I feel Lone Wolf got hit hard - not only does it still have the range 1-2 restriction, but you only get 1 reroll per round. Granted, mods are supposed to be harder to come by, but LW already had a pretty strict positional requirement.

I think LW would have been cool if it stuck to only rerolling blanks, cost 6 points, but had 2 charges (recovering 1 per round).

I mean, 2.0 LW is not bad, it's just not that great.

Man I can't imagine why anyoned be down on Barrage. They're PERFECT, like ATC done infinetly better because it doesn't overtly favor high initiative

They reward good play (even moreso with the bullseye benefit), punish mistakes, are open to counterplay. Plus they're 3 dice so they're not stupid

Also no extra green die at range 3!!!! So you're rewarded for good range control atop everything!

They're like...THE perfect upgrade

And let me tell you, there's little more fun than a Sat Salvo Bomber just going HAM on Barrage rockets because **** it, they're short lived so **** has to die. I've thrown like three charges out with wild abadon just to ping Soontir once. Totally worth it (proton bomb got him) ?

3P0 seems basically unplayable now.

He needed toning down for sure but he got hit THREE ways and any one of them would have made him questionable at best.

1. You have to guess at least 1 now. That's fine really, still usable but less reliable for 1 agility, maybe find a spot for him on a 2 agility and see how it goes.

2. You have to spend a calculate token to trigger him. Okay so that by itself is a huge nerf, now you have to burn your action prepping him and then also burn a token you got from that action. Combine that with the call 1+ restriction and you're wasting actions and tokens for no payout a lot of the time. The only slight saving grace is that he does get you a second calculate token so you aren't left with nothing when he wiffs, but you are worse off than if you hadn't brought him at all and just focused.

3. MAYBE you could find a spot for him if he was cheap enough. Even dirt cheap though he'd be using up a crew slot and often as not makes your ship worse instead of better. Except instead of making him cheaper they DOUBLED his point cost. 12 in 2e.

I get that they are trying to clamp down on the passive mods. That's fine, but if you're going to make 3P0 this ridiculously bad, just make his power something different. You gotta have some version of 3P0 in a Star Wars game just make him do something else if you don't want him generating free evades.

1 hour ago, BDrafty said:

Honest answer:

I think 5-7 points for a bulls-eye arc focus modifier would be ok if you kept the stress mechanic that it has in 1.0

The other option would be to limit the dice mods to 1 of your focus resutls.

I hear you, it was an overly sweet upgrade in 1.0. There was just a cool mechanic about it that I liked. PTL has a spiritual successor in the form of linked actions (and new Poe). I'm just sorry that expertise seems to have gone the way of cards like VI. I don't think it was nearly as game-breaking.

And yet, it really was. It seems a lot of players are still longing for all the things that broke 1E and created the reason for a revision of the game. Even I miss a few things about 1E, but I know this new version is far more balanced and makes all the ships valid - and quite frankly, the ships are more important than the upgrades. I lovelovelove that the new Squints don't really even need upgrades to be great and still feel like Squints. Many of the bullseye upgrades are designed to reward good flying. If you think they're too hard to use then maybe you're looking at it the wrong way - force opponents to do what you want - corral them using turn 0 (rock placement) and use bait ships to lure them in for kill shots. Think 3 moves ahead and you'll find bullseye arcs rewarding and then crackshot and predator become valuable tools instead of seeming like a waste of points.

2E forces you to be a better player, both in list building and flying. There is no easy-button. That's a good thing!

3 hours ago, SOTL said:

Ordnance is in a tricky spot, though. They've got all these ships that depend on Ordnance to work but we've now got 4 years experience that they're mostly going to suck because Ordnance is a pain in the *** to set and use your target locks without having a high PS. Unfortunately we've also got 2 years experience that the only thing worse than Ordnance being rubbish is Ordnance being good. So what are you supposed to do? You give good Ordnance and everyone kicks off, you give bad Ordnance and a quarter of the ships in the game disappear because you can't fire your missiles at low PS. The solution is Barrage Rockets, but now you've got a solution that essentially removes everything unique about ships that needed Ordnance to begin with and just makes them a 3 dice primary.

I think that the "failure" with ordnance is that they keep defining them in terms of "a primary weapon attack, but not." Sure, there the no R3 bonus, but other than that, there is not much to differentiate them.

IMHO, the easiest fix would be to let (at least some of them) have a 180 degree arc of fire--if a ship is in from of me, it can get shot, because missile/torps have guidance. This would reward low Init ships with a weapon of "stay loose, get the shot" that would at least give them a niche role. Keep damage low and/or cost higher, but make them different than a primary arc weapon.

