The situation you describe about defense being equal to attack is the real problem that Theorist failed to understand and blamed on highly accurate, 3+ attack dice for some reason. Because that's happening now with Poe, Soontir, Miranda, etc. and all the regen and defensive tech they have. If I had a dime for every time a Poe player got significantly more than a shield upgrade's worth of shields off of a regen droid, I'd probably have a dollar or two, lol.

Theorist doesn't understand that. Highly accurate shots are actually neccesary to break through the equal or better than attack defense these ships have.

Actually he does understand this. I recall having a discussion with him about Palp + Aces back when palpatine was first spoiled. One of the things we both felt was how it makes Soontir 'easy mode' allowing players to simply fly Soontir straight into enemy guns and not worry about arc-dodging because between stealth, his tokens, autothrusters and palpatine, its possible a 'pure jousting list' such as BBBBZ could struggle to kill him with focus fire, and that shouldn't really be possible.

But lots of people have made this realization to some degree. That's WHY Theorist is talking about high accuracy cards being a problem: Everyone building tourney lists is taking upgrades to defeat Soontir (and regen poe and other hard to kill aces). So if every list has these hyper accuracy cards to combat hard to kill ships like Soontir and co, anything else in the game that relies on agility, but doesn't have the damage mitigation powers of Soontir, Poe and the like, becomes easy pickings. Primarily ships with 2/3 agility are hit hardest in this environment because they don't have extra tokens or regen to stop firepower of that magnitude. And that is what he's talking about: the 'bad' ships like T-65, scyk, khiraxz, star viper, etc (he lists all the ships with 2/3 agility that some may agree/disagree are bad, but whatever) suffer because part of their points cost is tied to a stat that is supposed to provide durability but is less able against hyper accurate attacks.

Also, tied into this is the pilot skill bid. I don't think a lot of people are understanding the problem here. I read comments along the lines of 'its a star wars game, heroes are supposed to defeat the generics!' Which completely misses the point. The fact is, if you take a generic of a particular ship you pay less points than unique pilots, and therefore, generally speaking you can fit more ships into your list. By taking named pilots, you pay a premium in points for the pilot skill (and also the pilot's ability) and therefore generally speaking will have less ships. Back in Wave 1 - 3, having fewer ships, despite the higher Pilot Skill and cool abilities was a risk (in a tournament setting). You would have less firepower, less overall health (compared to a similar list with generics, and therefore more ships), but you would hope to overcome these drawbacks by careful positioning and trying to leverage the special abilities/upgrade cards you had to help you even the odds. Now however, the slew of damage increasing cards have reduced the risk that used to exist for high pilot skill lists vs generic lists with greater numbers. Why take Blue Squadron Novice at 24 points when you can have Poe at 31 points? He gets better value out of the regen droid for greater durability, can better utilize autothrusters, and for firepower, has his own ability plus the possibility of some strong EPT cards. Not to mention +6 pilot skill. He's more than worth the extra 7 points.

So while I don't believe X-wing is 'broken', its definitely skewed in certain directions and I believe Theorist's article at least points out an underlying problem as to why there are some imbalances in the game (particularly with certain ships, especially the ones that EVERYONE knows are weak right now!). Of course the game can go on fine as is and is for the most part 'healthy', but in order for certain ships to move out of their bottom-tier status, they are going to need something to help them in this higher PS, higher damage environment that currently exists, and I don't think the game designers are completely oblivious to the current state (afterall, they spoiled the x-7 title which is exactly the sort of fix that addresses this issue).

Going back to Soontir though, 'defensive fixes' have to be very carefully implemented. Obviously they can't benefit him (or other ships already capable of excellent damage mitigation). And obviously defensive buffs cannot equal offense. I think that everyone (including Theorist) understands that in order for a game to end, it has to be ultimately easier to deal damage than to mitigate it, but for the current 'bottom tier' ships to get better, something has to be done that allows them to survive better than they can at the moment...

