I know this topic has been heavily discussed recently. I had thought about posting in the last thread I saw, but I wanted to have a well thought out proposal before posting.

So after thinking about it, the option that seems most viable is the separation of pilot and ship. If each ship had it own separate stats and abilities it would be easier to keep newer ships balanced so long as each ship used the same sort of formula to calculate point costs. Each ship could have it's own small mat that has it's stats, upgrade slots, and pilot slot.

You could keep all of the same dials, templates, and tokens. For the ships you could finally separate weapon damage from chance to hit. You could add other attributes (such as armor), and tweak things such as turrets, and upgrade costs.

Cost to players would be fairly minimal. If revised pilot card packs were sold per faction you could easily include say 4 or 5 of each generic pilots and one of each unique for 30-35 bucks which is on par with most miniature game upgrade packs. Perhaps FFG could set up a mail order system where you could order the number of generics for each ship you needed. Something similar could be done for upgrade cards as well.

Yes paying for the upgrades without getting a new model kinda sucks. However, the chance to have balanced ships now with the promise of more balanced ships in the future is nice. Having mist if not all upgrade cards viable would be great. Having a refined system with a few more options would be awesome.

I should also mention that in have a sizable collection. I have at least 2 of each small ship for each faction, at least one of each large ship, and one of each of the epic ships so my proposed 2.0 solution would cost me more than it would other people.

I don't think we necessarily need 2.0 tomorrow but I think it needs to happen in the some what near future to solve the naturally occurring balance issues that come up in most games. Feel free to agree or disagree, just try and keep it constructive. The more ideas we throw out there for FFG to read to better the chance of us getting a greater game in the end.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Errata Pack.

A one off cost. Card-only.

Anything that needs rewording, anything that needs recosting, any dial that needs changing.

And enough of each for 100 point spam.

We shouldn't have to pay for their cock ups.

Separating pilot and ship can lead to some aweful combos. Omega Leader piloting a TIE Phantom with weapons engineer, Wedge piloting a VCX, Miranda in general, and Palob in a sturdier frame.

there is also a couple of pilots whose abilities are super specific (like the Lancer pilots) that just don't fit on other ships. That is the easier to overcome obstacle, however.

3 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

Separating pilot and ship can lead to some aweful combos. Omega Leader piloting a TIE Phantom with weapons engineer, Wedge piloting a VCX, Miranda in general, and Palob in a sturdier frame.

there is also a couple of pilots whose abilities are super specific (like the Lancer pilots) that just don't fit on other ships. That is the easier to overcome obstacle, however.

A cool way to do it would be to add a ship classification (fighter/bomber/freighter/etc) and then give each pilot a restriction on what kind of ships they could pilot. Pilots might be able to fly multiple types, but you wouldn't see Han in an A-Wing for example.

A 2.0 hard reset of the game would balance things... for like 1 wave. Then we'd have the same problems cropping up as the game went on from there. In a game with this many elements it is impossible to ensure balance over time as new things are added.

If you really want a 'balanced' tournament scene then you might have to do something like Magic: The Gathering and have tournament formats that control what cards/ships can be brought. This would essentially impose an artificial balance.

Just now, LunarSol said:

A cool way to do it would be to add a ship classification (fighter/bomber/freighter/etc) and then give each pilot a restriction on what kind of ships they could pilot. Pilots might be able to fly multiple types, but you wouldn't see Han in an A-Wing for example.

That could work. I think that could still make for some unintended combos, but the addition of a classification system could help a lot.

Going through and revamping pilot abilities would probably be necessary. For the named pilots you could grant a piloting bonus for a specific ship, allow the to pilot another ship with no penalty or bonus, and then impose a penalty for the other ships.

There will always be issues with living games, that's just the nature of the beast. Setting the game up this way or in a similar matter would at the very least bring current ships in line with each other as well as keeping future ships relatively in line with everything else. One of the pluses with this would be the ability to release errated pilot and upgrade cards in the future for a relatively low cost.

Having played other miniature games, new version releases are nothing new. The cost for version upgrade under this model would be relatively low when compared to other systems. It wouldn't invalidate any ships and wouldn't require anyone to buy any new ships.

There are those who will dig in their heels in the face of change which I get as it can be unnerving, but at some point in time it will have to happen for the viability of the game to be maintained.

As for the actual rework it isn't that hard. Truth be told, I have been working on a revision for a few months. It isn't finished and the has been minimal play testing thus far, but if I can work something like this in a few months the a larger game company should be able to pull something like this together in a few months relatively easily.

Any hard reboot of the game will end up losing some of us. I don't have a LGS that I can run to to pick up what I need. The closest is about 1 hour away.

I see other games with card packs have somewhat viable means set up for trade and purchase of singles, which I gues is what will start to come into play if you go to card packs.

I'm fairly happy with what I have in the game now. I can go to local tournaments, compete and win without having to rely on the Worlds level meta.

You can easily indicate which ships a pilot can fly in by printing the ship silhouette(s) that pilot can fly on the pilot card. If a new ship is released that an existing pilot can fly, just reprint the pilot card in that expansion, and include the new silhouette.

I'm not sure where this idea came from that "separate ships and pilots means any pilot can fly any ship."

