Just pondering to myself where this game could go and was wondering about the possibility of more factions (teams). Is there any other groups in the star wars realm that could/should be considered? .... I came up with some, but not sure how good they would be...

- Private security forces: bespin cloud car, mercenaries (really any ships could be used for this, but most likely modified incom fighters), any any other ship a security force would want.

- Break away empire force: some break away warlord from the time after the emperor died. Give this force no tie fighters, just ships like the assault gunboat, assault missileboat, assault shuttle..... Assault transport (wow, lots of "assault")

- droid army like the episode 1 star wars and clone wars.... Droid tri-fighter, vulture droids, etc (i wouldn't play this, but might be to someone's taste)

- ssi-ruuvi. Some weirdos from beyond the fringe....

No, thank you. The last thing we need to do is dilute this game with more obscure ships that no one knows. You can only dive so far into EU before you start to alienate your players, and we're fast approaching that. Do we really need another faction? There really aren't any good options. No iconic ships for anyone; it'd just be a whole bunch of "oh, what's that generic-looking ship?" With S&V, there was plenty of easily-recognizable, albeit EU ships. Everyone knows our beloved Firespray, which, had S&V been planned from the beginning, would never have been an Imperial ship. The bounty hunters are pretty well-known for EU ships, and the StarViper has been around in a handful of games.

I'll admit the droid army would be recognizable, but FFG has stated that this game is sticking with GCW era. So that's out.

Compare: Infinity Sectorials, space marine chapters from 40k.

Subfactions with only certain lists - your breakaway force for example (tie defenders, shielded TI's, etc)

Most of the galaxy with the exception of paramilitary groups and minor governments included in current 3 factions.

4th possibility: Non aligned sector group, example: corporate sector authority. Ships very similar to scum and rebels, Z-95s, guardian cruisers, r-41s, marauder corvettes.

Would love to see a marauder corvette.

can all this be included into the 3 current factions: easily.

Three factions is cool

its like paper/scissors/stone.

I dont think we really need spock and lizard.

If a really well thought out fourth faction was concepted and launched i wouldnt dismiss it but S&V fillled a gap.

I think anything else is scraping the barell a bit.

Only possible faction I could see it something from the new movies. They are set so far in the future its seems unlikely as (like Banana mentioned) the are sticking as close to the GCW as they can. Probably no 4th faction. I imagine we will see another stand alone game with the same mechanics focusing on either 7-9 or 1-3 in the future.

The equivalent of sectorials, sub factions may be worth looking at. Imagine cheaper tie advanced, phantoms and defenders, but cannot take filler ships at all? - and also unable to take the aces.

Alternatively a early empire build which is just locked to basic TIE's, the lambda, maybe the bomber.

I wouldn't mind a faction of "Allies and Enemies" This could include:

The Corporate Sector Authority

The Hapes Cluster

The Chiss Empire

The Yevethans

The Ssi-ruuvi Imperium

The Zahn Consortium

The Yuuzhan Vong

All of these factions are well represented in the EU and could have interesting rules and affects on the game.

It might be argued that scum shouldn't have been it's own faction but rather a representation of mercenaries to buy in epic for either side.

I think what would be much better and kind of what some are suggesting is wonderwaaghs idea of 'themed'squadron or 'tiered list'.

Thats again the 'faction within a faction'

So you play imperial and you play 181st fighrer wing (which specialisesin high speed fighters and has some support craft)

your mate also plays imperial but plays 'scimitar assault formation' who use bombers, punishers and some command decimators etc

Essentially like others have suggested you have a parrallell then to say '40k' and while you both play 'imperium', one of you plays bloodangels, the others plays ultramarines

You add diversity with a type of list, not a type of wierd alien race.

(note to FFG please please dont ever make the lapsong souchong crappy alien EU race)

I wouldn't mind a faction of "Allies and Enemies" This could include:

The Corporate Sector Authority

The Hapes Cluster

The Chiss Empire

The Yevethans

The Ssi-ruuvi Imperium

The Zahn Consortium

The Yuuzhan Vong

All of these factions are well represented in the EU and could have interesting rules and affects on the game.

