48 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Yeah it is, because it gives you nowhere for the game to go in future and you just narrow and narrow your design options down into a dead end.

While there are 2 red dice ships you can design cards that are good against them or weak against them, you can cycle them in and out of importance. When everyone has 3 red dice ships all you're doing is reducing variety and design space.

If the fix for a TIE Fighter is to stop it being a TIE Fighter and make it an X-Wing instead because X-Wings are better right now then why bother fixing it? Just play X-Wings.

So that's why nobody recognizes the ships that are being played. Great.

Sorry for thinking the best known ship in the universe should have a place at the table.

Also, where did you get the idea that I would like to give them an extra dice? Just read what I wrote. It doesn't make the TIE less of a TIE, but sure, go ahead and argue with yourself. I'm sure it's easier that way.

8 hours ago, Giledhil said:

@MajorJuggler's fix for swarm fighters is really good :

Attack Formation
0 / 0 / 0
TIE Fighter, Z-95, or M3-A Interceptor only. Title.
When attacking with a primary weapon, if the defender is in arc of another friendly ship with "Attack Formation" equipped, you may add one <hit> result. If you do and this attack hits, the defender suffers one damage, and then cancel all dice results.

Don't forget the defensive buff too!

Evasive Thrusters
0 / 0 / 0
Modification. TIE Fighter only.
Your agility value must be "3" to equip this card. When defending, you may discard this card to reroll any number of defense dice. When you are dealt a damage card that is not due to being the target of an attack, you may discard this card to discard that damage card.

Not to be an *** as I really appreciate all the effort you put into your xwing mod, but i really think you gotta cut down on the complexity of the TIE fighter mechanics

The TIE fighter is a cornerstone of this mechanically simple game and also something that can be spamed in great numbers, I dont think you should burden it with such wordiness

4 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Not to be an *** as I really appreciate all the effort you put into your xwing mod, but i really think you gotta cut down on the complexity of the TIE fighter mechanics

The TIE fighter is a cornerstone of this mechanically simple game and also something that can be spamed in great numbers, I dont think you should burden it with such wordiness

Fair. How bout this

Quote

Swarm Formation

Imperial only. Small ship only.

You may treat the evade and focus tokens of other friendly ships at Range 1, as your own.

Elite. 1 pts.

It gives them strength in numbers. You can't focus them down one by one, you have to brute force it.

It also helps other Imp ships. But it doesn't make them immune to anything. It has a tight range requirement, so you need to fly close.

5 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Fair. How bout this

It gives them strength in numbers. You can't focus them down one by one, you have to brute force it.

It also helps other Imp ships. But it doesn't make them immune to anything. It has a tight range requirement, so you need to fly close.

Academy Ties can't take elites!

Just now, MajorJuggler said:

Academy Ties can't take elites!

Is this the "fix the academy pilot" thread or "fix the tie fighter" thread? I was under the impression that it was the latter.

#BlackSquadronFTW

36 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Is this the "fix the academy pilot" thread or "fix the tie fighter" thread? I was under the impression that it was the latter.

#BlackSquadronFTW

#ScytheSquadronWTF

2 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

#ScytheSquadronWTF

Scythe Squadron Pilot

PS 6. EPT

15 pts.

Like so?

One game I keep bringing up for inspiration as an, imo, strictly better designed game is Armada

And not just because it has no green dice (though that really REALLY helps), but more because it has variable ship efficiency

Rather than being predicated on one ship just being...better, ship effectiveness fluctuates based on how you leverage their unique strengths. You don't send the nimble, long range CR90a into a slugfest against a star destroyer. You also don't send an unsupported star destroyer into a pack of three/four cr-90s that can dive into its rear arc where it is effectively defenseless

In xwing, you don't get dice that vary significantly with range, angles of attack and shiptype, so you gotta fenangle mechanics based on what "good play" mechanics you can (range control/firing arcs/relative positioning with other ships etc)

But you also have to keep it relatively simple so that play and counterplay are intuitive

Hence, outmanuever + xizor ability

1 hour ago, ficklegreendice said:

Not to be an *** as I really appreciate all the effort you put into your xwing mod, but i really think you gotta cut down on the complexity of the TIE fighter mechanics

The TIE fighter is a cornerstone of this mechanically simple game and also something that can be spamed in great numbers, I dont think you should burden it with such wordiness

Of the two cards, what's the worst wordiness offender and got any suggestions on how to improve it?

