Keep in mind, Double Falcons WERE dominating in the Wave 2 era until they changed the victory conditions for Full Wins. When it was the original 33 pts, TIE swarms were knocked out of competition if they were paired up with another TIE swarm.

This sort of brings up an example of how the MOV is forcing point fortresses such as fat-turrets into the top tier.

MOV is the tie-breaker, though. Someone always gets screwed over in tie-breakers. Sort of why I still prefer SOS.

So much text!

I just want to say that I, for one, welcome the brobot overlords because they have an arc you can actually play around

Personally going to revisit control. it does **** to han and predator, but stress does actually do somEtching to soonts and cheri and just pastes dash/corran

Really though, the primary turret mechanic just needs revisioning. It really dumbs down the game IMO when you have to think so far less about your facing and I feel it makes them far less interesting to play against.

Ito competition, turrets are just a shoo in so idk what you want to do there. I guess either Address lack of partial scoring or c3pos ****** efficiency on top of amazing offense independent of action and no arc to worry about. You can negate exactly none of these advantages, But the boost/evade are at least something.

Would it be awful if we just banned Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Wouldn't fix anything. The "Fat" ships aren't more powerful in a basic sense than multiples of decent small ships. The problem is that two 50 point ships have an inherent advantage over five 20 point ships due to the scoring system in timed games. The 5 ship player can score 0/50/100 and the two ship player can score 0/20/40/60/80/100. If both sides take down seventy points of the enemy, who wins? If the swarm takes out 90 points of the enemy and the two ship takes out 60, who wins?

Keep in mind, Double Falcons WERE dominating in the Wave 2 era until they changed the victory conditions for Full Wins. When it was the original 33 pts, TIE swarms were knocked out of competition if they were paired up with another TIE swarm.

This sort of brings up an example of how the MOV is forcing point fortresses such as fat-turrets into the top tier.

Another thing that is being exaggerated on top of fat turret domination.

That depends completely on the matchup. Do you really think Fel/Chiraneau is easier to fly than 4Y? lol

BTL-A4 Y-wings? With a dial like that? Y-wings are harder any day.

I'll add something to the debate here. What if ordinance was actually good? Wouldn't this give small ship lists a way to combat Fat Turrets? Just saying.

How about an ion pulse missile. Fantastic against fat turrets in the right hands...

Would it be awful if we just banned Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Wouldn't fix anything. The "Fat" ships aren't more powerful in a basic sense than multiples of decent small ships. The problem is that two 50 point ships have an inherent advantage over five 20 point ships due to the scoring system in timed games. The 5 ship player can score 0/50/100 and the two ship player can score 0/20/40/60/80/100. If both sides take down seventy points of the enemy, who wins? If the swarm takes out 90 points of the enemy and the two ship takes out 60, who wins?

If they can't Dodge you you can outdice them

Problem with removing EU is that You unduly punish every non turret large ship

That depends completely on the matchup. Do you really think Fel/Chiraneau is easier to fly than 4Y? lol

BTL-A4 Y-wings? With a dial like that? Y-wings are harder any day.

You can't be serious. Y wings, title or no, fly themselves. You have almost no choices to make.

Warthogs are incredibly simple to fly...

Also, the one time someone someone won an SC or Regional with 4 Y WIngs doesn't make up for the 15 times it was won by a 2 ship Turretwing list.

I bet a higher fraction of top-half 4Y made the cut than top half turrets at regionals. A LOT of people are bringing turrets. A LOT of them aren't doing well.

Well yes, all the bad players who hopped on the Turretwing bandwagon aren't winning because they are bad at the game. But they're still much easier to fly, so when you have two players of equal skill, one of which has a Turret, they are at an advantage.

That depends completely on the matchup. Do you really think Fel/Chiraneau is easier to fly than 4Y? lol

Yes.

Y's, while having turrets, still want to perform actions and not stress themselves. Their limited greens really hamper how they move.

While the RAC with Predator and his pilot ability is just dumping 3/3 and 4/4 hits on things without even spending an action to do so.

I've played 5 Y's and 5 Autoblasters before. I get what you're saying, it's not very skill intensive to fly your Y Wing deathblob towards someone and grind your 40 health against theirs until you win. But there is still more nuance to playing that and playing against it than a typical two ship Turretwing list.

I suppose in that specific matchup, the Y's would have a decent chance at beating a Deci Soontir list. They could nuke Soontir and even their primaries could kill a deci. You can make non-meta squads that autowin against certain meta lists but they are only good at killing that one thing. If I use Roark and swarm tactics I can autokill someone's super Phantom no problem and then just take out their Deci. But then I have trouble even taking out a mere mini-swarm with my entire list.

