4 hours ago, Kehl_Aecea said:

I like this. Different ships use different combinations of dice at different ranges... new upgrade cards can change what dice you and your opponent use at different ranges... I mean, ****, this could change up two dice primary ships if they are allowed to use blue dice at range 3!

Holy crap... I hate you. I might have to write up some new house rules! Does Armada have dice packs?

It seems like it would be pretty easy to just house rule Armada dice onto X-wing. Except focus and other tokens will have to change function. And prices might have to change to reflect that agi and Att would have different meanings or no meaning.

hmmm. A lot of work, I think I'll let others do that and 'borrow' their ideas

yeah it's not so easy given all the re-balancing you'd have to do

but it'd be so, SO worth it

All I would add would be To-Hit Dice. I think that's the main thing that could add that little extra design dial to X-Wing without significantly affecting the complexity of the game.

To-Hit Dice would be rolled by the attacker and canceled by the defender's Evade Dice. Once that happens, if there are Hit Dice left, the attacker gets to roll Damage Dice that go directly to hull/shields.

This would allow much more distinction between fast ships, tough ships, accurate pilots, and powerful ships. Hitting a distant target would still be more difficult, but if you managed to pull off such a crazy shot, you'd still do normal damage. Larger ships could be made to be easier to hit by default without compromising their greater hull. Torpedoes could be bad at hitting, but powerful when landed, while missiles could hit easily but not do as much damage.

This could even bring some more balance to things like Turrets. They could still have a free 360 degree arc, but hitting a moving target with a turret in certain directions should be extremely difficult. A much lower To-Hit chance with turrets but the same damage would bring them into line with the role they should have. That could even depend on the turret, though. You could have a Gatling turret that fires a barrage of shots that is likely to hit even the fastest ships, but won't do much per hit.

6 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

they should be used to reward playing to your ship's positional strengths by maximizing the amount of dice you get to roll and minimizing the amount your opponent gets

Oh I agree. I remember when X-Wing felt like it did this

I think we need a combination of dice mechanics from Armada AND Legion.

The dice types and combinations of armada are very elegant, in my opinion. The trick is how to add them in. New range rulers, and pilot cards would be necessary. This also allows more diversity for pilots of the same craft. Add in differing defense dice and you could have TIEs that are weak in defense, but high in attack. Or vice versa. But with the below, may not be necessary.

Some change of mechanics concerning focus similar to how legion does it could work wonders. For those who don't know, in Legion every unit card has a chart on how they convert focus results, either converting them to hits, crits, or shields (defense).

Now, adding this part in, could be difficult, but a focus action becomes like another die result. Now one option, with the Legion concept, and new pilot cards, is to remove focus actions from the majority of pilots.

When it comes to a "new die" I've wondered if the game could use a "half die" that could be used with offense or defense. For consistency it can be eight sided but it has two each of hit, evade, focus, and blank on it where the hit/evade count as blanks unless that is the results you are testing for. I guess it has a .25 chance at any given result before modifier with a Focus token increasing it to .5. I believe such a die would allow more refinement and graduations when it comes to die abilities acting as an intermediary.

Of course the problem with this, and any other new die type, is simply how would it be introduced and how could it be used retroactively.

Will of the Force die. D6 3 blanks, 2 2x, and one 3x. Can only be used by characters with force apitude. Acts as multiplier for defense or attackdie. Is triggered by an action, or if at 1 hull

1 hour ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

I think we need a combination of dice mechanics from Armada AND Legion.

The dice types and combinations of armada are very elegant, in my opinion. The trick is how to add them in. New range rulers, and pilot cards would be necessary. This also allows more diversity for pilots of the same craft. Add in differing defense dice and you could have TIEs that are weak in defense, but high in attack. Or vice versa. But with the below, may not be necessary.

Some change of mechanics concerning focus similar to how legion does it could work wonders. For those who don't know, in Legion every unit card has a chart on how they convert focus results, either converting them to hits, crits, or shields (defense).

Now, adding this part in, could be difficult, but a focus action becomes like another die result. Now one option, with the Legion concept, and new pilot cards, is to remove focus actions from the majority of pilots.

I'm really curious as to what the dice combos would be for the various ships if it was Armada style range dice, and how they'd effect the defensive system as it stands. X-wing: red, red, blue. Interceptor: red, red, black. Something like that? Immediately it would seem like you'd have to re-evaluate defence, as this works nicely in Armada due to it being a purely token system, where rolling a really hot red-red-black against a 3Agi that rolled equally perfect evade would still result in five hits and a crit cancelling to two hits and a crit. That kind of spins you back to "dice creep", albeit in a different way. I'm guessing the best way to do it would be to have evade results straight up cancel dice? Or are we thinking of new evade dice too?

Star Trek Attack Wing has some extra dice available as a Resource (one resource per fleet-costs 5 points)

Elite Attack Dice: Once per turn for any attack you may switch this dice out for one red attack dice. (it is black with gold markings)
It has no blank spots, either filled in with an extra Crit, a double hit, or an extra Battlestation (Focus) result

Counter Attack Dice: Once per turn for any attack you are defending against you may switch this dice out for any green defense dice. (it is gold with black markings)
Just like the attack dice it has fewer blanks (might be no blanks, I forget), improved odds of rolling an evade but also has a hit and a crit result that do damage to the attacker if rolled.