Attack Formation
0 / 0 / 0
TIE Fighter, Z-95, or M3-A Interceptor only. Title.
When attacking with a primary weapon, if the defender is in arc of another friendly ship with "Attack Formation" equipped, you may add one <hit> result. If you do and this attack hits, the defender suffers one damage, and then cancel all dice results.

Evasive Thrusters
0 / 0 / 0
Modification. TIE Fighter only.
Your agility value must be "3" to equip this card. When defending, you may discard this card to reroll any number of defense dice.

When you are dealt a damage card that is not due to being the target of an attack, you may discard this card to discard that damage card.

My thoughts below:

They're both too wordy and overly complicated

To attack with a ship you might have 8 of, you gotta measure arc/range from another ship, add a result, compare dice, and then cancel all results just to deal 1 damage. Seems a lot easier to just knock off a green die

also I'd just make it "another friendly ship". I see no reason to artificially stime build diversity by forcing ships with the same title together in a list

"When performing an attack with a primary weapon, if the defender is at Range 1-3 of another friendly ship and inside that ship's firing arc, the defender rolls 1 fewer defense dice"

I maintain, however, that outmaneuver is a much more intuitive mechanic that better encourages tactical and list building flexibility, mostly because you don't have to give a goddamn about your friendlies as long as they're holding the enemy down while you punch em

For evasive thrusters, the added discard element only adds a layer of headache to the flying and management of TIEs. With the Silencer it's fine because they're pricey (and the title is unique). Across 6-8 fighters though?

That on top of having a second ability makes it too bloated imo

If we're keeping it to a discard though, just have it discard to cancel one (critical) damage. Regardless of source.

"When you would suffer one damage or critical damage, you may discard this card to cancel that damage"

Easy, just beware those nasty proton bombs

EDIT edit: forgot you could just steal Integrated Astromech (if Integrated Astromech discarded itself) much cleaner than trying to roll IA and First Order Vanguard into the same card

What if FFG introduced some squadron mechanics, so you only got them if your squad had 4 or more Tie Fighters. Maybe you could equip 1 EPT to the squadron and all ships of that type got that EPT or mechanic even if they didn't have an ept?

@ficklegreendice

If multiple ships have arc on the target then the "check and see if another friendly ship with attack formation has arc" step takes about 0 seconds. It does introduce some player choice during the TIE Fighter's attack dice modification step, but if you only got 0 or 1 results then it's auto-use.

The outmaneuver mechanic has 2 issues:

• TIE Fighters are straight up jousters, they're not going to trigger Outmaneuver very often. This is by far the biggest problem, it won't actually help them for the initial pass which is the one that matters the most.
• I'm trying to increase TIEs accuracy without just globally increasing their expected damage output. TIEs already do plenty of damage to AGI0 and AGI1. But vs AGI3+, TIEs' ATT2 might as well be worthless.

I looked into giving TIE Fighters an extra hull, so tried that version of Evasive Thrusters. Games went too long.

It's still on the table to remove the second half of the card. If they start auto-losing to bombs, well that would stink. Sounds like a good poll topic.

1 hour ago, AngryAlbatross said:

What if FFG introduced some squadron mechanics, so you only got them if your squad had 4 or more Tie Fighters. Maybe you could equip 1 EPT to the squadron and all ships of that type got that EPT or mechanic even if they didn't have an ept?

Squadron cards with 'squadron abilities' and upgrade bars of their own opens up a lot of possible design space, and not just for TIE fighters.

In was kicking around a couple different ideas,

Title all ships of the same type at range one gain a focus or evade token when you perform ether action max 1 per round.

Title you may spend evades as focus tokens and focus tokens as evade, you may save one token each round.