If there was just a little more element of certainty on the core mechanics it would be better.

I don't mind randomness. It's what makes this game not chess. But the amount of random is just too high; if you can't produce the results you need, you can't win. Simple as that. All the skill in the game is built on that principle alone.

Consider if your results didn't completely depend on dice. Suppose the dice could only help you, I mean. Each ship has a basic attack/defense output, which has a chance of being enhanced by the dice.

Suppose the rules were like that.

E.g. an X-Wing, when attacking, always produces 1 hit result. On top of that, it rolls 2 modifiable dice, making the results span from 1-3 hits without range modifiers (as opposed to the current 0-3).

Dice matter-- it can't 1-shot an enemy without them-- but if the dice fail, it's not the end of the line, either.

I'm pretty sure that's what actions are for. Specifically, actions like Focus (which every ship in the game has access to) and Target Lock.

Then you have pilot abilities, elite talents, modifications, crew, astromechs... the game really is not short of ways to modify or otherwise influence dice rolls in your favour.

Do not let the haters get you down. FFG is not going to change anything that works, and they will eventually fix the things that really do suck. There are a lot of people here that buzz in with their BS Ideas from 40K and think they can FIX the game.

We've discussed this before, but I am not a 40k player.

Don't love the game? Then play house rules and shut up.

Over the past twenty-five years or so, the Star Wars EU has given me lots of practice at loving something while also recognizing and accepting its flaws. (This is, I've been told by mental-health professionals, a necessary step toward maintaining adult relationships.)

FFG owes you nothing but an excellent produce...

Do they? And all this time I've been paying for a CSA share!

And, frankly, look at D&D 3.5. One of the most well-loved RPG systems in recent history...

...Except by people who, unlike Monte Cook, understand game design.

And many of the most ardent fans will be glad to tell you everything wrong with the system and their own thoughts on how to fix the system...

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Discussing the flaws of a game you love and your own thoughts on a solution doesn't hurt a game. Frankly, given the deeper understanding such discussions can give you of said system, it might actually improve it, at least for the people doing the discussion.

This is really what I was getting at above: you can love something and still want to make it better. For some of us, figuring out a system is an expression of our enjoyment, and acknowledging what's wrong with it is an natural outcome.

It is fallacy to think that a strategy game should not require risk of failure, or in the case of green dice your opponents success also. Risk taking is a part of war. It's a blessing that dice in games can show this from a design standpoint.

Go to chess, then you don't have any dice at all! that's the game for you if you don't want unknown variable results. Or better yet, Go. That's a game you'd really like.

First, yes I do enjoy playing chess and Go, although I'm not particularly good at either one.

Second, getting rid of green dice is not the same thing as getting rid of all dice. Because...

you can emulate probability with literally any combination of dice, even just one toss provided there's a good enough curve

Although I love X-wing, one of its problems--again, from my perspective and in my opinion--is that the typical curve is wide with respect to a ship's hit points. Or, at least, it can be, because there are two separate ways of representing durability in X-wing. A ship with high Agility and low hit points has high but variable durability, and a ship with low Agility and high hit points has high and very consistent durability.

If two TIE fighters attack an A-wing at Range 2 (the TIEs have focus and the A-wing doesn't), it's anybody's guess how long it will take to kill the target. If two TIE fighters attack a Y-wing (same situation), they're almost certain to do some damage, and it's much easier to predict how much. If you carry that effect out, you get something like this:

Call that a death clock: the X-axis is the number of rounds spent attacking, and the Y-axis is the likelihood that the ship has been destroyed. Look how quickly the A-wing line climbs toward 50% in comparison to the Y-wing--and how much longer the A-wing takes to get to 100%.

We might create what we call a 90% confidence interval--that is, chop off the bottom 5% and the top 5%, leaving us with a number of rounds where we're 90% sure the target ship will die. The Y-wing has a 90% confidence interval of 3-5 rounds; the A-wing has a 90% confidence interval of 2-6 rounds. They have similar averages, but the A-wing could feasibly die a round earlier than the earliest likely point for the Y-wing... or it could feasibly die a round later than the latest likely point for the Y-wing.

That's inconsistent, and it's annoying if you like to fly A-wings (or E-wings, or TIE Advanced, or Defenders, or Interceptors, or Starvipers, or Scyks, and do I need to point out this is both a list of high-Agility ships and a list of ships FFG has struggled to balance properly?) And because we use two sets of dice, meaning we often roll up to 6 dice and occasionally as many as 8 or 10 to determine the outcome of a single attack, that inconsistency is baked into the game itself at a very basic level.

