Hi guys,

Last night I was distracted by the turret mechanics in the game. So I started thinking if I was a game designer how would I change this mechanic. Note, I am not a game designer, just a uni student that loves the game.

Here goes:

Suppose a turreted ship has 4 firing quadrants: Bow, starboard, stern and port. Suppose the activation and movement mechanics are the same. But a subtle difference for turreted ships. At the start of the activation phase, every turreted ship declares which quadrant their turret is going to be facing. When the turreted ship moves It declares its action in its action bar and may be given an additional free turret action (regardless of bumping or obstacles). This free action allows the turreted ship to reposition the turret into another quadrant (in any clockwise/counter clockwise fashion). Consequently subtract the pilots skill relative to the amount of quadrants the player moved (to a minimum of 0). Then combat carries on with this alteration.

Example:

Han Solo in his Millenium Falcon is battling rexler brath and an academy tie. Han at the start of the activation phase has declared his turret is in the bow quadrant. Play continues until han moves. Han moves into a position where the academy tie is in his bow quadrant but rexlar is in his stern. Han chooses focus and also repositions his turret to face his stern quadrant but at a penalty of 2 pilot skill. Han in the combat phase is now PS 7.

So what do you think? Fun/Rubbish. Broken?

What modifications would you make to my suggestion or another mechanic?

I'd just make primary weapon turrets range 2 outside the primary fire arc.

Seems complicated for X-wing. Especially tracking constantly changing PS.

My favorite turret re-design would be 'You cannot alter or re-roll attack dice when attacking outside of your firing arc'

As far as other fantasy totally-not-going-to-happen-re-designs I would make cloaking (and consequently the TIE phantom) closer to the lore. Drop the Phantom's base attack to 3 dice. When you cloak you acquire a blue cloaking token. While you have a blue cloaking token you cannot be target locked (and any target locks on you are discarded). Cloaking still grants you +2 evade. You can choose to de-cloak when you reveal your dial and you flip your blue cloak token over to reveal the other side (which would be red). A red cloak token grants you +1 attack dice (to represent the surprise attack) and you can use a 2 straight when performing a barrel roll action. Red cloak tokens are discarded during the end phase like focus and evade.

ACD would read 'At the end of the combat phase, if you have a cloak token you may flip it over to its blue side'

I feel like this would better represent the phantom as it should play according to the lore. It should be a ship that uses its cloaking to get into an advantageous position to hit hard using surprise and then get out and make another pass while cloaked. It should be a tough decision to choose to de-cloak, a decision that could leave you vulnerable. With the new FAQ the wise designers at FFG have brought the rules closer to this.

Seems complicated for X-wing. Especially tracking constantly changing PS.

I actually posited a similar idea (albeit much less complicated), along with a bunch of other possible core mechanic alterations, a while back in this thread here. In the version I proposed, turreted ships only had one firing arc, but could rotate it into any position you want after performing your maneuver- simple as that. Take a look at one of your large bases sometime (or one of the small ones for that matter). It would be super easy to make a firing-arc-shaped template with a ring at the short end that slotted down over the center post near the base, which could then rotate freely around the base.

And on Ordnance (a popular topic these days) if I were to hypothetically re-design it I would have them function kind of like an Ion weapon to make them more 'all or nothing'

Proton Torpedoes (4 points)

Atttack (Target Lock): Discard your target lock and exhaust this card to perform this attack

2 Attack Dice

If this attack hits, cancel all dice results and the defender suffers 3 damage and one critical hit

This would make torpedoes more like they are in the lore, effective against large slow moving targets and devastating.

Other Ordnance should be well suited to anti-fighter combat

Homing Missiles (5 points)

Attack (Target Lock): Exhaust this card to perform this attack

3 dice

The defender may not spend evade tokens

If this attack hits the defender suffers 4 damage

In addition to the above Ordnance I would add an 'Arm' action to all ships that could take missiles or torps. An arm action would refresh 1 exhausted ordnance card.

...

What modifications would you make to my suggestion or another mechanic?

of a different scale for the miniatures.

Starting with the base line where the Millennium Falcon can have as crew

• Luke Skywalker

• Lea Organa Solo

• R2-D2

• C3-PO

• Chewbacca

• [ben Kenobi]

with Han Solo as pilot all at the same time.

