5 hours ago, Grathew said:

IMO if they made squadrons something more customizable. Giving each genaric squad an upgrade bar, for example, would both make genarics more useful and maybe out weigh aces in usefulness. I will admit the balancing and logisical nightmare if they went that route but it could be cool. Like getting X-wings with black bomber instead of red, or TIE\ln with an added red die. It could honestly be its own thread.

Otherwise aces do more stuff, sometimes significantly more for a relatively small peice increase.

6 hours ago, Muelmuel said:

On the way to help swarm generics out

I just noticed, that this is much better on TIE/Int than on the TIE/ln that i planned.

3 hours ago, slasher956 said:

Heres an idea.... you need to have X generics of type to take 1 ace.... so for arguments sake start with X = 3... so to take Luke you need to have 3 other X-wings sqns.

You can then have upgrades / officers or Admirals who allow you to change that..... ie and officer called Rogue Co-ordinator whos card says - you may take, luke, wedge, red sqn etc without needing un-named X-wings points 5

Or an Imperial Officer called Fighter Training Commander - you may take 1 ace for every non unique squadron - 10 points

I like this a lot, a unique starfighter limit. Of course it’s really just an ace tax, so now Maarek costs himself + the 16-24 points for 2-3 basic TIEs. I don’t know if that pricing is right though but allows for a flexible limit.

You could also have Offensive retrofits, fleet support (capped by flotilla limit), or Officers that straight up increase your unique squadron limit for a smaller cost plus take up potentially useful slots on your actual ships. So if you want MMJ, I hope you don’t want Brunson, boosted comms, or comms net.

Starfighter Command Center (Fleet Support/ 6 points?) - you may increase your unique squadron limit by 1? regardless of the amount of generic squadrons.

Mercenary Contract Officer - (Officer/8 points?) - you may add up to 2 unique irregular squadrons to your fleet regardless of the amount of generic squadrons.

*unique* Wraith Squadron Pilots - ( Offensive retrofit/4 points) - add 1 unique squadron regardless of the number of generic squadrons.

Some examples I spitballed. That way you could still get your ace ball of death, it just becomes harder to activate potentially and takes a points chunk out of how dangerous your ships can be or no comms net.

5 hours ago, CMDR Kastor said:

ION BOMBS! ION BOMBS!

Though seriously? That would be a little problematic. Currently a given squadron is indistinguishable from other copy's of it on the field. They both run off the same card. Any upgrade given to one generic Y-wing would have to be multiplied out to all generic y-wings on the field.

My assumptions have always been you only get one squadron type card. So only one block of X wings, Y wings or TIEs. The upgrades would multiply out to all of the generics. Which means you could get better genarics but at a cost. Would you be willing to pay say 23 points to get X-wings with counter 1 and black instead of red bomber?

1 hour ago, DScipio said:

Honestly those upgrade cards don't scale well. If they read place one token on this card per squadron, equating to 5 tokens for 5 X-wings. I think they would be more useful. I'm also going to point out that the proton torpedoes card, which has an X-Wing on it would be useless for an X-Wing, it would probably get the most play on phantoms or VT-49s assuming they had the upgrade slot.

Either way we've gone tangental enough that I'm going to compose my thoughts a bit and make a new thread.

17 minutes ago, Grathew said:

My assumptions have always been you only get one squadron type card. So only one block of X wings, Y wings or TIEs. The upgrades would multiply out to all of the generics. Which means you could get better genarics but at a cost. Would you be willing to pay say 23 points to get X-wings with counter 1 and black instead of red bomber?

Honestly those upgrade cards don't scale well. If they read place one token on this card per squadron, equating to 5 tokens for 5 X-wings. I think they would be more useful. I'm also going to point out that the proton torpedoes card, which has an X-Wing on it would be useless for an X-Wing, it would probably get the most play on phantoms or VT-49s assuming they had the upgrade slot.

Either way we've gone tangental enough that I'm going to compose my thoughts a bit and make a new thread.

The squadron system would need new squadron cards first (with upgrade bars), that would include that most ships including X-Wing loose their Bomber Keyword and need a upgrade like Proton Torpedos to get it back.

Within the current system the easiest thing would be:

Offensive Retrofit: Ion Munitions Depot, 10 points.
After deployment select a number of non-unique squadrons with the keyword BOMBER up to your squadron value. Place a Ion Munition token on each of these squadrons.
When attacking ships, those squadrons have [Crit] Spend one of the defenders defense tokens.

So it's a ship upgrade for carriers that gives out the effect of the upgrade after deployment to squadrons with the relevant keyword.

In other news the survey I posted earlier: https://forms.gle/YkhnNrYTqD7BwkfN8
... has had some pretty interesting data gathered, even with the low numbers so far. Feel free to spread it around a bit if you are interested in the outcome.

34 minutes ago, DScipio said:

The squadron system would need new squadron cards first (with upgrade bars), that would include that most ships including X-Wing loose their Bomber Keyword and need a upgrade like Proton Torpedos to get it back.

