Ship with pilots format requires a single card and matching base token.

ships separate from pilots require two base tokens and two cards be brought to the table. In a sense doubling some of the components required to play.

Separating ships from pilots could potentially lower the overall components if you get rid of a generic pilot card in favor of one ship card and two special pilot cards. But you are missing aphysical marker for the generic pilots you still need cheap generic pilot cards only now you also need extra base tokens to mark what the pilot skill is.

Its no great saving in complexity or materials. it's a wash or worse.

Also restricting some pilot abilities and pilot skills to specific ships opens up a bunch of design space. For example ships with cloaking like the phantom need to be low pilot skill otherwise they remove very important parts of game play. It is similar with bombers.

So the reason pilot abilities are cool and special is their limitation to a specific ship.

But if you come up with a complicated system of restricting pilots to ships then ...

Your losing some of what your paying for by changing the game and adding components.

how do you add ships to the game, Errata old pilot cards to fly new ships?

im not saying it can't be done but we are likely better off not doing it. But!

this is how I would do it if I had to.

pilots would become a series of new upgrade types.

ace pilot

support pilot

technical pilot

ships would include a base pilot skill and an assumed basic pilot. Ships also gain a pilot upgrade slot according to the type of ship.

Ace pilots for fighters would have high pilot skills and abilities meant for maneuverable fighters.

Freighter class pilots for larger crafts with support or control style abilities.

Technical pilot for cloak ships and bombers. Ships that simply break the game if they are allowed a high ps pilot.

this solves lots of problems with the separate pilot/ship idea but it still requires abunch of components and complicates the most basic parts of the game.

21 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

ESP ECIALLY when it comes to game design, people frequently don't know what they ACTUALLY want, or don't know how to implement what they want in a way that makes a good game. Game design is HARD.

For instance, I know I want small and large ship movement to work such that a 3 straight is the same 'length' for each ship. But I've spent about 5 iterations of working out how it should work in practice, without requiring a different set of templates for each base size or having unintended consequences WRT tightness of turns or bumping.

I'm still nto sure I've got it right and wouldn't be unless I playtested it.

Portable pilots is usually cited as the biggest reason STAW fails as hard as it does when it comes to balance, because EVERY pilot and EVERY ship have to be balanced with each other, whereas X Wing avoids that by only designing pilots as part of ships.

I'd not only not include it in my list of things to think about for 2.0, I'd actively campaign against it.

You me got to have a conversation here. Let's take it back a notch and level out here.

Your comment about the majority wanting to win the game but not being able to is just a logic knot. The two player non-co-op game will always have a winner and loser. Duh. Given enough games though, both players should eventually experience a win at some point. So technically not just a majority, but all players will win the game.(lol I just lost the game) Barring certain extremes of course, like you or I will likely never have beaten the worlds best Go player. But given a sufficient number of games against average opponents, you and I will both eventually win at least one. So agree to disagree if you want, but in game design there are no bad ideas, just poorly implemented ones. A better analogy would be a lot of people think it's a good idea to do cocaine, but that doesn't make it a good idea. There is a difference, I know you can see it, you've already demonstrated that by referencing STAW which items an idea very badly. More on that later. Game design is not hard, it's a basic part of the development of children's psychology and social position on through your entire life. Humans literally do it all the time. Game PRODUCT design is hard because of a multitude of reasons. Let's make that clear. Even then I wouldn't say it's hard, just tricky to get right and keep it that way for any length of time as you go through your expansion cycles.

Now your absolutely right that there are times when folks don't actually know what they want... But they know roughly what it looks like. Which is what we got here. And why I'll quote myself and repeat, "you have to *make it* a good one(idea)". And we can totally do that. So let's not focus on why it can't be done. After all at one time they said we would never break the sound barrier and we did it anyway. Let's look at ideas that will make it work.

Attack Wing screwed the pooch on this one, 100%. But why? After it was put out, there was no vehicle to control it. Like not even worth trying levels of bonkers. Heavy errata would (and as I recall did) bring it kinda back in line, but it was so flawed it never really worked even with. X-wing wisely, and in a ton of ways I still agree with them, and with you, made the right call for what they were doing at that time by keeping pilots and ships as linked entities. It worked REALLY well for the game. But the players do want more, as always, but this one seems fairly obvious... Which is why STAW probably did it in the first place. It would have only made sense. They just did it terribly.

In one interview the design team even addressed this. Their feeling was that over time they might open the gates with more pairings in releases, which they have done, but then openly encouraged players to experiment with whichever ones they wanted to play and even gave a quick formula to figure the cost of such swaps. So they had to have thought about it before hand. This was always something on the table.

Now here's the weird part we have to remember: the current X-wing already does this. Maarak Steele, Sabine Wren, Hera Syndulla, and more still. All on different ships, at different prices. That's no different final product wise then a properly implemented system that allows them to be seperate entities that are paired by the players. They work in this method because they took the time to see them as seperate, then price them as such according to the vehicle they put them on. It's really no different then say a Codex in Games Workshop games like Warhammer or 40k that prices upgrades to a unit on a per unit level, but a specific weapon on one unit is better than this other one, so it's more expensive on the former and cheaper on the later or some such. And those they have on a rotational edit cycle also which is their vehicle to control them. Not sure that would be a good way to do it for X-wing, but hey it's an idea. Again I like the app idea here as it could track all this pretty handily.