The bad/"bad" ships that are listed are bad/"bad" because they cannot damage things like Poe or Soontir, not because 2 agility and 2 hull/2 shields is a little better than 3 agility and 3 hull in a hyper damage environment. That's a minor issue. Hyper damage is just a symptom of having to deal with Poe/Soontir/other Acewings.

Actually, VI Ten Numb with Mangler is one of the answers to the Soontir Problem. Stay at R3 and he's gone in 2-3 shots.

(oh no, you used Crackshot to cancel my Y-Wings single evade).

That I didn't roll in the first place.

see, Ace-wing seems to have far more advantageous positions against their lower PS counterparts due to the way pilot skill works for arc-dodging and shooting first. Arc-dodging is aokay in my book, because this is a game about maneuvering, but pilot skill (shooting first) and defensive tech combines to make generics seem worthless. The only time generics shine is upon block, which is possible but far more rare than the turns in which aces are not blocked

Shooting first is generally not that tremendously powerful without both the arc-dodging and dice fixing though. Back in the day (when we walked uphill both ways in the snow) you generally could sometimes arc dodge ok, but have no dice fixing to make it matter, or you could shoot first, which even TIEs have never really been reliably one shot, even with dice fixing, and then got shot 2-3 times in response and likely killed.

I guess my point is.... I don't really care about generics anymore. They kind of made sense once upon a time when there were only 6 rebel uniques to pick from, but now there's enough pilots and ships that I don't really see the point. I kind of like a balance when there's a leader and some fodder and to a degree we actually have that now, but the game has never proven to me it can make generics efficient without devolving into spam and if I can only have one or the other, I'd rather have the game with awesome characters doing awesome things.

if I were forced to pick between Wave 3 and Wave 7, I'd hurl myself at wave 7 without hesitation

I'm sure there's a gameplay compromise somewhere that can make more things viable though

maybe

but as is, I don't think the game has ever been better.

Actually, VI Ten Numb with Mangler is one of the answers to the Soontir Problem. Stay at R3 and he's gone in 2-3 shots.

Ten Numb's gone in less though

and considering soonts is the only 3 health ace without shields, that's an incredibly specific counter that costs almost as much

this is why we see more streshog than nub or PS 10 Poe or Conners (if anyone bothered to use them)

VI Numb is PS10, so shoots before Soontir, and as for the rest of the list, that's where Biggs comes in. The list I mentioned before with Wedge, Numb and Biggs hits like a truck against aces, while having the Biggs Shield to weather any hits. PS11 lowering agility and PS10 auto-critting really hurts agile, fragile ships.

It does hit like a truck against Soontir, but you face anything with shields and high evades and you're plinking at best 1 shield with Ten which will be regenerated. It's what I call a "precision hitter" something that hits past evades, but only for at best 1-2 hits. I really like ships that can be snipers but also hammers in how you play them.

Everytime i see this article come up it reminds me how much i hate a guild of the same name... in WoW... Because there used to be a guild way long ago they existed and were D#$%s. and i can have no valid input because i hate them so much.

I guess my point is.... I don't really care about generics anymore. They kind of made sense once upon a time when there were only 6 rebel uniques to pick from, but now there's enough pilots and ships that I don't really see the point. I kind of like a balance when there's a leader and some fodder and to a degree we actually have that now, but the game has never proven to me it can make generics efficient without devolving into spam and if I can only have one or the other, I'd rather have the game with awesome characters doing awesome things.

if I were forced to pick between Wave 3 and Wave 7, I'd hurl myself at wave 7 without hesitation

I'm sure there's a gameplay compromise somewhere that can make more things viable though

maybe

but as is, I don't think the game has ever been better.

I think you'd have to do something like limit any non unique pilot to pairs. That should allow you to buff them up without devolving into spam too rapidly. Even then, I think FFG is in a place where they want diversity within spam. The recent TIE pilots feel like they're trying to push a TIE Swarm that's only got a couple generics overall.

