There's an old saying that goes something like you should dress for the job you want, but in general, I find you should also adjust your mindest for the job you want. In that respect, I always try to approach a game like a designer including some of the more common and valid complaints about gas clouds.

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I keep coming back to a few core questions:

1) Are they supposed to be a "training wheels" obstacle i.e. are they in the game to be used by newer players to learn maneuvering without being overly punished for failing? It's hard to tell, but I think this is a "yes". If you land directly on a gas cloud, you skip your perform action step and likely aren't doing any damage, but also are unlikely to take damage due to the extra defense die and blank -> evade conversion. Kind of a penalty box, you messed up and have to take the turn off, but are less likely to be outright dead because of it. This messes up both your current turn and next turn far less than Debris or Asteroids.

2) Are some of the current interactions that seem to abuse gas clouds (fine tuned controls, afterburners, etc) intentional design spaces that the devs want in the game or an unintended consequence? I'm leaning on the latter right now for a variety of reasons, some of which are hard to really express in print. Basically, it doesn't feel like that element feeds into the game's core engagement (at least I assume the maneuvering aspect is a core engagement, but that's another article), but rather actively runs counter to it. I also suspect there might be some issues with the specifics of language rather than design intent.

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Any "fix" to gas clouds should ideally play into the core engagement of X-Wing, but also retain the simple and relatively low consequence nature of the gas clouds to keep them available as training wheels. I think there is actually a way to do this and it wouldn't require changing that much.

Change this:

Gas Cloud : The ship skips its Perform Action step

into this:

Gas Cloud : The ship cannot perform actions for the remainder of the round

I would also add this to the " While a ship is at range 0 of an obstacle it may suffer different effects "

Gas Cloud: The ship's attack dice cannot be modified

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The first change is easy to justify. Most players initially think this is how Gas Clouds and Asteroids (I would change Asteroids too) actually work and have to be told the specific difference between skipping your perform action step and not being able to perform actions at all (or at least I have observed this is a very common point of confusion), so doing this would not change how a new player interacts with Gas Clouds at all and would reduce the need for that distinction. If they're just flying X-Wings and TIEs that have no out-of-action-step actions it literally changes nothing. It only imposes a penalty for ships that abuse Gas Clouds, for everyone else, no change. As much as I appreciate the technical language of "skip perform action step" vs. "cannot perform actions", I think that trying to be too technical is actually the route of the problem and creates too many unintended bypasses.

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The second one is more of an oddball change, granted, but it also specifically targets another type of abuse i.e. passive mods. Passive or non-action based mods provide a substantial advantage and can also allow a ship who lands on a gas cloud to still have good offensive output while often still reaping the defensive rewards. This wouldn't prohibit defense modification and thus keeps the "penalty box" nature of the Gas Clouds (in fact it reinforces it somewhat against quite a few builds and pilots). Importantly, while this may seem a little complicated for a "training wheels" obstacle, if some players is just banging X-Wings and TIEs against each other to learn the game, does this actually change anything? If they land on it, they don't get their action anyways, so they weren't modifying dice regardless. In other words, like the first change, this doesn't affect a lot of the normal jousting ships outside of swarms that could get mods anyways (Sinker, Howl, Networked Calculations, etc, and all of those swarms have a sizable edge over normal unbuffed jousters anyways).

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The first change is just a lateral loophole closer. It's just future proofing Gas Clouds and keeping interactions consistent across the board, so I feel it would be really easy to implement and probably positive for the long term health of the game. The second change would be nice and helps an archetype (vanilla jousting ships) that struggles by at least a small amount, but is far more niche and is not reflexive of the same kind of lateral shift as the first therefore likely not a priority for the dev team.

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I'm not of the mind that Gas Clouds necessarily need to be nerfed, but some of the concerns about certain ships (Jedi in particular and to some extent Nantex, but also pilots like Tavison, Snap and Nien with a Pattern Analyzer and titles like Dauntless) being able to subvert the core engagement of maneuvering by plowing through Gas Clouds with few penalties does hurt player interest curve and negatively the ability of opponents to make meaningful decisions, so it's at least worth looking into.

I'm so sick of gas clouds discussions...

Eh, the gasclouds defensive effect means that Jedi will continue to not care

Be more in favor of just adding ionization to overlap/moving through

My 2c:

- Skip perform action step and take a Deplete token (assuming it's Strain for attack dice).

- When attacking, if the defender is at range 0-1 of a gas cloud and the attack is obstructed by that gas cloud you may change one hit to a crit.

My idea comes from the Rebels episode where they are in Ywings being chased by the Defender through the nebula. They have to power down their weapons for fear of causing an explosion and at the end of the ep they use the gas clouds to damage an imperial ship too.

If you are using these things for safety there is also a risk you need to take if you do get hit.

