What do you guys think about squadron upgrades? Cheap, largely 1 use only type upgrades (I'm thinking mostly ordnance and such). Here's some ideas/examples I came up with. The balance may need some tweaking, but I think this could help keep the meta fresh. Some of these ideas might end up being subsumed by fleet upgrades with Flotillas, we'll have to see.

- Engine Upgrade. 2 pts. When you activate this squadron, discard this card to treat your speed as "4" until the end of the activation.

- <menacing adjective> Torpedoes . 1 pt. Bombers only . When you activate this squadron to attack a ship, you may discard this card to re-roll one of your attack dice.

- Self Guided Missiles/Torpedoes . 1 pt. Bombers only . When you activate this squadron, you may discard this card to extend your squadron's battery attack to close range (instead of range 1). Critical effects cannot be resolved for this attack.

- Proton Rockets . 1 pt. When activating, even if you are engaged, you may discard this card to make a Range 1 <red battery> attack. After you perform this attack, all enemy engaged squadrons may make a COUNTER 1 attack against you.

- Advanced Targeting Computer . 2 pts. When you make a COUNTER attack, you may reroll 1 die. The first time you are reduced to 1/2 your original hull (or lower), discard this card.

- Evasive Maneuvers . 2 pt. Escorts only. When you are attacked by an enemy squadron with whom you are engaged, you may discard this card and toggle your activation slider for the round. If you do, you may treat that attack as if it were modified by the "Scramble" defense token. You can not use this card if you have already activated this round.

- Squadron Leader . 2 pts. Unique upgrade card . When you are activated by a squadron command, after you move, you may apply the balance of the originating ship's squadron points using yourself as the originating location (for the purpose of determining distance to other friendly squadrons.)

- Spotter . 1 pt. Heavy only. If you are at Range 1 of an enemy hull zone being attacked by a friendly ship on its activation, you may toggle your slider to "activated" for this round. If you do, any attacks coming from that ship are not considered to be obstructed (even if they are), and the attacking ship may re-roll a single die during each of its attacks against that hull zone.

- Skirmisher. 1 pt Speed 3+ When you are required to be re-positioned by virtue of overlap from an enemy ship, you may be placed at up to range 1 of the overlapping ship.

- Scramble Comms . 2 pts. Intel only. If you are at Medium range of an enemy ship executing a squadron command, you may toggle your activation slider for the round and discard this card. If you do, the Squadron command can only be resolved as a token, not a command dial.

They have potential, but I'd need these sorts of questions answered first:

Would they be restricted to Named/Unique Squadrons Only?

Is it Pointed Per Upgrade, or Per Squadron?

If I have say, 5 Y-Wings, and a Self Guided Card, is that saying that any one Y-Wing squadron can use that? I don't declare which one squadron has the Upgrade until I fire it off, or do I say at the start of the game?

I like the idea of ordinance being an expendable upgrade. Maybe a corresponding upgrade for capital ships that could replenish them at range 1 or something?

They have potential, but I'd need these sorts of questions answered first:

Would they be restricted to Named/Unique Squadrons Only?

Is it Pointed Per Upgrade, or Per Squadron?

If I have say, 5 Y-Wings, and a Self Guided Card, is that saying that any one Y-Wing squadron can use that? I don't declare which one squadron has the Upgrade until I fire it off, or do I say at the start of the game?

Great questions.

1. I had originally thought "no", any ship squadron can take them (unique or otherwise). This presents a game problem, of course, in terms of tracking which squadrons have which upgrades, since we normally are only expected to bring a single squadron card to the table (if at all) to represent all squadrons of that type.

2. It is costed per squadron, and except in the case of "Squad Leader", any squadrons can have an upgrade (or not). I would restrict all squadrons to a max of 1 upgrade.

3. I would expect that you have to declare which Y wing has the self-guided ordnance. Tracking this on the tabletop is a different challenge, of course. But, if it were to be official, I would say an inserted cardboard slotted item could be made to go where id tokens normally go in case of mirror matches.

I want to see menacing adjective torpedoes.

Problem with this stuff is it will add a tremendous amount of overhead to one of the already most fiddly bits of the game. I mean, no one is stopping you from playing it in your living room, but the squadron affecting upgrades already revealed for the flotillas shows that the FFG approach is one of "all or nothing within a radius" of the card bearing ship.

The actual upgrades have potential as ace pilot abilities or flotilla buffs tho.

I think this is a really nice idea, but as Hastatior said it will make the game extremely "fiddly". Some would be nice upgrades for ships though.

If anyone is interested I made these ideas into cards using KDY. There is no squadron upgrade atm so I used title.

We already have squadron upgrades which happen when certain squadrons work together or are boosted by ships that give them orders. Flotillas will expand that even further. No need to have upgrade cards for squadrons as I see it. There are plenty of ways to enhance them now.

