18 minutes ago, ObiWonka said:

ffor rt of. I don't think havinhips on the board is a gsuppoberta (games would be way tootw) , but conversely making pilo tts pay a lot more for higher skill would improve things dramatically. Each point of PS shouldn't simply cost 1 squad point (with another 2 PS for 1 point if you're willing to take VI), and then usually come with a better pilot ability as well.

Disagree. We need to have the option for more ships, not less.

If generics were cheaper, suppprt crew carriers would be better. Plus realistically, it would be two aces and 3-4 generics not 12 generics you'd commonly see. Star Wars had large scale dogfights. What we have now isnt that.

And as someobody who plays other wargames, its ok for games to take 1.5 hours. Not every game should be am furball Thats over in 20 minutes. Thats boring.

1 hour ago, LordFajubi said:

Not weighing in on whether vi is good or bad but this statement is incorrect. Kylo and Roark are both counters to vi.

55 minutes ago, Jadotch said:

And Snap Shot. I just wish that Snap Shots had a little more punch.

Another soft counter to VI is just not having lists that care about pilot skill. A PS2 missile swarm doesn't care that Vader's shooting at PS11 instead of PS9. A PS3 Jumpmaster with Intel Agent and Anti-Pursuit Lasers will block him just the same.

8 hours ago, Ralgon said:

They undercosted it assuming the loss of the ept would be a bigger drawback than it is, i think people overlook that.

So make it unique. Make it a harder choice instead of an easier one. Make base PS and PS9 important again, instead of just spreading it over umpteen extra pilot abilities so they have infinitely more combinations of pilots that can break the game @ max PS.

Making it unique would add an interesting decision to list making.

9 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Poe Dameron pays 2 points to go from the PS 8 version to the PS 9 version.
Veteran Instincts costs 1 point to increase PS by 2. Adaptability pays 0 to increase PS by 1.

The cost to increase the ship's PS should match the benefit ships get from it. A ship without any kind of repositioning and/or bad dial doesn't get much out of it, while an arc dodger gets a lot.

Paying just 1 point to increase PS by 2 for all ships at all starting PS feels wrong. It gives some ships the chance to reposition with perfect information, that goes against the "guess your opponent's dial" core mechanic of the game.

Perhaps it should be rotated out, or debuffed with something like this:

Veteran Instincts
Increase your pilot skill by two.
You must increase the squad point cost of this card by half your printed pilot skill (rounded down).

So PS 1 pays 1 point for VI.
PS 2 and 3 pay 2 points.
PS 4 and 5 pay 3 points.
PS 6 and 7 pay 4 points.
PS 8 and 9 pay 5 points.

At 5 points, no card is autoinclude.

Spoken like a true HotAC player!

I think that works, but it's a little inelegant.

9 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

The real mistake is not hard-capping at 9 from the get-go.

I have always thought this would be the easiest fix, because it's a rules change rather than an errata. I actually kinda like the initiative bid system, and I think it would be cool if the PS7 and PS8 pilots could compete with the PS9s (at the cost of their EPT slot). I still think the natural PS9s are the real victors here because they don't have to take VI and get another really useful EPT instead.

Just off the top of my head. But what if it was either...

1) Unique

Or

2) "You cannot equip this card if your Pilot Skill is 8 or higher"

So a PS7 can get to 9 and compete, but 9 is essentially the upper limit across the board.

Haven't considered all the interactions but I do agree that sometimes taking VI feels compulsory when I would really rather put something more fun in that slot.

1 hour ago, LordFajubi said:

Not weighing in on whether vi is good or bad but this statement is incorrect. Kylo and Roark are both counters to vi.

And Torkil.

5 hours ago, drail14me said:

Exactly! VI and adaptability should be used to create veriation amount generic pilots only.

Ashoka and Whisper hate this idea.

No to the nerf.

I don't think it will open the game. You'll still have the PS race to 9 or a low PS swarm. The game won't change, just the faces on the mat.

40 minutes ago, Wiredin said:

Ashoka and Whisper hate this idea.

Then they should've trained harder to be better pilots.

VI affects who is an ace. Changing/eliminating VI will simply bunch ace choices into a smaller group - the ships with naturally high PS. That will provide a different set of aces people will become unhappy with. The ace archetype is predicated on performing as your opponents can't - by its nature people find this oppressive. VI does nothing but expand that group of aces and create some squabbling over PS.

The real costing imbalances exist with low to mid PS ships. As another poster said, the game needs the bottom dropped out more than the top pruned. The manner in which point scoring has nearly negated multiple ship low PS lists is regrettable. 2 ship lists are typically simpler and less engaging than 3+ ship lists but the game has catered to them - focusing on high costed aces and upgrade combos.

I will say, the idea of capping at 9 is intriguing because bid amounts would truly reflect the value of being an ace.... But I think that would ultimately trim the number of ships capable of performing as aces.

7 hours ago, Lightrock said:

Not this again...

