1 hour ago, Punning Pundit said:

I've given this problem a _lot_ of thought (and I've written about it on these forums. ), and here's what I've come up with:

Anything that makes ships more resistant to burst damage will only further marginalize 2 dice attacks. Similarly: anything that creates more burst damage (IE: adding more red dice) creates pressure to have highly defensive ships- which marginalizes 2 dice attacks.

Your solution, which I do like conceptually, effectively turns each part of a swarm into a mini fel or Whisper. That puts pressure to only bring ships that can reliably punch through 4 or 5 green dice. If you can do that, you you potentially one shot a B-Wing. That's _rough_.

In my mind, the trick is to make 2 die attacks themselves reliable. If that starts to happen, B-Wings, Y-Wings, and maybe even Punishers start being able to survive long enough to be useful again.

Well taking that in mind, simply reword side 1 to say the defenders lose a green die and side 2 would say to roll 1 less red die (minimum of 1 for both).

That still conceptually achieves what I was looking for and doesn't escalate the dice creep that you're referring to

I will say, in our playtesting for Hoth, putting a majority of your points into almost any other TIE is far more viable than the standard TIE fighter.

...I'd still put the Punisher below the TIE fighter

Dear god 11 ships would be a nightmare to fly. Ive flown 8 quite a few times and its fun and challenging to fly them properly, cant even imagine 11 lol

How about...

Diversionary tactics (title, unique)

Before performing an attack, you may announce a Diversionary attack instead. This attack deals no damage. For each [boom] or [kaboom] result, one other friendly tie fighter within range two of the enemy ship can roll one additional attack die this turn.

I like the idea of a title to revitalize the TIE fighter. But it should be as true to the source material as possible - it should be focused on making the TIE a fearsome ship when encountered in large numbers, but individually expendable and unimpressive.

So from my point of view, a bad title would be something that gives individual TIEs extra actions, attack or maneuverability. Stuff that makes individual TIEs more efficient or hard-hitting or slippery. Something that turns the TIE fighter into some sort of super-TIE.

A better title would be something in the spirit of swarm leader - something that requires you to fly several TIEs as a team to increase their power. That could come in a number of forms - something to up their defense, attack, or action economy, but whatever it is it should have as a core requirement the use of multiple TIE fighters operating together.

So something like:

TIE/LN

Title, TIE Fighter only, Imperial Navy only (no TIE/fo)

When attacking or defending, if you are at range one of another friendly ship with the TIE/LN title that also has your target, or the ship that is attacking you in its firing arc at range 1-2, you may reroll one die.

1 point

That might be overpowered for the cost, but you should be able to get my point with that example. I think that making the TIE fighter relevant again would be a great move for the game's health

I think the TIE Fighter is probably right where it is, but it should be a useful marker for the health of the game that they are viable in the game. The TIE Fighter is arguably the most iconic ship in Star Wars and *should* be an evergreen stalwart. You don't pull TIEs up to where they're at least useful, you push everything else back down.

I agree that something like a title takes away from the stripped-down purity of what TIE Fighters are, both in game terms and in the 'fluff' of the Star Wars universe.

2 hours ago, Babaganoosh said:

TIE/LN

Title, TIE Fighter only, Imperial Navy only (no TIE/fo)

When attacking or defending, if you are at range one of another friendly ship with the TIE/LN title that also has your target, or the ship that is attacking you in its firing arc at range 1-2, you may reroll one die.

1 point

That might be overpowered for the cost, but you should be able to get my point with that example. I think that making the TIE fighter relevant again would be a great move for the game's health

I like the idea of this, but consider:

Accuracy Corrector Tempest Squadron Pilots get 2 guaranteed hits + an action every turn and _still_ don't see play. So I don't think rerolls will quite get us to where we want the TIE/ln to be.

I have played around with the idea of lowering an enemy's agility for every TIE/LN at range one of the attacker. I like the idea of swarming them _quite_ a bit.

And fwiw: I think the TIE/FO needs as much of a buff as the LN. Since it's mechanically difficult to differentiate them, and they both need help, I'm ok with letting them both have the same buff.

A couple of recently released cards could have brought back the Tie swarm, but were either unique or faction specific, swarm leader and fearlessness come to mind.

Playing a crack swarm through last seasons regionals I got tired of its biggest weaknesses, losing Howlrunner early and not having a late game ship.

The standard tie is basically the bedrock of the game. It is the only thing that does not need a title.

1 minute ago, Jetfire said:

The standard tie is basically the bedrock of the game. It is the only thing that does not need a title.

Honest question, so you see them viable in competitive play as something other than a blocker or a point filler (because that's a function of point cost and nothing else)?

because if not, then you're functionally agreeing that they do need some help... can't be the bedrock if it's not a part of the active game.

I think most of the ships in this game need less a buff than a nerf to the top-ranked ships. Hyper-efficiency is the issue, not weakness.