Lack of ships. CSA, and Zahn excluded, how many of those factions have 3 unique ships? Vong are a little to far into the timeline and get a lot of undeserved hate (same with Ssi-Ruuk), and the Yevethans, Hapans, and Chiss can easily be represented in the current factions (but make no mistake I WANT A CLAWCRAFT)

You could *maybe* do something with Zahn and the CSA, but they both already fit into S&V

It might be argued that scum shouldn't have been it's own faction but rather a representation of mercenaries to buy in epic for either side.

And thats a pretty fair option and i bet it was considered but probably allowed you to min max the best out of a rebel and imperial lists strenghts and weaknesses.

At the mo you have a pendulum from

Imperial cheap hoarde ships that specialise in nasty individuals through to small elite rebels that synchronise well and S&V seem to sit well between the two from my experience (albeit limited) of playing with S&V.

Bit like (and again i draw a 40k analogy) the pendulum swing points between 'tyranids' on the rend you to shreds in hth end of the scale and the imperial guard 'sit still and shoot you til you're nothing but smoking boots' at the other end. Eldar sitting somewhere in between and all other races somewhere along that line from the 'hth monster' to 'shooty sniper' scale.

Obviously in xwing the scale really seems to be about how lists work together and the options you have for a list as essentially all the choices do 'shooty sniper' and there are not really many ships that punch you to death (decimator and arvel cryned excepted )

I really like the idea of faction within faction.... U could do a rogue squadron list, where every ship benefits from a particular upgrade, like a uniform system upgrade.

It really is easy to use 40K as the baseline comparison.

But yeah. Subfactions would be cool. Maybe.

Whole new faction? Better be a doozy.

Also a rogue squadron x-wing subfaction might well fix the x-wing.

Three factions seems to be a good for the game. They could do mini factions for the scum faction. Basically boxed sets that have a theme, such as Hapes consortium fighters, yevethan and Ssi-ruuk, etc. these would still be the scum faction, but have a cohesive or complementary feel. Similar to how IG-88 works best with its selves.

Another thing to remember is the old LEGENDS lore is basically thrown out, so we can get some of these races without being beholden to how things used to be. Ssi-ruuk and yevethan, Vong or anything else can be used as just a minor race with some scum and villainy ships. They don't have to follow the old lore.

However, there could be new 'factions'. We have the scum, rebel and empire. With the prequels we would have separatist and republic and the new movies, the resistance and the First Order. These could all be new factions. However, I feel that the best way to do the sequel and prequel movies, should the be done, would be them as separate yet compatible game lines.

I think we're more likely to see tiered/themed lists than we are to see new factions.

To me, it kind of feels as though IG-88, when flown in pairs, is a bit of a faction within a faction (with the perk being the IG-2000 title card). I would not mind having other, non-unique synergy based cards, maybe some of which could benefit generic ships.

If epic becomes big, I'll need another 2 IG2000s... But yeah, Kinda.

Royal guard could be as well.

I'd probably like to see these factions.

The current three can cover every ship FFG'd reasonably want to include.

Three factions seems to be a good for the game. They could do mini factions for the scum faction. Basically boxed sets that have a theme, such as Hapes consortium fighters, yevethan and Ssi-ruuk, etc. these would still be the scum faction, but have a cohesive or complementary feel. Similar to how IG-88 works best with its selves.

The current three can cover every ship FFG'd reasonably want to include.

This is the real problem, to me. There was a gap when the game featured only two factions: there were fairly popular and iconic ships like the Hound's Tooth and, in honesty, the Slave I that didn't fit neatly into the Rebel-Imperial dichotomy. So they introduced Scum, and if you look at the pilots and ships that are included in that faction it's something like a grab bag of everyone that doesn't fit into either the legitimate government or the quasi-military resistance.

There are still groups, like the Yevetha, that don't fit the Rebel-Imperial divide and also would never work someone like Xizor or Kavil. But they're few and far between, and they also tend to fit into corners of the EU that are less well known, uncomfortable for Disney to engage, or both.