We saw it before. The TIE phantom was a beatable ship but it killed everything that preyed on Fat Turrets.

There was no reason for the Phantom being messed with. I mean how many tournaments did they win?

It was errated for being meta warping rather than an unstoppable wrecking ball: it had hard counters in the form of high PS PWTs but it drove just about everything else off, hence it was dealt with.

The errata was good regardless of that though: the mechanic is much more strongly thematic in its current form. The TIE phantom is somewhere rather than its previous state of being a Schrodinger's Phantom that's always in the worst possible position. It's now the only non-reactive arc dodging ship in the game and is more unique for it.

You make a lot of good points. I think Imperials are way too powerful. Rebels too weak.

I say the reason for this is almost entirely evade dice. Evade dice are basically armor; they negate damage when you get shot. BUT all the ships that don't normally have much armor or shields get them. That's weird, right?

Look at tie interceptors for example. They are supposed to be great offensively with their 4 lasers. Very slippery and agile. But have no protection beyond being agile.

Look at them in X-Wing. Great offense. Very agile BUT they also have a LOT of Evade dice, which basically functions like armor. So Tie Interceptor suddenly has excellent offense, excellent agility AND excellent defense.

Look at the B-Wing. They are supposed to have Excellent offense, poor agility and excellent defense. And yet in X-Wing minis B-Wings get torn to shreds the moment anything catches them. Why? No evade dice (armor)

So in the game of X-Wing suddenly B-Wings have excellent offense, poor agility, poor defense.

And this pretty much applies to most Rebel ships.

I say the place to start when trying to balance the game is Evade dice. They are armor disguised as speed. And that doesn't work well.

I say the place to start when trying to balance the game is Evade dice. They are armor disguised as speed. And that doesn't work well.

It works excellent as metaphor for the game. Interceptors are the thing which is supposed to evade incoming fire from a single attacker even when that attacker gets you in arc. They are that agile and star wars laser cannon projectiles are that slow and visible to allow for that with ease. The alternative would be to decrease arc size or give agile ships post maneuver movement like the phantom used to have. Do you remember who well this went because it feels so freaking unfair?

We have agility as metaphor for that and smaller post maneuver movement to represent getting better attack angles thanks to your superior agility, It works just fine. Get multiple angles on the same ship and you get past their agility, past their defensive tokens and dice. Or bring autoblasters, and the other ace counters. It is really working beautifully within the game metaphors and represents the X-Wing dogfights from the old Lucas Arts games and Legends X-Wing books very well. Maybe Wedges ability is a little too weak, maybe he should decrease enemy ships agility by two and be even a little more expensive. But the general idea and mechanics work great.

Make Contracted Scouts unique, give Manaroo a range limit, give Palpatine a range limit. You've improved the meta like 5000% and all you had to do was release a pdf on your website.

Oh, you're absolutely right that expecting it doesn't mean it happens, but since everyone is so strongly focused on the competitive scene whenever discussing things like this, I feel it's absolutely acceptable to put the burden on the player. It's even in the tournament rules if I recall correctly. When participating in a tournament, players are expected to be well versed in the rules including errata and FAQs. It no one's fault but their own if they show up with an illegal list. It's already a thing with Tactician for example.

My torp damage example was more a bit of fun based on something said upthread but could be fun. What would that rule have done to PWT if we got it instead of Autothrusters? What would it do to triple Scouts?

For Regionals and up, I'll grant you people should be well read up. But there is still enough lower level tournaments to be concerned about. While FFG can just change things as a fix, it makes the learning curve for entry higher, which will drive away customers. It is in their financial best interest to keep things as simple as possible. Yes, they've errataed things like Tactician, but because I think they didn't have any other options.

As for the torps idea, it would be interesting now, but back when Autothrusters were introduced, munitions were still broken, so I don't think it would have worked. Scouts would have either not been a thing, or they would have destroyed the use of other large base ships.

I say the place to start when trying to balance the game is Evade dice. They are armor disguised as speed. And that doesn't work well.

