1- The pilots should be a separated card of the ship. That would allow some interesting things: a) ships could have their own "ability" (much like what they are trying to do with the TIE/v1); b) pilots could describe which ships they can fly, allowing a pilot to fly 1-3 different ships (more lore friendly); c) combining the ship ability with the pilot ability would allow greater customization and tactical richness; d) hey, it is much cooler to see the pilot picture than some generic image of the ship. EDIT: very few pilots could use different ships, and that would be like 2 different ships tops. The most classic example of this is Maarek Stele, which should be able to pilot the TIE Defender. Example.

1a- Ship dials should be faction-neutral. That would allow multi faction expansions (no need to release "Most Wanted" stuff just to allow a ship to be used by another faction). Z-95, T-Wing? = Rebel and Scum pilots. In that same thought even ship cards should be faction-neutral.

1b- Ship bases should be generic, and not for a specific pilot. You already need to add the ship number when you have more than one generic pilot in the table, why not making only one base to fit all? (save material for more cards and tokens in each expansion)

2- Balancing (in cost): most ships with attack 2 cost too much; ordinance is too expensive; etc. FFG had to implement a lot of fixes (including the monstrous* TIE/x1 title for the TIE Advanced or the AT for the TIE Interceptors), but most fixes instead of adding to the variety of the game, become indispensable. *EDIT: monstrous, but a necessary fix for the TIE Advanced (giving a ship one clean critical hit for 1 squad point clearly shows how much the ship was imbalanced).

3- Small number of upgrade cards with each expansion. Really, it is already pushy to need to buy a TIE Punisher just for the Extra Munitions card - but if you want more cards, you will need to buy more of those monstrosities. Does it make sense in the commercial stand point? Yes, they would sell more dubious ships. But treating well the consumer isn't a better thing in the long term?

4- Upgrade types: they added the "system" upgrade too late and now are adding the unnecessary "tech" upgrade (for, really, just 1 upgrade card?). Also, there are numerous new different maneuver types being released with the last waves. This should have be better planned from the start.

5- Where is the Assault Gunboat?

I don't care about the drama, so I will answer to your original post.

5 - 100% agree. This game is based on the X-Wing and TIE Fighter videogames. (Yeah, yeah. I can hear the grinding of teeth and the sharpening of knives. Deal with it! Look at the core set. It is a game about rebels doing missions against imperials with pilot skills, tactical importance, reinforcement waves and goals and conditions. It's clearly not based on any of those arcadey shot'em'ups that came afterwards, save for taking some ships from them). So where is my Gunboat!!!???

1 - Probably it was until they realized that:

a) They needed to limit the combinations of ship+pilot for balancing reasons (just as you did with the Biggs' mockup card).

b) Once you start limiting the combinations, if you need a ship card + a pilot card, they could just simplify it by printing the ship+pilot combo as a single card. Less pieces to produce, less clutter on the table.

c) Nothing keeps them from making Maarek Steele pilot all TIEs and Gunboats if they want. There is no rule anywhere that prevents a pilot to feature in two ships. So it is always a possibility. Once we run out of known pilots and ships, maybe we can start seeing these alternative combos.

1a - They already are.

1b - They could have done it, with some kind of overlay system. One cardboard token with the ship stats, then a transparent overlay with the pilot name and PS. Again, given the limited combos, they figured out that it was more convenient for the player just to have the individual combination printed and punched.

2 - Many ships with attack 2 aren't meant to attack with their primary weapon as an usual behavior. Y-wings, for example, have their turrets. YT-2400 have the Outrider title and cannon. TIE Fighters have their numbers, allowing them to become a real danger when at close range and many of them. Even the HWK with it's attack of 1 has clearly more a role of support than combat, but still can defend itself with the new turrets. A-Wings have proton rockets or can equip two talents, which mitigates their low attack, for example Opportunist, or Outmaneuver, in addition to some other anchor talent like Push the Limit. One of the great things in X-Wing is that not all games are raw stat mathematical showdowns.

