Flying a swarm in x-wing is a real pain point. It's totally doable with a little practice but the amount of time and thought required taxes a player's energy and creates a significant amount of down time for the opponent as selecting a few maneuvers is much faster than selecting 6+. formation flying is a huge part of the "look" of starwars dog fights. And I think x-wing does a poor job of representing that key point of the fiction.

so thats a problem for me.

What I want is an upgrade card that lets me move a whole group of similar ships all at once. Maybe a modification, maybe an EPT not sure. I would love if it granted an extra slot of whatever it took up.

I'm going to try to write a card to this end and I want your feedback on it.

The goal is to encourage the use of this card to cut the down time and stress of flying a swarm or small formation of ships. This is not meant to be a strategic choice upgrade that has costs or downsides.

Formation calculator,

modification,

0 points

When this ship reveals its maneuver dial friendly ships that have not activated with the same ship name at range 1 may be placed in side to side base contact with this ship and eachother at the end of this ship's activation. These Friendly ships do not execute a maneuver on their turn but may take an action.

4 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

formation flying is a huge part of the "look" of starwars dog fights.

It also mostly ends the moment ships reach the ranges as which they fight in XWM.

The only real exception is the Trench Run. And those ships are mostly in formation because if you broke formation, you'd crash into a wall.

This card will result in some crazy maneuvering, as a half dozen ships moving in all different directions, even opposite directions, could suddenly form a formation using what would be turns not even on their dials, all without gaining a stress. That's insanity.

Should call the card "Focus Fire" cause that is what it would be used for. Ships flying in all directions suddenly get to immediately turn and put a single target within all of your ships' arcs.

31 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

Flying a swarm in x-wing is a real pain point. It's totally doable with a little practice but the amount of time and thought required taxes a player's energy and creates a significant amount of down time for the opponent as selecting a few maneuvers is much faster than selecting 6+. formation flying is a huge part of the "look" of starwars dog fights. And I think x-wing does a poor job of representing that key point of the fiction .

XWM does a poor job of representing anything like a honest-to-goodness SW dogfight at this point in time.

One problem with this notion is that you have just told your opponent your strategy by not setting dials for all the other ships.

As a Filthy Casual, I do this all the time. I only set one dial, and all the rest are decoys. My opponent knows I'm not cheating because I usually screw up my movement phase in some way

Heroes of the Aturi Cluster does something like this. Earlier in the encounter each group of TIE Fighters move as a unit. The AI card is used to pick one maneuver, and all four (potentially, squads can be smaller) TIE Fighters execute the same move.

I have suggested the same tactic be used in Epic matches.

For 1v1 dog fights, though, I think if you're flying a swarm you need to know the right moves. It can't be that stressful, right? If you set up your ships the proper distance apart, you can pinwheel / swerve / shoot. It's not until the swarm breaks up, then you need to think more...

58 minutes ago, Joe Censored said:

This card will result in some crazy maneuvering, as a half dozen ships moving in all different directions, even opposite directions, could suddenly form a formation using what would be turns not even on their dials, all without gaining a stress. That's insanity.

Should call the card "Focus Fire" cause that is what it would be used for. Ships flying in all directions suddenly get to immediately turn and put a single target within all of your ships' arcs.

yeah thats true. maybe some other wording would work better.

34 minutes ago, drathbun said:

It can't be that stressful, right? If you set up your ships the proper distance apart, you can pinwheel / swerve / shoot. It's not until the swarm breaks up, then you need to think more...

how many swarms have you flown? I can do it quite well it just takes quite a bit more time and energy.

I just wanted to point out that the fastest player I knew was using a crackswarm. If his game was taking more than 25 minutes something must've gone horribly wrong.

Also, once you master formation flying (admittedly, it takes a bit of practise and knowledge) you can work it out pretty efficiently.

The real problem with formation flying in X-Wing is the fact that it's borderline impossible to restore a formation once it's been broken.