It works excellent as metaphor for the game. Interceptors are the thing which is supposed to evade incoming fire from a single attacker even when that attacker gets you in arc. They are that agile and star wars laser cannon projectiles are that slow and visible to allow for that with ease. The alternative would be to decrease arc size or give agile ships post maneuver movement like the phantom used to have. Do you remember who well this went because it feels so freaking unfair?

We have agility as metaphor for that and smaller post maneuver movement to represent getting better attack angles thanks to your superior agility, It works just fine. Get multiple angles on the same ship and you get past their agility, past their defensive tokens and dice. Or bring autoblasters, and the other ace counters. It is really working beautifully within the game metaphors and represents the X-Wing dogfights from the old Lucas Arts games and Legends X-Wing books very well. Maybe Wedges ability is a little too weak, maybe he should decrease enemy ships agility by two and be even a little more expensive. But the general idea and mechanics work great.

I disagree. A ship that is effective at evading fire through maneuvers should survive by staying out of the line of fire. Not by sitting in an enemy's line of fire and tanking the damage due to magical "I'm fast" armor. They can't simply fly right into enemy guns and magically not get hit. Especially if they are as large a target as Imperial fighters are with their large solar panels.

Look at a head-on or profile view of a Y-Wing (1 Evade) compared to any Tie (3 evade). Which do you think would be easier to hit? Y-Wing is an ultra narrow dart. I tell you I'd much rather be shooting at a Tie Fighter than a Y-Wing.

You make a lot of good points. I think Imperials are way too powerful. Rebels too weak.

I say the reason for this is almost entirely evade dice. Evade dice are basically armor; they negate damage when you get shot. BUT all the ships that don't normally have much armor or shields get them. That's weird, right?

Look at tie interceptors for example. They are supposed to be great offensively with their 4 lasers. Very slippery and agile. But have no protection beyond being agile.

Look at them in X-Wing. Great offense. Very agile BUT they also have a LOT of Evade dice, which basically functions like armor. So Tie Interceptor suddenly has excellent offense, excellent agility AND excellent defense.

Look at the B-Wing. They are supposed to have Excellent offense, poor agility and excellent defense. And yet in X-Wing minis B-Wings get torn to shreds the moment anything catches them. Why? No evade dice (armor)

So in the game of X-Wing suddenly B-Wings have excellent offense, poor agility, poor defense.

And this pretty much applies to most Rebel ships.

I say the place to start when trying to balance the game is Evade dice. They are armor disguised as speed. And that doesn't work well.

It's not evade dice. It's the hyper modification of those evade dice that turns it into armor, and makes Soontir the hardest ship in the game to kill barring hard counters.

There is a difference between an Avenger Squadron with a focus token or a PtL Saber Squadron with focus and evade, and Soontir Fel behind 2 focus tokens, an evade token, autothrusters, Palpatine,and an extra green die from Stealth Device.

Because yeah, before the game got stupid a PS 3 Interceptor had a single token and its bare defense dice. Compared to that, a B-Wing does have good defense.

We saw it before. The TIE phantom was a beatable ship but it killed everything that preyed on Fat Turrets.

nope, only things PS8 and lower. ah, nope, again. Rebel Captive used to troll that thing even on PS6 Oicun

It's simply the fact that Han was a direct counter, not PWT as a counter.

PS Race isn't about PWTs, ask Dash how good he fared against whipster if you believe pancakes were a problem, not PS

You make a lot of good points. I think Imperials are way too powerful. Rebels too weak.

I say the reason for this is almost entirely evade dice. Evade dice are basically armor; they negate damage when you get shot. BUT all the ships that don't normally have much armor or shields get them. That's weird, right?

Look at tie interceptors for example. They are supposed to be great offensively with their 4 lasers. Very slippery and agile. But have no protection beyond being agile.

Look at them in X-Wing. Great offense. Very agile BUT they also have a LOT of Evade dice, which basically functions like armor. So Tie Interceptor suddenly has excellent offense, excellent agility AND excellent defense.