3 - I agree with you here. There is no reason not to put more cards on every ship. If they are limited by the amount of cards they can produce to have profits, they could start ditching the idea of including the extra rules in rules cards. The K-Wing came with an absurd amount of rules cards of which we have most of them by the dozens. If all those cards had been instead upgrade cards, or extra pilots, I would feel the product to be much more valuable. (If you want to contain all the needed rules, add them printed on a cheap paper like the ones used in the package for the credits and maneuver reference.

4 - Any game that keeps growing soon runs out of design space to keep it growing without entering the powercreep land. If they added the System slot to all new upcoming ships, then soon it would no longer feel special to the few ships that sport it now. Why would I take a B-Wing with FCS when I could take a T70 with FCS and better stats overall for about the same price? That is why most upgrade slots are restricted to a few ships rather than present everywhere. A few ships carry cannons, a few ships carry droids, a few ships carry systems. And a few ships will carry Tech. It gives some ships a reason to pick them above others if you want a particular upgrade, even if they wouldn't be the most optimal choice otherwise. You want an imperial fighter with heavy laser cannon? You have the TIE Defender and that's it. This keeps the game varied, otherwise if everyship gets every upgrade, people will flock to the one that is absolutely most cost efficient, or has best jousting rating or whatever the Mathwing alchemist come up with.

I will never have an issue with someone trying to be creative (unless that creativity involves hurting innocents), even if I disagree with their views. I personally like the pilot card idea. Whether it would work better or not, I don't know. But I think it's worth discussing. What better place for it than here?

Hats off to the OP for his efforts to discuss ways we could possibly better the game we all love.Sorry to those who found a way to be personally insulted for him sharing his opinion about a game.

I seriously cannot find any posts in this thread that fit that description. I do find posts where people seem to be personally insulted because there are people debating/countering the OP's ideas.

Look harder.

Pilot cards just... don't work. If you leave them open to all ships, you have a balance nightmare. If you try to limit them to a few ships, backwards compatibility becomes tricky.

FFG might have been able to separate pilots from ships if they went with a more traditional pen, paper, and rulebook approach for list building, but that would significantly alter the aesthetics of the game, and definitely did not fit with their original vision for the game.

The new manuvers are fine, in my opinion. As for Tech upgrades, they're clearly there to give Sequel Trilogy ships their own identity. While another Tech upgrade or two in the core set would have been nice, their existance makes perfect sense.

Things I feel were genuine mistakes on FFG's part...

Large Ships are too maneuverable. Remember that scene where the Tie Fighters pursuing the Falcon from the Death Star easily overtake it and outmaneuver it? That doesn't happen in this game. I think I'd give the PWTs a dial more like the K-wing, maybe without the 3-Banks. The Firespray and Shuttle would probably also need to be tweaked, although since the Aggressor is just an overgrown starfighter, it could probably stay as is. Obviously, points costs would be adjusted.

I also wish tactician had some sort of drawback to it. Ion Cannons reduce damage to one, R3-A2 gives you stress, Flechette Cannon doesn't double stress people and can't do more than one damage, Ion and Flechette munitions are one-use... I understand that tactician plays an important part in the current metagame and is balanced fine, but I really, really do not enjoy playing against it (And for the record, I'm talking about using non-turreted ships here).

This here, is constructive, mature, and respectful discussion.

I agree on the large ships being way too maneuverable. What they should have implemented was two different maneuver templates. One for large ships and one for small base. Having one set keeps it simple, but also doesn't make too much sense from a fluff standpoint. A Shuttle can basically move the some distance on the board as say an A-wing. By using the same templates as small base, you have the large base ships moving way quicker than small bases. Things like EU's are just so much more powerful when your base is large. The large base templates would essentially be the same as the standard but the distance cut by a quarter to a half. Whatever feels better. It would likely make the core set a bit more expensive, but I think its worth it.

