cardboard. cardboard. sooo much cardboard.

Couldn't they have simply done a single ship insert? If we're going to have to mark our ships anyway with a numeric marker, then there is no need whatsoever, for every single pilot to have their own cardboard insert.

46 minutes ago, Crabbok said:

cardboard. cardboard. sooo much cardboard.

Couldn't they have simply done a single ship insert? If we're going to have to mark our ships anyway with a numeric marker, then there is no need whatsoever, for every single pilot to have their own cardboard insert.

God I was hoping they got rid of that. I HATE those little number chits.

11 hours ago, kraedin said:

I wish they had gone farther in banishing passive dice mods. The Force seems like a big offender there.

Also, I don't like the Luke Skywalker gunner card. If you can move your are arc for free at the start of combat, you're basically as good as the old 360 degree turrets were. I'm sure he's expensive, etc., etc., but the turret mechanic was unfun long before turrets were OP.

It comes at a tradeoff of the gunner slot though, which we already know offers at least 1 really nasty upgrade.
And Lukegunner will more likely not be cheap

- I would have liked to see cards go away entirely.

Move everything to the squadbuilder (or printed lists from the squadbuilder). Use something like the threat system, but with the complete build on one card, to make ships playable out of the box.

- It's always bugged me that you play to the death.

Some sort of mission or objective system that prioritizes keeping your squadron together would be neat. If you've ever played one of the "Leader" solo board games by Dan Verssen, that's what I mean. I want there to be times when it is better to pull out of a fight in order to keep my pilots alive. Get the HotAC guy on the payroll.

- And for the love of God, put enough dice in the core set.

Passing initiative back and forth. Never been a fan of the bid.

2 hours ago, Crabbok said:

cardboard. cardboard. sooo much cardboard.

Couldn't they have simply done a single ship insert? If we're going to have to mark our ships anyway with a numeric marker, then there is no need whatsoever, for every single pilot to have their own cardboard insert.

That is a good one, yeah. Not for theme, per se, but just because it locks FFG into one path forward - more cardboard, and even more cardboard with every future expansion.

It does feel a bit silly, when you could just have the base template be the generic fire arcs and be done with it. Wouldn't need but a fraction of the base token cardboard, then.

15 hours ago, xanderf said:

Not really 'fixes' or 'broken things' - really just ideas to capture Star Wars theme better

• Breakout of to-hit from damage. This would have allowed, for example, torpedoes that are more difficult to hit with...but do a lot of damage; or missiles that hit very easily, but do very little damage. 1st edition touched on the second part of that a LITTLE with...well, cannons, of all things - the ion or flechette with 'roll x dice, if this hits cancel all dice and do y effect with 1 damage'. Odd choice for a cannon, anyway. But the first part never really appeared at all, either way.
• Less variety of speed choices. Every single ship in the game has a 2-forward. Practically everything (maybe all of it?) has 2-banks and 3-banks, with just the color differing. A 4-bank maneuver would have done a lot to introduce new options for higher speed units that are more difficult to maneuver at slower speeds.
• "Switch your deflector shields on -- double front!" I mean, seriously, one of the earliest lines going into the FIRST major space battle in the franchise...and we still have no corresponding ability. Sort of addressed by 'reinforce', although the X-Wing cannot use that action, so...???
• Still annoyed that there is no flag on which ships have hyperdrive, and which don't. It's a small thing, but makes a big difference for scenario play, for those into that, speaking of which...
• Have we all played 'Armada'? Some of us? "Objectives"?? I mean, of everything for X-Wing 2.0 to pass on...SOMETHING OTHER THAN DEATHMATCH AND DEATHMATCH ONLY would have been, I dunno, super awesome. SOME kind of objectives. Heck, even if you keep it in the FPS video game flavor and it's just capture-the-flag or team-rabbit or king-of-the-hill or whatever. Just...something other than always-deathmatch, all-the-time, as part of the core rules.

Anyway, minor nits to pick. Overall, 2nd edition does look like an epic improvement on this, but...

Well, heck, it took us six years before the X-Wings got "Lock S-Foils into attack position!" so I guess an equal amount of time before 'shields double front' may be expected... ?

Actually incorporating Shields Double Front will be easier due to the ship cardboard having a hash mark. We're just a card away.

1 hour ago, ObiWonka said:

Passing initiative back and forth. Never been a fan of the bid.

They tried that. Said that it added a lot of complexity for very little benefit, it was also frequently forgotten and was hard to restore the gamestate when it was. With the simultaneous fire rule and reduced access to double repositioning first player should matter a lot less than it did in 1.0.

Just now, Stoneface said:

Actually incorporating Shields Double Front will be easier due to the ship cardboard having a hash mark. We're just a card away.

