So lets talk about the most iconic character in Star Wars (and how he is never chosen in the meta). Here we have not only a powerful force user but a natural pilot. So I say make Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader be the only pilot to have both the Force upgrade slot and the Talent upgrade slot. Right now there is nothing that puts these slots as mutually exclusive, and I can't think of any other pilot that thematically should have both.

If either pilot happens to be undercosted a simple point adjustment will correct them. So tel me why this is a bad idea and I should get a thousand lashings from that vibrowhip one of Snokes guards were carrying below.

I think this is a fine idea. I have said in other threads that I wish the designers would error on the side of making something a little too powerful and having to increase cost accordingly. While I understand the power creep concerns of 1.0 how many of those issues would have existed if the designers could have just changed the cost of the original offenders instead of the constant over-correction leading to further and further power creep?

The most powerful combo I can think of for combining a Force and Talent upgrade doesn't even care about the Force upgrade, it's the easy access to double mods plus Juke if the pilot takes Juke and has access to Evade on the ship. I would be curious to see what combos people can think of that actually use the Force and Talent upgrades working together instead of combining the Force itself with various talents for enhanced modding (or modding when using the talent would make it harder like Elusive).

No.

People seem to be worried about Debris Gambit on Vader

I would say that in itself it is not an inherently bad idea, but it can lead to problems in the future. The reason for that is that it seems design was built around force users and non force users having access to two different elite talents.

this is only a theory but maybe in playtesting it showed that certain talents might have been too good on force users. By giving Vader access to both you suddenly have to be very careful about the future elite talents and force upgrades you design in case you create an OP combo.

Either, maybe, but not both imo. Though then all you do is just w3ld debris gambit permanently to Vader.

I've been playing Inquisitors lately, and I'm starting to suspect why the x1 lost its evade action, why the Fang, the StarViper and the Silencer doesn't have it, and why the Aethersprite has a force tax for its version. As soon as the lock is set up, I generally try to predict where my target will go, point vaguely in that direction (easy enough with the best dial in the game) and grab an evade. Often I'll miss, or they'll roll or boost out of the way, but if I get shot at, 3 greens + 1 force + 1 evade will all but guarantee that they'll take no damage unless hit by multiple attackers or a Proton Torpedo.

Now, on an I3 pilot, or even I4 in the case of Seventh Sister, this is mostly okay. They sit at an uncomfortable spot, since I3-4 is generally considered to be unsuitable for arc dodgers, and uneconomical for generics. However, if we up this to I5-6 and add multiple force tokens, this is potentially problematic. While I still think he might be a tad too expensive, this might be the reason why the Grand Inquisitor costs so much: Unless you're I6, you're not likely to shoot at him with more than one ship, and from that, even with a below average defence roll, he's likely to take no damage.

Consider all that, add +1I and +1 force: If he leverages his action-chaining and now stapled-on Afterburners correctly, Vader is massively difficult to draw a bead on. His one defensive weakness is that he has no way of flipping blanks. Give him the evade action, and he's all but invulnerable.

Let's take a quick lock at our other strong defensive profiles:

• Whisper - Focus and evade, but limited by agility 2
• Inquisitors, Valen Rudor (sort of), Night Beast, TIE Fighter Ezra - Focus/force and evade, but low initiative and low damage output
• A-Wings, TIE Interceptors, E-Wings - Agility 3 and the evade action, but cannot focus and evade
• Aggressors - Agility 3 and access to evade and calculate, but you'll need multiples, and only one can have calculate and evade. They're also I4

Off the top of my head there are just two high initiative, high agility token stackers in the game right now, but they also have drawbacks:

• Rexler Brath - Focus and evade, but vulnerable to blocking, with low damage output compared to his (massive!) cost
• Soontir Fel - Focus, evade and repo, but needs bullseye, and bursts like a bubble if you make a single mistake

Our new Jedi overlords are an interesting addition to this, but they can't do everything at once. Take Anakin for example:

• He can fly a standard Aetherspite. In this case he can have agility 3, 1 evade and 2 force, making him extremely tanky, but his damage output suffers, and if he wants to use his ship ability, he's spending another force token
• He can fly a 7B, making him hit much harder, but then - like Whisper - his agility drops to 2

Vader has none of these weaknesses, and with a lock he hits harder than every ship I've listed to boot. He cannot get the evade action.

That said, he's in a great place right now. Vader + Afterburners + FCS just dropped from 81 to 73, and with any luck, Brilliant Evasion will come in at 1-2 points. I'm sure we'll make do without a talent on him.

I asked a very similar question to Alex Davy last summer in UK when he was there showcase SE during an x-wing event. SE pilot was fully spoil at the time, but points/slots wasn't.

I asked him if some Force user will have both Talent & Force slot (I had Vader in mind because I wanted to stack Elusiveness & Force).
His answer was (as far as I can remember) "No, because Talents can allow to modify attack & defense dice, and the Force allow this as well naturally, so we don't want to stack modifying dice effects as it was possible in FE. But the SE design allow us to not commit to this approach if we feel differently later on with the game evolving"

So, what I had in mind, was exactly what the designers didn't want happen again, stacking of passive effects :)

Yes, let me have Trick Shot Asajj, it's fine I promise

No. Far too much risk of breaking the game. And as said above, puts unneccessarily shackles on the development of any future force and simultaneously any future talents.

