2 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Just re-looked at iden. Holy crap was I reading his ability wrong. I thought he only canceled 1 point of damage. Yeah, he’s waaay better than I thought.

Yup. He could take swarms from tier 3 to tier 1. That’s an insane ability.

I like the new revealed pilots, but I'm kinda disappointed in not seeing a change with the TIE fighter.

My issue is not that it is too weak, it will probably do just fine in the 2.0 environment.

I just don't like that the "powerful Rebel X-wings and nimble Imperial TIE fighters!" turned into "powerful and nimble Rebel X-wings and boring Imperial TIE fighters!"

Sure, the X-Wing needed the buff. But it didn't need to be more maneuverable than the TIE, which had very little going for it in terms of design anyway. In this world of exciting flavors, it remained vanilla.

But they teased some articles specifically about TIE fighters, so I'm holding out for some really nice surprise. At least I can get disappointed if we get nothing.

2 hours ago, LordFajubi said:

They tried the no variance thing in 1.0, it failed. Made the game predictable, lop-sided and for many unfun. I’ll take the chance on rolling dice again any day if the games are exciting and fun again. ?

Take out dice all together. Attack number translates to damage done, with range bonus adding damage and bullseye changing to critical damage. Agility number is the number of evades you get to counter damage per turn. Range bonus adds an evade.

Predictable, boring and no RNG. Perfect game design.

You should be able to get 4/5 named with 2/1 academies with crackshot or other cheap 2-3pt upgrades.

Avg 35pts for named x 4 is 140. Add in two academies at 48pts for 188. And you got enough for some crackshots, etc.

Wampa is very cool. Kinda of like the imperial Rex. Instead of taking a die away, wampa adds an attack die unless you shoot him - just like rex.

Iden has a very powerful ability and she will be in every swarm build from here on out.

The TIE Fighter pilots HAVE to be good, similarly to how the Interceptor pilots will HAVE to be good, because the basic frame is entirely too fragile for any "meh" abilities. Especially considering they didn't get any cheaper and as far as we know haven't gained... well anything to offset that X-Wings got objectively better unless they drive the X-wing price up to more then double a TIE fighter.

3 hours ago, LordFajubi said:

Eh, doubling hull and shields would just make the game take longer, especially with double dice. Maybe a system like D&D character creation where you roll 1 extra but drop your choice. Or for some real shenanigans your opponent picks which one die you drop. That could be interesting.

3 hours ago, DerRitter said:

Quick intuition: on average it would be the same, but the variance would be much more, it could lead to much longer games.

2 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Just doubling dice wouldn’t do it, because (on average) a given die doesn’t roll 1 damage, but .5 damage (additional modifiers for tokens). So you would need to more than double the dice, but by how much I don’t know.

Doubling hull, shields, green dice and red dice would make the game take a significantly shorter period of time, with lower variance, higher average damage and fairer tournament play. Doubling any number of red dice is more effective than doubling the same number of green dice, because reds have a 4/8 chance of hits and greens have a 3/8 chance, so every shot in the game is going to do more damage, on average. The very nature of variance is that the more trials you do the closer the experimental average converges on the mean, so if you carry on more dice toward the infinite you'd have no variance and a boring game. Doubling the dice count would require an adjustment to the way the whole game operates, but it would have been a good idea from the start.

As for awesome TIE fighters, I'm hoping Dark Curse makes a return in a future expansion he was always my bane favourite.

In fairness, TIE fighters always had really good pilot abilities precisely because they were cheap.

Going from 12 point academy pilot to 18 point howlrunner was 1/3 of the price of the ship....hence howlrunner's early-wave-warping ability.

But yes, Howlrunner's ability has gotten better, Iden Versio gives a squad a get-out-of-death-free card, and Wampa is a cut-price TIE interceptor if you ignore him (he's essentially the new Backstabber).

Scourge Skutu presumably keeps his ability.

I'll be interested to see Del and Gideon's abilities - if either (or both) have conditional extra attack dice, then getting 4 'extra attack dice' TIE fighters plus howlrunner plus Iden is one heck of a starting point for a swarm, especially with no splash damage missiles to deal with.

8 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Just re-looked at iden. Holy crap was I reading his ability wrong. I thought he only canceled 1 point of damage. Yeah, he’s waaay better than I thought.

6 hours ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

Yup. He could take swarms from tier 3 to tier 1. That’s an insane ability.

Iden Versio is a woman. She was the commander of Inferno Squad, a special forces unit employed by the empire.

She is voiced by and modeled after Janina Gavankar.

Art credit: Darren Tan

A serious buff that should not be overlooked: Mithel, Scourge and Howl are now at the same initiative. A difficult part of maneuvering the Slaughterhouse/Crackshot swarm was that all of these guys were of different ps. Now that that is gone, this opens up a lot of possibilities. Being able to choose the order of activation is HUGE for a TIE swarm. Btw: If snapshot returns (maybe "bullseye arc only") we are in for some fun.

