Wondering where people are at with upgrades? Do you like using a lot of them to trick out your ships? Do you like a few just for some flavor or some added capability? Or is "upgrades...who needs 'em?" more your style? I really like that the game supports all three play styles and any of those can work and be both fun and competitive.

Me, I like a few upgrades, but if there's too many with too many triggers to keep track of, I tend to lose track of it all and will miss some triggers, often at bad times; so either one ship with some upgrades or a handful spread across the list but I'm not opposed to running naked ships either, since some have plenty of power on their own without a lot of added bells and whistles.

Anecdotally, I feel like when 2.0 dropped, we saw far fewer upgrades being used. Named pilots in particular were fine "out of the box".

Personally, I try to keep it minimal and fortunately 2.0 differs from first edition in that one doesn't usually have a pile of upgrades and "fix" cards under their ship.

Soontir gets Predator, that's it. My recent mistakes usually involve putting WAY too many upgrades on a ship and then losing that ship immediately. I'm tending to find more fun in the game by stripping down upgrades to one or two key essentials.

I think 1-3 is about right.

Less, and why have upgrades?

More, and something's out of whack.

To be clear, 0 is not unacceptable; I just think ships should want for a little customization.

Edit: The above is per ship.

To me it depends on what i am flying. In general 1 to 3 cards is about my usual.

Depends on my list. I have some lists with 1-2 upgrades total across a list of 6 ships. I also have ace builds with 3 ships fully kitted.

Depends on list and whether or not you count the 0-point configurations

See, configs are technically upgrade cards, but in practice they're just built-in ship abilities that needed another card so you could flip it (ie servomotors). Personally, I don't count 0-point configs since they're not an upgrade. They're standard

Anyway,

Resistance: 7 (+ two servomotors)

3 on transport (r4, autoblasters; a crew are glued on), two on heroic PA Nien, nothing on Bastian; heroic + crackshot on Lulo

CiS: 10

Three Hyenas with missiles (two ESCs, one Boron) and 1-point struts, Dork Probes on one; hate + G G + kraken on Maul.

Republic: 4

Arcs are so lovely that they don't really need anything, but I had a point leftover for crackshot Wolfe

Juke, r2, fcs on baby Anakin

I lean towards fewer.

However, it'll depend on the ships. I believe in taking good upgrades, but most of the time, upgrades aren't that good.

My default CIS list has 14. It's tedious...

Few, but it depends.

I think less is more has been true since 2.0 begun. 0-2 is a very efficient range....

But there are specific builds that require many, and some pilots that aren't much good without a fair share.

thanks for the replies. I know a lot "depends" but I was mostly looking for your own personal preference, not conditional builds and whatnot. Any ship can be run any number of ways, so the question is: How do you like to fly your ships?

1 hour ago, cpdilloway said:

thanks for the replies. I know a lot "depends" but I was mostly looking for your own personal preference, not conditional builds and whatnot. Any ship can be run any number of ways, so the question is: How do you like to fly your ships?

I will say, outside a handful of builds, that I largely prefer fewer as opposed to more. I’ve often done just a card or two on any given ship.

You guys don't fill up your upgrade slots? Talent-less hacks flying your ships? No trusty astromechs to save your ***? Gutted sensor bays? Depleted torpedo silos? Smugglers with no contraband to speak of?

What kind of jank operation are you guys running?

Frankly, I keep my ships slim. I NEVER use anything but heroic for Resistance and I staple it to EVERY ship.Z

Not First Order though. I can run a lot of them naked, happily.

My First Order lists almost always have at least two copies of Fanatical somewhere. Unless it's QD, Tavson, Kylo.

I generally prefer lean lists, too many upgrades is a trap.

The only "Autoinclude" for me is Crack Shot on most pilots with Talents, unless others make more sense and a few specifics such as Adv. Sens. on Guri and 4-LOM as well as secondary weapons or devices on ships designed for them like Y-wings.

Naked ships provide best value Attack dice and Health and thats what will win games imho.

I can see that Proton Torpedos on high initive ships are good as well as paired with passive sensors.

So what I'm seeing is that Heroic and Crack Shot need to go up a point each.

I jest, though I wonder how much truth there could be in that (my statistical model actually did go there, not that it means anything).

Personally I like to load my ships out pretty heavily with 2-4 upgrades, but that's because I gravitate toward strange janky combos. When I want to play more competitive I go a little leaner.

A large part of it depends on ship though, so it's not a totally fair question. A decimator or YT naked is mostly a waste of points. A shuttle or reaper should usually have a crew to justify its existence. Other than that, it really depends on the list and what you want to do with it. Sometimes one more pilot will do the trick, other times it's easier to get the effect you're after with a much cheaper (or not so cheap) upgrade.

