I imagine part of the problem is FFG making do with what they are given by LFL, also. Since LFL has to approve content out of FFG, they may have a say in what is done. It's also a matter of content- what heavy bombers does the Empire have with turrets on them? Also, which faction has the largest concentration of canon fodder fighters that are easily destroyed for the sake of making the heroes look good?

Another part of it is design decisions by LFL for the past few waves when Lore didn't provide something for them to do by priority. The TIE Interdictor/Punisher was FFG's attempt at buffing poorly-performing ordnance at the time, and the TIE Aggressor was FFG's gesture to bring turrets to the Empire. We can debate if that's what FFG should have been focusing on at the time for the Imperial Meta.

55 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

I imagine part of the problem is FFG making do with what they are given by LFL, also. Since LFL has to approve content out of FFG, they may have a say in what is done. It's also a matter of content- what heavy bombers does the Empire have with turrets on them? Also, which faction has the largest concentration of canon fodder fighters that are easily destroyed for the sake of making the heroes look good?

Another part of it is design decisions by LFL for the past few waves when Lore didn't provide something for them to do by priority. The TIE Interdictor/Punisher was FFG's attempt at buffing poorly-performing ordnance at the time, and the TIE Aggressor was FFG's gesture to bring turrets to the Empire. We can debate if that's what FFG should have been focusing on at the time for the Imperial Meta.

Why is that when FFG "attempts" to fix imperials, they always fail? Their aids are useless. The punisher as ordnance fix? Laughable. The aggressor doesn't really have the "oomph" of nym, or even that flying piece of driftwood.

Yet when Scum needs fixing, they get ships like the Protectorate, the Scurrg, the Shadowcaster and the Jumpmaster?


It's too much for it to be coincidental...

Well, I hate scum in general, so I feel my capability to act as devil's advocate on their behalf is impaired Though, I gotta wonder what was prevalent at the time those fighters were being developed? I can believe the Punisher/Aggressor were released watered down in the days before Palpatine's nerf. It may have been that Empire didn't want runaway fighters because they were already strong at the time.

Still, if the Gunboat rewards play where you can double-stack cannons with some terrific damage output, the game could swing back to maneuver as Nym or his wingman are trying to escape being in anyone's arc least they get annihilated. I dunno.

4 hours ago, RufusDaMan said:

Why is that when FFG "attempts" to fix imperials, they always fail? Their aids are useless. The punisher as ordnance fix? Laughable. The aggressor doesn't really have the "oomph" of nym, or even that flying piece of driftwood.

Yet when Scum needs fixing, they get ships like the Protectorate, the Scurrg, the Shadowcaster and the Jumpmaster?


It's too much for it to be coincidental...

Actually imperial fixes have a long history of working well. Autothrusters gave interceptors a second life and paved the way for TAPs, the TIE adv title brought Vader back for the first time since wave 2-3, Kallus was great for Whisper, The Emperor gave the lambda shuttle a purpose, and lightweight frame was a beautiful upgrade to many TIE variants. Even X7, despite the FAQ SNAFU, continues to be an excellent boost to a lackluster platform. It looks like unguided rockets will be a contained little upgrade for bombers.

Rebels get a lot of duds like R3 astromech, everything having to do with the U-wing except expertise and inspiring recruit (which are equally good for all factions), and both new Han and Chewie. Scum used to get a lot of duds too.

The problem is, both rebel and scum power mechanics have gone un-nerfed; but that doesn't change the fact that imperial fixes have accomplished their goals pretty successfully.

42 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Even X7, despite the FAQ SNAFU, continues to be an excellent boost to a lackluster platform.

And dont' forget that BEFORE the nerf, x7 was bonkers good.

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

Actually imperial fixes have a long history of working well. Autothrusters gave interceptors a second life and paved the way for TAPs, the TIE adv title brought Vader back for the first time since wave 2-3, Kallus was great for Whisper, The Emperor gave the lambda shuttle a purpose, and lightweight frame was a beautiful upgrade to many TIE variants. Even X7, despite the FAQ SNAFU, continues to be an excellent boost to a lackluster platform. It looks like unguided rockets will be a contained little upgrade for bombers.