The fact that they’re so ambiguous in intent and “abusable” generally lends me to expect the designers didn’t totally have a grasp of what they were making. (That’s honestly a tall order to really know the full scope of a new creation)

id prefer they have more consistent rules and language to other obstacles and I generally think 6 rocks is the right amount of blockage for a standard game. 3 is too little. Therefore I see no reason why there should be a space opening obstacle.

For training wheels I still generally just do 4 small rocks spread far. And tell newbies not to hit them. If they don’t I don’t have to explain what they do. Lol

note: for training wheels it’s not a question of which obstacles. Simply a question of how many and how large

15 hours ago, Naerytar said:

I'm so sick of gas clouds discussions...

And yet, you joined in on this one

+1 for suggesting a canon solution

I was thinking of the Gas Clouds for quite a while, and in every game they felt very... safe, too safe for obstacles. Sure you get the defensive benefits too if your opponent brings them, but I also think they should be more punishing, in line with other obstacles, to not encourage easy overlaps.

I'd be okay with the Clouds assigning a negative token (maybe Deplete or Ion, although the latter can be overly punishing to small ships and ignored by medium and large). Maybe a Jam token sounds fair? It could make sense lore-wise, assuming that those clouds interfere with ship's electronic systems.

1 hour ago, TedW said:

Deplete or Ion, although the latter can be overly punishing to small ships and ignored by medium and large)

Three ion tokens then? They all fall off after you do your ion move anyway.

It’s hard to remember which ships in a swarm passed through a cloud when they’re all getting actions later in the round.

2 minutes ago, ootinni said:

Three ion tokens then? They all fall off after you do your ion move anyway.

Wouldn't that be too harsh though? Compared to asteroids (hit/crit on a roll and unable to fire) and debris (stress and an unlikely hit), I feel Ion might be overly punishing, since it basically forces the shortest move in the game and prevents all actions other than Focus (including bonus actions after the recent Ion changes, which asteroids and debris do not limit). Sure we have the defensive benefit that's powerful (assuming it manages to block sight), but having your ship stranded like a sitting duck for an entire round with your opponent managing to plan out and take advantage of it sounds like an overkill to me.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to see a negative aspect on Gas Clouds to balance out the positive one, but in a game where maneuvers are a crucial part of the game, this might be an overkill imho. ****, I've had games where I purposefully chose to run through an asteroid and take damage just to save my ship's butt from certain destruction and gain a drop on an unaware target later, and I feel with gaining Ion it would severely limit the risk-reward options. It would also most likely cause Sensor ships to take Collision Detector more often which.. actually isn't a bad thing in itself? 🤔

My vote goes to a Jam token (or 2 maybe?) to at least prevent locks and gaining tokens, but that's just me here.

Also approaching from a game-designer's point-of-view, I think they deliberately designed gas-clouds to offer no significant penalty and rather offer "positive" benefits to specific ships, e.g. Vader with after-burners and Jedi-aces etc. and in general the "pseudo-autothrusters"-effect, with the specific intent to explore this design-space.

I for one am very happy that the designers are still experimenting with the game and are not afraid to try new concepts and game ideas. This is one of the things I really liked in 1.0: almost every wave, there was some new mechanisms introduced (and some broke the game). So when 2.0 was introduced and everybody got a bulls-eye etc. I was affraid that the "experimenting days" were over, and now we were only going to play it safe (and boring). But no, thankfully they have introduced force-powers (which are by themselves kind of broken), the Nantex, others, and gas-clouds.

I dont consider gas-clouds broken, rather they add flavour to the game, and ihmo should stay the way they work now.

4 hours ago, Sciencius said:

Also approaching from a game-designer's point-of-view, I think they deliberately designed gas-clouds to offer no significant penalty and rather offer "positive" benefits to specific ships, e.g. Vader with after-burners and Jedi-aces etc. and in general the "pseudo-autothrusters"-effect, with the specific intent to explore this design-space.

I for one am very happy that the designers are still experimenting with the game and are not afraid to try new concepts and game ideas. This is one of the things I really liked in 1.0: almost every wave, there was some new mechanisms introduced (and some broke the game). So when 2.0 was introduced and everybody got a bulls-eye etc. I was affraid that the "experimenting days" were over, and now we were only going to play it safe (and boring). But no, thankfully they have introduced force-powers (which are by themselves kind of broken), the Nantex, others, and gas-clouds.

I dont consider gas-clouds broken, rather they add flavour to the game, and ihmo should stay the way they work now.

I also like that they're trying to keep the game fresh by introducing new concepts, rather than just making newer, better stuff that results in power creep.

The Gas clouds are just too much of an Auto take if you are an ace player. IMO they still need a bigger negative than just losing your action if you overlap.

Fixed it (no obstruction bonus, and you get Wedge'd):

When a ship moves through or overlaps a gas cloud, it skips its perform action step.

