While I'm busy lauding the **** out of Armada, I'll add that I wish base ships came with special abilities

so basically, instead of titles , we'd get reference cards for each ship in addition to (except in the specific case of two titles, such as x7/TieD and the Star Wings etc.). Basically the difference is you wouldn't have to **** around with so many upgrade cards

as an example, you could get stuff like

just replace engaged with being within another friendly ship's firing arc at range whatever. You could even substitute a re-roll for Wampa's ability (thematically representing there being just too many ship shots to dodge).

Though what I'd really like is for basic (Empire) Tie Fighters to have a Xizor like ability to allows you to spread damage around. This should greatly mitigate both the devastating effects of *** green dice, but could also be used to curtail guaranteed damage

Example:

There's Too Many! (name pending):

Whenever another friendly ship at range 1 suffers 1 or more damage, you may suffer 1 of that damage instead.

Fluff justification being there's just so many ships flying about that you don't really know who's where, kinda like a less crazy version of the swarm from Star Trek: Beyond

good luck keeping track

For pure fluff reasons ... I would want a "Force" upgrade slot. Like Elite, and only for some pilots. (Vader, Luke, Corran, Kylo etc ... etc ...)

Although I frequently use upgrades that give repositoning actions, I think the health of the game would be improved by making the unique if not gone all together.

I think PtL and other multi-action upgrades should be unique.

All stress token adding upgrades should be unique.

However, free actions and the like should be more liberally used to give ships character...

TIE Interceptors & A-Wings get a free boost or BR before or after movement.

TIE Fighter & FO get a free BR.

T-65s get a free TL on 1 ship in R1.

And so on.

I'd ask that in 2.0 we not have ANY abilities that give tokens, instead opting to give actions which can't be taken if bumped, asteroid, stressed. Pretty much everything should work like x7 does now- things like K4, etc.

The other aspect of this game that has never sat right with me is blocking and/or bumping. I feel that it was intended to be something to avoid, but it has managed to morph into a viable tactic that rewards the player, especially with any low skill pilots that essentially force high skill pilots to bump and lose their actions.

I'm not sure how to redesign this though. The punishment for ships touching at the end of all activations needs to consider pilot skill and/or ship size, otherwise players will always consider the trade off between self-harm and damage to the opponent to be a net gain. Perhaps something like if a higher pilot skill ship bumps into a lower pilot skill, the latter gets stressed, all tokens removed, or doesn't get to attack.

Or simply, just loosen the punishment from the outset. Bumping ships keep their actions, but get stressed or are only unable to perform a focus action instead.

Half points for Big ships and Named pilots only. It just makes everything better and boosts generics too

On 9/19/2017 at 4:57 PM, ficklegreendice said:

While I'm busy lauding the **** out of Armada, I'll add that I wish base ships came with special abilities

so basically, instead of titles , we'd get reference cards for each ship in addition to (except in the specific case of two titles, such as x7/TieD and the Star Wings etc.). Basically the difference is you wouldn't have to **** around with so many upgrade cards

as an example, you could get stuff like

just replace engaged with being within another friendly ship's firing arc at range whatever. You could even substitute a re-roll for Wampa's ability (thematically representing there being just too many ship shots to dodge).

Though what I'd really like is for basic (Empire) Tie Fighters to have a Xizor like ability to allows you to spread damage around. This should greatly mitigate both the devastating effects of *** green dice, but could also be used to curtail guaranteed damage

Example:

There's Too Many! (name pending):

Whenever another friendly ship at range 1 suffers 1 or more damage, you may suffer 1 of that damage instead.

Fluff justification being there's just so many ships flying about that you don't really know who's where, kinda like a less crazy version of the swarm from Star Trek: Beyond

good luck keeping track

Absolutely agree. As in Magic, have words or phrases that have a set meaning. Simply add a statement “as in the FAQ for the meaning”. This way the meaning can be upgraded over time w/o effecting the card itself.

Proper templating and keywording is so much of a base assumption for me in upgrading to a putative 2.0 that I don't think I actually mentioned it. In case I didn't:

PROPER TEMPLATING AND KEYWORDING.

OMG seriously, there should only ever be one way of phrasing an After Attacking ability, for instance, as opposed to the 5 or 6 there are at present.

