First, let me be honest that I love the idea of Epic play, as well as looking forward to second edition.

This of course led me to think about how I would design Epic play for 2.0.

 Energy

I think the first thing I would do is revamp the whole energy system. In fact, we seemingly have a mechanic for it right now - charges. If each epic hardpoint had a number of charges, as well as the main body, we can get the mechanic of transfering power - spend (flip) a charge on the main ship and you can ready(flip) a charge on a hard point.

The movement dial

This I would eliminate entirely. Instead, much like armada, give a dial that sets a speed, including a zero speed. You can change speeds as an action perhaps. This speed is the number of charges you spend to to execute a maneuver of that speed. Going fast will thus use up a number of charges that you can't put towards other things.

 Damage Deck

I think a single damage deck is probably the way to go. That being said, epic ships should have some more penalizing effects from said deck including loss of...

Crew

I am not talking about the upgrade slot, but something similar to shields - a resource that can be lost. The more crew you have, the more actions or attacks you can take. This may sound like energy, but, it goes along with changing the way epic ships play to a more..

 Worker placement

.. type of play style. Epic ships should play different than the fighters and freighters that zoom around. The ship card will be made larger, and have sections to where you can assign the crew. Depending where you assign crew they could be in danger from..

Targeted attacks.

Some areas and points of a ship have always been targeted by daring heroes. Why not take more to cripple a ship, slowly whittling them down to nothing - or maybe killing the crew, leaving the ship as nothing more than a large obstacle.

Some interesting thoughts. The idea of setting a speed is intriguing but this does give your opponent a lot of information about where the huge ship will end up. What were you thinking for manoeuvres - the same template or something more Armada like? I think energy will be replaced by the charge system somehow. This will help integrate Epic and Standard game modes. I would like to see the ability to take additional actions by spending charges.

Personally love the separate damage decks for huge ships - those crits are brutal! Plus I don’t see having a Blinded Pilot or Console Fire being an issue on a huge ship.

6 hours ago, Sasajak said:

The   idea of setting a speed is intriguing but this does give your opponent a lot of information about where the hug  e ship will end u  p  .

Which, IMO, is as it should be. A fighter pilot should really have a good idea where the big ships are going to be from second to second.

6 hours ago, Sasajak said:

What  were you thinking for manoeuvres - the same template or something more Armada like?   

You know, I realized after a while that each joint on the Armada move template is essentially a single huge ship move from x-wing. The ship basically move forward a bit and then rotates around an internal point. They’re not quite the same, but it really feels like they decided how a big ship should move in x-wing, then just made a tool to let a ship do that 1-4 times at once for Armada.

16 hours ago, Sasajak said:

Some interesting thoughts. The idea of setting a speed is intriguing but this does give your opponent a lot of information about where the huge ship will end up. What were you thinking for manoeuvres - the same template or something more Armada like? I think energy will be replaced by the charge system somehow. This will help integrate Epic and Standard game modes. I would like to see the ability to take additional actions by spending charges.

Personally love the separate damage decks for huge ships - those crits are brutal! Plus I don’t see having a Blinded Pilot or Console Fire being an issue on a huge ship.

I was thinking of keeping the same template for movement, it works well enough I find.

As to the seperate damage deck, what I was proposing was a unified damage deck for huge ships, not using the same for the smaller craft. Basically, the cr-90, transport, Raider, Gozanti, and c-roc would share a damage deck.

My 2.0 Epic "Prognosis" is that FFG were holding back the second Scum epic until 2.0's release.

I've long tbought that x-wing should add more variety of dice. X-wing 2.0 showed that not to happen. But, Epic could very much do that.

The idea is that small ships should be hard to hit (“they are avoiding our turbo lasers”) but if they do they get hammered. This could be accomplished with new dice. An singe evade from a green die cancels the hit. But if a hit occurs, bad news for the pilot.

If course this could be done with putting some minimum range values on epic weapons say range 2-4 or such. But a new armour die also works with targetting specific weapons/areas of an epic ship.

I would love to see epic ships become a more tactical battle. You have faster more agile ships fly close to target to take out point defense weapons so heavier ships can come in.

I loved old flight sims like wing commander, and of course TIE Fighter, where you could target certain guns, to lessen the threat. That would make a more interesting play style, for me anyways.

On 5/14/2018 at 11:35 AM, That Blasted Samophlange said:

 First, let me be honest that I love the idea of Epic play, as well as looking forward to second edition.

This of course led me to think about how I would design Epic play for 2.0.

 Energy

I think the first thing I would do is revamp the whole energy system. In fact, we seemingly have a mechanic for it right now - charges. If each epic hardpoint had a number of charges, as well as the main body, we can get the mechanic of transfering power - spend (flip) a charge on the main ship and you can ready(flip) a charge on a hard point.

The movement dial

This I would eliminate entirely. Instead, much like armada, give a dial that sets a speed, including a zero speed. You can change speeds as an action perhaps. This speed is the number of charges you spend to to execute a maneuver of that speed. Going fast will thus use up a number of charges that you can't put towards other things.

 Damage Deck

I think a single damage deck is probably the way to go. That being said, epic ships should have some more penalizing effects from said deck including loss of...

Crew

I am not talking about the upgrade slot, but something similar to shields - a resource that can be lost. The more crew you have, the more actions or attacks you can take. This may sound like energy, but, it goes along with changing the way epic ships play to a more..

 Worker placement

.. type of play style. Epic ships should play different than the fighters and freighters that zoom around. The ship card will be made larger, and have sections to where you can assign the crew. Depending where you assign crew they could be in danger from..