I guess my point is.... I don't really care about generics anymore. They kind of made sense once upon a time when there were only 6 rebel uniques to pick from, but now there's enough pilots and ships that I don't really see the point. I kind of like a balance when there's a leader and some fodder and to a degree we actually have that now, but the game has never proven to me it can make generics efficient without devolving into spam and if I can only have one or the other, I'd rather have the game with awesome characters doing awesome things.

if I were forced to pick between Wave 3 and Wave 7, I'd hurl myself at wave 7 without hesitation

I'm sure there's a gameplay compromise somewhere that can make more things viable though

maybe

but as is, I don't think the game has ever been better.

I think you'd have to do something like limit any non unique pilot to pairs. That should allow you to buff them up without devolving into spam too rapidly. Even then, I think FFG is in a place where they want diversity within spam. The recent TIE pilots feel like they're trying to push a TIE Swarm that's only got a couple generics overall.

oph, I played that for a while

real punchy little list with Howlrunner, Omega Leader, Zeta Leader, Omega Squaddie (crackshot) and Wampa

tears down anything...except palp aces

Palp aces is basically Omega Leader versus the world

The bad/"bad" ships that are listed are bad/"bad" because they cannot damage things like Poe or Soontir, not because 2 agility and 2 hull/2 shields is a little better than 3 agility and 3 hull in a hyper damage environment. That's a minor issue. Hyper damage is just a symptom of having to deal with Poe/Soontir/other Acewings.

The more I read this thread, the more I'm convinced that the PS system is borked, particularly when it comes to super arc dodgers. Everything has been developed just to counter act them, either by massive damage or negating their ps advantage. Not to say the game is broken, but its a trend that will continue until either corrected or is much worse.

I have pondered though a system where PS wasn't absolute. Consider this, is it right that fel can outfly 8 AP's at ps1? Sure, maybe? Makes some sense, because he's a really good pilot and they're really bad. Their PS sums up to 8, and his is still 9. But what about the top 6 named Tie Fighters, howlrunner through youngster? Not talking about abilities here, but mostly PS. Should fel be able to outfly this squad at a total of 40 PS as easy as he does the ap's? I think in this case, fel would actually have an easier time against the 6 aces than the 8 ap's.

How to fix that? not a clue.... at least nothing solid.

I do think its funny that generally the game tends to break on Empire getting a nearly absolute advantage that's only countered by a rather specific ship type. TIE Swarm, Whisper, and now Palpatine. They're the faction that tends to define the meta and in the process, never win it all because everyone is dedicated to stopping them. It kind of leaves them stuck with the job of wiping out any variety that could pose a challenge for the list archetype that ultimately counters them.

I'm not going to say the article is 100% accurate, but there are some good points made.

I do think its funny that generally the game tends to break on Empire getting a nearly absolute advantage that's only countered by a rather specific ship type. TIE Swarm, Whisper, and now Palpatine. They're the faction that tends to define the meta and in the process, never win it all because everyone is dedicated to stopping them. It kind of leaves them stuck with the job of wiping out any variety that could pose a challenge for the list archetype that ultimately counters them.

if you think about it, that's kinda the empire's MO

they're a giant monolithic entity and the dominating force in the galaxy full of uniform drab grey fighters, 99% of which begin with TIE

I have pondered though a system where PS wasn't absolute. Consider this, is it right that fel can outfly 8 AP's at ps1? Sure, maybe? Makes some sense, because he's a really good pilot and they're really bad. Their PS sums up to 8, and his is still 9. But what about the top 6 named Tie Fighters, howlrunner through youngster? Not talking about abilities here, but mostly PS. Should fel be able to outfly this squad at a total of 40 PS as easy as he does the ap's? I think in this case, fel would actually have an easier time against the 6 aces than the 8 ap's.

How to fix that? not a clue.... at least nothing solid.

I think you'd have to reduce the gradience down to a couple PS categories (Rookie/Vet/Ace?) and make the phases more double blind than they currently are. Choose actions simultaneously with tokens or a dial or something and have attack effects resolve more simultaneously as well (aka, Crit effects don't have an effect). It complicates things though.