Sigh, let's get over this again - you want to essentially rewrite the rules of the game by making sure there's a hard cap on PS9. Ideas like this keep showing up every 3-4 months or so since I remember and they obviously get ignored. Why? Because any developer will ask himself the following questions before doing any changes to a card:

1. Does the offending card make certain ships dominant in a way that makes their cost efficiency way above that of their potential competition?
2. Could reducing the strength of that card make certain ships too powerful by making them hard or impossible to counter?
3. Could reducing the strength of that card produce unwanted side effects that would negatively impact the game?

Unless the answers are Yes, No and No, devs won't start messing up what's printed on the cards just because someone on the forums asks for it.

In this particular case:

1. No - ships with PS10 and PS11 have their own place in the meta. They always have and they never dominated it because of their PS. Yes, we did have PS10 Poe win Worlds at some point, but he was teamed with 3 PS2s. We also had Dengar win World's twice - and he was PS9 both times. Even looking at regional results there's no flood of ships over PS9 winning left and right. PS11 imperial alpha is an estabilished archetype but hardly a dominant one.
2. Yes - ships such as Whisper, Soontir and Kylo Ren are all countered by PS10 and above. They were balanced with that counter in mind. In fact, back before the nerf PS11 Han was the only reason why Whisper didn't utterly dominate the meta. Counters such as this make certain ships challenging to fly in certain matchups but that's a part of the game not a problem to be removed.
3. Yes - unfortunately X-wing is a game where initiative is binary - either all your ships at certain PS move before the opponent or after him - there's nothing in between. In absence of possibility of meeting PS10 counters, players who rely on PS9 aces will be encouraged to fly with massive bids - something like 47 points Kylo with 42 points Whisper flying with 11 point bid. And if that becomes popular you can bet someone will try to save a point somewhere to fly with a 12 point bid instead. Does that sound like an improvement to you?

In the end of the day being able to fly after your opponent is important to some ships, yes. If they can't do it, they have it uphill and have to fly differently that usual. It doesn't mean the game is broken and requires fixing.

I flew an 87 pt Whisper-Kylo at my last Tournament. My only hard games were vs PS 10/11. Kylo would be busted if Max PS was PS 9

This game has been built since wave 2 with the idea of going above PS9 as being very special and unique.

2 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Then they should've trained harder to be better pilots.

now your just making them sounds like millennials.

16 hours ago, Celestial Lizards said:

Um... the ****?

Try reading the text I posted with the image?

Double post...

triiiple post....

Sorry

7 minutes ago, Rat of Vengence said:

triiiple post....

Sorry

Get it together Rat!

In seriousness to the topic at hand. While I can say I my local meta hasn’t had a huge Nym outing, VI hasn’t been a huge thing either. Never really has. It feels valuable on some Pilots and less so on others. Does it help, yes. Is it assured victory, no. Maybe that’s because I don’t fly typical meta stuff so the meta is not sure how to deal with my brand of awkward. Other times I’ve been beaten because of PS due to VI. Still other times it has helped me win. Is it Under costed? That might be fair, does it need balancing? I don’t see it out of balance, at least not by players who are good enough to build a list without it. It’s easy to get overly aggressive when you have high PS, because early engagements benefits from it the most. Smart players temper that aggressiveness and use it against an opponent.

Prime example, was in a match vs a PS 9 Maarek Steele in a Defender. I had Deathfire and Ryad along with Vessery. Deathfire rolled one strait, Ryad blew past, then Vessery bumps into Deathfire intentionally. Maarek being too aggressive 4k’s right in front of DF without bumping and Vessery right behind him. Ryad caused a Decimator to bump as well trapping both. Vessery and the Decimator fired but missed. Maarek was waisted by Vessery and Deathfire from range 1. Then it was just a matter of picking apart the Decimator. So no VI doesn’t need nerfing, but players do need to learn how to adjust to something higher than anticipated. And if you do anticipate it and they don’t use it then you might be in better shape than you thought if you can keep your excitement in check.

This again?

I am sorry but from my perspective no nerf is needed. What is needed is more emphasise on lower PS ships. In the Jumpmaster Meta, you didn't need VI because your opponents were PS 3. When Defenders was a thing, noone cared Countess was only PS 5.

Seconding hard cap at 9.

OK so here's the reason this bothers me:

I like winning. I also enjoy playing EPTs that do cool things like Intensity, PTL, Expertise, Lone Wolf, etc, on PS9 pilots.

Winning requires the best optimised list.

I keep building lists which are interesting and fun using PS9 pilots who don't like Push the Limit, then realising they're much more likely to survive and much more likely to do damage at PS11, than with any EPT they can pick at PS9, because there are PS10 and 11 threats out there that they can't otherwise avoid, in particular, high PS alphas with harpoon missiles, and Advanced Sensors Genius Nym with Sabine somewhere on the board (honourable mention to RAC with Kylo crew, too), and many of them can overwhelm or obviate entirely the benefit from the best non-VI EPTs.

And I keep running PS9s WITH PTL, or Intensity, or Lone Wolf etc etc etc, and getting hopelessly and unwinnably murdered by those things, because no matter how good your EPT is, 2 harpoons, 2 or 3 well modded 4 die attacks, or 2 unavoidable damage and a stress followed by one or two TLTs, will still frigging wreck your face.

