I came at this a while back in a bit of a curveball solution: a Crew upgrade that deploys a couple of Academy Pilots for no cost as a escort, and which don't contribute to MOV.

Something like...

Captain Slavin
Crew - Imperial
At the beginning of the 'Place Forces' step you may add two Academy Pilot TIE Fighters to your squad, without paying their squad cost. At the end of the game these TIE Fighters do not count towards either player's MOV score.
6

What this solution does is thematically bring in that TIE Fighters are cheap (6pts for 2!) and the Empire doesn't care about them (no MOV risk), but by tying it into a Crew slot you're avoiding a lot of the risks that just reducing the points cost of the TIE would feed into huge swarms that just slow the game right down.

@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.

My suggestion; which would help them overwhelm defense dice and tokens

Modification; "Synced Fire" Cost 1. "You cannot Equip this card if your Primary attack value is higher than 2 and you have the System Slot."

"When performing a primary weapon attack, choose 1 friendly ship that also has Synced Fire Equipped & has the defender inside their firing arcs at Range 1-3. If that ship hasn't already fired this round it may receive a weapons disabled token. You may roll additional Attack Dice equal to the printed value of that ship, to a maximum of 4 additional dice. you may treat their blue target lock token as your own"

and something to give s some movies;

Nimble Fighter (You cannot Equip this card if your Agility value is 2 or less and you have the Torpedo Slot) You may equip up to 2 different Title upgrades. 0 PTS

Immediately After executing a 3-, 4-, or 5-speed, you must execute a free barrel roll action if able.

TIE Swarm Formation

Title (TIE Fighter only), 0 pts

For each ship within range 1 who also have the 'TIE Swarm Formation' card, you may reroll 1 attack die (up to 2 dice).

Happy Friday!

I consistently field a swarm of TIEs, as is. And I consistently lose this game.

I am therefore stuck in a perpetual, looping Star Wars story, TIEs rolling blank red dice, then a few evades, letting me and those little Imperial pilots hope for a while before finally exploding in a spinning fireball of cinematic glory.

I'm fielding "Youngster" tomorrow with Black Squadron carried into battle with Suppressor and a support TIE shuttle. Wish me luck.

1 hour ago, General Kenobi's Chicken said:

Happy Friday!

I consistently field a swarm of TIEs, as is. And I consistently lose this game.

I am therefore stuck in a perpetual, looping Star Wars story, TIEs rolling blank red dice, then a few evades, letting me and those little Imperial pilots hope for a while before finally exploding in a spinning fireball of cinematic glory.

I'm fielding "Youngster" tomorrow with Black Squadron carried into battle with Suppressor and a support TIE shuttle. Wish me luck.

Good luck. I feel your pain. I love my TIEs and flying swarms but sometimes it feels like I'm in one of the movies and not really in a good way.

I'd love a "Mass production" title. Allows for another title to be used, but reduces the cost of the base ship by 2-3. Might make TIEs so cheap they're a no brainer, but a massed TIE swarm is exactly how they should be used.

seriously, the problem with TIEs will always be two-die primaries. They completely died of pre-crackshot and are now dead again with ******* wookies and other such nonsense completely negating their damage output. Having outmaneuver natively will at least help alleviate that

and then you really can't have green dice as a primary measure of defense, because **** green dice

having a Xizor-esque ability would help them out and reward good positioning at the expense of having to deal with bombs and such

I think we need Major Jugglers solution AND Academy Pilots to be ps 0. They should be able to block a wookie.

Yep. 2 attack dice is barely useful nowadays. ****, 3 attack dice isn't all that great unless you can stack dice modifications on the attack.

Short of rebooting the entire attack mechanic, which needs to be done, I like the idea of a swarm condition that if an opponents ship is caught in 3 or more arcs, they are debuffed in some way.

Maybe re-write Reinforce to not work against 2 dice attacks, I dunno. 2.0 come here fast!

34 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

seriously, the problem with TIEs will always be two-die primaries.

^This.

Lately I can't seem to figure out what people think of 2 die attacks.

Most of the above suggestions just seem to involve a reroll of existing dice. I would tend to think that TIE fighters need a way to boost damage output to be relevant.

Hence something like:

Inferno Squadron. Title. If with R1 of another TIE fighter you may add 1 attack die.