Conclusion is, this is a collection, so all the ideas are going to try to be recorded. We're not finalizing a product in the end, so after all this if you still want to campaign against it that's cool, I and everyone else can respect that. This is an open discussion after all, so those thoughts are welcome. Simultaneously though I'd just still like to encourage everyone in this discussion to look at the more positive spins or just another idea that you'd like to work on and share thoughts about instead of trying to 'nah' out one of the others. Like this maneuvering system your working on, let's discuss that. I'm like c'mon man there's cooler stuff to talk about then why we shouldn't do this one thing. That's all I'm saying here.

I'd be perfectly happy with it being very limited and very ship specific - but honestly at that point, you're adding a lot of design complexity in separating points and details for pilots from ships, to gain not a lot of differentiation from just printing pilots on multiple ships, but doing it more often.

I'm aware that we're just spitballing and none of this is final, but I'm not going to sit back and watch when someone makes a terrible suggestion and just whistle. But that's quite enough on that, I think I've made myself pretty clear.

As for movement, I went through several iterations of thought, starting from the premise that a lot of people are really irritated by the fact that large based ships are often faster moving and more agile than their small base counterparts, because of the size of their bases - their moves move them further and the barrel rolls and boosts move them further, so a small ship and a large ship with the same dial won't move the same.

This could be considered a feature, not a bug, and will ALWAYS happen to some extent, as long as both ships use the same templates.

So, I went through a few iterations of thought on what to do about it.

1: It's a feature, not a bug. Just leave it as is, and redesign dials accordingly. Large base 1 turns and 4- and 5-speed moves should be used sparingly, and green turns (and indeed stress clearing turns generally, looking at upgrades like Kanan) on large ships should almost never appear.

2: Different templates. This would be an expedient solution and wouldn't entail any compromise on one or the other behalf. A large base would use a completely different template set from a small base, for the same manoeuvres, allowing those manoeuvres to be shorter and narrower so that the distance travelled is roughly the same. BUt the downside of this is the extra clutter needed. A double set of templates is a lot more design investment, takes up more cardboard, more table space, etc etc etc.

3: Moving rear to rear for big ships only. Basically accomplished by putting a template down in the rear guides, lining up the chosen template with the front of it, and moving the ship normally. This woudl shorten the moves a lot, but also tighten the turns significantly, and mean that the base doesn't move in the same line, which would be weird. It's also hacky as heck and very fiddly.

4: Moving rear to front. Once RuneWars came out I worked this one out. It entails designing the templates all over again, but that;s a small cost relative to making the game better. Essentially, designing a template set that slots around the rear corner of the base, and then the front corner slots in at the far end, meaning that a small base ship with its rear lined up with the rear of a large base ship which does the same move, will end up with its front corner in the same position. The movement profile is again a bit different for each ship, but I think it's the best compromise - and it does lead to small bases being faster in a straight line than large bases, but that seems like a more satisfactory state of affairs for most people I think. It also means that the nubs aren't needed any more, so the boost and barrel roll and decloak mechanics could be overhauled without worrying about medium bases having nubs on the sides to get in the way.

But it's still not perfect - the ideal would be to move them centre-of-base to centre-of-base which would mean that one size never outstrips the other as long as the centres of the bases start in the same place, but I haven't worked out a reasonable method of accomplishing centre-to-centre movement without it getting CRAZY fiddly.

10 hours ago, TylerTT said:

Ship with pilots format requires a single card and matching base token.

ships separate from pilots require two base tokens and two cards be brought to the table. In a sense doubling some of the components required to play.

Separating ships from pilots could potentially lower the overall components if you get rid of a generic pilot card in favor of one ship card and two special pilot cards. But you are missing aphysical marker for the generic pilots you still need cheap generic pilot cards only now you also need extra base tokens to mark what the pilot skill is.

Its no great saving in complexity or materials. it's a wash or worse.

Also restricting some pilot abilities and pilot skills to specific ships opens up a bunch of design space. For example ships with cloaking like the phantom need to be low pilot skill otherwise they remove very important parts of game play. It is similar with bombers.

So the reason pilot abilities are cool and special is their limitation to a specific ship.

But if you come up with a complicated system of restricting pilots to ships then ...

Your losing some of what your paying for by changing the game and adding components.

how do you add ships to the game, Errata old pilot cards to fly new ships?

im not saying it can't be done but we are likely better off not doing it. But!

this is how I would do it if I had to.

pilots would become a series of new upgrade types.

ace pilot

support pilot

technical pilot

ships would include a base pilot skill and an assumed basic pilot. Ships also gain a pilot upgrade slot according to the type of ship.

Ace pilots for fighters would have high pilot skills and abilities meant for maneuverable fighters.

Freighter class pilots for larger crafts with support or control style abilities.

Technical pilot for cloak ships and bombers. Ships that simply break the game if they are allowed a high ps pilot.

this solves lots of problems with the separate pilot/ship idea but it still requires abunch of components and complicates the most basic parts of the game.

I like the way you're thinking. This does help address the issue of abilities/actions that should have lower PS. (However, even that rule is sometimes broken. Look at the Illicit Cloaking Device--that card can be placed on any PS ship, even a Talonbane Cobra with VI. Besides, this issue can be resolved with my earlier suggestions about pilot proficiency: pilots who are "proficient" in TIE Phantoms wouldn't go above PS 7, and pilots who are not proficient in TIE Phantom would take a -2 PS hit to be equipped to a TIE Phantom, thus ensuring that you never have a native PS 9 Phantom. There are ways to work with this system, and there may even be improvements or simplifications I'm not thinking about). THIS is what the OP wanted--us brainstorming and creating! (I think?) The Support Pilot/Ace Pilot/Technical Pilot monikers could be a simpler way of limiting flexibility so that ships with amazing abilities aren't overpowered by amazing pilots.

