My experience with miniatures games is limited to WotC SWM and X-Wing. Both suffer from power creep. The former more than the latter it would seem.

How can the designers help mitigate this?

For starters I don't want to see new versions of the current commanders. I think they should be one and done. The only exception would be if they make the Resistance into a separate faction. Old man Luke, Han, and Leia would be acceptable in my opinion. Likewise a Sir Alec Guinness Obi-Wan for the Rebels and a Ewan McGregor Obi-Wan for the Republic would make sense. But I don't want to see Luke Skywalker Farm Boy, Luke Skywalker Jedi, Luke Skywalker Pilot, etc released.

Another thing that would help mitigate power creep is to make Luke and Vader the most powerful commanders for their respective factions. Perhaps there would be commanders with better command cards (like Leia, Dodanna, Thrawn, Tarkin, etc) but no commander should be so deadly on the battlefield as they are (with the exception of a possible Palpatine, Yoda, and Obi-Wan).

But what about troops? I don't want to see stormtroopers disappear because the snow troopers out class them in every possible way. Should the stormtroopers just be the cheapest unit forever to give players incentive to continue fielding them over more powerful options?

Armada is pretty free of power creep among the models themselves (some old upgrade cards have been left in the dust, but that's not a big deal).

Storm troopers should be more expensive and better than rebel troops but we will see. I agree overall though, what I buy in the core set needs to continue to be competitive two years from now when we have dark troopers and destroyer droids roaming the table comparatively. I think they have done a good job with Armada and a poor job with X-Wing(from what I am told). Bolt Action is a really good game to model this after. Its in its second edition, only one army book even needed to be reprinted with the edition change and frankly it kind of needed to be reprinted before that and that was the very first army book they put out. They put out the rules and the army books and they continue to release new models that generally do not overpower older offerings. Now they did this by making troops and vehicles fairly abstract in their abilities with minor rules for notable attributes it they have them. Vehicle X was known to break down all the time so roll to see if it happens in game, vehicle Y was know to be a death trap when it got hit hard enough so it takes x more damage, vehicle z had no real quirks and was a general solid vehicle. But aside from these quirk rules, same chassis with point cost differences. The rules are already written for this game so there is no changing them until the next edition. My hope is there will be list limitations and bonuses depending on the forces you want to field. If say I want a general Storm Trooper regiment, leadership(if it exists) maybe is improved but lacks any real other benefits aside from numbers. If I want an Imperial Army force I have a more limited of choices but my bog standard troops are priced the same as Rebel troops but I am limited to non-storm trooper vehicles like AT-STs and DPs and tanks. A Snow Trooper force gets bonus x but cant include scouts, other storm troopers or army troops. A Rebel Commando force gets ability Y but cant take regulars or marines. A Rebel Marine force gets bonus Z but cant take heavy vehicles or commandoes. Something to make themed lists not only viable but something you want to take vs a generic mishmash of which units are better than others.

Stormtroopers are definitely not going to be more expensive, more powerful units, sorry Dash. We've already seen the points and stats.

Power creep is fairly manageable as long as FAQs/errata become a thing. If they stick to their old method of only correcting issues with new cards, then stuff will stay broken for a while. I HOPE they don't, but.....yeah. Doing it their way puts a huge weight on getting it just right first time every time a new model/unit comes out, which is a tall order for almost any writer.

Unfortunately without regular price adjustment/rules changes which FFG traditionally don't do, there will inevitably be imbalance and power creep to some extent. Hopefully it just won't be too bad.

That's good, Stormies should be more powerful being professional troops with top rate gear compared to Rebels and their use of anything available on the black market. I haven't seen any of the game aside from a quick review and the mini's. I think they did well with Armada but it also uses a lot less models and has less variables to interact with than a ground combat game.

30 minutes ago, Col. Dash said:

That's good, Stormies should be more powerful being professional troops with top rate gear compared to Rebels and their use of anything available on the black market. I haven't seen any of the game aside from a quick review and the mini's. I think they did well with Armada but it also uses a lot less models and has less variables to interact with than a ground combat game.

Oh ****...really sorry. I honestly meant to type "are NOT going to be more powerful, expensive troops"....

They really aren't i'm afraid, they are roughly on par with Rebel troopers....a bit better in some ways, worse in others, but definitely not superior. Sorry for the false hope!

