Lorrir has become what he always should have been.

OK, lots of individual comments to reply to here, thanks for the feedback all!

18 hours ago, Punning Pundit said:

Why not just literally make the Imcom title a single sided card with language identical to the TFA Falcon title?

I just put up a poll on the Facebook page to see what people think about changing it to a single-sided card, that simply states:

"When you reveal a speed 3 <left bank> or <right bank> maneuver, you may instead treat it as a red speed 3 <left sloop> or <right sloop> of the same bearing as the revealed maneuver."

This is super-easy to use but helps higher PS named pilots by giving them maneuver options after they have information of lower PS pilots having already moved, including potentially blocking their intended sloop.

10 hours ago, Firespray-32 said:

The difficulty there is that ship cards are functional components: you can't really leave them on the printout.

There are definitely a few options I can think of for cutting down on the number of fix cards without changing the pilot cards.

SQUADRON UPGRADES

Squadron Upgrades apply their rules text to every ship they apply to. They are not considered equipped to those ships.

For example:

OVERWHELMING NUMBERS
Squadron Upgrade, 0 points

TIE fighter, Z-95 Headhunter

When attacking, if the defender is in arc of another friendly TIE fighter or Z-95 Headhunter you may add one <hit> result. If you do and this attack hits, the defender suffers one damage, and then cancel all dice results.

ATTACK POSITION
Squadron Upgrade, 0 points

X-wing

Increase your shield value by 1. When attacking, if you are not stressed, you may either reroll one blank result or, if you have a target lock on the defender, you may convert all <focus> results to <hit> results.

SCATTER
Squadron Upgrade, 0 points

TIE fighter

During setup place one tracking token on this ship's pilot card.

When rolling defence dice, you may discard one tracking token from your pilot card to reroll one blank result.

INTERCEPTION TACTICS
Squadron Upgrade, 0 points

TIE interceptor, A-wing

Increase your hull value by 1. When attacking, if you are not inside the defender's primary firing arc, you may increase your primary attack value by 1 (to a maximum of 3).

CHASSIS CARDS

During setup place the matching chassis card for each ship type in your list and place it in your play area.

TIE FIGHTER
Chassis Card

During setup place one tracking token on this ship's pilot card. When rolling defence dice, you may discard one tracking token from your pilot card to reroll one blank result.

When attacking, if the defender is in the primary firing arc of another friendly ship at Range 1-2 you may add one <hit> result. If you do and this attack hits, the defender suffers one damage, and then cancel all dice results.

TIE INTERCEPTOR
Chassis Card

If you have fewer than your maximum number of modifications equipped increase your hull value by 1.

TIE ADVANCED
Chassis Card

You may equip one system upgrade to this ship. Reduce its squad point cost by 8 (to a minimum of 0).

STARVIPER
Chassis Card

When performing a barrel roll use the 1-bank template.

A-WING
Chassis Card

Increase your hull value by 1.

When attacking, if you are outside the defender's firing arc, you may roll 1 additional attack die.

X-WING
Chassis Card

Increase your shield value by 1.

When attacking, if you are not stressed, you may either reroll one blank result or, if you have a target lock on the defender, you may convert all <focus> results to <hit> results.

When you are dealt a damage card you may discard an equipped Astromech upgrade to immediately discard it.

The chassis cards are the tidiest solution and allow fine tuning of specific ships but they only apply to one ship: the TIE fighter, TIE/fo and TIE/sf all would need their own.

12 hours ago, Giledhil said:

I must say I also am a little concerned about over-complexity when adding loads of fix cards.
If a change in some game mechanics does the work easier than a big bunch of cards, I'm all for the single rule instead of the many. With that much additional cards, "reading" your opponent's list across the table sometimes gets difficult. Especially when multiple occurences of ships with dual cards happen...

For exemple, why "Squint Plating" as a card, instead of an errata to the statline?
And, to go even further, why add free Title/Mod cards when we can make these special gimmicks part of the ship card?
IMO, the less cards on the board, the better.

No card is a pure autoinclude unless it meets 2 conditions:

1. It costs no more than 0 points
2. It does not consume a slot, or of it does, there are zero other options available for that slot (i.e. many titles)

With regard specifically to Squint Plating, it is explicitly not autoinclude (intentionally by design), as it consumes the mod slot, and Soontir may want to take his old-school AT/SD combo.

Remember that all physical upgrade cards can be completely redundant for this mod, including the new custom ones, unless they perform some kind of game state tracking function, like being dual-sided (i.e. Intensity), token tracking on them (i.e. Gonk or tweaked R2-D2 droid), or discard on use (i.e. missiles / torps / bombs, or new Evasive Thrusters). You will need pilot cards to put shields and damage cards on, but then all you may need for some squads is a physical printout of a squad PDF, for example this one for a 7-TIE Swarm , plus any needed upgrade cards, like a discardable copy of "Evasive Thrusters" for each ship for the TIE Swarm. So yes, we could introduce new squadron or chassis concepts to tweak some card wording... but how much will it really matter? It's just book-keeping and accounting, and has zero impact on gameplay or game balance. Even if we introduce squadron mechanics, you will still want the squad printout to be super idiot proof, and still spell out all the upgrades for each pilot.