While I love squadrons, this is first and foremost a ship game. I prefer the current model of squadron enhancements being dependent on ships. It works and works well.

I think this is a really nice idea, but as Hastatior said it will make the game extremely "fiddly". Some would be nice upgrades for ships though.

If anyone is interested I made these ideas into cards using KDY. There is no squadron upgrade atm so I used title.

Pretty cool, man. I could probably stand to tighten up the language, of course. Sad to see no <menacing adjective> torpedoes. Those things are awesome.

I think there are two solutions to the idea of Squadron upgrades.

1) Variant cards where the upgrade is hard-coded into the card itself. (the problem becomes that there would be many many variants of existing squadrons. It would probably become quickly unwieldy)

2) Limit any squadron to having only one upgrade. Use the little squadron-id-token-slot-thingy to indicate who has which upgrade. For example. Suppose I made a squadron upgrade card that is "Astromech Droid" - well, I'd make a little ID token that has a little astromech droid on it, that way I only ever needed one "Astromech Droid" card and at a glance I can see who has what. This would also make it easy for "Discard this upgrade" effects because you'd simply remove it off of the squadron who had it. For this method, upgrade cost would be added on a per squadron basis).

I think I would go for the "2" option, if I were to do such a thing.

The problem is, that will "rules interfere" with Mirror Matches, assuming neither player has painted their Squadrons...

And that is something that does have to be addressed in at least passing...

Good point - here I am forgetting the original needs again >.<

I could design a little token that fits on the base, that could get annoying and fiddly...

Creativity is awesome, and you always want to encourage people to find a way...

But that way has to still work with the Rules... And that slot is, unfortunately, reserved for Basic Mirror Matches

Wait... Why can't the upgrade token do both?

for each upgrade there are two versions: Black icon/symbol on White, and White symbol/icon on Black. There's your difference, then.

Why not do a card and a replacement dial for a squadron or a little overlay that integrates with the stand?

Pretty cool, man. I could probably stand to tighten up the language, of course. Sad to see no <menacing adjective> torpedoes. Those things are awesome.

Which do you prefer?

No thanks... There is already a lot to keep track of. Squadron upgrades would be too much.

Squad upgrades COULD work if they were represented by a single card that applied to ALL squadrons of that type - and where you paid the cost per squadron.

I am in the Flotillas only camp here. Sure take them on the support ship, but not on the squadrons themselves.

Anything that increases fiddliness or token usage needs to be seriously considered in terms of whether the increase in player burden produces at least a commensurate increase in enjoyment.

I think it's safe to say that single-use upgrades for specific squadrons are very fiddly and would require a fair amount of book-keeping/token reminders. It wouldn't really make the game any better. Similarly, any upgrade that goes on any specific squadron but maybe not others would also get to be a hassle and not really improve the game much.

I do think there's potential design space for minor upgrades that would be applied to ALL squadrons of a specific type in your fleet, raising their cost from X to X+Y. So like for example you could upgrade all your TIE/LNs to TIE/FOs for some kind of minor durability upgrade for Y points, but that means all your TIEs are now TIE/FOs. Or some kind of torpedo upgrade for X-Wings or whatever. That wouldn't be too fiddly (as it would apply to all squadrons of a given type and wouldn't require any token usage or bookkeeping beyond keeping the upgrade card near the squadron card, which is what we do with ship cards already).

With the custom cards in mind, I would also consider alternative squadron cards a good way to incorporate certain upgrades. As already done by contributors on Kuat drive yards or by DA, you could have different cards for, say, the S-3 and A-4 Y-wing. Different card and artwork, different base, finish story.

I'm going to be adding the Squadron Upgrade type to KDY.

If people would rather use it as a across-the-fighter-type upgrade, they can do that.

If they want to do it using the per-squadron idea that I laid out (meaning to use the little squadron ID token as keeping track of who has what?) they can do that too.

I will also be adding a new printing template to KDY as well - a full set of ID tokens that you can slot into squadrons.

They will have a range of numbers, letters, and symbols as well as a multitude of colors so that you have a HUGE range of differentiation.

As I said, I will be going for option 'B' myself.

I appreciate the effort, but just too much extra stuff on he tab,e and to keep track of.

I appreciate the effort, but just too much extra stuff on he tab,e and to keep track of.

Exactly my point. If I'm facing a guy with 4 different tokens on his Y-Wings to represent different upgrades I'm just gonna nope right on out of there. Too much extra hassle, minimal (if any) extra fun.

If the other guy says "hey, all my Y-Wings are using this (insert bomber upgrade) and thus cost X points more", then that's not a problem. Minimal extra hassle, more customizable fun.