Keep in mind that all the ships that did that in the film were one-shot from that arc almost immediately after. Also, the new reinforce action pretty much already does this.

9 hours ago, max_ryan said:

Not normally one to post, but a lurker with ideas.

Why did they not split the ship and pilot card into 2 cards?

I mean, it would really open up the game choices, and would be easy to do.

Each ship would then have 1 generic card.

Then the pilot card and ship title card would add to it. Along with any upgrades.

This would allow pilots like Luke, for example, to fly the Falcon, (which he does in the expanded content) or an E-wing, or any other ship he gets onboard.

Even Leia flies the Falcon in the Films.

If they did that in 2.0 then I'd be more inclined to get it.

I see no reason not to do this, other than people saying certain pilots should never fly certain ships, although they can always fly ships together in combnations that should otherwise never happen, like pilots who die in A New Hope along side Ships that only appear in Jedi.

You don't want this, trust me. It causes a myriad of balance issues. Just look at Star Trek: Attack Wing.

It's a mess.

2 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

You don't want this, trust me. It causes a myriad of balance issues. Just look at Star Trek: Attack Wing.

It's a mess.

I think the idea would be to ship limit the pilots. Luke would have a T-65 icon on his card to indicate that he was only usable there. This system trades a lot of cardboard tokens for an additional upgrade card on each ship. If nothing else it would have been much more storage friendly.

2 minutes ago, HolySorcerer said:

I think the idea would be to ship limit the pilots. Luke would have a T-65 icon on his card to indicate that he was only usable there. This system trades a lot of cardboard tokens for an additional upgrade card on each ship. If nothing else it would have been much more storage friendly.

Well true but what we would have is a pilot game then and you could just proxy ships. FFG sells a ship game so that kinda shoots them in the foot.

Personally I would have done away with PS killing as a concept entirely and just had all destroyed ships removed at the end of the combat phase instead of their initiative/PS step. In 1.0 high PS became so insanely valuable because it gave you too many separate advantages, and I never really felt that PS killing as anything that promoted good tactical play and decision making, high risk/reward, or really anything fun... quite the opposite.

Looks like aces took a bunch of hits in the 2.0 though so we'll see how it all shakes out (especially in terms of costs), but personally that's the one thing I would have liked to see that isn't there. It really feels like a nit pick though as *so many great things* have been changed and they've come up with some brilliant new mechanical solutions to 1.0 issues and everything start to feel "same-y" (linked actions, red actions, etc).

I would have liked to see changes/improvements on two fronts:

1) True focused firing. I still find it rather silly that we call focused firing to the fact that all ships fire at a single ship, in turns, one after another, and the defending ship just defends one after another. This is not really focused, it is just firing in sequence one after another. You can always kill the ship half-way through your firing "sequence" and then your remaining ships just change a target. True focused firing means all ships fire concurrently. True focused firing rules could be something like this:

a) When all ships fire simultaneously to the same ship, their red die add-up (you roll the summation of red dies). The defending player then rolls its standard amount of green die (agility) + extra die (agility / 2) for each attacking ship after the first one. Example 1, three TIE Fighters attack an X-Wing simultaneously: 6 red die rolled on attack (2 x3), 4 green die rolled on defense (2 + 2/2*2 = 4). Example 2, 4 TIE Fighters attacking a Y-Wing simultaneously: 8 red die rolled on attack (2x4), 3 green die rolled (1 + 1/2*3 = 2.5 rounded to 3).

b) Higher PS means you can choose to fire first, or you can choose to wait your turn so that you catch-up with lower PS ships and thus allow to fire simultaneously. Up to you, this opens up strategic choices.

This would really make flying in formation and focus fire make strategic sense. The above ideas are just some quick thoughts, I am sure the minds in FFG could design a better system, but one that truly makes focused mean focused.

2) Energy Management like done in Lucas Art's simulator games. You can shift energy around from Engine/Lasers/Shields to gain bonus/penalties on each system depending on energy allocation. I believe a system cleverly crafted around this principle would be great. This would put more emphasis on how you fly and manage your ship, rather on squad building (card collecting as in Pokemon). At least, judging by how squadrons are made in 2e, looks like the TCG aspect of the game is now diminished. Still, I think the energy mechanic could have elevated piloting to a new level.

Story/campaign.

Woah, we just got 2.0!

This week.

Given the fact ffg seems to have listened to the fans on a lot of stuff, I would expect scenario, or cinematic play to be something they will focus on soon. I believe this is where the app and adjustable point values come into play. Because then It would be really easy to implement say free torps on X-wings during the trench run, or make TIE interceptors cost a little more and tie fighters a little less so you get that thematic mix at Endor.

I expect they will give us some of the old generic missions to play around with. Maybe the “escort the senators shuttle”, for starters.