Something similar could easily work with X-Wing.

My own idea, with mines and bombs being so popular, perhaps a set of 'Incendiary Dice' to roll for mine/bomb damage that have different random effects instead of just hits and crits would be interesting. 8 sided, two sides hit, one side crit, one side add a Stress token, one side add an Ion token, one side discard evade/focus token, two blank sides.

12 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Maximum Firepower

... it’s vital that you understand how to create the best possible pool of attack dice, anticipate your opponent’s defenses, and learn to position your ships to anticipate their attacks in the next round.

The strength of your attack is represented by its pool of attack dice. There are three types of color-coded, eight-sided attack dice, and each corresponds to a different maximum firing range, as indicated on the game’s range ruler.

Colored icons indicate which types of dice can fire at a given range. All three dice can fire at close range while only the red dice can fire at long range.

	Red dice have the longest range, though they are the least accurate. Only five of their sides result in hits ( ) or critical hits ( ), although only two of their sides are blank. The final side has an accuracy ( ) result, which can be used to strip away your opponent’s defenses, which we’ll explore in more detail below.
	Blue dice have the second longest range and are the most accurate. They have no blank faces; the faces that don’t result in hits ( ) or critical hits ( ) result in accuracy ( ).
	Black dice have the shortest range but deal the most damage. While these dice have two blank sides, they also feature multiple sides that combine both hit ( ) and critical hit ( ) results.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/10/10/capital-ships-in-battle/

Thing with Armada is all their dice is for offensive, there is no defensive dice as all their defensive have been moved to tokens.

Now with X-wing the dice are for different dynamics, offensive and defensive. So if we are going to make a 3rd dice would it be simply another attack dice, maybe another defensive dice say for shields that can ignore a hit or lose half shield points on every critical hit (B-wing might like that one), or you could use it for something completely different.

How about movement completing the triumvirate of war games, Attack Defense and Maneuver. Now question what would a movement dice do? I guess you can have it do two functions for green on white/green (doing a green maneuver when not stressed) or even red on red (doing a red maneuver when stressed is allowed but comes with risks). So doing a bunch of green maneuvers could result in an extra action or a free speed 1 maneuver or barrel roll for example. However doing a red maneuver when already stress could result in flipping a face up damage card or taking 2 more stress in addition instead of the 1 stress you would take for a red maneuver. Naturally some of the red on red results will be ignored when doing revealing green on white maneuvers and visa verse. Of course that is almost a 2nd ed. type change.

I wrote a big long post and it concluded as;

I would not want to add any extra dice without changing the rules enough to make it X-Wing 2.0.

8 hours ago, NakedDex said:

I'm really curious as to what the dice combos would be for the various ships if it was Armada style range dice, and how they'd effect the defensive system as it stands. X-wing: red, red, blue. Interceptor: red, red, black. Something like that? Immediately it would seem like you'd have to re-evaluate defence, as this works nicely in Armada due to it being a purely token system, where rolling a really hot red-red-black against a 3Agi that rolled equally perfect evade would still result in five hits and a crit cancelling to two hits and a crit. That kind of spins you back to "dice creep", albeit in a different way. I'm guessing the best way to do it would be to have evade results straight up cancel dice? Or are we thinking of new evade dice too?

Look up the mechanics for Star Wars Legion - not only does it have multiple dice for attack, but multiple defense dice. While said dice are based on the weapon, armada does offer differing dice based on skill.

Now any change will have to be from a 2.0 type situation, though they could release a X-wing advanced rules, that used the same models and most of the key components of the original game. So if you buy a core set and upgrades, you can play that same as always. The new set changes the rules which will apply to tournaments and all components going forward.

14 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

yeah it's not so easy given all the re-balancing you'd have to do

but it'd be so, SO worth it

Agreed. The maneuver system in Armada feels really quite clunky compared to X-wing, but the dice system both in Imperial Assault and Armada can be considered 'second generation' versions of the one in X-wing, and perform rather better (I'm not a massive fan of Imperial Assault's 'suck it' evade-everything-result on white defence dice, but FFG are relatively careful with who actually gets access to that one), and the Armada Hit/Accuracy (stop a token)/Critical and the Imperial Assault Damage/Accuracy (you need accuracy >/= the range in squares to your target)/Surge (spent to trigger unit-specific special effects like Stun, Bleed, etc) are interesting systems.

