Sounds like an interesting project.

I have a couple of insights. Some you may find useful, some not. :-)

The pilot cards: I think the functionality of the pilot cards is good as-is, but I might suggest a change to the aesthetics.

Since the vast majority of pilots are going to be fairly heavily restricted on what ships they can fly you're going to end up with a lot of reminder text saying what they can and can't fly.

It might be an idea to make room on the pilot card somewhere for ship icons. That way instead of the text you would just have a couple of icons showing what the pilot is rated to fly.

Points values: (I know it was someone else who mentioned them, but I wanted to weigh in nonetheless.)

whilst I will agree that set point values are an artefact of organised competitive play they do still have a use.

It's worth pointing out that "vanilla" x wing doesn't have a set points value outside of tournament play; if you're flying casual then there's nothing stopping you from flying as many or few points as you want.

The popularity of the 100 point tournament format is largely due to the popularity or the tournament scene in general.

I don't see 2.0 being much different in this regard. It has to be balanced with a certain points value in mind, that might as well be the existing 100 point balance for the original. But it's worth noting that there is absolutely nothing stopping people from flying whatever points value they want.

With regards to turrets:

Allowing a ship to fire secondary turrets in addition to primary weapons is going to be a little tricky to handle.

You absolutely do need to find some way of cutting down on the accuracy of ships that can engage multiple targets at a time.

First idea: Turrets fire last.

run the combat phase as normal, but only allow in-arc attacks to be made. Following the combat phase run a second combat phase where any eligible weapons which did not fire during the first combat phase can be fired.

Second idea: Designated targets.

Immediately before attacking, each ship will designate a target. Attacks made against any other ship will suffer an accuracy penalty. You may want to add that ships may only designate targets in-arc.

(I did toy with suggesting it as a part of the activation phase, but all that does is add a massive amount of bookkeeping to the game.)

I know that was a massive wall of text.. I'm sorry :-)

Thanks for the ideas! I will be taken all the suggestions I can.

About the ship icons: that's interesting! Maarek Stele will have about 5 pilotable ships, but the other pilots (except Farlander) will be really be limited by 1 or 2 ships. Is the icon easier to "read" than the text?

Likewise, rather than put Test Pilot on the A-wing card, just put 2 EPTs on the pilot cards and stick it in your ruleset and then rule that all EPTs are Limited.

FFG tested detached pilots and decided against it.

Also, why is the A-wing 17 points? Surely this is the opportunity to cut it to 15.

Then again, why not go with what Alex Davy was suggesting: double all the point costs. That lets you do what in the current game would be 0.5 increments.

Sure. Costs will need to be tunned after I decide if the attack roll will be based on the "Agility" stat or not.

About the double cost, that would require me to remake all cards in the game, which is not the intention. But I will certainly boost or restrict some abilities to better balance their costs (when just changing the cost isn't enough).

Likewise, rather than put Test Pilot on the A-wing card, just put 2 EPTs on the pilot cards and stick it in your ruleset and then rule that all EPTs are Limited.

Another good idea.

Uhhh... Pilots as upgrades was an unmitigated disaster in attack wing from what I've heard, so I counsel hard against that route.

While there are definite problems with having separate pilots, Star Trek attack wing is not a good example. They simple screwed up all aspects of game design. You could cite ST:AW as an example of why pre-planned maneuver dials or specialized attack dice are a bad idea.

Out of curiosity: what did ST:AW screw up exactly compared to x-wing? And why are seperate pilots a bad idea?

Good question, as someone who plays both X-Wing, and Attack Wing (although I prefer the former to the latter) the problem is the captain system. Captain skill and elite talent slots are assigned to the captain which is a separate captain card, all ships in a match MUST have a captain assigned, even if it is a 0 cost, Captain Skill 1 captain.

The problem is because you can put any captain on any ship (even different factions) you get into a state where you only see a select few captains because they are that good. A great example is Captain Jean-Luc Picard, he costs 6 points, has a captain skill of 9, and as an ability he has his own action bar from which he can perform an extra action every round. He is essentially the Darth Vader of the game. Due to this he can get a Battlestations (focus) and Target Lock in one round, and always shoot first, with a captain this powerful, why would you ever pick anyone else?

Most events I go to has at least 2 Picard captains across the 10 competitors.

