I think if someone is trying to come up with a tournament based system for objective based gameplay, then the idea of having one game have any effect on the other is not going to work. If you want to have this system widely accepted and used then you need to just have one game be one game and be the same number of points. You need to take one list to a tournament and play just that list. You need a fair and even chance going into each round. Otherwise people will not want it. You make it simple and you make it easy to roll with.

I also think that the idea of making the scenarios like actual flight battles will be hard as we are confined to a set 3x3 table. Most air battles beyond WWI can't really be defined in that space. I think you work with what you have.

I've played a number of other game systems that have scenarios for tournament play. These include Warhammer Fantasty Battle, Flames of War, and Bolt Action. Most noticeable is WHFB as in one edition it went from standard point set up and Death Match to making scenarios official and part of every game. This was a drastic change for everyone. Most people just played your standard, straight-up fight. People brought the most point efficient death lists. They introduced scenarios that were part of the core rules and it forced people to change how they played and made their lists. There were vocal groups that hated it as they loved games that were just punching the lights out of the other guy's forces. Eventually, though, it was accepted into the game system and used by everyone. The scenarios forced how you built your forces. If you built a list that was not able to compete in certain scenarios, then you lost and it was your own fault. What tended to happen was that people ended up taking broader lists. It wasn't all about the most efficient killing lists as that is not what was required to win. It brought depth and variety to the game.

In these other game systems the TO would either randomize right before the round or have it pre-planned which scenarios would be played by everyone. They were all standard and all well known by everyone. Everyone built their list to compete in each of the events. There were always people who built unbalanced lists that rocked in some scenarios, but didn't do well in others, but they never made the top tables. It was expected, though.

When people build lists, they should not get free ordnance or such in a specific scenario. They should build their list with or without it. Yes, there are times when a defending player has the advantage b/c they have to defend a specific object. There is the situation, though, that these objects don't have defense dice. So, no matter what you roll is a hit. That is a huge matter to deal with. You can try to use many ships to take it down easy or high damage weapons (like HLC or ordnance) to try to destroy the object. You don't know if you are going to be the attacker or defender in the scenario and need to prepare for both. The game ends at the end of the turn that the target is blown up or either force is totally destroyed. So, while the attacker might be a sitting duck while they are attacking, all they have to do is blow up the object and the game ends. That's an inherent mechanism for balance to the scenario. There are other balances, as well. If the Attacker takes a swarm, the Defender gets points for each ship blown up. So...maybe the Defender loses, but is able to blow up enough ships that it is turned into a modified lose as opposed to a total lose. Or maybe even the Defender wins as they kill 6 of the 7 Tie Fighters, even if the object is blown up. 1 pt for each ship and 5 pts for the objective. You need to have a 3 pt margin for a complete victory. Something like that. It's also possible that both sides turn it into a complete death match and one side beats the other without firing once at the main target. This way, whomever defeats the other guy's ships, they win. It's also possible to try to sucker your opponent into thinking you want a straight up fight, but then send some of your force off to blow up the objective. It also means the Defender can try to send his forces out piecemeal to slow down his opponent. If time runs out and either no one is dead or the target isn't blown up, then the Defender wins. There can be a lot of thought and variety in this scenario and how you plan on defeating your opponent. Maybe the Attacker tries to cripple a few defenders first and then goes for the target. Maybe he tries to blast past and go for the target straight away? There are a lot of options here.

If you design the scenarios smartly, then you can have an internal balance to all the missions. People won't object to playing object based gameplay. You will see a greater variety of lists in tournament play. The game will be spiced up by more than just Death Match. If someone wants to go even farther down that road and have storied events, you will probably see greater acceptance in such an event if this type of campaign becomes normal. Aim for realistic goals. This type of gameplay is realistic (in my humble opinion).

I just created a mission in Mission Control. Not sure if I can link directly to that mission here, but I'll try. It's called OBG - Destroy the Target

http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/xwing/htmlpreview/1582/

I just created a mission in Mission Control. Not sure if I can link directly to that mission here, but I'll try. It's called OBG - Destroy the Target

http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/xwing/htmlpreview/1582/

A good framework for a strike mission, but this is definitely going to suffer from Suicide Run Syndrome as it is. 8 hull, no evade dice, no hardening - that target is going to be destroyed in the first pass by most lists. Giving the defender points for enemies destroyed works against SRS, but it's also very tricky.

