How about some kind of Flight Leader Title or EPT card that allows you to deal out three Condition cards called 'Concentrate Fire' to 2 other fighters and yourself at the start of the game? When you pick a defender, if those 2 fighters have the defender in arc, they may combine their roll with yours for an attack of 2 apiece. Put in a stipulation on the condition that the dice can't be modified or something.

Pretty much, 2 dice ships are the Imperial Guardsmen of X-Wing at this point (or maybe HWKs are? Whatever.). But the big strength of Guardsmen isn't that their flashlight is powerful, it is that there's a lot of flashlights firing at once and the odds eventually produce a handful of hits similar to what a small squad of SPEHSS Marines might put out.

You're not going to strip tokens as effectively as 3 strikes, and range 1 won't hold an advantage, but you'd still have the opportunity to try to shotgun damage through and give the 2 dice fighters a fighting chance against all the evasive hijinks we see today.

3 hours ago, MenaceNsobriety said:

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.

That's why I put a floor of 2 agility on an offensive buff. If you work hard, you can drop a Phantom in half, but you probably shouldn't be able to drop it more. And X-Wings don't need a further nerf.

12 hours ago, Lobokai said:

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.

I feel like I'm not getting what I'm trying to say across so I'll try another way.

Assume for a moment that you can define the balance state of a ship as a single number: the higher it is, the more powerful it is relative to its cost. However, you can only see the balance number for a ship after you release it.

Wave 1 you aim to give all ships a balance number of 1. After analysing the results post-release this is what you see.

Ship A: 1.3
Ship B: 0.9
Ship C: 1.1
Ship D: 0.6

At this early stage everything's a bit of a mess. You decide to buff B and D in your first Aces pack and fix C later. The next wave contains Aces 1 and four new ships you've attempted to balance to 1.3. You also play it safe on anything new and unpredictable.

Ship A: 1.3
Ship B + Aces1: 1.2
Ship C: 1.1
Ship D + Aces1: 1.3
Ships E, F, G: 1.3

Ship H: 0.9

Most of the ships in the new wave turn out okay except Ship H, a ship with a new mechanic. You overestimate the impact of this mechanic. H rapidly falls out of use. That's sort of okay though, you can buff it with C in the next ace pack. Enter your third wave, with Aces 2 and Ships I and J. Eager to avoid the Ship H screwup you're a bit less cautious this time.

Ship A: 1.3
Ship B + Aces1: 1.2
Ship C + Aces2: 1.6
Ship D + Aces1: 1.3

Ship E, F, G: 1.3
Ship H + Aces2: 1.4

Ship I: 2.0
Ship J: 1.3

Unfortunately you've screwed up. You've overbuffed C and I contained an unforeseen combo that means it's dominating the metagame. People are complaining that Ship A, a long time staple of the game, is falling out of use.

You've got two options here.

Find a way to nerf I and C.
Find a way to buff A, B, D, E, F, G, H and J.

Operations specialist is the tie's new title.

17 hours ago, Babaganoosh said:

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.

Easier perhaps? But only in the near term. Buffing the TIE back into relevance only pushes the X-Wing and others further down. It isn't one buff you're suggesting but rather a dozen ships that will have to be looked at and possibly buffed to keep up. Or as I like to say, we need a fix to fix the last fix, but don't forget this breaks other fixes that will now need fixing.

Isn't this what is discouraging many players? I'm reluctant to say it but maybe the best solution is X-Wing 2.0.

Here how I would do it.

See my other thread

2 hours ago, Blue Five said:

I feel like I'm not getting what I'm trying to say across so I'll try another way....

....You've got two options here.

Find a way to nerf I and C.
Find a way to buff A, B, D, E, F, G, H and J.

I understand your premise, have since you've said it. I just disagree. Your stating an option A or B situation, but we're talking about C. While this thread started talking about buffs, we moved on to swarm incentives and instead of adding dice, making dice work. In particular 2 red dice platforms. That's when you entered this discussion, so that's the point I'll continue to refer to

what we are talking about is rewarding a certain list composition when used in a certain way... In this case, swarms.