Even Edge of the Empire has a similar system, and its own twist; Success/Failure and Threat/Advantage - when shooting at someone, success/failure determines if you hit - you roll your dice and the 'difficulty dice' (target's defences, range, etc) in one go and failures cancel successes in a way that X-wing players will easily understand. If you have any successes left, you do damage equal to the damage stat of the weapon (6 for an X-wing's laser cannon) plus the number of uncancelled successes. Threat and advantage is cancelled out the same way, and uncancelled 'leftovers' doesn't make you hit or miss but instead represents associated 'good stuff' or 'bad stuff'

• This makes it easy to have something like a capital ship heavy turbolaser do 'spontaneous existence failure' levels of damage but not actually hit very often.
• It means that the same weapon's theoretical maximum damage in the hands of a scrubber academy dropout (agility 2, no gunnery skill) and a 181st Veteran (agility 4, Gunnery 3) is dramatically different, meaning you don't need a D&D-esque parade of 'sword +1', 'sword +2' and so on to arm your elites with.
• Advantage represents opportunities occurring whilst attacking, or because of attacking - handing a bonus die to the next guy to shoot at the same target to represent crossfire, for example, or passing the target strain (stress token?) as they don't get hit but due to some desperate evasive moves, hitting other nearby goons with multiple seperate shots from linked or autofire weapons (ruthlessness-esque).
• Threat is the same, but bad things. Excessive quantities of threat when attacking can represent you overcommitting to an attack - so hit or miss, your guns are overcooked, or another opponent can capitalise on your straight-and-level attack run, or your target not only avoids your attack but pulls an evasive move that drops him in on your six (free boosts/barrel rolls)

A Blue d8 Ionized dice.

Whenever you get an ion token, you roll to see how many tokens you take.

5 are one ion token

2 are two ion tokens

1 is two ion tokens plus extra damage.

The nerf gun, imperial only. Uses a 7/8 success die. On a hit remove an upgrade, or pilot card from target scum ship

What do you guys think about this?:

"Power in Numbers":

Modification, Small ship only, Generic Pilot only:

When attacking with a primary weapon, if you are within range one of ship with the same pilot name (or maybe could say "within range one of another generic ship") you may roll 1 additional orange dice.

"Power in Numbers" Dice: Orange, 8 sided, 3 hits, 5 blanks, no crits (could be changed).

Basic point here is to buff swarms of all types. The actual chance to hit on the orange dice is fairly low, but if each generic is firing it off, could add some extra hits to your initial engagement. Obv helps ties. Should help rookie x-wings a lot too. Z swarm. Scyk Swarm. Depending on how you word it, you could buff mixed generic swarms or force a player to commit to a certain ship type.

23 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

This has come up often enough now that I saved my blurb for it on my google drive:

Accuracy die (blue): has no crits, and several double hit symbols. Double hit symbols on this die require two evades to cancel, but deal one damage if uncancelled. Used for missiles (canonically small, fast, nimble things designed to track and kill light ships, but didn't do much damage against big things with lots of shielding and armour) but also for any similar high-accuracy-low-damage scenarios like flak cannon equivalents, TLTs, etc.

Normal die: the current red die.

Damage die (black): has a lot of crits, and several double crit symbols. Double crits on this die require only 1 evade to cancel, but deal two critical damage if uncancelled. Used for torpedoes (canonically slow, powerful things that are almost impossible to tag fighters with but can cripple large ships and capital ships) and other high-damage-low-accuracy weapons such as HLC.

Cancellation order blue doublehit>hit>black doublehit>crit

Exact numbers of sides and distribution of them woudl be down to playtesting but I'd probably envision these both having more special symbols and less regular hits/crits than the red die, and probably fewer blanks, more focuses.

I'd also want to add impass/legion/descent style surges to all 3 dice to trigger special effects etc off.

really good ideas here. Any defense die changes? How would you implement these dice in the existing game? FAQ? New Upgrades?

13 hours ago, Gibbilo said:

really good ideas here. Any defense die changes? How would you implement these dice in the existing game? FAQ? New Upgrades?

Defence dice my preference would be to eliminate entirely, and replace them with some kind of token system and/or armour & wounds mechanics like in Runewars, but I've not thought that through enough to put a proper proposal together.

In terms of implementing this, I could see it happening in a current expansion (maybe a big base Imperial ordnance carrier?) but I find it unlikely. The time to have done it would have been when the TFA core was released, so the missed the boat on it really.

The could still do it by re-issuing/errating old ordnance in new sets, and selling the new dice separately, but I doubt they will.

On 9/19/2017 at 7:22 PM, StevenO said:

When it comes to a "new die" I've wondered if the game could use a "half die" that could be used with offense or defense. For consistency it can be eight sided but it has two each of hit, evade, focus, and blank on it where the hit/evade count as blanks unless that is the results you are testing for. I guess it has a .25 chance at any given result before modifier with a Focus token increasing it to .5. I believe such a die would allow more refinement and graduations when it comes to die abilities acting as an intermediary.

Of course the problem with this, and any other new die type, is simply how would it be introduced and how could it be used retroactively.

Or sort of like the Rebellion expansion green die, where it just has 2 crits and 2 evades and nothing else. Pretty unreliable but has a chance of really improving your attack/defensive value. Adds more randomness and with no focus you really are at the mercy of the die roll. RE-rolls are not going to help you that much since it still is a 1 out of 4 (up from 1 out of 4 to a 7 out of 16).