As to the components, I did think that part out too but didn't think it would matter to anyone. In a separate pilot system, you only need one cardboard base (whereas you get 4-7 cardboard bases in the current system, and each expansion pack comes with 4-7 pilot cards as well). In the system I'm spontaneously creating as I type right now, the new, single base simply has the stat line and firing arc and ship name & icon. To show what pilot is in the seat, smaller cardboard "name tags" (for lack of a better word) would be inserted into the nub on the front and back of the pegs that hold up the miniature, where we currently put generic ship numbers. We would then only need one name tag per unique pilot, and that amount of cardboard would be about 1/3 the amount (or less) that is used for a base.

This way, we could either forgo displaying PS on the ship itself (assuming that 2.0 would treat PS the same way we're used to) OR the 2.0 core set could come with numbers 1-12 (similar to our current designation numbers for generic pilots) which could be attached to the pilot's "name tag" plate. (Which would be awfully nice even in the current game--currently, if you put VI on Wedge, his cardboard still says "9". This would give you the flexibility to swap it out for "11", or even to replace it with "0" during the game if you get that crit.) Or, there could be other solutions that I'm not thinking of--but I'm just spitballing here.

Since the Ship card would no longer have special or unique abilities, we can reimagine its landscape and use it to help save table space. Instead of being a vertical card with an upgrade bar, stat bar, and action bar, and we currently place upgrade cards all around it to try to distinguish that those upgrade cards belong to this ship card and not the ship card to the right, we could envision a card that literally lets us "attach" upgrades. it could be a bigger ship card, landscape-oriented, maybe with enough room that you can lay your upgrade cards on top, inside each of the "slots" that are shaped and so designated to visually communicate how many upgrades you can put on, or slide them partly underneath the ship card instead of on top. (In this situation though, we would either need very big ship cards, or smaller upgrade cards--or both--and this might be a bit too unwieldy, especially for players who like to fly swarms.) Has anyone else been frustrated in playing on a 3'x3' table where there's no room for your cards? Or that the gamers on the table next to you are taking up the space you need for your cards, shield tokens, damage deck, templates, etc.? This is the opportunity to come up with solutions. Heck, a "ship card" could actually be a plastic stand with nubs that hold your upgrade cards upright and display them each for you, so that they don't all have to lie flat on the table and take up so much space. You could also have slots for holding damage cards upright, so you can easily keep track of how many damage cards you have assigned to you and which ones are crits, rather than the current system where we haphazardly throw them into a pile on top of the ship card and sometimes forget we can't perform red maneuvers because that card is half-buried. If an opponent doesn't remember what upgrades your X-Wing has, you could just pass him your plastic stand/card with the upgrades set upright in their slots, he can look at it, and at once see all the things equipped, and pass it back, instead of trying to pass back and forth piles of cards.

For my next trick, I will demonstrate how separating pilot abilities from ships will solve world hunger!

Nah I'm kidding. But seriously, it has been a fun thought experiment, and I will admit that I probably took it too far (honestly, a discussion about templates, cardboard, and the way we use space outside of the 3'x3' mat should probably happen anyway, since it can happen independently of the pilot ability/ship discussion). Heck, separating pilot abilities from ships might not be viable after all. Maybe no one would fly a generic TIE Phantom. (Maybe nobody does anyway.) But I think there are definitely some points that it raises that need to be considered:

• That, currently, pilot abilities are nothing more than unique EPTs permanently affixed to ships. (In some cases--Nym, Whisper, Echo--the ability actually has something to do with the ship. In other cases--Garven Dreis, Leebo, Kaa'to Leeachos--the ability does not really have anything to do with the uniqueness of the ship.) This knowledge raises further questions:
• Is the ship itself unique enough, viable enough to make an impact on the game? (In the current system you could ask: would a player ever want to fly its generics?) Or is a ship only viable because of its best ace? Sadly, with many ships currently, the best ace is the only iteration of that ship that shows up on the gaming table. (This might be because of the current meta's race for PS, but even if so, this has been the case for at least the past five waves.) If the ship is not bringing something unique enough or viable enough, what mechanic do we need to adjust so we can fix it? This, I think, gets at the same underlying problems of why we don't see B-Wings or X-Wings anymore; why we don't see Z-95 Headhunters, G-1A Starfighters, or TIE Interceptors. The list goes on. If people only fly a ship because of a single pilot's amazing ability, ignoring the other 3 pilots that came with the ship, I see that ship as 3/4 a failure. (Maybe that's my own perspective that needs adjusting though. When there are over a dozen ships available for each faction, maybe we're lucky that the community has adopted even that one pilot on the new ship. A real failure would be to launch a new ship with none of its pilots seeing play on the table)
• Ultimately wrapped in the same discussion is Pilot Skill. In the race to have ships that can arc-dodge first and also navigate around Nym's bombs (or just plain out-bomb him), we lose sight of over 80% of the rest of ships and pilots in the game. Pilot Skill has become so important that the diversity of ships and playstyles has taken a back-seat to having PS 9 and 10 on the table.

Oh and with that I'm done--I've got to get back to studying and I've already spent entirely too long on this. Sorry for hijacking the conversation... now that I'm gone I'll let you get back to discussing the other good points the OP brought up. (most of which are actually better ideas than the one I narrowed in on...)

