X-Wing Co-Op Campaign is Here!

By R2-EQ, in X-Wing

  • Would it be reasonable to change Squad Leader to allow granting an action to a ship of equal or lower pilot skill? It seems difficult to use it as-is unless one player gets ahead of all the others in pilot skill (probably by getting more XP than anyone else).
  • In the playtesting, were there ever problems with a runaway leader in XP? It seems possible for there to be a feedback loop of "Get more XP than the other players" -> "Get better PS and upgrades" -> "Get more XP than the other players".

I'm certainly seeing both of these. The first one if you're playing with a low number of players if even two are the same level SL becomes not real useful.

Thanks for the answers, armoredgear7. You've been doing a really great job supporting this project and communicating with the fans of it.

I can definitely see how this campaign would play differently with drop-in/drop-out play and varying levels of player skill. Running it solo, I have a lot more control and can coordinate my tactics and builds in ways that a looser group just can't. I think I'm going to keep playing for a while, then use one of the suggested methods to increase the difficulty if I find I'm consistently winning.

EdgeOfDreams if you are running this campaign on Vassal, maybe I could join you sometimes if you agree ?

I was planning to do it as well but it could be nice

EdgeOfDreams if you are running this campaign on Vassal, maybe I could join you sometimes if you agree ?

I was planning to do it as well but it could be nice

I would be interested in trying it with other people, but I'm not sure I'm ready to organize that right now. For the campaign I've already started, I want to keep it solo in order to have a pure baseline experience for comparing to play with other people. So, if I'm going to start a campaign with others,it's going to be from scratch with a new pilot or set of pilots. If and when I'm ready to do that, I'll put up a post here and on Reddit's /r/xwingtmg advertising for players. There's already talk over on Reddit about organizing such a thing, but I'm not involved with it yet.

  • Would it be reasonable to change Squad Leader to allow granting an action to a ship of equal or lower pilot skill? It seems difficult to use it as-is unless one player gets ahead of all the others in pilot skill (probably by getting more XP than anyone else).
  • In the playtesting, were there ever problems with a runaway leader in XP? It seems possible for there to be a feedback loop of "Get more XP than the other players" -> "Get better PS and upgrades" -> "Get more XP than the other players".

I'm certainly seeing both of these. The first one if you're playing with a low number of players if even two are the same level SL becomes not real useful.

We have found squad leader to be very valuable. My son can k-turn to drop in tight behind a ship and then I pass him an action so he can focus and blow it away. this has often been a great strategy for quickly dispatching key opponents.

  • Would it be reasonable to change Squad Leader to allow granting an action to a ship of equal or lower pilot skill? It seems difficult to use it as-is unless one player gets ahead of all the others in pilot skill (probably by getting more XP than anyone else).
  • In the playtesting, were there ever problems with a runaway leader in XP? It seems possible for there to be a feedback loop of "Get more XP than the other players" -> "Get better PS and upgrades" -> "Get more XP than the other players".

I'm certainly seeing both of these. The first one if you're playing with a low number of players if even two are the same level SL becomes not real useful.

We have found squad leader to be very valuable. My son can k-turn to drop in tight behind a ship and then I pass him an action so he can focus and blow it away. this has often been a great strategy for quickly dispatching key opponents.

Wouldn't he be stressed, though? You can't take free actions while stressed.

  • Would it be reasonable to change Squad Leader to allow granting an action to a ship of equal or lower pilot skill? It seems difficult to use it as-is unless one player gets ahead of all the others in pilot skill (probably by getting more XP than anyone else).
  • In the playtesting, were there ever problems with a runaway leader in XP? It seems possible for there to be a feedback loop of "Get more XP than the other players" -> "Get better PS and upgrades" -> "Get more XP than the other players".

I'm certainly seeing both of these. The first one if you're playing with a low number of players if even two are the same level SL becomes not real useful.

We have found squad leader to be very valuable. My son can k-turn to drop in tight behind a ship and then I pass him an action so he can focus and blow it away. this has often been a great strategy for quickly dispatching key opponents.

Wouldn't he be stressed, though? You can't take free actions while stressed.

shoot. we may have been doing that wrong

  • Would it be reasonable to change Squad Leader to allow granting an action to a ship of equal or lower pilot skill? It seems difficult to use it as-is unless one player gets ahead of all the others in pilot skill (probably by getting more XP than anyone else).
  • In the playtesting, were there ever problems with a runaway leader in XP? It seems possible for there to be a feedback loop of "Get more XP than the other players" -> "Get better PS and upgrades" -> "Get more XP than the other players".

I'm certainly seeing both of these. The first one if you're playing with a low number of players if even two are the same level SL becomes not real useful.

