X-Wing Co-Op Campaign is Here!

By R2-EQ, in X-Wing

We'be just started the campaign. We are also allowing players to take Scum pilots if they want, replacing the starting X-Wing with the Kihraxz and Rebel pilot abilities with the Scum abilities. Played the first game and had a blast. I went with an X-Wing with R2-D2 and scored a kill. This gave me enough xp to get a Shield Upgrade for the next game. I was surprised at how well the AI flew, better than some live opponents I've faced. Really looking forward to playing more games with this system.

Just scum ships, or Scum pilot abilities too? I bet there are some massively abusive scum pilot ability combos, even by campaign standards.

Yah, I'm finding the consistent damage of the TLT is a real XP magnet given how XP scoring works. Just hitting vs how much damage you put down is a big part of that. I may one shot a TIE in my xwing and get 2xp. The TLT is milking that same TIE for 3-4 xp every time and rarely has turn where it doesn't have a shot. TIE don't exploit the donut hole well. We're also having issues with the lower PS pilots falling behind as their targets are often getting cleaned off before they shoot.

Some thoughts-

XP per X damage in a turn. Makes hitting with 4 die worthwhile. (Maybe every 2?) That would limit TLTs to 1 xp, but other ships could score 2-3xp.

The kill bonus can get kinda insane. Damage xp and 1xp for a kill is fine, but I'd prefer to see other bonuses as squad bonuses. Kill a non-tie, get 2 party xp. Elite? Get another 4xp (or number of players). Maybe add a bonus for finishing squadrons to party XP. At the end of the mission you split the XP, lowest PS players get remainders. It would help alot with some players feeling they got screwed out of kills all the time as there would be much more trickle down XP.

On another note- EPT cost x2 the card cost. EPT from another pilot don't seem to have this multiplier. Is that right?

Having pooled squad XP for some bonuses is an interesting idea; I will file that one away for future playtesting.

EPTs cost double, Pilot abilties cost their owners PS, and use an EPT equipment slot. Therefore, Push the Limit costs 6xp and so does Garven Dreis' ability.

I'd like to suggest an ability as well, since there are places to track your kills on character sheet, but it didn't see it used.

Requires 5 kills of a specific ship type.

<Enemy ship> Ace.

Title

When attacking a <Enemy ship> you may reroll 1 attack die.

When defending against a <Enemy ship> you may reroll one defense die.

4xp

Figure most people would have it on ties eventually, but it would take work to get it on other types. Somewhat less useful than predator at 6xp, but it would add some flavor. Maybe it should be an EPT? It would be neat to see the kill counts work towards something though.

I would love more "titles" similar to squad leader. Or maybe just call them medals, and cost 5 points each.

*Medal of Command, for successfully assisting [squad size ] # of friendly ships in one engagement. Discard this to spend your focus , TL, or evade on a friendly ship's attack or defense dice.

*Medal of Valor, destroy [squad size ] number of enemy ships in one engagement. Discard this medal to reroll any attack dice.

*Medal of Vigor, survive [squad size ] attacks in one engagement. Discard this medal to regain 1 shield.

*Medal of spirit, survive being destroyed [squad size] number of times. When you would be destroyed you survive until the end of the next turn, enemy ships ignore you when choosing a target. If at the end of this time no enemy ships are in play, regain 1 hull.

...

edit: obviously I could just convince my playgroup. But we are still rocky on the rules so Ill just talk into the ether.

Edited by GeneticDrift

Make the last one Medal for Gallantry or the like, and give you one free get-out-of-jail card on ejection rolls.

It's to help pilots who keep exploding from falling behind. ;)

Make the last one Medal for Gallantry or the like, and give you one free get-out-of-jail card on ejection rolls.

It's to help pilots who keep exploding from falling behind. ;)

I actually had that for spirit, but making them spend 5 xp was just a kick in the pants.

