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.

First, thanks for honoring this thread with your presence. (no sarcasm)

I do some math here myself, but the system is iterative, so costs can be adjusted at any time.

I need to reiterate my "upgrade" to the game is not an ambitious project . As I said in the OP, this is for those who want to try something different (I want to try it myself with the HotAC campaign).

I have no pretensions of solving all X-Wing problems.

Barrel roll and boost are weak at PS1 and extraordinary at PS10-11.

You know, I never quite thought about it this way.... directly at least.

I wonder, what would X-wing be like if instead of following the order of PS, it followed a system similar to Armada? One player activates a ship, then the next, and so on irregardless of PS. It let's the rebels (who have smaller, but more ships) outfly the imperials.

But that would just make the swarm silly powerful again. You'd have to give high PS pilots the ability to 'pass', letting the player choose not to activate a ship. It would still let aces outfly lesser ships, but to an extent.

Just some musings. In a lot of ways, Armada is FFG's x-wing 2.0. They took a lot of what they learned from X-wing, and reincorporated it with new mechanics that play very well.

Just get your own thing up and enjoy the stuff you bought - I've had similar ideas in the past but they've never gotten past the idea stage.

Don't let ppl pressure you into making things you are comfortable with modifying. What you are doing is similar to modding/hacking a pc game. You can choose to do anything from simple skinning to full blown code fixes. You aren't being paid to do this - so do what's fun for u

Writing a game system however can be really tedious - and this isn't a commercial project for us - its basically "for fun" - for our own homebrews. Start small - if just modifying cards then playtesting is what you are comfortable with - do that. When ppl throw out big ideas, just use what you think you can use in your homebrew and try not to be intimidated by the immesity of the whole game system at once.

@MajorJuggler the idea of different dice has come to me, especially for different weapon types (energy, ion?, explosive, ballistic), so have the actions introduced with huge ships - the main impetus was not really to replace X-Wing (which has its own charm in abstract simplicity) but to a system that bridges closer to the SW lore. Haven't had the time to think too deeply into it yet let alone play with the math.

And yes as I currently do game testing, consumers and non-technical testers are generally the worst accept game design ideas from, but the best people to actually find problems.

Just get your own thing up and enjoy the stuff you bought - I've had similar ideas in the past but they've never gotten past the idea stage.

Don't let ppl pressure you into making things you are comfortable with modifying. What you are doing is similar to modding/hacking a pc game. You can choose to do anything from simple skinning to full blown code fixes. You aren't being paid to do this - so do what's fun for u

Writing a game system however can be really tedious - and this isn't a commercial project for us - its basically "for fun" - for our own homebrews. Start small - if just modifying cards then playtesting is what you are comfortable with - do that. When ppl throw out big ideas, just use what you think you can use in your homebrew and try not to be intimidated by the immesity of the whole game system at once.

@MajorJuggler the idea of different dice has come to me, especially for different weapon types (energy, ion?, explosive, ballistic), so have the actions introduced with huge ships - the main impetus was not really to replace X-Wing (which has its own charm in abstract simplicity) but to a system that bridges closer to the SW lore. Haven't had the time to think too deeply into it yet let alone play with the math.

And yes as I currently do game testing, consumers and non-technical testers are generally the worst accept game design ideas from, but the best people to actually find problems.

Mods? It looks like you got me right. I've being doing mods for PC games since Quake 1.

I have to admit, as much as i go on about Attack Wing, I do still enjoy it...and they just revealed the grand prize for the next set of OP events is the Enterprise A...so yeah I'm not stopping playing either X-Wing or Attack Wing any time soon!

Also plan ahead - don't try to takle everything at once (but also don't be afraid to go backwards to fix something already done). I'd suggest working on groups of ships in a order of chronological release, eg:

Batch 1: ANH + TESB (X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE Fighter, TIE Advanced, TIE Bomber, Milenium Falcon, Slave 1)

Batch 2: ROTJ (A-Wing, B-Wing, TIE Interceptor, Lambda Shuttle)

Batch 3: SOTE and eariler EU (HWK-290, Z-95 Headhunter, E-Wing, K-Wing, YT-2400, TIE Defender, TIE Phantom, StarViper)

Batch 5: Post SOTE EU (Punishing One, Hound's Tooth, M3-A Scyk, Kihraxz, Mist Hunter, TIE Punisher, Decimator)

Batch 6: New canon (Ghost, TIE Advanced /v1, T-70 X-Wing, TIE/fo)

Also plan ahead - don't try to takle everything at once (but also don't be afraid to go backwards to fix something already done). I'd suggest working on groups of ships in a order of chronological release, eg:

Batch 1: ANH + TESB (X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE Fighter, TIE Advanced, TIE Bomber, Milenium Falcon, Slave 1)

Batch 2: ROTJ (A-Wing, B-Wing, TIE Interceptor, Lambda Shuttle)

Batch 3: SOTE and eariler EU (HWK-290, Z-95 Headhunter, E-Wing, K-Wing, YT-2400, TIE Defender, TIE Phantom, StarViper)

Batch 5: Post SOTE EU (Punishing One, Hound's Tooth, M3-A Scyk, Kihraxz, Mist Hunter, TIE Punisher, Decimator)

Batch 6: New canon (Ghost, TIE Advanced /v1, T-70 X-Wing, TIE/fo)

Ships will be easy, since the template (for Rebels and Empire) is done. I will find trouble with the pilots (specially the images).

