Great feedback! Keep in mind that with 1 player, there are no Twist random enemies at Turns 6 or 8 (unless your PS is 6+). That is literally a worst case scenario, too, but you're right that it's not a winnable mission. While I'm okay with those occasionally (as it just sends you down a different campaign path), 6 on 2 isn't right. It probably needs to change.

I'm thinking of dropping the random Rebel Elite on Turn 3. The twists I'm torn on... those are made to be swingy, but I'm guessing it'll frustrate people more than it's worth. Despite how I feel about them, I might have to rein in the randomness.

But, keep in mind, the mission could go completely the opposite way. 2 TIEs vs 2 ships at startup. You roll a red crit and green focus, and you can add a decimator to your side and a hit to each Rebel ship. Turn 5 twist is Might of the Empire, and you get a red focus (+3 TIEs) and a green blank (upgrade them to Interceptors).

In that scenario (best case), you have 2 TIEs, a decimator and 3 Interceptors vs 2 damaged Rebel ships. Easy win.

In all likelihood, it's somewhere in between. But I know a lot of X-wing players don't like randomness. I'm open to changing it if it makes it more enjoyable

I'm also not a big fan of more randomness, but really, write "optional rule" about it and everything's fine, right?

Great feedback! Keep in mind that with 1 player, there are no Twist random enemies at Turns 6 or 8 (unless your PS is 6+). That is literally a worst case scenario, too, but you're right that it's not a winnable mission. While I'm okay with those occasionally (as it just sends you down a different campaign path), 6 on 2 isn't right. It probably needs to change.

I'm thinking of dropping the random Rebel Elite on Turn 3. The twists I'm torn on... those are made to be swingy, but I'm guessing it'll frustrate people more than it's worth. Despite how I feel about them, I might have to rein in the randomness.

But, keep in mind, the mission could go completely the opposite way. 2 TIEs vs 2 ships at startup. You roll a red crit and green focus, and you can add a decimator to your side and a hit to each Rebel ship. Turn 5 twist is Might of the Empire, and you get a red focus (+3 TIEs) and a green blank (upgrade them to Interceptors).

In that scenario (best case), you have 2 TIEs, a decimator and 3 Interceptors vs 2 damaged Rebel ships. Easy win.

In all likelihood, it's somewhere in between. But I know a lot of X-wing players don't like randomness. I'm open to changing it if it makes it more enjoyable

Another observation. Any rebel ship has the ability to one shot a basic tie with their ordinance payload if the dice favor (its happened to me a couple times so far) at a sheer points value you need roughly 2 to 1 ties vs rebels to be competitive against a real person.. We can reduce that by some margin vs AI, but really not much, becaus the AI is clearing stress every turn and still getting a free target lock and focus while the tie is trying to find a green move to clear stress, the rebels are just K-turning repeatedly to keep the ties in arc, and you cannot barrel roll out of the way if you havent cleared the tie stress (keeps happening). Also, if you do not add any random factors for the mission or the twist, the rebels usually have a 1 to 1 ratio with the ties or better. (Assuming you take any bombers)

Added to the 1 to 1 ratio, the third and fourth squad arriving on turn 3 is just too soon. Imperials shoot first, at PS 1.'Even if you are hitting all of your red dice 2 and 2 for 2 ties, the rebels have between 1 and 3 dodge dice and a focus.. At that attrition rate it is very difficult to destroy a ship from squad 1 or 2 before squads 3 and 4 arrive.. Its just too many rebels to deal with in general.

Still working on a fun ratio.

This is why I removed the free TL from the X-wing AI cards I did. With it and then taking a focus action, the AI was getting 3 hits almost every time it shot. With green dice being what they are, every game I play-tested with it, ended with dead TIE's everywhere.

This is why I removed the free TL from the X-wing AI cards I did. With it and then taking a focus action, the AI was getting 3 hits almost every time it shot. With green dice being what they are, every game I play-tested with it, ended with dead TIE's everywhere.

