My Idea for an Ordnance Fix

Okay, I know we're all bored of this topic, and the chances of FFG just straight up changing a rule seems slim (let's ignore the Cloaking rule), so realistically this is just for house rules.

Clearly FFG is trying to fix this obvious issue by adding cards, munitions failsafe, the new one coming out that gives them two charges etc. I think those are good ideas, but should be in addition to lower points costs and a complete revamp in munitions.

The best ideas I've seen on here are:

1. 10% of your points, rounding up, can be used on munitions.

2. Munitions can be fired when outside of your firing arc.

3. Action to reload your munitions.

1. I like the first one because, hey, doesn't matter how much they suck to use, everyone will take them! It does mean that every list will pretty much have to include a ship that can take them, otherwise you're playing at a 10 point disadvantage.

2. Thematically this is great. I feel missiles should be fire and forget. It adds a lot of versatility to them, and would almost make me consider Y-wings as viable torpedo platforms!

3. This is how it's done in Attack Wing, I believe. I like the idea! It still takes up a turn requiring an action so it's not just total missile spam. Cool.

And finally, the entire reason for this thread (aside from boredom, and me mentally prepping for a tournament by getting in the right headspace by Sunday), my own idea.

Any critical hits rolled from munitions, ignore shields (the way a proton bomb does).

I think my rule is pretty good, obviously!

Thoughts?

I like idea 1 because ordnance slots cost points, and constantly having them unused makes some of the ships having them and paying for them very price inefficient. Fixing that would perhaps bring some of these ships back to the table. Just the 10% rule is a bit off. 99 point lists would be disadvantaged. Just say 10 points for 100 point games, 30 points for epic games on 300 and so on.

Idea 2 is not that cool. You have systems in modern aviation that do this, but it's not fitting the game especially for rockets and torps.

Idea 3 is good, but not enough of a buff on its own. Unlike some others i think reusability is a very big buff for ordnance. Giving an action is a bit much for it as the ship would probably have an automatic reliading system. I would say just make the ordnance pause 1-2 rounds after a shot was fired, that would be enough to differentiate it from cannons and diminish the risk that ordnance just does nothing for a lot of points.

What if ordnance is intended to be used against huge or large ships?

In the flight sims, shooting a missile at mid or long range against an agile fighter was almost always a miss, because the fighter would do evasive maneuvers until the missile run out of fuel.

Torpedoes were even worse against fighters. They excelled, though, against big ships (like corelian transports YT-1300 or corvettes)

When they buffed the missiles in the multiplayer game, the game became almost unfun, because you couldn't avoid an advanced missile most of the time.

While I agree with you about Torpedoes, Missiles are designed for taking out starships.

There's a reason why the Missile Boat was the very specific counter for the TIE Defender, the most maneuverable ship in Star Wars: TIE Fighter.

Personally, I like it when the game mechanics try to replicate the lore as closely as possible. That kind of thing can lead to balance issues...if this wasn't a point based game. But since it is, my philosophy is "If something seems overpowered, just increase it's points cost until it's no longer overpowered for it's cost." Likewise, if something seems underpowered, lower it's cost.

I have played thru the first 3 games recently, and missiles were indeed designed to be effective against starfighters. However they aren't effective against all starfighters. You could shoot a concussion missile against a TIE Bomber, Gunboat, Y-Wing or B-Wing and it would likely hit. But some times, even with a red target lock, the targeted ship would evade in the last moment, and your precious missile would miss and start turning around. It was not uncommon that the missile would selfdestruct soon after because of running out of fuel.

Against more agile targets, like Interceptors, Advanced, A-Wings, and even TIE Fighters, you could only hit them with a missile if either you released them close enough that they had no time to react, or when the enemy was too focused on another task (dogfighting, bombing, etc) and ignored your missile attack. And even then, it was not 100% chance of hit.

Also, when you were shot a missile at you, it was not so hard to evade it if you focused on it. Wait for it sideways, then when it starts chasing you, you chase it instead.