It used to be that a list would perhaps contain just one ship capable of stacking up on 2+ tokens, Soontir Fel was the poster boy for this era (and that was just a year ago), now we can have squads of ships sitting on 2 or more defensive tokens and said ships are already plenty beefy with 3 green dice, lot's of health, or both. No 2-attack ship swarm can stand up to such overwhelming defense, mainly because it's near impossible to manage the number of fire arcs so that you could efficiently focus down the right targets, you run out of in-arc attacking ships faster then your opponent runs out of tokens.

The issue is then compounded by those ship's ability to follow up hyper-defense with on-par offence too. It stands to reason that if you can ignore your opponent's offence while you're dealing damage back, you win.

So long as hyper-efficiency remains an issue we'll keep having this issue where well balanced ships (Like the U-wing, Striker, Tie/SF) will be ignored on-release because they can't compete with existing monsters.

Think of it this way: There's loads of people who are way too wealthy, whilst there are also people who are poor. Printing money isn't going to solve the problem, that just causes inflation, you gotta redistribute the wealth in some other, fair, manner (See: Scandinavian Governments).

20 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

If they ever do X-wing 2.0 it would be cool if all TIE fighters had a built in Howlrunner ability (i.e. When attacking you may re-roll one attack die if you are at range 1 of another TIE Fighter). It would make throwing a couple of generics into a list pretty appealing and it would make you fly them thematically in formation.

A 2nd edition is probably a long ways off though (or its never going to happen) so that's just a pipe dream.

Well... i believe they need to do a second edition (let's use the name they use with descent, mansion of madness and ...) for multiple reason. The number of dice is one of them.

the problem is that when ffg build the game, they did build it with only the wave 1 and probably 2 in their head... no more. With all the upgrades that came out, it's hard to balance the game. A single update can become overpriced if it's cost is increased by one or to efficient if it cost 1 less.

i wanted to re do all the cards and ships stats/cost balance, but this is a huge work for probably nothing if no one want to play it. My idea is to :

- increase all cost (ship and upgrades) by about 10, making a one thousand list.

- double the ship stats, increase or decrease some attack. For exemple the hwk with it's 1 attack dice would not become a 2 attack die but 3... allowing it to catch up a bit with the tie fighter and it's 4 ad.

-change some game effects. Or add a requierement for some cards.

I believe that push the limits is way to efficient and some ships just can't do without it... but nerfing this card would be the death of many list... if every ship could do the second action for a stress but the ptl would only allow to avoid taking the stress (if the second action is in the action bar), we could see a lot more new list. I believe the a-wing would be a huge winner here, becoming viable. But every upgrades that allow to do a special action would also win more love ( i don't see many rage, squad leader, daredevil and even marksmanship is almost extinct just to name the elite action upgrades... the only one. We still see sometime is expose on ships without agility, but even here they are not common because it,s better to have a focus)

@tsuruki

good points. Maybe like Pundit said, we need mechanics that let a 2 dice attack have a chance...

and I don't get the lore complaints either... In A New Hope the Rebels kill 2 TIEs... The TIEs kill 4-5 Rebels (not the towers, the TIEs).

In fact if you ignore the Falcon and moments the Imperials are intentionally letting the rebels go, "movie" Imperial TIE fighters have a very solid kill rate against the rebels and don't die in droves

There are elite TIE/Ln squads and wings, and a couple titles that strip either dice or tokens and are linked to fielding 4-6 TIEs would go a long way to making an icon competitive again in a thematic and appropriate way.

I maintain that if the TIE fighter is being considered below the curve then we need nerfs, not buffs.

3 minutes ago, Blue Five said:

I maintain that if the TIE fighter is being considered below the curve then we need nerfs, not buffs.

I think most people would agree with you if that were practical, but I think that amount of nerf would be hard to implement. It's essentially an X wing 2.0, in my opinion.

it's much easier to buff the TIE back into relevance. That said, that kind of buffing leads to power creep of the same sort that obsoleted the TIE in the first place.

57 minutes ago, tsuruki said:

Think of it this way: There's loads of people who are way too wealthy, whilst there are also people who are poor. Printing money isn't going to solve the problem, that just causes inflation, you gotta redistribute the wealth in some other, fair, manner (See: Scandinavian Governments).

Inflation destroys debt, and debt reduction is poverty relief. The major problem with the world economy over the past ~15 years has been deflation: debt has been more expensive to pay off than it should be.

And yes: concentration of wealth is a huge and related problem.

But now I'm wildly off topic.

Quote

it's much easier to buff the TIE back into relevance.

That'd only fix the TIE and not everything balanced to the TIE.

The TIE is the benchmark to which previous Aces expansions were balanced. Buff it and you move the benchmark. Everything else needs fixing again.

It's much better to nerf the small number of power cards that warp ships to meta dominance than to buff every other ship in the game every time you make a mistake in some endless game of leapfrog.

