I'm going to be a bad person.

I'm going to talk about the silly little game called Star Trek Attack Wing. Hear me out, do not run away just yet.

I've played both Attack Wing and X-Wing since day 1. I prefer X-wing for the most part... but there are a few small instances where Attack Wing actually did a good thing (I know, hard to believe).

Here are those instances:

- Pilot cards separate from Ship Cards (This opens up so much more design space - instead of having to create titles like Alliance Overhaul, that ability would have been built into the aRC-170 and the pilots would have been separate.)
- 6 Straight and 4 Bank maneuvers. (Again, opens up more design space by adding more maneuvers - and if we limited these top speeds to small based ships, might have allowed things like the TIE/IN and A-Wing to appear to be as fast as large based ships). [i am guessing that X-wing is getting the reverse maneuver with the Quadjumper.]
- An incremental points increase in the game over time, without changing the round length in tournaments. That's right, Attack wing has gone from 100pts 60min rounds to 120pts 60min rounds, and finally 130pts 60min rounds. (It also caps ship points per ship and requires a min of 3 ships.)

I personally think X-wing should have moved to a 110pt or 120pt game size with the release of the FA Starter - but not increased the round time. 75 minutes is more than enough per round. I do not think a 125pt is necessary. Start the change more gradually, 110pts or 120pts.

However, I do not expect things to change from their current state anytime soon.

And now I await the flames.

I will just add 25 point Ndru Suhlak to the triple U-boats.

- Pilot cards separate from Ship Cards (This opens up so much more design space - instead of having to create titles like Alliance Overhaul, that ability would have been built into the aRC-170 and the pilots would have been separate.)

I agree with your other two points but not this. Some pilot abilities would be very broken in different ships.

How about Biggs in a YT-1300 with the MF title and 3PO? That would be fun to chew through right?

Or Fel in a Tie Defender with the X-7 title? Now that would be a token stack.

Uncoupling pilots and ships means that abilities would need to be less powerful to compensate as it would be easier to build an overpowered ship.

FFG will likely never change the point value of the standard tournament match, because that's the point value they balance things around. That however doesn't mean people can't play with whatever value they happen to like.

I think it's 1) lazy design to only balance with a single points value in mind and 2) inevitable that an X Wing 2.0 will be released at some point. And when it is released, I fully expect either an across the board points reduction for everything, or for the official points cap to be raised. Because how else do you get people to buy more ships?

- Pilot cards separate from Ship Cards (This opens up so much more design space - instead of having to create titles like Alliance Overhaul, that ability would have been built into the aRC-170 and the pilots would have been separate.)

I agree with your other two points but not this. Some pilot abilities would be very broken in different ships.

How about Biggs in a YT-1300 with the MF title and 3PO? That would be fun to chew through right?

Or Fel in a Tie Defender with the X-7 title? Now that would be a token stack.

Uncoupling pilots and ships means that abilities would need to be less powerful to compensate as it would be easier to build an overpowered ship.

One needs to consider that if ships and pilots had initially been designed to be separate, their abilities would likely not be the same ones we see today.

- Pilot cards separate from Ship Cards (This opens up so much more design space - instead of having to create titles like Alliance Overhaul, that ability would have been built into the aRC-170 and the pilots would have been separate.)

I agree with your other two points but not this. Some pilot abilities would be very broken in different ships.

How about Biggs in a YT-1300 with the MF title and 3PO? That would be fun to chew through right?

Or Fel in a Tie Defender with the X-7 title? Now that would be a token stack.

Uncoupling pilots and ships means that abilities would need to be less powerful to compensate as it would be easier to build an overpowered ship.

One needs to consider that if ships and pilots had initially been designed to be separate, their abilities would likely not be the same ones we see today.

Agreed. With separate pilots you would need to design from day 1 with that in mind. Not outside the realm of possibility if a 2.0 version is ever launched but at the same time it is not something that I would personally wish to see in the game.

I prefer pilots to have strong abilities and to have a thematic link to the ships they are flying.

FFG will likely never change the point value of the standard tournament match, because that's the point value they balance things around. That however doesn't mean people can't play with whatever value they happen to like.

I think it's 1) lazy design to only balance with a single points value in mind and 2) inevitable that an X Wing 2.0 will be released at some point. And when it is released, I fully expect either an across the board points reduction for everything, or for the official points cap to be raised. Because how else do you get people to buy more ships?

For a X-wing 2.0 I would expect other increments. Probably the designers never saw it coming that it will get so big, sucessful and nowadays complexity-creep-ridden.

100pts is too small, now. Many upgrades would need point values like 0,5 or 2,5.

With e.g. doubling the standard TIE to something like 20/24pts, you have more freedom in pricing updates more correct.

With e.g. doubling the standard TIE to something like 20/24pts, you have more freedom in pricing updates more correct.

I've always felt that it was a mistake for a game to use low triple or even double digits for things like this. I don't know that you need a 1000, but I think 500 is a better value, because then you have more room to fine tune the value of something.

I don't mean just X-Wing, I mean games like Warmahordes with it's one time 35 point standard game or other games with very low point values.