(Also; minor edit- the language you use to describe asteroid placement is a little of. I think you meant to say 'greater than' instead of 'within'. Right now the scenario technically calls for a clump of asteroids all at R1 of each other.)

Say a swarm comes at the target. How many can you kill in one round of shooting? 2-3 at most, I'd say. So you could end up with a modified attacker win there. More likely, you will see an unmodified attacker win.

Now, say you see a two-ship list. Corran and Dash, for example. How likely is it that you can kill one of those ships before they kill the target? I'd say the chances are well below 50/50. But even worse, you have to destroy 100% of the attacking list to get a defender victory, when the defender only needs to take down a relatively easy target.

I'd say that even control lists would have an advantage on the attack here, simply because you only need about one round of shooting from your list (using primaries) to take down this target.

I'd say the value:toughness ratio of the target needs to be changed, for starters. But past that, I would always worry that the gameplay is not going to be as exciting as a standard dogfight. X-wing is a game about flightpath maneuvering, and centering the game around one target tends to erase the dogfighting aspect of the game. I'd normally suggest building another layer into the scenario to force the attacker to make some hard choices, but if you're going for simplicity, that might be tough.

Here's a scenario I made a few weeks back that tries to address SRS: Surgical Strike. It does use slightly uneven forces, however (110-100). The added layer in this one is concealing which container is the real target. The attacker has to sort through a bunch of decoys to find the real one, and then attack. I'm not convinced this solves SRS, but I'm putting it here to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Great feedback! I appreciate it.

OK.....so...based on that, I see two methods to address it. The first is to increase the hull points of the target. The next is to increase the number of targets (but reduce the points you get for each). So, let's say there are 3 targets and they are each worth 2 pts. Keep the rest the same. Well.....maybe make large based ships count double? Otherwise, you can have a dual big based ship list be only worth one target.

If we were to increase the hull points of the target, what would be a fair amount? 12 hull points? 20 hull points? If you make it high enough, it's almost worth it to go for the total destruction of the defenders instead. Or at least forces you to dogfight for a while to avoid losing enough attacker ships.

EDIT: bumped hull points to 15 as just a starter.

I also wrote another scenario: OBG - Token Grab

http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/xwing/htmlpreview/1583/

At first I thought 5 tokens would be more fun, but I think it gives too much of an advantage to swarms. So, three is the best, I think. If you have just one, then you could have a fast, big ship grab it with no chance of being destroyed before it hits the table edge. I think you need to have three to balance it out. One YT grabbing a token and fleeing won't be worth his points to do so for the points you get in the end. A dual big ship list could try to grab two and flee, but if their opponent concentrated on blasting one ship, they could probably take it down before it got to the table edge. It would be risky either way.

Not sure on the ability to flee off your own table edge without a token. The idea is if you get 2 tokens off the table, should you be penalized by having a smaller force left to be blasted to pieces by your opponent? On one hand, I think you should be able to let your points escape, but on the other, maybe it would force a dogfight where ships don't want to run off until the end (or they think they will be blasted). I'd love input.

Oh, wow. I really thought that FFG was just Christian Petersen with a word processor, connected to a horde of gnomes carrying out his singular vision.

But seriously, I'm not sure how my argument is subject to an ecological fallacy. Just because they have people in the stable that specialize in RPGs doesn't mean that this is what the company as a whole will do well outside of that niche. I can't even say how well they perform inside that niche (though, witness what happened with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) with a dedicated RPG crew.

Corporate culture and business model matter. The individual talent they may have on payroll won't significantly alter those. While I may be wrong (and I hope I am), it doesn't seem to me that FFG's business model is geared towards exploiting story-based gaming. They probably (correctly) don't see a lot of added value in doing so. I do think they tried it with X-Wing, but have found that it didn't give them much payoff. So it seems to me that they've since embraced their comparative advantage, which isn't in story-based gaming.

