Has anyone ever wondered how a scenario is balanced ?

Is FFG has already published the best way to create is own balanced scenarios?

If not, within the framework of a campaign is there a way, created by the community, to know the level of one side or another according to the options selected and therefore playable: heroes, levels, enemies,... etc

My objective is to find a way to create your own characters and balanced scenarios quickly in order to avoid the game of dying for good.

Any help is welcome.

I've never tried this and I don't have a lot of info, but if you're looking for inspiration I'd start with the side missions from the existing campaigns. The threat-level scaling on these is generally a lot easier to suss out - these usually start with limited imperial groups on the board, and instead rely on things like "deploy units worth 2x the threat level" or "gain threat equal to the threat level when opening the door", etc.

If I was attempting something like this, I think my starting point would be to look at the various side missions to see how much threat they put on the board (and when, e.g. is it out all at once at the start or does it come out after a few rounds?). You'll also want to take into account things like how far the heroes need to move, whether there are any ability tests, etc. I don't think that it's going to be very easy to find a reliable formula, but I wish you luck!

Thank you @ManateeX !

Your proposals are very interesting !

I will keep in mind them to work on a specific tool but I am aware that the way is not easy at all ! 😉

Mission Objectives? (I have no idea how to balance that)

Time frame? Base it on movement: assume players will spend 1 move action and 1 action on another thing. Figures have an average move of 4. Count out number of tiles from point A to point B and divide by 4. Then add a round or two for things to turn south.
- If there's a villain that needs to be taken down ... try to figure out how many average rounds it will take once the heroes reach the target. That's pure guesstimation.
- This one is very off-the-cuff and not super accurate.

Threat Dispersal? This one I do have more solid advice!! Was able to suss this out from a handful of missions. (and do note these are rough averages, not exact)

• Total Budget = 15 times the threat level. Roughly divide it into the following...
• Starting Budget = 6 times the threat level
  • these are figures set up at the start of the mission
• Round Budget = take your round-limit estimation from above, times it by the threat level, there's your estimated budget
  • this is to account for threat accumulation over time.
• Event Budget = (total budget) - (starting budget) - (round budget).
  • Primary use is for your reserved hand
  • Any other creative uses. In general: 2 health added to a figure = 1 threat. auto-dealing damage is .5 threat per damage. etc

If your rebels have less ground to cover, the mission will be shorter ... so the empire needs to be able to hit harder all at once.
If the rebels have to book it just to reach objectives, the mission will be longer ... which gives the empire more time to build up over time and play a longer strategy of delay tactics.

That will at least get you into the ballpark. Remember that most mission objectives are fairly abstract in terms of being able to get a solid number to it. So you will have to play test it.

9 hours ago, thinkbomb said:

Time frame? Base it on movement: assume players will spend 1 move action and 1 action on another thing. Figures have an average move of 4. Count out number of tiles from point A to point B and divide by 4. Then add a round or two for things to turn south.

I would add that strain to move could be taken into consideration. I guess I'm saying you can err on the side of a few additional spaces.

The FFG devs have admitted in a podcast interview that they don't try to perfectly balance their campaign missions, because there's too many variables that change each time. They just try to make missions that are fun and have good "flow" and playtest them a few times and make adjustments so it feels good and to make sure there isn't anything actually broken (as-in, broken doesn't work, not like broken powerful).

Playtesting really is the key. It's why I gave up trying to create a campaign from scratch.