What if we could activate ships like the way it is done in a D&D encounter.

At the start of activation phase, each ship rolls a D8 for their initiative and adds their initiative to their Pilot Skill. Then ships are moved lowest to highest as per usual.

Similarly for the combat phase, another initiative roll.

This way, higher PS ships still gets to move later and shoot earlier as they should but that is by no means a guarantee. A PS10 Nym can fluff his initiative roll with a 1 and fail to bomb a PS4 Saber.

This makes the game a lot more dynamic than the static state of the same ship always moving last / shooting first. It also makes the gap between PS more important. Currently, any ship that is one PS better than another functions exactly the same as another pair that say is PS2 vs PS8. With an initiative roll added into the mix, each extra point of PS now matters.

Now that means that wouldn't be a player "with initiative", so how do we deal with draws? I suggest that if there is a draw (a ship's initiative + PS = of another ship), then the ship that rolled higher initiative wins (i.e. moves later, shoots first). This is to reward the lower PS ship for finally outwitting a more skilled pilot.

What if initiative and PS are both the same? The game ends, the universe implodes and a new universe is born with every detail exactly alike except someone smarter has solved that same PS initiative problem.

How would we deal with initiative bids then? One possible solution could be to grant a one use initiative reroll for each point of initiative bid. Players can spend their precious pool of initiative rerolls on critical rounds. We can easily track the amount of unspent "initiative rerolls" using spare dials and/or a simple token pool. Suggestions are welcomed

PS. I suggested using a D8 because X Wing is based on a D8 system but it could easily be a D6 (plentiful, cheap, less variance) or D10 (wider range of results).

Just alternate initiatives runewars style.

8 minutes ago, tangoraven said:

At the start of activation phase, each ship rolls a D8 for their initiative and adds their initiative to their Pilot Skill. Then ships are moved lowest to highest as per usual.

Bad idea. That's a lot of bumping. How do you plan your moves if you don't know which ship will move first when you set your dial?

Even if you roll at the start of the planning phase, still a bad idea. It makes impossible to plan your moves more than one turn in advance. Adds a lot of randomness, reducing the flying skill factor. Swarms would become completely unplayable. If you have 8 TIE fighters in formation, you need to be able to chose the activation order, otherwise it would be impossible to fly them.

No. No. No.

5 minutes ago, Ubul said:

Bad idea. That's a lot of bumping. How do you plan your moves if you don't know which ship will move first when you set your dial?

Even if you roll at the start of the planning phase, still a bad idea. It makes impossible to plan your moves more than one turn in advance. Adds a lot of randomness, reducing the flying skill factor. Swarms would become completely unplayable. If you have 8 TIE fighters in formation, you need to be able to chose the activation order, otherwise it would be impossible to fly them.

No. No. No.

Then how about you make the initiative roll the choice of either "take what is rolled" or "take a zero"?

If you need to choose the activation order - which is still only sometimes, even with a swarm - then you can go bottom line with it.

The easiest would be initiative based on squad points. You have initiative with 98-100, but 2nd round you destroy one of his Academy TIES, now he has initiative with 98-88, etc. Yes there is some math involved, but it would not be that hard.

Every turn, each player rolls a d6 and add it to the PS of all pilots. It gives some randomness but continues to value the higher PS over the lower.

Or bid for initiative? Each player starts with 5pts of initiative for every pt under 100 their squad list comes in at. Then every turn players bid initiative and transfer initiative pts to each other for the difference similar to honor in LOT5R. Ties give initiative to the other player.

So a 100 pt list vs a 99 pt list

round 1, player 1 has 0 initiative and player 2 has 5 initiative, player 2 bids 1, P1-1/P2-4

round 2, player 1 now bids 1 and player 2 wanting to maintain initiative bids 2, P1-3/P2-2

round 3, player 1 has an opening and really needs initiative so bids 3 which player 2 only has 2, P1-0/P2-5

Actual pts of initiative per sqd pt is tuneable.

I'd like to be able to move ships in any order I wanted, regardless of PS. Similar to Imperial Assault, where it's You go/I go.

Same for Shooting.

I'm sure there would be problems I haven't considered.

Have you folks actually tried any of this?

1 hour ago, tangoraven said:

At the start of activation phase, each ship rolls a D8 for their initiative and adds their initiative to their Pilot Skill. Then ships are moved lowest to highest as per usual.

Similarly for the combat phase, another initiative roll.

Suddenly, a single 100-point match now takes three hours to play.
No thanks.

Not a fan of adding more dice rolling. More dice rolling and interpretation means more amount of time used.

I actually like it! With a few tweaks, it could work:

1. Don’t roll every round, just roll at the start of the game

2. Incorporate minion groups - all generic ships with the same pilot skill may use the same initiative roll.

2 hours ago, Cusm said:

The easiest would be initiative based on squad points. You have initiative with 98-100, but 2nd round you destroy one of his Academy TIES, now he has initiative with 98-88, etc. Yes these is some math involved, but it would not be that hard.

This is simple enough. But is initiative then mandatory, or do you get to choose everytime?

2 hours ago, Odanan said:

Every turn, each player rolls a d6 and add it to the PS of all pilots. It gives some randomness but continues to value the higher PS over the lower.

Yes. I want to use this. This seems really fun.
But I propose a D20 for even MORE craziness.

1 hour ago, flooze said:

Have you folks actually tried any of this?

1 hour ago, Force Majeure said:

I'd like to be able to move ships in any order I wanted, regardless of PS. Similar to Imperial Assault, where it's You go/I go.

Same for Shooting.

I'm sure there would be problems I haven't considered.