What I meant is that the individual departments in FFG all have their own strengths: one game's design staff being weak at something doesn't make every department weak at it. You're assuming that their every product uses the same model and the fact that they make board games somehow creates a "culture" that prevents their RPG staff from making RPGs well.

Their RPGs use the same model as any RPG does: they release a core rulebook and then more specialist books, same way DnD and Pathfinder do it. FFG makes a lot of RPGs.

To say that X-Wing's design staff aren't specialists in story based gaming and RPG elements and therefore the story elements in X-Wing may be weaker would potentially be a fair statement, the truth in it or lack thereof aside, but to claim that RPG material is a weakness of FFG itself? That's like claiming that because Hasbro make action figures primarily they can't handle card games. Hasbro makes MTG.

I get the feelign when you say FFG, you mean the people at FFG who make X-Wing. Making that assessment of the whole company is highly unfair.

I also wrote another scenario: OBG - Token Grab

http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/xwing/htmlpreview/1583/

At first I thought 5 tokens would be more fun, but I think it gives too much of an advantage to swarms. So, three is the best, I think. If you have just one, then you could have a fast, big ship grab it with no chance of being destroyed before it hits the table edge. I think you need to have three to balance it out. One YT grabbing a token and fleeing won't be worth his points to do so for the points you get in the end. A dual big ship list could try to grab two and flee, but if their opponent concentrated on blasting one ship, they could probably take it down before it got to the table edge. It would be risky either way.

Not sure on the ability to flee off your own table edge without a token. The idea is if you get 2 tokens off the table, should you be penalized by having a smaller force left to be blasted to pieces by your opponent? On one hand, I think you should be able to let your points escape, but on the other, maybe it would force a dogfight where ships don't want to run off until the end (or they think they will be blasted). I'd love input.

Honestly, I think a question we do have to ask is : Would competitive tournament official play actually benefit from story-based play or not?

Would it create more rules and trouble than its worth?

We on the side are always welcome to create new user content.

If I was FFG I'd hire a few more full time monkeys to first:

Rehash the interface of Mission Control.

Advertise, continue to develop Mission Control and user support.

Get some darn guy to wipe out the kooky thread we see come on the forum all the time.

It's definitely worth it, but I would designate them as "scenerios" more than stories. The best example of this in my opinion is Malifaux, one of the most intriguing parts of that game competitively is it's objectives. Check that game out for some great ideas if you have time.

Where I think objective-based play comes in, is in that latter category. While I like that FFG has toyed around with it with the missions that they have tried to promote, as well as the objectives as they exist in Armada,

....

That said, I'm also of the opinion that people's craving for headcanon or story is very diverse, and it is difficult for FFG to try to capture it or find a happy medium which will keep most people happy.

FFG isn't one person. They're got people who specialise in RPGs and they've got people who specialise in board games.

...blah-blah... story-based gaming ...blah-blah...

I think this is an excellent post, but isn't there a distinction to be made between story-based and objective based?

You're right, there most definitely is. I guess I'm just speaking from my desire for story-based gaming. Armada is currently objective-based without being story based.

I think we can have a four-category typology:

• Deathmatch
• Objective-based
• Mission-based
• Campaign

There are probably ways to do these things so that the distinctions between the category are nebulous, but these seem to be areas along a spectrum that make sense for us framing our mind around the question.

Mission-based games and campaigns are story-based games. I think they intend to scratch a fundamentally different itch than the deathmatch tournament-style games, even if they might still be somewhat competitive because of the narrative stakes involved. However, they are also dramatically collaborative.

I do think that objective based games will create serious wrinkles and would make people build much less specialized lists and force them to be more adaptive. Maybe that would be good, I don't know. I think that they introduced it in a very interesting way in Armada, where the objectives are chosen and not randomly imposed.

Corporate culture and business model matter. The individual talent they may have on payroll won't significantly alter those. While I may be wrong (and I hope I am), it doesn't seem to me that FFG's business model is geared towards exploiting story-based gaming. They probably (correctly) don't see a lot of added value in doing so. I do think they tried it with X-Wing, but have found that it didn't give them much payoff. So it seems to me that they've since embraced their comparative advantage, which isn't in story-based gaming.