To avoid piling more dice on in a creep, I'm instead prosing the idea of giving swarming a mechanic that either removes green dice or tokens. Giving sequential shots from additional same ships being able to "debuff" already bloated ships. After going back and forth with others, I like the idea that each additional same ship after the first forces green tokens to be spent at no effect, if there are no tokens, then reduce the dice pool by one (Pundit likes a floor of 2, I agree). You only get this ability if you have a set number of same ships at deployment (I really think it should be 5 but maybe 4). Again, we're not altering stats we're incentivizing using ships left behind.

This isn't a flat buff, you can fly around it if you're the opponent

I then like the idea of whatever card best unlocks this reward to have a second side. This would show a squadron going more defensive than aggressive. I'd think flipping this card at the end of the combat phase would be the most appropriate, gives the opponent a fair warning.

This side would allow a single reroll if the attacker is in another friendly ship's fire arc at a given range (I like 1-2, but some playtesting would obviously be needed). Defense needs to be a softer buff than offense, otherwise a swarm v swarm battle would drag on.

Incidentally this swarm reward could help AWings too if it wasn't Imperial or TIE specific (which maybe it should be).

Or you could deal with the small number of problem upgrades with simple point taxes and not pile on unneccessary mechanical complexity.

45 minutes ago, Blue Five said:

Or you could deal with the small number of problem upgrades with simple point taxes and not pile on unneccessary mechanical complexity.

Sure, but how do you get the point taxes out there? Miniature gamers aren't CCG gamers. Good luck getting that into everybody's hands. To be functional, you'd need to reprint cards. Has FFG done this before at a game wide scale?

And at some level, points don't matter. If I can't break your defenses what do I care if you paid 4 points more than you used to?

Run away buffing and ridiculous dice pools are the problem now. Mechanics solves that.

23 hours ago, MenaceNsobriety said:

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.

I agree with the part about limiting it to 2 AT ships. So what I meant was to keep your proposed idea (if there are more green dice than red, then cancel 1 green) for attacks at range 1-2 and if not obstructed (which someone else was questioning). That way it would reward good positioning w/o negating a defenders normal bonuses for range 3 and obstacles. My 2nd point was simply that instead of cancelling a die after it's rolled, the defender can just roll one less die. But now rereading your reply, you're actually letting the attacker cancel 1 Evade result, is that right?

12 hours ago, Cpt Hellcat said:

I agree with the part about limiting it to 2 AT ships. So what I meant was to keep your proposed idea (if there are more green dice than red, then cancel 1 green) for attacks at range 1-2 and if not obstructed (which someone else was questioning). That way it would reward good positioning w/o negating a defenders normal bonuses for range 3 and obstacles. My 2nd point was simply that instead of cancelling a die after it's rolled, the defender can just roll one less die. But now rereading your reply, you're actually letting the attacker cancel 1 Evade result, is that right?

Yes. Basically like a permanent crack shot if certain conditions are met.

18 hours ago, Lobokai said:

Sure, but how do you get the point taxes out there? Miniature gamers aren't CCG gamers. Good luck getting that into everybody's hands. To be functional, you'd need to reprint cards. Has FFG done this before at a game wide scale?

And at some level, points don't matter. If I can't break your defenses what do I care if you paid 4 points more than you used to?

Run away buffing and ridiculous dice pools are the problem now. Mechanics solves that.

"Has FFG done this before at a game wide scale?"

You're familiar with the FAQ, no? The big tournament essential document in which FFG change the intepretation of and sometimes outright errata cards? The game already requires you to read that document to play it at tournament level: otherwise you're not going to know that Heavy Scyk gives you extra hull now and Daredevil isn't red.

In Netrunner, another of FFG's games, they also have a Most Wanted list that puts Influence taxes on meta warping cards. They could easily do that for X-Wing. It's less extreme than what they already do with the FAQ.

"And at some level, points don't matter. If I can't break your defenses what do I care if you paid 4 points more than you used to?"

We haven't hit that level. It's still a question of value rather than invunerability.

"Run away buffing and ridiculous dice pools are the problem now."

Yet you're suggesting more buffs.

No. I am not. I am proposing debuffs. Deflating of dice rolls and removal of tokens. That's the opposite of a buff.

Have you played at a tourney? Do you realize how often players have no clue what's in the FAQ?