Only thing you really need for 2.0 is to rebalance costs around the vastly superior Armada system of dice (3 dice types based on close, medium and long range)

The amount of distinction between ships in that game is staggering compared to what we have now, allowing for a larger variety of viable options between ships rather than "derp, the xwing ain't cost effective guess it'll never see play!"

Also VASTLY reduces the incredibly swingy value of green dice and replacing them with condition dependent tokens that you can spend at certain ranges or if the attacker is in arc etc

The system rewards your ability to manuever and position your ships strategically rather than just flying more efficient ships, as ship efficiency will be predicated by preferred engagements rather than a single mathematical certainty. Armada defensive tokens also reward concentrated fire as they fold to multiple attacks instead of bouncing off lucky dice

For example, you could have Tie fighters be piddly at longer range but also more evasive v incoming fire, forcing high risk v high reward playstyle that you mitigate by TIEs being inherently expendable. Interceptors could get bonsuses for attacking outside enemy arcs while xwings get defensive bonsuses for having defensive bonsuses v enemies in arc (since most in the movies always seem to die when shot from behind) etc

basically, it makes your decisions as a player matter more than dice or upgrade combos.

9 hours ago, Infinite_Maelstrom said:

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.

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).

Shield regen by itself might be bad, look at how mad people used to be about Corran and his shenanigans with that. But if they were to do it maybe something like the power allocation from the video games? You can gain 1 shield token but must either taken ion token, or a weapons disabled token/reduce attack by 1 die this round. You can perform a boost action but must lose a shield token or take a weapons disabled token/reduce attack by 1 die this round. You can reroll 1/2 dice this turn but must lose a shield token or take an ion token. Make it an active choice the player has to make, you gain an innate boon at a cost.

9 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Only thing you really need for 2.0 is to rebalance costs around the vastly superior Armada system of dice (3 dice types based on close, medium and long range)

The amount of distinction between ships in that game is staggering compared to what we have now, allowing for a larger variety of viable options between ships rather than "derp, the xwing ain't cost effective guess it'll never see play!"

Also VASTLY reduces the incredibly swingy value of green dice and replacing them with condition dependent tokens that you can spend at certain ranges or if the attacker is in arc etc

The system rewards your ability to manuever and position your ships strategically rather than just flying more efficient ships, as ship efficiency will be predicated by preferred engagements rather than a single mathematical certainty. Armada defensive tokens also reward concentrated fire as they fold to multiple attacks instead of bouncing off lucky dice

For example, you could have Tie fighters be piddly at longer range but also more evasive v incoming fire, forcing high risk v high reward playstyle that you mitigate by TIEs being inherently expendable. Interceptors could get bonsuses for attacking outside enemy arcs while xwings get defensive bonsuses for having defensive bonsuses v enemies in arc (since most in the movies always seem to die when shot from behind) etc

basically, it makes your decisions as a player matter more than dice or upgrade combos.

I'm between on the fence and disagreement on this. The action-cinematic feel of fast paced fighter action was captured for me with the current system. At least before it got way out of hand in its current state. But that swinging nature was just part of the fun. Those dog fights where stuff was exploding at every turn just reinforced to me the risky nature of the combat I was in and how much was at risk if I wound up in the wrong position with the wrong action.

It also gave me that seat of your pants feel rolling the defense dice hoping the fates were in my favor and that very real butt clenching adrenaline rush of seeing the shot for hit-hit-crit coming in and looking at my two remaining Hull and three dice like oh lawd this is going to tickle! And then that moment when you Dodge the two hits and your like oh thank the Maker! Then you flip the crit and it's Direct hit and you're like NOOOoooOOOOOoo! And then turn around and get that shot out of nowhere from a two die A-wing that goes to long range and through a rock to snipe the ace that just pulled that shot on you, with crit-crit and they roll straight focus with no tokens, can't trigger autothrusters, and lose a Soontir to injured pilot-direct hit! And you're like well that was cool! Then you look at the board and you both have to figure how your going to get your remaining squad mates back on track to the next target. That's what X-wing is to me after the strategy part of the double blind maneuvering. I don't want a static, dare I say sterile feeling, from always known defense qualities. To me that's just starting a 2.0 with the abilities of Soontir/autothrusters and it's just calculating math from the get go. Even if it's based on position and arc.