Alternatively, removing VI and designing ships smartly with the PS advantage in mind would go a long way. I so Pine for Whisper to have actually been PS 7....

Jousting means dodging enemy fire by planning, and not post-maneuver "I SEE WHERE YOU ARE" action movement.

If you think jousting is just 1-forward-1forward-Kturn you're a bad bad jouster

Trying to hide in the asteroids is bad for josuters, not soontir. Because HE has the upper hand in maneuvering, not you.

and he's one, while you have many many more bodies

Not to derail my own thread but I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Jousting does not mean "dodging enemy fire by planning", though planing can very well be a part of mitigating the damage. Jousting is absolutely charging into each other, trying to win and defeat your opponent. Jousting is 1 forward, charge and repeat. It has been so for hundreds of years. We often inappropriately use the word "joust" here. Sometimes we use it correctly as MJ says his numbers are 'jousting' numbers. Line up. Roll the dice. See who lives and how often. MathWing, Jousting.

But what you are describing is ACM, Air Combat Maneuvering. Or even more correctly if you're referring to the first few rounds it is actually called "The Merge". It is the merge where you engage your opponent while trying to gain a superior position. One that gives you an advantage and your opponent a disadvantage. It is after the merge that one continues to jocky for position to shoot without being shot or at least increase the angle to improve the chance of survival. You can joust or merge, not the same thing. Then you can continue to joust or engage in combat maneuvering; again not the same thing.

(1) Balance generics for their stat-lines.

(2) Price PS on a sliding scale. PS 9 over PS 8 is worth much, much more than PS 3 over PS 2. This should increase even further if the ship has multiple re-positioning abilities.

(3) Generally speaking, give the most powerful pilot abilities to mid-PS ships.

(4) If a pilot ability adds a token to the board (as opposed to simply shifting one), that needs to be factored into the cost.

(5) If a pilot ability adds a token to the board (as opposed to allowing a free action), that needs to be factored into the cost.

And so on.

We have learned a lot since X-Wing was released. If it were being done from scratch, I have no doubt a lot of the pitfalls discovered would be avoided. (And there'd be the joy of new ones!) But now, for the foreseeable future, the developers are stuck patching what we've got, and that's very difficult to do for two major reasons:

(1) If new stuff is better balanced and costed, holistically, competitive players simply will not use it. New stuff has to be in the power-vicinity of the really good existing stuff ... and when you're riding an edge that thin, you're going to slip over and end up with power-creep.

(2) The time delay. By the time a serious problem is discovered by thousands of gamers, a fix for it is at least months away. At least. (BTW, people, you do know that there's a difference in the testing ability of however-many playtesters over however-many weeks, and thousands of players over months, right?)

In addition to all this, a lot of the original intent of the game has been lost in the murky depths of ... a few years ago. For example, it's highly likely that Stress was intended to be a binary effect (very much like Ion). It's highly likely that "acquire a target lock" and "perform a free acquire a TL action" were intended to be synonymous. And so. But rulings have gone the other way, understandably, and it's invariably made the game more complex.

How do Autothrusters help Fel when he's flying "straight into enemy guns"?

Second, do you recognize that killing Soontir and killing Poe + R2-D2 are almost completely different tasks? The problem with Soontir is that you need a huge spike to get through his stack of tokens. The problem with killing Poe is that he gets +1 health every turn, so you have to get very consistent damage and sustain it over multiple turns.

This is what I meant upthread: it's not useful to treat Agility and hit points separately, unless you can demonstrate that a particular upgrade has a differential effect on one of the inputs. And there are very few offensive upgrades that really do that. TLT is the most prominent, but curiously Theorist ignored it almost entirely as a component of the current metagame.

Which cards? Theorist doesn't say, and neither do you.

