A thought experiment. For a number of ships, it's often the most expensive pilot that is the best pick through a combination of best ability for that ship as well as the highest pilot skill. Meanwhile, lower-skill pilots are passed over for that reason plus their lesser abilities. What pilot abilities, among pilots of the same ship would you swap to make lower-skill pilots more interesting, and simultaneously keep the high pilot skill ones from being the go-to option? Or, just to make options more interesting in general?

For example: Nera Dantels swapping with Ten Numb. Now Ten has to be loaded with ordnance to be a threat, but his higher PS makes it more difficult to dodge his torpedoes. Meanwhile Nera's auto-crits at PS5 come later in the round after higher PS ships have taken shields off her target.

How about Soontir Fel and Lt. Lorrir? Fel is still somewhat squirrely, but has to look to other options than Push the Limit. Meanwhile, Lorrir picks up a lot of utility with a much more useful ability.

How about Emon Azzameen and Boba Fett? Boba can enjoy flinging a pair of nasty Proton Bombs from his Slave-I with deadly accuracy, while Emon can be a fearless blocker that feeds off the enemies he just trolled.

Throw some ideas out there, let's see what happens!

Fel and Fel's Wrath.

Problem with swaps is that the low PS pilots' aren't just overall inferior, they're simply not inspiring at all

Gemmer and arvel are good examples (though arvel is plain overpriced too)

Esege is just...ugh for his price and being ps 8 would NOT help

Then there's the secondary case of the ability being cool, but also on the wrong ship. This is mainly rudor ie a cool ability on a sorta fragile and very wimpy ship that makes the more punchy inq a complete nobrainer

Were Rudor an... aggressor (sans ig2000 because goddamn that'd be hilarious), let's say, then you'd see his pilot ability come into its own

Both esege and Shara also fit, as giving up mods on a ship that pricey is kinda dumb. If they were a Z and A respectively, though...

Last, there's the case of "good ability...where's my ept?"

Ie Kir Kanos

Kirs ability on soontir (ie ps 9 + ept) would be kinda scary

On a positive note, ffgs getting a little better at assigning abilities.

A little

Wave 8 has the ghost/phantom which have more useful abilities on the "not heras"

All the jm5ks are useful, with manny and dengar (the two extremes of the spectrum) working really well together

Misthunter pilots both have their uses

And then TAPs...okay they ****** up there

Finally, vets continues the proud tradition of more useful stuff going to the mid ps defender over the high PS one

fickle , if you didn't want to participate, you simply could have not posted...

I put kir on soontir

fickle , if you didn't want to participate, you simply could have not posted...

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Corran and Etahn

Luke Skywalker and Sabine Wren.

Don't much care about what happens to Sabine, but it means that Skywalker can take VI and R2-D2 and be a pretty slick ace. He's stuck doing green moves (when he wants to regen), but Sabine's ability at PS10 is good enough that he'll dance like a pro and dodge plenty of arcs. He'd be a little action starved on offense, but it's cool, he'll just use the Force.

I'd move a ton of stuff around on Interceptors.

Leave Fel, Carnor and Fel's Wrath as they are.

Swap Turr Phennir and Lorrir, as well as Kanos and Tetran Cowall. I feel like Lorrir's and Kanos's ability work better with an EPT, while Turr's and Tetran's ability don't necessarily depend on one.

There are a number of low PS with great abilities, but they are plagued either by 1) the ship is meh without high PS (interceptors...) or 2) no EPT for some stupid reason, and that reason alone puts them on the bench, or 3) overpriced because its like 4-6pts between a PS4 guy with a decent ability and the PS8 guy with again a decent/good ability.

I always felt like PS was undervalued in points. Some ships have a huge gap (Awings anybody?) while others are stupid small (punishers?).

fickle , if you didn't want to participate, you simply could have not posted...

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nah, fickle 's got some good ideas when he's not being incessantly negative.

Corran and Etahn

Care to explain?

Luke Skywalker and Sabine Wren.

They're not in the same ship, though.

Corran and Etahn

Care to explain?

In two words: I Hate Corran.

The doubletap isn't as threatening at Etahn's PS - and crits in arc already doesn't care about PS.

Ryad at Rexlars PS would be even more fun, and Rexlars ability *might* see slightly more use if he shot later in the round landing those fscedown damage cards if he can keep that focus token

Garvin and wedge wouldn't be terrible either. Garven can pass the token earlier in the round to another ship would allow squad mates to spend actions on other things. Wedges ability is basically PS irrelevant, lowers defense is good at any ps

I'd swap Defender Maarek's ability with Ryad's, because her ability is awesome, and his is situational and sucks.

If this wasn't limited to same ship type, I'd swap Maarek's with Miranda's, because I consider her ability to be the definitive XWvTF Fighter representative ability.

I'm not sure about pilots, but I know which Astromech's abilities I'd swap. R5-P8 and BB-8. It's odd that Poe's best friend isn't the droid he comes with.

Or failing that, swap Poe and Wedges' abilities.

Poe and Blue Ace.

Blue ace ends up with enough jousting/regen potential that you'll take him anyway; Poe (especially with bb-8!) Becomes the ridiculous stuntmaster who you simply cannot shake, so you'd better throw with guns at him instead, pronto!

I wouldn't have minded if Fel had, I dunno, Lorrir's tricks - like Poe, it's leave the highest PS pilot with the repositionable trickery, while reducing their straight up token efficiency.

Oh, and I'd have given our dear Norra... I dunno, man, hobbies ability if you're so determined to keep it TL centric? I know it's not a within-ship swap, but man, that ability wants a cheaper platform to be worth even glancing at. And the hobbie+ targeting astromech combo could have done point on a ship with four reds and space for a crew to boot.

...Actually, that's a pretty solid swap, provided there's an EPT on both ships. The x-wing is cheap enough that your could get some synergy going and get either triple evades on defense or run it as a railgun of Blam with the other synergies out there. I dunno, it's just so situational for a ship costly enough not to have much in the way of wingmen. Meh.

Ryad and Rexler, but then, Ryad's ability is only remotely balanced by her low PS, so actually, I wouldn't do this at all.