Since that is three times the current, maybe triple most of the stats,

or something like that.. WIP.

Id have all ordinance shoot two range bands further, and have target locking go out to range five.

I would give range bonuses to canons, and cap all primary weapons to range two when attacking outside their primary arc. Auxiliary and 360 alike.

I'd have mines like the video game: They shoot and can be shot.

I'd allow Scum faction to be included in rebel and imperial lists, at a price. Just as if they were hired.

Oh, and I'd have ordinance not spend the target lock until after the attack.

Every ship has PtL built in. After performing and action, take a free action and add a stress. You'd be surprised how better generics would be if they had some short of bonus action economy. Plus it makes green moves more useful, and has the added benefit of improving the ability to fire ordnance too.

Generics get -1 attack when attacking named pilots and -1 defence when being attacked by named pilots.

Great for evoking a propper Star Wars feel, probably not so good for game balance...

At this point I don't think it would work, but earlier on I would have made ordnance ignore shields. With the current additions, and unknown quantitiies that are plasma torpedoes, advanced homing missiles, etc, it wouldn't work.

If the game was new, I would also of considered multiple attack dice types, similar to armada or imperial assault. Different attacks have different dice combos. Hindsight being what it is of course.

I'd change the dynamics of crashing your ships.

I believe the original design intent was to punish crashing and make it something that you didn't want to do, you lose your action and can't fire at any touching ship. However, once the game expanded beyond the core set and lots of ships are on the board, e.g. swarms, the community exploited the leniency of the penalties to either "bump" in order to maintain formation flying or to "block". Such that low cost, low pilot skill ships (especially TIEs) became even more effective as they can be used to prevent enemy ships from performing actions and in many ways undermining the higher point cost of higher pilot skill and in some cases negating pilot abilities wholesale.

Two solutions have been released in the form of upgrade cards, Enhanced Scopes ensures that a high skill pilot can move first and retain its actions (but in doing so sacrifices the ability to choose best actions) and Advanced Sensors gives the pilot their action before they move. Interestingly, both are these are for the systems slot, which implies that FFG want to limit the number of ships that can get around the crashing mechanic (as only a few ships have the slot).

This is one of the reasons I believe the X-wing in particular is a little behind, it's a ship that lives or dies by its ability to perform an action, especially with the generic pilots who don't have passive abilities, and as it flies best in a formation can be easily blocked.

I would propose, then, that when two ships crash into each other, the one with the higher pilot skill gets to keep its action. It makes little sense that Han for instance, at pilot skill 9, can't perform an action because his large ship crashes into a 12 pt TIE at pilot skill 1.

All munitions require a target lock, but you don't spend the lock just to fire. I think Homing Missiles already do that, but I'd make it standard. I'd also be happy to release pilots we've already seen in different ships, with different abilities. For example, the always popular "Corran in an X-Wing," although he wouldn't have his double tap.

I wouldn't have put the secondary weapon crit in the damage deck. I would have done something more like this:

"Choose and discard one of your non-EPT upgrade cards"

That way it punishes upgrades without distinction, so it can represent missile launchers being destroyed or crew members being incapacitated or killed by exploding consoles. Doesn't hit EPTs because there's already a crit that does that and the idea is that the pilot himself/herself wasn't hit.

I also like the idea of different colours of dice, because it allows for a ship to have more attack power than a TIE but less than an X-Wing. Makes difficult decisions like "does this need a third attack die" easier, and allows for upgrades that turn all your blue attack dice red or something. Would open up interesting design space without being too complicated.

Ordnance:Torpedoes doubles red dice against huge ships.

Ordnance: missile adds +2 red dice to large and huge ships.

I would add:

Energy management for all ships - just like in the X-Wing and Tie Fighter computer games.

Even if this would lead to longer rounds.

Flight maneuvers on cards, not on wheels:

this would lead to the possibility to add ace maneuversto ace pilots - Beginner pilots have only the base set of maneuvers for each craft, ...