And yes, the Missile Boat came with like 40 advanced concussion missiles in one launcher. And it was effective, but it was because two reasons:

- Advanced missiles were totally overpowered. They were faster, tracked better, turned tighter and dealt more damage than normal ones.

- The Missile Boat came with a tractor beam that you used to "paint" your targets, make them just drift forward, then rain missiles on them without giving them a chance to evade them.

That was the final stages of the campaign in "TIE Fighter" and the power creep had been taken to the top because it was the whole point of the storyline. Remember what happened when "X-Wing versus TIE Fighter" came out?

Instead of going back to "normal" torpedoes and concussion missiles, they kept pushin the power creep forward. You could come into the battle and face TIE Interceptors sporting double layered shields and advanced concussion missiles. They could shoot them at you from 3km away, and by the time you would hear the "meek, meek, incoming missile" message, it had already blasted you. The team-deathmatches soon became a game of target locking and releasing advanced missiles from kilometers away. There was no more dogfighting. The countermeasures (chaff and flares) weren't effective enough to counter this "modern air combat". The game had ceased to inspire on WWII dogfights and had become modern day telefragging.

We don't really want this to happen to the miniature game. If anything, we should keep a power balance similar to the Yavin-Hoth timespan, instead of entering the crazy Zaarin-Thrawn arms race that led to XvT. Ordnance should be made effective against slow or "unfocused" small ships, and large and huge ships. That matches the lore, and maybe would help counter the current Large Fat Turret meta.

Just, in generally, it's annoying that Torpedoes actually suck at taking on capitol ships in this game.

All other things aside, I think range is actually one of the biggest problems with them. In the games, a lot of times torpedoes are launched at those ships from well outside of their gun range. Which is why you need a fighter screen to shoot down incoming bombers in the first place.

In this game, torpedoes have the same, or sometimes even shorter, range than normal lasers. And capitol ships actually have extra long range on their guns. Which means capitol ships often don't need fighter protection, because they can often shoot the **** out of any bomber before it even gets close enough to fire it's torpedoes.

Remember what happened when "X-Wing versus TIE Fighter" came out?

I actually never played it, as I have little interest in PvP and that game didn't really have any single player campaigns.

Just, in generally, it's annoying that Torpedoes actually suck at taking on capitol ships in this game.

All other things aside, I think range is actually one of the biggest problems with them. In the games, a lot of times torpedoes are launched at those ships from well outside of their gun range. Which is why you need a fighter screen to shoot down incoming bombers in the first place.

In this game, torpedoes have the same, or sometimes even shorter, range than normal lasers. And capitol ships actually have extra long range on their guns. Which means capitol ships often don't need fighter protection, because they can often shoot the **** out of any bomber before it even gets close enough to fire it's torpedoes.

Remember what happened when "X-Wing versus TIE Fighter" came out?

I actually never played it, as I have little interest in PvP and that game didn't really have any single player campaigns.

They could shoot them at you from 3km away, and by the time you would hear the "meek, meek, incoming missile" message, it had already blasted you.

Well, that was the big thing those games let you do that this game doesn't, and that's shoot down incoming missiles. Which was why shooting a missile while going head-to-head with an enemy ship was almost useless. Because it would just fly directly into their incoming fire and be destroyed.

You could play thru both campaigns in Balance of Power expansion single player. It was harder than flying them with a friend or two, and you could only do it if you took particular flightgroups in every mission, to deal with the most critical objectives. But you could do it.

It would be cool that missiles and torpedoes could be represented ingame with movable tokens. I made a suggestion a while ago about moveable ordnance tokens. You could evade it, you could shoot it down, and it could have the effect that missiles had in the sims: if they don't hit the target, at least you stress them up, and they stop doing whatever they were doing and instead they just focus on evasive maneuvers.

But honestly, the ability of shooting down missiles and torpedoes in the sims was a concession for gameplay, in my opinion. A missile or torpedo is smaller than a womp rat for sure. It should be incredibly hard to hit it with a laser without having excellent automated accuracy correctors.