Shuttle Tydirium Episode 39: How to break a mission

http://shuttletydirium.podbean.com/e/episode-39-how-to-break-a-mission/

Welcome aboard the Shuttle Tydirium Podcast! This week we'll chat about our C-ROC builds, J-bot airs some grievances about the state of X-wing, and we take a hard swing at Mission 3: Dark Whispers, and we break it, Ivan Drago style.

Captain's question: 3:15

Loose restraining bolt: 14:15

Mission 3: Dark Whispers: 28:30

C-ROC builds: 1:08:05

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This is how you should approach every mission you write, as a mission designer. Mission 3: Dark Whispers is a good example of what happens if you don't.

Just finished listening to your Mission 3 discussion. I just finished reviewing my first manuscript as a Ph.D., and I laughed outloud at Phil's comment, "Send it back for major revisions." Still listening to the rest of it. looking forward to the C-ROC discussion.

10 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

Just finished listening to your Mission 3 discussion. I just finished reviewing my first manuscript as a Ph.D., and I laughed outloud at Phil's comment, "Send it back for major revisions." Still listening to the rest of it. looking forward to the C-ROC discussion.

That's exactly where I'm getting that phrase from

I am curious if you guys can point me toward any good Epic scenarios. I am planning on having some friends round over the weekend for a big Epic game and feel like it would be fun to do some sort of a scenario rather than just lining up both sides for a killing field like we usually do.

I have some vague ideas in mind (We have been using an Imperial Gozanti that I keep insisting will be converted to the Black Sun style frigate from Clone Wars (And I swear it will happen sooner or later), so the Scum side's plans can largely revolve around a stolen ship), but if there are any scenarios you can recommend it would be great to have a starting point.

Welp, I had a bunch up on mission control but that's defunct now, so... I haven't got anything that I can present nicely at the moment for epic.

One basic scenario you might try for epic is this:

200 points per side

each side must take exactly one epic ship

Deploy at R1-3 of opposite short edges of a 6X3 map

The first side to destroy the other side's huge ship wins

*edit- oh yeah, make sure you throw some obstacles on the table too. 12 obstacles at greater than range 1 of any edge and greater than range 1 from each other would be about right.

You'll need two epic ships, but that's pretty basic, like I said. The metagame in this scenario is basically the tasking of your ships to either protect your epic ship against fighter attack, attack the enemy epic ship, or to make a combined attack with all your ships at the same time. There's pros and cons to each choice.

Again, very fun podcast, thanks!

I played that scenario with a nephew and we found it fun as we never missed a chance to attack each other regardless the goal, haha. But, in this episode, I particularly love the rants. The first, long, melancholy, detailed rant (obviously due to a missing restraining bolt) was nicely done, and all too true from my perspective. I long for the days when flying was the key to winning and turrets, guaranteed damage, and stress-ers didn't exist or weren't favored. I believe a fantastically piloted list of three decked-out Interceptors or A-Wings should be absolutely top tier....but alas, it's all about sales these days. Now the second rant on the other hand was quick, visceral and unapologetic, blasting the subject in a fast volley; the poor Phantom.....boy, that was classic. Loved it guys!

Haha; sometimes I feel like I've infected the other crew with my hardcore approach to missions. I only really play scenarios that way when I'm trying to develop them and test them to see if they are breakable. I think that most of the in-box missions are perfectly fine for strictly casual play, even the ones that can really be broken like this one.

Quoting appears to be broken on my phone

So, Mangipan, I've tried doing a stolen scum Raider with the Imps trying to reclaim it and the Rebels intercepting the mission orders and wanting it too (along with extra victory conditions for each side. Eg the Rebels lost if they lost their CR90 whereas the Imps merely had to destroy the equivalent of what they lost).

It worked very well except for having 3 sides. Leaving the Raider derelict until one of the others could dock with it would have been much better. Instead, the scum ship held the balance of power which messed it up.

Keep in mind that the missions are not designed, nor playtested, with future-proofing, or even with current optimization of list, in mind.

IME, the best way to play the missions is:

(a) Using exactly the loadouts presented, and ...

(b) Where not specified, limiting yourself to ships and cards that were in circulation when the mission was published.

I know this is kind of strict, but it's the only practical way to get a good, "probably playtested and balanced," experience.

(This is, BTW, the reason that my group plays HotAC without new ships and cards. That's how HotAC was balanced, and power-creep, IMO, makes it way too easy with new ships and cards.)

That's a pretty fair standard, yes. Often we discuss or test missions based on the contemporary ships and cards, or try the suggested lists. The results vary depending on the scenario.

This particular scenario can absolutely be broken, completely, with contemporary ships and cards. When played at 100 points as described in the core set rule book, the rebel player can easily bring and place two X wings in front of a satellite token in such a way as to completely prevent the imperial from landing on the satellite, without overlapping the satellite themselves and triggering the overlap rule that allows imperials to pick up satellites physically blocked by rebel ships. The fact that the overlap rule is there means that the designers did realize that rebel blocking of the satellite could be a problem. It's likely that they did not realize that with 2 or more rebel ships you could permanently block access to a satellite without overlapping said satellite.

I would definitely cut those designers some slack though, because nobody realized back then that X wing would be a big deal. A lot of mistakes were made in those early days, it's understandable.