Look at the B-Wing. They are supposed to have Excellent offense, poor agility and excellent defense. And yet in X-Wing minis B-Wings get torn to shreds the moment anything catches them. Why? No evade dice (armor)

So in the game of X-Wing suddenly B-Wings have excellent offense, poor agility, poor defense.

And this pretty much applies to most Rebel ships.

I say the place to start when trying to balance the game is Evade dice. They are armor disguised as speed. And that doesn't work well.

It's not evade dice. It's the hyper modification of those evade dice that turns it into armor, and makes Soontir the hardest ship in the game to kill barring hard counters.

There is a difference between an Avenger Squadron with a focus token or a PtL Saber Squadron with focus and evade, and Soontir Fel behind 2 focus tokens, an evade token, autothrusters, Palpatine,and an extra green die from Stealth Device.

Because yeah, before the game got stupid a PS 3 Interceptor had a single token and its bare defense dice. Compared to that, a B-Wing does have good defense.

Hyper modification coming from... all buffs and no nerfs ^^

Seriously, the power creep is the main problem, since it is the origin of most of that s....

You make a lot of good points. I think Imperials are way too powerful. Rebels too weak.

I say the reason for this is almost entirely evade dice. Evade dice are basically armor; they negate damage when you get shot. BUT all the ships that don't normally have much armor or shields get them. That's weird, right?

Look at tie interceptors for example. They are supposed to be great offensively with their 4 lasers. Very slippery and agile. But have no protection beyond being agile.

Look at them in X-Wing. Great offense. Very agile BUT they also have a LOT of Evade dice, which basically functions like armor. So Tie Interceptor suddenly has excellent offense, excellent agility AND excellent defense.

Look at the B-Wing. They are supposed to have Excellent offense, poor agility and excellent defense. And yet in X-Wing minis B-Wings get torn to shreds the moment anything catches them. Why? No evade dice (armor)

So in the game of X-Wing suddenly B-Wings have excellent offense, poor agility, poor defense.

And this pretty much applies to most Rebel ships.

I say the place to start when trying to balance the game is Evade dice. They are armor disguised as speed. And that doesn't work well.

It's not evade dice. It's the hyper modification of those evade dice that turns it into armor, and makes Soontir the hardest ship in the game to kill barring hard counters.

There is a difference between an Avenger Squadron with a focus token or a PtL Saber Squadron with focus and evade, and Soontir Fel behind 2 focus tokens, an evade token, autothrusters, Palpatine,and an extra green die from Stealth Device.

Because yeah, before the game got stupid a PS 3 Interceptor had a single token and its bare defense dice. Compared to that, a B-Wing does have good defense.

Hyper modification coming from... all buffs and no nerfs ^^

Seriously, the power creep is the main problem, since it is the origin of most of that s....

is there a power creep if a couple Core ships from wave 0 make it to the tables and rock?

Definitely not.

Sure, there is no power creep in X-wing ^^

I say the place to start when trying to balance the game is Evade dice. They are armor disguised as speed. And that doesn't work well.

It works excellent as metaphor for the game. Interceptors are the thing which is supposed to evade incoming fire from a single attacker even when that attacker gets you in arc. They are that agile and star wars laser cannon projectiles are that slow and visible to allow for that with ease. The alternative would be to decrease arc size or give agile ships post maneuver movement like the phantom used to have. Do you remember who well this went because it feels so freaking unfair?

We have agility as metaphor for that and smaller post maneuver movement to represent getting better attack angles thanks to your superior agility, It works just fine. Get multiple angles on the same ship and you get past their agility, past their defensive tokens and dice. Or bring autoblasters, and the other ace counters. It is really working beautifully within the game metaphors and represents the X-Wing dogfights from the old Lucas Arts games and Legends X-Wing books very well. Maybe Wedges ability is a little too weak, maybe he should decrease enemy ships agility by two and be even a little more expensive. But the general idea and mechanics work great.

