X-Wing 1.0 had a serious problem with players exploiting the rules around bumping. The concept of castling was born out of this exploitation. Intentionally bumping your own ships should have negative consequences. Just losing an action is not enough and isn't consistent anyways. So I propose the following fix for x-wing 2.0.

Quote

After a ship bumps, that ship gains a stress token. Do not remove a stress token for blue maneuvers.

It is still possible to do castling; however, the player will be punished with stress tokens. Players will no longer have the option to exploit bumping to remove stress while keeping their ships 'in place'.

Punishing bumping with a stress, promotes 'good flying'. Good flying is not bumping into ships (even though some of you will argue otherwise).

No.

TIE swarm is looking like a meta monster in the making as it is (gorramit, Iden!). I'd rather not make them completely invincible to satisfy your inept notions on how to play the game.

12 minutes ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

So I propose the following fix for x-wing 2.0.

I will make sure management gets this.

Should I include your Genius observations, too?

Am I missing any other fixes?

41 minutes ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

X-Wing 1.0 had a serious problem with players exploiting the rules around bumping. The concept of castling was born out of this exploitation. Intentionally bumping your own ships should have negative consequences.

to save time i am just going to take my reply to your Kturn post and swap a few words.

changing a fundamental game mechanic has happened once in the history of the game and if it was going to happen to blue moves Bumping in 2.0 then i would have been before the rulebook came out.

i think blues bumping are is balanced in the wider context of the game, if you truly feel they are broken you should just figure out the best way to abuse them in a list and go win worlds.

For those confused by my comment above: I was using a little sarcasm to say that I think the fixes that Lace proposes seem to be personal rants against the designers.

I’ve seen several posts from Lace (and others!) using opinion as fact of “broken” cards that have seen no play. This posts seems to be just searching for something to complain about. It seems there is some implication that he has knowledge that far exceeds professional game developers, and he is the one spoken of in the prophecy that can bring balance to the game.

By saying I will forward his concerns to management, I was artificially inflating the legitimacy of this and other proposals, sarcastically implying that FFG management needs to get wind of this so they can fix this poorly designed game.

Sorry for the confusion.

4 hours ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

X-Wing 1.0 had a serious problem with players exploiting the rules around bumping. The concept of castling was born out of this exploitation.

The number of games I lost from bumping my own ships and losing the action is rather significant; I'd prefer my lack of games to not punish me any further.

As for 'castling', yeah, that's just **** stupid.

4 minutes ago, Rat of Vengence said:

As for 'castling', yeah, that's just **** stupid.

How can castling be addressed? Objectives doesn't really work too well because most ships have to move every turn. So if the game mode isn't radically changed, how else do you prevent castling? I think adding stress tokens to bumps would destroy the effectiveness of a castle especially if they do it multiple turns.

45 minutes ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

How can castling be addressed? Objectives doesn't really work too well because most ships have to move every turn. So if the game mode isn't radically changed, how else do you prevent castling? I think adding stress tokens to bumps would destroy the effectiveness of a castle especially if they do it multiple turns.

You aren’t thinking very deep about it though. Of course there is a solution. But it most certainly isn’t as ham fisted as yours.

I think you are under the impression that you are one of the select few who actually “understand” xwing, so you must grace us with your wonderful insights. Even if this isn’t your intent, and you are simply looking for discussion, you’ve come across a little strong in almost all your posts.

So let me just say this- The idea is bad because it focuses on one thing that, outside of obscure cases at the top level of the game, has a next to 0% impact on the actual game. But more importantly, your tunnel vision disregards it’s effect on the rest of the game entirely.

IF it was deemed an issue worth attacking, you should make it a point to not make it a buff to blocking as well. Blocking is a very powerful defensive tactic that is utilized to set up beneficial attack range on an opposing ship, and to also strip it of its action. To propose that this blocked ship also receive yet another handicap is asinine. Anyone who has played the game with experienced swarm players fully understands that blocking is plenty powerful as is.

Now if, let’s say, bumping into a FRIENDLY ship caused a negative effect, we have a worthwhile proposition. But even in this case, we don’t want to neuter new players early experiences by too harshly punishing them for simple mistakes. And on top of this, there are occasions when a block is so well executed, that it forces an opponent to run into one of their own friendly ships. Do we still want to penalize these players each time this occurs, just so we can say fortressing is dealt with?

With this in mind, The solution in my opinion seems to be to throw some luck into it as well so it isn’t a perfect penalty. If asked to resolve the issue (which I never will be, rightly so), I would propose a rule stating,

”when executing a maneuver, if you overlap a friendly ship, roll one attack die. Then, the overlapping ship suffers 1 damage for any <hit> or <critical> results rolled.”

I’m sure even this has flaws, and I’d love to hear others tear it apart and find ways to abuse it. But anyways, I hope you get what I’m getting at. There are more elements at play here that you didn’t seem to consider.

Don't fix what isn't broken

If our goal is to address castling, I'd be looking at some sort of Chess-inspired repetition rule. Maybe something like:

"If a player's ship(s) have not moved, attacked, or overlapped an enemy ship for 2/3 turns, at the end of that round all of those ships suffer 1 damage / must be assigned 1 stress token / something-or-other."