Rebels get a lot of duds like R3 astromech, everything having to do with the U-wing except expertise and inspiring recruit (which are equally good for all factions), and both new Han and Chewie. Scum used to get a lot of duds too.

The problem is, both rebel and scum power mechanics have gone un-nerfed; but that doesn't change the fact that imperial fixes have accomplished their goals pretty successfully.

Its not that the fixes weren't good at the time, it's that they are useless now. Can we expect a fix for them to bring them up to speed to current meta? or those ships are just ******...

7 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I imagine part of the problem is FFG making do with what they are given by LFL, also. Since LFL has to approve content out of FFG, they may have a say in what is done. It's also a matter of content- what heavy bombers does the Empire have with turrets on them? Also, which faction has the largest concentration of canon fodder fighters that are easily destroyed for the sake of making the heroes look good?

Another part of it is design decisions by LFL for the past few waves when Lore didn't provide something for them to do by priority. The TIE Interdictor/Punisher was FFG's attempt at buffing poorly-performing ordnance at the time, and the TIE Aggressor was FFG's gesture to bring turrets to the Empire. We can debate if that's what FFG should have been focusing on at the time for the Imperial Meta.

I HIGHLY doubt that LFL has anything to do with the game balancing of FFG, I can almost guarantee that anything FFG pushes in front of them (new ship designs, requests to use legends material, etc., not included) is just rubber stamped through. LFL doesn't have a game tester or play tester on hand to check for balance, basically, FFG is the play tester, as FFG is pretty much the outsourced company to create their (LFL) Star Wars game. FFG may have created the mechanics (kinda, I mean Wings of War, Star Trek: Attack Wing are almost identical mechanics...) but that's it, tomorrow, a Disney lawyer could walk into their office and say the contracts been cut, immediately shut down all Star Wars developments, and FFG would be done that day.

Any balancing, brokenness, favoritism, successes, or failings, lie squarely on the X-Wing Miniatures development team. No one else.

50 minutes ago, RufusDaMan said:

Its not that the fixes weren't good at the time, it's that they are useless now. Can we expect a fix for them to bring them up to speed to current meta? or those ships are just ******...

As was every rebel ship a bit more than a year ago in Wave 9 during Defender Domination. Now it‘s swinging in the other direction.

A better designed game would swing less, but it isn‘t and we all know it. There is no grand conspiracy, there‘s a lot of interactions between hundreds of cards.

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

As was every rebel ship a bit more than a year ago in Wave 9 during Defender Domination. Now it‘s swinging in the other direction.

A better designed game would swing less, but it isn‘t and we all know it. There is no grand conspiracy, there‘s a lot of interactions between hundreds of cards.

Rebel ships were fine during defender "domination", such as it was. Dash in particular had a field day dodging arcs of relatively predictable PS5s and PS6s. Rebels were wiped out by the u-boats in the spring and summer 2016 and then Paratanni dominated late 2016 and early 2017. That would leave the "defender domination" period of roughly 2 - 3 months somewhere between september and november and I'd argue that it was the best period for rebels that year (certainly the best in it's second half).

9 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I imagine part of the problem is FFG making do with what they are given by LFL, also. Since LFL has to approve content out of FFG, they may have a say in what is done. It's also a matter of content- what heavy bombers does the Empire have with turrets on them? Also, which faction has the largest concentration of canon fodder fighters that are easily destroyed for the sake of making the heroes look good?

Another part of it is design decisions by LFL for the past few waves when Lore didn't provide something for them to do by priority. The TIE Interdictor/Punisher was FFG's attempt at buffing poorly-performing ordnance at the time, and the TIE Aggressor was FFG's gesture to bring turrets to the Empire. We can debate if that's what FFG should have been focusing on at the time for the Imperial Meta.

I don't think it's anything to do with LFL as the same design/balance issues persist across pretty much all FFG games, whether they're connected to Star Wars IP or something else.

