The idea would be pretty simple - place your selected maneuver template in front of your ship, as usual. Instead of immediately picking up your ship and placing the back of the base on the other end of the template, however, you place another straight template at the end. (Like how collision placement is resolved) Remove your selected-maneuver template (leaving the placeholder at the far end) and move your ship so the front of the base is slotted into the placeholder.

Advantages:

• Eliminates the odd large-base behavior where merely having a large base moves you faster than smaller-base ships, for the same maneuver.
• By effectively eliminating the free-base-length part of each maneuver, there is now a greater relative difference between speeds. IE., the slowest movement you can take in the game is a speed-1-forward, which moves your base 2 lengths ahead. While the fastest is a 5-forward, which moves your base 6 lengths ahead - IE., the fastest speed in the game is only 3x the slowest. With this change, the slowest speed now does only move your base 1 length ahead, while the fastest speed moves it 5 lengths ahead. IE., the fastest speed is now 5x the slowest speed. Which is to say, faster ships will now feel faster.
• The repositioning ability of a 'boost' action is nerfed a bit. (It's still very powerful, in that a change of facing MASSIVELY increases your fire arc, but it no longer covers a huge distance on the map - this is especially effective against boosting large ships, whose speed was just obnoxiously higher than canon would imply)
• Much harder to 'jump over asteroids', which means maneuver planning and skill becomes considerably more important
• Effectively it slows down speeds overall, making 'approach' tactics more important and more possible to be varied

Disadvantages:

• It does add one step to the process of maneuvering a ship
• The area taken up by large bases can be problematic to clear for some fighters - a large-base in front of a B-Wing being almost impossible to clear, for instance
• Everyone gets a bit "drifty" with hard turns (back moving more than the front does...especially obvious with the 1-hard). Blue sparks everywhere.

Thoughts?

Way too fiddly to be realistically implemented, but I definitely want to try this out on the table. I think I'd take a Palp Aces squad so I have a large ship and some boosting/barrel rolling TIE interceptors. Wait, Barrel Roll gets substantially smaller as well. Hmm...

Just now, Parakitor said:

Way too fiddly to be realistically implemented, but I definitely want to try this out on the table. I think I'd take a Palp Aces squad so I have a large ship and some boosting/barrel rolling TIE interceptors. Wait, Barrel Roll gets substantially smaller as well. Hmm...

I'm not sure I'd do the change with the barrel roll - as repositioning goes, it's a pretty subtle move already. And the ability to slide the ship forward and backward would make placement of the 'placeholder' template needlessly complex.

But T-rolls, sloops, and boosts? Yes. (In case it isn't clear - the rear base notches are still in use...when you do a k-turns or sloop, you'd need the rear notches to get the ship in its correct position off the placeholder template)

Some maneuvers become really awkward. Large ship speed 1 turn, for example.

Bumping becomes a god tier tactic. A B-Wing cannot clear a large base with a maneuver that isn't red.

If the game was designed for it, I'd be down. But the way it is right now... a big nope.

There are pluses and minus. Movement would be slower but easier - If your template fits, your ship fits. The part that screws many players is when the template fits and the ship base extends onto a rock or slightly bumps. This would make judging distance of ships movements easier.

1 minute ago, Elavion said:

Some maneuvers become really awkward. Large ship speed 1 turn, for example.

That's a really good point. Sigh. Large ships just ruin everything!

4 minutes ago, Elavion said:

Some maneuvers become really awkward. Large ship speed 1 turn, for example.

Not sure I follow how that would be a problem? If you are moving the turn template out of the way, and just leaving the placeholder...

I mean, sure, it means the ship turns so hard that half its base remains over its original position (because it's ridiculous that large ships ever HAD a speed-1-turn, but whatever) - which is odd, but not problematic.

Because movement is slower, ships like Uwing, Lambda, etc. could become quite powerful with their big guns, able to turn and not gain much forward ground. The ghost with hera could do 1 hard turns and basically become a 4 attack dice turret. Every rule change will see a different beast emerge. Dash might get extinct, and Lambdas with HLC could rule the galaxy

3 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Not sure I follow how that would be a problem? If you are moving the turn template out of the way, and just leaving the placeholder...

I mean, sure, it means the ship turns so hard that half its base remains over its original position (because it's ridiculous that large ships ever HAD a speed-1-turn, but whatever) - which is odd, but not problematic.

the back of your ship goes further than the front (so if you turn left you actually move to the right, but backwards). It's literally a drift in space

Speed 1 hard turns on large bases were fine, at least until they made them green and gave them to dirt-cheap large base ships with barrel rolls.

4 minutes ago, Elavion said:

the back of your ship goes further than the front (so if you turn left you actually move to the right, but backwards). It's literally a drift in space

Everyone definitely gets a bit "drifty" with hard-turns. Not sure that's a bad thing, or not, though. Would be different, for sure, but I really can't say it's the WEIRDEST maneuver outcome (compared to some of what already goes on...)