Now apply that logic to Star Wars, if Vader could go on any ship, how would that effect things? Well I would certainly hate to face a TIE Phantom with Vader in the drivers seat. Cloak and then Focus, or Evade, Focus, and then ACD to cloak after you attack first (which in a PS9 Phantom you are pretty much gaurenteed to do that, and if you want to make sure there's always VI for a PS11 Phantom).

Now many people who play Attack Wing think this is a strength, that it enables a lot more variation in a list and say "Go to an X-Wing event, and you'll see the same lists dominating, they even have their own little names for lists." taken from the 'Red Maneuvers Podcast' in which they 'discuss' the assertion that X-Wing is a better game than Attack Wing.

As a game designer it is chaos! There is no variation because unless you are trying to create specific combos, you will always go to certain captains, I can honestly put my hand up and say that I almost always use the same captains unless the ability of another fits better. There are just too many cards in Attack Wing to plan for and there have been many times someone has comboed to allow themselves to roll 12 attack dice. One shotting a ship in that game is possible and is usually the thing that changes the game.

Why do I play it? I enjoy making niche little combos and trying fluffy builds and other such fun shenanigans. Last OP event, I managed to create a Klingon Bird of Prey that was so maneuverable it put the TIE Phantom to shame! It could sensor echo (barrel roll while cloaked basically) with the 1, 2 or 3 template, after doing that it could turn 180 degrees if it took an auxillery power token (stress). Not only that, the captain allowed me to make a sensor echo before I move, and still enabled me to perform it as my action if I wanted, giving me two times I could effectively K turn on a dime and a maximum lateral movement equivalent to a 6 straight template. That ship was destroyed only once in the 3 matches I played, and thats only because the cloaked mines hit me and dealt me some crits that basically killed the ship (it does have 3 hull and 3 shields...but you turn off your shields while cloaked...so very fragile).

So yeah...Attack Wing dun ****ed up when it came to making their game. Great prize support at OP events, great fun making lists and combo's....but not a perfectly balanced game, and its never fun when you are one shotted.

Edit: and let's not forget how they can make really overpowered combos. Weyoun allows you to disable him to stop a crew upgrade from being discarded. Conditional Surrender is an elite captain talent that allows you to discard all your crew to cancel an attack from an opponent to the ship in question, although you can return fire. See the problem here? You don't discard conditional surrender, the card was designed so you would discard all your crew and therefore couldn't use conditional surrender again in the match....not with Weyoun!

You take one crew who is really useful, perhaps William T Riker, who increases your defense by 2 and can convert two battlestation (focus) results into evade results when your captain is disabled. Your opponent attacks you, disables a secondary weapon to fire it at you and go for a stupidly high dice attack. You invoke conditional surrender that says discard your crew cards, instead you disable Weyoun to stop Riker being discarded, because Weyoun is your captain and now disabled, this activates Riker for the rest of the round giving you a greater defense quality against the rest of the attacks that round, you can still fire back, next round you spend your action to undisable Weyoun...oh yeah and all that stuff your opponent disabled for their attack? That stuff stays disabled since you cancelled the attack that they still paid for.

Fantastic combo, but it is the most obnoxious thing you could ever see and really annoyed a lot of people (I know, I used it for one tourney). They recently errated conditional surrender to say that you discard the talent card too, so you can no longer do that combo...two years after the card came out.

So yeah, when I see little girls on this forum screaming "Oh I have to buy a new damage deck that is more balanced and fair for everyone if I wanna play in events, waah waah waah" I just shake my head, that is nothing compared to some of the problems in other games, and I resent FFG for not sticking to their guns and saying "No, you want to play in official events, you use the new damage deck." and that's exactly what they should have done. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now and allow the topic to get back on track.

About the double cost, that would require me to remake all cards in the game, which is not the intention. But I will certainly boost or restrict some abilities to better balance their costs (when just changing the cost isn't enough).

Surely remaking the game is the idea of a 2.0? A mechanical reset would be the whole point: redo the point costs, change the combat mechanics to open the design space and increase tactical depth, redo or do away with the repositioning mechanics such as to not overly advantage pilot skill, remake just about anything that doesn't work perfectly as is.

Unless you're overhauling the game mechanics you might as well do this redesign within the existing systems. Your A-wing is essentially the same as the existing A-wing. Your X-wing is essentially the old X-wing with a -1 title card. Your Y-wing is the old Y-wing with -1 cost.

