Pretty much as the topic title states. Would anyone like the idea of generic pilots with pilot abilities?

I'm thinking of it as something for mid-range pilots to make the generics a bit more interesting. I don't have any solid ideas for it but things like:

Gold Squadron Veteran - PS 4 - Y-wing

At the start of the combat phase, you may spend a focus token to acquire a target lock,

Or Black Squadron Ace - PS 5 - TIE Fighter

Once per turn when attacking, if you roll a focus or blank result, you may roll an additional attack die.

I already do this all the time for Veteran Pilots skilled three to six.

Black squadron ace would be pretty friggin good.

But I think we are a little to far into the game to make this a thing. Mabey it could be done once or twice, but to do it on all EPT carrying level generics moving forward doesn't really fit with what the game is now.

Unless it's a rouge squadron card and used as part of the x wing fix, the x wing deserves something special like this.

I have thought of some way to add an elite talent slot with a generic pilot. I guess a condition could be like R2-D6 where you can't add this modification/elite upgrade if it already has an elite talent (and only on a generic pilot). That might be very interesting then - if that was what you were thinking of....

I've always wanted generic PS7's with EPT's on a few ships. I could care less about an ability.

TAP pilots kind of already have this via the title

If I saw non-uniques with Pilot abilities I'd be assuming they are really ship abilities that don't really translate well any other way.

Although I guess that with those they use titles instead.

Seriously is there anything unique about "Ace" or "Leader"? We got that already.

To clarify my thinking a little, what if Blue Ace or Zeta Ace were generic instead of unique? I'm not certain that their abilities are really ones you'd want to run multiples of though. Consider the Black Squadron Ace above, if it were generic at 15 or 16 points would be worth running instead of a Black Squadron Pilot with Crack Shot (though I'll concede that pilot ability is powerful and not well thought out)?

The idea is to maybe reflect the way a specific squadron flies together; preferably abilities that work well in multiples.

This could be for expansion packs that re-release existing ships, particularly ships that already have multiple copies *cough* X-wing *cough* or for any ship that ends up getting re-re-balanced.

I suspect though the preference is for generics with Elite upgrade slots.

Seriously is there anything unique about "Ace" or "Leader"? We got that already.

Well Ace and Leader are their family names. There's a lot of nepotism in a galaxy far far away, and the inter-family rivalry is quite frankly deadly

I'd like to see specific ships with abilities - in particular, my thought was for the Quadjumper. It's supposed to be a tug for huge+ sized ships, armed with a monster tractor beam - my thought is to give it no primary, but give it a cannon slot and the ability to ignore the instructions on secondary weapons that tell you to cancel all dice after hitting - to represent it having a lot more power to shove into its cannon than the average.

And to give Defenders the ability to spend an action to give +1/-1 to their att/agi for the rest of the game (or until they do it again) - balancing shields and laser power, as in the games.

That's how you get the TIE Phantom and Defender/x7. Generic Pilot abilities already exist.