3 minutes ago, Hydralisk101 said:

The victory condition in Xwing is to shoot down your opponent's ships. If you are denied that opportunity to shoot for most of the game, you deny the other player any chance whatsoever of having a chance to win. Even games like 40k with an almost equally strong IP the occasional lasgun could bring down a Terminator or a Warcaster could be assassinated with the last few units in Warmachine to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.

I think that's why the Krayts started to discuss the topic, considering that Nym is pretty similar

I have no problem with arc dodgers generally. But I think PTL shouldn't be available every turn at only 3 points. That's where I see the NPE start to gain traction. Push it up to 5 points or have it give 2 stress and it'll feel less npe.

1 minute ago, ViscerothSWG said:

I have no problem with arc dodgers generally. But I think PTL shouldn't be available every turn at only 3 points. That's where I see the NPE start to gain traction. Push it up to 5 points or have it give 2 stress and it'll feel less npe.

If by 'feel lees NPE' you mean 'be completely and utterly useless', yes.

There's a reason Rage only gets used by people who can clear multiple stress per round or ignore stress's impact on their actions.

Soontir is love Soontir is life.

The only reason why I switch from Soontir to something else is because Soontis lack of offensive firepower. Flying against or with aces is where the fun in this game is. Arc Dodgers are fun. Catching Arc dodgers is fun.

If there was one Problem with Soontir than this would be his stacked odds against hits which requires getting multiple shots against Soontir to reliable do damage. And that is mainly an issue with Soontir only having 3 HP. If X-Wing would use twice as many dice for everything and double the HP on everything, basically increasing the resolution of the dice results and giving finer differences in damage, because people would see more often small effects from single attacks without whipping Soontir of the board in a single attack.

Anyway I stop here, because @GreenDragoon did a better write up on it anyway. Let's just say a X-Wing world without Aces, without imperial arc dodging Aces, is a lot less fun than X-Wing used to be. My spending this year on X-Wing had been about $100, my spending on X-Wing last year was over 10 times of that. ;-)

24 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I think that's why the Krayts started to discuss the topic, considering that Nym is pretty similar

Eh...not really

Worse dial and only a single small base repositioning action makes him nowhere near the same league with with a range 1 turret

1 minute ago, ficklegreendice said:

Eh...not really

Worse dial and only a single small base repositioning action makes him nowhere near the same league with with a range 1 turret

Mmm, similar but different. That he doesn't even have to attempt to get arc, can reposition before or after his maneuver and can block off space you can get into, makes him a problem of a similar scale.

8 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Eh...not really

Worse dial and only a single small base repositioning action makes him nowhere near the same league with with a range 1 turret

In a more abstract way as both deny the other player to play the game. Nym means you get bombed no matter what, and often can't even shoot back.
Maybe @Brunas could weigh in and say that I'm wrong.

How many attacks should Soontir be able to survive (across the game)?

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

Crazy showerthought I had while reading your post:

What if Autothrusters were an action?

The reasoning is that choices are interesting. Actions are interesting. My ideal fix for interceptors is not to beef them up on offense or defense. Instead I'd want to get more choices. The moments where you realize you took the correct or wrong action and you could have taken the wrong/correct one are great in my opinion. So I'd rather have more of them than less.

In that regard and for Interceptors I'd rather get a free PTL and make autothrusters into an action.

Isnt autothrusters-as-an-action strictly inferior to an Evade action?

10 minutes ago, TheHumanHydra said:

How many attacks should Soontir be able to survive (across the game)?

all the ones that he avoids

22 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

In a more abstract way as both deny the other player to play the game. Nym means you get bombed no matter what, and often can't even shoot back.
Maybe @Brunas could weigh in and say that I'm wrong.

not really, though, because the other player can play the game in such a way where it is not possible to avoid firing arcs. Nym, unlike soontir, cannot handle range 3 (or any range really) shots well at all and he simply isn't as maneuverable, so there's definitely something the opposing player can do to hurt him especially since he doesn't have the green dice to luckily shrug off being in a bad position

now he can almost always bomb you (not at long range) but considering his cost it's not really that huge an issue. Given more than one ship, you can easily mitigate the effectiveness of his bombs by simply walling off table-space (something you really gotta do when flying Fenn with two large base scouts). You can definitely outplay a Nym, so it's not really proper to call him NPE unless maybe you skew into a bad matchup with nothing but low health aces, but that's the chance you take whenever you skew

NPE really should be exclusively reserved for when there's nothing a player can do, such as not getting shot at by PWTs while still getting shots of their own (apart from rocks ofc). Lower ps arc-locked ships against Dash also fall into this category

1 minute ago, Rakaydos said:

Isnt autothrusters-as-an-action strictly inferior to an Evade action?