Can you please post or repost your AI

I think the twists have to be player count dependant. With just 1 player, adding an entire X-Wing to the enemy squad is just too much to deal with, whereas with 6 players it is more towards "meh, who cares, we'll crush him as well" since it is basically only 1/6th of an additional x-wing to deal with for every player. You should properly scale this with the player count as well, but I'm not entirely sure how that is possible.

I really like the many possiblities in the missions through with random terrain and random modifiers, it just has to be fine tuned very carefully I think.

Didn't try it yet but I assume the free target lock on all rebels will end in horrible desaster for the TIEs since that basically guarantees TL+Focus on all attacks, maybe only TL if you manage to get the focus token spent on defense first but still, TL+Focus at 3 attack dice will on average(!) end up in 2.81 hits. Ouch. The average damage against a normale TIE with 3 evade dice and no focus will come down to 1.7 damage per attack, so it takes 2 attacks to kill a TIE, it goes up to 2.6 damage for a primary range 1 attack with TL+focus vs. 3 def without focus.

Do the normal X-Wings not have enough bite without the TL free action?

I've been reworking the rebel AI, but I havnt copied the sidebar text over.

Enemy AI:

When a Ywing uses a maneuver with a (bomb) icon, it drops a bomb before moving.

Rebels always lose inititive

Targeting priority is "In Arc", "Furthest within range 3", "Closest"

Action trees:

*) Awings get free focus

1) If Strike Target is in range/arc, Target lock (except Awing)

2) **Boost/barrelroll to dodge arc (if actions are available)

3) If no enemy has a shot on it, Target lock (closest in arc or furthest within range 3)

4) **Boost/barrel roll to get a shot (if actions are available)

5) Focus (Awing Evades)

When an Ywing or Bwing is shields down with 3 or less hull, (or Xwing/HWK at 2 hull, or Awing at 1 hull) it will attempt to hyperspace just before it shoots. Roll 2 red dice, if it gets 2 hits or crits (or focus if it has a focus token), it escapes to hyperspace- remove it from the field, nobody gets kill XP. If it fails to hyperspace, the ship resumes firing as normal, and will try again next turn.

Hello everyone!

Reading through this thread got me reminiscing about XCOM 2 and how taking inspiration from that make a cool way to progress through an Imperial campaign. Here is what I'm thinking: The players are a squad of ties assigned to a Gozanti. One player is the captain of the Gozanti and is the one who decides which Tie Pilot should have the Squad Leader upgrade.

When the Captain spends his experience, it will go to upgrading the Gozanti (much like how the Avenger is upgraded in XCOM 2). These upgrades that the Captain installs in his ship can be what grant upgrades such as crew cards, and perhaps blanket squad abilities to all of the pilot players.

When pilots level up, they can choose their EPTs, pilot abilities, and raise PS like in HotAC, but modifications and other "hardware" upgrades have to be built and installed by the Gozanti crew, which can take a number of days = to the squad cost of the card. So for example, that 3 point Hull upgrade you want to put on your Tie Interceptor put the Interceptor out of commission for days while the crew work in it. You roll a d6 for each day, and if a 1 is rolled, the Rebels are conducting a raid! The next mission the player who normally flies that Interceptor will have to fly a regular Tie instead. Also, the only Gozanti captain can choose which ties get what upgrades.

I think this can arguably simulate the fact that Tie Pilots are pretty much "cogs in the Imperial machine," while still being just interesting enough to stand out as player characters.

I can think of more, but I have to get ready for work now lol

What if the twists on the mission were determined by your performance or some secondary objective? Like if a rebel ship escapes then more reinforcements come, or destroy an emplacement to allow your reinforcements to arrive? That could remove some of the randomness and make it a little bit more narrative based

I'm also not a big fan of more randomness, but really, write "optional rule" about it and everything's fine, right?

I guess. I could just include it in a separate file, too. The same place where I put my "random mission" generator (though I think that'll get much less use than the campaign will).

