The poster who declared them basically a victim of game mechanics is right in my opinion.
I basically agree; in a theoretical X-Wing 2.0 system, I would want a lot of the fundamental mechanics to be re-worked in such a way that ships like A-Wings and TIE Interceptors have a more distinct play style beyond just dice efficiency. From a thematic point of view, these high-performance ships should be able to overcome their relatively weak shields and firepower to take down slow, ponderous opponents. In practice, they just get whacked by fat turret ships. Autothrusters just confirms that - it significantly alters the rules that govern engagements against fat turret ships, giving the Interceptors the tools they need to actually take them down using their maneuverability. Mechanics like that should be baked into the base game, instead of added as a kludge later.
I've been approaching these threads strictly from an X-Wing 1.0 point of view. Right now, we basically only play with 20% of the cards in the game, which is an unfortunate limit on diversity. Without changing any core game concepts, or significantly altering the text on cards, what's the minimal possible changes that we can make that would re-introduce the many diverse pilots and upgrades that already exist? Altering costs is the most straight-forward way to do that.
What I'd try is multiple types of each die a ala Imperial Assault, which would give you a huge advantage in representing accuracy and fix some intuitive problems. For example, ever noticed how single large attacks are much better at hitting high agility than several weaker shots? Similarly, it's the thousand cuts of the TIE swarm hard targets like the Decimator fear far more than Heavy Laser Cannons.
Attack dice I'd split into three types.
Red dice have more blanks but also have double hits on some faces. They're more damaging but more easily avoided.
Say blank, blank, blank, blank, focus, hit+focus, hit+hit, hit+crit.
Blue dice have fewer blanks (or no blanks with focus being their blanks) but have no double hits. They're harder to avoid but less damaging.
blank, focus, focus, hit, hit, hit, hit, crit.
Green dice have Effect symbols on them in addition to a few hit symbols, the effects of which are determined by the card using them (for example, an ion weapon assigns one Ion token for each Effect roled, a Flechette would assign stress, an Autoblaster would treat effects as unavoidable hits). Effect dice have a few hit results on them (although less than red and blue) and have one double effect result.
Defence dice I'd split into durability and agility dice. Durability dice have a lot of Armor results (they replace evades and cancel entire attack dice). Agility dice have fewer armour results but have two total dodges which cancels the entire attack.
Ohh that's a cool solution. Reminds me of Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition (which I played 2 days ago).
I would do something different, though. I would use the "Defense" stat (but called as "Agility") to both attack (see if the attack hits) and defense. The current "Attack" stat would be called "Firepower" instead (and would be rolled after the hit). Turrets would roll attacks with very low "Agility", the same for torpedoes (which would have more firepower but would be harder to hit, making them effectively different from missiles).
