Hi,

I must say I have came in to X-Wing just because it's Star Wars. I would completelly ignore it in any other setting. I also picked up Rebels and ships I really like and pilots I like from the Rogue Squadron books.

My question is: how do you care about your pilots? Are they only a statcard for you or are they something more? Is there your personal favourite from the background, which you just use regardless of stats because he's your hero?

I will start. When I bring home new ship, if I'm not sure who is the named pilot, I immediatelly go ask Wookiepedia. Interesting things you can find there. My personal favourites are Luke Skywalker, Tycho Celchu and Poe Dameron. I'm quite sure noone will ever believe me that I like these regardless of game stats... And I am going to add Kyle Katarn (though I am more like Jedi Outcast age then Dark Forces).

I play narrative campaigns. Where for example "Darth Vader" is Colonel Zechs Daryuuz.

I care deeply and avoid losses at every possible point. I roll to see if a pilot ejects or die for every single ship in the game. (Sometimes extra for the astromech, crew, team, and ship recovery possibility).

I make these D20 rolls every game ,even on 100/100 skirmishes.

If i get to go to a tourny and am somehow not busy I will bring a D20 for this purpose.

My squadrons are also persistant.

For example when playing X-wing / XVT / Xwing alliance the Imperial 128th recon / Black Omega is my squadron

Rebels have Sunrider Squadron.

I've used a star wars name generator to generate the names of Sunrider for future RPG purposes.

Support personnel, tactical officers, deck officers etc are also named in places. I need to actually D20ize a bunch.

While I do love many of the pilots for their lore -Luke, Soontir, Fett - I am more a fan of flying themed squads of all one ship, so I will use Luke or Wedge with Red Squardons, or Soontir with 181st pilots.

Right now I am fine tuning my Tie/Fo mini swarms. One with Omega Leader, Omega Ace and their Omega pals another with the Zeta's and then the Epsilons. I like themes.

I love flying pilots that I love in the lore.

Maarek, Soontir, Juno. Those are my jam.

Mostly just stats for an excellent game

Their personalities come through gameplay, like xizor shaking his head at the incompetence of his z-95 escorts; wondering "must I do everything myself?"

Yes, xizor, yes you must

I'm excited about Dengar just because I like the character. I'm not usually one for fat turrets, but I'm going to be using Dengar a lot.

I do like looking up pilots and crew cards. I especially found some of the epic ones interesting.

While I do love many of the pilots for their lore -Luke, Soontir, Fett - I am more a fan of flying themed squads of all one ship, so I will use Luke or Wedge with Red Squardons, or Soontir with 181st pilots.

Right now I am fine tuning my Tie/Fo mini swarms. One with Omega Leader, Omega Ace and their Omega pals another with the Zeta's and then the Epsilons. I like themes.

I know exactly what you mean. It's very hard for me to mix the ships of my Resistence and Rebel squadrons. So I ended up with flying either trio of T70s or regular Rebels. I also preffere to add Red Squadron Veterans to Poe Dameron (even if I rarely use the EPT slot) because Poe would hardly fly with Novices. :-).

Sometimes I hate myself for that love of themes.

While I do love many of the pilots for their lore -Luke, Soontir, Fett - I am more a fan of flying themed squads of all one ship, so I will use Luke or Wedge with Red Squardons, or Soontir with 181st pilots.

Right now I am fine tuning my Tie/Fo mini swarms. One with Omega Leader, Omega Ace and their Omega pals another with the Zeta's and then the Epsilons. I like themes.

I know exactly what you mean. It's very hard for me to mix the ships of my Resistence and Rebel squadrons. So I ended up with flying either trio of T70s or regular Rebels. I also preffere to add Red Squadron Veterans to Poe Dameron (even if I rarely use the EPT slot) because Poe would hardly fly with Novices. :-).

Sometimes I hate myself for that love of themes.

I have that problem myself. In skirmish mode i just tell myself that they are special operations or prototype fighters.

In Narrative, I either alternate timeline, or don't use ships not native to that timeline.

Their personalities come through gameplay

I agree, for the most part, most upgrades based on a character fit that character.

The Emperor makes sure things go according to his plan, Vader get the job done no matter what or who gets broke, or is very good as a pilot.

Han and Lando are about taking a risk, Wedge and Corran are deadly, Biggs protects you and Porkens blows up...

But that said I don't think of them as character in a RPG. They're the pilots I use and that's about it.

I like to build Squads with the Characters from the single player video games. Juno/Maarek and Dash/Keyan are my basic combos. With larger points I add Kyle/Jan and a Rookie X-wing. Only the one Scum for now though, I've been thinking of running Han as Scum and pretending that the brothers are flying together again though I guess I should downgrade since all the PCs get a 7 for PS. Can't wait til Maarek is in a Defender!