You'd have a much easier time for the same results if you just remade the pilot cards under the current mechanics.

As for your detached pilot mechanic, the same effect can be achieved under the existing system without changing a single mechanic, and it's more efficient with card space. Given the only rationale I see for moving titles to the pilot cards is card space, this method should appeal.

Edit: Corrected sign on the Y-wing point cost.

About the double cost, that would require me to remake all cards in the game, which is not the intention. But I will certainly boost or restrict some abilities to better balance their costs (when just changing the cost isn't enough).

Surely remaking the game is the idea of a 2.0? A mechanical reset would be the whole point: redo the point costs, change the combat mechanics to open the design space and increase tactical depth, redo or do away with the repositioning mechanics such as to not overly advantage pilot skill, remake just about anything that doesn't work perfectly as is.

Unless you're overhauling the game mechanics you might as well do this redesign within the existing systems. Your A-wing is essentially the same as the existing A-wing. Your X-wing is essentially the old X-wing with a -1 title card. Your Y-wing is the old Y-wing with +1 cost.

You'd have a much easier time for the same results if you just remade the pilot cards under the current mechanics.

As for your detached pilot mechanic, the same effect can be achieved under the existing system without changing a single mechanic, and it's more efficient with card space. Given the only rationale I see for moving titles to the pilot cards is card space, this method should appeal.

I don't want to redesign all the game, just change a few things so it will be easily applied to the cards people have at hands.

Scratching the X-Wing 2.0 (will make a X-Wing 1.5 instead).

I don't want to redesign all the game, just change a few things so it will be easily applied to the cards people have at hands.

In which case you could get the same results with similar or greater elegance working within the existing mechanics.

Incidentally, why are the rebel ships all full designations but the TIE/ln is just TIE fighter?

Secondly, just realised your base pilot costs one point. Did you just increase the cost of the A-wing?

I don't want to redesign all the game, just change a few things so it will be easily applied to the cards people have at hands.

In which case you could get the same results with similar or greater elegance working within the existing mechanics.

Incidentally, why are the rebel ships all full designations but the TIE/ln is just TIE fighter?

Secondly, just realised your base pilot costs one point. Did you just increase the cost of the A-wing?

Hmm... I might change the rebel ships names...

As the attack roll will be based on the "Agility", A-Wing got a great boost. But costs are (ever) subject to some tweaking.

Let the man do his job.

If someone comes here and asks for feedback then he's going to get feedback. Just saying it's good or bad isn't very useful feedback however.

Well the OP is more evolving the game rather than redesigning it from scratch. Agreed however that the current point system is much too acewing. PS for example is much too linear in point cost for its power. The cost for increasing PS should increase exponentially as PS increases.

The cost for increasing PS should increase exponentially as PS increases.

Which takes us back to the days of genericwing... I fail to see why that would be a step forward.

I'm not particularly against homebrew or custom cards (although I do have pretty high standards). But IMO you're going the wrong way: you're fixing a lot of things that aren't broken, and ignoring quite a few of the game's actual flaws.

For instance, why are you keeping pilot skill? Why aren't the default attack and defense mechanisms changing to eliminate some of the game's variance? Why is repositioning still lumped in with other actions? What do you gain from adding "configurations" and separating them from titles? Why do more ships need access to system upgrades? What do you gain by separating pilots from ships, if most pilots will be severely restricted anyway?

Let the man do his job.

How am I stopping the OP from doing his job?

After reading we could say if it is good, bad, awful, or he deserves The Chair.

If there's a problem with some of the basic premises of his homebrew reboot, isn't it better to get that feedback before he's done hours and hours of work?

I asked a few questions I think the OP should be able to answer before he goes any further. I've been a gamer for fifteen years--which isn't that long compared to some folks here, but it's long enough to have seen a lot of bad homebrew. And most of it starts from good intentions combined with a narrow focus: I wish I could fly Corran Horn in an X-wing with Fire Control System, so I'm going to change the system in ways that let me do that.

What's usually missing (and what I see missing here) is an awareness of the whole system. As an example, it seems as if the OP is planning to use a ship's Agility to determine whether it can hit in combat. Ordnance will get its own "Agility" and "Power" stats. But how will that work with other secondary weapons--will they also get their own Agility and Power ratings? How will ships like the YT-1300 and B-wing function, let alone the Ghost and Decimator?

