I wouldn't mind seeing a block of four BS pilots with crackshot with this swarm ability. Group shoot at range3 and then individual 3 dice crackers at R1. You could easily slip in an academy blocker, a Tie flanker (forget names) to add potency so that the crack mob hits like a hammer. No need for named pilots to suffer. That green move focus dude would be great as part of a range 3 blob shot to be pumped on the close.

sounds great really! tHanks for the suggestion...

2 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

well that's one point, but it's not the second overarching problem

any kind of swarm ability will completely pidgeon hole all TIE fighters into only being run with a large quantity of other TIEs

While TIEs being run would be great, fixing them to ONLY be run in swarms is both lame and lazy. They should be viable in just about any quantity for whatever role they can be expected to fill (lone blocker, flanker, mini-swarm or full on swarm)

I know its been mentioned a thousand times before, but that's why I'm not totally opposed to squadron cards. You can either decide to use them, obviously at whatever cost they are, or not use them. That way theres no pidgeon-holing. For a swarm, it could be something like Cost:3, if you have 3 ships of the same type at range 1 of each other, add 1 hit result to the attacker of your choice or soemting like that

2 hours ago, Npmartian said:

@DagobahDave , the people need you.

1 hour ago, Icelom said:

How about this.

1pt Tie fighter title.

"After performing a primary weapon attack reduce the agility of the target ship by 1 for the rest of the combat phase."

It might be to strong, but it would make any quantity of ties in a fleet valuable.

I like that idea. Swarms help each other out at the same PS, but if you want to help other (higher-PS) ships in your list you'll need the higher-PS TIEs, and they can't help at all up in the PS11 fights. It doesn't help with the problem of swarms struggling once they've taken initial losses, but I think that's okay as a weakness of swarm lists.

If this is too strong, one way to weaken it could be that it only triggers on a missed attack. So either you hit or you reduce their agility but not both.

30 minutes ago, piznit said:

I know its been mentioned a thousand times before, but that's why I'm not totally opposed to squadron cards. You can either decide to use them, obviously at whatever cost they are, or not use them. That way theres no pidgeon-holing. For a swarm, it could be something like Cost:3, if you have 3 ships of the same type at range 1 of each other, add 1 hit result to the attacker of your choice or soemting like that

if TIE Fighter = in need of fix, and TIE Fighter + Swarm Fix = viable, then TIE Fighter = (STILL) in need of fix, outside Swarm

if you decide not to use them, you'd be using TIE Fighters sub-optimally outside the very specific context of a swarm

thus pigeon-holed

same as how every interceptor pilot sucks outside Soontir and sometimes carnor

A title with attached cost, that grants increasing bonuses the more TIEs that have the same title equipped?

3 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

well that's one point, but it's not the second overarching problem

any kind of swarm ability will completely pidgeon hole all TIE fighters into only being run with a large quantity of other TIEs

While TIEs being run would be great, fixing them to ONLY be run in swarms is both lame and lazy. They should be viable in just about any quantity for whatever role they can be expected to fill (lone blocker, flanker, mini-swarm or full on swarm)

I definitely value your opinion so I did want to address that the swarm thing would work a lot like Larky said. TIEs are horribly inefficient jousters at this point because although green dice creep isn't a thing really (nothing with agility of 4 yet), green dice modification creep is a thing. Glitterstim, Lone Wolf, Reinforce, Rey/Finn, etc. are all ways of making green dice much less... er... fickle. As a result, two-dice attacks really don't have a lot of punch, and while several two-dice attacks used to eventually run the defender out of defensive mods, passive mods last the whole round and allow Asajj (as an example) to avoid the eighth TIE in a swarm just as easily as she did the first. So the swarm mechanic, while not a direct fix for the entire ship, at least means that most things aren't going to want to joust a TIE swarm head-on.

For the other things, I thing other fixes are needed. FFG (and the forums, to be fair) often seek one catch-all "fix" for ships. But the TIE, as nuanced as it is, needs some options. Still my favorite "fix" to date is the TIE Defender fix, because it gave them multiple options (multiple titles). As lone blockers, the TIE Fighters are actually pretty ok and still make top tables from time to time. Mini-swarms are just a little it away from tier 1. I think some sort of an accuracy corrector-like feature to allow them to do massive amounts of slightly easier to dodge damage gives them a cool place in the meta (I played against AC/DC yesterday, so I think TIE Fighters would be really cool with something like that. I got curbstomped, but I have to admit I liked how it played).

As for flankers, I think the problem is the lack of good board knowledge and reposition. Maybe something like this?

2 hours ago, Icelom said:

How about this.

1pt Tie fighter title.