Also, the critical path to getting this Mod off the ground is getting a squad builder, and playtesting the core pillars. Go forth and playtest!

12 hours ago, Giledhil said:

Those type of arcs sound good to me. Especially because that doesn't require new cardboard. Side arcs for U-wings ? Yes please!


Also, @MajorJuggler , do you already have a plan for torpedoes/missiles?
In our group, we currently use the following rule : missiles doesn't discard TL; torpedoes add one hit if the attack is successful. And we got rid of Guidance Chips.
Seems to work well for now, and adds a little difference between the slots.

Yeah, U-wings, they need some love. I haven't spent many mental clock cycles on it yet, but I'm pinning suggestions.

I still have to go through torpedoes and Missiles; my initial gut reaction in general is to let them all keep the Target Lock instead of spending it. Guidance Chips will probably stay in the game, but come with an appropriate cost.

9 hours ago, Kehl_Aecea said:

This looks fantastic. Mind if I make a suggestion for Y-Wings? The BTL-A4 title. Instead of locking a turret in arc, perhaps have it remove the turret slot and replace it witha cannon slot.

Or would that be potentially too powerful? (I always forget about HLC)

I think it would compete too directly with the B-wing. I think BTL-A4 is actually a pretty sweet design as-is, it just needs some good turrets to go along with it.

3 hours ago, Punning Pundit said:

Sold!

And Kir Kanos only costs one more point than a PS6 generic Royal Guard! His ability to spend an evade for a hit is very cheap. It could be situationally amazing, if he moves last and has already arc dodged everyone.

Also. Nobody has commented on Fel's Wrath yet!! He's 38 points of 3/3/4/0 in-your-face jousting goodness! Kill me and I kill you back! With a focus!

18 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

• Fel's Wrath: cost decreased from 46 to 38, and ability changed to: " When the damage assigned to you equals or exceeds your hull value, you may assign one focus token to yourself and then perform an additional attack. "

Alright, I must be missing something here. He takes damage => Hull, gets a Focus and a free action... then explodes?

double post

1 hour ago, ObiWonka said:

Alright, I must be missing something here. He takes damage => Hull, gets a Focus and a free action... then explodes?

Gets a focus and an extra attack, not action.

3 changes from stock:

1 - he gets a focus

2 - Reworded so a direct hit doesn't bypass his ability

3 - the ability triggers regardless of PS firing order. So he can attack twice in one round when he dies, if he dies at ps5 or lower

Yep, read it wrong.

Imperial & Scum Firesprays

Overview

This is fundamentally a very difficult ship to balance, because a 3/2/6/4 statline isn't worth anywhere near a third of your list with a fixed forward (and rear) arc.

• Firesprays can now take a free focus or barrel roll action after a non overlapping maneuver. This accomplishes two things: one, it brings their jousting value up to par, and two, it breathes some life into their rear arc without fundamentally changing the arc mechanics (i.e. no need to change it to a mobile arc).
• The Slave-I title has been tweaked so secondary weapons can be used out the mobile arc.
• Imperial Kath, Imperial Boba Fett, and Scum Boba Fett all get tweaked pilot ability wording, see below.
• Scum Boba Fett's ability has been tweaked to get away from the anti-synergy of range 1 on a large base, but he can only reroll one die (see below).

Pilot Tiers

• Scum Boba Fett is tier 1.
• Bounty Hunter (PS3) is tier 3.
• All other Firesprays are tier 2.

Pilot Costs and Ability Changes

Imperial :

• Bounty Hunter (PS3): cost decreased from 66 to 59.
• Krassis Trelix: cost decreased from 72 to 70.
• Kath Scarlet: cost decreased from 76 to 71, and pilot ability changed to: " When attacking, the defender receives 1 stress token if he cancels at least 1 <crit> or 1 <hit> result."
• Boba Fett: cost decreased from 78 to 72, and pilot ability changed to: " When you reveal your maneuver dial, you may rotate your dial to another maneuver of the same speed."

Scum :

• Mandalorian Mercenary (PS5): cost decreased from 70 to 66.
• Emon Azzameen: cost reduced from 72 to 68.
• Kath Scarlet: cost reduced from 76 to 75.
• Boba Fett: cost reduced from 78 to 77.

Key Card Changes

Firespray MK. II

• 0 / 0 / 0
• Modification. Firespray-31 only. Limited.
• You may equip one additional modification. After executing a maneuver, if you did not overlap an obstacle or a ship, you may perform a free focus or barrel roll action.

Slave-I

• 2 / 3 / 3
• Title. Unique. Firespray-31 only.
• You may perform secondary weapon attacks using your auxiliary arc.