Or

Title. You may spend an Evade token from another TIE fighter at R1 to add 1 attack die.

2 attack dice are fine, it's an important distinction to keep in the game to then have it wax and wave in usefulness.

Seriously, all this sub ever comes up with as suggestions is ways of making things that are different and add variety into more like a big amorphous blob that looks like whatever is currently good in the game.

You don't want to encourage TIE blocks too heavily or you'll just shuffle-board to victory (ie what Rebels did/do)

TIE swarms were always heavily skill dependent, so I see no problem rewardinv skillful flying by implementing positioning bases buffs

Like giving them all outmanuever, or Backstabber (back stabber gets four dice, better not ignore him!). Though the added die might start getting silly, so I believe outmanuever is more reasonable

Point is, TIEs from the movies really seem to like attacking from behind and that positioning element seems more interesting than just pushing a block of dice around.

this way also encourages TIE flankers rather than just out and out swarms, giving you more build options and tactical flexibility and variety

I'd like to see a large ship base with 4 slots for swarms of things. The Large base would work similar to a docked ship. They act as 1 unit at their lowest PS, and get a bonus die for each ship beyond 1 while docked (only one shot as long as they are docked in formation). No upgrade cards or pilot skills are active while ships are docked on the base.

4 academies? One shot with 5 dice, 6 green dice on defense. Any damage taken it distributed between docked ships as you wish. One action. At a minimum of 48 points to fully kit out the swarm base it would really limit what you could take along with it.

Title: Imperial swarm, tie fighter only, 6 points

At the end of the turn where this ship was destroyed, deploy a tie fighter academy pilot within range 1 of any board edge. The ship must not be within range 1-2 of an enemy ship.

That's just a crazy idea for the day.

Oh here's a good idea

Add the free outmanuever as a TIEtle galactic empire only (sorry, SF, but you're fine as you are)

Then you add the world's first generic pilot with a pilot ability in the form of that typical glaive/royal guard format for ace fixes

Inferno(?) Squadron Pilot. 15/16 points, ps 6. Ept.

"When another friendly galactic empire TIE fighter at range 1 is defending, you may suffer one uncanceled HIT or CRIT result"

Now you don't need to swamp TIEs with upgrades and you can give Low/Kanan a well deserved middle finger

Swarm Ability a la Armada.

41 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

2 attack dice are fine, it's an important distinction to keep in the game to then have it wax and wave in usefulness.

Seriously, all this sub ever comes up with as suggestions is ways of making things that are different and add variety into more like a big amorphous blob that looks like whatever is currently good in the game.

Well, when different means useless, that's not a bad idea.

Your sad devotion to wave 1 mechanics has not helped us make TIE-s better ships, or given us clairvoyance enough to resist the powercreep of harpoons.

Let the past die. The TIEs as they are currently are will never make it. They need help. You can be in denial about it, I don't care, but keep it to yourself.

If you continue to post fix threads. . what will you become?

On a more serious note, the TIE Fighter doesn't need fixing nor can it be. It's a cheap two dice fighter, if you change anything about it the risk of it becoming too strong is far too great.

Give it an extra hull? Way too cost efficient.
Extra attack dice? Makes Interceptors redundant - que Fix the Interceptor threads - Way too cost efficient.
Extra dice modification? They still die to bombs and harpoons and assault missiles and five dice hyper attacks and TLT and autoblasters and . .
Extra evade dice? Pointless.

As sad as it is to say, the TIE Fighter is done with this meta and there is nothing you can do to the TIE Fighter specifically that will make it competitive. In casual, it's still fine.

I mean, let's be honest here, four TIE fighters lost to a stationary PS5 Chewwie with Han and Luke Crew. Then three TIE F/O got killed in a single attack by a PS5 Chewwie with Rey Crew. . . so from a thematic point of view, they are "working as intended".

10 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

If you continue to post fix threads. . what will you become?

On a more serious note, the TIE Fighter doesn't need fixing nor can it be. It's a cheap two dice fighter, if you change anything about it the risk of it becoming too strong is far too great.

Give it an extra hull? Way too cost efficient.
Extra attack dice? Makes Interceptors redundant - que Fix the Interceptor threads - Way too cost efficient.
Extra dice modification? They still die to bombs and harpoons and assault missiles and five dice hyper attacks and TLT and autoblasters and . .
Extra evade dice? Pointless.

