The way it's always been is, if you have a PS1 ship that just got killed by a PS7, that PS1 ship will never get to shoot back. This of course has a lot of implications and is one of the reasons PS is important.

The question, as suggested in the title, is what would happen if all ships got to shoot (following PS order) regardless of whether they got destroyed or not during the round? Pilot and upgrade abilities such as Whisper's would still resolve as normal (so for example Whisper would have a new focus token and would be cloaked when the -now destroyed- PS1 defender shot back).

Would this buff builds such as swarms through the roof? I'm not sure how big of an impact it would have in the overall game. It would certainly take something away from certain aces and make the chase for highest PS less enticing.

EDIT: Some people are correctly pointing out that this would also need to come with lower costs for those high PS ships. Not saying that it would work even if that did happen, but an important detail.

Please don't kill fel's wrath any more, he's already dead by...well...everything

This is not a good idea. PS is part of how ships are costed.

PS isn't worth nearly as much if it can't protect you from retaliation. A Rookie pilot killing one of the 2 TIEs its up against is absolutely part of the balance. Now, a big part of the problem is that the granularity of PS makes it so a PS 7 is often paying points to still be at a disadvantage. That's the right way to go about changing something like this.

High PS ships with no innate repositioning are already paying too much for the order of shooting alone.

Drop the PS significance at the shooting phase, and they might as well not exist.

It would break things. Part of the reason Fen, Soontir, Vader, Wes, etc work is they kill things BEFORE they can shoot back.

There would be virtually no reason for PS. You may as well scrap the stat and let players activate at will as well. It would fundamentally change the game for the worse.

You don't have a ship that can reposition? Now you've probably got a race to the bottom of the PS scale. Why? It should be pretty simple. Now your PS 1 can make all the plans it wants to knowing exactly where all of those higher PS ships will be when it moves so it avoids bumps and sets up blocks as well as they ever have. So what's the problem? When now if those Aces had done their guessing right they should have been able to DECIMATE those low PS ships but because they get to stick around now they all get to shoot back and kill the Aces which had them dead to rights.

The drawback to moving early (without repositioning options) has always been that you shoot later and thus risk getting destroyed before you can ever shoot back. Unless you have those repositioning options moving later isn't such a huge advantage especially as you are now more vulnerable to blocks which can kill your action which is one of the few places you make up for moving later.

It's already been mentioned but there is a ship that does this: Fel's Wrath.

I wouldn't be opposed to this if it had one extra caveat- within the first two round of combat.

This would help negate the "games over before it started" effect of alpha strikes.

While I wouldn't mind the change, I'm not sure it is necessary.

This breaks the game, as pilots do pay for their PS.

But, I would like to try a middle ground: at the start of each round, players roll 1 6-sided die and add it to all their ship's PS.

lol, some of these Threads are like, Nerfing a Fel's Wrath

It would obviously break the game, one benifit to high pilots are obviously the abilites, but if even destroyed low level pilots can shoot, it would make sense to use generics over pilot pilots and just swarm and if they get destroyed at least you get one more shot

D&D attack wing works on a similar principal... It's one of the things which makes the game so ultra lethal (even though the game's equivalent of shields basically directly negate hits and arnt removed, like damage resistance, the tanky dragons still regularly pop in just a couple of rounds of sustained attack). If the games cheap units didn't tend to be very weak to the many area effect attacks in the game, they would easily drag down the big powerful high level stuff.

7 hours ago, Kdubb said:

I wouldn't be opposed to this if it had one extra caveat- within the first two round of combat.

This would help negate the "games over before it started" effect of alpha strikes.

While I wouldn't mind the change, I'm not sure it is necessary.

Maybe make it read, "if a ship started the combat phase with no damage...". It'd be interesting to playtest that rule. Doubt it would matter often, but you could definitely play more glass cannon-y ships. 2 PS 3 Phantoms + an ace would be potentially viable!

I'm also seeing a lot of replies saying that Soontir destroys things before they can shoot back, to which my answer is, no, Soontir takes his shot with no return fire because he's out of arc, PS mattered in activation, not combat. If you leave it up to your red dice whether or not he's taking return fire, you're asking for trouble.

I think it would have been better if it had been designed like that from the start, but the current PS system is too baked into the game to change now.