Sample Loadouts

(All Firesprays have Firespray Mk. II)

Imperial :

• Bounty Hunter + Heavy Laser Cannon + Recon Specialist + Slave-1 (76 points)
• Krassis + Heavy Laser Cannon + Slave-1 + Recon Specialist (92 points)
• Kath Scarlet + Veteran Instincts + Heavy Laser Cannon + Recon Specialist + Slave-1 (96 points)
• Boba Fett + Veteran Instincts + Navigator + Heavy Laser Cannon + Slave-1 (96 points)

Scum :

• Mandalorian Mercenary (PS5) + Fearlessness + Recon Specialist (73 points)
• Mandalorian Mercenary (PS5) + Predator + Recon Specialist (76 points)
• Kath Scarlet + Predator + Recon Specialist (85 points)
• Kath Scarlet + Predator + Heavy Laser Cannon + Recon Specialist (99 points)
• Boba Fett + Fearlessness + Heavy Laser Cannon + Recon Specialist + Slave-1 (102 points)

VT-49 Decimator

Overview

The Decimator gets +4 hull, but also a couple of indirect nerfs.

• No pilot abilities are changed.
• All VT-49s get a free 4 hull increase via the VT-49 only 'Heavy Assault Plating' modification.
• Engine Upgrade has been nerfed for large base ships, see YT-1300 post.
• Kylo crew isn't changed, but the "I'll show you the Dark Side" now has a one-turn latency, which is actually closer to the designers' original intent, based on discussions with them during our S&V interview.
• Vader Crew is changed to only trigger if the attack hits, which prevents it from being a hard counter to aces, especially on a platform with 20 hit points.

Pilot Tiers

• Rear Admiral Chiraneau is tier 1.
• All other VT-49 pilots are tier 2.

Pilot Costs and Ability Changes

• Patrol Leader: cost decreased from 80 to 70.
• Captain Oicunn: cost decreased from 84 to 76.
• Commander Kenkirk: cost decreased from 88 to 84 .
• Rear Admiral Chiraneau : cost decreased from 92 to 82.

Key Card Changes

Decimator Plating
0 / 0 / 0
Modification. VT-49 only. Limited.
You may equip one additional modification. Increase your Hull value by 4. This card cannot be discarded.

Engine Upgrade
See: YT-1300 post.

I'll Show You The Dark Side
Condition
Change to second paragraph:

" Starting the round after you receive this condition , when you suffer critical damage during an attack, you are instead dealt the chosen faceup Damage card."

Darth Vader (crew)
0 / 0 / 0
Crew.
Once per round , after you perform an attack against an enemy ship that hits , you may suffer 2 damage to cause that ship to suffer 1 critical damage.

Sample Loadouts

(All VT-49 have Decimator Plating)

• Rear Admiral Chiraneau + Veteran Instincts + Kylo crew + Emperor Palpatine + Engine Upgrade (117 points)
• Commander Kenkirk + Lone Wolf + Ysanne + Emperor Palpatine (110 points)
• Commander Kenkirk + Lone Wolf + Ysanne + Gunner + Rebel Captive (108 points)
• Oicunn + Expertise + Gunner (93 points)
• Patrol Leader + Gunner + Vader (84 points)

TIE/FO

Overview

First Order TIEs also get free use of 'Attack Formation' and 'Evasive Thrusters', and the low PS versions' efficiency is now only marginally lower than the standard TIE Fighter. Filling the tech slot is a cost effective option even for the PS1 TIE/FO.

Pilot Tiers

• Zeta Leader and Omega Leader and are tier 2.
• All other TIE/FO are tier 3.

Pilot Cost and Ability Changes

• Epsilon Squadron Pilot: cost decreased from 30 to 28.
• Zeta Squadron Pilot: cost decreased from 32 to 30.
• Omega Squadron Pilot: cost decreased from 34 to 32.
• Epsilon Ace: cost decreased from 34 to 32.
• Zeta Ace: cost decreased from 36 to 33.
• Epsilon Leader: cost decreased from 38 to 35.
• Omega Ace: cost decreased from 40 to 34.
• Zeta Leader: cost decreased from 40 to 37.
• Omega Leader: cost decreased from 42 to 41.

Key Card Changes

Attack Formation; Evasive Thrusters; Crackshot
(see TIE Fighter post)

Comm Relay

cost decreased from 3 to 4 / 5 / 6

Sample Loadouts

(All TIE/FO have "Attack Formation" and "Evasive Thrusters")

• Omega Leader + Comm Relay + Juke (50 points)
• Zeta Leader + Comm Relay + Crackshot (45 points)
• Omega Squadron Pilot (PS4) + Juke + Comm Relay (39 points)
• Epsilon Squadron Pilot (PS1) + Comm Relay (32 points)

I see the reason for the three Tier System, but I think it's gonna have diminishing returns. It makes the game less user-friendly and more complicated, which is probably the exact opposite of what a Community Homebrew Version that will by it's nature struggle to find players willing to take a serious chance on it can afford to do.

Maybe just add a points-cost-tax to the Tier 1 pilots, slightly less of a tax to the Tier 2 pilots, and call it good?