Or in a future edition they really could just nerf the dials of large base ships. +3 speed maneuvers should be extremely rare for large base ships. No 4 forwards for the YTs and FS, etc. No 1 hard turns either. That maneuver is just too good for large base ships. Maybe only the Aggressor should be able to perform it.

I also think the attacking mechanic, while simple is a little flawed. Currently, accuracy and weapon damage are combined in the red dice. I think they should be in separate die sets. Something like the HLC should be very damaging, but generally inaccurate. So maybe that only rolls 2 accuracy die against green dice, but gets to roll 4 damage dice if it actually hits. Fighters like A-wings and Ties could be fairly accurate, 3 or 4 accuracy die, but maybe only roll 1 or 2 damage dice. The accuracy dice could have accuracy symbols and focuses. Much like the standard red dice. The damage dice would have a combination of hits, crits and blanks. You could balance turrets as they would generally have poorer accuracy out of arc. Torps would be sort of inaccurate, but hurt a lot. Missiles more accurate but less damaging.

You'd have to balance agility and hull shields to get it right, but I think it would add a lot more flavor to a future edition.

Looking at the two attack ships, most of them have a clear purpose/ are from early waves and had bad points costs because the developers overestimated the value of defense dice compared to attack dice.

Looking at each ship individually,

Tie Fighter: Strongest of the wave 1 ships. Still a very viable option

Tie Advanced: Admittedly the worst ship in the game apart from perhaps naked HWKS.

Y-wing: Intended as a secondary weapons platform. Now that more secondary weapons are available to it, it is working well in that role.

A-wing: The developers overvalued boost on small ships- That's why most of the interceptors are also overpriced (Except for the two top pilots who had built in action economy). Chardan Refit has let the generics work again, but Tycho and Arvel are still awkward

Hwk-290: 1 attack was a mistake. Still, most of us bolt turrets on, so, who cares?

Tie Bomber: Secondary Weapons platform. Also reasonable in groups of 2-3 w/o upgrades as a beefy mini-swarm

Z-95: Jouster supreme

Outrider: Typically carries a cannon (Outrider title optional). Or it's Vrill.

Scyk: A point too expensive (Probably should have been 13 points for a basic Scyk, 14 for a heavy)

Punisher and K-wing: Secondary Weapons Platform

Tie Advanced Prototype and Tie/FO: Cheap, highly manuverable blockers. Comparable to A-wing. The most expensive uniques have offensive force multipliers to counteract their low base offense.

Punishing One: Torpedo Platform, or pay 12 points for a better primary weapon.

On the drama: I don't see anyone insulting the OP until both sides got defensive. I do see a number of frustrated, "Here we go again" posts, but when you don't bother to check if the topic you're posting shows up every other week, you shouldn't be surprised when people groan.

Forum. Still. Needs. Dislike. Button.

I disagree with a lot of what the OP says.

Can we please get out of this forum's current downward spiral? We just got new toys to play with! Go play with them!

Forum. Still. Needs. Dislike. Button.

I disagree with a lot of what the OP says.

Can we please get out of this forum's current downward spiral? We just got new toys to play with! Go play with them!

See that button on your keyboard that says "Exit"?

No. It would not be a better game. See the failures of Attack Wing for reference.

Come on, it can always be a better game. There is a reason "second editions" are released, with reviewed rules.

But don't worry, before more white knights come bashing, I'm not proposing a reset of the game (your dozens of minis are safe). I'm just proposing some kind of "lessons to be learned after 3 years of X-Wing".

If you've ever played Star Trek: Attack WIng, having pilots separate from ship cards is a hinderance. More cards to deal with and the faction "pure" vs "for gameplay" crowd divided the community, imo. Sure you could have a rule that restricted federation captains to federation ships, but that's not the case. I agree that having fused the pilot/ship cards and chits not only streamlined that aspect of the X-Wing game, but indirectly adheres the community.