The best way of fixing it I came up with was an upgrade that would let you rearrange friendly small ships at range 1, as long as there are no enemy ships at range 1-3. The way I had it figured out was- pick a point within the squadron leader's firing arc at r1-2, and all rearranged ships need to have that point within their primary arcs at r1-3 after rearranging.

8 hours ago, Elavion said:

The real problem with formation flying in X-Wing is the fact that it's borderline impossible to restore a formation once it's been broken.

It's what separates good swarm players from not-as-good ones, yeah

This sounds like a one-piece n personal problem: impatience. Let's force swarms to use movement trays, and only the first rank can shoot, and squadron casualties are removed from the rear ranks...WHFB-style. A

And we'll call it "dumbed down" X-Wing, because skill and planning and patience is for old folk, not popcorn attention span kiddies.

As a player who has flown swarms almost exclusively for the past couple of years, I think this has the potential to be a *really bad* idea.

I believe it'd make things, if not too easy. much easier. Being able to regroup facing the same direction would be pushing the easy button.

The fact that it can be hard to reorganize after the first 4-6 turns is balanced by the amount of firepower that can be brought to bear on a single target when you *can* get the majority of your ships pointed the right direction.

Lately I've been running Howlie, Zeta Leader and four Blacks, and to help speed up the game I usually plot them all doing the same maneuver for the first few turns. I also move them all at the same time, and I've never had an opponent have a problem with that. It can help speed up the first few turns. I also try to be fairly quick with plotting and not overthink things.

Swarms don't have to slow down the game if you don't let them.

I can admit that they can be mentally taxing, but I've always viewed that as part of the challenge.

So everyone seems to agree (myself included) that I wrote the card poorly.

im seeing some agreement that running swarms takes more mental energy and time. and why wouldn't it. 6 ships is twice as many maneuvers as 3 ships. My goal is to make flying 6+ ships feel similar to flying 3.

so now how about trying to re-write the card to get something closer to the intended effect.

formation calculator

ship modification

0 points

When this ship reveals it's maneuver dial freindly ships with the same ship name that have not activated and are in side to side base contact with this ship may be placed in side to side base contact with this ship at the end of It's activation. These ships do not exicute their own maneuvers on their activation but still take an action.

when this ship bumps into a friendly ship with the same ship name it may take a stress token to be placed in side to side contact in with it.

.

this upgrade card is too long. Too many words.

On 6/9/2017 at 2:01 PM, TylerTT said:

...

Formation calculator,

modification,

0 points

When this ship reveals its maneuver dial friendly ships that have not activated with the same ship name at range 1 may be placed in side to side base contact with this ship and eachother at the end of this ship's activation. These Friendly ships do not execute a maneuver on their turn but may take an action.

The way this is worded is actually a huge buff to high PS mini swarms. For example put this on Howlrunner, Mauler, Scourge, and pure Sabacc with PS-leveling EPTs. You can now set a different dial for each, and when it's your turn pick whichever one is best and stay in formation with that one while discarding the rest of the dials. ( rewording on the later post does not fix this issue)

Back to your core idea though; sometimes when I fly swarms I'll say "I'm just going to set this one dial for all my TIEs." Even at higher level events I've never been told, "No, please set separate dials." So I would say this already exists as an informal mechanic, and one I don't use all that often because I want to keep my opponent guessing as to when I will break formation.

Where swarm play really slows down in my experience is when/after the formation breaks up. Setting different dials for so many ships, and moving them, can't be helped though. I want all those TIEs to be in different places facing different directions so that I block as many options as possible while also getting all guns pointed at those potential blocks.

Here's an loose alternative idea for "formation leader":

<unique> Formation Leader, 0pt ept.

small ship only.

During the planning phase you may designate any number of friendly ships at range 1{maybe 1-2?}. Those ships do not set dials. During the activation phase each of those ships activates at the lowest PS and reveals your dial as its own.

42 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

...

when this ship bumps into a friendly ship with the same ship name it may take a stress token to be placed in side to side contact in with it.

...

