4 hours ago, svelok said:

The pathway to worthwhile but not broken force power upgrades, is when they start having a purple "-1" printed on the right.

The problem with most force powers right now is that the opportunity cost on spending what could be a die mod on anything else is seen as too high. Completely losing said potential die mod wouldn't make them any more palatable.

3 hours ago, AceDogbert said:

You act as if pilots not taking a focus action is a bad thing. In my opinion, anything which encourages pilots to take any other action is a good thing.

The way to make people not focus shouldn't be to give them actionless focus mods that regenerate. That's more-or-less just saying they can Focus AND do another action.

Jedi are an stupid good due to Regen and stress-less double reposition.

Force using pilots are imbalanced right now because FFG failed to charge an appropriate tax on moving up from 1 force point to 2 and especially from 2 to 3. Adding force via crew is expensive as heck. Mace gets a third force for free!

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

I'm sorry. Can you explain that long hand. I don't even know what rule you're referencing.

He means a force Talent that reduces your maximum Force pool. If implemented, hopefully it would be either a minimum of one or not require the expenditure of force to use so that single token users could take it.

6 hours ago, PhantomFO said:

Alternately, a change to the Force rules as follows:

Light-Side ships may spend any number of Force points to change an equal number of Focus results to Evade results.

Dark-Side ships may spend any number of Force points to change an equal number of Focus results to Hit results.

"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense. NEVER for attack."

LOVE this!

Another easy fix: you may only spend 1 force on a given attack/defense roll.

9 hours ago, JBFancourt said:

LOVE this!

Another easy fix: you may only spend 1 force on a given attack/defense roll.

If this happened, Brilliant evasion might actually see play!

56 minutes ago, pyoinator said:

If this happened, Brilliant evasion might actually see play!

It was Brilliant Evasion that got me thinking on it (increasing the viability of Force tertiary design elements) along with how they could ever build in game space to actually drop points on those options and ships. Running into ships and red turn/obstacle ignoring dice mods seem to favor unskilled play as well.

17 hours ago, Frimmel said:

Isn't that part of the conundrum though? You need the force to fuel abilities which take up your action too. So now you don't have active mods or the passive force mods. And I'd like to use some of the regular elite talents on Force users on occasion. It always seems like there is never a good choice with the force users.

Battle Meditation gives you an extra action to use, but none of the Force powers take an action to use. Foresight is a bonus attack and the other powers just have triggers. You are still free to take an action during the turn.

I agree that having an EPT on Force pilots would be nice. At least ones that were designated as fighter pilots in the movies like Plo Koon and Darth Vader; Ones that actually trained instead of relying solely on the Force.

18 hours ago, Cloaker said:

3) Force allows other core critical design facets (obstacles, stress) to be wholly ignored for a majority of engagements in terms of dice mods

After re-reading, I wanted to add that most pilot abilities and EPTs do the same (allow you to ignore game rules, or give you an edge). Dash ignores obstacles, and Grand Inquisitor ignores range, etc.

37 minutes ago, Cloaker said:

Running into ships and red turn/obstacle ignoring dice mods seem to favor unskilled play as well.

In fairness, I think it's good to have some measure of this available to lower the skill floor for less-experienced players. However, it should be (slightly) points inefficient, to deter it away from high skill ceiling players.

In other words, it would be nice for a newbie to get have Anakin spin around and look cool even if he makes a few newbie mistakes, but that should not be so powerful as to be a default choice for top Worlds builds.

I believe the devs said something similar in reference to gunner Luke: he can be costed out of the competitive meta and still remain viable to the game as a whole, as a kind of "training wheels" choice.

5 minutes ago, SuperWookie said:

Battle Meditation gives you an extra action to use

Fair enough as I didn't make my point very well. And I'm out on a weak limb overall. I was meaning more to things like Battle Meditation which takes a force to use and gives other non-limited ships an action to use. Purple actions take your force and your action. I guess maybe I'm just grousing about my own difficulties using the force and they aren't all that correct. Too many tough decisions and not enough easy ones with The Force for me. I'm always sort of "wrong" with it thus far.

I'm probably to a degree the guy described here:

7 minutes ago, Hatemonger said:

In fairness, I think it's good to have some measure of this available to lower the skill floor for less-experienced players. However, it should be (slightly) points inefficient, to deter it away from high skill ceiling players.

In other words, it would be nice for a newbie to get have Anakin spin around and look cool even if he makes a few newbie mistakes, but that should not be so powerful as to be a default choice for top Worlds builds.