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.

All well said, but thats not the point in which Attack Wing failed, and it could have been a great game despite your point, it would just have made it less balanced than X-Wing. However, if everything else would have been good, the damaged could have been minimized, but the other flaws are why X-Wing and Armada (which has Captains as upgrades) are huge sucesses and Attack Wing sell mediocore.

And this is where we really depart ways, FFG:

You have my attention with this. Seems well-designed for a story campaign type game.

Are you giving any consideration to functionality corrections to the game? Things like re-working how munitions work, or making the game more three dimensional and using 'altitude' to add a three dimensional feel to the game?

You have my attention with this. Seems well-designed for a story campaign type game.

Thank you!

Are you giving any consideration to functionality corrections to the game? Things like re-working how munitions work, or making the game more three dimensional and using 'altitude' to add a three dimensional feel to the game?

Ordinance will be completely changed. But combat mechanics might stay the same.

Setting a primary weapon value to zero allows a ship to be fully disarmed. That's why the HWK has one die rather than 0: Munitions Failure.

Munitions Failure is now gone with the damage deck update, but Boba Fett could still disarm a ship.

Note that the only two ships in the game that can be permanently unarmed are the GR-75 and the Gozanti, which have the power to destroy ships by running them over.

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.

No, those are accurate descriptors of the problem and your second comment betrays how little you understood it.

Granularity is the size of the points quanta you're working with. Given X-Wing only uses integer point costs you can't cost anything between 0 and 1 point, between 1 and 2 points.

This limits how accurately you can assign a card to its true value. Is Hull Upgrade worth a whole point less than shield? Probably not: with the exceptions of regenerators Hull killed Shield off entirely. But FFG were stuck: one point less is too much, but you can't put it at the same price as Shield or it becomes a dud card. Similarly, how do you price the +2 PS generic? 1 point is too little, 2 points is too much.

Want to design a card that's less effective than Predator? You've got to choose from 0, 1 or 2 points. Those are your only options.

Going to 200 points in this case does not mean doubling the number of ships. It means doubling their cost. That's 24 points for an Academy Pilot, 42 for an X-wing, 60 for a TIE defender. PTL is 6 points, Stay on Target is 4.

In essence, it allows what in our current 100 point setup would be half point costs.

What's the third symbol in the action bar?

It' not (afaik) something that already exists in the game.

Deserves a closer inspection, but right away I'm unsure of a 20 point X-Wing that gets a free boost, even with a restriction. Basic ships should not have in-built abilities. That's what an action bar is for.

Deserves a closer inspection, but right away I'm unsure of a 20 point X-Wing that gets a free boost, even with a restriction. Basic ships should not have in-built abilities. That's what an action bar is for.

I completely disagree.

Ships with special characteristics (in this case, the X-Wing's S-Foils) should have special abilities (instead of relying on fake title cards).

PS: I could create an action only for the "Closed S-Foils" ability, but I don't think it would be necessary in this case.

What's the third symbol in the action bar?

It' not (afaik) something that already exists in the game.

Hyperspace.

It will add some functionalities (like deploying the ships later into the game - something like the Gozanti does when releasing TIEs)

Setting a primary weapon value to zero allows a ship to be fully disarmed. That's why the HWK has one die rather than 0: Munitions Failure.

Munitions Failure is now gone with the damage deck update, but Boba Fett could still disarm a ship.

Note that the only two ships in the game that can be permanently unarmed are the GR-75 and the Gozanti, which have the power to destroy ships by running them over.

Good point... I will keep it like that for now (and change the Fett's ability to do not disable weapons).

And, BTW, ships will be able to ram themselves.

Are you giving any consideration to functionality corrections to the game? Things like re-working how munitions work, or making the game more three dimensional and using 'altitude' to add a three dimensional feel to the game?

The game needs Tailing mechanics more than anything else. As opposed to "Well, I guess I'll hope he goes left! Oops, he went right. Guess I'll keep going left." An "Advanced" X-Wing that added in Tailing mechanics would be an interesting thing to see.

Also consider breaking up ETs into different "subtypes" - this could allow you to add an upgrade to pilots who currently don't have access to EPTs cos some EPTs in the enviroment would make them awefully powerful.

