This has been running through my head for a while, and the resurgence of the ship rereleasing for new pilots topic made me finally post it.

Everyone loves a good amateur design thread¹ if the many "fix this ship" and "design the Assault Gunboat" are any indication, Strange Eons gives us a very powerful tool for pilot creation and the community is a very powerful engine for predicting where things can go wrong. Alex Davy himself said he sees a lot of great ideas on this forum² and has actively encouraged house rules and designing new stuff in Casual.

The problem is, nobody wants to play with the new pilot card you just came up with because it doesn't have what the FFG stuff has: an official seal of balance: it doesn't feel as fair as an official pilot. When something feels unbalanced in a tournament you're both playing within FFG's parameters, but when you're setting those parameters any unbalance is that much harder to accept.

Then came Heroes of Aturi Cluster, a meticulously playtested Co-Op campaign. It showcased what even a small section of the community can make when they put their minds to it, and they made something incredible.

And that got me thinking. Could we create a Community Expansion? Four pilots³ per ship, carefully fine-tuned, updated and balanced? Possibly a variant ship or two using existing models? If we're very restrained and are careful not to go wild with it, if we don't try to rebalance the game with it⁴ and instead focus our efforts on making a small number of very high quality pilots, could we not create something great for the non-competitive format?

If we do well enough, maybe there could even be a Vassal plugin for them.

So, who's interested?

¹Except the people who don't. If you are one such person, this thread probably isn't going to be very interesting. I apologise for only telling you this in the footnotes.

²He also said he sees a lot of bad ones, but let's not think about that.

³Probably no or very few upgrade cards though, they're very tightly tuned into the game balance. Maaaaybe a few. Maybe.

⁴By this I mean not aggressively countering unpopular strategies with pilots. The goal is make new stuff that does interesting things but fits in seamlessly with FFG's overall design direction: we want to make stuff that fits in the game rather than redefines it.

I've been sitting on an idea for the Skyhook Battle for a long time now. I just have no time to balance it out because of work. 3 Factions fighting around the destruction of the Skyhook and the opposing fleets. It's what Epic was designed for.

It is not so much restraint you have to worry about as the willingness to kill your babies.

Lets say you make Ace McAcington - G-wing pilot. You are restrained and you give him a PS6, and a cool ability that soo fits the fluff and a pair of upgrades that make the G-Wing the ship it always should have been and you were totally restrained. Then in the playtesting a player discovers that, while Ace's ability is fine with the G-wing on its own, mixed with an Q-Wing and these 4 upgrades on Tuesdays it will completely nuke the game. The problem doesn't come when you design such an ability, but when you have to cut it. And it may be something as small as taking away Ace's EPT slot to fix it, but Ace is an ace, so he has to have an EPT!

You will be surprised how attached designers get to an idea and just will not let it go. If you can learn to do that, then I think you can pull this off. I am constantly short on time and don't play near enough these days, but I would love to see what could come of this.

Yeah, I helped with the SWM virtual sets, post WOTC. Designers can get really, really, really attached to their designs. And then it just gets ugly.

I don't want to be a doom sayer but I see a bunch of problems right off the bat. Don't get me wrong, Heros' is great but they didn't start from scratch. They have produced a very good A.I. based on existing ships and pilots. You want to produce new pilots and abilities. What baseline are you going to use? The lowest PS for each ship? You can use some of FFG's numbers but that will only go so far.

A lot of the "fixes" mentioned in these threads actually turn the fixed ship into another ship like the T-65 into the T-70. Dials and ship stats become muddied and ships end up having the same dials and action bars and differ only in red or green dice unless that's been "fixed" too. It's like "fixing" a P-40 to dogfight a Japanese Zero. If it's a fair match then you have two Zeroes dogfighting. Not what you intended.

I think playtesting is going to be a problem also. It's going to be difficult to determine if a build is priced right. I suck at flying Imps. If I'm testing some new Imp build and getting spanked repeatedly, is it me or the build. You're going to need some really good playtesters. Preferably a lot of them.

While I really like the idea of a Community Generated Expansion I can't help but remember an old quote I heard. It goes, "God so loved the world he sent his only Son and not a committee". Finding the right balance of people to put together an expansion with few problems, I think is going to be a formidable task.

If you really want to put together an expansion I'd suggest you start with some of your friends and local players. Easier to meet face to face and hash things out. Once you get it to where you want to Beta test it, take it to your FLGS and run it there.

I wish you all the best. I know from experience how much effort is required to design a game. Almost 40 years ago I tried and it was a small disaster.

Yeah, I helped with the SWM virtual sets, post WOTC. Designers can get really, really, really attached to their designs. And then it just gets ugly.