Would it be awful if we just banned Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Seeing as it comes with a large ship...yes.

The whole idea of bundling cards with ships is pretty awful, so lets leave that aside and think purely in terms of how it would affect game play. Would it still be awful to ban an Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Would it be awful if we just banned Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Seeing as it comes with a large ship...yes.

The whole idea of bundling cards with ships is pretty awful, so lets leave that aside and think purely in terms of how it would affect game play. Would it still be awful to ban an Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Yes

The whole idea of bundling cards with ships is pretty awful, so lets leave that aside and think purely in terms of how it would affect game play. Would it still be awful to ban an Engine Upgrade on large ships?

It's bad so let's make it worse? What kind of logic is that?

Besides, banning Engine Upgrade would achieve nothing because it's not the problem. Take that action away and they'll just spend those 4 points elsewhere and take another action.

If it's large bases in general then the problem is not the large base itself, which is usually an inherent disadvantage, but the point forting. Go up against a heavy ship or go up against three smaller ships and do the same damage and you'll either kill two of the three or not kill the heavy. In addition to the victory distortion this has a potent psychological effect.

In essence, the timed game is biased heavily in favour of a minimum of ships. Large ships can best take advantage of this.

To some extent I agree, but they are also to able build themselves to be less reliant on actions and EU allows them more movement to escape arc than small ships get.

IG 88 is a straight up discount on a small base fighter for those stats, before even including excellent abilities or upgrades.

If you're comparing IG-88 to a TIE defender you might want to reconsider that.

What all those upgrades do is allow large bases to compete against the vast additional firepower and tactical flexibility of multiple smaller ships. If you nerfed them to the point where the tournament meta balanced out then large ships would be slaughtered in the casual format. The problem is not the ship design, it's the tournament design artificially favouring fewer ships. If a dual TIE defender squad was BBBBZ viable in an untimed game, it would be storming the tournament metagame.

We'll have to disagree. Vessery, arguably the best defender (and I like defenders), at base cost is a point cheaper than an IG88 at the same PS. The IG 88 has an extra hull and shield, engine upgrade, and a better dial. It's not even close (that's 11 points of upgrades). Is being on a big base really worth that much of a discount? I could go through the same exercise with other elite fighters.

Tournament design does muddy the waters, but I think that turrets and other large bases do well in a casual setting, too, and I see plenty of them not relying on running out the clock to win.

Large bases do fine in the untimed game because they're balanced to it. The scoring system with the clock in the tournament game favours shielding your points in as few ships as possible.

The base cost of the TIE defender is 30pt. The Aggressor has a large base which severely hampers it's arc dodging shenanigans, trades barrel roll for boost (arguably a downgrade) has a different dial, and isn't by most assessments severely overcosted. A hull point is not worth 3 points in real terms and a shield point is not worth 4 (do that calculation for the Z-95), their value is contexual. The large base makes the Aggressor easier to arc and get into the desired range, and thus those two extra hit points do not constitute seven points over the TIE defender.

The Aggressor is good value, certainly. But the Defender isn't (certainly useable but not maximum value for points by any assessment). The generic E-wing is assessed as even more brutally overcosted. By the time you hit the StarViper you're getting too far away to compare ships effectively.

Would it be awful if we just banned Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Seeing as it comes with a large ship...yes.

The whole idea of bundling cards with ships is pretty awful, so lets leave that aside and think purely in terms of how it would affect game play. Would it still be awful to ban an Engine Upgrade on large ships?

Still yes, it seems like you still have the answer to your question. Before wave 6 all the upgrade cards inside the expansion pack could be used with the ship model that came in the expansion pack. Even C-3PO could be used on the CR-90 as it defends at range 3 and up. Banning it from the ship it came from will be awful as a business model as well as game play.

Now I see where you may try to go with this. You are wondering if you could modify the boost much the same way barrel roll was modified with large ships. The answer is that it is much trickier with the boost action instead of the barrel roll action. The 1 turn when held a certain way covers 1/2 of a side of a small base ship. use the long side and that covers half of the large base ship so the barrel roll is essentially the same maneuver options in relations with large ships as it is with small ships after the wave 5 errata. The thing about boost is that 2 different types of maneuver templates can be used. The 1 straight and the 1 bank, thus making it that much harder to errata change/nerf the boost on large ships.

But the biggest question is what does boost give to large ships. Well it gives minor facing correction which isn't really a thing with most large base ships having a turret primary weapon. Against autothrusters it could give a large base ship the ability to move its printed firing arc and close into range 2 so that autothrustes won't trigger, assuming it doesn't overlap with the boost. However I don't think that is a significant enough advantage over autothrusters because those upgrades are really quite situational for their point cost.