Does not the variance of survivability for high-agility, low hit point ships reflect their ability to dodge fire but conversely when hit, suffer more from it?

Does not the variance of survivability for high-agility, low hit point ships reflect their ability to dodge fire but conversely when hit, suffer more from it?

Yes, the mechanic we have is one way to represent that. But it isn't the only way to do so, and it makes it harder to find a balanced cost for those ships. I also don't think it's the most satisfying way to represent it for players, because the more you rely on dice results, the less control players have over the outcome.

I'm not saying a chess-style lack of randomness is where we want to be, either, but when I think about Fel + Stealth Device being killed by a fluke roll, it implies to me that we could use a bit less of that kind of randomness.

I've been playing dice based board games for a long time. FFG's use of dice in this game is simple and maybe close to elegant. Maybe not great but good enough. I've played games where you consulted one chart for the weapon, measured range, consulted another chart for the target, determined the target's facing, rolled dice and then consulted another table that gave you the probability of a hit. I don't know about the rest of you but I'd rather play a game than read an engineering treatise on ordnance. There are comprises in determining the mechanics of a game and the result is playability.

X-wing is easy to learn, easy to play and challenging enough to keep you interested. I'm pretty sure that FFG spent a considerable amount of time hashing out the mechanics of this game. Could they have missed something? I'm sure they did. There's more players than play testers and it's possible there are card/ship combos that may not have been thought of in testing.

Can we bury this equine? It's been deceased for awhile and yet we continue to whip it.

Yes, the mechanic we have is one way to represent that. But it isn't the only way to do so, and it makes it harder to find a balanced cost for those ships. I also don't think it's the most satisfying way to represent it for players, because the more you rely on dice results, the less control players have over the outcome

Which is why we're given multiple methods of influencing the dice results (or avoiding having to rely on them entirely). That's what the good players of the game swiftly learn how to do.

In your example of Soontir Fel being one-shotted (which should never, ever, ever happen now, especially with Autothrusters now a thing), you're looking at a player who has allowed themselves to be put in a position where - with one of the best pilots in the game, and a huge array of defensive options and action economy at their disposal - is relying entirely on the roll of four dice to survive. If it happens, then that's on the player, I'm afraid, not the game mechanics.

I'm not saying a chess-style lack of randomness is where we want to be, either, but when I think about Fel + Stealth Device being killed by a fluke roll, it implies to me that we could use a bit less of that kind of randomness.

Soontie Fel, PtL, Autothrusters, Stealth Device.

I played a game recently where Soontir was on one hull point remaining - a single hit would have finished him off - facing a full health Kath Scarlett with Recon Specialist and PtL.

Soontir won.

Why? Because the Imperial player knew what he was doing. He stayed at range 3, and made sure he had an evade and focus at all times. Whittled Kath down, bit by bit.

Kath had multiple turns where she managed four hits with the rear arc, Target Lock and Focus. In those turns, Soontir needed to roll four or more blanks on five dice to finally go down. Sure, it could have happened - but the odds were significantly stacked against it, by the player both influencing the results enough (and flying patiently and effectively enough) to make sure it didn't happen.

Without the green dice, it could have been a no win situation for Kath, even with her incredible firepower. As it was, the element of danger was always there (nd so was the fun, the drama, and the tension. We were hanging on every dice roll, both attackng and defending).

If it's that difficult to cause one hull point of damage against Soontir Fel, then talking about him getting one shotted by a fluke roll is essentially talking about player failure. The player either didn't pay enough attention to their situation, got cocky and flew n close, was focused on by multiple ships (and so had his defences stripped) or was put in a situation where their abilities don't help (i.e. double stressed).

Incidentally, the same Soontir build can also potentially be one-shotted by a Proximity Mine (the sole cause of damage to the Baron in the game we played). The Proximity Mine doesn't allow for a defence dice roll. That's less random - but I'm pretty sure it wasn't as much fun for either my opponent or myself as waiting to see if Soontir's luck would finally run out.

In your example of Soontir Fel being one-shotted (which should never, ever, ever happen now, especially with Autothrusters now a thing), you're looking at a player who has allowed themselves to be put in a position where - with one of the best pilots in the game, and a huge array of defensive options and action economy at their disposal - is relying entirely on the roll of four dice to survive. If it happens, then that's on the player, I'm afraid, not the game mechanics.

I once killed a focus/evade Fel + Stealth behind an asteroid at Range 3, because I rolled 4 hits with Krassis + HLC and he rolled an eye and four blanks. What should that Fel--who was on initial approach, by the way, so that shot dictated the course of the game--have done differently? I had an 88% chance to miss entirely, and just a 0.2% chance to kill him. Other than "always avoid every firing arc completely", which smart players know isn't feasible, what player decision would have saved him from that outcome?

