A buddy and I are about to start HOTAC for the first time. Any advice for us before we dive into it? We are trying to understand why the AI for TIE's would want to take bank maneuver's if a ship is directly in front of it. I think the only strait option for the TIE's to go forward in the strait two.

At least in part, the banks make it more difficult to predict the exact maneuver of a given TIE. anyway, chances are that your ships won't be flying in a straight line, one behind the other, so a bank may bring one of you into arc while turning away from the other. Or, it may give the TIE a chance to disengage and come back at a more advantageous angle.

If the TIEs always went straight, it would be too easy for you to predict their move, and most of them don't have anything slower than a 2 ↑ and anything faster is too likely to overshoot and/or bump. The Banks are there to throw some unpredictability in there, and to represent a TIE fighter perhaps trying to guess what you're going to do in the same situation.

It could probably stand to be a bit more nuanced, but it seems to suffice.

As they have said above, the AI doesn't have a real intelligence to react to or predict the players' moves. It doesn't even have proper "eyes" to see where your ships are. Only information it works with is the general bearing towards the closest ship and if it is "far" or "close". It doesn't even know in which direction the target is moving!

If all moves taken by the AI were 100% logical, then the best thing they could do would be to chase the player's ships, most of the time being arcdodged.

Instead, 50% of the TIEs movements are logical, while the other 50% are totally illogical. That keeps the players from totally "reading" the AI, and can lead to blocks because of this.

Seeing it play for many sessions, I think the results are awesome. Is it precisely in those moments of "Why the heck did it do that!?" that usually breaks the players' plans and make them prey to other TIEs or at least severely leave them off place, and makes the game challenging. It also reinforces the fact that you are fighting against Academy pilots, that is, total noobs just taken out of the school and barely knowing what they are doing.

As they have said above, the AI doesn't have a real intelligence to react to or predict the players' moves. It doesn't even have proper "eyes" to see where your ships are. Only information it works with is the general bearing towards the closest ship and if it is "far" or "close". It doesn't even know in which direction the target is moving!

If all moves taken by the AI were 100% logical, then the best thing they could do would be to chase the player's ships, most of the time being arcdodged.

Instead, 50% of the TIEs movements are logical, while the other 50% are totally illogical. That keeps the players from totally "reading" the AI, and can lead to blocks because of this.

Seeing it play for many sessions, I think the results are awesome. Is it precisely in those moments of "Why the heck did it do that!?" that usually breaks the players' plans and make them prey to other TIEs or at least severely leave them off place, and makes the game challenging. It also reinforces the fact that you are fighting against Academy pilots, that is, total noobs just taken out of the school and barely knowing what they are doing.

After five games of HotAC, totally agree with this.

There is some room for wiggling with your arc choices for the AI, and also barrel rolling. I've tried to make the best most obvious choices for the AI and it's worked great so far, and with the scenario conditions and elite pilots and their extra abilities, it's plenty tough and plenty interesting.

the more players you have the more fun it it is.... we all started of with pilot names but have developed new nicknames for other pilots e.g. the guy who gets shot down/up all the time is "canon fodder" and "Red Shirt", the guy who chose the family name Organa gets called "Princess", Our squad leader "Big Bossk Lady", they guy who uses bases only (no peg between his ship and bace) Low-Rider etc etc etc..... Roll playing it is fun even have a funeral if some one dies

We play in a place called the Pyramid (local gaming store) so we named our selves Cheops Squadron

• Take predator
• Try not to steal all the kills
• If its looking bad jump to hyperspace don't get shot down in enemy territory
• Y wings with bombs can be a big help
• Don't forget interrogated astromech is free and can save your life.
• Adaptability kind of pointless in this game

Try to make your dials secret from other players. It keeps you honest vs the AI I think, it also makes the turns go that much faster.

I play with someone who likes to chat a lot and so the turns take a long time, so anything I can do to make it faster is a good thing.

Sometimes the AI will pull a move that appears ridiculous. Make sure you understand the way the AI behaves if the rebel ship is splitting the line between two sectors and directly in front at range one. Both conditions are in the rules but explained in two or three sentences.