IMO the base squadrons are good enough as is all things accounted for, I would rather use the upgrades to tune them. Because the X-Wing has a fairly large missile tube IIRC, which makes me think it should keep bomber. Also with all the aces and rouge squadron keeping bomber it seems a bit weird to take it off.

Also I split off what I have been using for upgrade bars and the likes in another thread so this one might get back on topic.

The biggest selling point with uniques vs. generics is that uniques generally give you higher quality ship activations.

Consider a rebel fleet that only has two flotillas dedicated to pushing squads. What would you rather push? 4 generics or wedge, Dutch, Norra and ten? You would have to increase the cost of these squads almost to the point of unplayability before you wouldn't seriously consider taking them over generics.

So, how about this. Fiddle with the points? Yes. But also grant some sort of bonus to a ship activating generics. Say, they can activate 2 generics per squadron point. Or can activate an extra genetic if they only activate generics.

3 hours ago, Flengin said:

But also grant some sort of bonus to a ship activating generics. Say, they can activate 2 generics per squadron point. Or can activate an extra genetic if they only activate generics.

I've liked a few ideas along those lines I've seen - tying squad activations to point costs, or just outright increasing the number of generic activations game-wide, or requiring a specific upgrade to do it, or etc.

I think at least one other option would be increasing the utility of the squad phase overall, though, and not ALWAYS requiring squad activations be tied to ships. (The squadron phase, you know, 'the phase that always gets skipped because there is never anything to do in it') Say a commander along the lines of 'During the squad phase, add the Rogue keyword to all of your squads that do not have defense tokens.'

30 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Say a commander along the lines of 'During the squad phase, add the Rogue keyword to all of your squads that do not have defense tokens.'

If there ever is a Han Solo commander this is a good contender for his ability.

5 hours ago, Flengin said:

So, how about this. Fiddle with the points? Yes. But also grant some sort of bonus to a ship activating generics. Say, they can activate 2 generics per squadron point.

I’ve thought along these lines before but when theorycrafting TIE Droid Fighters.

Combining this idea with a points reduction as well could perhaps really get generics back on the table in a big way.

Another idea I've had, but don't think is very good idea, is to rule that ship upgrade cards can only affect generics.

So, everything from boosted comms and expanded hanger bays, to flight controllers, right through to yavaris and squall, could only affect generics.

23 hours ago, ISD Avenger said:

I’ve seen a least 2 posts recently where someone has said ‘why take X generic fighter when for a few points more you could use Y ace, who has defence tokens & a cool effect’.

So it got me thinking. Are (some) generics too expensive? Would generics benefit from a 1-3 point price drop? This would further encourage their use no?

Discuss 😁

Yes, definitely.

22 hours ago, xanderf said:

Thing about aces is that they are very expensive for how squishy they are IF you can reliably generate ACC results. Trick is that "reliably generate ACC results" can be quite overpowered in some cases, while useless in others, making upgrades that do it...difficult to price.

...

This is a big one for me. I can not remember ever being able to use my Scatter on any of my TiE Aces, and so they died so fast they are not worth the cost to me, as I can get about two for one if I do not go Ace. The generics have twice the firepower and hull. However on the tougher (non-scatter) Aces I feel that they are much better than two generics.

14 hours ago, slasher956 said:

Heres an idea.... you need to have X generics of type to take 1 ace.... so for arguments sake start with X = 3... so to take Luke you need to have 3 other X-wings sqns.

You can then have upgrades / officers or Admirals who allow you to change that..... ie and officer called Rogue Co-ordinator whos card says - you may take, luke, wedge, red sqn etc without needing un-named X-wings points 5

Or an Imperial Officer called Fighter Training Commander - you may take 1 ace for every non unique squadron - 10 points

Another game that I play had a system so that you had common, uncommon and rare. You could have one a rare for every nine common/uncommon, and one uncommon for every three common. Now the Uncommon/rare could replace the number that they were. So example you have three fighters, you could have two common and one uncommon/rare, but could not take a second uncommon tell you had five or a second rare tell you had nine total fighters.. Using the fighters that we have now could even with a slight tweak make this system work, using TiE Fighters as an example the basic TiE Fighter is the common, the Black Squadron is the Uncommon, and all the named ones are rare. So any fighter that does not have a named squadron with out pilot name would just be one in nine for aces, those with them could have more of the lesser "Aces" (here is the tweak) along with standard fighters with out eliminating full Aces.

I wouldn’t be opppsed to more unique squadrons (not aces) ie: squads like Saber, Gamma & Rogue that have a detail or 2 changed from the generic for a point or 2 different. Only because it doesn’t look like we will be seeing any new fighters any time soon (where’s my TIE Avenger!?)

On 8/8/2019 at 7:24 AM, Green Knight said:

What @Drasnighta said.

Anyway, if anyone (FFG) needs honest input on what things should really cost, just PM me. I've got the list ready.

Regards,

Your friendly neighborhood opinionated forum poster

I imagine I am not alone in saying if you and/or @Drasnighta published your proposed points values either jointly or separately lots of us would salute and play accordingly!

Just now, Lord Preyer said:

I imagine I am not alone in saying if you and @Drasnighta published your proposed points values either jointly or separately lots of us would salute and play accordingly!