Quote

So yes, we could introduce new squadron or chassis concepts to tweak some card wording... but how much will it really matter? It's just book-keeping and accounting, and has zero impact on gameplay or game balance. Even if we introduce squadron mechanics, you will still want the squad printout to be super idiot proof, and still spell out all the upgrades for each pilot.

Said bookkeeping is still important and I'd urge you to come back to this sort of quality of life stuff later. I take the point that it isn't a priority at the moment.

I would however definitely suggest minimising the number of upgrades that are themselves functional components. I'm very much in favour of a single sided Incom Refit (although I'd make it a Talon Roll to limit its potency (90 degree turn versus 180 degree turn) and for consistency with the T-70.

In the absence of squadwide upgrades if the plan is to base this around printouts/squad lists on tablet screens I'd also reword Evasive Thrusters as thus:

Evasive Thrusters
0 / 0 / 0
Modification. TIE Fighter only.
During setup assign one tracking token to your pilot card. When defending, you may discard this token to reroll one blank result.

This puts a single token on every pilot card rather than an upgrade card next to it. This is a significant space saver on the board when using printouts when you consider you'll have up to eight copies of it per squad.

On Crack Shot what do you think of letting TIEs and Z-95s use any discard EPT (Adrenaline Rush, Cool Hand, Lightning Reflexes, Crack Shot) twice? Instead of changing and reprinting Crack Shot for the sake of two ships you could create an EPT version of Extra Munitions. Somewhat ironic for me to suggest but it opens up some more build options and I was wondering what you thought.

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I see the reason for the three Tier System, but I think it's gonna have diminishing returns. It makes the game less user-friendly and more complicated, which is probably the exact opposite of what a Community Homebrew Version that will by it's nature struggle to find players willing to take a serious chance on it can afford to do.

Maybe just add a points-cost-tax to the Tier 1 pilots, slightly less of a tax to the Tier 2 pilots, and call it good?

Actually, it does not really make the thing more complicated, if you get a builder that makes the calculations for you.
Making the upgrades cost more does achieve two goals : pay a tax on the fully kitted aces, and also making cheaper builds viable. The high Tier tax you suggest achieves only the first.

Why would the Empire have a card called "Squint Plating"? That's terrorist slang. I've located a spy, seize him!

8 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I see the reason for the three Tier System, but I think it's gonna have diminishing returns. It makes the game less user-friendly and more complicated, which is probably the exact opposite of what a Community Homebrew Version that will by it's nature struggle to find players willing to take a serious chance on it can afford to do.

Maybe just add a points-cost-tax to the Tier 1 pilots, slightly less of a tax to the Tier 2 pilots, and call it good?

Agreed; the TIER system is adding way too much unnecessary complexity. The proposed changes thus far appear to affect almost every card and bit of cardboard in the game -- if you're doing that, don't add complex subsystems on top of it. Just tax higher pilot skill further. Simplicity matters -- be careful of so over-engineering to achieve perfect balance that you destroy some of the things that make the game approachable and fun. (In my business we have a saying: "sometimes you have to shoot the engineers and go into production" -- because left to their own devices they won't quit tinkering trying to optimize and will never deliver anything. Be wary of the same trap here.)

Frankly, with all the proposed changes, at this point you could introduce one further that works better -- redistribute pilot abilities. Optimal pilot abilities like Soontir's should be mid-PS, not high PS. Ryad and Vessery are great examples of well-applied balance between PS and pilot ability. But following my own advice, I wouldn't go that far for simplicity's sake.

8 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I see the reason for the three Tier System, but I think it's gonna have diminishing returns. It makes the game less user-friendly and more complicated, which is probably the exact opposite of what a Community Homebrew Version that will by it's nature struggle to find players willing to take a serious chance on it can afford to do.

Maybe just add a points-cost-tax to the Tier 1 pilots, slightly less of a tax to the Tier 2 pilots, and call it good?

The fundamental core principle is to increase build diversity. This requires more complexity somewhere, it is impossible to avoid. The triple tier upgrade system pretty closely resembles reality, and is the minimum level of complexity that must be added to reasonably increase build diversity for all pilots. A "flat tax" per upgrade based on pilot tier is a sort of reductionist meet-in-the-middle approach, but this has some big problems too: many of the upgrade cards actually aren't worth that much more on more expensive ships, but you would tax them that way anyway, essentially killing them off completely for all the big-name pilots.

6 hours ago, Firespray-32 said:

Said bookkeeping is still important and I'd urge you to come back to this sort of quality of life stuff later. I take the point that it isn't a priority at the moment.

I would however definitely suggest minimising the number of upgrades that are themselves functional components. I'm very much in favour of a single sided Incom Refit (although I'd make it a Talon Roll to limit its potency (90 degree turn versus 180 degree turn) and for consistency with the T-70.

In the absence of squadwide upgrades if the plan is to base this around printouts/squad lists on tablet screens I'd also reword Evasive Thrusters as thus:

Evasive Thrusters
0 / 0 / 0
Modification. TIE Fighter only.
During setup assign one tracking token to your pilot card. When defending, you may discard this token to reroll one blank result.

