordnance interacts with the action economy; that's okay if (like the HLC) you gain that marginal benefit multiple times in a given match.

To put it another way, a ship's expected contribution toward the game's most common win condition is (average damage per round) x (expected lifespan). Increasing damage by a little bit for one round has a pretty small effect on the ship's overall impact.

But I want to caveat all this by emphasizing the risks of relaxing either of those two constraints. If you fix ordnance by increasing its expected damage, you risk making the game into rocket tag (the first person to pull the trigger wins). Fairly obviously, a torpedo that said "if this attack hits, the target is destroyed" would be broken at any point level. If you fix ordnance by allowing it to be used more often, you risk unbalancing the game's fundamental (and fairly fragile) underpinning of attack and defense expectations.

I don't mean that it can't be done, but that it's a pretty difficult needle to thread, and possibly not one that should be attempted by a massive committee of amateurs...

Good points; limited range is maybe a 'problem' that shouldn't be directly fixed, but it is a contributing factor to ordnance suckiness overall. And a good fix would only make ordnance competitive, not dominant.

Finding a fix is a tricky proposition to be sure! And if I knew that at the end of this, one of our fixes would be implemented, I'd be less eager to compile everyone's ideas, good and bad. But this entire exercise is just for kicks, obviously. So I'd rather have all the ideas in one spot to look at rather than see them all trickle in constantly. It's a good thought exercise in-between news cycles.

I was really hoping when I saw the cardboard for the transport that the little green and red blobs with firing arcs were to simulate "smart" missiles. Turns out they were to signify turbolaser and ion batteries but oh well. My fully formed ruleset in my head would be too fiddly for FFG to actually implement but I like the idea:

1. When fired, place the missile token anywhere in your firing arc at range 1,2, or 3 depending on the missile.

2. At the end of the next activation phase, the missile may move to any location in its firing arc (again subject to range depending on speed of the missile)

3. This continues for a set number of turns (2 or 3 probably) Would need a counter, hence the fiddliness.

4. At any point (including when first fired), if a target ship is inside the legal movement range of the missile, it may detonate and roll attack dice against the target.

Not a way to fix current ordinance but a new way to simulate missiles flying around the battlefield.

First off, I agree with everything else that has been said. But there is one other thing that also bugs me.

So after you've gone through the trouble of target locking that squirrelly interceptor, and after you've taken the time to get a focus token and all the dice modifiers you can find, and after you get your shot off, and after your red dice roll hot enough to beat the interceptors 3 green dice + focus + evade, you end up hitting for 1, maybe 2 damage.

Whaaaaaaat?

You just hit a fragile little TIE with a freaking torpedo and it flies away intact?? That doesn't seem right to me. It doesn't feel like how ordinance should work. With lasers it makes sense: you fire a barrage of lasers at your enemy and he dodges 95% of them, well that's okay, you score his hull a bit but he carries on. But a missile seems like it should be more towards the all-or-nothing side of things. If you hit that TIE it should pop like a balloon in a porcupine mosh pit. As soon as that TIE pilot gets the red target lock token placed on him he should be sweating and/or panicking.

So in short, the "fix" I would like to see is for all ordinance to carry a clause along the lines of "if this Attack hits cancel all the defender's dice results." Then, even with the high cost and action requirements it would make things a lot more interesting and fun.

Rather than cancel all defense dice, could just include a minimum damage modifier.

I was really hoping when I saw the cardboard for the transport that the little green and red blobs with firing arcs were to simulate "smart" missiles. Turns out they were to signify turbolaser and ion batteries but oh well. My fully formed ruleset in my head would be too fiddly for FFG to actually implement but I like the idea:

1. When fired, place the missile token anywhere in your firing arc at range 1,2, or 3 depending on the missile.

2. At the end of the next activation phase, the missile may move to any location in its firing arc (again subject to range depending on speed of the missile)

3. This continues for a set number of turns (2 or 3 probably) Would need a counter, hence the fiddliness.

4. At any point (including when first fired), if a target ship is inside the legal movement range of the missile, it may detonate and roll attack dice against the target.

Not a way to fix current ordinance but a new way to simulate missiles flying around the battlefield.