Not to mention, use of proper technical writing including bullet points. Never again should there be a card with such horribly ambiguous phrasing as, for instance, Special Ops Training.

On 9/26/2017 at 6:09 AM, redxavier said:

The other aspect of this game that has never sat right with me is blocking and/or bumping. I feel that it was intended to be something to avoid, but it has managed to morph into a viable tactic that rewards the player, especially with any low skill pilots that essentially force high skill pilots to bump and lose their actions.

I'm not sure how to redesign this though. The punishment for ships touching at the end of all activations needs to consider pilot skill and/or ship size, otherwise players will always consider the trade off between self-harm and damage to the opponent to be a net gain. Perhaps something like if a higher pilot skill ship bumps into a lower pilot skill, the latter gets stressed, all tokens removed, or doesn't get to attack.

Or simply, just loosen the punishment from the outset. Bumping ships keep their actions, but get stressed or are only unable to perform a focus action instead.

I guess I see the bumping rules as they are currently as a feature, not a bug...

22 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Proper templating and keywording is so much of a base assumption for me in upgrading to a putative 2.0 that I don't think I actually mentioned it. In case I didn't:

PROPER TEMPLATING AND KEYWORDING.

OMG seriously, there should only ever be one way of phrasing an After Attacking ability, for instance, as opposed to the 5 or 6 there are at present.

Not to mention, use of proper technical writing including bullet points. Never again should there be a card with such horribly ambiguous phrasing as, for instance, Special Ops Training.

YES!

Although I would miss the intense, and recently almost philosophical debates on card text.

4 minutes ago, Sk3tch said:

YES!

Although I would miss the intense, and recently almost philosophical debates on card text.

I frigging wouldn't.

E: Keywording may need some elaboration.

Basically, it's making specific, unique short words or phrases that refer to longer references in the rules.

'Limited' is a keyword. It only ever appears in one format, and only ever means exactly one thing - that you cannot equip more than one copy of that upgrade on a single ship.

The Unique dot is a keyword too, or at least it was until it was used on Conditions without updating its rules and things got a little muddy.

Keywords could refer to actions, to timings (After Attacking/Defending, for instance, is two different keywords, one for attack abilities, one for non-attack), to rules (Modification, Limited, Title, are all keywords), actions, etc etc etc.

For instance, I'd propose adding two keywords for the after attacking timing - Gunner, for attack abilities, and Fire Control for non-attack abilities. Then, for instance, Baze would say 'Gunner (Attack): one ship other than the target', and Gunner would say 'Gunner (Attack): one ship', Dengar would say 'Gunner (Defence): the attacker', FCS WOuld say 'Fire Control (attack): acquire a target lock', Valen would say 'Fire Control (Defence): perform a free action'.

And 'acquire a target lock' and 'perform a free action' could be boiled down to keywords, too. I want cards to have the minimum possible amount of text on them, and for the vast majority of the text to refer to ref cards and rules reference keywords, Then it becomes a lot easier to amend how rules interactions work, without needing to tweak card wording. You decide that Gunner (Attack): should include a restriction against making another attack, you can do that. You decide it should just be that each card can only be triggered once per round, you can do that.

It requires a completely different, and more skilled, development team, but you know, a man can dream.

Natural language on cards and upgrades etc is a frigging bane of my existence as a gamer.

37 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I guess I see the bumping rules as they are currently as a feature, not a bug...

Agreed.

Blocking should absolutely be a tactic. Ramming should absolutely be a tactic (Oicunn, Epic, and the like, but I'd love to also see a small ship upgrade that let you suicide ram things). Running into things to avoid fire whilst getting full mods should just not be possible.

33 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Blocking should absolutely be a tactic. Ramming should absolutely be a tactic (Oicunn, Epic, and the like, but I'd love to also see a small ship upgrade that let you suicide ram things). Running into things to avoid fire whilst getting full mods should just not be possible.

One of the experimental TIEs (x4?) was built specifically for ramming.

