Title is weird, but I have been thinking about some cool concepts that would likely never make it into the game.

What about a weapon that deals more damage than it has red dice?

Like this:

Turbo Laser Cannon
Attack (Focus): 1
You cannot add red dice to this attack. This attack can only be modified by a focus token for its standard effect.
If this attack hits, the defender suffers 3 damage, then cancel all dice results.

Or like this:

Heavy Rockets:
Attack (Target Lock): 2
Discard your target lock to perform this attack. You cannot add red dice to this attack.
If this attack hits, the defender suffers 2 critical damage, then cancel all dice results.

I know this preys upon ships with low agility, but I just thought it might be a cool concept. Also, I would have no idea how to cost out such upgrades in squad points. Cool? OP? Other Thoughts?

There's been a similar idea around for a while; separating attacking and dealing damage.

So for example, you could roll two dice to hit with a Proton Torpedo, then - if it hits - four dice to see how much damage you cause.

Or an A-Wing might roll four dice to hit, then two dice for damage.

It would add a lot of flexibility and open up design space, as you could - like in your version of the idea - theoretically set up ships or weapons t be effective against very specific targets.

Your idea is probably a lot more feasible at this stage though, as it wouldn't require wholesale changes to the game.

I don't see why it shouldn't happen. It could probably be balanced.

The obvious one is 'low number of dice, does double damage if it hits'.

But allow me to go off on a slight tangent: different dice.

The obvious way to provide weapons with differing accuracy/damage profiles is different dice.

Accuracy die (blue): has no crits, and several double hit symbols, also fewer blanks (e.g. 2 double hit, 3 hit, 2 focus, 1 blank). Double hit symbols require two evades to cancel, but deal one damage if uncancelled. Used for missiles (canonically small, fast, nimble things designed to track and kill light ships, but didn't do much damage against big things with lots of shielding and armour) but also for any similar high-accuracy-low-damage scenarios like flak cannon equivalents, TLTs, etc.

Normal die: the current red die.

Damage die (black): has a lot of crits, and several double crit symbols, also probably more blanks/eyeballs (e.g. 2 double crit, 2 crit, 1 focus 3 blank). Double crits require only 1 evade to cancel, but deal two critical damage if uncancelled. Used for torpedoes (canonically slow, powerful things that are almost impossible to tag fighters with but can cripple large ships and capital ships) and other high-damage-low-accuracy weapons such as HLC.

Cancellation order doublehit>hit>doublecrit>crit

You could potentially bake these into some secondaries (e.g. crits from torpedoes do 2 critical damage if uncancelled) but mostly they'd need to be worked in from the ground up, and the boat's been kind of missed on them. But it's pretty telling to me that basically every other FFG dice-based-combat game uses different dice for different accuracy profiles - Descent 1 and 2, Imperial Assault, Runewars, Legion, Armada, all of them do this. I suspect X-Wing only doesn't because it was the first one.

You could also use them as upgrades (add one blue die/black die) or even results (add one double crit, add one double hit), with all that that implies for the weapon bearing the cancellation order in mind.

It's something I'd dearly like to see but I suspect won't happen unless there's an eventual 2.0.

Yeah, right now I am definitely discussing something that would happen within the current rules set, nothing that requires new rules or new mechanics.

My thought is like a difficult to aim pulse weapon or a sniper rifle like effect. Hard to hit, but disastrous when it does hit.

Lieutenant Blount says hi...!

19 minutes ago, Stinger07 said:

Yeah, right now I am definitely discussing something that would happen within the current rules set, nothing that requires new rules or new mechanics.

My thought is like a difficult to aim pulse weapon or a sniper rifle like effect. Hard to hit, but disastrous when it does hit.

It's pretty easy to do. Low numbers of dice, double damage.