Now I would say if you're just getting rid of the evade action or focus for degree or even reinforce per se and replacing it with some kind of token that "shores up" your defences, like a Armada style flip token, that has an effect like "flip: add an evade to your roll, reduce your Agility by one if this is red" and then maybe you can't flip it if you bumped or are stressed or on a rock, and to flip it back to green takes some kind of action. If there was something that have you a little confidence or something that you could count on, that worked in conjunction with a defense dice system, that had interplay and counter play potential while still keeping that awesome thematic feel, that I could get behind. Maybe. I definitely want to keep the ability for that crazy shot to occur, and for that lucky as all get out dodge roll.

I would love to see critical hits be far more powerful (with the exception of like blinded pilot) which would both make shields more important and did cards like marksmanship

I would love to see a complete unnerf of all cards and a cost rebalance first before we move into 2.0 territory.

There are some other things that would be nice like new dice or ps cap at 9 but those should happen when a cost rebalance fail.

A three-dimensional gameplay would be great for a space dogfight game...

7 minutes ago, Wedge Nantillais said:

A three-dimensional gameplay would be great for a space dogfight game...

Has anyone tried this with just adding lowering the pegs or using tokens to show the level everything is on and had any positive or negative results from the added complication?

Initiative : the first player who ends programming his dials chooses to have init or not. This would make the game more nervous, like in real dogfight conditions.

All id want for 2.0:

Medium bases for Kwing, punisher, ig88, uwing, scurrg, misthunter, silencer, mb starviper

Half sized maneuver templates, especially for medium and large ships.

3 dice as in armada.

+1 agility against range 3 secondaries

+1 agility against shots out of arc.

No autothrusters (made redundant by the above)

Weapons disabled on regen

No action bombs via advanced slam.

Less card cluttering, more unified mechanics.

Print back arcs on every ship to make tailing and backstab upgrade cards a more open design space. Also, that way, mobile arc retrofits are possible.

So, an upgrade to 2.0 would just be cardboard and medium bases which have to be designed to fit both small and large pegs.

24 minutes ago, Wedge Nantillais said:

Initiative : the first player who ends programming his dials chooses to have init or not. This would make the game more nervous, like in real dogfight conditions.

I like the concept but I think this might become a judges nightmare with competetive players getting into ugly fights over who put down the dial first, all the time.

Also lol poor swarm players.

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

THE LIST:

1+Granularity gained by raising point cost.

--- YES.

2+Models stay the same, base may change?

--- YES.

--+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[nubs gets a mention later] at equidistant points all the way around. Abandoned for lack of firing arc clarity. Worth a second look)

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

--- Many ships: Aggressor, Punisher, Silencer, K-Wing, U-Wing... should have been on Medium bases. Small bases are 4cm, large are 8cm. Medium are easy... 6cm.

--+Nubs have been brought up a few times now. Recessed slots for templates mentioned repeatedly. (Can't really disagree here with getting rid of them. They've not exactly helped with the clarity of what's a bump/overlap versus what is range measured from etc. I feel like they've also changed the rules on what they do a few times now which to me is always a bad indication of it's usability. It's a really common rules question and not exactly intuitive. If we're talking about new bases, definitely worth talking about

--- As odd as it is, Wizkids got this right and FFG blew it. Wizkids uses beveled bases, FFG uses nubly-nubs. Beveled bases are FAR superior.

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

--- Meh. I would rather see MORE maneuvers. 6 straight, 4 banks, and a comeabout (a tight 180 degree turn).
I would also like to see more colors of maneuvers beyond G/W/R - add a Yellow maybe. Difficult, but not stressful (no action but also no stress).

--+Base size to maneuver interaction appears to be a sticking point. (Should look at that. Rear to _____ common maneuvering is popular idea. Armada does a front corner to front corner and I feel like this was a response to lessons learned in X-wing. Might be worth a bit of dissection)

--+Modify the secondary positioning actions.

4+App software support system/mandatory system. (In my head I've been designing systems that use this, I feel like games will be moving more in this direction more and more. FFG has demonstrated as much with Descent and XCOM, soon Imperial Assault. Good discussion point)

5+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.)

--- Never thought of this before... but yes. I like it.

--+Accuracy versus damage and damage type.

--- RuneWars showed me how awesome this is. This would really really capture the cinematic feel of Star Wars. Sure, a Tie would be hard to hit (say a fixed 3 or 4 defense) but it would also explode immediately when they are hit (only 1 damage capacity). X-wings would be more durable (shields - so say maybe 3 health all total), but easier to hit (maybe only 2 defense). I cannot say how much this would be awesome. (Points would need to be tweaked, but we already know they need to fix the points system).

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

--- It is what Turrets should have been since the very beginning. But it also should not take an action to move them. Essentially, after a maneuver you should be able to move your mobile arc one step.

7+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.)