You would basicly get Initiative by having more ships. If you fly a 3ship list and fly a 6 ship mini swarm I will have 3 ships I can move after all your ships have moved.

That's not too bad is it? More ships have generally lower fewer abilities and tricks.

4 minutes ago, Hannes Solo said:

You would basicly get Initiative by having more ships. If you fly a 3ship list and fly a 6 ship mini swarm I will have 3 ships I can move after all your ships have moved.

I'm not a proponent for the random initiative here, but Battletech has long ago figured out a solution to this problem. When the opponent's side reaches double the number of ships they have to move 2.

So 5 ships vs 3 where 5 has lost initiative = L move, W move, L move two ships, W move one, L move remaining two ships, W move last ship...

7 minutes ago, Hannes Solo said:

You would basicly get Initiative by having more ships. If you fly a 3ship list and fly a 6 ship mini swarm I will have 3 ships I can move after all your ships have moved.

And is this a bad thing?

It promotes usage of cheap generic ships instead of fat , FAQfodder monstrosities

Gotta say I don't see the appeal of any of these suggestions? Why needlessly complicate initiative? The game does not need additional bloat. What are the critiques fomenting this idea?

2 hours ago, LagJanson said:

I'm not a proponent for the random initiative here, but Battletech has long ago figured out a solution to this problem. When the opponent's side reaches double the number of ships they have to move 2.

So 5 ships vs 3 where 5 has lost initiative = L move, W move, L move two ships, W move one, L move remaining two ships, W move last ship...

I played Battletech for the last 23 years and have no idea of what you're talking about.

34 minutes ago, Odanan said:

I played Battletech for the last 23 years and have no idea of what you're talking about.

Total Warfare pg 39 Unequal Numbers of Units

If prior to any pair of movement or attack declarations, one team has at least twice as many units left to declare for as the other team, the team with twice as many units declares for two units rather than one.

Really wordy, eh? There's a chart below an example though. I'm roughly as long as you Odanan, but spent about half that on the demo team.

5 hours ago, Slugrage said:

Suddenly, a single 100-point match now takes three hours to play.
No thanks.

Pretty much my thoughts as well.

"Oh I have a great idea. Let's now find another kind of dice, roll it for each and every ship in the game, do MATH with that roll and information from the ship, tabulate/correlate/order all of that new information, NOW get back to playing the game we mostly know for the remainder of the round. Of course this is all being done for one round so we'll repeat the entire process again next round."

How are we tracking the "new" effective PS for all of these ships? A bunch of new tokens numbered 2-17. With all of this work "improving" initiative what happens when there is tie? Going to use the roll or actual PS to break that fine but what if there is a tie-tie? Now it seems we'll have to generate another random outcome.

5 hours ago, Force Majeure said:

I'd like to be able to move ships in any order I wanted, regardless of PS. Similar to Imperial Assault, where it's You go/I go.

Same for Shooting.

I'm sure there would be problems I haven't considered.

Might want to take a look at just about every game where numbers can be different and the power level of pieces can vary greatly. I think back to DDM and SWM from WotC where you wanted to "out activate" your opponent so that you could force him to commit his main pieces before you had to use yours so you could use what he was doing against him. DDM actually went and set a limit to the number of units a squad could have (granted there were some ways around it) because of how problematic it could be.

I think some breakup of the initiative system would be a good thing. I don't think arc-dodgers are all bad, but at times they shut down gameplay and if you have some generics, its a lot harder to play. Perhaps some mechanism where occasionally a lower PS pilot can 'seize the initiative' or something.

I actually think the game would be a lot more interesting if the maneuvering had something to do with it, like perhaps getting in a pilot's rear arc would give you a chance to move after that pilot. There's no need for it to be based completely on random die rolls. The ideal might be a system where a very skilled player using a generic could dominate a noob using an arc-dodging ace.

If I had to identify the top design flaws (or stress points, in any case since i still think its a great designed game). I'd say:

1. Diminishing returns... taking large amount of generics your list will quickly lose effectiveness every time you lose a ship, while a large combo'd expensive ship could potentially be fully functional even if its down to one hull point. The result is that as more card combos accrue xwing inevitably turns into a 2 or 3 ship meta.

2. Points values- need to be based on a larger scale, so a tie fighter could be priced at the equivalent of a 12.5 lets say. The current system must resort to using the 'opportunity cost' of filling up an upgrade slot or other extreme measures to deal with subtler nuances in the point system.

3. Initiative system-as above. Another solution for this could be to actually break up the maneuvering phase from the phase where you perform actions. Perhaps performing actions could be a 'reaction'- although this would require the game to keep track of actions it still would work better as a system and it would be more dynamic.

4. Lack of objective based missions for competitive play: this would break up the meta a lot more and in general, make it hard for 'broken' ships to emerge or at least make the process take longer. Would also introduce a far easier way to balance the game, that is just by tweaking missions instead of rewriting the actual product.

But nobody should actually try to play xwing this way, it's just a recipe for frustration. Until FFG does an xwing 2.0 or the community somehow gives birth to an open source non-IP strangled ruleset.

An experienced player DOES have a chance of beating a less experienced player flying a higher pilot skill ship.

1) BLOCKING. Lower PS ships can force a bump which spells doom for arc dodgers.

2) Using arcs intelligently. If you are going up against Soontir and his ilk you cannot just fly right next to each other in formation with largely overlapping arcs. You need to think about area denial and setting up kill boxes. Ideally strive to force a bump inside of a 2+ arc kill box.

And if it has come down to 1 v 1. Say an academy pilot vs. Jake Farrel in the end game...

Well, Jake SHOULD win that match because he is way more expensive than an academy pilot points wise.