When a gas cloud obstructs an attack, the defender rolls 1 FEWER defense die, and may change up to 1 blank result to an evade result.

1 hour ago, wurms said:

Fixed it (no obstruction bonus, and you get Wedge'd):

When a ship moves through or overlaps a gas cloud, it skips its perform action step.

When a gas cloud obstructs an attack, the defender rolls 1 FEWER defense die, and may change up to 1 blank result to an evade result.

That might be a bit harsh. If you want to go down that route maybe say:

When a ship overlaps or passes through a gas cloud it gains 1 strain.

17 hours ago, Deffly said:

The Gas clouds are just too much of an Auto take if you are an ace player. IMO they still need a bigger negative than just losing your action if you overlap.

And eg. a scum mining guild player or seperatist vulture player will prefer rocks.

Thing is, you only get to decide 50% of the obstacles on the table anyway.

Personally, I think a balanced mix could be quite engaging. Two rocks, two debris fields, and 2 gas clouds could make for an interesting battle field.

I also don't get the 'no-consequences' thing. You skip your action. That's pretty significant. And the defender gets a bonus, so your challenged to chase through to turn that off and also get no action in the process. It's not like every new obstacle had to be the same or more dangerous. At some point SOMETHING had to be going in the other direction towards less so. There's no reason for the terrain pieces to be a static level consequence.

Also, I feel like we're all collectively forgetting that the environment cards are going to change all this for some players. Those cards give them the ability to add typing to the obstacles and thus make them"Ion Clouds" or "Explosive". So for those recommendations, we're already getting that stuff. That's likely, from the designer mindset, why it's not part of the base rules. It was already in the advanced ones.

I think the specific entries of FTC and Afterburner are what need a change for the tournament scene. Or you could alternately add a bullet point to 'Fully Execute' that you 'did not overlap any obstacles'. Which turns off FTC.

It's not a training wheel, it's not easy mode. It's just different. Nothing wrong with that.

11 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

I also don't get the 'no-consequences' thing. You skip your action. That's pretty significant. And the defender gets a bonus, so your challenged to chase through to turn that off and also get no action in the process. It's not like every new obstacle had to be the same or more dangerous. At some point SOMETHING had to be going in the other direction towards less so. There's no reason for the train with to be a static level consequence.

Also, I feel like we're all collectively forgetting that the environment cards are going to change all this for some players. Those cards give them the ability to add typing to the obstacles and thus make them"Ion Clouds" or "Explosive" so for those recommendations, we're already getting that stuff. That's likely, from the designer mindset, why it's not part of the base rules. It was already in the advanced ones.

I think the specific entries of FTC and Afterburner are what need a change for the tournament scene. Or you could alternately add a bullet point to 'Fully Execute' that you 'did not overlap any obstacles'. Which turns off FTC.

It's not a training wheel, it's not easy mode. It's just different. Nothing wrong with that.

This guy gets it.

Skipping your action is an extremely harsh penalty, and if you're upset your opponents keep doing it you need to punish them for it.

If your upset about it's defensive bonus, well I don't know what to tell you. The game needs to evolve, and this is one way for it to evolve.

Trust me, no one wants Static Discharge Vanes to become stapled to everything. "I went through a gas cloud, so I'm going to give you the Ion I was supposed to. Also because you are ioned now, you can only perform the focus action after you perform your maneuver"

I’d have them give the overlapping ship a strain or deplete, right now they’re not punitive enough

That’s an easy change and one I could see them adding

Just agreeing with the general sentiment there needs to be some negative effect.

After all, 2 games streamed at Worlds had big swings because of the 1/8 Debris crit. You need to be forced to calculate risks like that, instead of just knowing 100% there will be no consequences (other than action loss).

You could even have it be something like: "Roll 1 red die. On hits, take a strain, on focus or crit take a deplete." That would be unique, and there is still a 25% chance nothing happens.

I think the fact that there were two games where debris mattered, at that level, ironically prove that nothing is really wrong with gas. Clearly people are still mixing it up and it's having an impact anyway. I still fail to see anything wrong.

I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a war game where all the terrain was identical. I'm guessing there's a naval game out there that's like water/land binary. But I bet it still has smoke.

I am betting that originally, FFG had thought about designing gas clouds to assign strain when they came out in the prequel faction packs.

But there would have been some consternation from those who didn't buy into CIS or Republic that they wouldn't have had component access to a new game mechanic--it was about the strain tokens, not the clouds all along. So until they can get strain tokens, which will help shorten matches, as less green dice get rolled. But then I think about that, and then, tractor beams....

Gas Cloud effects are pretty dumb though.

2 hours ago, Cloaker said:

Gas Cloud effects are pretty dumb though.

As they offer an alternative, gas cloud effects are pretty cool though.