Of course, FFG, it wouldn't make sense to just make x4s without making the other ones and the control ships, so...<nudge, nudge>

'Blocking' in the general sense of forcing ships to engage a specific ship or to move elsewhere should indeed be a tactic in a dogfighting game. Moving to deny your opponent their ideal positioning, yes absolutely, but the problem I have lies in the execution. They put all the punishment onto the crashing ship, with no drawback for the crashed into ship (other than not firing). More significantly, this way undermines the value of pilot skill and breaks the immersion/fluff.

Retain the most important part of blocking, positioning control, but lose the no-fire and no-action penalties. The community twisted the original intent of the game design and the game needs to adjust in response.

1 minute ago, redxavier said:

'Blocking' in the general sense of forcing ships to engage a specific ship or to move elsewhere should indeed be a tactic in a dogfighting game. Moving to deny your opponent their ideal positioning, yes absolutely, but the problem I have lies in the execution. They put all the punishment onto the crashing ship, with no drawback for the crashed into ship (other than not firing). More significantly, this way undermines the value of pilot skill and breaks the immersion/fluff.

Retain the most important part of blocking, positioning control, but lose the no-fire and no-action penalties. The community twisted the original intent of the game design and the game needs to adjust in response.

So basically, give people even less reason to play with low-PS pilots.

I'm sorry, but crashing your ship into another ship is incredibly dangerous. In the PC games, if you crashed into another fighter you'd lose most, if not all, of your shields and possibly take quite a bit of hull damage too; and that was if you started with full shields. You learned quickly to avoid collisions at all costs. If you have to break off a maneuver to avoid crashing into some rookie, odds are you're not doing much else in that instance besides trying not to get pulverized into a cloud of debris.

To me, that's what bumping represents, and it seems perfectly reasonable that you're not firing or taking actions as a result.

Except the game doesn't work the same as the PC game at all. All movement is predetermined. Expert pilots like Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader can see what's ahead of them but can't turn to avoid it? That's idiotic. Further, if you crash into another ship, it's not incredibly dangerous just for you, the other guy is in trouble too, but that part isn't reflected in the game at all. You can't emphasise the effects of crashing and then ignore the effects for one side.

Generic pilots is another topic. However, their purpose shouldn't be to serve as sacrificial lambs so that you can mess with the opponent's best ships.

7 minutes ago, redxavier said:

Except the game doesn't work the same as the PC game at all. All movement is predetermined. Expert pilots like Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader can see what's ahead of them but can't turn to avoid it? That's idiotic. Further, if you crash into another ship, it's not incredibly dangerous just for you, the other guy is in trouble too, but that part isn't reflected in the game at all. You can't emphasise the effects of crashing and then ignore the effects for one side.

Generic pilots is another topic. However, their purpose shouldn't be to serve as sacrificial lambs so that you can mess with the opponent's best ships.

Again, I see it as a feature to partially offset the benefits of high Pilot Skill. I guess fluff-wise, I don't really view it as two ships actually making contact, but rather coming very close with the higher-PS ship doing everything they can to avoid contact. Yes it's dangerous for both ships, but my point is that the ship that moved into place first isn't actively trying to avoid the situation (either through suicidal tendencies or due to obliviousness), whereas the latter moving ship is.

But, agree to disagree, I suppose.

4 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Again, I see it as a feature to partially offset the benefits of high Pilot Skill. I guess fluff-wise, I don't really view it as two ships actually making contact, but rather coming very close with the higher-PS ship doing everything they can to avoid contact. Yes it's dangerous for both ships, but my point is that the ship that moved into place first isn't actively trying to avoid the situation (either through suicidal tendencies or due to obliviousness), whereas the latter moving ship is.

But, agree to disagree, I suppose.

No, I totally understand where you're coming from and actually agree in many ways - crashing is bad and there should be penalty reflecting that the ships are too close (to fire against) and one has had to swerve to avoid the other. Thematically, it makes sense too in that a pilot wants to make another pilot do a move they didn't want to do. I just don't like how it's become such a useful tool for the other person in the game, doing it deliberately to force 'collisions' (and bumping your own ships especially seems really cheap). Removing opponent's actions is a pretty powerful weapon in a game that now depends even more on actions.

I don't really know how to 'fix' it. I feel that something needs to change at least for small ships vs medium ships (though there are some upgrade cards that seem to address this).

Big ships don't get a range 3 bonus for Defense.