Another observation. Any rebel ship has the ability to one shot a basic tie with their ordinance payload if the dice favor (its happened to me a couple times so far) at a sheer points value you need roughly 2 to 1 ties vs rebels to be competitive against a real person.. We can reduce that by some margin vs AI, but really not much, becaus the AI is clearing stress every turn and still getting a free target lock and focus while the tie is trying to find a green move to clear stress, the rebels are just K-turning repeatedly to keep the ties in arc, and you cannot barrel roll out of the way if you havent cleared the tie stress (keeps happening). Also, if you do not add any random factors for the mission or the twist, the rebels usually have a 1 to 1 ratio with the ties or better. (Assuming you take any bombers)

Added to the 1 to 1 ratio, the third and fourth squad arriving on turn 3 is just too soon. Imperials shoot first, at PS 1.'Even if you are hitting all of your red dice 2 and 2 for 2 ties, the rebels have between 1 and 3 dodge dice and a focus.. At that attrition rate it is very difficult to destroy a ship from squad 1 or 2 before squads 3 and 4 arrive.. Its just too many rebels to deal with in general.

Still working on a fun ratio.

I want the base Rebels to be dangerous. Now, it's very possible I went too far, but I want them to be scary, and to have a shot at taking out Imperial ships quickly. On the flip side, as you progress and get some XP, they will lose some bite. You'll gain Upgrades that let you arc dodge, better defenses (Stealth Device / Shield Upgrades should be common enough), better firepower and higher PS (including your wingmates) to fire first with.

The first mission is going to be hard, and maybe even a losing mission at this point. And I can adjust that. I can push back Third and Fourth Squad to Turn 4. I can adjust the built-in upgrades, but personally, I'm leaning towards keeping the auto-TL, as pretty much every ship with TL in Heroes gets it automatically as well. I'd rather adjust other options before the auto-TL, just to keep that consistency.

So for now, maybe Turn 4 instead of Turn 3, and losing the Rebel Elite from mission setup (if you roll it). Give that a spin (and ignore the twist if you must).

This is why I removed the free TL from the X-wing AI cards I did. With it and then taking a focus action, the AI was getting 3 hits almost every time it shot. With green dice being what they are, every game I play-tested with it, ended with dead TIE's everywhere.

Yeah, that's true. But not too long after the start of the campaign, player PS will outstrip Rebels (and they already fire first if they're in a Bomber or against an A-wing). The Imps can fire first, make them eat their own Focus token. Then they just have the TL. Plus, as I said above, for consistency reasons, I'd rather adjust the built-in upgrades before the auto-TL, as the Heroes campaign has pretty much all ships with a TL gain it automatically.

I think the twists have to be player count dependant. With just 1 player, adding an entire X-Wing to the enemy squad is just too much to deal with, whereas with 6 players it is more towards "meh, who cares, we'll crush him as well" since it is basically only 1/6th of an additional x-wing to deal with for every player. You should properly scale this with the player count as well, but I'm not entirely sure how that is possible.

I really like the many possiblities in the missions through with random terrain and random modifiers, it just has to be fine tuned very carefully I think.

Didn't try it yet but I assume the free target lock on all rebels will end in horrible desaster for the TIEs since that basically guarantees TL+Focus on all attacks, maybe only TL if you manage to get the focus token spent on defense first but still, TL+Focus at 3 attack dice will on average(!) end up in 2.81 hits. Ouch. The average damage against a normale TIE with 3 evade dice and no focus will come down to 1.7 damage per attack, so it takes 2 attacks to kill a TIE, it goes up to 2.6 damage for a primary range 1 attack with TL+focus vs. 3 def without focus.

Do the normal X-Wings not have enough bite without the TL free action?

I'm not sure how it's possible... but you're right, it needs to be done. And I'll do it! Gives me something to work on. And again, if the TIEs are firing first (which will happen very quickly after the first mission, with XP and upgrading PS), they'll be stripping Focus tokens off of Rebels (and the Imperial player can direct who his wingmates attack and fire at, so he can decide to split fire to rip off Focus tokens if he thinks it's more important than focus firing down one ship).