It's a huge change with a lot of effects, some of which may make game elements unusable. At a minimum, it's going to require every ship to be rebalanced with a new cost.

But I want to read his ideas. In my opinion the basic sistem is ok ( PS, Red vs Green, damage and actions... )

It is okay: I enjoy playing X-wing! But it's not great. Pilot skill, for instance, makes it really hard to price glass-cannon-style ships, as well as actions that allow repositioning. (Barrel roll and boost are weak at PS1 and extraordinary at PS10-11.) Varying green dice among ships makes it a complex task to compare ships' durability, and it sets high-Agility ships up for inconsistent results across games.

(shrug) The OP asked for feedback, and I've given it. He's free to take it into account, or not.

Uhhh... Pilots as upgrades was an unmitigated disaster in attack wing from what I've heard, so I counsel hard against that route.

While there are definite problems with having separate pilots, Star Trek attack wing is not a good example. They simple screwed up all aspects of game design. You could cite ST:AW as an example of why pre-planned maneuver dials or specialized attack dice are a bad idea.

Out of curiosity: what did ST:AW screw up exactly compared to x-wing? And why are seperate pilots a bad idea?

Credentials: I have a massive Star Trek Attack Wing fleet, have won my share of tournaments, but eventually quit.

You've seen it in X-Wing. A single "new" upgrade can change the meta. Y-Wings were rusting in hangers until the TLT upgrade put them back on the mat in force. That's not a bad thing, but it is a thing - and what makes it a thing is something we call synergy .

Synergy is like medicine, a little isn't enough, but too much isn't healthy.

Now for some math to illustrate the point I hope to make....(TL;DR; More is bad). The number of upgrade cards in a system that can synergize increases exponentially as each new upgrade is introduced. If you have say, 25 upgrade cards to play with, you can probably pair up some of those cards on the same ship. With only 10 cards. the number of permutations would be !10 / (!2(10-2)!) or about 45 combinations. With 15 cards, that jumps to 105 combinations, with 25, we're at 300 combinations, at 40 we're at 780 combos, at 50 we're at 1225, etc.

X-Wing has done a great job (so far) keeping the synergy between various upgrades balanced - but even their efforts have had to be tweaked when some players find a synergy that either wasn't anticipated, or ended up being too advantageous - hence we've seen a few cards dialed back.

It is no secret that Star Trek: Attack Wing was designed as an unapologetic Star Trek themed X-Wing clone. The game systems are near identical - with few exceptions, and some differences in nomenclature. One BIG difference however, was the intention to make the game more modular than X-Wing. This was implemented in part via "faction penalties" - the notion that you could take any upgrade from any faction, and use it on any ship - as long as you paid a bit more for it (+1 SP) when building your fleet. Another "innovation" was that ship Captains (the Star Trek: Attack Wing equivalent of an X-Wing Pilot) would likewise be "upgrades" that could be shuffled around within their factions - or even used in other factions for a minor SP penalty.

These two "innovations" basically meant that (more or less) every kind of upgrade could be used with any kind of ship under any kind of captain, and the number of permutations involved escalated rapidly. The number of permutations remained manageable at first - when the number of ships, captains, and upgrades remained small. But unlike X-Wing, new waves began to appear monthly, along with an abundance of tournaments - whose prizes included limited edition ships, etc. meant that the number of cards being introduced rapidly increased to the point that by the sixth wave, certain card combinations were so unbalanced, the meta began to polarize around those few ships and upgrades that could take the greatest advantage of the unbalanced synergies the new combos introduced.

With new waves snowballing into the meta every month and new limited edition prize ships coming (more or less) monthly, the number of permutations increased far faster than the design team could balance the game. In fact, for about a year, almost nothing was done to balance the game.

The main reason the game became unbalanced to the point that it was almost unplayable for a full year - was because the number of synergistic permutations didn't just "out-pace" the designer's ability to balance the game, it ruined the game - and many would say it ruined it irreparably .

Keeping pilots tied to specific ships significantly reduces the number of permutations, and subsequently, makes balancing the game that much more manageable - especially as the game grows in scope. X-Wing is already at a point where a single new upgrade card will introduce dozens if not hundreds of new "synergies". That's not necessarily a bad thing as long as there remains enough time in-between waves to review and test every synergistic combination.