This puts a single token on every pilot card rather than an upgrade card next to it. This is a significant space saver on the board when using printouts when you consider you'll have up to eight copies of it per squad.

On Crack Shot what do you think of letting TIEs and Z-95s use any discard EPT (Adrenaline Rush, Cool Hand, Lightning Reflexes, Crack Shot) twice? Instead of changing and reprinting Crack Shot for the sake of two ships you could create an EPT version of Extra Munitions. Somewhat ironic for me to suggest but it opens up some more build options and I was wondering what you thought.

I like the idea of minimizing "active" cards, functional cards as you say. That seems like a good idea for evasive thrusters. Most people would probably just use an evade token. I wouldn't want to explicitly call out using a particular token though, given that FFG may do the same thing with one of their own upgrade cards in the future.

X-wings getting sloops not Talon rolls is a feature not a bug. I explicitly wanted to give them a way to flip around with an extra 45 degrees of angular adjustment. And... by design the T-70 will get K-turns, Talon rolls, and sloops, which is an upgrade over the T-65. If that makes X-wings powerful and fun, then that's a feature not a bug -- the game is called "X-wing" and we're trying to make them worth taking! We can always tweak point costs as needed.

I see you have not done your homework before posting! Adrenaline Rush, Cool Hand, and Lightning reflexes are all now dual sided cards that can be used twice universally, regardless of what pilot they are equipped to. They are all pretty terrible for a single use card. The Attack Formation / Crackshot wording is there because those two cards are, for the most part, very anti-synergistic with each other. If you took a standard 6 TIE Crackswarm in the Mod-Wing meta I do not think it would do well - most notably because they don't do that well in the stock game and the power curve is similar. Bottom line, it is hard to math out that particular interaction (although I probably will later if I get the bandwidth), so it just needs to be playtested.

1 hour ago, HolySorcerer said:

Why would the Empire have a card called "Squint Plating"? That's terrorist slang. I've located a spy, seize him!

Actually I usually fly scum.

Seriously though, open to suggestions, I'm currently leaning towards "Interceptor Plating" because it's so obvious.

So you can now run 3 PL decis with 4 extra hull each for a total of SIXTY hit points??

Plus 20 points left for some crew upgrades. Depending on cost updates for crew probably Vader on one, kylo on another, and third with isaard maybe.

That seems crazy good.

Quote

I see you have not done your homework before posting! Adrenaline Rush, Cool Hand, and Lightning reflexes are all now dual sided cards that can be used twice universally, regardless of what pilot they are equipped to. They are all pretty terrible for a single use card. The Attack Formation / Crackshot wording is there because those two cards are, for the most part, very anti-synergistic with each other. If you took a standard 6 TIE Crackswarm in the Mod-Wing meta I do not think it would do well - most notably because they don't do that well in the stock game and the power curve is similar. Bottom line, it is hard to math out that particular interaction (although I probably will later if I get the bandwidth), so it just needs to be playtested.

I see them now. The first time I saw the relevant page I thought I was looking at a full sheet of Crack Shots and never looked in the top corner.

When it comes to minimising functional components I'd use tokens where possible instead of dual cards.

Adrenaline Rush
During setup place two tracking tokens on your pilot card. When you reveal a red maneuver you may discard a tracking token from your pilot card to treat that maneuver as a white maneuver.

This phrasing of Adrenaline Rush doesn't even require a card to discard allowing the EPT to remain on the printout. It also creates an interesting shared charge effect in the rare cards where a ship can have two tracking token cards.

For example, a Black Squadron Pilot could have this.

Crack Shot
During setup assign one tracking token to your pilot card. When attacking a ship inside your firing arc, you may discard one tracking token from your pilot card to cancel one of the defender's <Evade> results.

Evasive Thrusters
During setup assign one tracking token to your pilot card. When defending, you may discard this token to reroll one blank result.

A Black Squadron Pilot thus equipped has two charges which can be spent on either Evasive Thrusters or Crackshot as needed. A-wings can take this even further and have two discard EPTs equipped, potentially pulling off three Crack Shots or four Cool Hands.

If this effect is undesirable you could always use different tokens too. The core game has two redundant sets of tokens to work with in the form of crit tokens and tracking tokens.

2 hours ago, Hawkstrike said:

Agreed; the TIER system is adding way too much unnecessary complexity. The proposed changes thus far appear to affect almost every card and bit of cardboard in the game -- if you're doing that, don't add complex subsystems on top of it. Just tax higher pilot skill further. Simplicity matters -- be careful of so over-engineering to achieve perfect balance that you destroy some of the things that make the game approachable and fun. (In my business we have a saying: "sometimes you have to shoot the engineers and go into production" -- because left to their own devices they won't quit tinkering trying to optimize and will never deliver anything. Be wary of the same trap here.)