As with @Kdubb above, it's probably got some unintended consequence I haven't thought of, but in theory it would avoid game-ending punishments for using bumps tactically at any point in the game (which is good flying, no matter what some people choose to believe); getting into a "bump lock" with an enemy ship; getting unavoidably blocked by a bunch of TIE/Zs jumping into your path, and just simple mistakes. It could also be left in the Tournament Regulations, and not affect casual play where castling is not (or at least shouldn't be) an issue.

1 hour ago, Kdubb said:

I’m sure even this has flaws, and I’d love to hear others tear it apart and find ways to abuse it. But anyways, I hope you get what I’m getting at. There are more elements at play here that you didn’t seem to consider.

It's not bad, but it still suffers from punishing people for simple inexperience or for factors out of their control. Players could just randomly lose the game because their base caught a couple millimetres of an enemy blocker's corner, causing them to back up over a couple millimetres of their own ship's corner, and then losing the coin flip to blow up. Can you imagine the tables that would be flipped over that?

If we're going to address castling, we should address castling and nothing else. Changing the overlap rules across the whole game, every single time they happen, to stop something that by definition can only occur at the start of the game, is a terrible, terrible idea, no matter how subtle we try to be.

1 hour ago, DR4CO said:

If our goal is to address castling, I'd be looking at some sort of Chess-inspired repetition rule. Maybe something like:

"If a player's ship(s) have not moved, attacked, or overlapped an enemy ship for 2/3 turns, at the end of that round all of those ships suffer 1 damage / must be assigned 1 stress token / something-or-other."

As with @Kdubb above, it's probably got some unintended consequence I haven't thought of, but in theory it would avoid game-ending punishments for using bumps tactically at any point in the game (which is good flying, no matter what some people choose to believe); getting into a "bump lock" with an enemy ship; getting unavoidably blocked by a bunch of TIE/Zs jumping into your path, and just simple mistakes. It could also be left in the Tournament Regulations, and not affect casual play where castling is not (or at least shouldn't be) an issue.

It's not bad, but it still suffers from punishing people for simple inexperience or for factors out of their control. Players could just randomly lose the game because their base caught a couple millimetres of an enemy blocker's corner, causing them to back up over a couple millimetres of their own ship's corner, and then losing the coin flip to blow up. Can you imagine the tables that would be flipped over that?

If we're going to address castling, we should address castling and nothing else. Changing the overlap rules across the whole game, every single time they happen, to stop something that by definition can only occur at the start of the game, is a terrible, terrible idea, no matter how subtle we try to be.

This.

I don't object to hitting castling with a hammer. Because it shouldn't be possible to remain stationary for multiple turns in a dogfighting game. But that's not the same as removing blocking as a thing (especially since it's one of the main tools of a low-initiative swarm against a highly manoeuvrable, repositioning ace).

I've a feeling this a new trolling account from Shadow.

8 hours ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

X-Wing 1.0 had a serious problem with players exploiting the rules around bumping. The concept of castling was born out of this exploitation. Intentionally bumping your own ships should have negative consequences. Just losing an action is not enough and isn't consistent anyways. So I propose the following fix for x-wing 2.0.

It is still possible to do castling; however, the player will be punished with stress tokens. Players will no longer have the option to exploit bumping to remove stress while keeping their ships 'in place'.

Punishing bumping with a stress, promotes 'good flying'. Good flying is not bumping into ships (even though some of you will argue otherwise).

I would love to bring a swarm to your game, give you perma stress.

43 minutes ago, SOTL said:

I've a feeling this a new trolling account from Shadow.

I thought @Rexler Brath, as he‘s constantly in the threads of @Lace Jetstreamer and gifting his reactions. Shadow never stayed in his threads, he just tried to bait with the most inflammatory question/claim and never came back. This ‚new‘ guy keeps trolling, and that is new.

I don't think it's a good idea, I also think bumping in just fine. You can make bumping stronger with intimidation or else.

10 hours ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

X-Wing 1.0 had a serious problem with players exploiting the rules around bumping. The concept of castling was born out of this exploitation.

The first sentence is simply not true. The second is irrelevant given how small of a problem castling actually is. Castling doesn't actually happen all that often and when it does it's usually to delay things for a round or two. I've never been very convinced by its effectiveness as good players know to plan for it anyway. Furthermore, your suggestion has a whole bunch of unintended consequences as have already been highlighted. It's almost like you haven't fully thought through your opinion. That, combined with some of the other posts you've started recently, seems to be persuading a lot of people, myself included, that you're a borderline troll.

Edit: Excellent, I now have the @Rexler Brath "Confused" reaction badge of honour.

Bumping is quite fine, but it permits fortress tactics based on immobilism. It's ridiculous and disappointing in a dogfight game. So :

If a ship stays exactly in its place after executing a 1-5 speed maneuver, it receives two stress tokens.

5 hours ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

How can castling be addressed? Objectives doesn't really work too well because most ships have to move every turn. So if the game mode isn't radically changed, how else do you prevent castling? I think adding stress tokens to bumps would destroy the effectiveness of a castle especially if they do it multiple turns.