I'm expecting 4 named TIEs and an ace to be a really, really good list.

Which is good because it's a fun archetype.

15 minutes ago, Aaron Foss said:

Iden Versio is a woman. She was the commander of Inferno Squad, a special forces unit employed by the empire.

Ah yes. I did read that in one of these threads.

Considering we have Inferno Squad now, do you think Iden will have access to a Torp slot (she does have a personalized TIE after all)?

If so, that could split the swarm types up. Howlrunner with mass generics (the classic) or Inferno Squad (three TIES) with an ace.

I'm liking the idea either way.

10 hours ago, Infinite_Maelstrom said:

Well it depends how bad the x-wing is at rolling hits.

Red dice can be fickle too.

true but not much..

On the one hand we’ve got some cool abilities. On the other the chassis from the trash compactor. Light. Darkness. A balance.

4 hours ago, Aaron Foss said:

Iden Versio is a woman. She was the commander of Inferno Squad, a special forces unit employed by the empire.

She is voiced by and modeled after Janina Gavankar.

Art credit: Darren Tan

Must be from one of them new fangled video games, probably Atari. I ain’t got time for that.

1 hour ago, Sasajak said:

On the one hand we’ve got some cool abilities. On the other the chassis from the trash compactor. Light. Darkness. A balance.

I kind of like that aspect. A huge factor in having quality pilots is just getting them time behind the stick. For all its weaknesses, TIEs are cheap to fly, so the pilots can get a lot of experience quickly.

Makes sense that the named TIE pilots would be good. You had to be seriously good to even survive in one for very long...

17 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

I kind of like that aspect. A huge factor in having quality pilots is just getting them time behind the stick. For all its weaknesses, TIEs are cheap to fly, so the pilots can get a lot of experience quickly.

You know, I've always thought that if the TIEs have ejector seats the pilots themselves should have a higher survival rate. I thiiiiink they have an auto-eject. But my reasoning is this: TIE pilots wear their life support, so it might actually make sense for the cockpit to already be a vacuum. Can't have decompressions if there's nothing to decompress. And once the craft does take lethal damage, there's no atmosphere to be superheated by blaster bolts. Meanwhile, you have all the pretty-faced Rebels, all surrounded by their precious, ignitable oxygen, just so they can show their faces.

If any X-Wing ship is to get really good pilot abilities, I would prefer it to be the humble TIE Fighter.

Let's face it, their main strength is that they're cheap and disposable. With only three hull and only really the Modification and Elite Talent slots to customise them, you're not going to be sticking lots of points into them, and there's not many ways to directly improve their performance.

So, if very powerful named pilot abilities help keep them on the table, that's OK by me!

55 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Let's face it, their main strength is that they're cheap and disposable

This always made me wonder how these pilots accrued enough combat flight time to have these cool abilities.

23 minutes ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

This always made me wonder how these pilots accrued enough combat flight time to have these cool abilities.

They're good. They're very good.

24 minutes ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

This always made me wonder how these pilots accrued enough combat flight time to have these cool abilities.

Just now, LagJanson said:

They're good. They're very good.

Practice? Rebels can barely fuel their fleet, so they practice in simulators. TIE Fighters probably cost as much as a sandwich to fly for 30 minutes, and they're super standardized, so pilots get a lot of actual meaningful hands on training. Knowing Imperial respect for lives, err, desire for realistic training scenarios, they can probably push them pretty hard, which is good once combat actually happens. Not saying there's live fire training or anything, but high stress training scenarios in the ship you'll actually fly in combat makes for a good pilot.

1 minute ago, Biophysical said:

Practice? Rebels can barely fuel their fleet, so they practice in simulators. TIE Fighters probably cost as much as a sandwich to fly for 30 minutes, and they're super standardized, so pilots get a lot of actual meaningful hands on training. Knowing Imperial respect for lives, err, desire for realistic training scenarios, they can probably push them pretty hard, which is good once combat actually happens. Not saying there's live fire training or anything, but high stress training scenarios in the ship you'll actually fly in combat makes for a good pilot.

There's also, of course, the safety in numbers routine. Seems to work in the animal kingdom anyway!

Meh, I hardly ever use named tie pilots as they tie pretty quickly. Also when using a mini swarms of named pilots I get too confused as to who is who and who is doing what...

At least now a lot of the named pilots should be the same pilot skill, which as someone else said.. helps a lot when it comes to planning and not self bumping.

2 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Must be from one of them new fangled video games, probably Atari. I ain’t got time for that.

Battlefront 2 (Atari hasn't been around since 1986)