S&V 60: Developers Interview with Max Brooke, Frank Brooks and Alex Davy

By Kelvan, in X-Wing

In this episode we sit down with the three X-Wing developers and discuss Legion and L5R (minutes 5 through 18), and then X-Wing, where we hit them on hot topics like older ships not being as good as newer ships, bombs being too strong, the death of swarms, the role that generics currently play in the game, the difficulties of designing a game where the meta is 1-1.5 years time shifted from the design process, and the usefulness of machine learning to aid in design testing. Enjoy!

https://www.teamcovenant.com/podcast/scum-and-villainy/scum-villainy-60-developers-interview-max-brooke-frank-brooks-alex-davy

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Just one dollar can help a drug addicted, debt ridden space pirate in the outer rim

Edited by Kelvan

I don’t think the link is working for me :(

1 minute ago, the1hodgy said:

I don’t think the link is working for me :(

Edited link. Try now. Thanks for the heads up!

lol @ interrogation scene as the image for the episode

Working now, awesome thank you!

"Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs." -Alex Davy 2017

1xpnm4.jpg

9 minutes ago, Babaganoosh said:

lol @ interrogation scene as the image for the episode

That's @sozin being funny.

8 minutes ago, Favoritism Flight Games said:

"Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs." -Alex Davy 2017

1xpnm4.jpg

He's too good looking for that.

After listening to this, I'm hoping that they have an Errata planned and just can't talk about it.

After hearing them talk about Whisper, I wanted to follow up with "alright, how is Nym any different?"

1 minute ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

After listening to this, I'm hoping that they have an Errata planned and just can't talk about it.

After hearing them talk about Whisper, I wanted to follow up with "alright, how is Nym any different?"

I want to be clear. I thought this a lot. "Have Xwings ever been good?"

They've had 13 waves of opportunities to fix it not even including ace packs and epic. That's on them.

Am not fully through, but really good insight so far.

Edited by the1hodgy
18 minutes ago, Kelvan said:

I want to be clear. I thought this a lot. "Have Xwings ever been good?"

They've had 13 waves of opportunities to fix it not even including ace packs and epic. That's on them.

It's a good point. The fabled X-wing fix has been needed for a long, long time. I think there are some cards that could be seen as fix attempts, most notable the integrated astromech. And at the same time, Biggs is an exceptional design problem that an x wing fix must overcome (that is, it cannot buff biggs).

But all in all, a strong fix attempt is long overdue.

ALMOST as long overdue as a Hortan Salm EPT - and 1 point droids don't count!

Edited by Babaganoosh
31 minutes ago, Favoritism Flight Games said:

"Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs." -Alex Davy 2017

1xpnm4.jpg

But what if he does have more rhymes than the Bibles got psalms?

3 minutes ago, kris40k said:

But what if he does have more rhymes than the Bibles got psalms?

Then we best all Jump(master) around!

Fine... then I listen to podcasts. :grump grump:

OMG, are they ******** on the ONLY competitive Imperial Large based ship?

Scum and Villainy is awesome! Thanks for trapping them, though.....

So far (listening now) so NOT having anything useful to illuminate at all; they seem confused or without direction.

In the end, mostly political speak, nothing more.

Edited by clanofwolves
48 minutes ago, Babaganoosh said:

It's a good point. The fabled X-wing fix has been needed for a long, long time. I think there are some cards that could be seen as fix attempts, most notable the integrated astromech. And at the same time, Biggs is an exceptional design problem that an x wing fix must overcome (that is, it cannot buff biggs).

But all in all, a strong fix attempt is long overdue.

ALMOST as long overdue as a Hortan Salm EPT - and 1 point droids don't count!

R2-D6 *sad beep*

if we still had forum tags the line above would be it.

Interesting that they confessed that they didn't do the Gunboat earlier because they needed to add so many features that the ship had but the game was lacking that they didn't think they were ready for it.

So the Gunboat, in a way, has driven the design of the game for years. Tractor, SLAM, Jamming, viable ordnance, ... All of that had to come first before the Starwing could finally debut in the game.