While I expect Nats up to be 100/6, I would expect there maybe “assault on indar alpha” regionals or “Yavin 4” store kits.

7 hours ago, pickirk01 said:

We don't know costs yet. Force abilities may make Luke cost 6-8 points more than Wedge.

I don't think they're going to balance things based on "this person has force power", but rather "this person seems to be performing well between this range of points, and poorly in other ranges of points". They can live balance these things with the ap, so it'll be easier for them.

Its kinda hard to judge force powers as a "This pilot is stronger so hes worth more" because so far the only pilots we know have force have an ability involving their force, while nonforce users just have a passive ability. Luke's is fairly passive but in the end its still tied to his force power. If they run out, they effectively have no ability. Wedge wouldnt have a counter for how many times he can negate defense dice as an example.

10 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Its kinda hard to judge force powers as a "This pilot is stronger so hes worth more" because so far the only pilots we know have force have an ability involving their force, while nonforce users just have a passive ability. Luke's is fairly passive but in the end its still tied to his force power. If they run out, they effectively have no ability. Wedge wouldnt have a counter for how many times he can negate defense dice as an example.

This, exactly this. It brings more tactical decisions.

On Luke and Darth remember that there is an opportunity cost. Force points can also be used for dice mods separate to their pilot ability so while their abilities are powerful you could be out of FP at a critical point if you are not careful. Of course on the other hand if you do not spend the FP then its wasted too.

Or do I take the pilot with a passive ability that I can count on working throughout the game consistently?

2 hours ago, OoALEJOoO said:

2) Energy Management like done in Lucas Art's simulator games. You can shift energy around from Engine/Lasers/Shields to gain bonus/penalties on each system depending on energy allocation. I believe a system cleverly crafted around this principle would be great. This would put more emphasis on how you fly and manage your ship, rather on squad building (card collecting as in Pokemon). At least, judging by how squadrons are made in 2e, looks like the TCG aspect of the game is now diminished. Still, I think the energy mechanic could have elevated piloting to a new level.

In theory, this could be quite interesting. In practice think about a 3 v 3 or 4 v 4 (let alone 8 v 8!) match where each player has to account for every ship's firing arcs, status of 4 shield areas per ship, etc. It would bog the game down quite a bit.

I don't know if you've played Epic, but it does have an energy system and it works. Mostly. It's just... not smooth. And most epic games only have 1 or 2 (maximum of 2!) ships with that energy mechanic. Having to keep track of that much information for several ships- 4 or 5 (or at most 16!) would simply not be fun in practice.

However! I might be wrong. With the extra lines on the cardboard of 2.0, you should be able to mock something up yourself and convince a friend to try it out with you. Let us know how it works in practice.

10 hours ago, WAC47 said:

90% sure (based on the appearance of the [rotate turret] action icon on the card) that it is a free [rotate turret] action. Not just “rotate turret for free.” Therefore, no taking a Boost/red maneuver and Lukeing. And there should be some counterplay through action denial.

And he’s bound to be ridiculously expensive. And he’s unique. And they’ve changed actions/abilities to prevent super unkillable ships.

I understand the frustration but it’s very early to tell how much Luke will actually result in a fat turret meta (and the rough translation from Polish doesn’t help)

I doubt Luke will even be any *good*. Most of the time, the 1.0 Lancer gets to shoot at what it wants without much effort; there's no reason to think that the new turrets will be any different. Luke gunner will probably be the 2.0 equivalent of imperial Boba Fett's pilot ability - if you're any good, you won't need or use it. I just don't like what Luke represents for the game.

2 hours ago, Punning Pundit said:

I don't think they're going to balance things based on "this person has force power", but rather "this person seems to be performing well between this range of points, and poorly in other ranges of points". They can live balance these things with the ap, so it'll be easier for them.

I agree, I was just responding to the people that are saying the force is OP before we even know the cost of any pilots or upgrades. We may end up a week into October all griping about how OP the Tie Punisher is. The point is we just dont enough to judge any cards or pilots yet, only know that certain mechanics have changed.

8 hours ago, LordFajubi said:

God I was hoping they got rid of that. I HATE those little number chits.

Nah they doubled down on it, now the number chits are how you identify your target locks, instead of red/blue pairs. Light/dark face up to distinguish between you and your opponent, numeric to distinguish between your ships.

16 minutes ago, pickirk01 said:

I agree, I was just responding to the people that are saying the force is OP before we even know the cost of any pilots or upgrades. We may end up a week into October all griping about how OP the Tie Punisher is. The point is we just dont enough to judge any cards or pilots yet, only know that certain mechanics have changed.

An OP TIE Punisher. Yes please.

1 hour ago, Vineheart01 said:

Wedge wouldnt have a counter for how many times he can negate defense dice as an example.

You counter Wedge by taking 0 AGI ships