I disagree. A ship that is effective at evading fire through maneuvers should survive by staying out of the line of fire. Not by sitting in an enemy's line of fire and tanking the damage due to magical "I'm fast" armor. They can't simply fly right into enemy guns and magically not get hit. Especially if they are as large a target as Imperial fighters are with their large solar panels.

Look at a head-on or profile view of a Y-Wing (1 Evade) compared to any Tie (3 evade). Which do you think would be easier to hit? Y-Wing is an ultra narrow dart. I tell you I'd much rather be shooting at a Tie Fighter than a Y-Wing.

Target profile from the front is super small, just a few m², against flanking the target profile would be indeed disadvantages. And we are talking about a 90° "line" of fire, not a real line. If you decrease the fire arcs to something much smaller, sure those barrel rolls gonna be enough to represent the high agility of the TIE-Interceptor.

Besides, agility is not representing the target profile, but the combination of small movement and target profile. Those evades rolled are exactly that, evading incoming fire. That focus spend on defense is exactly that, a special focus on evading.

Hitting a Y-Wing is target practise, because you are shooting at a basically stationary target. Shooting an interceptor with a single ship is an exercise in patience as you only chance to hit the thing is when the pilots fumbles to evade that slow incoming shots. Why? Because the interceptor pilot has lateral thrust which rivals his forward thrust, while the Y-Wing has a lot less thrust avaible in general and thus can not change his flight vector fast in any significant way.

Star Wars Dogfighting in interceptors is more like dodgeball than lasertag, incoming fire is slow, visible and avoidable for the most part, auto-blasters with their ability to spray are here the exception and even that is represented in the game. Now you could argue that Y-Wings should have not only one, but two agility instead, but the basic idea of the ships in X-Wing is mostly based on X-Wing, which makes the Y-Wing a lot less agile than it used to be in TCW.

…

is there a power creep if a couple Core ships from wave 0 make it to the tables and rock?

Definitely not.

A lot of people fail to grasp the concept of a power curve for balancing. Instead of using the best ships from Wave 1, they use the worst or the average of all as baseline. Which naturally leads to the claim that there is power creep each time FFG releases a ship which is not useless as FFG was not very good early on with their ships: TIE Advanced, A-Wings, Defenders, K-Fighter, Scyks, arguably some of the T-65 as well, etc all ships significantly below the power curve and in the need of upgrades. And this is not because of later releases, but applies even to the time of their release, those ships were dead on arrival. They are not the base-line and any new ship should offer options which are better than that.

What X-Wing really has is not power, but complexity creep.

When ship A is 10% mathematically below ship B, giving it a 30% buff is called ?? I'll help you, it's not "balancing".
When a ship is new, voluntarily make it a little (at least) better that its counterparts already present ? Not "balancing" either.

When nearly every ship is, at some time, in need for a buff of some kind to be brought to the tables, it's not because of "balancing".

When nearly every ship is, at some time, in need for a buff of some kind to be brought to the tables, it's not because of "balancing".

Yes, it is.

X-Wing was unbalanced at the start because the TIE fighter was better than everything else and it took them a long time to fully appreciate by how much. Hence newer ships are pretty powerful because they're balanced to the TIE fighter and older ships balanced to the X-wing are not.

Combine that with FFG usually playing safe rather than risking overpowering something and you have a recipe for a lot of Ace Packs.

Over-doing it is not balancing, it's building the need of fixes to keep customers to buy. That's clearly what FFG have been doing with X-wing.
(Like we needed that to buy hundreds of dollars of plastic ships ^^)

You speak of perfect balance as if it's easy.