Also, one of the reasons you saw almost no Vader pilots (so far!), was that Vader crew was so much better, esp on Whisper or Echo. With that option gone (although there is at least one good Vader-Reaper combo) and Vader pilot now down in points we will see more Vader. Esp in Hyperspace, where Vader crew is illegal anyways.

4 hours ago, svelok said:

Yes, let me have Trick Shot Asajj, it's fine I promise

8 hours ago, Giledhil said:

No.

What he said. Only the one chosen by mediclorians can have both

7 hours ago, Okapi said:

That said, he's in a great place right now. Vader + Afterburners + FCS just dropped from 81 to 73, and with any luck, Brilliant Evasion will come in at 1-2 points. I'm sure we'll make do without a talent on him.

This.

9 hours ago, Marinealver said:

If either pilot happens to be undercosted a simple point adjustment will correct them.

Not this.

Vader who also has Debris Gambit probably needs to go up like another 10 points or more.

I want an affordable Vader, rather than a massively powerful Vader. Don't get me wrong: I think he's still good and can be a solid part of a list (Proton Rockets are so cool on him, too!). But I'd rather have a ship I can slot into a more standard list without having to really make sure everyone else is dirt cheap. I'm really enjoying this role for Vader. A solid piece, rather than someone I have to design an entire list around. More like Wedge than Whisper, in terms of impact on the meta-game.

But this is, like, just my opinion, man. It's how I want to take my coffee.

As someone who flies a lot of Vader, I'm going to have to say "no."

Opening up a Force user to have a Talent will effectively break the current state of balance in the game in consideration to Force Powers and Talents and limit the design space of the developers even more. Every time they add a new Force Power, or a new Talent, they would have to pull back or limit them more to prevent a too powerful combination arising between two Powers and Talents that could potentially be broken when placed on Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker.

This would result in weaker Talents and Force Powers for every other pilot in the game when they shouldn't have to have such restrictions on them. Point adjustments would not matter unless you simply price those two pilots out of competitive viability. At which point, congrats, now you've just made Vader/Anakin played even less.

I'll allow it, if you let me have Heroic on Rey.

13 hours ago, The Penguin UK said:

I'll allow it, if you let me have Heroic on Rey.

Gasp, I forgot about the Chosen One of Disney. Of course she would have to have both as well if it were to fit canon.

Yeah this was a stupid idea.

19 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

well if it were to fit cannon

😁

I would settle for just letting talents be equipped in the force slot for all pilots, I'm not really a fan of most of the force abilities or the way that they compete with the pilot's ability for the same resources while a "normal" pilot can equip a talent that independently synergizes with their ability or otherwise enhances the ship's capabilities

15 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Vader who also has Debris Gambit probably needs to go up like another 10 points or more.

I want an affordable Vader, rather than a massively powerful Vader. Don't get me wrong: I think he's still good and can be a solid part of a list (Proton Rockets are so cool on him, too!). But I'd rather have a ship I can slot into a more standard list without having to really make sure everyone else is dirt cheap. I'm really enjoying this role for Vader. A solid piece, rather than someone I have to design an entire list around. More like Wedge than Whisper, in terms of impact on the meta-game.

But this is, like, just my opinion, man. It's how I want to take my coffee.

I'd also take my coffee that way

Sure vader is extremely strong in the lore. But this is a game which needs some kind of balance to be playable.

But I won't be stopping anyone giving vader a test flight with force and talent in a casual game of X-Wing. If anyone does, please let us share your experience

1 hour ago, Hiemfire said:

😁

Either way you get a bomb!

He's so iconic that his name is impossible to spell correctly.

5 hours ago, Effenhoog said:

I would settle for just letting talents be equipped in the force slot for all pilots, I'm not really a fan of most of the force abilities or the way that they compete with the pilot's ability for the same resources while a "normal" pilot can equip a talent that independently synergizes with their ability or otherwise enhances the ship's capabilities

That's why they had an academy just for Jedi. It takes years for them to learn how to manage their Force charges correctly!

Supernatural Reflexes is worth 32 points on Vader, but only worth 8 on an Inquisitor.

Jedi should absolutely have access to appropriately costed talents.

From a narrative perspective, the idea that a skilled pilot such as Vader or Luke owes their flying ability entirely to the force doesn't make much sense.

From a game mechanic perspective Vader with Debris Gambit should be totally legal so long as it's costed appropriately. Yes, that 120+ point Vader will be tough to kill, but pop his wing-man, and block him once, and investing over half your list on a 5-health ship starts to look like a terrible idea.

13 minutes ago, markrivett said:

Supernatural Reflexes is worth 32 points on Vader, but only worth 8 on an Inquisitor.

Jedi should absolutely have access to appropriately costed talents.

From a narrative perspective, the idea that a skilled pilot such as Vader or Luke owes their flying ability entirely to the force doesn't make much sense.

From a game mechanic perspective Vader with Debris Gambit should be totally legal so long as it's costed appropriately. Yes, that 120+ point Vader will be tough to kill, but pop his wing-man, and block him once, and investing over half your list on a 5-health ship starts to look like a terrible idea.

SR is not worth 32 points on Vader.

SR costs 32 points on Vader.

1 hour ago, HolySorcerer said:

SR is not worth 32 points on Vader.

SR costs 32 points on Vader.

This. It’s priced out of viability for now, most likely because we have a TON of force pilots and new abilities in the pipeline and they don’t want to see it become totally broken by accident. Come July it should go back down a bit.

for me I’d rather see something new that helps the Inquisitor the way that hate helps Kylo and Vader (also give that Silencer its stupid Sensor slot back!)