This is a quick job on a proposed "pilot-less" ship (can still be used without a pilot upgrade, though):

I know this ship ability emulating the X-Wing closing s-foils sucks, but it is not intended to be great, just to give the ship some character (could be anything different, really).

With abilities, the ships would be even more unique and FFG wouldn't need to invent a lot of extra maneuvers of upgrade types to make the no-named new ships feel fresh.

PS: since all basic ships would have Pilot Skill 1, I don't know if it is necessary to have the number there.

No. It would not be a better game. See the failures of Attack Wing for reference.

Come on, it can always be a better game. There is a reason "second editions" are released, with reviewed rules.

But don't worry, before more white knights come bashing, I'm not proposing a reset of the game (your dozens of minis are safe). I'm just proposing some kind of "lessons to be learned after 3 years of X-Wing".

If you've ever played Star Trek: Attack WIng, having pilots separate from ship cards is a hinderance. More cards to deal with and the faction "pure" vs "for gameplay" crowd divided the community, imo. Sure you could have a rule that restricted federation captains to federation ships, but that's not the case. I agree that having fused the pilot/ship cards and chits not only streamlined that aspect of the X-Wing game, but indirectly adheres the community.

You guys keep talking about Attack Wing, but what I proposed is very different from that game. What I proposed actually makes the game more diverse and loyal to the lore.

Bleh, never will be on board with the "pilots and ships are separate!" idea.

There's certain combinations of pilot skills and ships that would be broken or would be cringeworthy to see, not to mention you'd have to balance every single pilot to every single ship. If not, you could end up with Biggs in a Falcon, which I promise you would be the most ridiculously broken thing ever.

Actually, it isn't. Just because you are proposing limits, doesn't change that the card you posted is essentially the Attack Wing captain card with an X-wing theme. The fact that you are only wanting it for a very limited selection of pilots makes it worse. If FFG starts releasing old pilots in new ships, with different abilities, your complaint goes away. And Hera suggests that FFG is leaning away from only using pilots once.

Actually, it isn't. Just because you are proposing limits, doesn't change that the card you posted is essentially the Attack Wing captain card with an X-wing theme. The fact that you are only wanting it for a very limited selection of pilots makes it worse. If FFG starts releasing old pilots in new ships, with different abilities, your complaint goes away. And Hera suggests that FFG is leaning away from only using pilots once.

Sure, but that covers only one of the advantages I listed for the pilot/ship separation.

Bleh, never will be on board with the "pilots and ships are separate!" idea.

There's certain combinations of pilot skills and ships that would be broken or would be cringeworthy to see, not to mention you'd have to balance every single pilot to every single ship. If not, you could end up with Biggs in a Falcon, which I promise you would be the most ridiculously broken thing ever.

...

No. It would not be a better game. See the failures of Attack Wing for reference.

Come on, it can always be a better game. There is a reason "second editions" are released, with reviewed rules.

But don't worry, before more white knights come bashing, I'm not proposing a reset of the game (your dozens of minis are safe). I'm just proposing some kind of "lessons to be learned after 3 years of X-Wing".

If you've ever played Star Trek: Attack WIng, having pilots separate from ship cards is a hinderance. More cards to deal with and the faction "pure" vs "for gameplay" crowd divided the community, imo. Sure you could have a rule that restricted federation captains to federation ships, but that's not the case. I agree that having fused the pilot/ship cards and chits not only streamlined that aspect of the X-Wing game, but indirectly adheres the community.

You guys keep talking about Attack Wing, but what I proposed is very different from that game. What I proposed actually makes the game more diverse and loyaI

The problem is implementation. How do you ensure backwards compatability? How do you handle the relative value of an ability (Tycho's ability is awful on an X-wing since he has only two actions to work with, for instance, but it's one of the ships he's most famous for flying)? It also makes checking Pilot skill harder.

Like I said, it might work if FFG had abandoned the card-based upgrades all together and used rulebooks, but... Actually, that would make finding which pilot could use what ship a real headache, come to think of it, since there'd be no official source for a comprehensive list of pilots for each ship.