I definitely agree with the granulation being too course with pts. Doubling the value of everything would have helped a lot, but it also makes the maths harder when creating squads... I wish we had the 4 turns, slopes that ST-AW had it would be great for fast lancer types which can't turn fast.

Seperating pilots would be awful for the game, The thing that gives a lot of ships there character EG. HWK is the fact that their pilots fit certain roles or synergise with the ships.

Doubling the value of everything would have helped a lot, but it also makes the maths harder when creating squads...

Sure it does, but with the squad builders doing the math for you, or just about everyone having a calculator on their phone I'm not sure that's much of a barrier.

Myself I would of went with 500 points as the standard value and price cards accordingly. So a Academy Pilot would cost 60 points, Wedge would cost 145, ect...

Then that would allow you to make an upgrade that's not quite as useful as PtL cost 12-13 points.

A 2.0 release that completely shakes things up and voids previous purchases may be a way to get some to buy new products but it's also certain to alienate a HUGE percentage of your current customer group. Maybe you're tolerant of someone saying "all of those old purchase you made are no longer useful or at least not useful unless you buy X" but when a game does that all it tells me is "we're done" so I mostly stop buying anything for it.

There are revisions that could be made without voiding everything that has come before and alienating many people but splitting pilots and ships is one of those changes gone too far. Increasing the point value of everything to allow for more "steps" between things is probably tolerable as it may just be changing numbers.

For everyone who wants to say that the value of a point is too much difference are correct. Had the game started out at 200 or even 500 points with the cost of everything nominally increased x2/x5 there would be more room to price for nuances. Does it make the math harder? Sure but so does going from dealing with numbers 1-10 to the numbers 1-100. If you have a hard time with the math of 200 or 500 points squadrons then I suspect you may also have trouble with 100 points as well.

X-Wing is far from the only game that likely suffers from not enough steps. Sometimes they may have started ok but then as things grow the need for smaller steps became clearer but there are other games where the steps were just too big to start out with.

I've seen mention of the six straight and four bank maneuvers and can agree they could have a place in X-Wing but then one may need to reconsider Actions such as Boost and SLAM which tack on additional movement.

I've seen mention of the six straight and four bank maneuvers and can agree they could have a place in X-Wing but then one may need to reconsider Actions such as Boost and SLAM which tack on additional movement.

Back to ST-AW again... but there are plenty of extra movement actions in ST-AW. They are certainly not as prevalent as in X-wing, but they exist, and sometimes they are even faster than X-wing's. For one thing Sensor Ghost (ST-AW's barrel roll - typically only used by cloaked ships) - allows you to use the 1 or 2 speed ruler for barrel rolling. It has been faster since day uno.

I vote for a squad points increase to 125 or 120.

The primary factor is my strong desire for tournament meta to MOSTLY consist of squads with 3-6 ships. As it stands, competitive squads are mostly 2-3 ships. Personally, a game of X-wing is way more fun with more ships on the board and 2-ship lists are not thematic to me. Sure, epic games have more ships, but I strongly prefer 75 minute games.

How about a 100/125 game? You get 125 points to build your list but you are limited to spending 100 points max on the ships themselves. This would limit list builds to what is already possible but you get an additional 25 points to spend on upgrades.

How about a 100/125 game? You get 125 points to build your list but you are limited to spending 100 points max on the ships themselves. This would limit list builds to what is already possible but you get an additional 25 points to spend on upgrades.

You would see swarm builds drop out of the meta.

while i wouldnt mind it going to 125, i dont think its needed.

Its quite rare to make a list thats more than 5pts or less over the 100pt limit. What would you gain with that extra 20 or so points? True, some lists wouldnt have to dump that moderately important upgrade just to be legal and it functions without it, just not optimally, but you'd still have a few points left.

I think the biggest reason they never increased it is swarms. If it goes to 125, i can field crackhowlie, 6 blackcracks, and an academy and still have 4pts for a SD or a hull upgrade or a good init bid. Or just 10 academies. With those numbers, a LOT of pilots lose their strength.

In epic a lot of the time the named pilots are ignored because they just get overwhelmed so fast its hilarious. 125pts wouldnt be AS bad, but any increase in points resulting in more sources of damage could skew things badly.

Armada increased their point to 400 because when they released the game they wanted to bring in Large Ships, but needed to get the game out first. When they introduced Large Ships they realized they couldnt make them feel epic enough within the 300pt limit, as they were either oddly weak for their size or insanely powerful for their price. Increasing the pointcost there was a good idea, and didnt really conform to spamming because the game limits that as it is. Spamming small base ships was always a thing and really only worked because fighters sucked at first, but they dont anymore.

I dont really follow the meta for Armada since its kinda dead around here unfortunately, but i see more negative with the Rogue inclusion than increased point max.

How about a 100/125 game? You get 125 points to build your list but you are limited to spending 100 points max on the ships themselves. This would limit list builds to what is already possible but you get an additional 25 points to spend on upgrades.

A big issue I have with anything like that is what is Howlrunner besides being a packaged six point upgrade of an Academy Pilot? This may be separating the pilot from the ship but upgrade pilots ARE upgrades even if they are still stuck in a specific ship.