Eg:

Squad Leader, Swarm Tactics, Wingman could be a sub-type called Tactics;

Bodyguard, Draw their Fire, Decoy could be a sub-type called Protector;

Marksmanship, Crackshot, Deadeye could be a sub-type called Targeting;

Predator, Lone Wolf, Expose could be a sub-type called Aggression;

Determination, Cool Hand could be a sub-type called Grit;

Elusiveness, Push the Limit, Stay on Target, Adrenaline Rush could be a sub-type called Jockeying; etc

How many sub-types depends on you but a min of 3 is a nice number - 1 for attacking and defensive EPTs, 1 for movement and actions EPTs, and 1 for for PS changing and support EPTs. As part of a pilot's ability you can restrict a sub-type of EPT or lower it's cost or raise its cost.

Another idea is variable PS for each pilot - this eliminates the need for VI and adaptability. Each pilot starts with a base PS, but may spend points to increase it for the coming battle (can be explained lore wise as meditation, drugs, uploading combat programming, etc) in creasing his reflexes. This allows more combos between pilots as well.

Also consider breaking up ETs into different "subtypes" - this could allow you to add an upgrade to pilots who currently don't have access to EPTs cos some EPTs in the enviroment would make them awefully powerful.

Eg:

Squad Leader, Swarm Tactics, Wingman could be a sub-type called Tactics;

Bodyguard, Draw their Fire, Decoy could be a sub-type called Protector;

Marksmanship, Crackshot, Deadeye could be a sub-type called Targeting;

Predator, Lone Wolf, Expose could be a sub-type called Aggression;

Determination, Cool Hand could be a sub-type called Grit;

Elusiveness, Push the Limit, Stay on Target, Adrenaline Rush could be a sub-type called Jockeying; etc

How many sub-types depends on you but a min of 3 is a nice number - 1 for attacking and defensive EPTs, 1 for movement and actions EPTs, and 1 for for PS changing and support EPTs. As part of a pilot's ability you can restrict a sub-type of EPT or lower it's cost or raise its cost.

Another idea is variable PS for each pilot - this eliminates the need for VI and adaptability. Each pilot starts with a base PS, but may spend points to increase it for the coming battle (can be explained lore wise as meditation, drugs, uploading combat programming, etc) in creasing his reflexes. This allows more combos between pilots as well.

That's way too complex. You're suggesting that instead of 1 perfectly usable upgrade slot, that different pilots need to have up to 6 different, independent slots? Let me tell you what that does. That kills creative combos. By giving certain pilots only certain subtypes that suit their ability, you are holding a gun to the player's head and saying "You may ONLY use this pilot for THIS PARTICULAR ROLE IN A SQUAD." That's what the devs did with the HWK-290, and look how that turned out.

I do think Pilot Skill as a concept needs a rehaul, but even still, 6 different versions of EPTs is just ludicrous and makes no sense.

Also consider breaking up ETs into different "subtypes" - this could allow you to add an upgrade to pilots who currently don't have access to EPTs cos some EPTs in the enviroment would make them awefully powerful.

Eg:

Squad Leader, Swarm Tactics, Wingman could be a sub-type called Tactics;

Bodyguard, Draw their Fire, Decoy could be a sub-type called Protector;

Marksmanship, Crackshot, Deadeye could be a sub-type called Targeting;

Predator, Lone Wolf, Expose could be a sub-type called Aggression;

Determination, Cool Hand could be a sub-type called Grit;

Elusiveness, Push the Limit, Stay on Target, Adrenaline Rush could be a sub-type called Jockeying; etc

How many sub-types depends on you but a min of 3 is a nice number - 1 for attacking and defensive EPTs, 1 for movement and actions EPTs, and 1 for for PS changing and support EPTs. As part of a pilot's ability you can restrict a sub-type of EPT or lower it's cost or raise its cost.

Another idea is variable PS for each pilot - this eliminates the need for VI and adaptability. Each pilot starts with a base PS, but may spend points to increase it for the coming battle (can be explained lore wise as meditation, drugs, uploading combat programming, etc) in creasing his reflexes. This allows more combos between pilots as well.

It's an interesting idea for an "X-Wing Miniatures RPG", but not inside the scope of my mod.

About the 200 points, wow, it would require me to review the costs of every single card in the game. I'm sure it would be better for balance, but I don't know if I'm doing it. (yet)

Please please PLEASE don't set an 'official' points limit. One thing that continually frustrates me about X Wing is the constant focus on the 100/6 deathmatch style of game. If you're leaving the official game behind, then let people decide on their own points limits to play, instead of setting one for them. Maybe then we'll see an increase in different game sizes and different scenarios being played!

There still needs to be a benchmark for costing each upgrade/pilot otherwise costs will balloon.