A buddy and I are about to start HOTAC for the first time. Any advice for us before we dive into it?

-More players=more fun. 6 player games were awesome when we could get them. You might consider each making 2 pilots, towards that end.

-We "gamed" the AI too much. Like, yeah, we didn't take it to the extent listed on p.39 of the rules, but it eventually got to the point that we knew based on the announced vectors pretty much where the AI was going to go.

Or at least where the only "good" moves it had to go were, so we could safely disregard the others. If I had it to do again, I'd have put one player in charge of the AI and never had him announce any of the vectors/numbers/etc.

-Along those lines, I wish we had made an effort to make it more of a "black box" from the Imperial side. The exact knowledge of which round reinforcements will arrive, for instance, kind of ruins the immersion in my mind. Like yeah all that info is available if anyone chooses to look up the HotAC rules and it's a little offset by the random arrival vectors, but it's also not so great when we're saying "OK it's Round 3, Beta Squad will be arriving next turn, we need to do X Y and Z to get ready"

-Our less experienced players were always deferring to the maneuver choices of the more experienced, and that made me sad. When I run a campaign in the future, I'll need to figure out how to tell people to "figure it out" without being dismissive or ignoring their questions. I might even add a "blind" phase where people plan their maneuvers secretly, and then some rules about us being able to swerve from each other upon reveal, before the AI has moved. I dunno, but this area needs work imo.

The AI may not seem like it makes sense, but it is effective. TIEs seem to do something silly in one turn, but all of a sudden they swarm you the next. As long as you play the AI as "intelligently" as possible (ex. barrel roll to the advantage of the TIE), it works.

Things to remember:

• All the non-Academy pilots get free actions.
• All of the Imperial ships break standard game rules, usually to their favor (esp. TIE Phantom, who cloaks/decloaks differently than the current rules).
• Red maneuvers work differently for Imperials.
• Read up on how Swerve works for the Imperials.
• Don't "game" the AI, but you can make some reasonable assumptions. (ex. Attack AI ships will come towards you. Strike AI will move towards escort ship. At long range, they move fast. At short range, they could possibly K-turn.)
• You get XP for "Assists". Support builds are viable.

Suggestions:

• Make a PS 9 version of your pilot, with unlimited XP, to see what your pilot would look like at that stage. This becomes your road map for your pilot's XP expenditures.
• Predator is a strong Elite talent.
• Don't spend XP on things that you can't use later. (Ex. If you are planning on buying into a B-Wing, don't buy a 3+ point Astromech.)
• If you are escorting a ship, don't forget the Protect action. Stack those evades.
• Focus fire.
• Make a plan and stick to it (unless it is a bad plan or it is no longer viable).
• Coordinate and work together.

Some of these seem like no-brainers, but when TIEs start swarming like hornets from all sides it is easy to lose sight of the objective.

Otherwise, just have fun. If everything goes to pot, start a new pilot... or a new campaign.

Don't forget that the AI Tie Fighters will also Barrel Roll first to get a shot. The AI moves before you do, usually, so it tries to predict where you are going to be to some degree. It does get repositioning abilities after it moves.

What do I wish I had known? Well, Budgernaut suggested pooling all the experience to dish out to all the players equally, with the least experienced getting any left overs. I actually like this idea a lot, as it prevents some of the "gotta kill it before the others" mentality. Also, support ships can do well enough as the damage ships.

after a few games you can predict the low level pilots very easy ....

We're just about to start a campaign at the FLGS so this has been an interesting read. Glad to see so many people say support ships are viable as my first thought was a support HWK or k-wing although an A-Wing with Jake and Keyans abilities with PTL, Juke and Predator sounds really fun too.

We're just about to start a campaign at the FLGS so this has been an interesting read. Glad to see so many people say support ships are viable as my first thought was a support HWK or k-wing although an A-Wing with Jake and Keyans abilities with PTL, Juke and Predator sounds really fun too.

If you split the XP for each mission among all pilots, it helps support ships even more. Not sure if everyone would go for that as some players are more of the "gain all the XP you can!". I'm thinking it will tilt the game more towards co-op play.