56 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

Rebel ships were fine during defender "domination", such as it was. Dash in particular had a field day dodging arcs of relatively predictable PS5s and PS6s. Rebels were wiped out by the u-boats in the spring and summer 2016 and then Paratanni dominated late 2016 and early 2017. That would leave the "defender domination" period of roughly 2 - 3 months somewhere between september and november and I'd argue that it was the best period for rebels that year (certainly the best in it's second half).

Fact is that the listjuggler entries of Wave 9 to 10 are dominated by Defenders, from September 22nd to February 2nd. That's four months. There were twice as many Defenders on the tables as Jumpmasters, and more than three times as many compared to KWings. Dash by the way is at almost 10%. Yes Dash is unique and Defenders were flown in pairs or triples, but that means that Dash was still way below the amount of flown Defenders. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind too much. But trying to downplay the dominance of the Empire is just wrong.

41 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Fact is that the listjuggler entries of Wave 9 to 10 are dominated by Defenders, from September 22nd to February 2nd. That's four months. There were twice as many Defenders on the tables as Jumpmasters, and more than three times as many compared to KWings. Dash by the way is at almost 10%. Yes Dash is unique and Defenders were flown in pairs or triples, but that means that Dash was still way below the amount of flown Defenders. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind too much. But trying to downplay the dominance of the Empire is just wrong.

It's worth noting that at that point a large percentage of players hadn't realised the value of Attanni (which was almost totally derided on the forum on it's release), or even the potential of Miranda and Bombs for that matter.

Once people clicked onto @Oldpara's list there would have been a sizable drift over to Jumpmasters even if the Imperials hadn't been nerfed.

57 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Fact is that the listjuggler entries of Wave 9 to 10 are dominated by Defenders, from September 22nd to February 2nd. That's four months. There were twice as many Defenders on the tables as Jumpmasters, and more than three times as many compared to KWings. Dash by the way is at almost 10%. Yes Dash is unique and Defenders were flown in pairs or triples, but that means that Dash was still way below the amount of flown Defenders. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind too much. But trying to downplay the dominance of the Empire is just wrong.

Check the winning lists though. Defenders were very popular among newer players because they were straightforward to fly, forgiving and resilient. And you could build a good defender list even if you only had a starter, veterans and the TIE Defender blister, which is a big deal for a newcomer.

Popularity does not equal dominance though. Commonwealth defenders won some big tournaments in september and october but from mid-november to february it's hard to find a single large tournament not won by Paratanni.

And I think most players would agree that the september-october period was way better for rebels than either the preceding u-boat craziness and the ensuing Paratanni craziness. Meta was actually relatively normal during that time.

So, yeah, rebels were hit hard in the latter half of that year but defenders were the least of their problems.

11 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

Popularity does not equal dominance though.

My mistake, sorry. What I meant:

We are currently discussing how no imperial list is viable to be put on the table. Few try anyway, but most play Scum or Rebel instead. In that context my poor choice of the word dominance was meant to describe how many ships of that faction were seen on the tables compared to now.

I was wrong to assume that this understanding is obvious enough to not explain it, because it is not.

Oh I get it now. I misunderstood you because the way you phrased it suggested a cause-effect relationship between the large number of defenders and the relative lack of popularity of the rebel lists and - in effect - a certain symmetry with what's happening now to the imperials at the hand of the rebels. Since I knew this wasn't quite true (imperials were mostly innocent bystanders watching rebels get screwed over by 2 consecutive scum powerhouse archetypes), I felt compelled to argue the point.

No doubt Defenders were ubiquitous for a time- but they really didn't dominate the game, despite their popularity. They were nothing like Nym is now. If you want to find a comparison to Nym, you have to go back to pre-nerf Phantom. Now that was a terrible meta- which is back! Hooray?

7 minutes ago, Favoritism Flight Games said:

No doubt Defenders were ubiquitous for a time- but they really didn't dominate the game, despite their popularity. They were nothing like Nym is now. If you want to find a comparison to Nym, you have to go back to pre-nerf Phantom. Now that was a terrible meta- which is back! Hooray?

So do you want Imperials to be viable for play, or do you want them to be the new broken OP faction that everyone hates?

