Tracking demand for Conversion Kits ...

By Jeff Wilder, in X-Wing

2 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

We do, they've said academy pilot is 24 points. That doesn't mean you'd WANT to in standard. If it's anything like 1e in that regard, you'd still be better off upgrading one to howlrunner nad only running 7. Probably upgrading another to Iden Versio if you can.

I was more thinking squad building limitations, the way epic has a max ship type count. If 8 TIEs are officially legal then easiest official way is core, 1x Imperial, 1x Rebel kit, unless Sabine’s TIE has a dial difference.

I've upgraded myself on the spreadsheet to 2 Imperial CKs, which immediately illustrated how extraordinarily unbalanced the Imperial CK is: every single ship is either bright yellow (we have a huge surplus) or bright red (we have a huge deficit). No green whatsoever.

That's just bad distribution in the CK, and it's my first serious annoyance about 2.0.

dang, really? it fits my collection like a glove (just an advance and x7 over)

but I guess that's what happens when you put FickleGreenDice in the FickleGreenFaction

you can't expect typical behavior

Edited by ficklegreendice
2 hours ago, gamblertuba said:

I'm going to be short on Starvipers and have an extra of just about every large based ship. There really is no excuse for just how poorly they have assigned multiples in the kits.

Its really simple and most everyone is skipping over it.

Generic + Generic + ace + ace is 2x pieces of cardboard base... they have to give you that even for one ship so they might as well toss in an extra dial/card and one more cardboard with Generic + generic. (this is all assuming the cardboard is the most expensive part)

it may not be the most efficient but removing a decimator would remove 1x large base cardboard and 1x dial, that is less than what is required for the single decimator it's a trade-off really. While it might be less efficient for some collections it is more efficient for cardboard needed.

For me the Imperial kit almost entirely nails my conversion needs. I’ll be short a gunboat, 2 interceptors, and a defender (a couple defenders but only because I have 2 with broken pegs now), and have one too many shuttles and decimators. The scum kit is the bad one for me, I am 1+ high or low for every ship except the IGs and Punishing One.

Edited by mdl0114
3 minutes ago, Icelom said:

it may not be the most efficient but removing a decimator would remove 1x large base cardboard and 1x dial, that is less than what is required for the single decimator it's a trade-off really. While it might be less efficient for some collections it is more efficient for cardboard needed.

I can buy that, except that the problem is actually that it's less efficient for most collections, at least from what I'm seeing.

That makes it poorly designed, efficiency-wise, even if it technically saves cardboard.

Edited by Jeff Wilder
1 minute ago, mdl0114 said:

For me the Imperial kit almost entirely nails my conversion needs. I’ll be short a gunboat, 2 interceptors, and a defender (a couple defenders but only because I have 2 with broken pegs now), and have one too many shuttles and decimators.

So in other words you'll be short four highly in-demand ships, and have a surplus of two ships unlikely to run in multiples.

Combine that with your (correct) feeling that you have closer congruence than most people, and you should be able to see that the Imperial CK is badly designed.

3 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

So in other words you'll be short four highly in-demand ships, and have a surplus of two ships unlikely to run in multiples.

Combine that with your (correct) feeling that you have closer congruence than most people, and you should be able to see that the Imperial CK is badly designed.

The only thing in your list that currently is a deficit to me is the tie advanced, everything else I am on par or have in surplus (that's a deficit on your list)

you might just need more data... But I would wager it's pretty accurate on the large base ships... but again I think it's like that because of my earlier reasoning.

My money is still on another 2 or 4 conversions for TIE-Fighters in the Epic kit and the same for X-Wings in the rebel epic kit.

I still agree that the imperial kit seems to miss one defender, might as well had 6 TIEs included right away. And I am not just saying this because I have 3 Defenders (my TIE-Figher demand is satisfied by the kits more or less), but rather because those 3 ships had been included in a lot of packages and are super iconic. They increase the gunboats, but I guess they have noting left which they could reduce to add another TIE-Fighter or Gunboat. The printing plates might be just full and doing another one might ruin the costs for everyone.

1 minute ago, Jeff Wilder said:

So in other words you'll be short four highly in-demand ships, and have a surplus of two ships unlikely to run in multiples.

Combine that with your (correct) feeling that you have closer congruence than most people, and you should be able to see that the Imperial CK is badly designed.

I actually have a second decimator, I was over when the typo of 3 decis was a thing, just 1 over on the glorious space cow. Almost regret not doing 3 lambdas and Soontir ever now. I don’t know if not being able to support 5 interceptors is a good argument for the CK being poorly designed, it’s not great for your group’s sample size of 7 people, but your group has a much better fit for scum aside from that one guy who has a really big scum surplus.