(Note that this was prior to the existence of Autothrusters, but the fact that FFG had to specifically design an upgrade card to help high-Agility ships compete is a mark in favor of my argument that inconsistent defense is difficult to balance.)

Nothing you said addresses the basic math at work: the more dice you roll for a given attack, the less reliable the outcome. I wouldn't want to import Armada's mechanics over directly, but imagine something like it. Suppose instead of some number of defense dice and focus+evade, Soontir could pick up a token that allowed him to reroll all attack dice, a token that allowed him to choose and cancel any dice result, and a token that halved the damage from an attack (round down).

Now the defending player has much more control over how well he defends against an attack--and the attacking player has much more knowledge (that is, can predict much more reliably) what she needs to do to kill Soontir. It's not a game of throwing attacks at him until he stumbles, but of planning how to get around those tokens and/or throw enough attacks to deplete them.

I once killed a focus/evade Fel + Stealth behind an asteroid at Range 3, because I rolled 4 hits with Krassis + HLC and he rolled an eye and four blanks. What should that Fel--who was on initial approach, by the way, so that shot dictated the course of the game--have done differently? I had an 88% chance to miss entirely, and just a 0.2% chance to kill him. Other than "always avoid every firing arc completely", which smart players know isn't feasible, what player decision would have saved him from that outcome?

Well, he shouldn't have flown head on into the arc of a HLC-wielding, native re-roll touting ship for a start. Soontir is a glass cannon and an expert finisher, he could quite easily have flanked for a turn or two before moving in on thefurball from theside. I'm assuming there were other ships in his list which could have made the initial approach while the Baron hung back?

See, that's exactly what I'm saying - player agency and lack of patience caused the loss of the ship. Your opponent had one of the most manueverable arc-dodging ships in the game, but instead of using that to their advantage they put themselves in a position where they could concievable be one shot killed. They knew Krassis threw four dice with a re-roll. They knew they wouldn't get the range 3 defence dice bonus. They did it anyway.

Nothing you said addresses the basic math at work: the more dice you roll for a given attack, the less reliable the outcome. I wouldn't want to import Armada's mechanics over directly, but imagine something like it. Suppose instead of some number of defense dice and focus+evade, Soontir could pick up a token that allowed him to reroll all attack dice, a token that allowed him to choose and cancel any dice result, and a token that halved the damage from an attack (round down).

OK, I'm imagining it. In my example above - with Kath on 10 health and Soontir on 1 - Soontir would probably have conceded. He could have gone two rounds - max - without dying. Nowhere near enough time to take Kath down.

That would have made for a pretty boring anecdote by comparison, wouldn't you agree?

Now the defending player has much more control over how well he defends against an attack--and the attacking player has much more knowledge (that is, can predict much more reliably) what she needs to do to kill Soontir. It's not a game of throwing attacks at him until he stumbles, but of planning how to get around those tokens and/or throw enough attacks to deplete them.

You're right, instead of being a game it becomes simple maths. Either Soontir has enough damage mitigation to kill Kath before he loses his last hull point, or he doesn't. If he doesn't, the Imperial player may as well concede. If he does, the Scum player may as well concede because barring action denial he simply wouldn't be able to hurt him.

So:

1: current systerm - players continue, with each die roll being important and meaningful, until one player wins OR

2: Soontir has too much damage mitigation for his opponent, who concedes OR

3: Soontir hasn't got enough damage mitigation to do enough damage to win and concedes.

I think I much prefer the current system, in that case. The alternatives just seem anti-fun.

FFG owes you nothing but an excellent produce...

Do they? And all this time I've been paying for a CSA share!

Guys like us that have spent well over a couple grand prolly should own some stock in this product range...

I once killed a focus/evade Fel + Stealth behind an asteroid at Range 3, because I rolled 4 hits with Krassis + HLC and he rolled an eye and four blanks. What should that Fel--who was on initial approach, by the way, so that shot dictated the course of the game--have done differently? I had an 88% chance to miss entirely, and just a 0.2% chance to kill him. Other than "always avoid every firing arc completely", which smart players know isn't feasible, what player decision would have saved him from that outcome?

Well, he shouldn't have flown head on into the arc of a HLC-wielding, native re-roll touting ship for a start.

Well, you kind of walked into that one.

Nothing you said addresses the basic math at work: the more dice you roll for a given attack, the less reliable the outcome.