I'm aware it's a really difficult thing to achieve, especially when the number of combinations are that huge.
I was more than happy at firts with the care FFG gave to the game, but for a few waves, my impression is that they now push power creep volontarily to maintain selling numbers. That being said, I sincerely hope I'm proven wrong soon

Let me tell you a quick story. This is story of Fox McCloud. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Fox was the best character in the game. In Melee, because of the extremely high end characters compared to extremely low-end characters, only half of the cast(out of 26 characters) are actually viable in tournaments. Project M was a mod for the next game in the Smash series, Brawl. It was designed as a spiritual successor to Melee. They made a terrible, terrible mistake. They chose to sort out the balance issues in Melee, by buffing every single character in the cast to be roughly as good as Fox was. The only way to do this was to give a whole bunch of characters stupid, infuriating gimmicks or otherwise just gave them many, many options.

Don't make the mistake Smash Melee did. Don't make the mistake Project M did.

Were you perchance inspired by one of MagicScrumpy's latest Youtube videos? Not trying to offend, but I happen to find his view of Project M's balance, which is very similar to yours, to be outdated. Project M did have a ridiculously overpowered cast, but that was back in version 3.02. Unfortunately, that patch lasted a full year and was also during PM's highest popularity, so it left a lasting impression. PM's philosophy of "buffing all characters to around the level of Fox" was abandoned in version 3.5 in favor of nerfing the entire cast to have "clearly defined flaws as well as strengths." And there were some pretty major nerfs. In 3.5, Fox and other Melee top tiers led tourney results since they were left mostly intact from their Melee counterparts and could wreck a lot of the PM characters. 3.6, which is now the final patch, made minor adjustments across the board that went a long way toward finally having a truly balanced-but-fun roster. At least, that's my opinion.

Perhaps what hurts PM most these days is its heavy reliance on matchup knowledge. To do well in any reasonably sized tournament, you usually have to have a lot of character-specific MU knowledge. Because there are so many good characters in PM, there's an almost overwhelming amount of information to learn. If you don't know what to expect, you can be destroyed by what you might call a "gimmick". Because of this, some people (usually coming from Melee) are turned off from the game because they don't want to (or can't) put in the time to practice and learn everything.

For Melee, I think its only "mistake" was that it was never actually patched, yet at the same time I do love the way the state of the metagame right now. It never would have developed to this point if the community didn't have to work out ways around an OP Fox. If somehow there were frequent patches for the game throughout its 15 year life, I have a hard time imagining how it would have stayed as great as it is now...

Anyway, it's nice to see a fellow smasher among the X-Wingers. But as an avid fan of Project M (who loves the game much more now than back in 3.02), I had to share my opinion.

I had a few X-Wing related thoughts I wanted to tie in, but I guess I ran out of steam. I will say this, though: With the coming of Wave X, I'm more worried than I've ever been that FFG is backing themselves into a corner. When Wave IX was announced, they talked about how they wanted to go "back to basics" with a greater focus on lining up firing arcs. I got excited at this idea as I thought it meant they were shifting their philosophy toward more gameplay-rich balance (ala PM 3.5, I suppose) ideas. But with Wave X and "Condition Cards", I'm concerned that they're once again adding another mechanic that could complicate and weigh down the meta...

Let me tell you a quick story. This is story of Fox McCloud. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Fox was the best character in the game. In Melee, because of the extremely high end characters compared to extremely low-end characters, only half of the cast(out of 26 characters) are actually viable in tournaments. Project M was a mod for the next game in the Smash series, Brawl. It was designed as a spiritual successor to Melee. They made a terrible, terrible mistake. They chose to sort out the balance issues in Melee, by buffing every single character in the cast to be roughly as good as Fox was. The only way to do this was to give a whole bunch of characters stupid, infuriating gimmicks or otherwise just gave them many, many options.

Don't make the mistake Smash Melee did. Don't make the mistake Project M did.

Were you perchance inspired by one of MagicScrumpy's latest Youtube videos? Not trying to offend, but I happen to find his view of Project M's balance, which is very similar to yours, to be outdated. Project M did have a ridiculously overpowered cast, but that was back in version 3.02. Unfortunately, that patch lasted a full year and was also during PM's highest popularity, so it left a lasting impression. PM's philosophy of "buffing all characters to around the level of Fox" was abandoned in version 3.5 in favor of nerfing the entire cast to have "clearly defined flaws as well as strengths." And there were some pretty major nerfs. In 3.5, Fox and other Melee top tiers led tourney results since they were left mostly intact from their Melee counterparts and could wreck a lot of the PM characters. 3.6, which is now the final patch, made minor adjustments across the board that went a long way toward finally having a truly balanced-but-fun roster. At least, that's my opinion.