Edited by GeneticDrift

I have an idea about the TLT and XP problem. Maybe change the first line of scoring on page 42 to read:

"Deal at least 1 damage to one or more enemy ships with a primary weapon." - 1 XP

and then under "Destroy an enemy ship or emplacement..." add a line:

"...and you used a secondary weapon" - 1XP, maybe 2XP?

Then the TLT ship gets a max of 2 or 3 XP per enemy TIE (same as what an x-wing averages), and it has to destroy the ship to get it. It should help even out the XP.

Another idea I had was to change the AI target priority so that a turreted ship is a higher priority than most other ships. I know that if I'm playing a swarm against a squad with a TLT, I'm trying to get the swarm into the donut hole ASAP.

Having played pretty extensively and seen a lot of TLT action... I think it's a solution looking for a problem! Once an X-Wing has some upgrades they're quite deadly. TLT is a steady 1 XP, but X-Wings frequently land the kill shot, particularly if your team plans well. If the TLT pilot is hogging all the glory, maybe he should be reminded it's a cooperative game! Against TIEs the most a TLT is gonna get per turn is 2: 1 for damage 1 for a kill. And if he's just softening them up, he's getting 1. Not game breaking! BUT, your X-Wing pilots should prioritize mobility upgrades to make sure they're never missing out on shots.

That fits. Y-wing is a support ship in this case, rather than the direct DD.

Softening up a TIE for an x-wing to finish off is very thematic.

Playing a few weeks now. In our squad, we have a B-Wing, 4 X-Wings, and a Y-Wing. We have played through 4 missions, and we are having a blast.

The Y-Wing has TLT. It's an XP monster. Last night, we ended up playing the mission with all of the minefields. On average, most of us got an average of 14 to 16 xp. The Y-Wing got a whopping 24xp. Personally, I think it's a little on the extreme end on what he got, as he plays a little selfishly, and is more concerned about himself than the mission objective (which kinda drives me batty), but it is what it is. He does kill steal a lot of ships with that TLT. That's the downfall of the TLT, is it's ability to get that last hull damage needed on an interceptor or T/F.

It's devastating to enemy ships, but a bit annoying on our end as well, lol.

My son and I are loving the c-op play and have been promoting it to the local x-wing crowd.

Disable sensor net - We beat this scenario by virtue of blasting together clockwise around the play area. We simply overshot the ties and outraced them as they k-turned, made sure we were never in range of more than one sensor, and focus fired on that sensor so it was destroyed before it could call for a patrol squad. We never fired on an imperial ship, no patrol squads were launched, and we barely got scuffed by imperial fire. low xp but an easy win. Good luck with the red dice helped to be sure.

Capture refueling station- taking over the station seemed almost too easy. unload the team turn 3, blew a fuel pod turn 4, moved to center of station turn 5, destroy command center turn 6. Did we miss something here? were we supposed to clear the fuel pods before the command center? With good rolls you could take the command center in two turns after docking.

Edited by jeepnut42

Having played pretty extensively and seen a lot of TLT action... I think it's a solution looking for a problem! Once an X-Wing has some upgrades they're quite deadly. TLT is a steady 1 XP, but X-Wings frequently land the kill shot, particularly if your team plans well. If the TLT pilot is hogging all the glory, maybe he should be reminded it's a cooperative game! Against TIEs the most a TLT is gonna get per turn is 2: 1 for damage 1 for a kill. And if he's just softening them up, he's getting 1. Not game breaking! BUT, your X-Wing pilots should prioritize mobility upgrades to make sure they're never missing out on shots.

Hi, I am the player that was using a TLT Y-Wing. It's not that I don't play cooperatively. It's just that the TLT (perhaps other turrets also) have that magnet effect with the XP reward system.

A range 2-3 turret player can easily have a shot every single round, two shots with the TLT. That means that with a little bit of luck, he can get consistent 1 XP per round, while other players can't because they need to get their targets in arc, and have a single attack per round, tops.

These X-Wing or B-Wing players can either totally miss their attacks (because most of the time the TIE Fighters defend with 3 green dice with focus), or be lucky and kill them in one devastating blow with lots of crits and stuff. The thing is that even when they deal a killing blow, they usually get a final XP that is lower than the turret player, even if the turret player is consistently trying to just soften the enemies so that their friends deal the killing blows.