It isn't too hard to write a program that takes a new card, and prints out all new combinations that card introduces. Testers can certainly review each new combination, but the time it takes to do this review, and to subsequently test troublesome combinations, and iteratively re-work the new card till it is truly balanced increases with each card added. I don't doubt that you can already measure the number of days required to fully test each proposed upgrade is already in the "weeks" - and every single card that is added to the game increases the time needed for the next card that is added - by a number of days...

The bottom line is, if the game is going to remain balanced, it is either going to have to introduce fewer upgrades with each wave, or take longer between waves (or higher a whole lot more testers).

So IMO, it isn't necessarily the fact that captains could be swapped around in STAW that screwed the game up. When the game was small, it wasn't a problem since the number of permutations was manageable enough that the designers were able to maintain a balance. It didn't become a problem until the game became bigger than they could manage.

The only other issue was that the game lost all thematic meaning. Faction penalties, being more or less negligible, meant that every build borrowed the best of the best from various factions, and even when there were more than an hundred ships to choose from, you still saw the same four or five ships, flying the same few pilots with the same collections of synergistic upgrades. Hundreds or cards in play, but only the same two dozen or so, in various iterations, showing up for any competitive play.

As to the original post however - I don't think any of what I discuss here will be a problem, since it will likely stay small enough to not matter.

The cost for increasing PS should increase exponentially as PS increases.

Which takes us back to the days of genericwing... I fail to see why that would be a step forward.

Untrue. Since cos increase exponentially, mid PS becomes much stronger as they are higher than generics but not so high that they are paying a premium for their high PS like aces. Eg ps1&2 cost +0, ps 3&4 costs +1, PS 5&6 cost +2, PS7&8 cost +4, and ps9 costs +8.

I'm interested to see where this goes, it is interesting on paper but balancing is gonna be a nightmare I bet.

Game design is always messy

The cost for increasing PS should increase exponentially as PS increases.

Which takes us back to the days of genericwing... I fail to see why that would be a step forward.

Untrue. Since cos increase exponentially, mid PS becomes much stronger as they are higher than generics but not so high that they are paying a premium for their high PS like aces. Eg ps1&2 cost +0, ps 3&4 costs +1, PS 5&6 cost +2, PS7&8 cost +4, and ps9 costs +8.

Hantheman has a point, and this was mentioned by the designers around Wave 4: pilot skill was priced at 1 point per PS (with +1 for an ability and +1 for an EPT slot) early on with an exception for TIE fighters which got 2 for 1 point (as it was two TIEs to one other ship). However, the value of pilot skill depends heavily on the ship. Anything that repositions and especially anything that double repositions gets a huge amount of value out of high PS: the jump from Alpha to Saber compared to the jump from Kanos to Soontir. On ships that live and breathe pilot skill, the few points to jump to the max skill pilot are almost a no brainer. You either bid high or not at all. Similarly, on the Lambda pilot skill is practically worthless, maybe even disadvantageous, so the higher skill Lambdas aren't seen. On fat turrets the middling pilots see less use because the price for the max PS pilot is so little relative to the cost of the ship itself.

On ships like the TIE interceptor and the TIE phantom, the higher pilot skill rungs need higher pricing to make the jump from low to mid a true decision rather than a no brainer. On Lambdas and YVs the pilot skill price should be much lower: you buy their higher PS for abilities rather than PS.

There's one point in price between Soontir and Carnor but a lot more than one point of value.

I'm not quite understanding the logic of having the ships and pilots separate (assuming the pilots are restricted). Coupled with title and / or 'configuration' cards, you're essentially doing the same thing just with a few more steps. Would it make more sense to keep the existing ship / pilot / titles and then add a new type of card?

Uhhh... Pilots as upgrades was an unmitigated disaster in attack wing from what I've heard, so I counsel hard against that route.

While there are definite problems with having separate pilots, Star Trek attack wing is not a good example. They simple screwed up all aspects of game design. You could cite ST:AW as an example of why pre-planned maneuver dials or specialized attack dice are a bad idea.

Out of curiosity: what did ST:AW screw up exactly compared to x-wing? And why are seperate pilots a bad idea?