What I meant is that the individual departments in FFG all have their own strengths: one game's design staff being weak at something doesn't make every department weak at it. You're assuming that their every product uses the same model and the fact that they make board games somehow creates a "culture" that prevents their RPG staff from making RPGs well.

Their RPGs use the same model as any RPG does: they release a core rulebook and then more specialist books, same way DnD and Pathfinder do it. FFG makes a lot of RPGs.

To say that X-Wing's design staff aren't specialists in story based gaming and RPG elements and therefore the story elements in X-Wing may be weaker would potentially be a fair statement, the truth in it or lack thereof aside, but to claim that RPG material is a weakness of FFG itself? That's like claiming that because Hasbro make action figures primarily they can't handle card games. Hasbro makes MTG.

I get the feelign when you say FFG, you mean the people at FFG who make X-Wing. Making that assessment of the whole company is highly unfair.

You raise fair points, but I'll stand by my statement.

Corporate cultures and business models aren't just some social-science gobbledigook that I came up with. This is why when companies buy up other companies, they don't usually absorb them wholly into themselves, e.g. Lucasfilm and Disney. FFG does seem to have different departments, and they probably share out people between them. (I really don't know). FFG doesn't seem to have entire daughter companies that operate autonomously.

Hasbro doesn't make MtG. Hasbro owns WotC, which makes MtG. (Please correct me if Wikipedia fails me.)

The degree of autonomy a unit has to design games top-to-bottom will affect its ability to cater to a particular niche. Of course, there are advantages to be had from cross-pollination of ideas and other resources (e.g. artwork and compatibility).

I just look at how WFRP was more boardgame-like than RPG-like, with a much higher cost of entry without (I hear) much added value for the RPG gamer. The tokens and doo-dads that we know FFG for were probably somewhat atmosphere-killing in an RPG. Business model matters because if your added value is in producing games that require a lot of components, and you try to do the same to an RPG where those components do not have added value for the game, then you're going to produce a mis-aligned game. I feel that this is what happened to WFRP. Hopefully they fixed that for the RPGs that they're making for the SWU. It certainly looks like they did from the RPG products they have.

That said, I don't know why I should buy into FFG's roleplaying games, when I still have West End Games RPG material. I feel like FFG is probably going to try to sell me a bunch of expansions that I will need to play a fully-fleshed out game, because that's how they see RPGs being profitable.They will have an incentive for producing an artificially truncated core game, rather than something that is more encompassing. That's not in my interest as an RPG consumer.

Now, I've not actually had my hands on FFG's RPGs, so I invite you to correct and inform me where I am wrong.

What about this idea guys?

I also wrote another scenario: OBG - Token Grab

http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/xwing/htmlpreview/1583/

At first I thought 5 tokens would be more fun, but I think it gives too much of an advantage to swarms. So, three is the best, I think. If you have just one, then you could have a fast, big ship grab it with no chance of being destroyed before it hits the table edge. I think you need to have three to balance it out. One YT grabbing a token and fleeing won't be worth his points to do so for the points you get in the end. A dual big ship list could try to grab two and flee, but if their opponent concentrated on blasting one ship, they could probably take it down before it got to the table edge. It would be risky either way.

Not sure on the ability to flee off your own table edge without a token. The idea is if you get 2 tokens off the table, should you be penalized by having a smaller force left to be blasted to pieces by your opponent? On one hand, I think you should be able to let your points escape, but on the other, maybe it would force a dogfight where ships don't want to run off until the end (or they think they will be blasted). I'd love input.

I like it!

I guess the only downside is that it punishes 2-ship builds (ideally there is no difference for having different numbers of ships), but I think that's really not a huge issue here.

You could clear up the language for the rules a little, but I think it should work fine as is, mechanically speaking.

Another way you could improve the scenario is if you come up with a thematic justification for what's going on in the mission. Recovering items, pilots, or something.

What about this idea guys?

The player with Initiative rolls an attack die at the beginning of the match to determine the scenario;

Blank Result: Advanced Patrol

Mission Background: Both forces have sent a vanguard to clear the way for the fleet.