Also since it’s required I think you need to consider the core set for TIE and X-Wing Numbers. Your group still has an awful fit for the Imperial CK but I would say calling the whole thing poorly designed on the basis of 7 collections is jumping to conclusions.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

My money is still on another 2 or 4 conversions for TIE-Fighters in the Epic kit and the same for X-Wings in the rebel epic kit.

I still agree that the imperial kit seems to miss one defender, might as well had 6 TIEs included right away. And I am not just saying this because I have 3 Defenders (my TIE-Figher demand is satisfied by the kits more or less), but rather because those 3 ships had been included in a lot of packages and are super iconic. They increase the gunboats, but I guess they have noting left which they could reduce to add another TIE-Fighter or Gunboat. The printing plates might be just full and doing another one might ruin the costs for everyone.

They just corrected a typo, they had 3x decimators listed and 2x gunboats those were swapped no way the original plan was 3x decimators. My guess is these are already set in stone.

7 minutes ago, mdl0114 said:

I actually have a second decimator

That's great (really), but that's you . The whole point of collecting data for multiple people is that it allows seeing if the CK contents are efficient overall , not just for one (lucky) person.

The Scum CK is not bad, the Rebel CK is pretty bad, but forgivable. The Imperial CK, though, is horribly inefficient, at least from available data.

Edited by Jeff Wilder
1 minute ago, Icelom said:

They just corrected a typo, they had 3x decimators listed and 2x gunboats those were swapped no way the original plan was 3x decimators. My guess is these are already set in stone.

Aluminum. ?

Your 7 people are not a relevant data point to draw a sweeping conclusion from. If you want to collect more data that’s great, you’re saying it’s horribly inefficient though with a sample size of 8 (if you’re considering my collection).

Edited by mdl0114
2 minutes ago, mdl0114 said:

Your group still has an awful fit for the Imperial CK but I would say calling the whole thing poorly designed on the basis of 7 collections is jumping to conclusions.

It's a small sample size, but the trend is immense, and if it's an illusory trend, it's going to take some serious counter-data to pull it back.

In other words, it's going to need several people with fewer than four TIE fighters, fewer than three Interceptors, fewer than two Defenders, and so on.

It's possible, of course ... but it's highly unlikely. Statistically, I'm pretty comfortable saying the Imperial CK is poorly designed.

Considering that 5 A-Wings, BBBB-Z, 3 K-Wings, nor Quad-TLT Y-Wings, and not even enough X-Wings to cover one of each expansion are covered in the rebel alliance conversion kit.
I would not call the rebel conversion kit well designed.

Just two Star Vipers in the scum kit is silly as well, considering that they are well aware that you need 2 Star Vipers for 3 autothrusters and when you already have two, you are getting at least a third when guns for hire arrived. Then you have the same lack of Y-Wings with scum.

57 minutes ago, BojambaMcMamba said:

All of that really misses the point, though. The point is that, per the OP's spreadsheet, People (globally) own TIE/ln's in a proportion that is way out of whack with how the dials are being supplied (globally). Either people will buy 34 more dials for $50 to get dials for those last 4 TIEs that don't have them, or they'll be left with TIEs that don't have dials. Selling two dials in a core set that provides two more TIE/ln models isn't going to reduce the number of "orphaned" TIE/ln ships out there.

None of this is the end of the world, really. I'm still thrilled with the conversion kits. I just feel like it was a bizarre decision to only provide 4 TIE dials. It's super easy to get 5 TIE fighter models (2 in original core set, 1 for Howlrunner, 2 in Gozanti, plus, how many people do you know that bought at least two core sets? I know I did.) Could they at least try to better match how many are out in the real world? I bet they have a pretty good idea how many they produced.

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What I don't understand about the imperial conversion kit is the amounts of ships provided compared to rebel and scum. It is 3 and 5 ships short, respectively, which could be easily one plate of tie/ln prints. Yet it costs the same as the other kits. Anyway, I feel like all this discussion is complaining at a high level and I personally am very happy that we even have an option to convert 1e to 2e.

Not to belabor the obvious, but somebody with ambition could copy my spreadsheet and grab data from everyone here that's interested in providing it ...

(Might wanna flip the axes, though.)

Edited by Jeff Wilder
3 minutes ago, warmdown said:

What I don't understand about the imperial conversion kit is the amounts of ships provided compared to rebel and scum. It is 3 and 5 ships short, respectively, which could be easily one plate of tie/ln prints.

