I just had a thought, and was wanting to know if anyone else had thought it.

With point costs being figured behind the scenes with the FFG APP, what are the chances that upgrades become fluid? Meaning that a specific upgrade on a Tie Fighter is X points, but if the same upgrade is on a Scurrg H-6 Bomber it is X+Y. Or perhaps it is X on the Academy Pilot Tie, but X+Z for Howlrunner in the Tie. If the APP just calculates an end point total it would be difficult to track these things. Also in a lot of ways this lets FFG be able to do stealth tweaks and adjust things behind the scenes.

I am not advocating this style, just hypothesizing a possibility and looking to see if anyone else got the sense that this might actually be a thing.

They mentioned this as something they are willing and able to do.

I'd be all for it, personally.

I've long since advocated for changes to VI and PTL, for instance, that scale cost based on PS. I could very well see that kind of cost scaling being applied.

In particular, I'm thinking that upgrades that give a Force rating will probably be scaled based on whether the pilot has a force rating to begin with, because Force gives extra mods, and extra mods look to be at a massive premium.

Yeah, thing that I am specifically wondering is the way the APP will display things, as in will it show a line item cost or just a sum for the list. I would guess for scoring purposes it would have to break it down by ship. But imagine if it didn't calculate ship totals for a list until it can compare to all other items in list. Something like expertise (if it survives the purge) on 1 ship is this much, you put it on 3 ships multiply cost by 1.5 (again arbitrary number) each and if on high quality ship with ace pilot man the expense is brutal....

I can imagine the saltiness already.

I think FFG has specifically mentioned that this is a feature of the app that we can play around with.

I have mixed feelings about whether they should use that feature for establishing card prices for official tournaments. I think it might break some players. But it might be easier to get used to than I'm imagining, or the app might have a really great way of letting us know that certain upgrades have variable costs.

For fun themed events, FFG could give us a way to hide all sorts of discounts, like "Hey did you know that if you run a squad of A-Wings and include only one named pilot, you get a -2 point discount on all the generics?" Hunting around for those things would be a game in itself, and hiding what you discover could give you an advantage.

it's almost certainly going to be the case, as certain upgrades as simply worth more on some ships/pilots than others

though I don't see them going too crazy on ship-type variance. we're going to have a cost and then some ships will pay extra if they're too dumb with the upgrade

most likely, we'll see greater variance across initiatives because that's a more global feature. Stuff is almost invariably better on higher initiative ( especially ordnance) so I expect it to cost more too

It would be cool if you could make custom squad building restrictions, adjust your own point costs in the app, and then save all these pre-sets with a code that you could give to others to share the same settings, to help set up "original trilogy only" lists or "everyone has to have crack shot but it's a point cheaper" etc.

I don't see this happening though.

FAQ basically covers everything you just said

really hope they get the save feature right, though. gonna be a right pain in the *** otherwise

1 hour ago, DagobahDave said:

I think FFG has specifically mentioned that this is a feature of the app that we can play around with.

I have mixed feelings about whether they should use that feature for establishing card prices for official tournaments. I think it might break some players. But it might be easier to get used to than I'm imagining, or the app might have a really great way of letting us know that certain upgrades have variable costs.

For fun themed events, FFG could give us a way to hide all sorts of discounts, like "Hey did you know that if you run a squad of A-Wings and include only one named pilot, you get a -2 point discount on all the generics?" Hunting around for those things would be a game in itself, and hiding what you discover could give you an advantage.

Yeah, was more focused on official tournaments in this case. A specific meta seems to be spammed (like 40%+ of competitive lists) and the adjust the cost mid-season so that the list has to "evolve" to a more diversified type. As a business model it would make sense to them to prod people towards new purchases...

Guess it would depend on how Orwellian about "big brother" type of conspiracy theories you subscribe to.

1 hour ago, DagobahDave said:

I think FFG has specifically mentioned that this is a feature of the app that we can play around with.

I have mixed feelings about whether they should use that feature for establishing card prices for official tournaments. I think it might break some players. But it might be easier to get used to than I'm imagining, or the app might have a really great way of letting us know that certain upgrades have variable costs.

For fun themed events, FFG could give us a way to hide all sorts of discounts, like "Hey did you know that if you run a squad of A-Wings and include only one named pilot, you get a -2 point discount on all the generics?" Hunting around for those things would be a game in itself, and hiding what you discover could give you an advantage.