No. It would not be a better game. See the failures of Attack Wing for reference.

Come on, it can always be a better game. There is a reason "second editions" are released, with reviewed rules.

But don't worry, before more white knights come bashing, I'm not proposing a reset of the game (your dozens of minis are safe). I'm just proposing some kind of "lessons to be learned after 3 years of X-Wing".

If you've ever played Star Trek: Attack WIng, having pilots separate from ship cards is a hinderance. More cards to deal with and the faction "pure" vs "for gameplay" crowd divided the community, imo. Sure you could have a rule that restricted federation captains to federation ships, but that's not the case. I agree that having fused the pilot/ship cards and chits not only streamlined that aspect of the X-Wing game, but indirectly adheres the community.

You guys keep talking about Attack Wing, but what I proposed is very different from that game. What I proposed actually makes the game more diverse and loyaI

The problem is implementation. How do you ensure backwards compatability? How do you handle the relative value of an ability (Tycho's ability is awful on an X-wing since he has only two actions to work with, for instance, but it's one of the ships he's most famous for flying)? It also makes checking Pilot skill harder.

Like I said, it might work if FFG had abandoned the card-based upgrades all together and used rulebooks, but... ACtually, that'd make finding which pilot could use what ship a real headache, come to think of it.

We are not talking about backwards compatibility here: it is impracticable. The game is what it is. FFG will continue to patch it, reviving dusted ships and changing metas.

The OP is about what the game could have been if some different decisions were made.

We are not talking about backwards compatibility here: it is impracticable. The game is what it is. FFG will continue to patch it, reviving dusted ships and changing metas.

The OP is about what the game could have been if some different decisions were made.

You misunderstand, I was talking about how Pilot cards would be hard to keep compatible with new releases. Trying to find a way so that new ships could be flown by old pilots and old ships could be flown by new ones would be surprisingly difficult to keep up to date with the current system of cards.

If only there were a similar game that we could observe to witiness how bad of an idea seperating pilots from ships could have been...

If only there were a similar game that we could observe to witiness how bad of an idea seperating pilots from ships could have been...

The OP isn't advocating Attack Wing's system, and continuing to that he is verges on strawmanning at this point. I don't think his suggestion works either due to logistics, but at least read what the OP said, please.

We are not talking about backwards compatibility here: it is impracticable. The game is what it is. FFG will continue to patch it, reviving dusted ships and changing metas.

The OP is about what the game could have been if some different decisions were made.

You misunderstand, I was talking about how Pilot cards would be hard to keep compatible with new releases. Trying to find a way so that new ships could be flown by old pilots and old ships could be flown by new ones would be surprisingly difficult to keep up to date with the current system of cards.

True enough. Hence why there must be some planning ahead. The EU is there: the designers know which ships will be added soon.

For instance: they knew (or should have know) that the E-Wing would be released some day. So, when making the Luke pilot card, they could have added there: X-Wing and E-Wing only.

More complicated pilots (for more uncertain ships) could be released in the latest expansion OR could have new cards, with different abilities, in the new ship.

I'm not saying every pilot would be able to pilot more than one ship, just very few of them. It adds flavor and uniqueness to the ships themselves.

If the mess of Attack Wing is the only argument people have against the pilots as upgrades, let's make each of them for ONLY ONE kind of ship. Now can we talk about the other positive aspects of separating the ship of the pilot?

Ok, I'm sure there's lots of thing about the game that FFG would do differently if starting over from scratch. The fact that we don't have 2.0 yet is a testament to how well designed the game actually is. That and how popular it is.

That said, the things I would have changed (not necessarily the things FFG got 'wrong'):

Making Cannons require a target lock to fire (don't spend it, just requires)- this would have kept some parity with Torps and Missiles without having to go back and recost everything like Proton Torpedoes at 3 or even 2 to keep them as an option next to HLC and such.

And that's pretty much it. Fiddle with the costs of TIE Advance and/or T-65.