Someone did the mat that in a straight up fight in the open a unit of Rebel troopers statistically wins out over a unit of Stormtroopers in Legion. There are some situations (both units using aim and in cover iirc, or when firing at armored targets while using aim) where stormtroopers win out (barely). But the units are close enough that it doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things.

edit: actually after calculating it myself, ignoring there special precise/nimble special rules or aim/dodge actions, with both units being out in the open, a unit of 7 Rebel troopers will do 7x 0.375 = 2.625 normal hits. Stormtroopers will block half of this, resulting in 1.31 casualties. In addition 7x0.125=0.875 crits will be done against which no defense is possible. End result is 2.18 dead Stormtroopers

Stormtroopers in exchange will do 7x0.25= 1.75 normal hits thanks to surge=hit. Rebel troopers will block 1/3rd of these due to surge:block resulting in 1.16 casualties. In addition 7x0.125=0.875 crits will be done. End result is 2.04 dead Rebel Troopers

So yeah, Rebels are slightly better.

If both use "AIM" the math is a bit more tricky but if we simplify a little, and just use the rerolls as 2 more dice rolls for the Rebels, and 3 more dice rolls for the Stormtroopers due to their special rule, we get that Rebels with AIM will do roughly 2.8 damage. Stormtroopers with AIM will do roughly 2.91 damage.

Remember FFG is a business and their objective is to sell games. They have to balance making the game still good when they put something new out with making people what to buy the new stuff. In the end, they do need people to buy the new stuff.

So FFG's business model is to both sell pretty things people want to buy, so they will need to make better and pretty models and to sell new more powerful units to the gamers that want to buy into the new power curve. They have taken a lot of flak for this in X Wing, so they might rely more on the new pretty rather than the new powerful for this game. However, power creep is inevitable as there are enough people interested in the game aspect for them not to ignore. People will analyze the math with the dice probability and special abilities of the units to decide to buy the new unit or not. If the math says the new unit sucks, it won't sell unless it is very pretty. So the new Deathtrooper pack will need to do 2.91+X damage to justify both the higher unit cost and the price tag cost.

23 minutes ago, Mep said:

So the new Deathtrooper pack will need to do 2.91+X damage to justify both the higher unit cost and the price tag cost.

That is the simplistic way, but you can make the Deathtrooper cost more as well. This makes the "more powerful" scenario more interesting and impacts list building by forcing more decisions. As has also been said in other places, you can also create synergies between cards to make it even more interesting.

There's also sidegrades, instead of straight upgrades. Many games go the route of having new things offer new options and synergies, rather than just being better.

Now, I'm not saying FFG will do anything like that, because IMO their track record on power creep is actually not great. But they COULD.

6 minutes ago, Extropia said:

There's also sidegrades, instead of straight upgrades. Many games go the route of having new things offer new options and synergies, rather than just being better.

Now, I'm not saying FFG will do anything like that, because IMO their track record on power creep is actually not great. But they COULD.

I think they do a good job of that with their LCGs. I am confident they will offer interesting rather than just better options.

At the moment we know that armies are limited to so many of each category of things. But, there could easily be a whole slew of prerequisite choices, in that you can't take this unit with out taking that unit. In addition some units could be unique or limited. I think there are a lot of potential surprises in army building that could be sprung that ensures we do not see rampant power creep, but rather just a little slip here and there that create strong choices that change as more units are added.

In Armada the commander had a big part of making the choices you would in your army, Motti was in Wave 1 rather limited because of the VSD and it wasn't until wave 2 or 3 came out with the ISD that he could shine. A fleet led by Ackbar was probably going to take ships with side batteries to the advantage of his build.

In general then the game finds itself in a changing meta, largely because the cards made for a lot of variation without having to come up with killer units upon released off each wave. Perhaps snow troopers can walk through snow without any negative effect?

All in all I think there are a lot of interesting ideas that FFG could pursue when it comes to how we build armies and what gets built without having to deliberately play with the power levels of the game as to promote a power creep.

4 hours ago, Basylle said:

That is the simplistic way, but you can make the Deathtrooper cost more as well. This makes the "more powerful" scenario more interesting and impacts list building by forcing more decisions. As has also been said in other places, you can also create synergies between cards to make it even more interesting.

Agreed, a Deathtrooper would have a "higher unit cost". Having your prerequisite troopers in our list cost more does heavily influence the points left for the rest of the build. They would have to be worth the cost.

Sidegrades are the best for sure and FFG does plenty of them and they do sell when the model is pretty/cool enough for people to really want to play that model. I think we will get hit with the power creep when they run out of all the pretty stuff to sell and have to get people excited about a new SKU based on game merits.

OMG I JUST WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME NOWWWWW!!!!!