With the new base plates, effects in the side and rear arc are also easy to implement.

28 minutes ago, Bad Idea Comics said:

And yet, it really was. It seems a lot of players are still longing for all the things that broke 1E and created the reason for a revision of the game. Even I miss a few things about 1E, but I know this new version is far more balanced and makes all the ships valid - and quite frankly, the ships are more important than the upgrades. I lovelovelove that the new Squints don't really even need upgrades to be great and still feel like Squints. Many of the bullseye upgrades are designed to reward good flying. If you think they're too hard to use then maybe you're looking at it the wrong way - force opponents to do what you want - corral them using turn 0 (rock placement) and use bait ships to lure them in for kill shots. Think 3 moves ahead and you'll find bullseye arcs rewarding and then crackshot and predator become valuable tools instead of seeming like a waste of points.

2E forces you to be a better player, both in list building and flying. There is no easy-button. That's a good thing!

That's all well and good, but I still miss a tasty talent upgrade from time to time. I get that the ships and the pilots have taken center stage in 2.0 (it was that way in the early days of 1.0 as well), but most of the talent upgrades are pretty **** lack-luster. Is it impossible to find a kind of middle ground between completely broken and completely useless? SHOULD no talent upgrade fundamentally change the way you fly a ship?

If the talent upgrades are only ment to give you a little extra gold star for good flying, I guess they designed them right in 2.0.

2 minutes ago, BDrafty said:

That's all well and good, but I still miss a tasty talent upgrade from time to time. I get that the ships and the pilots have taken center stage in 2.0 (it was that way in the early days of 1.0 as well), but most of the talent upgrades are pretty **** lack-luster. Is it impossible to find a kind of middle ground between completely broken and completely useless? SHOULD no talent upgrade fundamentally change the way you fly a ship?

If the talent upgrades are only ment to give you a little extra gold star for good flying, I guess they designed them right in 2.0.

The whole concept of using bullseye arcs does fundamentally change the way you fly a ship. I guess I'm not seeing what you're seeing. I've played a couple games in 2.0 (both double Defender lists) and found that Outmaneuver was incredibly rewarding. It played well to the new concept of the Advanced Sensor equipped Defender. At the same time I saw how potent Predator could be, especially when paired with FCS on an E-wing (my opponent was flying Corran Horn). It's a great double whammy. He flew well and was able to greatly capitalize on 2 die re-rolls a few times during the game. Not every turn, but it paid off for sure and certainly rewarded his good flying. We both flew our ships in ways that capitalized on those talents, but really, it was the reverse - we knew how we wanted to fly and chose talents that were appropriate for that style of flying. I wanted to not be in arc and my opponent wanted to double tap with Corran.

I guess my point is that any upgrade can look like garbage on paper, but can be gold when paired with a plan. The lack-luster talents may be quite fun and effective if you have specific goals in mind.

Well yeah, you really don't want any upgrade dominating everything (vi...)

Plenty are fine, though

All the bullseye stuff is dirt cheap, so if you got spare points...

Trickshot is well worth it on a turret

Elusive is probably the single most universally appreciable talent.

No one remembers squad leader

Outmanuever might be a bit too pricey. Sat Salvo too, but **** if it ain't the bee's knees with Barrage Rockets

Finally, ruthless is quite good. Ships die FAST in second Ed, which sometimes makes all out offense the best defense. Putting a damage on a Bomber to put a damage on an enemy Vader is more than worth it

Found it best on Kestal because she gets hits through enemy mods

The problem with Expertise in 2.0, even bullseye, is that it completely negates the choice you have to make over whether to spend a focus on offence or defence. This is an important choice.

Yes Force does the same thing but Force does have a limited pool and is costed pretty high.

As for stuff that went to far or didn’t go far enough. Advanced Sensors is probably still too cheap. I would have liked to have seen a progressive point cost for it based on your initiative.

Palob is probably too cheap for an ability that basically says free range 2 Jam and I get your token. The points can change but the ability should have probably just been range 1. The Shadowcaster was probably my most hated ship in 1.0. The 180 angle arc with a range 2 grief ability was horrible. Way too easy to keep that arc on target all the time. Now the HWKs have the same and all the Scum ones have briefing abilities. Palob, like Assaj is definitely the worst offender and unlike Assaj he is very very cheap. His ability like 1.0 Assaj helps to keep him alive and the Moldy Crow improves that too. I like that HWKs are better, I just think Palob probably needed a different treatment. Range 1, maybe a choice like 000. I think FFG underestimate the angle arc

Most of the stuff I’ve encountered is stuff that didn’t go far enough, and that can probably be fixed later with points buffs.