If it just affected castling, I'd be all for it. But it is far more often going to further punish bumping in game (castling doesn't count as a game :P) that is already amply punished by removing the opportunity for actions.

Fortressing (what castling used to be called and I'm old fashioned) never needed fixing back in Wave 4 when it was the issue of the day because it was absolute trash.

It was an issue in one game in Worlds where a four ship 'castle' was used to keep a squadron in the corner, preventing the TIE phantom (in its original Schrodinger's TIE form) from infinitely arc-dodging it. That player's plan was to break the formation at the end, snipe a single TIE fighter and win on points.

Once the TIE phantom was reworked it was never really an issue again. Fortressing costs you so much in action efficiency that it only works against extremely brittle lists. Just flying around the edge of the board with turrets is more effective.

10 hours ago, DR4CO said:

No.

TIE swarm is looking like a meta monster in the making as it is (gorramit, Iden!). I'd rather not make them completely invincible to satisfy your inept notions on how to play the game.

Hello 911? I just witnessed a murder

1 hour ago, Firespray-32 said:

Fortressing costs you so much in action efficiency that it only works against extremely brittle lists.

Castling can mean any time in the game, a player can intentionally choose to block their own ships for positional advantage. This is seen at high level play at the start of matches especially used by Low Initiative swarms. You might be referring to players who 'Point Fortress' and force their opponent to come and get them 'waiting' in the corner of the board the whole game. That is only the extreme case. The more common is as I described. I believe BOTH forms abuse the mechanics of the game.

Position is the main component of this game. Ships should not be allowed to just bump and stay in the same position without sufficient penalty. Stress is a mechanic that punishes bad flying. Ships bumping into each other should have more than just actions taken away. Abuse of mechanics should be designed out of the game. This is why harsher punishments for players who intentionally abuse the bumping mechanic are necessary. By including a stress to a bump, it now makes sense that the ship cannot take an action because ITS stressed. This is the whole point of consistency.

15 minutes ago, Lace Jetstreamer said:

Castling can mean any time in the game, a player can intentionally choose to block their own ships for positional advantage. This is seen at high level play at the start of matches especially used by Low Initiative swarms. You might be referring to players who 'Point Fortress' and force their opponent to come and get them 'waiting' in the corner of the board the whole game. That is only the extreme case. The more common is as I described. I believe BOTH forms abuse the mechanics of the game.

Position is the main component of this game. Ships should not be allowed to just bump and stay in the same position without sufficient penalty. Stress is a mechanic that punishes bad flying. Ships bumping into each other should have more than just actions taken away. Abuse of mechanics should be designed out of the game. This is why harsher punishments for players who intentionally abuse the bumping mechanic are necessary. By including a stress to a bump, it now makes sense that the ship cannot take an action because ITS stressed. This is the whole point of consistency.

And it's been pointed out by many people that all you're doing there is making swarms vastly better and also punishing bumping into enemy ships even more. You've also failed to show sufficient support for your assertion that "Ships bumping into each other should have more than just actions taken away." Castling isn't a problem in the game and it seems the majority disagrees with you that loss of action isn't a sufficient penalty for a bump.

You can make this simpler, and more targeted:

if you bump a friendly ship before leaving your deployment zone, roll one dice for each ship and suffer any hit or crit results.

9 minutes ago, Jike said:

And it's been pointed out by many people that all you're doing there is making swarms vastly better and also punishing bumping into enemy ships even more. You've also failed to show sufficient support for your assertion that "Ships bumping into each other should have more than just actions taken away." Castling isn't a problem in the game and it seems the majority disagrees with you that loss of action isn't a sufficient penalty for a bump.

Indeed. What this really does is punish formation flying, since blocking the front ship of a formation frequently results in the entire formation bumping.

Bumping is fine at present.

'Castling' (i.e. intentional bumping into your own ship) has advantages and disadvantages - and very, few few ways remain with which to castle and still keep tokens, albeit in 1e there are lots of ways to modify dice without tokens. Not to mention that it's only abuse in your opinion. I'd call it a perfectly legitimate tactic, that has verged on abusive only at one point during the game - the heights of Parattani and Triple Mindlink Scouts.

Fortressing (i.e. lists explicitly intended to simply stay in one place forever) are dumb and bad (i.e. un-fun to fly against), but they're also dumb and bad (i.e. not very competitive) - there has never been a situation during the game where a fortress list has even come close to winning any kind of regionals+ competitive event to the best of my knowledge.

It remains to be seen how useful any or all of these tactics will be in 2e, but my guess is that none of them will be that useful - there are even fewer ways to retain tokens through bumps, fewer ways to modify dice without tokens,, and in general the offensive game has increased and the defensive game has increased. Blocking is going to be a lot more useful in 2e than it has been of late in 1e.

In short, the sky is not falling, the game is currently fine, and you have no particular reason to assume this will change for 2e, and several reasons to think it won't.

The only thing better about fortressing in 2.0 would be lambda rear arcs, but it's still a non issue.