I would love to see lots of pilots in different ships, but NOT with the same skills. Look at Boba, scum and imperial versions have different skills. Luke in an E-wing would be totally different, as would Corran in an X. I would love to see Biggs in a rebel TIE or Stele in every TIE ever made. Tread pilots could have similar skills to existing pilots in those ships if it becomes a burden to think up new skills.

Han in a Z-95 would be great, especially for Scum (along with the rest of the Outlaw Techs from Stars End), adds evade token when he focuses

Vader in a defender (attack twice instead of two actions)

Kayan in X-wing, tycho in x, well, there's lots of people we can put in an X, even Soontir!

Basically we don't need to decouple pilots and ships, we just need more pilots for the ships, and we have the pilots already! The trick is to figure out how to release them in a pack that makes sense and gives us something we want other than a Huge ship. A Super aces pack with repaints (battle damage!) of some ships that we want/ need, like different Zs or green As or Ys or blood stripes on more TIEs.

Now can we talk about the other positive aspects of separating the ship of the pilot?

To be honest, there aren't any in comparison to the current system.

The only reason you'd separate the ships and pilots is if you were doing the Attack Wing system. You're suggesting having each pilot have a small suite of ships they could go on, and have further extended that to most pilots only having one ship.

All this means is we've got a load more cards to keep track of: you might as well combine them into one card, and in those rare cases where you'd want to have a pilot fly two ships you can release a new ship card, a la Wave 8 with Hera in the Ghost and Hera in the Attack Shuttle, or Wave 6 with Boba Fett in a Scum Firespray and Boba Fett in an Imperial Firespray. In the later situation, this allowed FFG to update Boba's pilot ability to something more powerful.

Furthermore, this method (the method FFG uses) allows you to adapt pilot ability costs, pilot skill and pilot abilities to the new ship. Take a hypothetical Tycho X-wing. His pilot ability is much more potent in an A-wing, so if you did a straight port you could charge less for the pilot ability, or you could adapt it better fit to the X-wing. If Tycho were a loose pilot card, you couldn't change his cost or his ability in any way. The problem with a physical game is once you print it you're usually stuck, so future-proofing is pretty important.

Doing it the way they do it cuts down on unnecessary components and gives them a lot more design freedom.

Ok, I'm sure there's lots of thing about the game that FFG would do differently if starting over from scratch. The fact that we don't have 2.0 yet is a testament to how well designed the game actually is. That and how popular it is.

I think it's got a lot to do with the PR nightmare of invalidating all existing components or the financial nightmare of trying to release updates for every ship in existence. A full on 2.0 simply isn't practical.

The reason we have so many fix cards is because usually they can't go back and change things.

Echo in a cloaking defender sounds amazing. A little too amazing.

I think a lot of people up in arms about even the notion of separating pilots and ships, claiming it would break the game with certain combinations are forgetting one thing: when you design a game from the ground up you can deal with it.

I think a lot of people up in arms about even the notion of separating pilots and ships, claiming it would break the game with certain combinations are forgetting one thing: when you design a game from the ground up you can deal with it.

They did originally have separate pilots and ships. It's not that they never thought of it, it's that they decided against it.

Yes, if pilots were separate they'd design abilities that worked on all ships they could go on, but this hugely limits what you can do when designing abilities. You don't have to balance them for one ship, you have to balance them for several. Many pilot abilities we dearly love would simply not be possible. You can't have pilot abilities that are balanced on their ship but broken on others, you can't have pilot abilities that reference special mechanics. You end up with simplistic pilot abilities like the earlier ones.

It's much easier and more elegant to just print new pilot cards unless you're doing the Attack Wing thing. And given A: the only reason to want pilots in other ships really is lore, and B: allowing ship transfer's likely to end up with pilots being best in a ship they're not famed for, I'm not sure why you'd want to do that.

Oh, I'm not for separating pilots and ships, but to say that would instantly break the game is an error in thinking.