Personally, I think that instead of separating pilots and ships, we just need more versions of some pilots.

I know it would add a bit of complexity, but what about some sort of elevation mechanic? It'd be interesting to have to think in three dimensions instead of just two. Though I suppose then you could end up with real overlaps instead of mere bumps, which may be rather difficult to track.

2.0 or a far more likely "revised core set" needs to address the problems that are killing the game. And I'm only guessing one thing.

The lack of objective play in the competitive format.

Objectives that rotate into and out of play could solve many problems with the main competitive format.

So my guess as a product maybe it's a core set with two resistance a-wings vs a normal colored tie suppressor.

On 9/6/2017 at 8:32 AM, ForceSensitive said:

THE LIST:

+Granularity gained by raising point cost

Sure. Why not?

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+Models stay the same, base may change?

Of course. The models must be usable. Any 2.0 that doesn't adhere to this is doomed to failure.

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--+Guides on all sides of the ship.(somewhere I have sketches of a circular base concept that had this and achieved 8 slots that were all equally usable by having 8 nubs at equidistant points all the way around. Abandoned for lack of firing arc clarity. Worth a second look)

It's not a bad idea. I'd also like to see them get rid of nubs, in favor of the recessed slot Attack Wing uses. Attack Wing did almost nothing right, but this was one of them.

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--+Mention of medium bases. Curious notion. I like it. This one came up once in the local pod too.

Enh. Sure, why not?

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+Maneuver tool instead of templates (Surprised how much I like this concept, good discussion point. Might just be the Armada talking.)

Why? The templates are great. They're simple and easy to use, with no points of failure. The Armada tool is clunky and wears out, from what I've seen.

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--+Base size to maneuver interaction appears to be a sticking point. Should look at that. Rear to _____ common maneuvering is popular idea.

There's not actually anything wrong with base-to-maneuver, as long as it's understood and designed for. Large ships should, in general, only have 1- to 2-speed straights and banks, and 2-speed turns. There could be exceptions, but they really should be exceptions.

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--+Modify the secondary positioning actions.

Pretty much. Any double re-positioning in a turn should give the ship stress.

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+App software support system/mandatory system.

Yes. FFG needs to not be afraid of errata, and having a dedicated app that is understood to be part of the game would allow access to current card text, errata, FAQs, and open questions pretty much instantly. This is in addition to squad-building, dice rolling, and so on.

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+Dice types (holy Qui-gon this is popular. I'm all for it but it opens up an opportunity to revamp a TON of stuff. Lots to explore. Seems to be nearly unanimous at this point, so happy.)

Enh. I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with basic reds and greens.

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+Mobile firing arcs. (Huh. I didn't like that one but worth exploring, rough spot since introduction in wave TWO)

Yes. It's just a better mechanic for turrets ... not just what we now call PWTs, either.

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+Pilots separate from ships (see also App system. This one gets a lot of love but has been a notoriously sticky area. Must dive deep.)

Yes. Specifically, every ship should be a reference card, listing every pilot qualified to fly it. When a new pilot is released, a new copy of any appropriate ship's reference card should be released in the same pack. (Or updated on the app. Or whatever.) This does not mean that every pilot can fly every ship ... not even close. Nor should it be evaluated in terms of current pilot abilities. This is for a re-build of the game.

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+Core level mechanic that adds action economy to universal level. (Push the limit)

I'm leery of this one. Action economy and complexity creep got the game in trouble ... and people want to bake it into the base game?

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+Bonus dice versus weapon types(see also dice types)

I'm not exactly sure what this mean, and I'm too lazy to read through and see if I can puzzle it out.

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+Alternating initiative. (In a group discussion locally we once think tabled what the game would be like with alternate activation and removing pilot skill entirely. Seems like a low identify point, get the microscope.)

I like this idea for the current game. I'm not sure it would be necessary for a re-vamped game, but I'm also not sure it wouldn't be a good fit.

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+New defense mechanism that has no variance.

Ugh. Again, the slow erosion of variance is actually behind most of the systemic problems in the game. "No variance" is why list-building is now vastly more important -- in many cases determining the extremely likelihood of a winner or loser before the ships hit the table -- and why so many cards are considered unplayable.

Embrace variance. High-skill players can seek lesser variance, but the less they can eliminate, the more games will be at least nominally competitive, even between tiers of skill. It amuses me that the big-name players are all about eliminating variance in game-play ... which means all of the variance is displaced to match-ups.

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+More types of upgrades. (Ship titles versus refits kinda stuff. Totally agree. Easy open.)

Sure. Why not? FFG just needs to be extra careful with ships with large numbers of upgrade slots.

Some things not in the list:

Keywords. The game badly needs keywords. Not only will this help minimize ambiguity and streamline playtesting, but it will save space on cards.

Binary stress and "anxiety." Generally, a ship should either be stressed or not. Similarly, while I don't have a good name for it, a pilot should either have anxiety or not. "Stress" would refer to actual forces at play on the physical craft. "Anxiety" would refer to forces at play on the pilot. A flechette torpedo? Stress ... the ship either jukes hard to avoid, or gets some shredding. Glitterstim? Anxiety. There can be some overlap ... perhaps a PTL-ish effect allows the player -- or his opponent! -- to choose whether he gets stress or anxiety. But you cannot stack stress, and you cannot stack anxiety. (You can be under the effects of both, however.) If it's for a beneficial effect, you simply can't do what you want to do ... it's a side-effect of a non-beneficial effect, the stress or anxiety simply has no additional effect.