Targeted attacks.

Some areas and points of a ship have always been targeted by daring heroes. Why not take more to cripple a ship, slowly whittling them down to nothing - or maybe killing the crew, leaving the ship as nothing more than a large obstacle.

Well let me go through some of the 2.0 stuff and your post.

• Energy is now a standard part of X-wing with the upgrade cards having energy systems. That being said I can see energy from huge ships being used to recharge upgrades. Thus you don't need two different R2-D2 upgrades as R2-D2 can be on a huge ship recharging the shields and drawing energy from the ship. That being said you can also equip missile and torpedo upgrades without the need for Ordnance Tubes as they will naturally recharge with energy from the ship.
• Well the dial can be opened up more with alternative ways of using the maneuver tool much like how S-loops and T-rolls added different maneuvers without adding different maneuver templates. That also being said to segway from the last part the energy system can be revamped to where the in 1.0 energy came from the dial to the ship. Now energy can come from the ship and the dial burns up energy on its maneuver. If there is not enough energy (from ion damage) then it can crawl to a 1 straight and discard all energy.
• Damage deck should be unique per ship. There is a lot more space on a ship and a unique deck would be the way to simplify that where as star-fighters are smaller thus have more of the same components (engines/cockpit/weapons). If they were to unify damage deck something that was suggested in one of the podcast where each faction had their own unique damage deck only that was a standard suggestion but I can see that being applied to epic.
• Again I think that is what can be abstracted by actions, energy and a unique damage deck.
• If all huge ships now go to 2 (or more) section cards I can see being able to move upgrades (like R2-D2) around from one section to the other.
• Back on a past point if all ships have multiple sections that can be the targeted area.

Something else I would like to see is, Epic ships get a new base. Really something like the Armada bases. Fighters should be able to zip across or under the capital ships, flying close to target individual cannons or shield generators.

Epic ships with more actions/attacks, would be good.

On ‎5‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 7:35 PM, That Blasted Samophlange said:

If each epic hardpoint had a number of charges, as well as the main body, we can get the mechanic of transfering power - spend (flip) a charge on the main ship and you can ready(flip) a charge on a hard point.

Indeed. Simply because of stuff like sections, epic ships will need their own (minor) rules addendum. Making them as close to the core rules as possible would be good, though.

• Shields can have a standard '1-up' icon for natural (if slow) regen.
• The ship card can have energy, and '1-up energy', and a 'ship rule' box allowing you to transfer it onto upgrades at a given point in the turn.
• Jam and Reinforce need only be in line with their standard equivalents
• White Chained Actions (say Jam/Target Lock) gives you the action economy a big ship needs.
• Slow movement is fine. Essentially a single speed straight or bank, with an action (and/or charge) to 'boost' is probably enough without needing multiple speeds.

I don’t think there should be a penalty for moving quickly (such as losing charges), the penalty should come when you change speed. How about instead of costing an action to change speed (cos actions are a lot of potential fun on a huge ship, let’s keep them open) you have to spend a charge to do so (one charge per speed change)?

I feel like, given the opportunity of reworking features, that command dials may be a good idea. These are still light-ish ships so I don't think they need as many as the heavier armada ships; but most actions should at-least have some delay I think. Maybe split actions into ones that can be done swiftly and ones that need to be initiated some time before they resolve.

Epic ships already have delayed actions by activating last in the round.

The idea to replace energy with charges is sound, I also like the idea lf having more actions on epic ships (so they can earn those points back).

However Im not a fan on adding complexity in the form of crew or any other resource management. Epic games already take a lot of time, considering players are fielding much larger squadrons. I prefer to keep them as streamlined as posible, so the speed of epic games can be improved.

I love most of the concepts presented here. I love the charges idea and I have a feeling that was one of many reasons why that mechanic was introduced - it's a universal mechanic that can be applied to innumerable aspects of the game. I actually really like the concept of crew, but maybe lumping them in with the charges used for energy. Actions, attacks, movement, etc can all have a specific cost in charges, and different ships could have variations of those costs to represent a ship that may be more efficient in one aspect. Certain damage cards could cause crew damage which might increase the charge cost of actions because you have fewer crew to perform them. I'm just spit-balling here, but really, this system could work on so many levels, all with a single mechanic.

Another aspect, and I've brought this up somewhere else before, is fielding flights of fighters on a large base using a "tree" type stand. Four small ships or two medium ships. This would speed up gameplay and offers some interesting tactical options with flight formations - I'd thought of offensive, defensive and scout formations gaining special abilities to better hit, better stay alive or better position at game start. This would be balanced by slightly limited, albeit faster, movement. Again, just a thought and it would need lots of hashing out, but I think it would create a way to both speed up large games and make the game feel even larger at the same time. Maybe then Epic would see tournament play, which would create even more interest and then support.

Note: I own every Epic ship and have yet to play a single game of Epic. This disappoints me, but, at the same time, it prevented me from buying a gazillion ships pre 2.0, so that's the one upside - I'm only stuck with maybe three ships I won't have dials for come 2.0's release. That said, I'm a bit rabid to see Epic 2.0 because I WANT to use those big ships badly.

On 6/20/2018 at 7:19 PM, DerRitter said:

Epic ships already have delayed actions by activating last in the round.

The idea to replace energy with charges is sound, I also like the idea lf having more actions on epic ships (so they can earn those points back).

However Im not a fan on adding complexity in the form of crew or any other resource management. Epic games already take a lot of time, considering players are fielding much larger squadrons. I prefer to keep them as streamlined as posible, so the speed of epic games can be improved.

I agree. Less book keeping the better.