"After performing a primary weapon attack reduce the agility of the target ship by 1 for the rest of the combat phase."

It might be to strong, but it would make any quantity of ties in a fleet valuable.

Hilariously OP.

Just think about this against anything with high agility and low HP.

1 hour ago, DagobahDave said:

You're our only hope!

Screaming Engines: Tie only

Ships at range 1 may not modify dice except with focus or TL tokens.

Sorry for dwelling on the swarm idea, but surely that is an emblemic part of what the TIE fighter is, as opposed to named pilots. For Tie fighters, specifically, I think swarm>named...

Whereas for the Tie Interceptors, yeah, swarm<named fits perfectly.

One can dream of every pilot being viable, but that is an X wing utopia now... So why not have some craft where generics together trump individual elites in the same ship. It would make a change.... (I didn't play waves 1-3).

I would love to see the swarms re-appear in the game, however they were still feasible for a practised player until Harpoons/Tragedy Stimulator. "Now, things are worse."
For example, a friend of mine ran 4 Black Crack Ties with Howl & Zeta Leader to Top 8 at the Australian Nationals last year, prior to G4H being legal.

For me I think the biggest issues TIE’s have currently is not so much the bombs and harpoons. Yes, those don’t help. TIEs are at that point a lot of older ships are at. Not enough mods or enough ways to deny mods.

I think sadly, the ability of someone like Captain Rex should be Imperial. It creates a bit of survival for TIE’s beyond the typical one token they get with no other modification abilities.

Swarm leader was a great example of a boon for swarms. More mechanics like that are needed.

Swarm Maneuvers: When defending, if another TIE is within range and has the attacker inside its firing arc, you may change one Blank result to an Evade. You may only change 1 result per attack.

10 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

I still don't understand why people would want to push swarm mechanics

You want to improve the individual TIE, unless you enjoy only having a single viable module for ships. Personally, I find that to be incredibly dull and a waste of a ship's potential

Besides, TIEs shouldn't need swarms to be effective. Sure, cannon fodder mooks are as expendable as they get, but Inferno Squad and Black Squad (particularly Vader, Stabber, Mauler) have all operated just fine without having to rely on numerical superiority

You also have to consider the poor FO,vwhich is costed less for swarming and more for flanking. It needs some love too, as even Omega L doesn't last too long out there anymore

SF not so much, it's quite alright. Limiting fixes to 3+ agility (inverse lwf) will do the trick

For me... it’s thematic; every time you see a TIE, there are always more near by. 2 attack dice are perfect, but they attack in masse. Also, requires a good amount of skill to fly!

and that is precisely why gameplay > fluff

why limit yourself to merely thematic swarms when you could have TIEs in any quantity be good. makes no sense to me

36 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

and that is precisely why gameplay > fluff

why limit yourself to merely thematic swarms when you could have TIEs in any quantity be good. makes no sense to me

Not to mention if TIE pilot aces are supposed to be some of the best ever because they have survived to become aces, why are they not that scary? They should be solid in any state and as a bonus en masse they should be down right terrifying. Currently they are well interesting a cute trick or two but not frightening.

1 hour ago, Ronu said:

Not to mention if TIE pilot aces are supposed to be some of the best ever because they have survived to become aces, why are they not that scary? They should be solid in any state and as a bonus en masse they should be down right terrifying. Currently they are well interesting a cute trick or two but not frightening.

Except TIE aces get reassigned to other ships. Everyone starts with the basic TIE.

I stand by my idea:

Line fighter - title - tie fighter only (so /fo too) - 0 pts

When attacking or defending against a ship from outside its firing arc, you may reroll one of your dice.

Emphasizes the role as a flanker and backstabber, is useful in a swarm and doesnt seem op to me.

When defending, if you have no shields, you may reroll 1 die. Tie only, 0 points.

At 0 points it benifits swarms of cheap ships more than aces, and the shields-down requirement benifits the LN, IN, and bomber.

15 hours ago, AngryAlbatross said:

as @MaxPower pointed out, the standard Tie is far overcosted for what it does.

My hope is that FFG brings out some squadron mechanics sometime soon to encourage us to run multiples of the same ships. Maybe something giving boost and free evades to Ties could help. Or as @MajorJuggler has suggested, free hits when attacking with multiple ships on the same target.

When the most cost efficient platform in the game is overcosted, you know there's a problem.

7 hours ago, EazyAU said:

I would love to see the swarms re-appear in the game, however they were still feasible for a practised player until Harpoons/Tragedy Stimulator. "Now, things are worse."
For example, a friend of mine ran 4 Black Crack Ties with Howl & Zeta Leader to Top 8 at the Australian Nationals last year, prior to G4H being legal.