Set-up: Standard 6 Asteroids.

Objective: Destroy the enemy force.

Focus Result: Reconnaissance

Mission Background: The player with Initiative has entered the area seeking to discover information on their opponent and flee with the data gained. The other player is protecting the vital data from capture.

Set-up: Standard 6 Asteroids, 3 Objective tokens (either Satellites or Debris fields, defending players choice).

Objective: Player with Initiative – Scan as many Objective tokens as possible, for each token scanned you score 1 Victory Point, for each shipped that scanned a token and escaped via your table edge you score an additional Victory Point. To scan an Objective Token; move within Range 1 and instead of firing during the combat phase, roll 1 attack die, on a Focus result you successfully scan the target. You may spend a focus token on this attempt in order gain a second attack die. Special Note: The Objective Token will remain in play after it is scanned, and multiple starships may scan the same token, though it will only award a Victory Point for being scanned the first time it is scanned.

Defending Player – for each Objective Token at the end of the game that remains un-scanned, score 1 Victory Point. Additionally, for each of your opponent’s craft that are destroyed after they have successfully scanned an Objective, you will score an additional Victory Point.

Hit Result: Strike

Mission Background: A VIP target has entered the area, either an important passenger or an Enemy Ace. It’s too good an opportunity for the other side to resist.

Set-Up: Standard 6 Asteroids, the Player with initiative chooses one of his opponents’ starships that fulfill the following criteria: Is a Unique Pilot and/or has a Unique Upgrade (of any type, including Elite Talents) equipped – this is the TARGET.

Objective: Player with Initiative – destroy the TARGET prior to his escape.

Defending Player – Destroy the enemy forces or allow enough time for the TARGET to escape. The TARGET must remain on the board for 5 rounds, after which he may attempt to flee the board by exiting using either player’s table edge.

Critical Result: Escort

Mission Background: Tasked with seeing vital craft safely to their objective, the strike fighters must fend off enemy units until their VIP is clear.

Set-Up: Standard 6 Asteroids, if the player with initiative has starships with Ordinance, these are the BOMBERS for the mission, if the player with initiative has no starships with Ordinance, they receive the SHUTTLE token from the basic set.

Objective: Player with Initiative – get either the BOMBERS or the SHUTTLE safely off their opponent’s table edge.

Defending Player – Destroy all BOMBERS or the SHUTTLE.

I think the recon mission might work; hard to tell from just thinking about it. But I think that Escort and Strike are going to suffer from SRS, which i described earlier. Escort missions and strike missions also generally need a built-in advantage to the defender to be balanced. (It's easier to kill one target than it is to defend one from an entire enemy list, most of the time).

You could add the following special rules to the Escort and Strike missions;

The Defending Player's starships not designated as a target gain the following special rule:

Nerf-Herder: This ship counts as an intervening obstacle for all enemy fire (adding 1 evade die to targets whose line of fire he intercepts). Additionally, as an Action, this starship may take an "Intercept" action. Place an Evade token on a friendly starship within range 1, provided that the receiving starship is an objective of your opponent.

I also wrote another scenario: OBG - Token Grab

http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/xwing/htmlpreview/1583/

At first I thought 5 tokens would be more fun, but I think it gives too much of an advantage to swarms. So, three is the best, I think. If you have just one, then you could have a fast, big ship grab it with no chance of being destroyed before it hits the table edge. I think you need to have three to balance it out. One YT grabbing a token and fleeing won't be worth his points to do so for the points you get in the end. A dual big ship list could try to grab two and flee, but if their opponent concentrated on blasting one ship, they could probably take it down before it got to the table edge. It would be risky either way.

Not sure on the ability to flee off your own table edge without a token. The idea is if you get 2 tokens off the table, should you be penalized by having a smaller force left to be blasted to pieces by your opponent? On one hand, I think you should be able to let your points escape, but on the other, maybe it would force a dogfight where ships don't want to run off until the end (or they think they will be blasted). I'd love input.

I like it!

I guess the only downside is that it punishes 2-ship builds (ideally there is no difference for having different numbers of ships), but I think that's really not a huge issue here.