Autothrusters help at R3----the ideal range for soontir to be in range of a bunch of guns

Killing Soontir and Regen Poe is not that different. For example, 3 TIE fighters with 2 attack dice shooting at either Soontir or Poe: Soontir's tokens stop the damage, poe's ability stops some, regen droid takes care of any that gets through. Now if those same 3 TIEs have crack shot, well now they might just burst enough damage through to kill either. Another example: FCS HLC on IG88 or an FCS phantom---again bursty enough that it can overcome both of their defenses. I can't think of any specific card or combo of abilities that is good at killing one but not the other EXCEPT for non-attack dice stuff (like bombs/mines, vader crew, feedback array, etc)

Which cards? I should think its obvious, but anything that lets you get better damage. There's so many, I'll just list a few: crack shot, predator, K4 droid (or anything that allows TL + focus), pilot abilities that improve chances of landing damage such as: IG88B, chiraneau, wedge (been around forever but still), etc, etc.

So if I'm reading this right Vorpal Sword disagrees; MajorJuggler says he's "more right than he knows".

Is the game getting uber complicated requiring multiple future expansions to balance, buff, realign most of the 2 Attack Ships?

We all talked about the green dice and how you can trust them. Now we have auto damage, regen and ace turtling. Maybe a 2 attack ship that doesn't or can't load up on upgrade cards is behind the curve.

I miss my ole's Star Wars: X-Wing when I was young and ignorant. I didn't know the math and didn't care. When it took a good 10 minutes rather than 2 hours to pick a few ships and upgrades to play without being annihilated. Ah those were the days...

(2) Price PS on a sliding scale. PS 9 over PS 8 is worth much, much more than PS 3 over PS 2. This should increase even further if the ship has multiple re-positioning abilities.

See.... this is the issue. PS 9 isn't worth much more than PS 8 when PS 2/3 spam is viable. Most of the first wave pilots are terrible because the game prices PS at 2 points per PS. If you then combine that with better abilities on mid PS pilots, you end up with Aces being over costed.

Ultimately, the PS is so meta dependent that its impossible to price properly. It's value is entirely dependent on what your opponent brings, which means as the game shifts, its value constantly changes. After all, Acewing was created by creating a single, completely broken pilot who was uncounterable by anything less than PS10 or higher. Up until that point, all the points spend on PS were largely a waste.

Jousting means dodging enemy fire by planning, and not post-maneuver "I SEE WHERE YOU ARE" action movement.

If you think jousting is just 1-forward-1forward-Kturn you're a bad bad jouster

Trying to hide in the asteroids is bad for josuters, not soontir. Because HE has the upper hand in maneuvering, not you.

and he's one, while you have many many more bodies

Not to derail my own thread but I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Jousting does not mean "dodging enemy fire by planning", though planing can very well be a part of mitigating the damage. Jousting is absolutely charging into each other, trying to win and defeat your opponent. Jousting is 1 forward, charge and repeat. It has been so for hundreds of years. We often inappropriately use the word "joust" here. Sometimes we use it correctly as MJ says his numbers are 'jousting' numbers. Line up. Roll the dice. See who lives and how often. MathWing, Jousting.

But what you are describing is ACM, Air Combat Maneuvering. Or even more correctly if you're referring to the first few rounds it is actually called "The Merge". It is the merge where you engage your opponent while trying to gain a superior position. One that gives you an advantage and your opponent a disadvantage. It is after the merge that one continues to jocky for position to shoot without being shoot or at least increase the angle to improve the chance of survival. You can joust or merge, not the same thing. Then you can continue to joust or engage in combat maneuvering; again not the same thing.

You make a useful and important terminology point, but if you substitute ACM for "jousting" in Warpman's post, he brings up an important point. I make this substitution in my head as I read it because I read "jousting" as "the thing that jousting ships do in this game", and making advantageous maneuvers to benefit a turn or two later is the only real tool they have available for them, as they can't respond.

That being said, I think that asteroids provide more of an advantage to jousters vs Soontir than Warpman suggests, because Soontir has actually a pretty limited number of moves he can make that are green and allow him to do Soontir things. Asteroids limit this further, making blocking easier. Blockers don't really care if they run over a rock, anyway.

So if I'm reading this right Vorpal Sword disagrees; MajorJuggler says he's "more right than he knows".