Frankly, with all the proposed changes, at this point you could introduce one further that works better -- redistribute pilot abilities. Optimal pilot abilities like Soontir's should be mid-PS, not high PS. Ryad and Vessery are great examples of well-applied balance between PS and pilot ability. But following my own advice, I wouldn't go that far for simplicity's sake.

What is your workable alternative that will retain build diversity for all pilots, and has little added complexity? Since you're claiming that this approach is unneccesary, that means you must have a fully fleshed out alternative. Talk is cheap, let's see it!

I don't mean to be snarky, but it's easy to sit and play Monday morning quarterback and think about theories. It's another thing to actually built it out and test it. I appreciate that people want a magic bullet that can both increase build diversity and not add complexity, but until someone actually puts forward a testable hypothesis, with specific actual card values that we can comprehensively test across 3-5 ships, there's no actual information content in these posts to reply to.

I'm not stuck on this particular approach, I would change to an alternative if one is better, but nothing specific has been suggested yet. I have already tried all the suggestions brought up and actually run the numbers. Again, if someone provides a testable set of card costs and subset of ships on which to test, then I will be happy to investigate and report what the numbers look like.

Edit / PS: cards are changed, cardboard is not, with the exception of adding a rear arc to the lambda. Going to "digital distribution" for upgrade cards and printatable squad sheets with everything spelled out also means that card changes are not problematic like in the retail game that relies on physical components for list building.

45 minutes ago, markcsoul said:

So you can now run 3 PL decis with 4 extra hull each for a total of SIXTY hit points??

Plus 20 points left for some crew upgrades. Depending on cost updates for crew probably Vader on one, kylo on another, and third with isaard maybe.

That seems crazy good.

Oops, clerical error. It should have said cost reduced from 80 to 70. Cost reduced from 70 to 60 makes no sense, because the current cost of the Patrol Leader is 80. Those responsible have been flogged.

The issue with tiers becomes pretty irrelevant with a user-friendly squadbuilder. I have zero experience with such things but could probably hack something together using a spreadsheet. Might try it next week if no one else steps up.

Build diversity is a fine goal. A better balanced game will certainly lead to more diversity of lists but it may not be reasonable to expect much diversity for ship builds within a list. Seems like there will always be one or two ideal loadouts for a pilot. I'm not certain how much is lost if you just build out a "standard" Dash or Corran and then price the pilot appropriately.

What is your workable alternative that will retain build diversity for all pilots, and has little added complexity? Since you're claiming that this approach is unneccesary, that means you must have a fully fleshed out alternative. Talk is cheap, let's see it!

Take a deep breath and tone down the snark there, we're all trying to be constructive.

My post included two ideas: one that sacrifices the ideal for simplicity and one that I think is better balanced but that I would ultimately reject because it lacks the necessary simplicity.

I go to this: simply increase the cost paid for pilot skill -- it should not be a linear scale. That's because both higher pilot skill is valuable, the cost of upgrades on high pilot skill tend to be more valuable than on lower pilot skill, and because most pilots in the game have more valuable abilities at higher PS than lower (one of the real issues, but not an easy one to fix at this point). I agree with you that in principle there's a sliding scale of value both for pilot skill/ability and for upgrade cards, and that the incremental value of an upgrade is greater for the points at high PS than less. But I'll trade perfect for good enough, and I think good enough places higher value on the pilot vice the upgrade so those upgrades can still be valuable for lower skill pilots, without having to have a table of tier or three values per card or anything else more difficult.

Edit / PS: cards are changed, cardboard is not, with the exception of adding a rear arc to the lambda. Going to "digital distribution" for upgrade cards and printatable squad sheets with everything spelled out also means that card changes are not problematic like in the retail game that relies on physical components for list building.

Forgive me; I saw the summaries of the hull values changing on several ships and assumed that was a base change; I see they are largely modifications which allow other modifications, so I agree those do not require cardboard changes, though you acknowledge that the Lambda and Firespray do (very minor on Firespay, though).

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I'm not stuck on this particular approach, I would change to an alternative if one is better, but nothing specific has been suggested yet. I have already tried all the suggestions brought up and actually run the numbers. Again, if someone provides a testable set of card costs and subset of ships on which to test, then I will be happy to investigate and report what the numbers look like.

The only other system I can think of that matches the tuning power of tiered upgrades is to add costs to the upgrade slots directly: if you equip an upgrade in that slot it adjusts the cost of the ship by that number. It's more powerful but you'd have to redesign the icons to incorporate a number. It's also not really a reduction in complexity.

One thing I would consider changing is the order of the tiers: make Tier 1 the lowest and Tier 3 the highest. The card costs read Low/Medium/High from left to right so it's a bit more intuitive to have ascending tier numbers with ascending point costs. It's just a QoL thing. One benefit is that if you ever need to go higher Tier 4 makes more sense than Tier 0.

2 hours ago, Hawkstrike said:

My post included two ideas: one that sacrifices the ideal for simplicity and one that I think is better balanced but that I would ultimately reject because it lacks the necessary simplicity.