I was doing precisely so, weakening enemies that were going to be attacked this same round by one fellow player. But that means that in the end I was attacking as many enemies as all of my friends combined, so unsurprisingly I ended milking XP from many different targets.

Also, I noticed that at least the TLT isn't great at peeling tokens off the AI ships. If I roll well and they roll bad, they don't bother spending their tokens if the hit is dealing only one damage anyway, so they don't try to counter the exceeding results. And if I roll bad and they roll good (as is usual, because they always have Focus most of the time), I don't get to peel anything at all.

Playing a few weeks now. In our squad, we have a B-Wing, 4 X-Wings, and a Y-Wing. We have played through 4 missions, and we are having a blast.

The Y-Wing has TLT. It's an XP monster. Last night, we ended up playing the mission with all of the minefields. On average, most of us got an average of 14 to 16 xp. The Y-Wing got a whopping 24xp. Personally, I think it's a little on the extreme end on what he got, as he plays a little selfishly, and is more concerned about himself than the mission objective (which kinda drives me batty), but it is what it is. He does kill steal a lot of ships with that TLT. That's the downfall of the TLT, is it's ability to get that last hull damage needed on an interceptor or T/F.

It's devastating to enemy ships, but a bit annoying on our end as well, lol.

:ph34r: Have one ship upgrade to an A-wing. Make it a very defensive build, Stealth Device, Autothrusters, shield upgrades, Elusiveness, etc. When the mission starts have him fly as fast as he can at a swarm of enemy ships. When he gets close enough that all the swarm AI's target him, swing around and train them all into the selfish Y-wing player, and then speed away.

You can decide whether it's a better lesson to let him get destroyed, or to come rescue him with the rest of your squad. ;)

Hello, thank you for this "mod" it is just stunning !

I really hope there will be more in the future, I would pay for your next hard work to encourage you.

Can I ask if the Interceptor really get a free focus token every turn at the end of step 1 or is it just me ? :-)

Playing a few weeks now. In our squad, we have a B-Wing, 4 X-Wings, and a Y-Wing. We have played through 4 missions, and we are having a blast.

The Y-Wing has TLT. It's an XP monster. Last night, we ended up playing the mission with all of the minefields. On average, most of us got an average of 14 to 16 xp. The Y-Wing got a whopping 24xp. Personally, I think it's a little on the extreme end on what he got, as he plays a little selfishly, and is more concerned about himself than the mission objective (which kinda drives me batty), but it is what it is. He does kill steal a lot of ships with that TLT. That's the downfall of the TLT, is it's ability to get that last hull damage needed on an interceptor or T/F.

It's devastating to enemy ships, but a bit annoying on our end as well, lol.

24XP for a single mission seems absurdly high (perhaps impossible?), especially when you don't get XP for dealing damage to minefields (only destroying them). I wonder if you're awarding too much XP for dealing damage? (Should be maximum 1XP per turn for dealing 1 or more damage to any number of targets. Only kills/bonuses will get you more).

My son and I are loving the c-op play and have been promoting it to the local x-wing crowd.

Disable sensor net - We beat this scenario by virtue of blasting together clockwise around the play area. We simply overshot the ties and outraced them as they k-turned, made sure we were never in range of more than one sensor, and focus fired on that sensor so it was destroyed before it could call for a patrol squad. We never fired on an imperial ship, no patrol squads were launched, and we barely got scuffed by imperial fire. low xp but an easy win. Good luck with the red dice helped to be sure.

Capture refueling station- taking over the station seemed almost too easy. unload the team turn 3, blew a fuel pod turn 4, moved to center of station turn 5, destroy command center turn 6. Did we miss something here? were we supposed to clear the fuel pods before the command center? With good rolls you could take the command center in two turns after docking.

Absolutely, if the commandos roll really well they might be able to take the station intact very quickly. The challenge in that mission is usually dealing with everything else and surviving for the full 12 turns.