Oh, I don't have any.

I deliberately only comment on other people's work on a rules sense, and leave actual design decisions for when I'm paid to do so.

Consequently, the only real work I have on the matter was a potential "Heir to the Empire" Upgrade set which included rules for Scum and Villany, that I was paid to produce - but as paid work, its property of its owner and I won't release it to the public without their go ahead (and I havn't been able to talk to them for almost 2 years... They paid in advance...)

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

Oh, I don't have any.

I deliberately only comment on other people's work on a rules sense, and leave actual design decisions for when I'm paid to do so.

Consequently, the only real work I have on the matter was a potential "Heir to the Empire" Upgrade set which included rules for Scum and Villany, that I was paid to produce - but as paid work, its property of its owner and I won't release it to the public without their go ahead (and I havn't been able to talk to them for almost 2 years... They paid in advance...)

Wow! I can only hope that you do someday get permission to publish that! Heir to the Empire is my favourite Star Wars story of all time!

Aces being almost always the better option is a bit of a problem, typically I only bring generic squadrons if the aces want them around like Howlrunner or Biggs.

For what it's worth I support a limit on aces in list making, I don't think fiddling with point costs will change much.

SURVEY RESULTS ARE IN!

I got 16 respondents, and surprisingly cohesive results. The survey covered all of the wave 1 fighters and the addition versions of them in CC. Each fighter had the options of: Definitely Underpowered for it's points, More or less balanced, Definitely Overpowered for it's points.

Lets dive in. Most squadrons had quite balanced results with the vast majority of respondents selecting Balanced, and a small amount of them selecting Overpowered, Underpowered or both. But many painted a different picture:

More or less balanced squadrons (where neither Over-Under responses or Under-Over responses was more than one): Luke, Rogue Squadron, Y-wing generic, A-wing generic, Green Squadron, B-wing (that's surprising), Dagger Squadron, Howlrunner, Soontir, Captain Jonus, Gamma Squadron.

It's worth noting at this point that the B-wing was the only generic to be considered even sightly overpowered (1 over, 0 under). The rest of the generics where either true balanced or underpowered to various degrees.

Now the boring results are out of the way, time for the what we are waiting for.

Big Winners(overpowered%): Gold Squadron(37.5%), Tycho(31.3%), Ten Numb(37.5%), Mauler(50%), Valen(43.8%) and Ciena(37.5%) all had a greater than 25% Overpowered responses though Tycho, Mauler and Ciena were a little controversial each with 1 Underpowered response. The real deal though was Shara Bey with a huge 75% or respondents considering her overpowered.

Slightly overpower crowd: Wedge, Biggs, Dutch, Nora, Zertik

Losers: Tie Advanced, Vader, Tie Interceptor, all had more than 25% saying underpowered. But the lowest rated award goes to Major Rhymer with half saying he's bad and one saying he's overpowered, which is a little odd. Did he kill your father or something? I jest, your response is valid.

Slightly underpowered: X-wing, Tie-Fighter, Black Squadron, Tie Bomber

And finally, most controversial goes to Keyan Farlander! The only squadron to have more that two or more results for both over and underpowered (2 over, 4 under).

3 respondents put "More or Less Balanced" for all squadrons. I've presumed they really meant that and left them in. However one could argue that they were protesting the survey. Removing them from respondents paints a more severe picture, but with similar outcomes.

Overall, I'm very happy with the results. It definitely does seem like a viable way of collecting data, though I'd be hesitant to advocate changes purely on the basis of survey outcomes.

Raw data https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i9goV4XP3FVLNtQbWRmL_1oZPMpbq3K1NAXk9YdK5ig/edit?usp=sharing

2 hours ago, CMDR Kastor said:

3 respondents put "More or Less Balanced" for all squadrons. I've presumed they really meant that and left them in. However one could argue that they were protesting the survey. Removing them from respondents paints a more severe picture, but with similar outcomes.

I was one of those 3 respondents. I didn't mean for that to be the case, but as I got further and further along I was pretty sure that was how it was going to end up. I agree that several squadrons either aren't very good, or better that others, I still feel that they are costed appropriately.

Sure, Vader isn't very good with escort, but his pool, his special ability and his defense tokens make him worth 21 points. Remove escort, make him cost 24 points and he's worth that cost (more people probably take him too). I think some people we're "protesting" by saying that certain squads are either too good or too bad, but not necessarily over/under costed.

In short, while I can't speak for the other 2, I'm glad you left my results in. And thanks for putting this out there and sharing the results.

Yes

9 hours ago, CMDR Kastor said:

Slightly  underp  owered: X-wing

I guess Biggs, Norra, Jan and AFFM aren’t enough...

I was one of those who voted that Shara Bey was overpowered. I based it on a sort of vague calculation of how many attacks it would take to kill her with her brace and scatter. I reckon you would need 5 tie interceptor attacks to kill her ( 2 scattered away, 2 damages braced). That's 55 points of fighters and with her counter 3 that's probably three dead interceptors and two badly damaged ones. That's assuming she hasn't got an attack in as well. In my most recent game I ignored her and killed all the other squadrons around her.