I think FFG would prefer this movement as their miniature games (Armada and Runewars) that have movement templates have the a different type of movement, using the side and not front/back.

1 minute ago, Cusm said:

I think FFG would prefer this movement as their miniature games (Armada and Runewars) that have movement templates have the a different type of movement, using the side and not front/back.

That's basically how it works in Armada, too - you notch the maneuver tool in at one of the front-side corners of the base, and move the ship's front along to the end point, where you notch it in, again.

It works really well, and eliminates a LOT of the problems with bases of different sides. But, unfortunately, really not something that could be adapted to X-Wing without new templates or new bases or something. The front-to-front method seemed the closest way of transmuting that system into something that works with the existing X-Wing parts we have, now.

With X-Wing being their first big miniature game, they have learned a lot over the years and you can see big improvements in mechanics and play with their other mini games. The movement templates (sides), different dice for ranges, two head dial, action dials, and alternating initiative are all better, IMO, than what we have in X-Wing; but it is way TOO EARLY to think a reboot or 2.0 is coming - when it happens I think we will see all the above included.

I really like the idea that if the template fits then your ship fits.

Maybe large based ships could come with extra wide templates with notches for the nubs to fit in!

There's plenty of ways that your template could fit without your ship fitting.

19 minutes ago, xanderf said:

That's basically how it works in Armada, too - you notch the maneuver tool in at one of the front-side corners of the base, and move the ship's front along to the end point, where you notch it in, again.

It works really well, and eliminates a LOT of the problems with bases of different sides. But, unfortunately, really not something that could be adapted to X-Wing without new templates or new bases or something. The front-to-front method seemed the closest way of transmuting that system into something that works with the existing X-Wing parts we have, now.

New templates can easily designed, so switching to something like this is totally an option for X-Wing 2.0. They would as well work with the old bases.

The biggest problem is of course that added step and all the extra time that will add. Right now it would also require changing your templates as you'd be making everything go slower if you use the current templates.

Where I have seen this idea with the most potential is as a replacement/alternative for Boosting. If Boosting instead used this method and the speed 2 templates you'd see large and small ships advance the same distance instead of the small ship nose advancing 2 standard lengths while the large ship advances 3 lengths. Used in the boost action it wouldn't be EVERY maneuver making it faster and it also solves that issue with Engine Upgrade being seen as too powerful when on large ships.

Forgot this one.

I'd love to see large ship boosts being back to back (i.e. you put a template in the back nubs, put the relevant template aligned with it, then move the ship accordingly), making them MUCH shorter.

I don't see it. For a few reasons:

First, by shorting movements (specially turns and banks) you make this an almost only jousting game. You can forget about flanking.

Second, movements would not be "realistic". I mean, when moving front-to-back, both front and back nods move trough the template, and you can easily see a natural movement. With your system, all banks and turns look like they are slipping on ice.

Third, bumps would be a REAL mess to execute. It's a bit odd as it is, imagine if you have to put an extra template at the front.

Fourth, if two ships bump front to front, it would be impossible to them to break contact, unless one of them is a Shadowcaster with its 5 straight, or a ghost with 5K. They would always overlap the other ship.

1 hour ago, Willy Jarque said:

Second, movements would not be "realistic". I mean, when moving front-to-back, both front and back nods move trough the template, and you can easily see a natural movement. With your system, all banks and turns look like they are slipping on ice.

Counter-intuitive as it may be, it'd actually be more realistic.

If you want to read up on why, I recommend http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsAir

3 minutes ago, Elavion said:

Counter-intuitive as it may be, it'd actually be more realistic.

If you want to read up on why, I recommend http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsAir

It's Star Wars, it behaves as if space is air, it doesn't have remotely realistic space-movement.

I'm 99% convinced the SW universe has Luminiferous Aether tbh.

6 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

It's Star Wars, it behaves as if space is air, it doesn't have remotely realistic space-movement.

I'm 99% convinced the SW universe has Luminiferous Aether tbh.

FWIW, legends materials refer to things like Etheric Rudders and such.

4 hours ago, Willy Jarque said:

Third, bumps would be a REAL mess to execute. It's a bit odd as it is, imagine if you have to put an extra template at the front.

Soooo...you know that is how you currently do bumping, right? The rules say you put a straight template on either side of your maneuver template to ensure that the notches in the base align as best as possible given the bump? That's the current rules, so in fact this proposal would actually change nothing for bumping, anyway - it's already done that way.

20 hours ago, Cusm said:

Forgot this one.

Maybe for large ship boosting they should just use the huge ship template instead.

Okay well yeah that is about as sensible of moving all missile and torpedoes +1 (or 2) range and letting them use the range 5 template. But yeah it is a terrible idea for two reasons, one just like the range 5 ruler not everyone has huge ship movement templates (although more people will have them over the range 5 ruler), and two the huge ship bank does not turn the same angle. Standard banks are 45 degrees giving 2 banks to make a hard 90 degree turn. Huge ships are only 30 degrees making them require 3 banks to make a hard 90 degree turns