Or 2 TIEs, 1 Defender, 1 Interceptor, which is probably even better. It is odd.

Quote

Yet it costs the same as the other kits. Anyway, I feel like all this discussion is complaining at a high level and I personally am very happy that we even have an option to convert 1e to 2e.

FWIW, I do agree with this. I am, overall, still extremely happy with the conversion option. It just makes me twitch how much better it could be.

39 minutes ago, mdl0114 said:

I was more thinking squad building limitations, the way epic has a max ship type count. If 8 TIEs are officially legal then easiest official way is core, 1x Imperial, 1x Rebel kit, unless Sabine’s TIE has a dial difference.

I doubt we see squad building limitations like that. And sabine's tie dial from the rebel kit may or may not let you run what you need for imperial. Depends how the bases work out for whether you have all the right bases to run the ships you want (similar to how I had to buy an extra tie defender after veterans came out to be able to fly ryad/vessery/delta, since while I had 3 defender models, vessery and the delta were on the same cardboard base, so you couldn't lfy them both without 2 defender expansions. Or how the alpha squadron interceptor *only* came in the interceptor expansion, so you were SOL if you have Imperial Aces and wanted to fly more alphas).

10 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

It's a small sample size, but the trend is immense, and if it's an illusory trend, it's going to take some serious counter-data to pull it back.

In other words, it's going to need several people with fewer than four TIE fighters, fewer than three Interceptors, fewer than two Defenders, and so on.

It's possible, of course ... but it's highly unlikely. Statistically, I'm pretty comfortable saying the Imperial CK is poorly designed.

The other question is how many of each ship you're actually likely to RUN. I own 5 tie advanced (had 3, fourth from raidre, fifth from a grab bag at CAC), but have never run more than 1 at a time, and don't know that I ever will. Sowhile I have 3 extra models, I couldn't care less about getting extra conversions to fix them. On the flip side, I have 3 interceptors that in 1.0 I could only run 1 alpha at a time, while the conversion kit suddenly means I could run 3 of the base-level generic all together.

6 minutes ago, warmdown said:

What I don't understand about the imperial conversion kit is the amounts of ships provided compared to rebel and scum. It is 3 and 5 ships short, respectively, which could be easily one plate of tie/ln prints. Yet it costs the same as the other kits. Anyway, I feel like all this discussion is complaining at a high level and I personally am very happy that we even have an option to convert 1e to 2e.

Upgrade cards might eat in your ship budget, maybe empire has more of those upgrade cards. Or in an odd move FFG is printing parts of the rebel, imp and scum kits on the same plate. Which would mean the amount of produced imperial, scum and rebel kits would be linked to each other. Though I doubt that. It would be a stupid move for later re-prints ... at least if they plan to offer reprints of those kits.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Upgrade cards might eat in your ship budget, maybe empire has more of those upgrade cards. Or in an odd move FFG is printing parts of the rebel, imp and scum kits on the same plate. Which would mean the amount of produced imperial, scum and rebel kits would be linked to each other. Though I doubt that. It would be a stupid move for later re-prints ... at least if they plan to offer reprints of those kits.

More likely, it's just because it's all based on how many of each ship you can run. Imperials have less models to convert, so get less total conversions.

3 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

This sidesteps the point.

If I currently own 8 TIEs and four kits to convert them, I have four unconverted TIES.

If I buy the core set, now I own 10 TIEs, four kits to convert, and two don't need converting, and I have four unconverted TIEs.

If you're not worried about having unconverted ships, that's cool. I, personally, don't want to end up with unconverted ships.

You did catch that the base TIE Fighter dial didn't actually change right? So there's nothing stopping you from using 1st ed dials in a 2nd ed game, except maybe some weird personal pride thing.

I certainly would do it if I needed to (I only own 4 TIE Fighters).

3 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

This sidesteps the point.

If I currently own 8 TIEs and four kits to convert them, I have four unconverted TIES.

If I buy the core set, now I own 10 TIEs, four kits to convert, and two don't need converting, and I have four unconverted TIEs.

If you're not worried about having unconverted ships, that's cool. I, personally, don't want to end up with unconverted ships.

If you think that is bad try to imagine what it will be like to have OCD knowing that 1.0 Tie Fighters are ANH White/Grey while 2.0 Tie Fighters are ESB Blue. At least if I get the new core set and a Tie expansion I can run 5 of any color and that will be fine enough for me.

3 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

SF Bay Area.

Daly city reporting in and I'm fairly new to the area... Where do yall play?