Rebel ships will start the campaign with a high difficulty, but XP will rein them in. Players will get more wingmates with higher PS and some Upgrades, or they can load up on upgrades / ordinance for themselves. Play strategically; use obstacles, drop bombs, throw around some ion tokens. There are more of you than there are of them. The first mission will be hard (and as I've said, I can already do some things to balance it out some), but things will get better as the campaign progresses.

What if the twists on the mission were determined by your performance or some secondary objective? Like if a rebel ship escapes then more reinforcements come, or destroy an emplacement to allow your reinforcements to arrive? That could remove some of the randomness and make it a little bit more narrative based

Iiiiiiiiinteresting. I really, really like that idea in theory. Makes it less random, for sure, and adds another layer of strategy as compared to randomness (something I'm positive most of the X-wing community will prefer). I'm definitely going to work on this. Maybe each mission can fork 1 of 2 ways (with the 6 I have written up as a template), based on how the mission unfolds by the midway point? I like it!

As an aside, the files are finally up at BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/135259/imperial-campaign-rules

As an aside, the files are finally up at BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/135259/imperial-campaign-rules

I have been silently following this thread for a while and I'm excited to see it come to a stage of fruition. I will have to check it out this weekend!

Ok, playtested 2p ties with wingmen, 4 ships total. Vs 1 bwing.

Would have destroyed the bwing in turn 4, but the sensor jammer was taking away 80% of my total hits.

By turn 10 the bwing had no shields left and had taken no hull damage.

I lost 1 tie on turn 9

I did not give auto target lock to the bwing when it had a stress (70% of bwing manuvers were k turns)

So. Mission over against 1 bwing and i could not destroy it. The sensor jammer is just too powerful against ships with only 2 red dice.

Can someone else please try this same scenario..

This is why I removed the free TL from the X-wing AI cards I did. With it and then taking a focus action, the AI was getting 3 hits almost every time it shot. With green dice being what they are, every game I play-tested with it, ended with dead TIE's everywhere.

Yeah, that's true. But not too long after the start of the campaign, player PS will outstrip Rebels (and they already fire first if they're in a Bomber or against an A-wing). The Imps can fire first, make them eat their own Focus token. Then they just have the TL. Plus, as I said above, for consistency reasons, I'd rather adjust the built-in upgrades before the auto-TL, as the Heroes campaign has pretty much all ships with a TL gain it automatically.

Yes, but most of the Imperial ships that get the free TL are only 2 attacks ships, so it's not as big of a problem.

Another idea to ease us in on the first mission, we could fight z95 or just scum ships.

Quick thought, could the enemy ships start with no auto tl and gain them after a few missions?

I honestly would love to see some missions that involve scum. As the legitimate government in the galaxy, the Empire did deal with pirates and smugglers.

Some defecting imperials might be interesting as well.

This is why I removed the free TL from the X-wing AI cards I did. With it and then taking a focus action, the AI was getting 3 hits almost every time it shot. With green dice being what they are, every game I play-tested with it, ended with dead TIE's everywhere.

Yeah, that's true. But not too long after the start of the campaign, player PS will outstrip Rebels (and they already fire first if they're in a Bomber or against an A-wing). The Imps can fire first, make them eat their own Focus token. Then they just have the TL. Plus, as I said above, for consistency reasons, I'd rather adjust the built-in upgrades before the auto-TL, as the Heroes campaign has pretty much all ships with a TL gain it automatically.

Yes, but most of the Imperial ships that get the free TL are only 2 attacks ships, so it's not as big of a problem.

This !

Ok, playtested 2p ties with wingmen, 4 ships total. Vs 1 bwing.

Would have destroyed the bwing in turn 4, but the sensor jammer was taking away 80% of my total hits.

By turn 10 the bwing had no shields left and had taken no hull damage.

I lost 1 tie on turn 9

I did not give auto target lock to the bwing when it had a stress (70% of bwing manuvers were k turns)

So. Mission over against 1 bwing and i could not destroy it. The sensor jammer is just too powerful against ships with only 2 red dice.

Can someone else please try this same scenario..

It has 1 defense die. I would think your results were an anomaly. Use the Focus action and get your hits in anyway.