Everyone is focusing on ordnance fixes again, but I'm going to repeat what I've said in other threads

I wish when they had designed the game that they had integrated titles and modifications into the upgrade bar. Then some ships could have been given more than 1 modification slot as standard. Imagine if Han, Chewie and lando all used out rim smuggler stats, but that the YT-1300 had 3 modification slots and a turret slot instead of a turreted primary. So you could get the falcon stats with 2 hull upgrades and a shield upgrade and add a turret, or you could upgrade it in a different way if you wanted to.

I also wish that they had given howlrunner's pilot ability to vader. I love the thought of a single tie advanced leading a swarm of generic fighters, instead of a regular tie fighter being the lynchpin for a swarm of other craft.

Two simple changes.

1. Ordinance requires a Target Lock to fire, but can be used to re-roll dice on that attack.

2. Turrets can only spend Target Locks to re-roll attacks inside the ship's primary firing arc. Otherwise only focus tokens and pilot abilities can be used to modify.

Neither would require card reprinting and I think they would fix two of the biggest complaints we have with the game.

Instead of rolling dice I would have each player do their best pew pew noises and then everyone at the tourney votes for who gets initiative.

Only in elims though.

Generics get -1 attack when attacking named pilots and -1 defence when being attacked by named pilots.

Great for evoking a propper Star Wars feel, probably not so good for game balance...

I was thinking of something very similar. I like this mechanic because it promotes using the heroes and gives some expensive ships a chance to be worth the points.

I reword it to say, Unique pilots roll 1 extra attack die when attacking a non-unique and 1 extra defense die when defending against a non-unique.

A very subtle difference but this is why I make it. There is a ton of "tanking" and "turtling" in the game and so I am in favor of anything that gets more damage though. If you have 1 red die vs 1 green die, all other things being equal, the red die will eventually put out more hits than the green die gives evades. So by adding a red and a green vs reducing a red and a green means slightly more damage over the course of a game, and a lot more damage if a squad of names is against a squad of generics.

I'd change the dynamics of crashing your ships.

I believe the original design intent was to punish crashing and make it something that you didn't want to do, you lose your action and can't fire at any touching ship. However, once the game expanded beyond the core set and lots of ships are on the board, e.g. swarms, the community exploited the leniency of the penalties to either "bump" in order to maintain formation flying or to "block". Such that low cost, low pilot skill ships (especially TIEs) became even more effective as they can be used to prevent enemy ships from performing actions and in many ways undermining the higher point cost of higher pilot skill and in some cases negating pilot abilities wholesale.

Two solutions have been released in the form of upgrade cards, Enhanced Scopes ensures that a high skill pilot can move first and retain its actions (but in doing so sacrifices the ability to choose best actions) and Advanced Sensors gives the pilot their action before they move. Interestingly, both are these are for the systems slot, which implies that FFG want to limit the number of ships that can get around the crashing mechanic (as only a few ships have the slot).

This is one of the reasons I believe the X-wing in particular is a little behind, it's a ship that lives or dies by its ability to perform an action, especially with the generic pilots who don't have passive abilities, and as it flies best in a formation can be easily blocked.

I would propose, then, that when two ships crash into each other, the one with the higher pilot skill gets to keep its action. It makes little sense that Han for instance, at pilot skill 9, can't perform an action because his large ship crashes into a 12 pt TIE at pilot skill 1.

I liked this in theory when I first read it but the more I think about the more I'm sure it won't work in practice. The lower PS ship has already taken its action by the time the higher PS ship bumps. So you would have to have them take tokens back off the board. Or, worse yet, have them "un-barrel roll" since they are no longer eligible to have taken an action, but then that means they didn't bump, so they can take an action so they can barrel roll...

Maybe if 2 ships are touching and one has a higher PS than the other, then only the higher PS ship can choose the lower as a target for attack.

I would add to the dice range benefits section:

"If you attack a target outside of your firing arc with your primary weapon, the target gains 1 defense die."

to be a legitimate part of a manuever based games, primary weapon turrets really would have to be re-released with four firing arcs, a turret token, and the need to declare a facing (with the token) after dials are set but before they are revealed

since logistical issues make this impossible, all we can really hope is that ffg will give players some small benefit for not being in arc without being one of very few ship types that can pay for autothrusters. The out of arc benefit of autothrusters would be adequate applied across all ships.

I'd probably look at ways of decoupling accuracy and damage without slowing the game down.

I would remove defense dice from the game. Oh boy it would go so much faster that way!