I just saw The Renegade Refit and I love it. But it made me think. How many people would love a -1 point card for each slot. I know this would have a huge effect on the game but how great would it be if they had a card like that for each slot for all ship that just lowered it by 1 point. Maby make it a Limited card or something. I say this as I know I fly ships many times that are not using all of thier slots or put a 0 in it just to fill when getting points back form it could change match ups like crazy.

What do you all think?

It would have to be a modification with certain stipulations, so you couldn't strip an Academy TIE of it's non-existent upgrades or a Light Scyk of the same. Otherwise, the idea has merit.

It'd effectively be a cost reduction for every base ship and a 1 point cost increase for all upgrades.

The biggest issue with this I see is that it discounts ships with more upgrade slots more, and generally those ships don't need as much help as the ones with fewer slots.

12 hours ago, player2072913 said:

The biggest issue with this I see is that it discounts ships with more upgrade slots more, and generally those ships don't need as much help as the ones with fewer slots.

Ships with lots of upgrade slots use almost all the slots to become OP, or are so far under the power curve that nothing will help them. However, I think adding small drawbacks to -1 point cards, and teeny boost to 0-point cards works well. All of these have the limited keyword:

Salvaged Munitions (0 Points, Torpedo) Unstackable, but effective against aces where they exist. Gets B-wings back into the fray, hopefully.
When attacking a target inside your firing arc with your primary weapon, the defender may not spend more than one token, and cannot use reinforce tokens for their standard effect.

Unstable Pods(-1 Points, Torpedo) Potentially disastrous on high-hull ships like Y-Wings and Ghosts, but nothing on B-wings, X-wings and the like.
When defending, if there is at least one uncancelled [crit] result, all damage cards dealt to you are dealt face up.

Retrofitted Retro-Rockets (0 Points, Missile) A neat little boost to ships that need the reactive power, like A-wings, Kihraxz Fighters and so on.
When you reveal your manoeuvre dial, you may discard this card to reduce the speed of the revealed manoeuvre by one. You cannot equip this card if your hull value is 5 or higher.

Faulty Racks (-1 Point, Missile) A devastating effect for armed aces like Nym, but nothing for ships like Punishers and A-wings that rarely execute reds.
After executing a red manoeuvre, you receive an additional stress token.

Boosted Dampeners (0 Points, Bomb) Something anti-synergisting on Nym, but a great buff for a lot of quasi-bombers like Y-wings and Sabine ships.
When you execute a red manoeuvre, roll 1 attack die. On a [focus] result, do not assign a stress token to your ship after executing the manoeuvre.

Damaged Payloads (-1 Point, Bomb) Pretty awful on anything except low-PS bombers, where they love the free point.
After you overlap another ship or an obstacle, you must deal yourself one face up damage card.

Leading Shots (0 Points, Cannon) Great for whiffs, and useful in a few other circumstances, too.
When attacking a target in your primary firing arc, you may cancel one of your dice results to reroll any number of your dice.

Maligned Blaster System (-1 Point, Cannon) Awful against aces, but fantastic against low agility ships like Miranda, Nym and Ghosts.
When you are attacking, enemy ships at range 2-3 may change one blank result to a [focus] result.

Orbital Sensors (0 Points, Turret) A good ability that represents the opportunity cost of not having a TLT. great for Y-wings.
When defending at range 1-2, if the attacker is outside you firing arc, you may increase your agility value by one for the duration of the attack.

Misaligned Weapons (-1 Point, Turret) Great fr indiscriminate fire, but awful in the mid-game.
When attacking, after you declare the target of an attack, the defender may choose one ship at range 1 of themselves to become the defender instead.

New Recruits (0 Points, Crew) Certainly useful, but the opportunity cost is very high.
When you reveal a white manoeuvre, you may discard this card to treat that manoeuvre as green until the end of the round.

Conscripts (-1 Point, Crew) Outright worse attack dice, but not if you can overcome their incompetence with mods.
When attacking, after rolling dice, you must change all [hit] results to blanks and all blank results to [hits].

Salvaged R4 Astromech (0 Points, Astromech) Anti-synergistic with Integrated Astromech, but useful for a lot of ships.
When you reveal a red manoeuvre, you may discard this card to treat that manoeuvre as a [straight] manoeuvre of the same speed.

Patchwork R2 Astromech (-1 Point, Astromech) Absolutely awful... when it triggers.
After executing a white manoeuvre and before your 'perform action step', roll one attack die. On a [focus] result, receive one stress token.

'Liberated' Astromech (-1 Point, Salvaged Astromech) Devastatingly brutal, but also quite unlikely.
At the start of the planning phase, roll one attack die. On a [crit] result, your opponent chooses what manoeuvre you execute this round.

Faulty Sensors (-1 Point, System) Brings the potential for devastating match ups, but a lot of lists won't trigger it at all currently.
You cannot perform attacks on enemy ships with agility values of 3 or higher at range 3.