OK, I'm imagining it. In my example above - with Kath on 10 health and Soontir on 1 - Soontir would probably have conceded. He could have gone two rounds - max - without dying. Nowhere near enough time to take Kath down.

This is a non sequitur, and I'm genuinely confused about what you're trying to say.

Now the defending player has much more control over how well he defends against an attack--and the attacking player has much more knowledge (that is, can predict much more reliably) what she needs to do to kill Soontir. It's not a game of throwing attacks at him until he stumbles, but of planning how to get around those tokens and/or throw enough attacks to deplete them.

You're right, instead of being a game it becomes simple maths. Either Soontir has enough damage mitigation to kill Kath before he loses his last hull point, or he doesn't. If he doesn't, the Imperial player may as well concede. If he does, the Scum player may as well concede because barring action denial he simply wouldn't be able to hurt him.

No, sorry. What I'm saying is that choices made by the players about their action states should have reliable consequences, not that one player should be able to maneuver the other into a might-as-well-concede scenario. Part of game balance is minimizing those no-win scenarios, and it's perfectly doable... especially since, again I'm not advocating a diceless game, just one where the dice dictate a smaller proportion of the overall outcome.

Again, I'm not advocating for a redesign of X-wing using the Armada rules (or even a redesign of X-wing at all... I like the game and am invested in it more heavily than most). But if Christian Petersen came to me tomorrow and said "we're doing X-wing 2.0, and I want you to pay you $100,000 to be the lead designer", then getting rid of defense dice would be one of my first priorities: I think a system where a larger proportion of variance comes from player decisions would lead to a stronger system with better long-term health.

Vorpal Sword,

I have a couple of questions regarding your graph and statements,

If two TIE fighters attack an A-wing at Range 2 (the TIEs have focus and the A-wing doesn't), it's anybody's guess how long it will take to kill the target. If two TIE fighters attack a Y-wing (same situation), they're almost certain to do some damage, and it's much easier to predict how much. If you carry that effect out, you get something like this:

How did you determine the curve for the A-wing?

We might create what we call a 90% confidence interval--that is, chop off the bottom 5% and the top 5%, leaving us with a number of rounds where we're 90% sure the target ship will die. The Y-wing has a 90% confidence interval of 3-5 rounds; the A-wing has a 90% confidence interval of 2-6 rounds. They have similar averages, but the A-wing could feasibly die a round earlier than the earliest likely point for the Y-wing... or it could feasibly die a round later than the latest likely point for the Y-wing.

That's inconsistent, and it's annoying if you like to fly A-wings (or E-wings, or TIE Advanced, or Defenders, or Interceptors, or Starvipers, or Scyks, and do I need to point out this is both a list of high-Agility ships and a list of ships FFG has struggled to balance properly?) And because we use two sets of dice, meaning we often roll up to 6 dice and occasionally as many as 8 or 10 to determine the outcome of a single attack, that inconsistency is baked into the game itself at a very basic level.

Why do you consider results from your graph to be inconsistent for the A-wing? The Y with double the health of the A but with 1/3 the agility should have a rather narrow window for destruction.

I think a system where a larger proportion of variance comes from player decisions would lead to a stronger system with better long-term health.

I agree, I don't know that I'd get rid of the dice but I would definitely do something to make it easier to defend.

But to be fair, and I don't know that I saw this mentioned so far. Part of the design concept was that defense would be inferior to offense. So there is a bit of 'working as intended' with the green dice in the game.

How did you determine the curve for the A-wing?

Step 1: Work out the possible outcomes for an attack by a TIE fighter with focus against an A-wing defending with naked dice.

Step 2: Work out the possible outcomes for two such attacks (which then make up a single round). Figure out the probability of 4 or more successes.

Step 3: Work out the possible outcomes for two rounds. Figure out the probability of 4 or more total successes.

Steps 4+: Add another pair of attacks, making sure to work out the probability of 4 or more successes each time.

Why do you consider results from your graph to be inconsistent for the A-wing? The Y with double the health of the A but with 1/3 the agility should have a rather narrow window for destruction.

What I mean by "inconsistent" is that the Y-wing and A-wing have similar average lifespans, but the A-wing's lifespan is much less reliable. It could evaporate far too early to get any real value out of it, or it could last an improbably long time.

That "should have a rather narrow window for destruction" is what I'm talking about: it's a weak aspect of the game's design, because it means that some ships are much more reliable than others--and therefore some ships are more likely to earn back their points than others, even if the average power levels of the two ships are very similar.

I am happy with the game mechanics as-is. Aside from quibbling about point values, I find this game to be well balanced and fine the way it is.