I don't know, I haven't played it yet.

4 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

I don't know, I haven't played it yet.

Why not? I wrote new maneuvers on 1.0 dials and my opponent simply wrote his maneuvers down on a pad. The rest can simply be printed out and we used ion or crit tokens for keeping track of charges. Now that all the info is available I can't imagine waiting. It's been great fun and I'm looking forward to plenty more 2.0 games before 9/13.

1 hour ago, Bad Idea Comics said:

Why not?

Because they still haven't finished the only game mode worth playing: Epic.

2 hours ago, Bad Idea Comics said:

Why not? I wrote new maneuvers on 1.0 dials and my opponent simply wrote his maneuvers down on a pad. The rest can simply be printed out and we used ion or crit tokens for keeping track of charges. Now that all the info is available I can't imagine waiting. It's been great fun and I'm looking forward to plenty more 2.0 games before 9/13.

Because I have other stuff to do.

Not only that, but I can wait for the official stuff.

18 hours ago, mazz0 said:

Why are you calling ships “chassis”? The simplest item you can get in X-Wing is a complete ship - chassis, engine, guns, shields, armour, life support.

It’s not a car. If it were a plane, it would have an airframe. Maybe a “spaceframe?” Space shuttles had airframes. We’ll go with that.

double post!

23 hours ago, Dreadai said:

HLC will rock the house on T-70s, especially given access to both reposition abilities with s-foils... it's going to be so sweet.

Nah?

I am glad that expertise is gone. It was one of the signs, 1ed was so-unfun and partly broken in the end.

Even at 4pts it was an auto-include. However going into the EPT slot it further enforced ace- and combowing, rendering most pilots, esp EPT less pilots useless.

Easy mode passive modifier, no choices involved apart from "avoid stress". Uncounterable by blocking, jamming, token stealing. Enabling fully modded shots even when repositioning. Extremely strong in combo with other "focus result on die" supplying sources.

2ed is about choices, good flying, and mods are rare. Even generics can pull their weight and are (expected to be) fielded. Expertise runs directly counter to these ideas.

Hopefully it never comes back. Knowing FFG though...somehow they have to sell the Clone Wars era stuff even to people disliking this time period of Star Wars. I am really hoping I am just overly pessimistic

Did anybody else hate how expertise (an elite pilot talent), had art of a guy with a gun on the ground?

Too far? Nah, every upgrade card is range 3 or less.

57 minutes ago, EastCoast said:

Too far? Nah, every upgrade card is range 3 or less.

Insert evil Palp laugh here

2 hours ago, EastCoast said:

Too far? Nah, every upgrade card is range 3 or less.

Well there were those glue sniffers who were arguing that a ships arc was not limited to range 3 and extended infinitely.

23 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

Nah?

Yah! S-foils close only impacts primary weapons!!

On 8/20/2018 at 12:54 AM, hawk32 said:

I think they could have left lone wolf the way it was in 1.0. It had enough restrictions (limited, range restriction, only blanks) already that I don't think it would have been auto-include... although it definitely could have seen a pt increase.

You are right that it wasn't an auto-include; Predator always seemed to get used over Lone Wolf anyway, despite Lone Wolf working on offense AND defense. The only thing I saw it on a lot (relatively speaking) was N'dru in the Z-95. My problem with the new Lone Wolf is that is costs 1 energy to use it. Why? Lone Wolf seems like it fits the bill of a "talent" or "elite trait" that would be innate to an ace pilot; it isn't the name of a computer system or something that would require energy to use. Makes no sense...

On 8/20/2018 at 8:26 PM, ficklegreendice said:

Barrage.
[...]

Also no extra green die at range 3!!!!

That's odd. They are a non-TL-guided weapon, and thus should not deny the R3 defensive bonus.

26 minutes ago, EYEL1NER said:

You are right that it wasn't an auto-include; Predator always seemed to get used over Lone Wolf anyway, despite Lone Wolf working on offense AND defense. The only thing I saw it on a lot (relatively speaking) was N'dru in the Z-95. My problem with the new Lone Wolf is that is costs 1 energy to use it. Why? Lone Wolf seems like it fits the bill of a "talent" or "elite trait" that would be innate to an ace pilot; it isn't the name of a computer system or something that would require energy to use. Makes no sense...

Charges aren't Energy, they can represent any number of things. I suppose in this case it represents the pilot's concentration or something.