Everything. The pilot sharing is already pretty much well covered, but the point formula they used was obviously a mistake. The only factors into costs of ships was their stat line. Add the stat line together, multiply by two. So a 4/0/3/3 ship would cost the same as a 2/3/3/2 ship. Which is insane. And then you factor things like actions, dials, or arcs into the equation, things quickly go south. And when combined with their lack of restraint on attack values (5 isn't uncommon), the game quickly begins to have issues.

Finished the OT small ships. Now I will design the pilot cards (at least those I can find images of the proper pilots).

PS: Dat TIE Advanced...

I'm not quite understanding the logic of having the ships and pilots separate (assuming the pilots are restricted). Coupled with title and / or 'configuration' cards, you're essentially doing the same thing just with a few more steps. Would it make more sense to keep the existing ship / pilot / titles and then add a new type of card?

Its adding more detail at the expense of simplicity - its not so much as replacing the current game, it's making a different sort of game. Some one said it adds to fluff - that is 100% correct.

I'm not quite understanding the logic of having the ships and pilots separate (assuming the pilots are restricted). Coupled with title and / or 'configuration' cards, you're essentially doing the same thing just with a few more steps. Would it make more sense to keep the existing ship / pilot / titles and then add a new type of card?

Its adding more detail at the expense of simplicity - its not so much as replacing the current game, it's making a different sort of game. Some one said it adds to fluff - that is 100% correct.

It will also fit nicely with the great Heroes Of The Aturi Cluster campaign.

200pts and granularity, such buzz words, wow.

So hot right now.

Come on guys quit group-thinking into the next corner. The 200 comment was just spit balled on that cast. The meaning was he wanted to have more fine definition between costs. At least consider some other values as well. His whole point was to get more accurate costs. Three hundred points. Four hundred even. 250? 500? 150? Might want to consider how that cost will then translate to Epic to while your at it.

OP: There are many things that the X-wing developers have even said they would potentially do differently now.

• Change to 200 points and double ship costs to allow finer gradients of point assignments.
• Potentially change how turrets work.
• Adding new kinds of dice like in Armada.

All of these require math to get done correctly. Be aware that, just like FFG, if you make a new system without having the prerequisite mathematical background to understand what it is that you are actually creating, you will be driving by the seat of your pants, blindfolded, and you won't even know where the track is. Thankfully for house rules the bar is very low, and you can easily re-iterate if something is broken.

Pilot skill, for instance, makes it really hard to price glass-cannon-style ships

Yup, this is relatively hard. It's not a probability problem. To solve this you need to go back to the fundamental equations defining combat. One of the things I did for MathWing v3.0 was to re-derive the fundamental combat equations using different assumptions that are more applicable to X-wing, rather than the continuous time differential equations that Lanchester used.

In the process I derived the solution for what shooting first is worth purely from a jousting perspective. I now have properly PS-derated jousting values for all the ships based on the meta's PS distribution. Ironically one of the first things I set out to do years ago during wave 2 was to quantify exactly why the poor Alpha Squadron pilot never gets taken. Now I finally know.

as well as actions that allow repositioning. (Barrel roll and boost are weak at PS1 and extraordinary at PS10-11.)

Yup. This is fundamentally not a jousting factor, until you get really smart about using analytical playtesting... which has a pre-requisite of MathWing v3.0 or equivalent, so will almost certainly never happen at FFG.

Varying green dice among ships makes it a complex task to compare ships' durability, and it sets high-Agility ships up for inconsistent results across games.

X-wing Combat Models by stochastic process (instead of plugging in average damage and durability into deterministic lethality:value curves) is in the mental queue for MathWing 4.0. I already implemented the exact stochastic solution for Axis and Allies combat years ago (which is significantly simpler), so it appears that I might come full circle.

It isn't too hard to write a program that takes a new card, and prints out all new combinations that card introduces. Testers can certainly review each new combination, but the time it takes to do this review, and to subsequently test troublesome combinations, and iteratively re-work the new card till it is truly balanced increases with each card added.

To make matters worse, to get balance right you need to actually analytically evaluate the identified combinations, and that can potentially take even more time, plus the right expertise. Testers are good at providing feedback and generating data, but are generally terrible at actually fine-tuning game balance correctly. There are several years of empirical data just in X-wing to back this up.

I'm interested to see where this goes, it is interesting on paper but balancing is gonna be a nightmare I bet.

Yup.