Also, you may not have seen but on his site armoredgear7 has suggested a new mechanic for Assists, instead of following the somewhat tricky (and in our case, easy-to-forget) "Kill Assists" and "Guardian" tables:

New Assist mechanic – the short version:

You get an assist token every time you:

-give another friendly ship an action

-assign an Ion/Stress/Tractor token to an enemy ship – 1 Assist per Token

-use a pilot ability that gives a bonus to a friendly ship

(there are a number of specific cases that need to be outlined, but you get the idea).

At the end of the mission, you gain 1XP for every 3 Assist tokens you have, rounded down (5 Assists = 1XP).

We’ve been testing it and it’s been pretty good so far. It definitely makes building a support ship with an Ion Turret more desirable, and things like Ion Torpedoes and Ion Bombs get you some XP even without doing damage. Also provides additional incentive for the Squad Leader to give out actions every turn.

Feel free to try this out and let me know how it goes.

We're just about to start a campaign at the FLGS so this has been an interesting read. Glad to see so many people say support ships are viable as my first thought was a support HWK or k-wing although an A-Wing with Jake and Keyans abilities with PTL, Juke and Predator sounds really fun too.

If you split the XP for each mission among all pilots, it helps support ships even more. Not sure if everyone would go for that as some players are more of the "gain all the XP you can!". I'm thinking it will tilt the game more towards co-op play.

With Madcap's dice rule that I adjusted to use for determining all damage and using this rule for splitting XP my 8 year old has never been into the game more. He is even at the point he can run a game on his own with a friend.

I'm pretty sure he's soon going to be winning any 100pt match him and I have though as he is getting really good at positioning.

I have played 8 missions so far and would agree (to an extent) with what each and every poster has already said.

However, I would also argue against nearly everything that has been said.

So... Here is MY advice.

1. At least one person in your group should be rather conversant with everything in the rule book and players should be relatively familiar with all the stuff that directly pertains to players: gaining & spending XP; Special Actions, etc...

2. Other than what you need to know to play the game, I believe players will get more out of the campaign by being as "in the dark" as possible. Yes, you can be more "effective" by learning the ways of your enemy (AI) and in the "real world" this is something every successful warrior strives to do. But in this case... I would argue against it as the AI is not a living, thinking being that can adapt to the player's actions. In order to preserve the thrill and feel of outflying and outfighting a "real" opponent, just fly your ship and play the game as if your opponent WAS real.

3. Yes, the HotAC rules allow you to do things the normal mode of playing the X-wing game does not... And that can be fun and exciting in its own way, as players strive to maximize their pilot and ship beyond the tournament legal norms. By planning what you would want at level 12 with unlimited XP, you can maximize your pilot/ship and not wast a single point. You CAN do that... but I would argue against that. Firstly, because that is not the way things work in the "real" world. Despite what our school counselors tried to teach us, most of us do not learn and grow that way; we learn (hopefully) what we must to succeed at the moment, or (more often) discover that we have a particular skill/ability along th way, rather than as a defined objective. Secondly, the game of min/maxing ships/pilots is what most competitive players do when creating a list for tournament play. The result: certain combinations are proven to be very effective and others not so effective. Because of this, there is less variety in competitive play... HotAC was created as a counter to this. Therefore, I argue that you COULD plan ahead to create the most awesome ship/pilot combination but that (depending on WHY you play) your game experience will not necessarily be maximized.

3. The more players... the more fun! Six seems to be a good number.

4. Max out pilot skills/ship upgrades before increasing pilot skill.

5. Communicate with other players about tactics, maneuvers, etc... (that's what "real" pilots do) but choose your maneuver quickly and don't change it. Dogfights require quick reflexes and instant life or death decisions. So, in a dogfight game (with no real life or death consequences) why would you want to do otherwise and make decisions by committee.

6. I would not share experience. While "war" is a team sport, not everyone is equally good at it and some grow and develop at different rates. If all pilots were equally talented, there would be no heroes.

7. I would limit Predator to only one re-roll.