It's good to know. :)

13 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

Interesting that they confessed that they didn't do the Gunboat earlier because they needed to add so many features that the ship had but the game was lacking that they didn't think they were ready for it.

So the Gunboat, in a way, has driven the design of the game for years. Tractor, SLAM, Jamming, viable ordnance, ... All of that had to come first before the Starwing could finally debut in the game.

It's good to know. :)

Yeah, because it’s not like when you press the SLAM key, the GUNBOAT tells you “THIS SHIP DOES NOT HAVE A SLAM SYSTEM” when you’re playing the game it came from or anything! :P

They definitely didn’t give the GUNBOAT a SLAM action just because they completely misdesigned the K-Wing and didn’t want the Imperial players to feel ripped off (spoiler: we still do. GUNBOATS don’t bomb. Or SLAM, for the record).

I like how they give the Imperials the short end of the stick with every new mechanic, and then somehow find a way to blame us for it (while going completely off-lore).

Edited by Kieransi
14 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

Interesting that they confessed that they didn't do the Gunboat earlier because they needed to add so many features that the ship had but the game was lacking that they didn't think they were ready for it.

So the Gunboat, in a way, has driven the design of the game for years. Tractor, SLAM, Jamming, viable ordnance, ... All of that had to come first before the Starwing could finally debut in the game.

It's good to know. :)

I’m pretty sure that’s bollocks... but hey. It’s here now. Better late than never!

6 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

Yeah, because it’s not like when you press the SLAM key, the GUNBOAT tells you “THIS SHIP DOES NOT HAVE A SLAM SYSTEM” when you’re playing the game it came from or anything! :P

They definitely didn’t give the GUNBOAT a SLAM action just because they completely misdesigned the K-Wing and didn’t want the Imperial players to feel ripped off (spoiler: we still do. GUNBOATS don’t bomb. Or SLAM, for the record).

I like how they give the Imperials the short end of the stick with every new mechanic, and then somehow find a way to blame us for it (while going completely off-lore).

Sorry your space nazis didn't win in the movies- sincerely, FFG

Edited by FlyingAnchors
I know symbolism, legitimate government, empire not that bad, rebels aren't much better, rogue one, etc etc
1 minute ago, Kieransi said:

Yeah, because it’s not like when you press the SLAM key, the GUNBOAT tells you “THIS SHIP DOES NOT HAVE A SLAM SYSTEM” when you’re playing the game it came from or anything! :P

They definitely didn’t give the GUNBOAT a slam action just because they completely misdesigned the K-Wing and didn’t want the Imperial players to feel ripped off (spoiler: we still do. GUNBOATS don’t bomb. Or SLAM, for the record).

I like how they give the Imperials the short end of the stick with every new mechanic, and then somehow find a way to blame us for it (while going completely off-lore).

I don't think the Missile Boat is ever going to come to the game. That ships was just too broken and specialized. Also, it's probably one of the least known ships in the Empire perhaps just above the TIE Punisher.

Given that, I can buy the idea that the Missile Boat is a customization of the Starwing, so the SLAM action goes to the Starwing.
Since the Starwing doesn't even carry bombs, it doesn't bother me that they use the SLAM action more like the actual Missile Boat used to do: to release missiles and torpedoes. That is what the OS-1 title seems to do and to me it's fine.
The presence of SLAM on a non-Missile Boat Starwing is harder to explain, but I am not going to complain. It's just an intermediate hybrid model. There, explained. :)

There's a missile boat title in the Gunboat, so yeah, it's not getting a ship of its own.

1 minute ago, FlyingAnchors said:

Sorry your space nazis didn't win- sincerely, FFG

I get what you mean... it’s hard to root for the Empire. I just think everyone benefits from a fair and balanced game.

I think you get weird looks from people if you play Axis and Allies and root for Nazi Germany, but it’s no fun if the allies win on turn 1, right?

Besides, I don’t really want to get into this debate, but I think pirates are still on about equal moral footing with nazis (walking the plank never happened in real life - Hollywood invented it because they aren’t allowed to show what pirates really did to prisoners). I am definitely on the political left, so I’m not advocating Nazi-ism at all, just wanted to say that I still don’t root for scum over the Imperials.