We have found squad leader to be very valuable. My son can k-turn to drop in tight behind a ship and then I pass him an action so he can focus and blow it away. this has often been a great strategy for quickly dispatching key opponents.

Wouldn't he be stressed, though? You can't take free actions while stressed.

shoot. we may have been doing that wrong

Though it's not a bad idea. Making the special version of Squad Leader be a free additional action and usable regardless of the condition of the ship being given the action would really help protect and buff the lower PS pilots in your squad.

Thanks for adding the campaign into Vassal Module.

Any chance to add in this module the Reference cards for the AI moves ? and a way to launch one six sided dice ?

That would be awesome !!

Edited by Rosco74

So1ks started our campaign on Sat.

Obi Juan Y-wing 6xp

MegadoomerY-wing 2xp

Dolphchic X-wing 8xp

Recking Ball X-wing 5 xp got killed and lost plasma torp

puak Y-wing 12xp

Tupaco Taco X-wing 6xp

Kraken A X-wing 8xp

Was an awesome run. Capturing an officer this weekend

So, continuing with my solo campaign on Vassal, I got to the mission "Needle in a Haystack" and encountered a problem. I think some or all of the ion cloud tokens in Vassal are too big. There's just no possible way to even come close to getting them all on a 3x3 board without getting them in range 1 of each other. I even tried recreating the sample layout image from the mission description, and ended up with way less empty space on the board than the image indicates.

Can anyone else confirm that I'm not crazy and the ion clouds really are too big?

EdgeOfDreeam I will try that right now, and will edit this post in the hour !

EDIT : You are quite right !! I think those ion clouds are 250% too large .......

Nice catch

Edited by Rosco74

So, continuing with my solo campaign on Vassal, I got to the mission "Needle in a Haystack" and encountered a problem. I think some or all of the ion cloud tokens in Vassal are too big. There's just no possible way to even come close to getting them all on a 3x3 board without getting them in range 1 of each other. I even tried recreating the sample layout image from the mission description, and ended up with way less empty space on the board than the image indicates.

Can anyone else confirm that I'm not crazy and the ion clouds really are too big?

Yes, I noticed this as soon as the file was posted and talked to the guy who created the vassal extension about it. I have no idea what kind of timeline he's going to keep with updating the module.

So, continuing with my solo campaign on Vassal, I got to the mission "Needle in a Haystack" and encountered a problem. I think some or all of the ion cloud tokens in Vassal are too big. There's just no possible way to even come close to getting them all on a 3x3 board without getting them in range 1 of each other. I even tried recreating the sample layout image from the mission description, and ended up with way less empty space on the board than the image indicates.

Can anyone else confirm that I'm not crazy and the ion clouds really are too big?

Yes, I noticed this as soon as the file was posted and talked to the guy who created the vassal extension about it. I have no idea what kind of timeline he's going to keep with updating the module.

Ok, thanks for the response. As long as I know it will get updated someday, that makes me happy.

If a phantom can't preform the a decloak, what happens? We assumed it just stays cloaked.

Do ships in a squadron always perform the same action? Or will they always independently choose actions? For that matter, is it still move, then choose an action for each ship? Like the SL could move and then barrel roll into where the next ship to move would be forced into a collision? Hasn't really come up much, but last game there was a time where it would have made a difference.

Does stress block phantoms free dodge action?

Two more tries at cloak and dagger (We didn't realize we didn't have to beat our heads against this mission until after the 4th try.) 4 tokens instead of 3 for the base feels a lot better (find 3 to reveal). We had 3 pilots. I guess this probably needs to be scaled by the number of players. We also split up the phantoms and it was a lot less risk of an instagib. A bad roll still really hurt, but didn't leave you down a pilot.

The changes I made to XP are working out well for us. The possible extra XP for a really good roll is a nice splash vs things like TLT. The squad XP seems to be working well. Helps out quite a bit for people who didn't do so well on a mission.

So, continuing with my solo campaign on Vassal, I got to the mission "Needle in a Haystack" and encountered a problem. I think some or all of the ion cloud tokens in Vassal are too big. There's just no possible way to even come close to getting them all on a 3x3 board without getting them in range 1 of each other. I even tried recreating the sample layout image from the mission description, and ended up with way less empty space on the board than the image indicates.

Can anyone else confirm that I'm not crazy and the ion clouds really are too big?

Yes, I noticed this as soon as the file was posted and talked to the guy who created the vassal extension about it. I have no idea what kind of timeline he's going to keep with updating the module.

Ok, thanks for the response. As long as I know it will get updated someday, that makes me happy.