Defenders are a good comparison if you want the former. The Phantom is a good comparison if you want the latter.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

So do you want Imperials to be viable for play, or do you want them to be the new broken OP faction that everyone hates?

Defenders are a good comparison if you want the former. The Phantom is a good comparison if you want the latter.

Yeah totally, I don't want anything like Phantom era back. I'd just like Imps to have some options that aren't just strictly worse than the other factions.

8 hours ago, Gadgetron said:

I HIGHLY doubt that LFL has anything to do with the game balancing of FFG, I can almost guarantee that anything FFG pushes in front of them (new ship designs, requests to use legends material, etc., not included) is just rubber stamped through. LFL doesn't have a game tester or play tester on hand to check for balance, basically, FFG is the play tester, as FFG is pretty much the outsourced company to create their (LFL) Star Wars game. FFG may have created the mechanics (kinda, I mean Wings of War, Star Trek: Attack Wing are almost identical mechanics...) but that's it, tomorrow, a Disney lawyer could walk into their office and say the contracts been cut, immediately shut down all Star Wars developments, and FFG would be done that day.

Any balancing, brokenness, favoritism, successes, or failings, lie squarely on the X-Wing Miniatures development team. No one else.

I agree that LFL probably isn't really doing much with mechanics, but that doesn't mean they can't have an impact on the game.

Are they going to care about whether a ship attacks with 2 or 3 dice? Probably not. Will they care about throwing a turret and a crew slot on a ship that has no reason to have them? Possibly...

The point being that FFG's job of balancing is made that much harder by not being able to simply release similar ships for every faction. Options for what ships can do is somewhat limited by the lore, so FFG has to try to balance asymmetrically, which is a much more difficult task.

9 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I agree that LFL probably isn't really doing much with mechanics, but that doesn't mean they can't have an impact on the game.

Are they going to care about whether a ship attacks with 2 or 3 dice? Probably not. Will they care about throwing a turret and a crew slot on a ship that has no reason to have them? Possibly...

The point being that FFG's job of balancing is made that much harder by not being able to simply release similar ships for every faction. Options for what ships can do is somewhat limited by the lore, so FFG has to try to balance asymmetrically, which is a much more difficult task.

Just FYI, there was a quote from the LFL guys where they said that the relationship is the other way around, and they sometimes go to the X-Wing team to find out what a ship should be able to do.

15 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I imagine part of the problem is FFG making do with what they are given by LFL, also. Since LFL has to approve content out of FFG, they may have a say in what is done. It's also a matter of content- what heavy bombers does the Empire have with turrets on them? Also, which faction has the largest concentration of canon fodder fighters that are easily destroyed for the sake of making the heroes look good?

Another part of it is design decisions by LFL for the past few waves when Lore didn't provide something for them to do by priority. The TIE Interdictor/Punisher was FFG's attempt at buffing poorly-performing ordnance at the time, and the TIE Aggressor was FFG's gesture to bring turrets to the Empire. We can debate if that's what FFG should have been focusing on at the time for the Imperial Meta.

at the same time you can ask... when we see bombing in movies/tv show, which faction is generally seeing doing it... You dont need a turret to be a good bomber. Put a sensor, genius and bomblets on a Tie bomber and suddently you have a pretty decent ship.

Its a bit harder to fix the Punisher like that because it has many problems and one of the biggest is the dial. IMO one nice solution would be this title: "When you reveal you dial, you can replace any maneuver by a white "0 speed". If your pilot PS is X or more, add and EPT slot to the ship".

I really hope we are going to get a Tie Bomber FO and it will finally offer a good bombing platform. If we are lucky it migh even include some fixes for the old bomber and the Punisher... :-)

14 minutes ago, Thormind said:

I really hope we are going to get a Tie Bomber FO and it will finally offer a good bombing platform. If we are lucky it migh even include some fixes for the old bomber and the Punisher... :-)

One of the promotional posters you can get depicting the new walkers show some aircraft that are suspiciously shaped like TIE Bombers in First Order colors. We won't know until the film, though...

36 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I agree that LFL probably isn't really doing much with mechanics, but that doesn't mean they can't have an impact on the game.