On 9/9/2017 at 8:52 PM, ForceSensitive said:

I'm really intrigued by this medium size base thing. When someone first mentioned it I immediately thought 1x2 rectangle Base size with a 'wide' version for like the K-wing, Scurg, Punisher, ARC-170, and a 'narrow' version for things like the U-wing. Thinking about it I love how such a game piece could be moved around the play space. Literally pulling 'wing-over like' maneuvering in and through other fighters and obstacles. And a narrow version would pick up a little more speed and feel very dart like diving long into positions. (Which intrigued me even more to have that rectangle style as the standard for even small ships. Narrow A-wing, wide TIE/bombers?) But then someone corrected me with the concept of a 1.5x1.5 square base that was more catch-all and probably a little more stable and I like that too.

The more I thought about this, the more I liked it. I am going to simply super glue two bases together and play test this.

Here's a few ideas that have been kicking around my braincase for a while:

1: Move to a 2-turn in advance maneuver and action programming . If you've played armada, you may have a good idea of how I want this to work. Basically, you program your maneuvers and actions an extra turn ahead of time. So instead of one dial, which you program during the planning phase and then reveal during the subsequent activation phase, you have a two dials. The one you program during the planning phase doesn't get revealed or executed until after the next planning phase. You would want two more dials for action planning, as well. For boost and barrel roll actions, the direction of movement would also need to be specified in the dial.

- Why is this good for the game? One of the original strengths of the game (in my opinion), was the need to out-think and out-fly your opponent. With the advent of turrets, powerful post-movement repositioning abilities, and bombs, the importance of this aspect of the game has diminished in comparison to squad composition. Forcing players to plan an extra turn in advance could re-invigorate this aspect of the game. Players would really need to think about what their opponent was planning to do and plan accordingly in order to do well.

- How could this backfire? The obvious answer here is turrets. By making it harder to anticipate where your opponent will be, we're reducing the power of anything that requires you to know where the enemy is, and increasing the power of anything that does not require you to know where the enemy is. That brings me to my second adjustment:

2: Give everything a souped-up bullseye arc, and nerf turrets: Bullseye arcs are cool. I was thinking of something very similar but far more aggressive before wave 12 was previewed. In my version, all ships gain this 'straight-on' arc, which can be represented by placing the range ruler in the front guides of a ship. If you can overlap the template of an enemy ship with the range ruler, you can shoot them with this special arc. If you have a straight-on arc shot, you apply a multiplier to your dice. At range 1, multiply your red dice by 3. At range 2, use a 2x multiplier. At range 3, the defender does not gain their extra green die (and you have a 1x multiplier). Turreted ships do not gain this arc, and are always treated as firing at targets at range 3, out of arc.

- Hardcore option : Treat this straight-on arc as the only firing arc (ignoring your primary firing arc).

- Why is this good for the game? As with the first change, the idea here is to reward great flying. Lining up a perfect shot (especially with the first change in effect) is tough, and should be rewarded.

- How could this backfire? 3x is such a huge boost to red dice. That could really be overkill. Implementing this change without the first change would be crazy.

6 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Of course. The models must be usable. Any 2.0 that doesn't adhere to this is doomed to failure.

How so? Will 2.0 not include models for existing ships, requiring the purchase of old ships and new 2.0 "upgrade packs" for bases, cards, and tokens?

Or do we still include the models, making the old models redundant?

Or perhaps we should have every pack include both a model and a non-model version, doubling the amount of product and potentially confusing newcomers?

It'd certainly be nice if people could just swap their lovingly repainted models onto the new bases, but it's hardly the end of the game if they don't.

13 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Yes. Specifically, every ship should be a reference card, listing every pilot qualified to fly it. When a new pilot is released, a new copy of any appropriate ship's reference card should be released in the same pack. (Or updated on the app. Or whatever.) This does not mean that every pilot can fly every ship ... not even close. Nor should it be evaluated in terms of current pilot abilities. This is for a re-build of the game.

This sounds overly complex. Not only do you need to reprint cards every time a new pilot comes out who could fly them, but you also need a way to keep up-to-date on all the most recent printings, and if a subsequent book/movie/game/etc. has a character flying an existing ship, we need to errata and reprint the ship cards rather than simply printing a new ship/pilot combo card that doesn't affect older cards.

I still think it's much less messy to just print the pilots in what you want them to fly. If you want Corran Horn to be able to fly both X-Wings and E-Wings, then make an X-Wing Corran and an E-Wing Corran!

16 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

How so? Will 2.0 not include models for existing ships, requiring the purchase of old ships and new 2.0 "upgrade packs" for bases, cards, and tokens?

I'm not understanding what you're asking, sorry. What I'm saying is that if I have to re-purchase my ~125 ships, I'm out, and I suspect a pretty large majority of the current X-Wing player-base will be, too.

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I still think it's much less messy to just print the pilots in what you want them to fly. If you want Corran Horn to be able to fly both X-Wings and E-Wings, then make an X-Wing Corran and an E-Wing Corran!

I don't understand how it's "less messy." That's analogous to saying it's "less messy" to have all Bomb rules printed on every Bomb/Mine upgrade card.

If you have a Corran Horn for the E-wing and one for the X-wing, you already have two cards you need to keep track of ... and that's not counting all the other pilots for each ship. If you have a reference card for the X-wing, and a reference card for the E-wing, all you need is one pilot card. You don't need "E-wing Corran" and "X-wing Corran." You just need "Corran," and whatever reference card for the ship he's flying.

It's significantly more messy the way things are now.