As for large ships well engine upgrade will just make Occuin have to risk 2 dice when he wants to daredevil ram however that is more of a gimick build so no change in the meta there. Other large ships like Agressors already have boost and YT-2400 have barrel rolls so they won't be hampered by the ban on engine upgrade.

The one thing that will really get screwed over by this EU Ban on large ship proposal would be shuttles. Already shuttles have sliped from potential contenders in the top tier meta to just average middle tier meta as they have been displaced by the IG88B/C bots and the Doom Decimator which performs the jobs of the buzzsaw and doom shuttle builds far better then the shuttles. The boost was necessary as those ships do not have a K-turn. Now if you are attempting to nerf Han well here is some news for you the YT-1300 (and 2400) have a K-turn. Hans actually has 2 K-turns so you target for this sniper nerf ban would have been completely missed and you would have hit an innocent bystander.

So yes, your suggestion is beyond awful.

Two Questions:

1: I've seen a number of forum members suggest decreasing the attack of turrets by 1 when firing outside of their arc. Has anyone tested this as a fix?

2: If time limits were expanded to say 90 minutes per battle, would that change the situation?

Everything I've seen points to 75 being enough for 90% of games.

I've always thought too that the primary turret rules should of been from the beginning that they get -1 attack shooting outside of arc. They should want to try to get ships in their arc for maximum fire power but if they couldn't then roll -1 attack dice seems very fair to me.

Another thing I've thought they messed up on with the introduction of turrets was the Falcon's title. The added attack die, shield and hull should of came with the MF title and not the evade action. It always felt weird how that is the only ship that handled it that sort of way in the game.

So BBBBZ and Panic Attack are good counter lists for fat turret lists but it loses to non-turret lists?

Everything I've seen points to 75 being enough for 90% of games.

Potentially limiting the shots to range 2 only with a primary weapon might be a good idea. You won't hit Fel with thrusters Ina primary out of arc AND range 3 shot anyway, sure 4 blanks can happen but it's rare.

Wouldn't affect the 2400 because it only affects primary and a two die 2400 isn't any good with its primay weapon (potentially save the lowest named pilot)

The ship could still make a range 3 in arc. I feel this would force fat ships to engage more and would only situationally make them worse.

Turrets don't need fixing.

None of the ordnance actually are good against fat ships. They should be. That's the easiest way to get a large number of small ships to be good against fat ships. If the ordnance could be added to a list to add a soft counter to fat ships it would help so much.

But ffg is kind of dropping the ball on this.

We need to just accept that all things are true, but they aren't totally true.

1. Engine Upgrade is incredibly powerful on large bases, but it isn't the only thing that makes them good.

2. Turrets can be easier to fly, but more successful players by fly them really well by getting past the "easy" surface layer with smart 2 and 3 turn thinking. The easy first step probably makes it simpler to progress to 2nd level thinking, but it doesn't make it auto-fly either.

3. The scoring system is a problem, but if it were the only advantage they would just get blasted away. Fat ships are both good and they score well.

4. Uber-defensive upgrades are a problem, but they are able to be overcome with focus fire (see 1 and 2)

Similarly, Fat turrets do rule the meta, but they are not the only viable thing in the meta. And the meta is expanding, but at the same time the meta is not headed toward full fledged diversity.

Too often we see people say "X is the problem" and that argument is easily countered by someone who feels X is not the problem, because any one of these things looked at by itself does not make a ship a juggernaut and there are counters to each one. It is the whole of these items, which are manageable in and of themselves as parts, that creates issues. We need to stop arguing that any one thing leads to the "dominance" of a ship, else we just go in circles as we have done.

There isn't a quick fix just by tweaking one of these things.

As a side note, I'll just add that some of the recent design choices in the game are not good for the casual scene, either. In particular, the defensive and regenerative cards combined with some of the newer ships lead to an almost pre-determined end game based upon # of ships remaining rather than quality of ships remaining. I often refer to this example, but it illustrates this so well, combining a core defensive upgrade with a new ship. I was flying a near full health Boba Fett + VI + Engine + Tactician (46) vs a Knave Squadron + R2-D2 (31). When first getting into this matchup, I thought what a laugh it was. With my two arcs, EU, and Boba's ability I could run circles around this ship all day. Except unless I could land 3 hits (1 to overcome an evade, 1 to overcome R2-D2, and 1 to land damage) I was doing nothing, and that only worked if my opponent only rolled 0 evades. If he rolled any, I make no progress. Not only that, I had to land 3 hits turn after turn consistently against 0 evades, else he regains yet another shield, so no regrouping for another pass. Land 3 hits while my opponent rolls 0 evades for 4-5 turns consecutively or lose. I don't know, but the game has a problem when any 1 ship reaches a point of near "invincibility" in a 1v1 matchup. I'm not saying that the odds should be equal - no way a TIE fighter should be soloing a Falcon 1v1, but the defensive upgrades now available all too often lead to these ridiculous "no hope" scenarios. Target priority is a piece of this of course, but in my mind, it is pretty out there for a 46 point ship to have no chance of winning against a 31 point ship. Even odds, even some disadvantage due to ability matchup, fine. But no chance? The game has become riddled with these no hope end game scenarios - Corran, Fel, Fat Han and the like. I greatly understand the appeal of these ships - if I can manipulate it down to a 1v1 or at times even a 2v1, it hardly matters what you have fielded, I'm going to win out.