Just want to confirm...This does just apply to the vassal file right? The issue is not coming from the 0.7 version Terrain (12 X 18) download? Just asking as I did got nice printout from my local store. Thanks

My record in campaign missions is now 3 for six. Introduced new players so ran the intro mission first for them... Managed to keep all pilots alive, but... Every ship, 2 Xwings and 2 Ywings, were down to ONE hull point each.

Second mission it was the slicer run with the Hawk. We had such a good system down, but couldn't find the frequency. The other Xwing pilot drew away the TIEs and managed to evade them, but her last maneuver while effectively throwing the TIE fighters out of position landed her on collision course with a rock on which she impacted and was forced to eject losing half her XP and her biggest upgrade. While scrambling to her aide and failing we left the Hawk for a moment... Reinforcements appeared on both sides of it spelling instant death. Nuts.

Having lots of fun.

MegadoomerY-wing 2xp

IT'S GOT CHICKEN LEGS

1) If a phantom can't preform the a decloak, what happens? We assumed it just stays cloaked.

2) Do ships in a squadron always perform the same action? Or will they always independently choose actions? For that matter, is it still move, then choose an action for each ship? Like the SL could move and then barrel roll into where the next ship to move would be forced into a collision? Hasn't really come up much, but last game there was a time where it would have made a difference.

3) Does stress block phantoms free dodge action?

Two more tries at cloak and dagger (We didn't realize we didn't have to beat our heads against this mission until after the 4th try.) 4 tokens instead of 3 for the base feels a lot better (find 3 to reveal). We had 3 pilots. I guess this probably needs to be scaled by the number of players. We also split up the phantoms and it was a lot less risk of an instagib. A bad roll still really hurt, but didn't leave you down a pilot.

The changes I made to XP are working out well for us. The possible extra XP for a really good roll is a nice splash vs things like TLT. The squad XP seems to be working well. Helps out quite a bit for people who didn't do so well on a mission.

1) If the Phantom is blocked in all three directions, it can't decloak (as usual). Otherwise reroll.

2) I think this is covered by the AI Setup section of the book; All ships pick the same maneuver but still move (and swerve) and perform actions independently in their numbered order. This rule exists strictly to remove player decision-making when movement order can affect things.

3) Absolutely, yes. Covered in the book under "Red Maneuvers & Stress"

4) I'm in the process of doing some more playtesting on this mission, and I agree - it probably warrants some scaling tweaks.

So, continuing with my solo campaign on Vassal, I got to the mission "Needle in a Haystack" and encountered a problem. I think some or all of the ion cloud tokens in Vassal are too big. There's just no possible way to even come close to getting them all on a 3x3 board without getting them in range 1 of each other. I even tried recreating the sample layout image from the mission description, and ended up with way less empty space on the board than the image indicates.

Can anyone else confirm that I'm not crazy and the ion clouds really are too big?

Yes, I noticed this as soon as the file was posted and talked to the guy who created the vassal extension about it. I have no idea what kind of timeline he's going to keep with updating the module.

Ok, thanks for the response. As long as I know it will get updated someday, that makes me happy.

Just want to confirm...This does just apply to the vassal file right? The issue is not coming from the 0.7 version Terrain (12 X 18) download? Just asking as I did got nice printout from my local store. Thanks

I verified all of the hosted files when I noticed the issue; the printable terrain is the correct size.

Simple question I didn't see clarified anywhere else: can you target lock minefields, emplacements, and other such non-ship targets?

Edited by EdgeOfDreams

Simple question I didn't see clarified anywhere else: can you target lock minefields, emplacements, and other such non-ship targets?

Yep. It's discussed on p36-37 for Minefields and Emplacements, but it isn't addressed quite as explicily as your question.

Edited by armoredgear7

There have been many questions asked and answered in this thread ... some of which I think would arise by anyone playing this variant.

I am curious if a FAQ has been created and maintained? If so, where can I get it? If not, I for one, would vote for its existence.

Thanks for all of the effort for a superb variant.

There have been many questions asked and answered in this thread ... some of which I think would arise by anyone playing this variant.

I am curious if a FAQ has been created and maintained? If so, where can I get it? If not, I for one, would vote for its existence.

Thanks for all of the effort for a superb variant.

FAQ is here: http://dockingbay416.com/campaign/faq/

I expect the FAQ will be updated at the same time the next version (0.8) comes out, but I don't know when that is expected to happen.

Edited by EdgeOfDreams

Link to the FAQ

http://dockingbay416.com/campaign/faq/

edit : a few seconds later :P

edit 2: Could you please add the changes log from 0.7 to 0.8 when it's released ?? because I won't just print everything each time :-)

Edited by Rosco74

Kudos for the amazing work on this campaign.

As an indidual who works on numerous home baked variants for my favourite games I have an idea about how much work you have put in! Many thanks ;)