Aftermarket Systems (0 Points, Tech) The utility is strong, but so is the opportunity cost.
When defending, you may discard this card to change one [focus] result to a [evade] result.

Salvaged Tech (-1 Point, Tech) Very nasty, but not for quite a few ships.
You cannot perform [target lock] actions and cannot be assigned blue target lock tokens.

Rookie (-1 Point, EPT) Thematic and painful, but useful on ships like GSPs or aces that are already hard to hit, or don't care about stress.
When defending, if you are hit by an attack, you must either receive one stress token or suffer one additional damage.

Black Market Acquisition (-1 Point, Modification) She's not pretty, but she's got it where it counts, kid.
Decrease your hull value by one. Once per game, you may roll one additional attack die when attacking a ship in you primary firing arc.

Rhylothian Spice (0 Points, Illicit) Spice is one of the precursors to glitterstim...
When attacking or defending, you may discard this card and receive two stress tokens to change all your [blank] results to [hit] or [evade] results.

Uncertain Part Origin (-1 Point, Illicit) Never trust the Black Sun, unless they tell you to at gunpoint at the Bazaar on Nal Hutta.
After defending, if you were hit by the attack, roll one die. On a [crit] result, you are destroyed, and each ship at range 1 or you suffers one damage.

I'm pretty sure that covers every non-epic upgrade. Most of these are anti-synergistic with each other, so no super-punishers running around at 15 points. Most of the 0-point upgrades will be used every game, or at least give you some more flexibility with generics. All of the -1 point upgrades can be leveraged by a smart opponent, so it's a case of cheap Vs flexible ships.

Hm, you've convinced me that it might not be a totally bad thing!

Salvaged Tech as worded makes you near-immune to most missiles and torps, I doubt that was your intention?

@Astech that's a long list of well nuanced cards!

One potential flaw as pointed to by player, is the salvage tech meant to be for all target locks or just blue target locks?

On 4/25/2018 at 6:48 PM, Deathmvp said:

I just saw The Renegade Refit and I love it. But it made me think. How many people would love a -1 point card for each slot. I know this would have a huge effect on the game but how great would it be if they had a card like that for each slot for all ship that just lowered it by 1 point. Maby make it a Limited card or something. I say this as I know I fly ships many times that are not using all of thier slots or put a 0 in it just to fill when getting points back form it could change match ups like crazy.

What do you all think?

That would really help struggling imperial ships!

Oh wait...

When I've run a campaign I've allowed:

Production Model, title: -2pt cost, you may only equip EPT to this ship (if you already have an EPT emblem).

It's a blanket upgrade and 95% of named pilots want other cards anyway. It was a way to make a few ships viable and used and combined with scenarios it was enough to get more generics on the battlefield. Sure you could fit in another generic here or there, but like I've said in many other threads- There are lists possible today that 12 tie fighters couldn't take out in a standard game and probably could never beat untimed either. At least it makes it feel like Star Wars again.

10 hours ago, player2072913 said:

Hm, you've convinced me that it might not be a totally bad thing!

Salvaged Tech as worded makes you near-immune to most missiles and torps, I doubt that was your intention?

5 hours ago, nitrobenz said:

@Astech that's a long list of well nuanced cards!

One potential flaw as pointed to by player, is the salvage tech meant to be for all target locks or just blue target locks?

Thank you both. Salvaged Tech is indeed meant to be Blue Target Lock tokens only. I'll edit the original post to reflect this.

It's astonishing how easy it is to make interesting, balanced cards with great utility on generics. That whole list was made in 30 minutes, and could probably be thoroughly play tested in a week. FFG seems to be strongly avoiding this kind of release for some reason, much to the game's disadvantage.

This would only truly benefit ships with large amounts of slots.

soooo guess it would be the same scenario as usual?

3 minutes ago, Kdubb said:

This would only truly benefit ships with large amounts of slots.

soooo guess it would be the same scenario as usual?

Not at all. Take the example of the Black Market Acquisition upgrade I designed above. you could be looking at 9 TIE fighters with a 3-die attack each on the opening salvo (or 4 dice at R1). Sure, they've only got 2 hull each, but you have to actually shoot them for them to die. And that's a ship with no upgrade slots.

Maybe a Scurrg could be built with an awful lot of free upgrades, but Nym will still be better with his OP loadout. K-wings that aren't Miranda suck currently. Ghosts have their exact load out specified sans torpedoes, which would admittedly give them a very slight buff. Similarly, Falcons, Decimators, YV-666s and so forth all have ideal builds that don't leave many free slots. This 'negative point cost upgrade with negative ability' idea only buffs underused ships in the end.

1 hour ago, Astech said:

... FFG seems to be strongly avoiding this kind of release for some reason, much to the game's disadvantage.