Probably, yes. But what if you get several actions? Then you can decide, which is more interesting.

Is it always better than a focus? Should be better, right, because 3/8 vs 2/8?

I'm throwing another vote in the "arc-dodging is not NPE, invulnerability is NPE" bucket.

Arc-dodging is great in a game that is supposed to be about dog-fighting spaceships. Attempting to predict and outfly the opponent to have an attack while avoiding theirs is great! Soontir was great at arc-dodging, but the problem was when you did out-think the Soontir pilot, and you caught them dead to rights, rolled all hits, all of the defensive mods meant you did 0 damage. You were playing the arc-dodging game "correctly," however you were not being rewarded for good play (by being able to actually destroy Soontir) thus making the arc-dodging game not fun or NPE.

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

Probably, yes. But what if you get several actions? Then you can decide, which is more interesting.

Is it always better than a focus? Should be better, right, because 3/8 vs 2/8?

but is it 2 points better?

Interesting topic and my own opinion has been mixed into other answers so far. I've never been able to fly Interceptors well, but I did learn how they move so that early/mid game I could catch Fel and pin him beneath multiple arcs. I liked the challenge there to be honest so didn't much think of him as a NPE.

A smartly flown Fel with the Emperor in tow could very much come across as an NPE. Even the traps wouldn't work because the green dice could be manipulated enough to avoid being killed. He wasn't immune to being hit, but he was very freaking hard to kill. Not everybody flew Fel to great effect with this force umbrella, but when you encountered a good player it was like hitting a wall.

16 hours ago, Hawkstrike said:

Yeah, the problem isn't arc dodging, it's perfect arc dodging while retaining full offensive mods and getting defensive mods too.

When pre-Palp nerf Palp-Soontir could reliably shrug off four hits by rolling paint on one defense die, we had an NPE.

The thing about that is that you are doing it literally wrong when this happened. Those defensive mods should tell you:"Shoot the shuttle instead of Soontir, let Soontir have free reign for at least a few turns", so the NPE experience is born out of a silly game move. Beside, you took here a shot against autothrusters on top, so you a referring most likely to a turret shot, so much for NPE

Once Palpatine is of the board, rolling just one paint on four dice means getting 2 hits. That's worth ~24 points in a single attack. And that is the reason why Soontir was used with Palpatine in the first place. 35-Points is too much to lose in the first engagement when the opponent has still enough ships to overcome your token stack with multiple attacks per turn. Palpatine was a safety net to force the opponent to shoot at Palpatine instead´ while your lists removed at least some of the firepower from the board to make Soontir's token stack sufficient to survive without Palpatine. If you remove Palpatine from the equation Soontir becomes a very expensive ship, especially in an environment which has a lot more offensive power than Soontir was originally designed for.

1. Palaptin's function in imperial arc dodgers lists was to bring that list into the mid-game. Palp's job was to die first.
2. The player's duty was to not screw up his maneuvers in the mid game, because a pump here without Palp being there could easily kill an imperial arc dodger in one shot.
3. Soontirs job was simply being Soontir and winning the endgame based on his pilot skill and maneuverability.

New ships just Fen Rau and new offensive Supports like Manaroo changed #1 and #2, because Palp started dying before the mid-game could really get started, the mid game itself became a lot harder because a single bump, single shot or not became super dangerous already, all thanks to plenty of those super accurate 4 or even 5 dice attacks which all meant that Soontir often could not reach #3 at all. So his era ended, and it would have been ended with or without the Palp changes.
So, if we consider the above 3 steps as the basis of the traditional Imperial Arc Dodger lists, then imo the answer what we want to see this fun playstyle again is simple: Something which offers the same incentive to not shoot at our aces and something which helps with the power creep. Point Reduction via Titles on the classic arc dodgers would be one way to go about it, while introducing something scary which needs to die first, like for example a 4 dice primary support ship which is cheap enough to fit with 2 aces. Really such a shame that they did not make the Royal Guard Titles at least -1 Points, because then two Interceptors would fit together with an Upsilon-Class Shuttle.