3 hours ago, Sparklelord said:

I'm also seeing a lot of replies saying that Soontir destroys things before they can shoot back, to which my answer is, no, Soontir takes his shot with no return fire because he's out of arc, PS mattered in activation, not combat. If you leave it up to your red dice whether or not he's taking return fire, you're asking for trouble.

Maybe it is "asking for trouble" but sometime the best move for Soontir may be to just charge into the jaws of the beast to take it down before it can shoot. Best done with the TL versions but while it's true that 4 double modified attack dice can miss if you only need a point to get put on a low agility target it may be better to take the shot than to try to skirt away.

12 hours ago, LunarSol said:

PS isn't worth nearly as much if it can't protect you from retaliation. A Rookie pilot killing one of the 2 TIEs its up against is absolutely part of the balance. Now, a big part of the problem is that the granularity of PS makes it so a PS 7 is often paying points to still be at a disadvantage. That's the right way to go about changing something like this.

I agree with this.

Also FFG seems like they are trying the remedy the disadvantage of the failed PS bid by giving more and more of the middle PS named pilots amazing abilities (see Countess Ryad, Countdown, Pure Sabacc)

Why does anyone want to meet PS? I've never heard a complaint (before Thai thread) about lower PS pilots being killed before they can shoot, it comes with the territory.

8 hours ago, Sparklelord said:

Maybe make it read, "if a ship started the combat phase with no damage...". It'd be interesting to playtest that rule. Doubt it would matter often, but you could definitely play more glass cannon-y ships. 2 PS 3 Phantoms + an ace would be potentially viable!

I'm also seeing a lot of replies saying that Soontir destroys things before they can shoot back, to which my answer is, no, Soontir takes his shot with no return fire because he's out of arc, PS mattered in activation, not combat. If you leave it up to your red dice whether or not he's taking return fire, you're asking for trouble.

As I see it higher PS ships have two advantages: moving last (not that great of yon don't much repositioning) and shooting first. These are obvious advantages and are essential to the game. If lower PS ships could die and still shoot then why not take low PS ships with a s many red dice as pheasable move to range one and even if you die you absolutely destroy the enemy. It's like moving first in chess or 40K or any other turn based game, if you aren't making the first move you risk losing a unit before it has a chance to do anything. That's the PS gamble of lower points and higher risk for more upgrades.

it also negates the idea of the dual use of Focus on lower Glassy PS ships. The other advantage of shooting first is that it may consume their focus and weaken their attack now that is essentially negated as you can put all your effort into attack.

16 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

There would be virtually no reason for PS. You may as well scrap the stat and let players activate at will as well. It would fundamentally change the game for the worse.

That's just anarchy

18 hours ago, haritos said:

The way it's always been is, if you have a PS1 ship that just got killed by a PS7, that PS1 ship will never get to shoot back. This of course has a lot of implications and is one of the reasons PS is important.

The question, as suggested in the title, is what would happen if all ships got to shoot (following PS order) regardless of whether they got destroyed or not during the round? Pilot and upgrade abilities such as Whisper's would still resolve as normal (so for example Whisper would have a new focus token and would be cloaked when the -now destroyed- PS1 defender shot back).

Would this buff builds such as swarms through the roof? I'm not sure how big of an impact it would have in the overall game. It would certainly take something away from certain aces and make the chase for highest PS less enticing.

EDIT: Some people are correctly pointing out that this would also need to come with lower costs for those high PS ships. Not saying that it would work even if that did happen, but an important detail.

9 Academy swarms wouldn't be a "not really worth it other than to get 9 ships on the board" to a.... "all your stuff just died" option.

If a theoretical 3 Ace list came up against a 9 tie swarm 3 of those ties can "in theory" die every round. But having 3 agility, unless the Aces are going to get into knife fighting range to 4 or 5 dice them, the likelihood is only 1 or maybe 2 per round blow up. That's the Ace's advantage, but by blowing up one ship the ties have lost 11(and a bit) % of their list combat potential. If everyone gets to shoot then all 9 of those ties want to shoot something, even the dead ones. So in the first round of combat the Ace's have no advantage for their pilot skill and higher cost. The same in the subsequent rounds.