I go to this: simply increase the cost paid for pilot skill -- it should not be a linear scale. That's because both higher pilot skill is valuable, the cost of upgrades on high pilot skill tend to be more valuable than on lower pilot skill, and because most pilots in the game have more valuable abilities at higher PS than lower (one of the real issues, but not an easy one to fix at this point). I agree with you that in principle there's a sliding scale of value both for pilot skill/ability and for upgrade cards, and that the incremental value of an upgrade is greater for the points at high PS than less. But I'll trade perfect for good enough, and I think good enough places higher value on the pilot vice the upgrade so those upgrades can still be valuable for lower skill pilots, without having to have a table of tier or three values per card or anything else more difficult.

I am several steps ahead of that approach on pricing pilot skill. I do not have any sort of standard progression for cost vs pilot cost, I evaluate every single pilot in the game on an individual basis. The process goes something like this:

1. Start with a specific loadout and upgrades.
2. Make any assumptions about ability or card rate triggering here. (i.e. new A-wing card +1 attack die trigger rate, etc)
3. calculate the absolute (PS independent) jousting value. Many pilots' abilities get rolled directly into this step since they are pure dice mods.
4. calculate the PS-based jousting value, which is a complicated formula based on its absolute jousting value, it's tank to glass cannon ratio, and it's relative standing within the PS hierarchy. (There's some academically interesting analysis here, but it's well beyond the scope of this thread.)
5. Compare this efficiency to the ideal "target efficiency" for what's reasonable for the pilot's capabilities. (fixed arc, turret, PS-based reposition capability, etc).
6. If the pilot ability isn't considered in step 1 or step 4 then account for it here.
7. If step 2 made an assumption of card utilization rate, repeat steps 1-6 for the next utilization rate.
8. Repeat all of the above for all possible loadouts you want to evaluate, pick a couple as representative target builds.

Once programmed, it's all automated, but setting up the scripts to look at each pilot, slicing them several ways, is still time intensive since there are so many pilots, and at least several viable upgrade paths for each. The good part is that once set up it's easy to go back and look at the data later! So when we get to doing analytical playtesting and we have some actual numbers on how often that new A-wing card triggers, we can hone in on the actual efficiency ranges that the ship is getting on the table, to better determine an appropriate cost.

This is of course all invisible to the end-user, with the end goal of making a pretty good initial cut at balance even before playtesting. Playtesting iterations are very limited so you want to start from as good of a point as you can, and extract maximum value fine-tuning costs to the final amount. So, that all being said, I certainly don't need to move pilot abilities around between pilots, since I can just adjust costs / tiers directly. In a few cases it costs nothing, or even negative points, to move up the PS progression based on the value of the pilot abilities.

1 hour ago, Firespray-32 said:

The only other system I can think of that matches the tuning power of tiered upgrades is to add costs to the upgrade slots directly: if you equip an upgrade in that slot it adjusts the cost of the ship by that number. It's more powerful but you'd have to redesign the icons to incorporate a number. It's also not really a reduction in complexity.

One thing I would consider changing is the order of the tiers: make Tier 1 the lowest and Tier 3 the highest. The card costs read Low/Medium/High from left to right so it's a bit more intuitive to have ascending tier numbers with ascending point costs. It's just a QoL thing. One benefit is that if you ever need to go higher Tier 4 makes more sense than Tier 0.

The value of many upgrades scale differently with different pilots, and this tends to be true within the same slot. Expertise is super valuable on expensive ships, much moreso than cheap ships. But other EPTs like Trickshot or crackshot don't scale nearly as much. You would have to be willing to let these "flat value" upgrades be essentially useless for more expensive pilots. With tweaked costs and card verbage across the board, there will be more "fixed" upgrade cards that fall into this category.

I initially debated doing a three tier card price system, and a per-upgrade tier state for each pilot, but that was too complicated and not worth the trouble.

I thought about numbering the tiers that way too and even had it that way initially, but, when people talk about "tiers" in gaming systems using the English language, "tier 1" is universally better than "tier 2". So to be intuitive with human description, I think I need to stick to "tier 1 = best = highest cost". I could reverse the labeling on the upgrade cards to high / medium / low, but as long as the costs always go one way, it should be immediately obvious which cost applies to which tier. Also, squad builder automation makes this easy! We have a basic one built up in google spreadsheets, but we're only using it for making the PDFs for the pre-built squad lists.

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I thought about numbering the tiers that way too and even had it that way initially, but, when people talk about "tiers" in gaming systems using the English language, "tier 1" is universally better than "tier 2".

In my experience it's usually the other way around. Tier 1 is the first tier and the first tier is usually on the bottom of the stack. The top tier is usually the highest numbered because it's the last tier. This applies to seats, cakes, gaming systems, pretty much every use of the term I can think of right now. FFG's Star Wars catalogue provides two excellent examples of this for a gaming context. In Imperial Assault the Tier I equipment is the first stuff you get, the Tier III equipment comes last and is the most powerful. In Rebellion the third tier objectives are at the bottom of the objective deck and the last ones you get and they're usually easier to score or worth more than the tier one objectives.