Seems fine as a general premise, provided the points costs are balanced and so forth. That's almost what we have in Plasma Torpedos, too. Or attacks from Bossk. A weapon which has an on-hit effect to do extra damage, in addition to normal damage. We already have cards which do less damage than the number of hits, and they're mostly fine.

There is some oddness to them, though. Like, is TLT better or worse than a 3-dice primary attack? The answer isn't straightforward; sometimes yes, sometimes no. Likewise, I bet something like you Turbolaser would be similar. Is it better or worse than an attack of a certain kind? I guess your version is clearly worse than a 3-dice attack, since it mostly only can hit 0 and 1 agility ships. And so it'd probably have to be priced cheaper than a straight-up 3 attack dice cannon (the closest is Mangler). So let's say this is 3 points. Dang, that's kinda ugly. It's got potential on a TIE/D, where you could easily wind up doing 6 damage a turn to a Decimator or Ghost. However, it'd be useless against a lot of other ships, so it's a highly skewed upgrade. I'm not sure I like where it fits into game design.

Hrm. And is it fun? Roll your 1 die, and maybe the TIE fighter blanks out and is vaporized in a single shot. Is that what we want? More modest designs seem like they could be good, however, and kind of already exist in the game.

I think such weapons would need playtesting, but certainly they seem like interesting things for some sort of custom leagues or such.

They already exist ... Plasma torpedo does 1 additional shield if it hits ... possibly dealing more damage than dice. Similarly, Harpoon missiles deal more damage than dice if you include the triggering of the condition.

There is no reason that this couldn't be extended out into a different ordnance option.

I think the concept is fine but I would hate to see x wing move into 40K territory with duce rolled for attack, defense, damage, and saves.

The armada idea of different dice could be interesting, dice with no crits or focus but 6 hits. Or four crits and four blanks. Also quite Complicated as non if the forty odd ships in the game currently use.

So the OP's idea of secondary weapon which does a defined amount if damage seems the best option at this point.

Not too dissimilar to some missiles.

If the attack hits cancel all dice and add X number of hits.

44 minutes ago, tsondaboy said:

Lieutenant Blount says hi...!

Which is sorta why such a mechanic better not be a missile. Besides, we got enough nasty missiles anyway.

I do like the idea of a single die attack that hits like a truck if it does hit though. Inaccurate deadly weapons ftw. However i'd probably make it 2die just to remove the ease of auto 1 evade stuff (it would never hurt Reinforce or Evade tokened people for example even if they blanked on dice), bump the price a little to compensate of course (or deal 2 damage instead of 3?)

i mean we have the opposite, highly accurate but weak guns, so why not the inaccurate ones?

Attack Wing has some cards in similar functionality;

Quantum Torpedoes: if the attack hits then they Do an extra damage.

Disruptor Beams: for every damage suffered, roll an attack die and if you get at least 1 hit/crit add 1 damage.

Focused Particle Beam: if you roll all hit/crit, keep rolling reds 1 at a time until you don't roll a hit/crit (max +3 damage)

I like it as long as it is priced right. I scares poor Norra though.

Or maybe something like the turbolasers in epic.

1 hour ago, Boba Rick said:

I like it as long as it is priced right. I scares poor Norra though.

Or maybe something like the turbolasers in epic.

Why would it scare Norra to be doing more damage?

7 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

Which is sorta why such a mechanic better not be a missile. Besides, we got enough nasty missiles anyway.

I do like the idea of a single die attack that hits like a truck if it does hit though. Inaccurate deadly weapons ftw. However i'd probably make it 2die just to remove the ease of auto 1 evade stuff (it would never hurt Reinforce or Evade tokened people for example even if they blanked on dice), bump the price a little to compensate of course (or deal 2 damage instead of 3?)

i mean we have the opposite, highly accurate but weak guns, so why not the inaccurate ones?

Make it a torpedo and include under the title “B-Wing only” and you’ve hit two birds with one stone.

7 hours ago, tsondaboy said:

Make it a torpedo and include under the title “B-Wing only” and you’ve hit two birds with one stone.