You could clear up the language for the rules a little, but I think it should work fine as is, mechanically speaking.

Another way you could improve the scenario is if you come up with a thematic justification for what's going on in the mission. Recovering items, pilots, or something.

Thanks!

Yeah, it does hurt 2 ship builds, but that is actually intentional. I think tournament play has too many 2 ship builds and we need something to kind of limit them. So....yes. It does.

Yeah, the language was just kind of hammered out. Just to get the idea out. I completely stayed away from story, though. I figure that can be added in at another point. I just created it for mechanics discussion here.

By the way....what about changing the "blow up the thing" mission? Add more hull points or add more targets?

Thanks!

Yeah, it does hurt 2 ship builds, but that is actually intentional. I think tournament play has too many 2 ship builds and we need something to kind of limit them. So....yes. It does.

Yeah, the language was just kind of hammered out. Just to get the idea out. I completely stayed away from story, though. I figure that can be added in at another point. I just created it for mechanics discussion here.

By the way....what about changing the "blow up the thing" mission? Add more hull points or add more targets?

I think you could go either way there. More hull or more targets does pretty much the same thing: make the target harder to kill. But in both those cases, SRS is still a big problem. I'd focus more on developing an elegant solution to avoid a suicide run on the target(s).

Make it too hard to kill the thing in a suicide rush. If someone wants to take that gamble, that's their option. If you have a good defensive list, it will be hard to do. I think there is a certain balance of going for the objective vs. avoiding getting blown up.

Make it too hard to kill the thing in a suicide rush. If someone wants to take that gamble, that's their option. If you have a good defensive list, it will be hard to do. I think there is a certain balance of going for the objective vs. avoiding getting blown up.

SRS is more than just the first pass, though. If the best option is to attack the target, then that's what we should expect players to do, whether it takes one pass, or several. The problem is the same: focusing on stationary targets instead of dogfighting, while the defender whittles you down is not a formula for an exciting game. You can balance it easily enough, but making it fun is an entirely different problem.

Generally speaking, adding complexity is a good way to beat SRS in missions. (Campaigns don't have this problem if you have pilot death/progression). But it's tough to make a strike/escort type of scenario that avoids this problem while keeping things simple. 'Escape' missions are also a good example - missions where the objective is to make it off a board edge before the enemy takes you out. Those can be extremely uninteresting, even if they are balanced.

I like that random generation idea a lot. (i'll prolly use it).

Make it too hard to kill the thing in a suicide rush. If someone wants to take that gamble, that's their option. If you have a good defensive list, it will be hard to do. I think there is a certain balance of going for the objective vs. avoiding getting blown up.

SRS is more than just the first pass, though. If the best option is to attack the target, then that's what we should expect players to do, whether it takes one pass, or several. The problem is the same: focusing on stationary targets instead of dogfighting, while the defender whittles you down is not a formula for an exciting game. You can balance it easily enough, but making it fun is an entirely different problem.

If you give the defender points for blowing up attacker ships, though, then you balance that out. It's the idea of the victory being too costly to be worth it (pyrrhic victory). I think it should be a valid tactic to use, but one that the Defender has a chance of defending against. The idea is to make it a bit different then a standard dog fight. I think this does. If the attacker goes whole hog to blast the targets, they are taking a gamble. At least it should be a gamble. It shouldn't be an auto win. The player can go for that risk, or can try to whittle the defenders down enough to then make a feasible attack on it. Finding that point to go for it is part of the fun of this scenario (at least to me). Or maybe someone is trying to dogfight, but losing. They can gun it and try to just blast the thing to at least make it a modified lose. Or maybe get lucky and get a win?

I can't see this ever catching on, which is what I think is the real reason that FFG never pulled away from 100 point dogfight. the fact that the ships move over a limited, set space and cannot stop makes any objective other than kill it or move through it seem out of place.

Unless they made it the official way, which is how GW did it with WHFB.

Make it too hard to kill the thing in a suicide rush. If someone wants to take that gamble, that's their option. If you have a good defensive list, it will be hard to do. I think there is a certain balance of going for the objective vs. avoiding getting blown up.