It's balance discussions that seem to invert this, likely because when making tier lists for pilots one tends to start with the best ones and then build downwards. That creates the rare situation where first tier and top tier line up. In the context of X-Wing "Tier" is heavily associated with balance state I can see how first tier and top tier would become synonymous. For that very reason it might be worth replacing the word Tier entirely. Level would be utterly un ambiguous . For a more thematic spin you could go with Logistics Value (LV) to represent the difficulty of bringing in rare elite pilots and equipment that's in high demand. You could even rip off Company of Heroes and call it Veterancy.

Something to think about when you get to the paint job but I understand you're much more focused on making the engine work right now.

TIE Advanced Prototype

Overview

• TIE Advanced Prototypes all get rebalanced strictly on cost, as they get no specific buffs, and cannot take "Attack Formation" or "Evasive Thrusters".
• The Inquisitor sees no net change when loaded out with PtL/AT/v1, staying at 62 points.
• The TIE/v1 title is somewhat unforgiving on low PS pilots, since they can have trouble getting a target lock on their eventual target. The generics have been fairly aggressively recosted, but they will have to get looked at again later once Missiles get rebalanced.

Pilot Tiers

• Sienar Test Pilot is tier 3.
• All other TIE Advanced Prototypes are tier 2.

Pilot Cost and Ability Changes

• Sienar Test Pilot : cost decreased from 32 to 25.
• Baron of the Empire: cost decreased from 38 to 31.
• Valen Rudor: cost decreased from 44 to 35.
• The Inquisitor: cost reduced from 50 to 49.

Key Card Changes

None. TIE/v1 remains 2 / 2 / 2.

Sample Loadouts

• Seinar Test Pilot (PS2) + TIE/v1 (27 points)
• Seinar Test Pilot (PS2) + TIE/v1 + Autothrusters (31 points)
• Baron of the Empire + TIE/v1 + Juke + Autothrusters (40 points)
• Baron of the Empire + TIE/v1 + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (42 points)
• Valen Rudor + TIE/v1 + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (46 points)
• The Inquisitor + TIE/v1 + Push the Limit + Autothrusters (62 points)

B-wings

Overview

• B-wings gain some beef with a new custom modification "Front Deflectors", which always gives them a reinforce in the front arc. This will need some playtesting to see how often it triggers when B-wings are getting shot, to make sure it hits the sweet spot in terms of price:performance. Their extra durability encourages the use of the system slot and/or cannon slot.
• B-wings gain access to a 1 hard talon roll (left and right) to help them be real knife fighters, and a 3K so they can finally get around a large base ship.
• I want to keep a close eye on Ibtisam's new ability, especially with an EPT like Elusiveness (also reworded), to make sure it is not out of line. It should be OK since she will be stuck on greens with this particular comb (see Sample Loadouts below).

Pilot Tiers

• Blue Squadron Pilot and Dagger Squadron Pilot are tier 3.
• All other B-wing pilots are tier 2.

Pilot Cost and Ability Changes

• Blue Squadron Pilot (PS2): cost remains 44.
• Dagger Squadron Pilot (PS4): cost reduced from 48 to 47.
• Nera Dantels (PS5): cost reduced from 52 to 50.
• Ibtisam: cost reduced from 56 to 53, and pilot ability changed to: " Once per round, when attacking or defending, if you have at least one stress token, you may change one of your dice results to a <hit> or <evade> result."
• Keyan Farlander: cost reduced from 58 to 55.
• Ten Nunb: cost reduced from 62 to 59, and pilot ability changed to: "When attacking, you may choose one of your <hit> or <critical hit> results. That die cannot be canceled by defense dice or evade tokens."

Ibtisam FAQ: Ibtisam's ability can be used once per round while either attacking or defending, but not both.

Key Card Changes

Front Deflectors

• Modification. B-wing or G1-A Starfighter only. Limited.
• 0 / 0 / 0
• You may equip one additional modification. Once per round, after you execute a maneuver, you may assign a reinforce token to this ship, with the fore side facing up.
• FAQ : As per the FFG rules, with the reinforce token on the fore side, the reinforce token can only trigger against attacks that are inside the defender's firing arc.

Gyroscopic Cockpit

• title. B-wing only.
• 0 / 0 / 0
• When you reveal a speed 1 <left turn> or <right turn> maneuver, you may treat it as a red speed 1 <left talon roll> or <right talon roll> of the same bearing as the revealed maneuver. When you reveal a 2 <kturn> maneuver, you may treat it as a red 3 <kturn> maneuver.

Sample Loadouts

(All B-wings have Gyroscopic Cockpit and Frontal Deflectors equipped.)

• Blue Squadron Pilot + Fire Control System (48 points)
• Dagger Squadron Pilot + Fire Control System + Heavy Laser Cannon (62 points)
• Ibtisam + Elusiveness + E2 + Kanan Crew (65 points)
• Ibtisam + Elusiveness + E2 + Kanan Crew + Heavy Laser Cannon + Fire Control System (85 points)