I'm not a fan of hiding official discounts. Success in a tourney should involve an even playing field, and being surprised by an unexpected discount giving more points to play with is not conducive with that.

Skewing the app towards the new ships would be a bad business model. If I wanted to milk that, I'd discount a high number of ships nobody usually wants to fly in swarms. Like, half-cost HWK290 if you fly at least three, or bull like that.

4 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

I'd be all for it, personally.

I've long since advocated for changes to VI and PTL, for instance, that scale cost based on PS. I could very well see that kind of cost scaling being applied.

In particular, I'm thinking that upgrades that give a Force rating will probably be scaled based on whether the pilot has a force rating to begin with, because Force gives extra mods, and extra mods look to be at a massive premium.

Whats also nice, is they could do that based on the new Threat Level indicator. Higher the level, higher the upgrade cost

I sure hope that scaled points for list building is the exception and not the norm. Or that it's well explained and displayed. Other wise, it will make ongoing squad building and tweaking/adjusting your squad a royal pain if every adjustment you made changed how much things cost for you.

I don't think they're going to go too nuts with the variable costs. They're likely just reserving that option so they can surgically nerf certain combos that come up. I expect most stuff that is PS sensitive will just see higher PS pilots being more expensive in general.

1 hour ago, HolySorcerer said:

I don't think they're going to go too nuts with the variable costs. They're likely just reserving that option so they can surgically nerf certain combos that come up. I expect most stuff that is PS sensitive will just see higher PS pilots being more expensive in general.

The optimist in me wants to believe this.... Unfortunately it has been beaten, drugged, and shoved in a hole by the pessimist. The pessimist is now screaming in the hole "they said "shut up we'll take your money and you WILL like it!"". And as an afterthought walking away it says "oh, and you will put the lotion on..."

1 hour ago, PhantomFO said:

I'm not a fan of hiding official discounts. Success in a tourney should involve an even playing field, and being surprised by an unexpected discount giving more points to play with is not conducive with that.

I don't know that I'd want to see that in mainstream events either, but making card points opaque (in general) is something I'm interested in experimenting with, and the app could be configured to give us ways to do that.

7 hours ago, Hystarr said:

I just had a thought, and was wanting to know if anyone else had thought it.

With point costs being figured behind the scenes with the FFG APP, what are the chances that upgrades become fluid? Meaning that a specific upgrade on a Tie Fighter is X points, but if the same upgrade is on a Scurrg H-6 Bomber it is X+Y. Or perhaps it is X on the Academy Pilot Tie, but X+Z for Howlrunner in the Tie. If the APP just calculates an end point total it would be difficult to track these things. Also in a lot of ways this lets FFG be able to do stealth tweaks and adjust things behind the scenes.

I am not advocating this style, just hypothesizing a possibility and looking to see if anyone else got the sense that this might actually be a thing.

It's all but guaranteed IMO.

They already told us they can do this (which means they not only thought about it but have decided not to veto the idea internally), and 1.0 has many examples of the same principle in the fix titles that the new app and the ability to change prices is meant to replace. While some of the fixes will juts get rolled into the base ship's costs I think it's pretty safe to assume that the likes of the K-fighter's price break on modifications will live on in the new per ship costs system.

My concern is that variable upgrade costs will make it much harder to theorycraft and brainstorm with friends. Everyone has a suggestion and an idea when you've got a 3 point hole in your list but variable costs will make those conversations much less helpful.

Plus I reduce the boredom of work by writing lists in my head, much harder with variable costs. I can see why it could be good for the game but I think it's worse for the social playtesting and listbuilding side of things. Especially given that it looks like single faction play is going to become truly viable in 2.0, a lot of players expertise is about to become more niche.

Well, they did that with the Kihraxz in 1.0, so why wouldn't they do that kind of thing in 2.0?

this seems like something that @MajorJuggler worked on with his tiered price system, I feel like it may be a welcome thing if cost scales with utility.

it wouldn't be too hard theorycrafting with a variable cost as long as it was something uniform across the upgrade cards eg. "this upgrade cost 1 point for pilot lvl 1-4, 2 pts for pilot level 5 & 6

8 minutes ago, piznit said:

it wouldn't be too hard theorycrafting with a variable cost as long as it was something uniform across the upgrade cards eg. "this upgrade cost 1 point for pilot lvl 1-4, 2 pts for pilot level 5 & 6

I would hazard to guess that it might be a combination of that, plus what ship is it on, how many are in your list, and how has it performed in recent sponsored tournaments.