^this^ would also be good as training wheels for reassembling a formation. I think you could just run with this part and skip the whole first paragraph. Maybe something like this as the core of your card, and add the ability to assign a focus token to all friendlies in base contact at the end of activation? Then you're looking at a non-zero value though.

I think what you really want is a tray/template setup as Alekzanter sarcastically suggested, but that is serious 2.0 territory (or at least huge ship release)

I highly disagree with the statement that swarms are mentally taxing and hard to play. I flew a crackswarm for 6 months straight last year and its not that hard once you actually put the work in. This EPT idea is just lazy play.

The issues with swarms isn't that it is mentally taxing - half the players playing x-wing want that, me included. At its core, the issue is that the game's format rewards larger point investments wherever MOV is concerned. Additionally, the upgrade power creep only affects ships with upgrades - aka not swarms.

Double post

On 6/9/2017 at 4:01 PM, TylerTT said:

Formation calculator,

modification,

0 points

When this ship reveals its maneuver dial friendly ships that have not activated with the same ship name at range 1 may be placed in side to side base contact with this ship and eachother at the end of this ship's activation. These Friendly ships do not execute a maneuver on their turn but may take an action.

Hell no!

You realize that some of the maneuvers that would allow are impossible to do in the game. You're saying that a ship could do a hard 3 and friendly on the outside of that turn would get put right next to it when it's done (something a lot more than a 3 turn). Side by side ships may "stay in formation" on a bank when the outer one takes a faster maneuver with the same bearing.

What you suggest is basically legalizing the way some people cheat in the game by "simplifying" the movement of their swarms and in doing so effectively having them perform maneuvers they shouldn't be able to perform.

Yeah I realize it changes how ships can maneuver. That's partially the point.

selecting 6 maneuvers is twice as many as the typical list right? It's like you are playing two games and the other player only has to play one.

We never see swarms at top tables of large events. At least some of that is due to fatigue

The upgrade power creep is a factor but many title upgrades are now negative points. Guns for hire will be intresting.

I think it can be done X-wing and I think the benifits would be great.

I'll admit I don't browse tournament results but still have heard of swarms "making the cut" at events even still granted they may be past their heyday when they were one of the handful of competitive options to use.

If you're trying to fly in formation then setting six dials isn't going to be any harder than setting three. You set one and that pretty much dictates what everything else has to have if you want to keep the formation.

Should I also point out the absurd use of that "upgrade" as described? You have it saying you can have other ships maneuver based on the revealed dial. Not only does that make impossible maneuvers possible it would also give that swarm a HUGE ability to alter what it is doing. Ok, you're trying to push up the PS of a swarm but if I set one TIE Fighter to do a 5 straight and the other to do a 2 turn and maybe another to do a 3 turn the other way and they all can be affected by the upgrade that means I have three different places I could place those three fighters. At PS 1 you probably should figure you can go where you want to but if you went to PS 3 or 4 you may have other ships maneuvering before the swarm and now you get an additional means to react to that.

I still think swarms are fun and easy to fly. I can usually set six dials in the time it takes my opponent to set two anyway!

The simple physical actions of setting more dials and moving more ships takes longer. i don't care how cool or awesome you are. I'm talking about averages.

the only issue i have with swarms is how the time taken to run and plan them impacts on timed games.

It's an extra layer compelling us into pwt and mega ace shenanigans

Quote

Flying a swarm in x-wing is a real pain point

I keep seeing this and as a long-time swarm player it has never been an issue for me - provided the majority of the swarm is at the same PS or are in blocks of the same PS.

i.e. the only time I've had any issues was over the course of a 7-round tournament, with a TIE Swarm consisting of PS 8, 7, 6, 4, 4 , 4. At the 4th or 5th round I started to develop a headache from juggling ships with various pilot skills.

But a PS 8, 4, 4, 4, 1, 1, 1 or 8, 6, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1 swarm?

Easy peasy.

Is it because people don't know how to fly small blocks of a swarm as if they were one craft?

What gives?