Turrets don't need fixing.

Side note: I've been told lately that I've gotten quite irritable on other forums (and this one) lately, to the point where people have asked me if everything is okay. I see now what they are getting at. I'm grumpy.

I was at the same regional at Epic Loot in OH. Hats off to the TO and the store! It was well run and an awesome game store. I didn't make the top eight, but I noticed the same thing when I left - all fat ships - IGs, Falcons and Decimators. Not a surprise at all from my experience.

That said, I did finish tied for sixteenth with Soontir, Carnor and a Royal Guard, all with PTL, Autothrusters, and Stealth and had a blast. I did not fight a turret all day so it was the best of X-wing in my opinion - pure dogfighting and outmanuevering!

I would limit the fixes to perfect turrets (decimator and falcon) only with two simple changes:

1. Give me an extra green when at range 2-3 and outside of arc. The extra green has a lesser statistical impact than taking away a red, and for realism a farther shot outside of arc should have a defensive advantage. Blaster turret doesn't need this modification because you have to burn a focus, but perfect turrets are still tipping the scales too far their way.

2. You should have to hit to to use Vader on the Decimator. Yes you should have to hit. This is clearly broken and takes all the fun and competition out of the game. For example - attack-miss-vader crit-attack-miss-vader crit - oh now your ship is destroyed on round one. Let's move on to the next round of this "dogfight" game and do the same auto-destroy with my perfect arc on your gutsy skill based three-hull ship. Yes, I do have Vader hate - not on the shuttle, but only the decimator.

So leave Y-wings and hawks alone and give a little more balanced help with the big guns. Again, hats off to Epic Loot for an awesome Saturday!

Edit: You could also just have Vader work only after an attack in arc rather than having to hit. That's probably more fair given that the same mechanic is currently what the shuttle has.

Sorry I skipped reading all three pages leading up I just thought I'd just chime in. I think there's some merit to the idea that dual IG's are pushing the meta to turrets in a similar way the phantom did. I know I'd feel more comfortable not running a turret in a tourney without dual IG's lurking around. As far as I know there aren't many list archetypes outside of turrets that can stand up to fat builds and dual IG's at the same time. What generally does well against two IG's does not fair well against turrets and vice versa? Duals IG's have everything fat ships have except the 360 arc, thank goodness. They are a large ship with a boost, gunner ability(because who isn't running IG-88 B?), damage mitigation through autothrusters and evades, plus s-loops. I think IG's could have been 4 or more points cheaper without the boost action and still been a competitive ship. Forcing engine upgrade as a modification and taking autothrusters off the table. Its terribly difficult to knock one of these ships off the board quickly without 1 of 2 things, 4+ attack dice or turrets. I've played a lot of games with good players who fly the IG's very well and its so hard to keep those buggers in arc, hence turrets, we all know green dice will fail eventually, autothrusters be damned (It's what gunner/Luke is for). This is just my theory however. I strongly feel the more maneuverable FFG makes ships the more turrets become "the safe bet".

FFG nerfed phantoms but gave us IG's. Incidentally I have cause to wonder if the phantom people have shied from recently is a good counter to the IG's with the ability to pre-block, move afterwards and shoot with 4-5 native red dice. The phantom did not get nerfed 'ability-wise', it got nerfed 'player-wise'. I'll probably be loved/hated (more of the latter I'm sure) for saying this but the FAQ separated the truly skilled from the skill-less, the players that have the presence of mind to anticipate and read their opponent from the ones that cannot. Yet, everyone still have to deal with a different kind of predator out there and not many people feel confident without a big FAT security blanket. Myself included. I MUST HAVE ALL THE FFG BLING! HEIL FFG!

3. The scoring system is a problem, but if it were the only advantage they would just get blasted away. Fat ships are both good and they score well.

This is the problem. The tournament rules reward players who do not lose ships, so the most obvious way to play is to build ships that are difficult to lose. Expensive ships, with lots of defensive upgrades, high hit points, high pilot skill and some post dial movement.

It just so happens that all of those ships also have turrets.