I care pretty much nothing for pilots in a standard game. Well, maybe I care about bringing Horton home in one piece, but everyone else is cannon fodder.

Darius makes a good point about pilots in a campaign though. Running a few missions with pilots that level up from zero to hero, and risking those ships in a dogfight is completely different, and I'm not usually sentimental about such things. I think I only really feel the attachment if there is a possibility that I can lose them permanently. Which is a missed up thing, psychologically speaking.

It's tactical loss also. With built up pilots such as aturi, losing the PS8 guy with 3 EPTs 2 modifications and keyans ability hurts the whole team.

Even if it's just named though, just having a character and history (including tour history, kills etc of a character means sometimes you just don't want to lose that. I had a friend bug out Soontir (Void Killer) on one HP from an engagement as he didn't want to risk her.

"Whisper" probably has the best entry on wookiepedia of all the pilots.

[At some point, "Whisper" entered a dogfight, which necessitated entering cloaking mode.]

What an in-depth backstory, soo rich with lore.

But I think for me its a mix of their abilities, their ship, and my experiences flying one.

I think higher of any Y or A-Wing pilot over X's and B's, because those ships are amazing, and Jake Farrell is probably my favorite A-wing, because his ability is cool and I've used him a lot to great success.

On the other hand, my friend finally joined the game after his childhood hero, Dash Rendar, released. But now his name is taboo because he has yet to win a game with him (15+ losses and counting), to the point where we've joked that Rendar is an imperial agent, undermining his rebellion!

I was never able to get into the EU, so I don't really care at all about the lore or "who they are". It's all just so much garbage to me. But I like them for this game, I do get attached to them, especially when they do something cool for me.

I feel much more of an affinity for the ships themselves. I remember flying a lot of them in TIE Fighter, and there've been many times where one ship or another was able to pull off something truly amazing. Just the other day I had a Scimitar Bomber that pretty much couldn't evade anything all game, missed every shot he took. Then he plopped some mines down and did a single damage to one of his pursuing A-Wings. Suddenly he couldn't be touched. He had only 1-2 hull left, the A-Wing couldn't hit him, Tycho couldn't hit him, Ten Numb couldn't hit him. He survived several turns by forcing bumping and generally outmaneuvering the other ships, then was finally able to game a shot or two, used another bomb to force the generic A-Wing onto an asteroid, killed it, two turns later came around on Tycho (who had been forced to disengage the Bomber to face the Firespray that had finished its own meal and come hunting for more) and lit him up with 3 hits at close range. Tycho failed to evade it. That one little bomber managed to waste about 4 turns of shots from numerous pilots and killed half the opponent's list. Meanwhile Juno (for many more points) didn't do squat. It's games like this that can make me go "man these Bombers are just sweet."

And then of course there's Interceptors, which just plain rock on their own.

I think Soontir Fel is dreamy. I want to stroke his beard.

But seriously, it depends how I'm playing. If I play a campaign where there's development and a dead pilot stays dead, I'll start to care about them. One-off games? Not so much.

I love the Tie Interceptor, so I instantly loved played Soontir, even before figureing out the PTL combo. Then I looked him up, and Found out he was the favorite Star Wars character I hadn't found yet. I really like flying him with 181st pilots, and Im totally going to put him in an Xwing.

Depends who it is. Some pilots I've become attached to flying just because.

If it's a no-name generic, usually I'll big them up if they do something amazing.

For the Record: I've also flown 181st...

I think most Imperial focused players have.

Dutch Vander - he's in the OT and he flies a Y-Wing - nuff said

They are but pawns in the great war.

That doesn't mean that I don't have favourites however.

Dutch Vander - he's in the OT and he flies a Y-Wing - nuff said

and his ability is solid.

I care enough that when flying my twin IGs with ion cannons, I try to disable my targets instead of blasting them to pieces... I want my bounty!

My absolute favourite is Tycho Celchu. I started to like him from the Rogue Squadron books and then I came to knowledge that he flies my favourite ship (A-Wing). He also performs quite well in my hands.

I like pilots that have lore (I was a huge fan of the X-Wing novels), and ships that I like flying (my favorite aspect of the game is maneuvering and outflying my opponent). So my favorite pilot is Soontir. I like Wedge and other X-wing Rogues for lore's sake, as well as Corran. Love Tycho for lore, though I don't think he's quite good enough in the A. Like Jake for gameplay.

On the other hand, I make it a point to fly everything at least once.

For me it's all about theme and a little bit of role play. I'm not good enough at the game to be a tournament bod, so my games are always about TIEs chasing down the falcon or red squadron trying to blow up the Death Star.