On Mauls crew card it says you can equip "dark side" upgrades. What do we think these will be? Im thinking they must be in the force slot and must be imperial/FO only (also scum scum when Maul is present). Im excited to see what evil effects FFG is going to cook up. Also excited to see how they can make vader even more potent.

Looking through wikipedia there are a lot of cool dark side abilities that could have interesting gameplay implications like force lightning, force choke, thought bombs(users can animate an object to destroy force sensative users nearby), & force phantoms.

So my stab at a dark side upgrade will be Force Phantom.

At the start of setup, when placing the ship with Force Phatom on the map, place 2 ships instead of 1. Secretly denote which ship is the actual ship and which one is the phantom (Im not sure how to do this at the moment). When the phantom ship is hit by an attack, bumps or is bumped by another ship, or hits an obstacle it is removed from the board. When this ship does damage on an attack, cancel all dice results and no damage is done.

This would create some crazy mind games where your opponent is trying to figure out which ship is the phantom and which is the real one. On offence you could be really hoping for a blank out or hoping that they use their evade token so your phantom is not revealed quite yet.

Anyways what are your guys ideas for dark side upgrades.

Target a ship range 1-3, Spend a force token. Target ship must suffer one stress, or one damage and you suffer one stress instead.

Spend a force to remove all focus tokens from a target ship R1-2 at the end of activation?

1 hour ago, Scum4Life said:

Target a ship range 1-3, Spend a force token. Target ship must suffer one stress, or one damage and you suffer one stress instead.

Spend a force to remove all focus tokens from a target ship R1-2 at the end of activation?

Nice but what would u name them?

I'Ve been thinking about this, and I reckon the reason we've seen nothing yet is that the devs are struggling to make something that feels "Dark," but isn't a total NPE.

So, yeah. No idea.

What if you could "Show" your opponent the "Dark Side," and you like, I dunno, pick a crit from the damage deck and just hand it to one of their ships face-up, UNDER the shields. Or is that too crazy?

1 hour ago, Kleeg005 said:

I'Ve been thinking about this, and I reckon the reason we've seen nothing yet is that the devs are struggling to make something that feels "Dark," but isn't a total NPE.

So, yeah. No idea.

Its tough to balance the force

56 minutes ago, HammerGibbens said:

What if you could "Show" your opponent the "Dark Side," and you like, I dunno, pick a crit from the damage deck and just hand it to one of their ships face-up, UNDER the shields. Or is that too crazy?

Ooof. WORST CARD EVER. At least it is not in the game at launch.

1 hour ago, TBot said:

Ooof. WORST CARD EVER. At least it is not in the game at launch.

I’m certain it’ll get a rework. My guess is it won’t go under shields, but otherwise it might stay the same.

Dark Force Idea:

Mind Probe:

While attacking, before you deal damage, you may choose to deal the same number of stress tokens instead of damage.

20 points.

Edit: actually please no. That would be so broken against large ships.

1 hour ago, ClassicalMoser said:

I’m certain it’ll get a rework. My guess is it won’t go under shields, but otherwise it might stay the same.

Dark Force Idea:

Mind Probe:

While attacking, before you deal damage, you may choose to deal the same number of stress tokens instead of damage.

20 points.

Edit: actually please no. That would be so broken against large

I like it. At that price point it might not be OP

Whatever they decide on, if the target is a droid pilot, they should be immune to any mind trick or persuasion type attack. Basically if the target generates a calculate instead of a focus, they're safe.

37 minutes ago, Kehl_Aecea said:

Whatever they decide on, if the target is a droid pilot, they should be immune to any mind trick or persuasion type attack. Basically if the target generates a calculate instead of a focus, they're safe.

Maybe something like: At the start of the engagement phase, you may spend 1 force. If you do, each other ship at range 0-1 gains 1 stress token if it has at least one focus token.

You can work around it, but avoiding focus is painful unless you’re a droid.

2 hours ago, kerbarian said:

Maybe something like: At the start of the engagement phase, you may spend 1 force. If you do, each other ship at range 0-1 gains 1 stress token if it has at least one focus token.

You can work around it, but avoiding focus is painful unless you’re a droid.

That actually works rather well.

Droids will be resistant because they can get calculate tokens, and other force uses can spend force tokens for the same function, whilst only non-force-using non-droid pilots are critically dependent on focus tokens for focus-to-hit or focus-to-evade modifiers.