--- Again, a weird thing to say, but Wizkids got this right as well... err... they got it better. Maintain faction restrictions (Rebels for Rebel ships, Imperials for Empire) unlike STAW, but certainly separate the pilot from the ship. It's a double whammy because you actually need less pilot cards (no need to make up stupid pilots like 'Red Ace') and it gets rid of Title Cards because those effects are now printed on the Ship cards. Saves cardboard in the long run.

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

--- Not 100% sold on this. Although I personally think that PtL was a bad design as it closed off so much design space (things that are similar must either be markedly better, or never get used).

9+Bonus dice versus weapon types(see also dice types *Clarification edit:* it's been brought up that the bonus dice for range that is currently primary weapon only should be extended to include Canon and turret upgrade type weapons)

--- Agree, but I would personally prefer to just remove defense dice period.

10+Alternating initiative. (In a group discussion locally we also 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. Seems to have been considered by many)

--- Honestly something more akin to what Legion is doing would make more sense. A Wing Commander (ie: Black Leader, Rogue Leader, etc) who issues orders at the beginning of the turn and everyone else acts more... randomly. There has never been a real feel of squadron coordination in the game, this could do it.

11+New defense mechanism that has no variance. (This one has also been around since nearly the beginning. Seems to have fallen out of Vogue discussions of late but still very much in the players mind simultaneously. Green dice are so very often thought to have 'failed' the player when in reality they were only ever intended to delay the destruction. Green dice were DESIGNED TO FAIL intentionally so the game would not likely stagnate in shoot outs. It's also the only built in advantage to tailing another fighter: it's my reds versus your greens and your greens are weaker one to one. I feel very strongly that the cinematic flavor and the 'this one time...' stories that are created from that should be kept. This will be a bit of a briar patch, but a successful 2.0 could hinge on being able to capture that action-cinematic feel that draws so many to the game particularly in casual players, while also satisfying the mathematical bent that many competitive players enjoy. Must dive deep here also, with the microscope in tow. Armada notably did this successfully but the scale difference of the game makes it seem more reasonable for the context. Notably in Armada fighters don't have any defensive damage mitigation unless they have a name, and even then it's pretty limited. Addendum: lots of discussion on this one)

--- This, this, this, this. Range and / or maneuvers could add to Def value instead of a 'evade' action. There is a lot that can be done here.

12+More types of upgrades. (Ship titles versus refits kinda stuff. Totally agree. Easy open. *Clarification edit*: it's been mentioned that perhaps having only the one 'slot' for title cards is not enough. Especially since a title can overlap between a ships given name like 'Millennium Falcon' or like a model number 'BTL-a4' or whatever. I think that's a great point. This is a great topic I would love to throw down on.)

--- Maybe. But personally, I'd look for ways to remove excessive upgrades. It streamlines the game a bit more. Much like how I suggested removing Titles above (any of those that are needed could fall into your 'refit' category).

13+Objective Based Play (Oh my gawd yes. DO IT!)

--- 1000x Yes. Objectives and missions are such a good idea for all levels of play.

14+Keywords being brought in as a common usage item. (Thank you! Since I started this game I've been scratching my head asking why there were not keywords. One of the most ubiquitous mechanics of modern games is bizarrely not in X-wing. I mean, unless we count "Attack(Target lock:".)

--- I will never understand any game designer who does not think about keywords. They are oh so important.

15+An additional type of stress mechanic to differentiate between a pilots stress and the vehicles stress. 'Anxiety' was the mention. (Fascinating notion. I am certainly curious. I mean it really makes sense thematically. Good discussion point)

--- I like the idea... sorta. Just not the terms.

16+Plan more turns in advance. A two dial system was recommended. As well as...

--- Meh.

17+Action planning. Setting a dial for what action you well perform ahead of time.

--- Again, see RuneWars for how this should be done.

18+Core level Bullseye arc.

--- Yes. Also... include bonuses for tailing. And honestly this is how X-wings would fight best.

I added my commentary in the box. Bold and Italicized.

8 hours ago, Wedge Nantillais said:

Initiative : the first player who ends programming his dials chooses to have init or not. This would make the game more nervous, like in real dogfight conditions.

I like the idea as a format option, but maybe not the main format. One hard lesson learned in modern game design was that a mechanic should not have a physical manipulation of components as a requirement. Fun idea though. (see Chaos Orb from Wizards of the Coast Magic: the gathering)

2 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

I like the idea as a format option, but maybe not the main format. One hard lesson learned in modern game design was that a mechanic should not have a physical manipulation of components as a requirement. Fun idea though. (see Chaos Orb from Wizards of the Coast Magic: the gathering)

Also, God forbid both players want to go last .