SRS is more than just the first pass, though. If the best option is to attack the target, then that's what we should expect players to do, whether it takes one pass, or several. The problem is the same: focusing on stationary targets instead of dogfighting, while the defender whittles you down is not a formula for an exciting game. You can balance it easily enough, but making it fun is an entirely different problem.

If you give the defender points for blowing up attacker ships, though, then you balance that out. It's the idea of the victory being too costly to be worth it (pyrrhic victory). I think it should be a valid tactic to use, but one that the Defender has a chance of defending against. The idea is to make it a bit different then a standard dog fight. I think this does. If the attacker goes whole hog to blast the targets, they are taking a gamble. At least it should be a gamble. It shouldn't be an auto win. The player can go for that risk, or can try to whittle the defenders down enough to then make a feasible attack on it. Finding that point to go for it is part of the fun of this scenario (at least to me). Or maybe someone is trying to dogfight, but losing. They can gun it and try to just blast the thing to at least make it a modified lose. Or maybe get lucky and get a win?

I think that this is the right track to beat SRS in a simple scenario. Both the attacker and defender should get points for killing enemy ships - that way, the attacker is more incentivized to engage in a dogfight. The destruction of the target should not end the match; that can allow the attacker to end the game at an advantageous point in the match (like when they have a 1-hull Fat Han about to die, for example). Also, the defender should probably have a baked-in advantage, since needing to defend the target is a liability. They should also get points if the target survives - this might work as a baked in defender advantage.

So basically:

Both sides get points for killing ships (based on the cost of the ship - easiest way is to just work the standard MoV system into the points calculation of the scenario).

Destroying the target gives limited points, does not end match

Defender gets points for keeping the target alive

Defender has baked-in advantage to compensate for liability of the target

I'm not sure on the Attacker getting points for killing ships, too. All they would have to do is kill a ship or two, and then blow the objective and there would be no way for the Defender to come back.

I think the Defender has the advantage that they Attacker has to spend actions and attacks on the objective. If the Attacker goes for the objective, then the Defender has the chance to cause the damage on them. That's the gamble. Can the Attacker do more damage to the objective than the Defender can on them. That's the crux of the scenario.

I might be able to be persuaded on the game not ending. I don't think it should just continue to be a dogfight though. Maybe have the Attacker escape off their board edge?

I'm not sure on the Attacker getting points for killing ships, too. All they would have to do is kill a ship or two, and then blow the objective and there would be no way for the Defender to come back.

I think the Defender has the advantage that they Attacker has to spend actions and attacks on the objective. If the Attacker goes for the objective, then the Defender has the chance to cause the damage on them. That's the gamble. Can the Attacker do more damage to the objective than the Defender can on them. That's the crux of the scenario.

I might be able to be persuaded on the game not ending. I don't think it should just continue to be a dogfight though. Maybe have the Attacker escape off their board edge?

I disagree, the attacker getting points for killing defenders is a good way to keep them motivated to actually fight the defenders; otherwise their only motivation to kill defenders is to keep the defenders from killing them before they hit their target - I don't know if that works very well, usually it would be a better idea to just focus on the target. I think that they should have to do both - fight the defenders and kill the target, to get max points. But they can win either way; by just killing the target and not getting touched, or killing all the defenders. In either case though, I think that destroying the target should not give enough points to guarantee victory. Also keep in mind that if the defender gets points for keeping it alive, then the value of the target is the sum of the value to the defender and attacker.

The reason I think the defender needs an advantage is that they are always going to have the liability of losing the target points. How much an advantage they need depends on how many points the target is worth, though. The target can sponge up enemy attacks, but it rewards the enemy for those attacks; so they're not exactly wasted. If you required the attacker to stick around after the target was down, that'd be a different story, but that seems pretty silly. I think forcing them to retreat off their own table edge is probably the best mechanic for ending the game after the target is destroyed.

One way to give the defender an advantage in this mission would be having an armed target. Call it a space station with a laser turret, give it some sort of attack value. That way, the attacker can't take the chance of just dogfighting with the defender and hoping they win so they can finish off the target at their leisure, both players can have the same points total (good for tournaments).