Are they going to care about whether a ship attacks with 2 or 3 dice? Probably not. Will they care about throwing a turret and a crew slot on a ship that has no reason to have them? Possibly...

The point being that FFG's job of balancing is made that much harder by not being able to simply release similar ships for every faction. Options for what ships can do is somewhat limited by the lore, so FFG has to try to balance asymmetrically, which is a much more difficult task.

This is an interesting point that I've gone on and on about with other players when we're shooting the bull. Sure, FFg started beautifully with this premise, but lost their way in a big way and this is where the game has fallen into it's current state, in a deep theory perspective.

Initially we had expensive, tough, hard hitting (turrets too), flexible (in crew, droids and synergies) Rebel ships with very little ability to avoid damage or repossession very well vs. relatively cheap, relatively weak, lighter hitting, not terribly flexible (in crew or droids, but OK with synergies) Imperial ships with great ability to avoid damage and repossession very well. It was clear and nice to play these games. As the game added more ships, the A-Wing gave the Rebels some Imp-ness and the Decimator gave the Empire some Rebel-ness, but the balance and differences were almost unique, save the poor original Phantom design (which was very Imperial, but a bit too much) and the arguable Imperial dud that was Boba Fett, whom I love to fly with a pint in hand, BTW. Epic ships aside and the TIE Advanced fix and Phantom nerf mixed in, that spreadsheet for the game was quite alright.

Then Scum.....

Scum started as a kinda wacky Rebel copy that was tournament lacking save some unique and very powerful abilities in the IG-2000s. I think problems arose with not only the TERRIBLE apology design of the Jumpmaster, but it seems the original game design that @JJ48 correctly alluded to has been mostly lost in the Rebel (expensive, tough, flexible, but low on elusiveness and re-positioning) and Scum (expensive, tough, flexible, but low on elusiveness and re-positioning, added with some crazy shenanigans) as they have both been given the only unique attribute that kept the Imperial faction unique and playable: very good elusiveness and re-positioning. The Rebel and Scum faction now have all the tools plus some. In contrast, very little design attributes that make the other factions very good have been designed into the Imperial side of the game. True, Imps have the Decimator, but still don't have any other maneuverable, flexible, turreted large ships with synergistic crew, they have two space cows that struggle as they cannot maneuver or flexibly attack like their counterparts. Imps are, save the aggressor, locked into 80 degree firing arcs (though the Rebel SF has the rear arc too), and their bombing capabilities are basically neutered vs. the other factions although Star Wars cannon would argue the Empire should be the best at said attacks.

Now, the Imps are to be given two more arc-ed ships (Gunboat and the Silencer) when there is a sea of bombs and turrets and FFG has spent the last two years designing arc attack abilities out of the power side of the game.

I need some tea....now where did that kettle get too?

10 hours ago, RufusDaMan said:

Its not that the fixes weren't good at the time, it's that they are useless now. Can we expect a fix for them to bring them up to speed to current meta? or those ships are just ******...

But that is a very different assertion from "when FFG tries to fix imperials, they always fail." They don't fail, they succeed.

The problem now is that bombs are especially threatening to a much higher percentage of imperial ships than the other factions, so they're disproportionately suppressed. But again, that's not a hallmark of failed fixes, but over powered bombing mechanics.

6 hours ago, Lightrock said:

Check the winning lists though. Defenders were very popular among newer players because they were straightforward to fly, forgiving and resilient. And you could build a good defender list even if you only had a starter, veterans and the TIE Defender blister, which is a big deal for a newcomer.

Popularity does not equal dominance though. Commonwealth defenders won some big tournaments in september and october but from mid-november to february it's hard to find a single large tournament not won by Paratanni.

And I think most players would agree that the september-october period was way better for rebels than either the preceding u-boat craziness and the ensuing Paratanni craziness. Meta was actually relatively normal during that time.

So, yeah, rebels were hit hard in the latter half of that year but defenders were the least of their problems.

Lothal Open was won by commonwealth defenders at the end of February. And that wasn't exactly a small tournament. Kashyyyk had triple defenders as the runner up (but did indeed lose to paratanni)