I feel that the problem with 1.0 is that it's too big and that there's too much. And all of this weight comes down on what is actually a pretty simple set of rules. The game currently has around 160 named pilots, and there are around 260 upgrade cards without including the secondary weapons. Each one of these 400 plus cards has what is essentially a rule exception or variation. That's an enormous amount to fit into a limited design space. For a long time now the designers have been pushing the boundary of balance in order to fit in more abilities.

So there are way too many pilots (and cards) in this game. And yet it's not supposed to be a card game. So my thinking is to remove all of the abilities of every pilot, we simply don't need them. This enormous pool of abilities from the pilot cards can then be reviewed on a case by case basis for incorporation into the game via the standard upgrade cards instead. And part of this review is a cost rebalance of all cards, removal of any duplicate or similar cards, and removal of cards at both extremes (ie, auto-include and useless). You'd fix a lot balance problems just doing this. To keep specific themes of various characters and heroes, you can add restrictions to some of the newly created upgrade cards to limit them to that character only, so only Kylo Ren gets to use the ISYTDS-giving upgrade card (assuming that ability survives the culling) or only Han Solo gets to use the set up anywhere ability.

What remains is making the differences between the pilot skill levels mean something in light of the removed abilities. All upgrade cards and EPT cards especially (including reused pilot abilities from above) should have skill requirements on them. Higher skill means more options, while lower skill pilots have access to fewer cards.

Finally, I like the concept of accuracy dice added to attacks that help push through defence, in terms of gameplay this rewards good positioning. So ships firing out of their primary firing arc into the rear of enemy ships get to roll a dice for accuracy. Nothing overly complicated, and no real need for new dice, just roll one green dice and get a focus. You can modify some of the existing multitude of 'extra attack dice' cards to read 'extra accuracy dice' instead.

Oh wow... That's funny! I hadn't thought of that.

... You going to put your last dial down?

...I was waiting for you

... But... I'm waiting on you...

*Old West shoot out music plays*

19 hours ago, Animewarsdude said:

Has anyone tried this with just adding lowering the pegs or using tokens to show the level everything is on and had any positive or negative results from the added complication?

I've never tried it with X-Wing, but it was a pretty cool mechanic in the Axis and Allies Air Force Miniatures game.

I mean, are we really going to worry about altitude in a game in which the JM5K is unable to fly inverted?

For a ground/atmospheric format I could see altitude included.

4 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I mean, are we really going to worry about altitude in a game in which the JM5K is unable to fly inverted?

So what you are saying is the Jm5k is unable to keep up with c ommunicating? Aka: Keeping up foreign relations? ??????

Ion effects more respectful of the lore. "Ion torpedoes away !"

When an ion weapon hits the target ship, this ship no suffers damage and receives one ion token for each hit or crit result uncancelled. At the beginning of the next turn, discard all this ion tokens and apply following effects to the affected ship :
- 1st ion token : execute a 1 straight white maneuver and reduce its agility by 1 ;
- 2nd ion token : no action except focus, discard its astromech (if equipped) ;
- 3rd ion token : assign to it a disable shield token ;
- 4th ion token : assign to it a disable weapon token.

+1 for large ships. Or +1 for medium ships and +2 for large ships.

For example.

An interesting thought that struck amid the TLT discussion:

Secondary weapons should all have two ranges, one in primary arc, one out of primary arc. Thus meaning that you can put interesting things with multiple ranges, such as Homing Missiles being able to fire at range 1-3 in arc, or range 3 out of arc representing them having time and space to get round to a target outside arc when fired from in arc, and meaning turrets in particular could have a range of different ranges without needing to include text on the cards.

I'm going to start by saying what I don't want. I don't want added complexity, I want less complexity. The core aspect of this game that renders it able to hook new players (beyond "Star Wars") is simplicity. Buy a ship, build a squad, set your maneuver, roll some dice. This core simplicity (compared to something like Warhammer or Warmahordes) is a bigger draw to many people than you'd think. That and a much lower price point than other miniatures games.

The game has been getting more complex, but most of that complexity comes from the 250-ish upgrade cards that currently exist. I'm not sure what can be done to reduce upgrade bloat while retaining the existing core simplicity, but I do know that decoupling ships from pilots would just add an entire layer of complexity (and more board clutter and potential confusion). Plus, a core aspect of this game is play. In the end we are pushing small plastic spaceships around, and it should be fun. I want to pick up an X-Wing and think, "this is Luke Skywalker," not have that on a card decoupled from the ship and token. That's a more minor issue than the one I have with adding complexity.