While this is as true now as it is in your proposed idea, the combat effectiveness of a swarm list isn't being eroded by the high PS ships, which is their advantage. The swarms advantage is numbers, blocking, focus firing etc.

If for some reason the game was changed to allow destroyed ships to shoot in that combat phase, certain pilot abilities would become irrelevant (or more irrelevant) and the low ship count, high PS lists would be at a distinct disadvantage. Then people would start loading up on Assault Missiles and Adv Protons again, which would oddly be even less effective since all the destroyed swarm ships would still get to shoot back.......

I keep trying to come up with "Squadron Abilities" that would buff groups of non-unique ships without breaking the game.

"At the start of the combat phase, you may discard this card. If you do, friendly ships that are destroyed but have not fled the battlefield are not removed until the end of the combat phase."

No idea how you could cost that appropriately. Also can't let Rebels get their filthy hands on it. Because Biggs.

Yeah, PS is such a huge reason to pay the points to get that shot, I cannot see this working well at all. The beauty of glass-cannon Aces (the few times they can be fielded these days to victory) is just that, the white knuckle gamble shot when in arc, range 1 of that PS 2 with two hull left, no tokens and let the four reds do their thing....ah the stress and hopeful elation. That would all then be useless. Imperial Aces would have another nail in their coffin. There has been far to many driven already.

But, there is Fel's Wrath, fly him. I did three games over a year ago for giggles in a four Interceptor casual game; his ability actually procked once beautifully, finishing off a Y-Wing.....but that was a rarity I know to be sure, and that ability isn't worth his points.

Keep up the pondering though......one day, who knows what my spring to life.

Response to the title of this thread: Yes.

Eliminating a core mechanic of the game would "disrupt balance too much."

Which isn't to say a new balance couldn't be found.

Proposing a seismic shift like this really begs the question: Why?

To that why, I have no answer.

9 hours ago, E Chu Ta said:

Response to the title of this thread: Yes.

Eliminating a core mechanic of the game would "disrupt balance too much."

Which isn't to say a new balance couldn't be found.

Proposing a seismic shift like this really begs the question: Why?

To that why, I have no answer.

Well sorry I thought it was obvious: cause high PS is insanely good and you often have that race for top PS and initiative bids.

I only strongly object to one thing I ve read. Saying that if you take away the "I get to kill you, you don't shoot back" advantage from the high PS ships would make PS meaningless and we might as well just activate wherever is such a deceitful overstatement.

I am not saying I'm right or anything close, but come on, PS gives you repositiong, more informed action selection choices, abilities resolved first and crits dealt first among other things. Don't take it to the other extreme and say it would be useless, cause that's simply not true.

Maybe for 2nd Edition.

2 hours ago, haritos said:

Well sorry I thought it was obvious: cause high PS is insanely good and you often have that race for top PS and initiative bids.

I only strongly object to one thing I ve read. Saying that if you take away the "I get to kill you, you don't shoot back" advantage from the high PS ships would make PS meaningless and we might as well just activate wherever is such a deceitful overstatement.

I am not saying I'm right or anything close, but come on, PS gives you repositiong, more informed action selection choices, abilities resolved first and crits dealt first among other things. Don't take it to the other extreme and say it would be useless, cause that's simply not true.

Funny thing, the "race to the top" is completely unimportant if your opponent happened to be flying PS 1. If your opponent is flying PS 1 then PS 2 is just as good as PS 11 with an 11 point PS bid. Sure most of those higher PS pilots also have some nice ability but when you look at PS all you need to worry about is > = < because the difference in PS never matters beyond those three things.

Shooting first may give you benefits with crits but that not NEARLY as important as just putting down the target even if that crit happened to prevent the target from attacking. I must also assume that if you're going to make sure everything gets a return shot then you should be allowing EVERY ship to survive until the End phase; I'm sure Biggs's allies will really appreciate that. Moving LAST is NOT always a benefit especially if you don't have those repositioning actions and as I mentioned before while your actions may be "more informed" they are also more like to be prevented and sometimes it just doesn't matter when you take the action as a Focus is a Focus no matter when it's taken assuming you get to. I'm sorry to say this but resolving abilities has nothing to do with PS but everything to do with initiative.