2.0 could leverage reference cards for ships really well. 2.0 is going to happen, and it's going to be a better game, and that's saying a lot, because X-Wing is a very good game. The only real question is whether they kill their audience doing it.

Just look at Attack Wing which uses the pilot and ship separation. Too many broken combos.

6 minutes ago, 4fox100 said:

Just look at Attack Wing which uses the pilot and ship separation. Too many broken combos.

Literally the post above yours says:

I'm not sure where this idea came from that "separate ships and pilots means any pilot can fly any ship."

Pilot/Ship separation sounds as broken as a severely damaged banana. Do not want. It would less "increase options" then create more chances for "The ultimate combinations" to surface.

The game is very close to being just fine, older ships could use upgraded dials and costs and some outlying problem-causing combinations still need to be knocked down a peg.

1 hour ago, Jeff Wilder said:

You can easily indicate which ships a pilot can fly in by printing the ship silhouette(s) that pilot can fly on the pilot card. If a new ship is released that an existing pilot can fly, just reprint the pilot card in that expansion, and include the new silhouette.

I'm not sure where this idea came from that "separate ships and pilots means any pilot can fly any ship."

2.0 could leverage reference cards for ships really well. 2.0 is going to happen, and it's going to be a better game, and that's saying a lot, because X-Wing is a very good game. The only real question is whether they kill their audience doing it.

Reprint the card? So how many extra copies of Marek Steele am I going to end up with now? The man was a test pilot for the Empire. He can literally fly any TIE variant, so he's now an auto include into every small based imperial ship.... Same could be said for any non-iconic bounty hunter pilot in scum. They literally flew whatever they had available at times.

2.0 when it does come needs to do 3 things, Majorly errata certain abilities, Point cost/Dial balancing across the board, and balance PWTs. It does not need to re-invent the wheel with pilot/ship separation. It seems like a really bad idea to implement, even if you really want to bring Vader in a TIE punisher to store championships.

And if your going to restrict pilots to ships, you might as well not even bother. Why separate Vader from the TIE Adavanced if that's all he's allowed to fly anyway? Same with Han/Chewie for the Falcon, Dash for the outrider, etc. FFG is also not afraid to reprint pilots in different ships. Marek flies two ships, Sabine 3, If we ever get an Endor campaign box I am almost certain we will get the Arc-170 pilots in there endor ships (those that were there anyway.). It just doesn't seem worthwhile to separate them from each other so we can have 5-6 pilots fly 2 different ships.

7 hours ago, Monkeyshine77 said:

I should also mention that in have a sizable collection. I have at least 2 of each small ship for each faction, at least one of each large ship, and one of each of the epic ships so my proposed 2.0 solution would cost me more than it would other people.

That's not sizable. That's somewhere between newcomer and enthusiast. I know many players, myself included, with 10+ basic TIE fighters, 6+ T65 X-Wings, 6+ Y-Wings (Rebel only), 6+ A-Wings, etc. etc. and at least 2 each of the large base ships, and probably 2 each of the Epic ships. Don't use your personal benchmark as to what other people have.

4 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Literally the post above yours says:

I'm not sure where this idea came from that "separate ships and pilots means any pilot can fly any ship."

But the fact that the separation exists means they can fly more than one making balancing that much more difficult. There are enough things that slip through the cracks as is with one ship per pilot. Adding even just one more possible ship would jump the number of possible balance issues. For example imagine biggs on any other ship than a T65. Or Zuckuss on something else than a G1-A. So my argument still stands multiple possible ships per pilot is extremely tough on balancing and will end up causing more troubles.

3 hours ago, Slugrage said:

That's not sizable. That's somewhere between newcomer and enthusiast. I know many players, myself included, with 10+ basic TIE fighters, 6+ T65 X-Wings, 6+ Y-Wings (Rebel only), 6+ A-Wings, etc. etc. and at least 2 each of the large base ships, and probably 2 each of the Epic ships. Don't use your personal benchmark as to what other people have.

Word, I have 131 ships total epic included and I know people on here dwarf my fleet. 2.0 I like the idea but unless I can use my models at least there is NO way I'd start completely over. They don't need to pull a games workshop, I already boycott Destiny, I won't buy Imperial Assault and I think Armada looks neat but don't know anyone who plays. I'd wash my hands totally of FFG products if they screwed us.

OK, so I only have 157 ships. I wasn't putting that out there as a way to brag, just to illustrate that the change to 2.0 could cost me a decent chunk of change but that I would be OK with that as it would mean a better game.

Would 2.0 potentially lead to some current players leaving? Possibly, but at some point not addressing some of these issues will as well. I'm only mentioning this as a couple of you seem to be fixated on this point.

A new Expansion that has fixes, yes. 2.0 no.

Why? a new expansion could address a lot of the issues, with out players having to re-buy their collections, or buying endless packs of cards. It could contain special cards if you flying A, B, C, or Z you can play it on the board so that card automatically supersedes the original values. Not to mention new rules set that wont send players running...

2.0 in my mind would be a very unnecessary right now, it would make everything in 1.0 trash, which in my opinion means re-buying everything which I am un willing to (I got at least one of everyship, with many have 2 or more). If 2.0 came out, I would be done with FFG.