Is the game getting uber complicated requiring multiple future expansions to balance, buff, realign most of the 2 Attack Ships?

We all talked about the green dice and how you can trust them. Now we have auto damage, regen and ace turtling. Maybe a 2 attack ship that doesn't or can't load up on upgrade cards is behind the curve.

I miss my ole's Star Wars: X-Wing when I was young and ignorant. I didn't know the math and didn't care. When it took a good 10 minutes rather than 2 hours to pick a few ships and upgrades to play without being annihilated. Ah those were the days...

Then ignore the math. Despite what MajorJuggler claims, the math is not the end all, be all of game design.

So if I'm reading this right Vorpal Sword disagrees; MajorJuggler says he's "more right than he knows".

Is the game getting uber complicated requiring multiple future expansions to balance, buff, realign most of the 2 Attack Ships?

We all talked about the green dice and how you can trust them. Now we have auto damage, regen and ace turtling. Maybe a 2 attack ship that doesn't or can't load up on upgrade cards is behind the curve.

I miss my ole's Star Wars: X-Wing when I was young and ignorant. I didn't know the math and didn't care. When it took a good 10 minutes rather than 2 hours to pick a few ships and upgrades to play without being annihilated. Ah those were the days...

Then ignore the math. Despite what MajorJuggler claims, the math is not the end all, be all of game design.

MJ has never claimed that Mathwing is the be all and end all. In fact he frequently says the opposite. And you'd have to be stupid to think math has no bearing on the game at all.

MJ's mathwing is not the be all end all as he has stated; it is a way to predict which ships end up dominating the competitive scene

even a lesser jouster, such as a TLT, can end up as a killer card if you take its jousting value into account with its other perks (namely, having a TLT)

by contrast, the Defender was panned by MJ because it had a jousting value on par with named PWTs, only it didn't have a turret. It just had a white 4k

and then Biophysical went all maverick on us, but that's beside the point

So if I'm reading this right Vorpal Sword disagrees; MajorJuggler says he's "more right than he knows".

Is the game getting uber complicated requiring multiple future expansions to balance, buff, realign most of the 2 Attack Ships?

We all talked about the green dice and how you can trust them. Now we have auto damage, regen and ace turtling. Maybe a 2 attack ship that doesn't or can't load up on upgrade cards is behind the curve.

I miss my ole's Star Wars: X-Wing when I was young and ignorant. I didn't know the math and didn't care. When it took a good 10 minutes rather than 2 hours to pick a few ships and upgrades to play without being annihilated. Ah those were the days...

Then ignore the math. Despite what MajorJuggler claims, the math is not the end all, be all of game design.

I cannot stress how much I disagree with this statement, Sithborg. Math is, fundamentally, everything this game is. If you want to ignore the maths in X-Wing, you're left with some nice miniatures to show off on your shelf - nothing else.

Ok I have a crazy idea. It's not tuned or balanced by any means, but let's see if I can convey the concept. And it would be impossible to implement into the existing game, but I can dream for x-wing 2.0.

At the start of each round, each player sums their PS. Each player receives activation tokens equal to their totaled PS / 5, rounded down.

During the activation phase, players alternate, starting with the player with initiative, by either revealing a ship's dial (performing it's move), or discarding an activation token.

If a player has no activation tokens and all of their ships have performed their maneuvers, then the player skips until both players have performed all ship maneuvers.

The rest of the phases are as currently are.

It's a play on Armada's system. Each side takes turns activating a ship, but there's no way to 'pass'. This lets rebels (the swarmers in that game) react to star destroyers and such. The fighter squadrons in Armada do the same thing, but have a fancy sliding cardboard piece that lets you know if it's been activated that round yet or not. Armada does not have PS, so it's simply a numbers game.... granted armada doesn't have arcs the same way X-wing has arcs.

My idea lets PS matter, but up to a point. It would make pricing high PS to be easier, and even make mid range PS mean something. It's not perfect and ends up requiring everything to be rebalanced, hence why it couldn't be added to the existing system. Just a thought.