I had a similar idea too, but perhaps a bit more simple and easy to implement.

1. When you fire your missile put a missile token at a distance of 1 maneuver template in front of your ship.

2. At the end of the activation phase, after all ships have moved, you may move the missile using any 3 template (including a 3 k-turn) or 4 or 5 straight template.

3. If the target ship's base or maneuver template ever overlaps the missile token, or if the missile token's maneuver template overlaps the ship's base, the missile explodes and does damage.

4. If after X number of turns the missile hasn't reached its target it explodes harmlessly.

Also, the missile token would have 1 hull and like 5 agility and could be targeted by attacks.

There are a lot of ways to make ordnance more effective.

I know it won't happen, but the most effective way is to lower the cost of ordnance. If Proton Torps were 2 points, you would see them used a lot more. They are better than a standard attack at range 3, just not 4 pts better.

FFG makes things much more complicated with the no adjusting cost policy. I mean they have errated the wording on cards (Daredevil, Swarm Tactics) so its not like they don't think they can't adjust things that are printed on cards.

There too many hoops that the controlling player has to jump though. Plain and simple.

Point cost

Action

Roll attack dice

Defender dice

Look at that. That's 4 things any ordinance wielded has to worry about.

Point cost is almost a minor issue here. If your missile or torpedo hits like it's supposed to, are you complaining? No, whether it just did damage, or had an aoe or control effect. How much any given ordinance costs matters only if it isn't effective at paying those points back, which we all agree that they usually don't. So that means we need to fix the mechanics. If ordinance become a reliable investment, then the point cost doesn't matter as long as you stand to get a decent return on your investment.

Action is where a lot of issues crop up. The PS difference is highlighted here, as low it's often don't get their TL. To be able to fire. Point cost doesn't matter here, nor do munition fail safe type fixes. To be fair, I believe it should be harder for the scrubs to lock up the higher PS aces. Weapons like Prockets sidestep this, but come with a r1 limitation. As they should. Illusion of Prockets not being good are mainly because the main platform they are carried on is the awing, which suffers from the dumpster bin fix that was chardaan refit. Other platforms are tie advanced(terrible until fix) and the defender, which is better off with a cannon anyway.

Rolling dice. Here's the meat and potatoes, and where it all breaks down. A majority of the current ordinance requires you to spend your action to fire, eliminating potential dice modification. This kicks ordinance up the ship chain into the hands of elite pilots who either have built in modification, or can take epts like predator. This is a BAD THING. Expensive ships do not need more expensive things on them.

Defender dice. The final nail in the coffin. Usually, after performing several rites involving dice gods, and a very unfortunate goat, provided you did club the chant, you get here with 2ish hits. Defender rolls dice+tokens, and wipes away your hopes and dreams.

I remember playing the video games, and whenever I got a missile launch warning, I dropped whatever I was doing and turned to evasive maneuvers. Corkscrews, putting every last bit of juice into engines, and dodging behind ships were my primary methods of survival. After paying the cost, both in points and action economy, that should be all the attacker has to do. Ordinance should do a set amount of damage and effects, and the burden is now on the defender to avoid as much of that as possible.

Apologies for grammar/spelling, my phone sucks and I have fat thumbs.

The strength of Ordnance is that it works best at Range 3 (At least for those attacks that can fire at range 3).

Imagine this title:

Distortion Cloud Bomber: You are considered to be at range 3 of all ships within range 1-3.

Defender dice. The final nail in the coffin.

If I were designing X-wing over again from scratch, there are a lot of changes I'd make, but the biggest one I'm sure I'd like to make would be removing defense dice from the game. The fact that in X-wing both parties roll different sets of dice creates a game with a lot of variance; removing the defense dice tightens that up substantially, and as a side effect it might also help clean up secondary weapons.

Flip side would be to remove attacker dice, and just make every ship do set damage. Then it's on the defender to dodge. That seems more thematic to me, and represents nimbler ships and better pilots.

I have already stated how we handled it, it was pretty effective.

But one our guys still thinks that when ordnance is fired, the attacker may force the defender to re-roll any of their green dice, yes I said green dice.

This is very interesting, and we will be trying this on our next game night to see how well it works. I will keep you informed of the test results.