Perhaps what hurts PM most these days is its heavy reliance on matchup knowledge. To do well in any reasonably sized tournament, you usually have to have a lot of character-specific MU knowledge. Because there are so many good characters in PM, there's an almost overwhelming amount of information to learn. If you don't know what to expect, you can be destroyed by what you might call a "gimmick". Because of this, some people (usually coming from Melee) are turned off from the game because they don't want to (or can't) put in the time to practice and learn everything.

For Melee, I think its only "mistake" was that it was never actually patched, yet at the same time I do love the way the state of the metagame right now. It never would have developed to this point if the community didn't have to work out ways around an OP Fox. If somehow there were frequent patches for the game throughout its 15 year life, I have a hard time imagining how it would have stayed as great as it is now...

Anyway, it's nice to see a fellow smasher among the X-Wingers. But as an avid fan of Project M (who loves the game much more now than back in 3.02), I had to share my opinion.

I had a few X-Wing related thoughts I wanted to tie in, but I guess I ran out of steam. I will say this, though: With the coming of Wave X, I'm more worried than I've ever been that FFG is backing themselves into a corner. When Wave IX was announced, they talked about how they wanted to go "back to basics" with a greater focus on lining up firing arcs. I got excited at this idea as I thought it meant they were shifting their philosophy toward more gameplay-rich balance (ala PM 3.5, I suppose) ideas. But with Wave X and "Condition Cards", I'm concerned that they're once again adding another mechanic that could complicate and weigh down the meta...

Hmm, no, i've not heard of MagicScrumpy. Does he focus mostly on Project M or something? I play smash for WiiU, so that's mostly where my sphere of smash is. I know what i know about PM and Melee because i have friends that play PM and because i do watch a lot of Melee tournaments. My close friend stopped playing a while ago, and told me what i currently know about the state of PM's balance, which i guess was 3.02.

I hadn't kept up with the updates of PM since nintendo killed it, so i would trust your judgment there. Thank you for sharing your outlook, i might try out PM again if you think it's more balanced than it was.

As for Wave X, i'm honestly not sure what to think? On one hand, i don't really think condition cards are anything we didnt already sort of have, but on the other hand we're once again getting ships with gimmicks. The new shuttle with coordinate, EVERYTHING about the quadjumper(reverse 1, hyper control, etc) the fact the rebels are getting a TIE Fighter that can take a crew and illicit slot, and so on. Wave 9 looks to have been designed very carefully and it really looks like two completely different teams designed wave 9 and 10.

For Melee, I think its only "mistake" was that it was never actually patched, yet at the same time I do love the way the state of the metagame right now. It never would have developed to this point if the community didn't have to work out ways around an OP Fox. If somehow there were frequent patches for the game throughout its 15 year life, I have a hard time imagining how it would have stayed as great as it is now...

Technically, Melee was patched in the PAL version. It's just nobody really accepted the PAL version.

And yes, MagicScrumpy's videos are pretty obnoxious. This is the same person who thought a good rebalancing point for Melee characters was Melee Mario, a character who virtually never shows up in tournaments. Yeah, good job making the cast "viable" that way.

For Melee, I think its only "mistake" was that it was never actually patched, yet at the same time I do love the way the state of the metagame right now. It never would have developed to this point if the community didn't have to work out ways around an OP Fox. If somehow there were frequent patches for the game throughout its 15 year life, I have a hard time imagining how it would have stayed as great as it is now...

Technically, Melee was patched in the PAL version. It's just nobody really accepted the PAL version.