Something akin to sensor jammer or juke that triggers only if the target has no focus token is a nice self-contained rule; people who should be resistant to mind tricks can get around it, 'normal' pilots can't.

I imagine all dark abilities will have a significant down side, such as Vader crew did in 1.0. Using them will cost you damage or stress you in addition to costing 1 or more force tokens.

This will help balance their effects and keep cost reasonable. If this is not the case, they would have to be very expensive.

Maul will also set a new precedent, since ships with a crew slot will now be able to get both talent and force power, which is not possible w/o Maul.

For example: Boba Fett with Talent, Force point (via Maul) and a dark side Force Power on top? Yummy!

So they will have to balance with this in mind as well.

I have a feeling that the dark side powers will require more than just the force to use. Some people have already put ideas out there like this. Self-stressing or self-damaging mechanics are probably going to be incorporated into the design.

Personally, I'd like to have a mandated straight maneuver incorporated into a dark side power. You're so F'ing mad you can't be BOTHERED TO F'ING DO ANYTHING BUT FLY RIGHT AT THAT PIECE OF...or you know, whatever.

Force Dominate

When this is the active ship during the activation phase, Spend a force token and gain two stress to force a ship R1-3 to perform a boost or barrel roll. The target ship may bump or overlap obstacles.

Force pilots into arc, or to lose arc on you, into their allies or onto obstacles.

But costs an action due to double stressing.

Hate
Spend 1 force token to apply the "Suffering" condition card to an enemy ship in your [forward firing arc].

Suffering
When attacking an enemy ship with Hate equipped, change 1 of your [hit] results into a [focus] result.

Because we all know that :

4 hours ago, vladamex said:

Maul will also set a new precedent, since ships with a crew slot will now be able to get both talent and force power, which is not possible w/o Maul.

For example: Boba Fett with Talent, Force point (via Maul) and a dark side Force Power on top? Yummy!

So they will have to balance with this in mind as well.

This is not true. Maul does not grant a force slot. He merely removes the restriction of light side factions to light side force upgrades. He doesn't grant you an upgrade slot, but gives you more flexibility for what to do with that upgrade slot.

3 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

This is not true. Maul does not grant a force slot. He merely removes the restriction of light side factions to light side force upgrades. He doesn't grant you an upgrade slot, but gives you more flexibility for what to do with that upgrade slot.

Also gives a way to mod dice multiple times via his token and regen ability. At a cost.

19 hours ago, TBot said:

At the start of setup, when placing the ship with Force Phatom on the map, place 2 ships instead of 1. Secretly denote which ship is the actual ship and which one is the phantom (Im not sure how to do this at the moment). When the phantom ship is hit by an attack, bumps or is bumped by another ship, or hits an obstacle it is removed from the board. When this ship does damage on an attack, cancel all dice results and no damage is done.

I know the cards are bigger in 2e, but that's still way too much text.

Anger - 6pts

"When attacking, if you have exactly one stress, you may spend 1 force to reroll 1 red dice."

Basically plays off Maul's crew card where if he suffers damage, he can take a stress to recover a force, and now since he is stressed and has 1 force power, he can attack and reroll a die cause he is angry at you.

Hate - 8pts

"Before setup: Choose 1 enemy ship and assign them the Hate condition. When attacking that ship, you may spend 1 force to change 1 blank result into a crit result"

35 minutes ago, wurms said:

Anger - 6pts

"When attacking, if you have exactly one stress, you may spend 1 force to reroll 1 red dice."

Basically plays off Maul's crew card where if he suffers damage, he can take a stress to recover a force, and now since he is stressed and has 1 force power, he can attack and reroll a die cause he is angry at you.

Hate - 8pts

"Before setup: Choose 1 enemy ship and assign them the Hate condition. When attacking that ship, you may spend 1 force to change 1 blank result into a crit result"

I like these, they seem very dark sidey

Suffering - +1 force points, Gain a force token token when you gain a stress.

Drawing power from your own suffering?

7 minutes ago, Scum4Life said:

Suffering - +1 force points, Gain a force token token when you gain a stress.

Drawing power from your own suffering?

Hmm.

[Suffering- when a ship at range 0-1 gains a stress token, gain one force token up to max of your ship's total force pool.]

Covers both own and nearby foe/friends.