I put way too much upgrades on my Aces but otherwise I like none or few.

I tend to over-upgrade in initial list building.

And then strip down as I play and see which ones really work, and which ones I never use.

I can also add that I do see a lot of new players fully upgrade large ships, and then have so many things to keep track off they tend to not use most of it. Or simply lose too many points when one ship goes down.
0 Upgrade lists really do streamline the games.

Number of upgrades varies greatly from ship to ship but what I do know is that I don't put luxury upgrades.

Each upgrades should have a meaningful synergy with the pilot. Yes a Hull Upgrade is nice on Wedge, but unless he is flying some wierd two ship list it's not worth it.

5 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

So what I'm seeing is that Heroic and Crack Shot need to go up a point each.

I jest, though I wonder how much truth there could be in that (my statistical model actually did go there, not that it means anything).

Actually I agree.

I think comparing crackshot to predator is worth doing.

First off, Predator has a chance of doing nothing if you reroll into a blank, or focus when you don't have a token to convert it or really don't want to spend the token to save it for defense. So to guarantee a hit you probably need to line up. Bullseye twice and if you are rolling hot you might not even need a reroll.

Crackshot, if your opponent rolls evade equal to or less your hits you can trigger it (only once) to cancel an evade result , thus dealing an extra damage.

So this is useless if your opponent blanks out, or if you rolled 1 fewer hits than your opponent did evades.

My experience from many games is Crack Shot triggers almost all the time and has the added effect that people will Iver mod their defense by spending focus to get an extra evade result to prevent me crack shotting them for a single hit.

So, Crack Shot plays mind games with your opponent, you get maximum benefit from a single use, doesn't cost a focus, more likely to be useful than predator if you only get one bullseye shot per game, which also happens.

Until we get a large ship meta predator is just overpriced at 2 points compared to crackshot but would certainly be underpriced at 1 point.

Predator is better on agile ships that can consistently line up bullseyes (I5+ Aces) or tankier ships with a reasonably chance E.g. T-70s

TLDR - Crackshot and heroic up to 2 points, to increase the variety of talents being used.

I usually either have zero upgrades or 1-3 upgrades. It depends on the ship. Usually use lots if generics or cheap filler ships, like Tie Fighters. Otherwise, I have either a tool kit ship, like some type of bomber, a mid level ace, or a high ace. They usually get the upgrades, but not too many. Between 1-3 is good. Almost never more than 3.

4 hours ago, Scum4Life said:

Actually I agree.

I think comparing crackshot to predator is worth doing.

First off, Predator has a chance of doing nothing if you reroll into a blank, or focus when you don't have a token to convert it or really don't want to spend the token to save it for defense. So to guarantee a hit you probably need to line up. Bullseye twice and if you are rolling hot you might not even need a reroll.

Crackshot, if your opponent rolls evade equal to or less your hits you can trigger it (only once) to cancel an evade result , thus dealing an extra damage.

So this is useless if your opponent blanks out, or if you rolled 1 fewer hits than your opponent did evades.

My experience from many games is Crack Shot triggers almost all the time and has the added effect that people will Iver mod their defense by spending focus to get an extra evade result to prevent me crack shotting them for a single hit.

So, Crack Shot plays mind games with your opponent, you get maximum benefit from a single use, doesn't cost a focus, more likely to be useful than predator if you only get one bullseye shot per game, which also happens.

Until we get a large ship meta predator is just overpriced at 2 points compared to crackshot but would certainly be underpriced at 1 point.

Predator is better on agile ships that can consistently line up bullseyes (I5+ Aces) or tankier ships with a reasonably chance E.g. T-70s

TLDR - Crackshot and heroic up to 2 points, to increase the variety of talents being used.

I think if Crack Shot and Heroic go up to 2 points, the increase isn't going to be in different talents, it'll be in empty talent slots.

2 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I think if Crack Shot and Heroic go up to 2 points, the increase isn't going to be in different talents, it'll be in empty talent slots.

^Yup, EPTs are pretty weak in general making the slot mostly useless outside of specific synergies. It's pretty neat.

9 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I think if Crack Shot and Heroic go up to 2 points, the increase isn't going to be in different talents, it'll be in empty talent slots.

To be fair, my model also put Daredevil, treacherous, and dedicated down to 1, and Ruthless down to 0. Maybe more empty talent slots, but still more interesting choices. Auto-include upgrades aren't choices and aren't fun.