And yes, MagicScrumpy's videos are pretty obnoxious. This is the same person who thought a good rebalancing point for Melee characters was Melee Mario, a character who virtually never shows up in tournaments. Yeah, good job making the cast "viable" that way.

Mario is a little... too low in the tier list to balance off of. I would say if i had to choose a character to balance around, probably Luigi AT THE LOWEST, Captain Falcon at the highest. So somewhere around Dr. Mario, Samus, Pikachu.

I would argue the balance issue is based on the the fact that the only objective of competitive play is Deathmatch, while it may seem like only having one game mode, would make it easier to balance it really is the opposite.

In Deathmatch there are two ways to make a ship more powerfull increasing its offense or its defense(I'm including regen, defense modifiers and arc dodging ability aka pre-nerf Phantom decloaking), if you go increased Defense you run into the Fat Han issue where games last a long time and things don't die so we had to go to partial points on large ships.

If we buff offense then you get Torp Scout Alpha Strike lists where everything is a matter of who shoots first or has the best dice and games only last 10 min and aren't very fun either

Granted it is easy for me to say that adding more scenarios and the like to competitive play would make things easier but there is the issue of having to balance who chooses the objectives, what the objectives are, and how things would work in a thematic sense (IE a typical territory/objective take and hold scenario that is a staple of ground based games doesn't really work in a dogfight setting since the ships are constantly moving and can't camp an objective) which if FFG could pull off would be amazing but would take a lot of work and play testing

I would argue the balance issue is based on the the fact that the only objective of competitive play is Deathmatch, while it may seem like only having one game mode, would make it easier to balance it really is the opposite.

In Deathmatch there are two ways to make a ship more powerfull increasing its offense or its defense(I'm including regen, defense modifiers and arc dodging ability aka pre-nerf Phantom decloaking), if you go increased Defense you run into the Fat Han issue where games last a long time and things don't die so we had to go to partial points on large ships.

If we buff offense then you get Torp Scout Alpha Strike lists where everything is a matter of who shoots first or has the best dice and games only last 10 min and aren't very fun either

Granted it is easy for me to say that adding more scenarios and the like to competitive play would make things easier but there is the issue of having to balance who chooses the objectives, what the objectives are, and how things would work in a thematic sense (IE a typical territory/objective take and hold scenario that is a staple of ground based games doesn't really work in a dogfight setting since the ships are constantly moving and can't camp an objective) which if FFG could pull off would be amazing but would take a lot of work and play testing

I hear this idea often on these forums as some sort of magic fix for the meta, but I haven't seen any ideas for actual missions.

The meta likely wouldn't change much unless certain objectives forced you to play certain ships.

I would argue the balance issue is based on the the fact that the only objective of competitive play is Deathmatch, while it may seem like only having one game mode, would make it easier to balance it really is the opposite.(...)

Granted it is easy for me to say that adding more scenarios and the like to competitive play would make things easier but there is the issue of having to balance who chooses the objectives, what the objectives are, and how things would work in a thematic sense (IE a typical territory/objective take and hold scenario that is a staple of ground based games doesn't really work in a dogfight setting since the ships are constantly moving and can't camp an objective) which if FFG could pull off would be amazing but would take a lot of work and play testing

Design me a mission where a list of very mobile, invincible ships that are strong offensively wouldn't just dominate anyways.

I hear this idea often on these forums as some sort of magic fix for the meta, but I haven't seen any ideas for actual missions.

The meta likely wouldn't change much unless certain objectives forced you to play certain ships.

Escort of a feeble convoy (autoloss with loss of convoy) is a challenge even for this kind of ships. Offensively good stuff is often bad at protecting.

That said, it would help only slightly. If the desigm has already moved itself into this corner, its difficult to get out if there.

Wave X really too early to say something yet (remember we even have HotR there lurking, which might shift things). Quadjumper is gimmicky, but probably a lot of fun, and nice or scenarios. But I am a bit wary of the Upsilon, 4dice and coordinate - could be like "thought you finally blocked my highly mobile superace, nope it gets help from the shuttle".