I am new to the game and noticed basically all angles seen in most games are 45° rotations of your starting angle, except for incomplete maneuvers.

If your enemy sets up facing board directions or 45° off of that, and you set up in between, e.g. 22° to the straight, that might increase the chances of bullseye. It becomes that line that is awkward to cross or fly along no matter what maneuver is picked.

Can somebody math that?

I usually set up my ships at 45/90° and 22° off those angles. When you are playing the bump game, the mix of angles make it harder for some players to visualize your ship positioning. Especially if you are approaching through the middle of the obstacle field. Since I often set up that way, I know how to set up obstacles to complement my flight paths. Approaching a ship at the 45° angle gives you slightly more base to get in bullseye than if your ship is approaching at about 22/68°. Only by a couple millitmeters though. You don't need maths; you just need a ship base, an angle-measuring thing, t-square, and a ruler.

41 minutes ago, Xeletor said:

I am new to the game and noticed basically all angles seen in most games are 45° rotations of your starting angle, except for incomplete maneuvers.

If your enemy sets up facing board directions or 45° off of that, and you set up in between, e.g. 22° to the straight, that might increase the chances of bullseye. It becomes that line that is awkward to cross or fly along no matter what maneuver is picked.

Can somebody math that?

I used to fly 4x Juke/PTL Green Squadron Pilots this way back in 1.0. It was good then just because people had a hard time figuring out where you could go if you weren’t some variation of 45° in orientation to them. With bullseyes being a thing now, I definitely need to get back in to the habit.

The change to more of a snap int style of movement (barrel roll) and the inclusion of the bullseye arc has always been a source of contention for me. The bullseye arcs are supposed to reward good spatial awareness, but it works best in free form with you being able to place the ship at any angle other wise the blind spots will be picked out and you will never get a shot. The snap in nature of 2nd edition does make for a smother table top experience and less subject to interpretations of the "true location" arguments that has came across many table top games (aka inch pinching).

For me in order to fully integrate bullseye arcs into 2nd edition to an effective manner there has to be ways to rotate < 45 degrees. Perhaps if there was an upgrade card that allowed you to perform a partial bank (as if you were bumping) at the start of the planning phase. That way you still get most of the snap in movement during the activation, but you can make careful adjustments to line up those bullseye shots.

Can someone please post up a little graphic to illustrate this? I’m having a hard time with visualization.

To easily line up at 22.5 degrees (1/2 of 45), you can set any bank maneuver off the backside of your deployment zone and off the back of your ship. Line up the edges of the bank to be pointed straight across the field and you have legally setup your ship at this angle.

22.5 degrees has been talked about a few times over the years, but never really adopted as near as I can tell. For the bullseye arc to hit your opponent, you have the best options if you have double reposition (autothrusters now). Its all about how you engage the enemy. If you engage them and both of you are straight on, the profile is the hardest to hit (narrowest). Same if you engage them at 90 degrees. It will be hardest to hit their ship at "square" angles. However, engaging at 45 degrees from your opponent nets you the largest target base size (as their base is about 1.4 times as wide at 45 degrees off one of yours). If you line up at 22.5 degrees and your opponent is square at either 0 or 45 degrees, when you do engage you will have the average, or about 1.2 times the width of a base no matter what angle you engage at. This is all assuming small bases.

22.5 combines with bullseye to get the "greatest area" of an enemy ship's base "most of the time" that falls under the bullseye.

But it is just another fraction of 45 degrees, and if you really want to mess with arc dodgers, then deliberately set up just a nudge off one of the "primary" fractions - it will take a little practise for you, but the number of times it will cause mental stress to your opponent is very high.

I like to set up at odd angles for two reasons;

1) A 3 turn maneuver covers more ground than a 3 straight. (Measure to the furthers part of the base) My hope is to mess up my opponents rule of 11.

2) Most obstacles are set up in a grid format, so I am hoping the odd angle helps me fly through them.

Odd angles are ~30°