Edited by armoredgear7

Having played pretty extensively and seen a lot of TLT action... I think it's a solution looking for a problem! Once an X-Wing has some upgrades they're quite deadly. TLT is a steady 1 XP, but X-Wings frequently land the kill shot, particularly if your team plans well. If the TLT pilot is hogging all the glory, maybe he should be reminded it's a cooperative game! Against TIEs the most a TLT is gonna get per turn is 2: 1 for damage 1 for a kill. And if he's just softening them up, he's getting 1. Not game breaking! BUT, your X-Wing pilots should prioritize mobility upgrades to make sure they're never missing out on shots.

You are probably right about that, overall.

TLT has the other side effect of having to shoot the same target twice, so you can't split fire and try for two kills unless you're doing some BTL-A4 tricks. Additionally, that TLT is almost always going to be your most expensive upgrade and frequently gets blown off during eject rolls. Then you've got to spend 6XP to keep replacing it.

Got my books in, based off of the recommendation from the earlier post to use SpinnPrint. They did an amazing job. I am so excited. I plan to print out the obstacles on my own, and that will be coming soon. Thanks for all the hard work in creating this and making it pleasing to look at as well!

Here are a few pictures of the book:
20151003_195912000_iOS_zps4rnipl0d.jpg

20151003_195721000_iOS_zpsjrkzxt8b.jpg

20151003_195744000_iOS_zpsqkxfmbs9.jpg

I just received my copies too. I just don't know how to post pictures here... They look just as good as the other pictures though.

Edited by GeneticDrift

Those look great. I wish I had thought about spiral bound, that's a lot better.

Hello

Very nice campaign thanks a lot for releasing it !

I have some questions btw.

Does IA swerve in order to avoid bomb tokens ???

"Bomb loadout" on the Ywing should replace a torpedo icon by a bomb icon, not giving option to have 2 bombs or 2 torpedoes or any mix ??

Thx

Wow, this looks simply amazing! Thank you for taking the time to make this.

Before I try this out with my kids, I have one question. Approximately how many of each ship type does one have to own to play all the missions for a 3 player game? I don't necessarily need an exact count, just a ball park.

Edited by Shrike37

Wow, this looks simply amazing! Thank you for taking the time to make this.

Before I try this out with my kids, I have one question. Approximately how many of each ship type does one have to own to play all the missions for a 3 player game? I don't necessarily need an exact count, just a ball park.

The rule book suggests 2 ties per player and one of each other ship (pg 5). Although I would suggest more interceptors as they seem to pop up a lot. You can use a different ship if you do not have the right one, but the book notes that could swing the difficulty some.

Edit: You might not get this mission but there is one mission that calls for 1 tie defender per player, i guess you could skip it or use a different ship pair, maybe tie advanced with the title (just pretend to have it) is similar in theme.

edit 2: you could just use a token and a stat card, but it is also fun to use our minis.

Edited by GeneticDrift

Hello

Very nice campaign thanks a lot for releasing it !

I have some questions btw.

Does IA swerve in order to avoid bomb tokens ???

"Bomb loadout" on the Ywing should replace a torpedo icon by a bomb icon, not giving option to have 2 bombs or 2 torpedoes or any mix ??

Thx

Rules as written they will simply hit them. The AI should probably swerve to avoid things that cause damage on overlap (Proximity Mines, Cluster Mines, Connor Net) though. Most of the time this will only be an issue for Elite enemy ships.

Bomb Loadout is an intentional change from the skirmish game; this is mentioned on page 10.

Hello

Very nice campaign thanks a lot for releasing it !

I have some questions btw.

Does IA swerve in order to avoid bomb tokens ???

"Bomb loadout" on the Ywing should replace a torpedo icon by a bomb icon, not giving option to have 2 bombs or 2 torpedoes or any mix ??

Thx

Rules as written they will simply hit them. The AI should probably swerve to avoid things that cause damage on overlap (Proximity Mines, Cluster Mines, Connor Net) though. Most of the time this will only be an issue for Elite enemy ships.