Yup. There was a brief time between the JM nerf and G4H where swarms might have been able to make some headway.

Very, very brief.

It's a shame that we're at a point now, like we were back when Phantoms were the rage, where it's unlikely that if you have 12 spare points, it's even worth bringing an Academy Pilot along. Blocking is nowhere near as useful as it once was, and it'll just die and cost you MoV.

I don't know what to do, but I miss seeing tie fighters on the board...

I think the problem is more to do with huge spike damage with regular 4/5 red dice as all hit/crits being very common.

Swarms are suppressed heavily by basically the entire meta, tbh. Hyper-high attack deletes TIEs. Harpoons delete entire swarms. TLTs doing damage too reliable for them to dodge enough to not die quickly. Trajectory Simulator bombs are very hard for swarms to dodge. Guaranteed minimum defences make it impossible for them to do meaningful damage. Regen means what little damage they do push through is obviated. Blocking being less effective means one of their primary tactics (blocking with one ship, shooting with everyone else) is a lot less useful.

2 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Blocking is nowhere near as useful as it once was

This is a non-trivial element.

• Ships have gotten harder to block - because even 'unmanouvrable' ships have pretty good dials (auzitucks are no easier to block than an x-wing) and the agile ones are insane (advanced sensors Kylo or BB-8 Poe, for example, are nigh impossible to block without multiple ships dedicated to the task)
• Blocking achieves less. Expertise is pretty common, and K4 Security Droid, Ezra/Maul, Targeting Synchroniser, and Co-ordinate mean that a ship with no actions still getting double-modified attacks is far from uncommon

5 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Swarms are suppressed heavily by basically the entire meta, tbh. Hyper-high attack deletes TIEs. Harpoons delete entire swarms. TLTs doing damage too reliable for them to dodge enough to not die quickly. Trajectory Simulator bombs are very hard for swarms to dodge. Guaranteed minimum defences make it impossible for them to do meaningful damage. Regen means what little damage they do push through is obviated. Blocking being less effective means one of their primary tactics (blocking with one ship, shooting with everyone else) is a lot less useful.

Pretty much this.

• You'll never make a TIE fighter 'tough' (and you shouldn't) but the difference between a ship being reliably one-shotted and not is a big deal. With attackers expecting 4 hits with genuine confidence, a 3-hit ship which rolls a single evade still dies outright. It's why I've been quite vocal from time to time about just how much difference that single extra hit point of a TIE/fo or TIE/sk means - 5 ships requiring two attacks each to kill results in a squad which is actually 'tougher' than 8 ships each going pop every time someone fires at them.
• Splash damage should be a natural counter for swarms. But stuff like bomblets and harpoons are just incredibly powerful and with only 3 hits each, a single point of splash damage can gut a squad, and with 2-dice attacks, you tend to need to get to range 1 - and hence in mutual splash range - to cause meaningful damage with primary weapons.
• Automatic or near-automatic evades plus shield regeneration does make a joke of 2-dice attacks. The most ludicrous one I've seen recently was Stealth Device/x7/Lone Wolf on Ryad. Literally an entire TIE swarm fired into her, at ranges 1 and 2, after blocking her. Not so much as winged.
• Blocking doesn't really help a lot (see above)

Whilst I'd like to see a "swarm upgrade" I agree that that in turn still leaves the 'filler' or 'flanker' TIE fighter useless.

A reinforcement mechanic (respawning killed TIEs) is something I'd like to see, but that would definitely not apply to unique pilots.

Applying something like outmanoeuvre as standard has been mentioned, and would be good - although it would punish stuff relying on green dice far more than those relying on evade tokens, reinforce, randomly 'spawned' evade results and just being much tougher point for point.

Consolidated attacks is a nice mechanic - originally Attack Wing had a Barrage Of Fire ability which was a big part of making Birds Of Prey (the game's TIE fighter analogue) work. Swarm Leader was sort of the same thing but making it a unique elite upgrade essentially means you need a tough, high PS ship to nail Swarm Leader to and just relegates the TIE fighters to evade token batteries - a job which frankly a TIE/x7 or accuracy corrector TIE/x1 can do and still actually contribute some meaningful shooting itself. You can't really afford to make a TIE fighter the swarm leader itself because it'll go pop before it shoots. If there was a less potent, distributed ability to concentrate fire, then maybe.

I‘d argue that the main problem of swarms is the tournament scoring.

Using Theorist‘s killpoints helps swarms a great deal. There, you are ranked based on how many points you destroyed. Points lost is the first tiebreaker but otherwise meaningless. This means a 100-88 win is better than winning eg 60-0, or like the 100pt Kylo just 21-0 and similar scores.

Just this change helps swarms a great deal.