Well, it is a long list, and if you only had one or two different "slot fillers" in an expansion it would take more than 10 expansions to get through that list! Over the course of the several waves it would take to release we would be missing the rest of the list.

the slots arent worth points, this is why upgrades cost points. this would completely destroy game balance

3 minutes ago, Vontoothskie said:

the slots arent worth points, this is why upgrades cost points. this would completely destroy game balance

so you think the generic scum Z is the same ship as the rebel one?

2 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

so you think the generic scum Z is the same ship as the rebel one?

pretty much. Scum z-95s have worse aces but better generics, pretty balanced.

the reason both are 12 points(despite scum illicit) is that the rebel synergy makes the rebel Zs a bit more valuable. illicit slots in wave 6 and 7 were intended to be scums "thing", while rebels and imps had their respective synergies. the designers abandonded that design later, but it makes sense. scyks should have had it too

1 minute ago, Vontoothskie said:

pretty much. Scum z-95s have worse aces but better generics, pretty balanced.

the reason both are 12 points(despite scum illicit) is that the rebel synergy makes the rebel Zs a bit more valuable. illicit slots in wave 6 and 7 were intended to be scums "thing", while rebels and imps had their respective synergies. the designers abandonded that design later, but it makes sense. scyks should have had it too

The aces don't matter, but the slots do...

But I give you an extreme example... Imagine the JM5K now, and before the nerfs... Obviously slots have value, so much so, that they make or break a ship. That should be included in pricing. And it is.

2 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

The aces don't matter, but the slots do...

But I give you an extreme example... Imagine the JM5K now, and before the nerfs... Obviously slots have value, so much so, that they make or break a ship. That should be included in pricing. And it is.

the jumpmaster was broken because it cost as much as a fighter half its worth. the slots certainly provide opportunity, but you cant just say every ship should be cheaper if it chooses not to equip things

Just now, Vontoothskie said:

the jumpmaster was broken because it cost as much as a fighter half its worth. the slots certainly provide opportunity, but you cant just say every ship should be cheaper if it chooses not to equip things

It's not a very good idea, and it punishes craft that rely on their upgrades. The TIE/SF for example does not have a great dial, or great actions, however the system and tech slot provide interesting opportunities. That's where its value lies (and doubletapping + QD), other than that it relies on the title and the mod slot to make it work at all.

Other ships can provide value just naked, or with few upgrades. Wookiees don't need a lot to be valuable. Their reinforce action and 180 arc already do that. Making the wookiees even cheaper is a bad idea.

But upgrade slots worth points. This is beyond doubt.

6 hours ago, nitrobenz said:

Well, it is a long list, and if you only had one or two different "slot fillers" in an expansion it would take more than 10 expansions to get through that list! Over the course of the several waves it would take to release we would be missing the rest of the list.

But of course this again feeds into FFG's unwillingness to release these kinds of cards. If they had game balance as a priority at all, a single car pack retailing for $10 USD with one of each of these cards, plus one of every errata'd card would be both immensely profitable and immensely good for the game. Additionally, having some options is better than none.

6 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

pretty much. Scum z-95s have worse aces but better generics, pretty balanced.

the reason both are 12 points(despite scum illicit) is that the rebel synergy makes the rebel Zs a bit more valuable. illicit slots in wave 6 and 7 were intended to be scums "thing", while rebels and imps had their respective synergies. the designers abandonded that design later, but it makes sense. scyks should have had it too

Since when? N'Dru has had tier 2 builds since his release with Cluster Missiles, LW, GCs and glitters (once available). He's an alpha-strike beast. The other one had for the longest time very strong synergy with attani mindlink, and the generics are definitively better in the mirror match with their access to illicit slots, as well as being better in general. Airen is very, very rarely used and tends to hover between tiers 3-4. Blunt's ability is null and void, since Harpoons are always the best choice, and they very nearly always hit the target.

Following from @Commander Kaine's extreme example now:

Consider a TIE fighter; currently outclassed in every way by their Rebel and Scum counterparts, and sorely lacking in synergy. Now imagine a TIE fighter with three of every upgrade slot in the game, granted by a non-unique title that costs 0 points. Which is better? The obvious answer is the upgraded TIE. Even by taking the current free upgrades, that TIE is an awful lot better.

Frankly, Miranda is so far above the power curve that nothing will catch up to her unless deliberately designed to hard counter her or outright be on the same power level.

What this kind of option will do is increase the skill curve of the game. The game stops being about aces, and we all know what encompasses the current top tables; lists built around very specific upgrade triggers that are useful every single turn for a whole tournament (such as Miranda's ability, Lowhricks buff etc). You're now looking at a game where probably every upgrade slot on every ship is filled, making ships that previously had no synergistic combos whatsoever much more flexible. As a list builder you have to consider a massive selection of small buffs your opponent might take, and consider whether expensive (and awesome) synergy is better that jousting that actually stands a chance.