I'm not sure how to reply to this without inadvertently describing myself as a baby killer.

While I think this could be interesting, I have much more interest in a second HotAC pack. New missions, maybe new terrain, etc. Is anyone working on that?

well....this died fast.

I've been floating an idea for a 'Custom League' -which is a very similar idea, in different places and there are people who are interested in this sort of thing.

There's a ton of people who love coming up with their own upgrades, ships and pilots. We have strange eons, and we have vassal.

I think the key to making this a real thing is just getting enough people on board so that we can have a good discussion during the development process, and actually play each other a few times when it's done.

It doesn't matter how many people think it's a bad or silly idea, only how many people think it could be fun and are willing to participate.

I've been floating an idea for a 'Custom League' -which is a very similar idea, in different places and there are people who are interested in this sort of thing.

There's a ton of people who love coming up with their own upgrades, ships and pilots. We have strange eons, and we have vassal.

I think the key to making this a real thing is just getting enough people on board so that we can have a good discussion during the development process, and actually play each other a few times when it's done.

It doesn't matter how many people think it's a bad or silly idea, only how many people think it could be fun and are willing to participate.

I'd be on board for that sort of thing. I've got SE and vassal.

I would argue you have to manage this as a project. Find a member of the community with some experience in project management and appoint them as PMO (this can be yourself). Anyone who works in IT will have experience with the AGILE model, the basics of which could be transferred to this project easily.

Plan. Plan the stages of development. Scope your initial project so volunteers have some parameters to work in (are you creating a new campaign or a list of balanced pilots), list the sequence in which work has to take place (it's no point telling play testers to be on board on day 1), state expected outcomes, allocate time frames for goals to be met, etc.

Next step, Actions. Don't say "wouldn't it be cool if ....". People will simply say yes or no and give reasons. Few of us are actually willing to get off our arses, take any initiative and do anything. You have to drive it. You need to ask who is interested, where their interest or skill-set lies and make them commit to performing the work. Keep in mind that people have real life outside of your project and volunteering their time for this is probably their lowest priority.

Kick off. The PMO's role is to manage that process and make sure people do what they commit to doing, reach the desired documented outcomes and deliver the product within the agreed upon time frames.

In a nutshell, this is what I'd be doing. I'd offer to help but I have work coming out my wahzoo and a screaming 8 week old.

I would argue you have to manage this as a project. Find a member of the community with some experience in project management and appoint them as PMO (this can be yourself). Anyone who works in IT will have experience with the AGILE model, the basics of which could be transferred to this project easily.

Plan. Plan the stages of development. Scope your initial project so volunteers have some parameters to work in (are you creating a new campaign or a list of balanced pilots), list the sequence in which work has to take place (it's no point telling play testers to be on board on day 1), state expected outcomes, allocate time frames for goals to be met, etc.

Next step, Actions. Don't say "wouldn't it be cool if ....". People will simply say yes or no and give reasons. Few of us are actually willing to get off our arses, take any initiative and do anything. You have to drive it. You need to ask who is interested, where their interest or skill-set lies and make them commit to performing the work. Keep in mind that people have real life outside of your project and volunteering their time for this is probably their lowest priority.

Kick off. The PMO's role is to manage that process and make sure people do what they commit to doing, reach the desired documented outcomes and deliver the product within the agreed upon time frames.

In a nutshell, this is what I'd be doing. I'd offer to help but I have work coming out my wahzoo and a screaming 8 week old.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I've been feeling out how much interest there would be in a project like this (where we create a bunch of custom cards and then play with them on vassal) in the past week or so, and I've decided that there would probably be enough to make it worthwhile.

Right now I'm drawing up the plans for getting started, and I will start after I advertise a little on the Shuttle Tydirium podcast (coming soon) of which I am a member. I figure that means ~3 weeks to kickoff.

The basic process outline for the project is going to be:

Card Development:

1: Collect card submissions from community

2: Submissions voted on, top submissions move on to next step

3: Top submissions are opened up to development - players can submit modified versions of the original submission

4: Modified top submissions voted on, winners move on

5: Final cards are sent to a panel of x-wing experts for an up/down vote.

6: Accepted cards are implemented in a separate Vassal expansion to the x-wing module

'Custom league':

Regular tournament structure; all lists must include custom cards.

Offer some prize support

I like the idea of a community vote leading to the chosen pilot. From there, with use of fluff, the pilot is given 4 abilities to choose from and also then are voted for by the community. That's when we go to play testing and see if the Community picked ability is one that works and if it doesn't we tweak until it does.

well I got a scum epic ship that could count as a community expansion. At least until FFG gives us an official Scum Huge ship.