Quote

I think that amount of nerf would be hard to implement. It's essentially an X wing 2.0, in my opinion.

Take a leaf out of Netrunner's book and have a Most Wanted list with extra point costs for cards on it.

14 minutes ago, Blue Five said:

That'd only fix the TIE and not everything balanced to the TIE.

The TIE is the benchmark to which previous Aces expansions were balanced. Buff it and you move the benchmark. Everything else needs fixing again.

It's much better to nerf the small number of power cards that warp ships to meta dominance than to buff every other ship in the game every time you make a mistake in some endless game of leapfrog.

Take a leaf out of Netrunner's book and have a Most Wanted list with extra point costs for cards on it.

If all things were balanced off the TIE... Then we'd not have this issue... If things were costed off the TIE, then I understand. I'm confident that either FFG misspoke or the community misunderstood... Base cost, we have, balanced off of... We do not

A good way to nerf without a cost list or a rewrite would be to give "de-buffing" abilities to a prolific unit.... Like the TIE (and the XWing).

They need a generic mod just like Lightweight Frame but for offense.

Precision lasers 1 point Mod.

When attacking with a primary weapon , during the compair results step, if there are more defense dice than attack dice you may cancel one defense die. You may only equip if your primary weapon value is 2 or less.

it would fix all 2 attack ships.

2 hours ago, Lobokai said:

If all things were balanced off the TIE... Then we'd not have this issue... If things were costed off the TIE, then I understand. I'm confident that either FFG misspoke or the community misunderstood... Base cost, we have, balanced off of... We do not

I'm not sure you appreciate how difficult balancing is. Since about Wave 4 ish everything's meant to be balanced to the power level of the TIE fighter. That doesn't mean it's easy to do.

37 minutes ago, Blue Five said:

I'm not sure you appreciate how difficult balancing is. Since about Wave 4 ish everything's meant to be balanced to the power level of the TIE fighter. That doesn't mean it's easy to do.

A'contraire, I do appreciate the difficulty of balance. And I know that to achieve balance its sometimes required to change both sides of the scale. You need a little weight in both the pans when the beam is waggling.

You, on the other hand seem to think that balance, once off, requires never touching one side of the equation. The balance is already off. Get a TIE a green token or dice manipulation when working in concert with its squad mates and a now destitute part of our hangers might see a little action again.

5 hours ago, MenaceNsobriety said:

They need a generic mod just like Lightweight Frame but for offense.

Precision lasers 1 point Mod.

When attacking with a primary weapon , during the compair results step, if there are more defense dice than attack dice you may cancel one defense die. You may only equip if your primary weapon value is 2 or less.

it would fix all 2 attack ships.

I was all set to love this, but...

B-Wing, defending against a TIE at range 3 through a rock. TIE Fighter shooting a TIE Interceptor at range 3- even without autothrusters. Etc.

I think the germ of a good idea is here, but a whole lot of ships derive all of their defensive power from those green dice. One of the reasons I worded my idea the way I did was to make sure that 2 attack ships were actively working to get the best shots they could. And I didn't want to negate a defender's primary ability to stay alive, just tone it down a bit.

6 minutes ago, Punning Pundit said:

I was all set to love this, but...

B-Wing, defending against a TIE at range 3 through a rock. TIE Fighter shooting a TIE Interceptor at range 3- even without autothrusters. Etc.

I think the germ of a good idea is here, but a whole lot of ships derive all of their defensive power from those green dice. One of the reasons I worded my idea the way I did was to make sure that 2 attack ships were actively working to get the best shots they could. And I didn't want to negate a defender's primary ability to stay alive, just tone it down a bit.

I would be fine with slapping range 1-2 on it. I am not sure it really needs it because it would be competing with a lot of very useful Mods but I guess you are right that they should have to work at least a little to get better shots. Oh and Omega Leader might be a problem with this but you could get around that with clever wording like force the defender to cancel a dice result of your choice. That way OL ability works against the upgrade instead of helping but then it gets kind of wordy and confusing.

6 minutes ago, MenaceNsobriety said:

I would be fine with slapping range 1-2 on it. I am not sure it really needs it because it would be competing with a lot of very useful Mods but I guess you are right that they should have to work at least a little to get better shots. Oh and Omega Leader might be a problem with this but you could get around that with clever wording like force the defender to cancel a dice result of your choice. That way OL ability works against the upgrade instead of helping but then it gets kind of wordy and confusing.

Or even make it - for a Range 1-2 attack that is not obstructed, the defender rolls 1 less die, instead of canceling.

1 hour ago, Cpt Hellcat said:

Or even make it - for a Range 1-2 attack that is not obstructed, the defender rolls 1 less die, instead of canceling.

Can't really do that without hurting low agility ships more than high. The point is to try to make 2 attack matter against harder to hit targets. Plus the way I worded it evade tokens/C-3PO/Latts would be counted in with the defense total so they would not be as effective against 2 attack ships.