1 minute ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I'm not understanding what you're asking, sorry. What I'm saying is that if I have to re-purchase my ~125 ships, I'm out, and I suspect a pretty large majority of the current X-Wing player-base will be, too.

Then I don't understand what you're suggesting. Changes to rules, cards, tokens, etc. would require purchasing new packs. Even if the models themselves are the same, it would be impossible to have a true 2.0 without having to repurchase. That's pretty much what 2.0 is.

1 minute ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I don't understand how it's "less messy." That's analogous to saying it's "less messy" to have all Bomb rules printed on every Bomb/Mine upgrade card.

If you have a Corran Horn for the E-wing and one for the X-wing, you already have two cards you need to keep track of ... and that's not counting all the other pilots for each ship. If you have a reference card for the X-wing, and a reference card for the E-wing, all you need is one pilot card. You don't need "E-wing Corran" and "X-wing Corran." You just need "Corran," and whatever reference card for the ship he's flying.

It's significantly more messy the way things are now.

Ok, let me give you an example:

I have a pilot Chewbacca, who is currently only listed on YT-1300 and YT-2400. Then a new movie/book/whatever comes out, and shows us Chewie flying a TIE Fighter. FFG wants to cash in on this novelty, and decides to make Chewbacca a TIE Fighter pilot, as well. They now need to print new TIE Fighter cards which must actually replace the older cards.

Contrast with if they make a separate card for each pilot/ship combo. Yes, they would still need to print a new Chewie TIE Fighter card, but now it has no effect on older cards. There's no need to keep up with most-recent-printings (or at least far fewer of them). Not to mention the added bonus that TIE Fighter Chewie could have a different ability or PS than YT-1300 Chewie.

Of course, you'd also start running into issues with some of the more popular craft, as eventually either the list would get so long that it would be difficult to read, or else FFG would just have to decree, "No more TIE Fighter pilots!" The latter would be less than ideal, as you could eventually have potentially iconic pilots left off the list simply because there's not enough space to add any more. Having to list all legal pilots would simply be too big a limitation on design.

Just now, JJ48 said:

Then I don't understand what you're suggesting. Changes to rules, cards, tokens, etc. would require purchasing new packs. Even if the models themselves are the same, it would be impossible to have a true 2.0 without having to repurchase. That's pretty much what 2.0 is.

I'm not sure how much simpler to say it. "Current models need to be usable in 2.0."

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I have a pilot Chewbacca, who is currently only listed on YT-1300 and YT-2400. Then a new movie/book/whatever comes out, and shows us Chewie flying a TIE Fighter. FFG wants to cash in on this novelty, and decides to make Chewbacca a TIE Fighter pilot, as well. They now need to print new TIE Fighter cards which must actually replace the older cards.

Contrast with if they make a separate card for each pilot/ship combo. Yes, they would still need to print a new Chewie TIE Fighter card, but now it has no effect on older cards. There's no need to keep up with most-recent-printings (or at least far fewer of them).

... Wut?

You don't need a new TIE Fighter reference card unless you have the new TIE-fightin' Chewbacca. And if you have the new TIE-fightin' Chewbacca, you'll have the new reference card, because it will be re-printed, with the needed addition, in that pack.

Quote

Not to mention the added bonus that TIE Fighter Chewie could have a different ability or PS than YT-1300 Chewie.

That's the only benefit, and it's just not worth the mess, IMO.

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Of course, you'd also start running into issues with some of the more popular craft, as eventually either the list would get so long that it would be difficult to read, or else FFG would just have to decree, "No more TIE Fighter pilots!"

Well, there's plenty of room on reference cards. But you could also do it the other way ... on pilot cards, use ship-silhouettes to indicate which ships the pilot can fly. When a new ship comes out, if an existing pilot can fly it, reprint that pilot's pilot card with the additional ship-silhouette. It could work in either direction ... I'm not sure which would be better. (But both are preferable to the current mess.)

@Ziusdra

I understand what you're getting at but I don't really agree that it would do anything to increase diversity. Any game with this level of complexity is gonna have it's winners and losers in terms of cards/ships. Math nerds ruin everything. Upon release the optimal combination of pilot and ship will be discovered and will remained paired until the new hotness comes along and usurps either the pilot or the ship.

I could even make a case that it might make things worse. Imagine if we get another JM5K in terms of balance in our theoretical 2.0. At that point the only good pilots will be the ones that could pilot this theoretical monster. It might seem bad that some ships are only ever used because of their pilots but it's better than the alternative of simply not being used at all because they offer nothing unique and some other ship is mathematically better. They could tie unique abilities to ships, it's already the path they're taking currently with titles, but that's yet another layer of added complexity to consider for combos with a dozen different pilot abilities.

I stand by my statement that you'd haft to make the abilities basic. A lot of pilot skills would range from useless, competitive, to down right broken based solely on the platform you put it on. It'd be difficult to attach a point cost as the value you receive out of it would vary to a greater degree than what we have with our current upgrades.

I understand that you could limit what ships a pilot can operate, but that opens up a few other issues as well. One being that older pilots cards would become obsolete as the game progressed and new ships came out, they'd have to constantly update the roster of ships they can pilot. That or they could just leave them with whatever they had innately, but that could lead to them getting phased out by newer pilots anyway.

If Xwing 2.0 was a closed system that didn't constantly add new ships and mechanics I'd think better of pilot cards. As the idea sits currently it just seems like they'd either

A) Be a glorified new upgrade slot with basic bonuses .

