Hey guys,

So, I had a game yesterday where, surprise surprise, the green dice managed to make a mess of things yet again

It wasn't on my side, given I was flying a bunch of X-wings, but holy **** did the enemy have some hot greens. The game went well past time before the first enemy dropped, despite my best efforts and full modifiers off of the lovely Asty + bb-8 combo

it was an ultimately stressful but memorable experience, marred only by the fact that it made me realize (again) that the player really has no recourse if the dice decide to **** you over. Of course, such is the standard for dice games, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good standard.

Enter Xcom2, a turn based strategy game lorded over by rngesus the sometimes wise, where 91% shots miss like the dickens and full cover sometimes amounts to as much as a silk screen. The difference in Xcom, however, is that the members of your squad have access to RNG-defying consumables that are guaranteed to save your bacon (or at least delay the inveitable for another round). I think X-wing would immensely from including such things

the first and most basic of these items is the frag grenade which, though mechanically, basically has the same result as the game's bombs: guaranteed damage (most of the time). This gave me the idea that the bomb slot could be further expanded to include more useful items that'll improve game variety and keep rng from being too much of an ass

Since the only "utility" bomb in the game is the ion bomb, which I personally do not care for, I think there's a lot of room for interesting new mechanics

that said, let's rip off Xcom!

Flashbang: okay, I have no idea how flashbangs would work in space. In Xcom, the flashbang grenade greatly reduces enemy accuracy, giving you a (relative) safety net against them. In X-wing, with its strange habit of combining accuracy and firepower in the same roll, the "flash bang" could be a bomb that removes a red die from affected ships or the round of combat

Smoke: another fluff oddity that I can't figure out, but in game terms the Smoke grenade provides cover that makes all units within more difficult to hit. "smoke" in X-wing would have to be a mine template which could obstruct shots and perhaps prevent ships on the template from firing. Kind of like a deployable asteroid without the action denial or damage chance.

Mimic Beacon: Imagine being able deploy a Biggs (that lasts for one round) from your rear pegs. Probably would be bent over broken, but the shenanigans possible are frankly astounding. TLTs and turrets in general would detest the **** thing.

granted, the pricing on these items would be up in the air as their impact on a given game is very difficult to measure (no direct damage), but I think the game could really benefit from a fresh set of useful, unique; dice-independent bombs

Flashbang: okay, I have no idea how flashbangs would work in space. In Xcom, the flashbang grenade greatly reduces enemy accuracy, giving you a (relative) safety net against them. In X-wing, with its strange habit of combining accuracy and firepower in the same roll, the "flash bang" could be a bomb that removes a red die from affected ships or the round of combat

XWA had Mag-Pulse weapons that prevented firing, that could fill your role. Likewise, smoke could be XWA's flak defence, which would function like a defensive Crackshot (although Shield Upgrade essentially already does this, so there'd need to be more to it.) As for Mimic Beacon, a four HP 0 agility Biggs Mine could be a very interesting ordnance upgrade.

Everyone I talk to who plays Mimic Beacon mentions how **** broken the thing is, so I'm not modeling anything off that.

Flashbangs sound like an effect similar to Sensor Jammer. You're making the attack less accurate (turning a hit into an eyeball), improving your chances of avoiding the shot. I'd say something similar to that, or perhaps that would restrict your opponent's ability to spend focus tokens against you for a round.

Smoke is a defensive buff, so let's work along the same lines and give it the chance to turn blank greens into evades by spending a focus token. Or, if you want to introduct a new effect, let it turn all blanks into evades by spending an Evade token. Evade effectively does this already if you roll one blank, so it would give insurance against multi-blank situations.

I wouldn't call mimic beacon broken as much as a check to some of the bull legendary can throw at you

(if you really want to break the game, train up a pair of psy operatives and get them stasis. Stasis works on everything, and you can perma lock any threat with two operatives thanks to the low cooldown)

It'd probably break X-wing, maybe. Assuming it's a range 1 bomb ala seismics, it cannot affect its bearer unless said bearer bumps into something (the one-forward deploy is designed to not let you be hit by your own bomb, even after a one-forward move), so it's pretty much support only unless you're deathrain

the more pressing annoyance would be PS order. In asymmetric squads, there's no way to control who'd shoot the beacon first.

Let's not give Biggs a mini-me shall we?

Butttttt

Mimic Drone (whatever)

At the beginning of the combat phase, if you performed no actions this round, you may drop one mimic drone. Transfer all red target lock tokens to that token.

<rules card>

Mimic Drone

Ps0

When activated, it attacks all ships that have it locked using 1 red die

The military version of Luke's saber practice drone.

a slippery slope, to be sure

Oh yeah, they need to be removed at end of turn.

Flashbangs could be the reverse of Autothrusters: X number of uses, when targeted by an attack and you are outside their primary arc, spend 1 token to turn one result to a blank result.

Smoke could easily allow all shots against to be considered obstructed

Mimic beacon could just negate the highest PS shot by the opposing squad

Run and gun: 1 use EPT, Perform 1 slam action, you may still attack this round

Squadsight: EPT, All attacks are considered within your primary arc if the target is in the arc of another allied ship.

Evade tokens and changing blanks to evade are non random green dice fixes. Adding super defense buffs is probably a bad idea. Chaining mimic beacons sounds horrible.

Two thoughts...

One, I play dice games because I like to have some amount of random chance. If I wanted to avoid random completely I'd play Chess. And since this is a dice game there will be times in which the dice decide the game.