As sad as it is to say, the TIE Fighter is done with this meta and there is nothing you can do to the TIE Fighter specifically that will make it competitive. In casual, it's still fine.

I mean, let's be honest here, four TIE fighters lost to a stationary PS5 Chewwie with Han and Luke Crew. Then three TIE F/O got killed in a single attack by a PS5 Chewwie with Rey Crew. . . so from a thematic point of view, they are "working as intended".

Oh okay. Vader soloed a whole rebel fleet and one shots xwings on the regular. Should we make that happen as well? Or is it okay if we acknowledge that these scenes are based on drama instead of what would be feasible in universe.

19 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Well, when different means useless, that's not a bad idea.

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.

19 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

. . . so from a thematic point of view, they are "working as intended".

You bet.

Rock Magnet

Title, -3 points

If within R 1-2 of an asteroid, you must try to hit it.

8 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

How many 'respawns' you want in a squad should drive the cost of the title. To go into examples, a 1 point title means:

• an eight ship swarm of academy pilots can get 4 reinforcements.
• a swarm of three crack shot black squadron pilots and four academy pilots all get reinforcements (this might be a bit too much!)

You'd need to decide if you wanted it to be:

• TIE fighter Only (Bad idea - rebels and TIE/sf!)
• Imperial Only. TIE Fighter Only
• Imperial Only. Academy Pilot Only

The latter depends on whether you want to improve the academy pilot only or the Black Squadron Pilot too. If the latter, you can really deliver a kick in power if you want to by allowing the reinforcement to flip discarded cards face-up (thus resetting crack shot and/or stealth device).

If going the "Respawn" route, it should apply to only non-unique TIEs. Howlrunner and Youngster ain't coming back, because they're not faceless mooks. I think such a title could also help Interceptors, and probably should. The cheapest Interceptor is 18 points, and not exactly lighting fires. The first non-unique that gets an EPT is the Saber Squadron at PS4 for 21 PTS, and probably not doing too much better.

6 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I came at this a while back in a bit of a curveball solution: a Crew upgrade that deploys a couple of Academy Pilots for no cost as a escort, and which don't contribute to MOV.

Something like...

Captain Slavin
Crew - Imperial
At the beginning of the 'Place Forces' step you may add two Academy Pilot TIE Fighters to your squad, without paying their squad cost. At the end of the game these TIE Fighters do not count towards either player's MOV score.
6

What this solution does is thematically bring in that TIE Fighters are cheap (6pts for 2!) and the Empire doesn't care about them (no MOV risk), but by tying it into a Crew slot you're avoiding a lot of the risks that just reducing the points cost of the TIE would feed into huge swarms that just slow the game right down.

I like this, but I'd want to see other cheap TIEs get some love as well.

17 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Oh okay. Vader soloed a whole rebel fleet and one shots xwings on the regular. Should we make that happen as well? Or is it okay if we acknowledge that these scenes are based on drama instead of what would be feasible in universe.

TOTALLY:

Plot Armour - Modification - Main characters only
As long as this card is in play, you cannot lose and your opponent cannot win.

On another note, I don't remember him doing that in the films. In fact, I distinctly remember him shooting two people in the back before being tractor beamed . . err. . i mean knocked off the board.

So actually. . .

The greatest pilot - Title - Darth Vader Only
When attacking a ship, if you are outside of their firing arc, don't roll dice, just remove the target from the board.

If you are attacked by a large base, turret ship piloted by a scoundrel with great hair from outside your firing arc, scream WHAAT!!? (because as great as the force is, you couldn't tell that it was coming) and then throw the model across the room. For all game play purposes, this ship is considered destroyed but alive for story purposes.

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

2 attack dice are fine, it's an important distinction to keep in the game to then have it wax and wave in usefulness.

Seriously, all this sub ever comes up with as suggestions is ways of making things that are different and add variety into more like a big amorphous blob that looks like whatever is currently good in the game.

Well, having 3 attack with a condition is not the same as flying free-for-all Squints, so it's not exactly the same.

I have a ton of TIE fighters. I would love to fly them. But their "Punch to Pop" ratio is off, so for me the TAP is the new TIE/ln.