On 9/27/2017 at 4:29 AM, thespaceinvader said:

I frigging wouldn't.

E: Keywording may need some elaboration.

Basically, it's making specific, unique short words or phrases that refer to longer references in the rules.

'Limited' is a keyword. It only ever appears in one format, and only ever means exactly one thing - that you cannot equip more than one copy of that upgrade on a single ship.

The Unique dot is a keyword too, or at least it was until it was used on Conditions without updating its rules and things got a little muddy.

Keywords could refer to actions, to timings (After Attacking/Defending, for instance, is two different keywords, one for attack abilities, one for non-attack), to rules (Modification, Limited, Title, are all keywords), actions, etc etc etc.

For instance, I'd propose adding two keywords for the after attacking timing - Gunner, for attack abilities, and Fire Control for non-attack abilities. Then, for instance, Baze would say 'Gunner (Attack): one ship other than the target', and Gunner would say 'Gunner (Attack): one ship', Dengar would say 'Gunner (Defence): the attacker', FCS WOuld say 'Fire Control (attack): acquire a target lock', Valen would say 'Fire Control (Defence): perform a free action'.

And 'acquire a target lock' and 'perform a free action' could be boiled down to keywords, too. I want cards to have the minimum possible amount of text on them, and for the vast majority of the text to refer to ref cards and rules reference keywords, Then it becomes a lot easier to amend how rules interactions work, without needing to tweak card wording. You decide that Gunner (Attack): should include a restriction against making another attack, you can do that. You decide it should just be that each card can only be triggered once per round, you can do that.

It requires a completely different, and more skilled, development team, but you know, a man can dream.

Natural language on cards and upgrades etc is a frigging bane of my existence as a gamer.

I am all for standardization and keywording. Action icons and colored numbers are great examples of keywording already in use for XWM. It works so well that you dont even need the pilot card for generics other than as a place to put upgrades and damage since all the info is on that wee bitty piece of cardboard.

Newest list updates are in. Again, if you feel I've missed something let me know. At this point though a lot of items are repeated in bulk purpose but there are more precise changes being discussed and they overlap between a few of the other points we've collected herein. If there's a edit format to like to see for the list feel free to share that as well, it might help further the discussion with clarity.

On 9/20/2017 at 9:57 AM, ficklegreendice said:

..., I'll add that I wish base ships came with special abilities

so basically, instead of titles ,...

There were a lot of ideas in the prototype x-wing that should have made it to the final game, but didn't. This is one of them.

@Infinite_Maelstrom Really? By what means did you come across that little tid bit if I may ask?

• A significant difference between torpedoes and missiles. Maybe torpedoes having a token that is moved (flying bomb) where missiles are direct fire. Something that makes a difference between torp, missile and canon other than special effect.
• More maneuver templates, "4" bank, "6" straight. Precedent is already in play via other "AW" games, use 'em.
• Definitely dump the nubs.
• Change in Big Ship vs Small Ship tourney scoring (enough small ships with 8, 9 or 10 H/S totals out there). Big ships already are "easier" to shoot due to base size, half points should either be abolished or be based on total starting hits required to destroy.
• A damaged effect mechanic (though represented in crits to a point), a degradation of ability as damage occurs could be a interesting mechanic. It also would aid in certain crits being mitigated by pilot/ship. Who cares if Tyco pulls a crit that stresses him, he just adds it to his growing pool.
• A hard limit on ability use that requires stat reduction (i.e. Decimators do not get to use "Expose" since they already have an Agil of 0).
• Bump mechanic -- enough with the castles and blocks without possible effect beyond loss of action --. How about a collision check (like debri and astroids).
• Rules of ground combat units and atmospheric fights (face it, enough people have already house ruled these, how about an official bash at it).
• A campaign (again, already home brewed to the nines, time for an official one or two).
• Maybe a 4th faction? Mercs or Merchants (yeah, Scum and Villainy could encompass these, but there are honorable scallywags out there too)?
• Oh and one more (though I know this will never happen), a flat - visible- formula for how ships are constructed and point costs attributed allowing for custom "home brew" ships to be built with accuracy, but also to hold official ship costs accountable. (Obviously this will require recalculation of the majority of the ship costs in the game, but hey, wish list right?)