B) Make the natural power creep and imbalances worse than they've ever been before.

4 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I'm not sure how much simpler to say it. "Current models need to be usable in 2.0."

I'm not asking for simplicity. I'm asking for clarification. In your own posts you argue for separating ships and pilots onto separate cards, which means the cards you currently own will be invalid . So, how do you plan to get your 2.0 ship/pilot cards without purchasing the new models?

7 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Well, there's plenty of room on reference cards. But you could also do it the other way ... on pilot cards, use ship-silhouettes to indicate which ships the pilot can fly. When a new ship comes out, if an existing pilot can fly it, reprint that pilot's pilot card with the additional ship-silhouette. It could work in either direction ... I'm not sure which would be better. (But both are preferable to the current mess.)

We'll have to agree to disagree here. I personally find the current system far more efficient than trying to track lists of who can fly what, and have no problem with a pilot having a couple different cards for a couple different ships. But, to each his own.

10 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I'm not asking for simplicity. I'm asking for clarification. In your own posts you argue for separating ships and pilots onto separate cards, which means the cards you currently own will be invalid . So, how do you plan to get your 2.0 ship/pilot cards without purchasing the new models?

Cardboard upgrade packs. I do apologize for the cross-talking ... I'd genuinely thought that cardboard upgrade packs was a more or less universally known and accepted part of any potential X-Wing 2.0.

I'm not really a fan of the separate pilot and ship cards, but if they were to do that maybe have it where you have them double sided so you get a crew and pilot card in one, the side used just determines the price and ability used, so like how we have dual cards but one side is the pilot ability while the other has the crew icon and the ability for that. Extra points if they have it where the pilot's ability can sort of slot down on the ship card to help reduce clutter.

I'm pro secondary dice for heavier weapons, but I think going past 3 sets of dice might get a little cumbersome for the game. Another possible idea is that ships have unique abilities open to them, so basically how some of the title cards are sort of considered auto-include like the Tie Advanced Prototype's one. Preferably the abilities just helps make the ship more distinct and are in general simple and to the point abilities or actions.

For the 'medium' and large bases, why not have them be more like an H instead of a square? So the maneuver templates would dip into the space of the base.

Really do hope for the card pack so I don't have to repurchase all these ships again

New dice types would be cool - in addition to colors, could also see adding more sides (d10, d12).

Would like to see a rebalancing and options for higher level pilots to defer initiative (maybe - would have to try that out).

I wish we could go back to Wings of War and do away with dice rolls. Make everything automatic fire, range 1-3 , Range 1 deals 3 damage cards, Range 2 deals 2 and Range 1 deals 1 damage card. Pilot abilities can assign conditions. Damage cards received are flipped face up, resolve effects and half of them will say do something then discard. Shields allow you to discard damage cards after resolving any face-up effects.

5 hours ago, BomberGob said:

@Ziusdra

I understand what you're getting at but I don't really agree that it would do anything to increase diversity. Any game with this level of complexity is gonna have it's winners and losers in terms of cards/ships. Math nerds ruin everything. Upon release the optimal combination of pilot and ship will be discovered and will remained paired until the new hotness comes along and usurps either the pilot or the ship.

I could even make a case that it might make things worse. Imagine if we get another JM5K in terms of balance in our theoretical 2.0. At that point the only good pilots will be the ones that could pilot this theoretical monster. It might seem bad that some ships are only ever used because of their pilots but it's better than the alternative of simply not being used at all because they offer nothing unique and some other ship is mathematically better. They could tie unique abilities to ships, it's already the path they're taking currently with titles, but that's yet another layer of added complexity to consider for combos with a dozen different pilot abilities.

I stand by my statement that you'd haft to make the abilities basic. A lot of pilot skills would range from useless, competitive, to down right broken based solely on the platform you put it on. It'd be difficult to attach a point cost as the value you receive out of it would vary to a greater degree than what we have with our current upgrades.

I understand that you could limit what ships a pilot can operate, but that opens up a few other issues as well. One being that older pilots cards would become obsolete as the game progressed and new ships came out, they'd have to constantly update the roster of ships they can pilot. That or they could just leave them with whatever they had innately, but that could lead to them getting phased out by newer pilots anyway.

If Xwing 2.0 was a closed system that didn't constantly add new ships and mechanics I'd think better of pilot cards. As the idea sits currently it just seems like they'd either

A) Be a glorified new upgrade slot with basic bonuses .

B) Make the natural power creep and imbalances worse than they've ever been before.

Dangit I said I was gonna bow out but I'm too tempted to respond to this... haha. I'll make it quick then I swear I'm not coming back here for a few weeks, I got too much studying to do.

1. "I don't really agree that it would do anything to increase diversity."

We can agree on that, actually. Increasing diversity shouldn't be the primary goal--if you want to increase diversity, just add more pilots in the current system. Add more astromechs. Add more ships. You can increase diversity just by increasing numbers. But the goal of separating pilots from ships is (as I now see it) fixing the fundamental problems with each naked ship type. Balancing the ships w/o depending on awesome abilities (that often have little or nothing to do with the unique merits of that ship) to carry the ship into playability. I don't see what Talonbane Cobra's ability has to do specifically with the Kirhaxz, but it would sure be nice to see any Kirhazx in battle. The problem lies therein with the Kihraxz, since the entire existence of the ship depends on Talonbane, whose ability doesn't complement or stem from any uniqueness within the Khiraxz.

2. "I could even make a case that it might make things worse... etc. etc. etc."