I mean we already have unguided rockets and bomblet generator. We’re just waiting on infinity torpedoes.

Advanced cluster homing missiles

range 2 spend TL cannot be modified except via focus discard blah

Make 6x 2-dice attacks. Each attack that goes through deals 1 face-up damage.

36 minutes ago, FlyingAnchors said:

I mean we already have unguided rockets and bomblet generator. We’re just waiting on infinity torpedoes.

Volley Torpedoes

Attack: Focus: Your dice may only be modified by spending a focus for its standard effect.

The defender may double their agility value when rolling defense dice.

Range 2-3

Att: 4

Cost: 2

Torp, Torp

8 hours ago, tsondaboy said:

Make it a torpedo and include under the title “B-Wing only” and you’ve hit two birds with one stone.

No the B-Wing only fix crazy weapon is when they add the Composite Beam via a ●B6 Prototype title. Something like one of those Attack Wing beams up there, but after you make the attack you Stress, Ion and Disable yourself.

The thing about this kind of idea is that no ship in the game is prepared for it. All agility 1 ships would despise a secondary weapon that rolled, say, 2 dice, but dealt two faceup damage cards (under shields) if it hits. All aces would loathe a 5-die weapon that dealt 1 damage if it hit. You'd be creating the ultimate scissors=paper-rock dynamic in the game, with TIE Punishers, Scurrgs and K-wings reigning supreme.

On the other hand, the concept of more varied dice greatly appeals to me. If a reboot is required anyway, I think dice variety is the way to go. Armada utilises it to great effect, although Idon't think the range bands should be significant in the same way in X-wing. What I'd propose is similar to @thespaceinvader's concept above:

3 sets each of attack and defense dice:
Red Attack: [crit] [hit hit] [hit] [hit] [bullseye] [focus] [blank] [blank] - Standard die, potential for damage, potential for whiffs.
Purple Attack: [hit] [hit] [hit] [hit] [focus] [focus] [bullseye] [bullseye] - Accurate die, very reliable, very meagre.
Black Attack: [crit crit] [crit hit] [hit hit] [hit hit] [blank] [blank] [blank] [blank] - Power die, massive damage, extremely unreliable.

Green Defense: [evade evade] [evade] [evade] [focus] [focus] [blank] [blank] [blank] - Standard die, slightly unreliable, but with good potential.
Blue Defense: [evade] [evade] [evade] [evade] [focus] [focus] [focus] [blank] - Tank die, very reliable, but low output.
Yellow Defense: [evade evade evade] [evade evade] [evade] [evade] [blank] [blank] [blank] [blank] - Gambit die, extreme variance, but potentially amazing.

The Bullseye roll allows the attacker to choose and remove 1 defense die immediately after the defender rolls their dice.

So proton torpedoes become 3 black, 1 purple. Homing missiles become 4 purples. B-wings get a single blue defense die. A-wings get a yellow and two greens. Etc, etc. it gives the devs more room to create unique ships, and even pilots on the same ship (like Han rolling all blacks, and Rey rolling all reds).

It would be terrible. The whole point about TLTs was that is was easy to dodge 2, 3, or even 4 dice (since half of them would not be hits). So the solution was 6 dice for a maximum of 2 damage.

I mean a 2 dice for 10 damage might be fun but all it would be is a huge ship killer and nearly every weapon that does more than 1 damage is already good enough at that.

7 hours ago, SirCormac said:

Volley Torpedoes

Attack: Focus: Your dice may only be modified by spending a focus for its standard effect.

The defender may double their agility value when rolling defense dice.

Range 2-3

Att: 4

Cost: 2

Torp, Torp

Nice idea, perhaps bump up the attack dice to 5 if people get double agility. Most ships will be rolling 4 defense, aces nigh untouchable at 6.

Then they become more deadly for low agility ships, and devastating vs ghost, deci and capital.