Bomb Loadout is an intentional change from the skirmish game; this is mentioned on page 10.

And in the case of bombs, yeah - their imaginary dial would already be down before the bomb is dropped, so it'd be kind of cheating for them to get to swerve away from those the turn of. :)

I figured it was a wash and to just let it go as written.

Thank you for the reply.

We did 2 missions at the moment, the introduction one and the "Needle in the Haystack" from Chasing the Phantoms. We had 2 X-wings.

The fist mission, we managed to survive until turn 10 then escaped. I scored only 5 xp and my wingman 8 xp. The first time a TIE shot me, I lost all my shield tokens, then had to play more defensive :-/

For the first real mission, in the middle of the ion storm, we made a good start. Killed 2 TIE before the two new ones appear turn 5. The YT-1300 finaly found the escape pod and the next turn all started to get bad. The Phantom poped near the docked YT-1300 and 4 TIE were in range to shoot him. It was turn 8 so an Interceptor poped as well.... behind our X-xings ...

We rolled so badly we killed only one TIE, the Phantom and the rest of the TIE just made a firework at the rescue team, leaving them with 1 hull point.

The YT-1300 tried to run and escape but we couldn't avoid all ion storm token while maintaining a good speed to keep them at range so we finaly got ionized and the 1 damage killed them...

With 1 Phantom, 1 Interceptor and 3 TIEs on our back in the middle of a ion storm, we tried to activate hyperspace, but the green maneuver droped us in range of this killiing Imperial team.

The Phantom landed range 1 and 5 damage dice killed me before I could try to jump. My wingman managed to jump safely.

Conclusion : it is a starting mission but at 2 players it seems to be very difficult, I don't know if all missions have the same difficulty but really really hard.

Second point experience difference . After 2 missions, there is already a gap btw us. I lost half xp and one upgrade in the last mission so basicaly now I have an X-wing, I am PS3 and 4xp left (lost my proton torpedo during eject).

Start : 5xp I took proton torpedo for 4 pts. 1 point left.

5 xp for mission 1 : pilot skill 3 for 6 pts. 0 point left.

9 xp for mission 2 : half due to eject rounded down, 4 points left.

My mate has an X-wing, PS3, proton torpedo, a rebel ability 3 and 6 xp from last mission as he successfully escaped.

My concern is that the difference will increase more and more. His ability made already a big difference as he can target lock an enemy when defending.

Any idea or suggestion from your play tests about difference growing up in xp ??

Thanks

My mate has an X-wing, PS3, proton torpedo, a rebel ability 3 and 6 xp from last mission as he successfully escaped.

My concern is that the difference will increase more and more. His ability made already a big difference as he can target lock an enemy when defending.

Any idea or suggestion from your play tests about difference growing up in xp ??

Thanks

I'm going to start with a different XP system tonight.

There are two pools of XP. One for the pilot and one for the squad. Individual XP is as normal. Squad XP is totaled up and then divided among surviving players. If there is an uneven amount, start awarding XP with the lowest PS player. Equal PS goes to the lowest mission XP. This will have the effect of a catch up for low PS pilots.

Individual XP

1 xp per 2pts of damage (rounded up) done in a turn to any target. (This change is to equalize small but constant hits like accuracy corrector vs just large amounts of unmodified dice. Toss it if you don't like. Assault missiles may break this.)

1xp for a kill

1xp assist

1xp guardian

Squard XP

2XP Large base kill (This isn't a change AFAIK, just making it more clear than multiple adds imho)

1XP Non-TIE small base

?XP elite kill. Equal to the number of players. (Previously everyone got 1 xp, now the same number just goes to the pool.)

Should be very little change in the overall amount of XP gain, but those falling behind will share in XP rather than the people with powerful abilities constantly grabbing the kill for even more bonus XP.

One thing I'd like to see awarded somehow, but currently isn't in the assist rules is the application of ion and stress tokens.

Edited by theruleslawyer