Edit: And btw, I get why the Upsilon itself is expensive, so I am arguing more that Interceptors should be cheaper.

I think the big part of the problem is that FFG biased imperials toward Evade-tanking. Depending on the dice, you're either invincible, or your points vanish instantly- there's almost no "damaged but still alive" zone. The Tie Intercepter is the sharpist, pointiest example because it combines evade-tanking with arcdodging for an appropriate price, so depending on dice you could lose over a third of your list.

In a meta where the arcdodging evade tank is effective, people feel that there's nothing they can do about it. In a meta where the arcdodging evade tank isnt effective, an iconic ship is left tragically underplayed. There is almost no good middle ground.

19 minutes ago, TheHumanHydra said:

How many attacks should Soontir be able to survive (across the game)?

As with all ships in this game, as many as possible.

Reflecting more on the importance of Arc Dodging, I believe X-wing may be the only miniatures game on the market with "annihilation" being the only win condition, which further increases its importance. I will add however that this isn't necessarily a detriment to the game system , having personally played miniatures games where juggling multiple scenarios and schemes at the end of a long day can seem tedious and work-like to some.

Another aspect of the arc dodging was the Initiative Bid Arms Race. The onus for some players on the bid was a mentaility of "If I lost the bid I've lost the game" though in certain cases such as pre-nerf Phantoms, this was very much the case. I hope we don't go back to those days in the waves to come.

@Brunas

About Palp in Imperial Assault:

You forgot to look at the second part of his auto damage ability. After they take a damage, they gain a +1 damage token, which they can use whenever they attack to add +1 hit to their damage. So you do have to consider who you damage if you use the ability.

Flying against soontir probably represents 75%+ of my favourite games of X-wing. I've rarely ever flown him myself, but the challenge of beating him when handled by an experienced opponent is the best thing this game has offered me.

8 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

outmaneuver should be a core mechanic, not an upgrade.

yep

Arc dodging in and of itself is not a NPE in most situations. It can be a problem when skill levels are wildly different, but in that case the more experienced player should adjust accordingly in a teaching environment.

Soontir specifically? Hmmm... Originally, no. However, I feel like he was a bit of a sleeper problem, because he's probably the strongest Arc Dodger (Exempting the shroedinger phantom) prior to Wave 8 when the Inquisitor hit, so in trying to buff all arc dodgers, they made Soontir into a monster. Carnor Jax, Darth Vader, Turr Phennir, and even the post-nerf phantoms probably would have been merely annoying with the original Palpatine. But Soontir pushed the archetype over the edge. A similar problem to what happened to the Falcon once Predator and C-3P0 hit, in my opinion.

10 minutes ago, Squark said:

Arc dodging in and of itself is not a NPE in most situations. It can be a problem when skill levels are wildly different, but in that case the more experienced player should adjust accordingly in a teaching environment.

Soontir specifically? Hmmm... Originally, no. However, I feel like he was a bit of a sleeper problem, because he's probably the strongest Arc Dodger (Exempting the shroedinger phantom) prior to Wave 8 when the Inquisitor hit, so in trying to buff all arc dodgers, they made Soontir into a monster. Carnor Jax, Darth Vader, Turr Phennir, and even the post-nerf phantoms probably would have been merely annoying with the original Palpatine. But Soontir pushed the archetype over the edge. A similar problem to what happened to the Falcon once Predator and C-3P0 hit, in my opinion.

What do you think would have happened if, say, Lt Lorir and Soont had swapped pilot abilities- that is the PS9 EPT had the ability to bank barrel roll, and the PS5 got a focus token on Kturns?

Building your list with a solution to Soontir (or Phantoms at that time) limited choices greatly, and even if you made the right choice and caught Soontir in arc, he would still dodge all damage.

It doesn't take a ton of skill to double reposition with perfect information AND have tokens and dice mods to cover yourself.

2 minutes ago, algnc said:

Building your list with a solution to Soontir (or Phantoms at that time) limited choices greatly, and even if you made the right choice and caught Soontir in arc, he would still dodge all damage.

It doesn't take a ton of skill to double reposition with perfect information AND have tokens and dice mods to cover yourself.

May I ask how much flying with Fel you have done?