Other day I was playing and the other guy took 3 shots at my HWK-290 with a autoblaster cannon and landed one damage. But that's just how it goes sometimes.

That's why some of the best upgrades are ones that help reduce or eliminate random chance.

Two, the defense in this game is supposed to lag behind offensive. Some of the most 'broken' combo's in the game have been ones that improve defense.

Enter Xcom2, a turn based strategy game lorded over by rngesus the sometimes wise, where 91% shots miss like the dickens and full cover sometimes amounts to as much as a silk screen. The difference in Xcom, however, is that the members of your squad have access to RNG-defying consumables that are guaranteed to save your bacon (or at least delay the inveitable for another round). I think X-wing would immensely from including such things

Have you heard of the target lock, focus, and evade actions? What about 90% of the upgrade cards that modify dice? If you're playing X-Wing by rolling dice and calling it a day, you're doing it wrong.

Isn't Glitterstim a consumable that can alter the probabilities in your favor for a turn? You want more Glitterstim type mods?

I've often though it'd be interesting to see a signal decoy of some description as a utility ordnance (akin to how Thread Tracers is pure utility). Something that you could drop from your rear guides, and essentially has Kagi's ability for a round; For the round in which it's deployed, all attempted target locks go to it if possible. Alternatively, all existing red target locks within range of it are moved to it. Remove the token during the end phase, as if it were a bomb that hung around too long, and all associated target locks.

It's not massively overpowered, but it gives some utility against ships that use target locks a lot, like ATC Advanced, Omega Leader, FCS B-wings, etc., and a bit of protection against alpha strike lists with guidance chips or LRS.

I haven't played X-com2, but rng, for me, was awesome in X-com. I played it on Ironman (no backsies), and it make every decision interesting and terrifying.

Flashbang: okay, I have no idea how flashbangs would work in space. In Xcom, the flashbang grenade greatly reduces enemy accuracy, giving you a (relative) safety net against them. In X-wing, with its strange habit of combining accuracy and firepower in the same roll, the "flash bang" could be a bomb that removes a red die from affected ships or the round of combat

Smoke: another fluff oddity that I can't figure out, but in game terms the Smoke grenade provides cover that makes all units within more difficult to hit. "smoke" in X-wing would have to be a mine template which could obstruct shots and perhaps prevent ships on the template from firing. Kind of like a deployable asteroid without the action denial or damage chance.

Mimic Beacon: Imagine being able deploy a Biggs (that lasts for one round) from your rear pegs. Probably would be bent over broken, but the shenanigans possible are frankly astounding. TLTs and turrets in general would detest the **** thing.

granted, the pricing on these items would be up in the air as their impact on a given game is very difficult to measure (no direct damage), but I think the game could really benefit from a fresh set of useful, unique; dice-independent bombs

All of this is already in the game, it just depends on the squad you build.

FLASHBANG: Elusiveness, Sensor Jammers. Pilot Zertik Strom pretty much removes a red die (prevents range 1 bonus) from all range 1 enemies firing primary weapons. Carnor Jax prevents focus actions and tokens being used-preventing hits.

SMOKE: An asteroid is your smoke. Hide behind it for defense. Use it to block. Tractor Beams are gonna let us throw someone on it. Then you have things like Glitterstim, Tactical Jammer is practically permanent moving smoke screen. Ion projector is like an EMP moving cloud. Anti pursuit laser is like a moving meteorshower. Lambda + Tactical Jammer (22pts). Moving +1 agility cloud! Plus you have pilot abilities like Serrisu and Kagi. Mara Jade is practically a permanent stress bomb.

MIMIC BEACON: Biggs, Draw Their Fire, Torkhil pilot ability (make them move first so you can dodge).

I think everything is pretty much in the game in one way or another. I dont want to have all the crew/pilot abilities available as mods or bombs so any ship can use them. If there was a Mimic Beacon, then we all just rip up our Biggs card? There has to be a give and take. Torkhil's ability is so powerful, that he basically becomes Biggs if your opponent is flying an ace. Nobody wants Soontir moving first. The ability however, is on the HWK, which is a really weak ship in both power, movement, and HP of 5. Give and take. If this ability was on a crew card, a Kwing could load it up and fly around the board until all aces were dead.

I understand were you want the game to go though, and FFG is with you. Tractor Beam will be guaranteed defense. Guidance Chips are going to guarantee at least one hit the defender has to evade. Long Range scanners are going to make firing those range 3 missiles (Assault Missiles Im looking at you!) even easier. Game starts, TL, then right when you move into range 3, focus and fire! Going to change the game! Where as now it is get to range 3, TL. Next turn you are at range 1 or out of arc, or stressed from dodging arcs and cant focus then you roll hit focus focus focus with your missile

Well X-com is a squad level strategy game. X-wing is a dogfight game. To be blunt X-com's dog fighting minigame is rather unintuitive. But if you really want to talk about status effects well X-wing has them.

For negative status effects we have stress, ion, weapons disabled, and the up-coming tractor beam token. For positive status effects we have focus and evade. There is also critical damage that provides negative status effects.

The only thing X-com has that X-wing really doesn't is a persistent progression system. You could do that with a campaign. Say like start with the lowest on all ships and after each mission a ship gets a random upgrade card assigned to it. It can either equip or save upgrade cards to trade in for changing into a unique pilot or purchasing other ships by simple 1 to 1 point trade. As for damage effects a ship is out for 1 game for each face down damage and out 2 games for each face up damage. Ships that are destroyed are destroyed.