The other thing I don't want is for X-Wing to become Armada. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Armada. It is a better designed game in almost every way and every game is a rewarding experience. Armada games are also long, complicated affairs that require advanced planning, forward thinking and finely tuned strategies from list construction, objective selection and deployment all the way to the last turn. If I want that experience, I will play Armada. If I want white knuckle, edge of your seat dogfights, I will play X-Wing. It's hard for me to articulate precisely, but different damage dice, reducing variance in defense, and other Armada inspired ideas just reduce some of the game's charm. In fact, D&D Attack Wing tried a few ideas to make defense more static by using the idea of armor, but that just turned the game into one about crit-fishing and focusing on weapons that ignore armor (while it lasted, anyway).

Now, all that being said, some more complexity is probably inevitable. Here are my ideas (some others have mentioned):

1: remove primary weapon turrets from the game. Ships with turrets should be done in one of three ways (with all three methods being represented on different ships): mobile firing arcs, a regular arc and a turret upgrade, and a turret upgrade and a primary weapon value of 0. The last option is the one I have thought about the least, but it makes sense for ships like the falcon. I am a big fan of stuff like a mobile firing arc for all large ships with turrets, as long as something like gyroscopic targeting exists for all ships, it also requires you to decide between free turret moves and engine upgrade.

2: keywords for some things may be helpful, standardize a few things in the game.

3: some change to pilot skill. The way I've been thinking it can come in one of three ways: remove it entirely and have regular alternating activations (with a pass rule so swarms don't just rule everything), have a hard cap on pilot skill, or something like an "Ace" keyword that would go on only the very best pilots (Soontir, Vader, Luke, Poe, Han and the like). Ace would just make you always go last in the activation phase and first in combat, if multiple aces are on the table, determine order that the Aces activate in the normal way.

4: an exhaust mechanic. Some of FFG's other games have this (Runewars comes to mind), as did D&D Attack Wing. Some upgrades are only SUPER strong because they can be used over and over and over again. Make them exhaust and then they can't be used again until an action is spent to ready them. FFG is starting to go this route with some dual cards, but the concept could be explored a lot more and applied to older upgrades (*cough* R2-D2 *cough*).

5: higher points to allow more granularity is a good idea too.

6: love the idea of more objective based games, but in standard play I don't want it to go full Armada.

Oh, another idea, but this one is FAQ-able (or can be put in the next tournament reference doc):

Half points for half destroyed ships should be based on total health, not base size. Make it "if the sum of your shields and hull is greater than 8 (including any increases from modifications)"

This frees IG-88 from the half point **** that is (as far as I know) in part keeping him from seeing play, while at the same time tossing the K-Wing and the Scurrg where they belong, and ending that sort of point fortressing. The downside is it also pushes the ARC and Punisher into the half point world, and I certainly don't think it's needed for them.

Anyway, that's just a thought for the competitive scene. Doesn't have any impact outside of it.

I agree about the complexity issue. I haven't played Armada, but I've heard some interesting things about it. A lot of those things just don't seem appropriate for X-Wing though, in my opinion. X-Wing is supposed to be simpler and faster. That isn't to say some things couldn't be moved around, though.

Here is my personal list for an X-Wing 2.0:

Medium Ships
I actually haven't played around much with the ships commonly associated with this idea, but it sounds like a good one to me. I'm not exactly sure what relevance it would have, but I think it could help divide the ships up more logically without having to complicate things too much.

Alter the Movement Mechanic for Ship Sizes
This one's been covered a lot. It's just weird that big slow ships technically move faster than small agile ships because the size is factored into the movement.

To-Hit Dice
This might sound like an idea that adds complexity, but I think in the long run it could even it out elsewhere in the game. I think the dice dominate this game too much, and it's led to a reliance on upgrades that make hitting or missing guaranteed in ways I don't think should be true either. I think separating hitting from damage is the main change that X-Wing needs to have that extra little step, without making it Armada-complex. This would mean that you could also separate powerful ships from accurate ones, and fast ships from heavily defensive ones (which overlap a lot right now). This could also be used to differentiate the ship sizes further, with larger ships giving bonuses to to-hit rolls against them.

Pilot Cards
I'm not sure if I like all of the interactions that would suddenly appear if pilots were separated from ships, but at the very least I wish the pilot cards depicted a picture of the pilot by default instead of generic images of the ship. I already know what the ship looks like, that's what the miniature is for. It's weird that I only get pilot art outside of promos if they show up on a tiny crew card.