Something is rotten in the state of x wing.

And those three things have a lot to do with it - harpoon missiles, sabine, and nym.

But even without them, I'd usually prefer to spend less, and get the opportunity to arc dodge people who spent more than to spend more and get dodged by people who spent less.

Something is wonky there. It should very, very rarely be the case that a 1 point EPT is Just Better than a 2, 3, or 4 point EPT for an ace. For a cheap generic, sure, but for an ace? No.

WHich is what implies so heavily to me that something is up with it. Any PS8 or 9 pilot, and even some 7s, with very few exceptions (Omega Ace and Rey being the obvious ones, especially not that Advanced Optics has come out and BB8 Intensity Poe has been eclipsed by VI R2D2), gets several times more value out of VI than they do out of any other EPT, including significantly more expensive ones.

That just feels super wonky, especially given how heavily swarms are being suppressed at the moment, which are normally a natural counter to high PS aces, because they have enough ships to block and still get multiple arcs on target with reliable enough damage to punch through.

And that's particularly why I think Generics only is a good solution. It gives generics the ability to get up to PS8 max, which is then the second highest pilot skill available to ships outside pilot abilities, and it leaves the PS9s able to build lists more freely that include interesting EPTs that do things, instead of just moving last. Euqally, just making it cost more the higher your PS is, or more if you're a unique pilot, or etc, would be a good solution. But as with ace-grade ships in generic pilot hands, it's blindingly obvious that the value of PS is is not fixed, it increases nonlinearly as PS increases, so having a fixed cost PS boost just doesn't work.

Obviously, I'd prefer to see those upgrades fixed - in particular Sabine, who has needed fixing since about a month after she was published, but Harpoons as well which are stupid OP for their cost. But I can't ever see them taking the EPT off Nym, which means Advanced Sensors Genius Nym is never going away, and he makes pretty much the entirety of range 3 around is starting position a complete no go area for anything with lower PS than him, because he probably arc dodges it and he probably bombs it, and it can do nothing whatever about that. But even then, the problem doesn't go away, because PS11 Poe is never not going to be good, now.

1 hour ago, Jiron said:

This again?

I am sorry but from my perspective no nerf is needed. What is needed is more emphasise on lower PS ships. In the Jumpmaster Meta, you didn't need VI because your opponents were PS 3. When Defenders was a thing, noone cared Countess was only PS 5.

This is also a good solution, but it requires FFG to be much more careful with their unique pilot abilities. Ryad, Vessery, and Guri got it right, but they's basically the only ships where the lower PS pilots have way better abilities than the higher PS ones. That should be the case for basically everything. And even then, it doesn't change what's come before.

14 hours ago, Stoneface said:

No to the nerf.

I don't think it will open the game. You'll still have the PS race to 9 or a low PS swarm. The game won't change, just the faces on the mat.

Well the game would obviously change cause you would have a much larger pool of viable options.

38 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

OK so here's the reason this bothers me:

I like winning. I also enjoy playing EPTs that do cool things like Intensity, PTL, Expertise, Lone Wolf, etc, on PS9 pilots.

Winning requires the best optimised list.

Of course winning requires the best optimised list. But it would be true even if someone nerfed VI. New popular EPT would emerge and people like you would again rise their voices screaming "nerf! nerf! nerf!"
Meanwhile VI is not toxic, it does not break the game - it does not prevent certain list archetypes from flying and is not a hard counter to anything (with the exception to TIE Phantom in some cases - and it should, because otherwise Phantom hard counters everything else).
VI is a great EPT but it does not break the game - and that means it is in fine place.

38 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

I keep building lists which are interesting and fun using PS9 pilots who don't like Push the Limit, then realising they're much more likely to survive and much more likely to do damage at PS11, than with any EPT they can pick at PS9, because there are PS10 and 11 threats out there that they can't otherwise avoid, in particular, high PS alphas with harpoon missiles, and Advanced Sensors Genius Nym with Sabine somewhere on the board (honourable mention to RAC with Kylo crew, too), and many of them can overwhelm or obviate entirely the benefit from the best non-VI EPTs.

Here we go, "X-Wing Special Snowflake (TM)" attitude!
As you pointed out earlier getting good results requires optimised list. It is true for any competitive tabletop or card game - it is nothing new and it is nothing bad, it is just a nature of competitve game and competitive players - they will be always searching for the most powerful solutions. Your "interesting" and "fun" lists to fly are just euphemisms for a bad lists that you want to play and win with, disregarding opponents that those lists may face. Meanwhile you can't have cake and eat it too.

39 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Something is rotten in the state of x wing.

I can't see anything rotten with X-Wing at the moment (with the exception of Sabine crew card). Meta is truly diverse, there are many playable list archetypes. Low PS ships are winning tournaments left and right, all factions got interesting ships and ways to play.

So... wanting to run things which are fun and interesting is bad?

OK.

Good to know.

Thanks.

7 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

So... wanting to run things which are fun and interesting is bad?

No it is not bad.
But lists that are interesting and fun should work against meta lists. Otherwise they are not "interesting" nor they are "fun", they are just unplayable and bad.