Speaking of dice anomalies, your rolls need to be really weird to get 70% k-turns, or you need to be behind it constantly and have it consistently target that closest ship. Only then does it have a 66% chance to k-turn. I cannot build around statistical improbabilities. If you are riding it and it keeps k-turning, well, at least it's able to fire back, rather than just maneuvering around while you follow it. That wouldn't be much of a fight (or game) if that was the case.

Lazy, do me a favor and give each player like 50XP and try the mission again. Let me know how it goes.

This is why I removed the free TL from the X-wing AI cards I did. With it and then taking a focus action, the AI was getting 3 hits almost every time it shot. With green dice being what they are, every game I play-tested with it, ended with dead TIE's everywhere.

Yeah, that's true. But not too long after the start of the campaign, player PS will outstrip Rebels (and they already fire first if they're in a Bomber or against an A-wing). The Imps can fire first, make them eat their own Focus token. Then they just have the TL. Plus, as I said above, for consistency reasons, I'd rather adjust the built-in upgrades before the auto-TL, as the Heroes campaign has pretty much all ships with a TL gain it automatically.

Yes, but most of the Imperial ships that get the free TL are only 2 attacks ships, so it's not as big of a problem.

That's true, but again, if you're shooting first (which will be the case in the vast majority of the campaign against these standard ships), you'll be stripping away the focus tokens from them the majority of the time. Maybe someone can try this mission with 50XP given to every player to see what it'd feel like (the players will be playing this same mission later on again).

Quick thought, could the enemy ships start with no auto tl and gain them after a few missions?

I'd rather not do that, as I'm trying to keep the auto-TL consistent with the Heroes campaign. The less rules differences, the easier it'll be to remember everything. I'm not dead set against it, but it's kind of last resort for me.

I honestly would love to see some missions that involve scum. As the legitimate government in the galaxy, the Empire did deal with pirates and smugglers.

Some defecting imperials might be interesting as well.

I'd love to add Scum, but personally have zero experience playing with / against them. I wouldn't even know where to start with them. Defecting Imperials was a thought (as evidenced by some TIE Fighters betraying you in one of the mission twists), but I wasn't sure about working it into a cyclical campaign structure. If it happened multiple times, it might feel weird. Though I like that idea, too.

Okay, I tried moving some stuff around. I've made Third and Fourth Squad show up on Turn 4, I've adjusted the twists to be based on the number of players (to a limited degree), I've eliminated the random Rebel Elite on Turn 3 that often pops up, and I've made the mission twist based on performance by the midway point (shown at the bottom of the second mission page). Let me know what you guys think:

http://imgur.com/a/4t67K

Okay, I tried moving some stuff around. I've made Third and Fourth Squad show up on Turn 4, I've adjusted the twists to be based on the number of players (to a limited degree), I've eliminated the random Rebel Elite on Turn 3 that often pops up, and I've made the mission twist based on performance by the midway point (shown at the bottom of the second mission page). Let me know what you guys think:

http://imgur.com/a/4t67K

Thank you for being open to constructive feedback.

Okay, I tried moving some stuff around. I've made Third and Fourth Squad show up on Turn 4, I've adjusted the twists to be based on the number of players (to a limited degree), I've eliminated the random Rebel Elite on Turn 3 that often pops up, and I've made the mission twist based on performance by the midway point (shown at the bottom of the second mission page). Let me know what you guys think:

http://imgur.com/a/4t67K

Thank you for being open to constructive feedback.

You're welcome, but that's the whole point! You guys are play-testing something I'd never be able to adequately do myself. So thank you for giving such detailed feedback. On that note, if the free TLs remain an issue, I'll end up changing them. But like I said, last resort!

I think changing Xwing to rebel zs for this early game might be the easiest way to fix it without having to remove tls or completely restructure. I'm going to run a play test like that either tonight or tomorrow

I think changing Xwing to rebel zs for this early game might be the easiest way to fix it without having to remove tls or completely restructure. I'm going to run a play test like that either tonight or tomorrow

What are you going to do for a z AI ?