Sure, anything done poorly and without proper planning and execution could make things worse. But all of your worse-case scenarios already exist in the current structure. Are you sick of Nym yet? Did nobody else regret buying so many useless Scyk interceptors for the first year after they came out? (& how many people actually use them now, post-fix?) Need I mention the StarViper, the TIE Punisher, or years in which the TIE Advanced sat on the shelf?

3. "You'd haft to make the abilities basic. A lot of pilot skills would range from useless, competitive, to down right broken based solely on the platform you put it on."

You're describing the current system, though. Just take a look at all of the TIE Fighter and X-Wing pilots. Then look at Nym and Dengar. They "range from useless, competitive, to downright broken." This game could be renamed Star Wars: Scum Miniatures.

4. "Older pilot cards becoming obsolete, etc."

Well maybe. That would need to be cooked in the theory-crafting oven, and mine is currently burnt out. If we cut off the idea as it currently stands, without developing it further, then of course this will be an issue. But the idea isn't to abandon it because we haven't thought it fully through. Someone else mentioned something about an app--I think integrating this game with an app would be a brilliant idea, and FFG would need to double-down on its app developers. This would obviously go beyond simply having a list-building app: store and regional tournament hosts could have (on their laptops) the app open, which would receive the official lists submitted by participants over their smartphones. Do away with the paper lists, most of us probably use one or both of the brilliant X-Wing squadron building apps. The app could integrate errata and fixes (such as the current fix for the Scyk title regarding the Hull increase) and have updated FAQ and tournament rules. In the same way, a necessary fix or expansion of a pilot's usefulness could be integrated. It's not a perfect idea, but neither is the current system, and both could use further brainstorming.

I do want to say though, I've had a good time brainstorming and imagining ways to make this work. Nothing invites creativity like challenge... and my own stubbornness...

I'm trying my best to keep the OP up to date and speed. You guys are awesome and I love where this discussion is at right now, and certainly where it's going. I've edited The list a bunch and added some commentary. If there's something you feel I've missed shoot me a private message or post here a reminder, I probably just missed it in the sheer volume of input.

Most of my commentary will be in the OP, but I want to also feel as a bit of a host I should add to it as well. Stimulate it as it were. I'm wondering then if a 2.0 would be desired to have a 'ground' or an 'atmospheric' core game mode or support. I remember this getting a ton of discussion before so I was a bit curious if this was still something folks were looking at?

I think that shield regen should probably be an inherent ability of shielded ships - like you can go off and let your shields slowly recharge, maybe if you did not get shot at this round, recover one shield. I don't like the way shields on these ships are just an extension of the hull, that isn't really how I thought they worked in star wars.

On 9/7/2017 at 3:53 PM, ForceSensitive said:

I'd like to throw out one: I don't like how large ships with crews work. Like the Falcon, Decimator, Outrider, and Ghost.. I don't see why when the ship activates, one action is supposed to represent what the ENTIRE CREW COMPLEMENT did. Like why is the Gunner for a Target lock that only he could use because seriously it's on his guns scope, and the pilot is trying to evade, and the copilot is trying to reroute power to Shields... Like really, what happened to all that? I know it's not an RPG, but the advantage of having more peeps on the ships is getting more functionality out of the ship. Could this game not represent that better? How does the Turret fire if there's no one to man it? End of day: how do we better represent crewed vessels with multiple crew roles in a game where you only have one step to show what the crew did? I'm thinking it can use work.

that sounds like a good idea; how about implementing it with a rule like this:

When you activate, you may perform one additional action for each <crew> upgrade equipped to your ship.

That seems simple enough, although it might be overpowered in the current system (but hey, that's why 2.0).

That could work. You could rig it to a exhaust mechanic (tap, thanks magic!) To rerun it in a little. Yet another ubiquitous mechanic mysteriously absent from the game that is super usable.

I think another lesson they learned in X-wing that they applied to Armada was that there were different types of crew. Armada has technically four, arguably five now, types: Admirals, officers, assault crews, defensive crews, and now they have boarding party types. To me the same lesson should apply to a X-wing 2.0 first. So working from there...

Really you could have large crewed vessels work like multiple ships in one model. Each crew member could be stressed and performing actions independently which only able to do certain things...

(I know, I'm getting super close to RPG here)

A concept for the 2.0 Falcon to me would be that it has, for the crew/action components at least, a 'Co-pilot' slot, two 'Gunner' slots (maybe they tie in to two seperate Mobile firing arcs? Still don't like those, but hey it's a thought) and a 'heavy turret' slot. Still leaving it open for like an 'advisor' crew type. The copilot slot could be an exhaust to do an action that would be relevant to flying the ship like evade or reinforce. But the gunners could just do their own actions like acquire target locks and focus that was for just their own attacks. Maybe the missile slot can only be controlled by the main pilot and copilot position? Complicated I realize, but I dig it.

A simpler approach may be to just have a simple conversion ability for a Gunner crew card. Like Luke Skywalker (Gunner) could say when attacking, if you don't have a Target lock on the defender, add a focus to your attack roll. Then at the bottom of his card is a bar that has his 'attack effect' with an [eye symbol, colon, hit symbol] telling you to always treat one eye as a hit. Another Gunner card, say the basic one, might not have any text, just the box at the bottom that shows [miss: perform a attack] or something like that. A particularly vicious Gunner like bossk may have a attack effect that shows [crit: hit, hit]. Maybe using that effect though I have to exhaust their card, or assign a stress to them.

Like there's two ways you could do it right there. There's more or there, one of them is amazing.