I believe the devs said something similar in reference to gunner Luke: he can be costed out of the competitive meta and still remain viable to the game as a whole, as a kind of "training wheels" choice.

Just now, Hatemonger said:

In fairness, I think it's good to have some measure of this available to lower the skill floor for less-experienced players. However, it should be (slightly) points inefficient, to deter it away from high skill ceiling players.

In other words, it would be nice for a newbie to get have Anakin spin around and look cool even if he makes a few newbie mistakes, but that should not be so powerful as to be a default choice for top Worlds builds.

I believe the devs said something similar in reference to gunner Luke: he can be costed out of the competitive meta and still remain viable to the game as a whole, as a kind of "training wheels" choice.

Good points---it just seems that many Force elements are either getting priced up or are complete non factors due to dice modifications being the default use of Force, which may make things tougher in the long term.

The other part that no one is probably considering much yet is the day when FFG releases The Upgrade . You know the one, the one where it suppresses enemy Force Values/powers or reduces them. That card is going to be probably part of a very pricey expansion!

16 hours ago, wurms said:

Kill regen. Save the game

FFG tried but it peeled off and recovered

17 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

I dont think people fully appreciate how rare Always On Passive/Double/Multiple Modification that works on both sides of the dice without a support ship actually is...

Horrible take. Force isn't an upgrade, it's a base stat like Agi/Atk which are just as "always on" as force is. Paying for "always on" value is literally the most common thing in the game

17 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Literally my only change to force (other than force powers that never see play getting MUCH cheaper, because they just aren't worth the point + force cost) would:

If you overlap a ship (of a same or larger size?) or overlap/move through an obstacle, you MUST spend a force for no effect

Can't really concentrate while ******* up, after all

Actually, a much easier and more elegant solution (that would also fix gas clouds) would be to redefine "Fully Execute" slightly. If you moved through or overlapped an obstacle, it counts as partially executing a maneuver. I actually thought this would be the case all along, and when it wasn't I thought it was an oversight, and when I realized it wasn't, I expected it to be reversed, and when it wasn't, I'm not figuring it's only a matter of time, because:

Quote

Plus, there must be consequences

At least for Aethersprites. Vader and Inquisitors already lose a whole lot when they miss their action or get blocked.

20 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Frankly though atm while the game is balanced on a knife edge with these easy double mods it doesn’t feel bad.

Mostly agree here. It's true that these double-mods are "easy," but they certainly do come at a cost, and I don't just mean a squad points cost. You're only getting one back per turn, so if you're truly using them to mod your attacks, they're not there for your defense or other force abilities like fine-tuned controls (except once or twice per game, or if you successfully disengage to get them back).

It's interesting to me that some people act like force is "always-on double mods" but others complain that pilots are always force-starved. I feel like it strikes a fairly elegant balance of resource-management. When people know how to use it super well, it feels like the Jedi just have endless supplies of force, but if you don't know how to use it, it's always on empty.

And while I agree that some force talent upgrades are overpriced (most notably "brilliant" evasion), I don't think it's nearly as bad as many make it seem. Let's look at them all:

• Instinctive Aim (1) – It's... okay? It's anything but versatile. It's hard to imagine many reasons to take this as few force pilots carry munitions anyway, and most that do don't struggle with locks. The only low-initiative force pilots with munitions that I'm aware of are inquisitors. In their case, I could see this taking the place of Jendon to fit more in a list, but it's tricky to compete with Passive Sensors and Fire-Control Systems at their very aggressive prices. If missiles were a tad cheaper and inquisitors were a tad more expensive (which both should probably be the case anyway), maybe it would be a more appealing choice? They want to focus most of the time anyway, so the loss of a force isn't disastrous. Still, 1 point is very cheap. It shouldn't be free, and it can't be cheaper.

• Predictive Shot (1) – Once again, it's a pretty poor deal, but at least there are more potential candidates here. The goal is to deal an auto-damage or two against a defender that's been forced to lean into their green dice. If there's an evade token on the defender, this is absolutely useless. If the defender is reinforced, this is absolutely useless. If the defender is focused, this is potentially still okay. The fact that you have to use this before rolling dice puts it with in a category with Lando and Threepio of "fun in concept, very unreliable in execution." The bullseye requirement really, really kills it though. As it's even more situational than Jamming Beam, I could see an argument for making it free, though I dislike the idea of free upgrades in general.

• Brilliant Evasion (3) – Great potential here that's only killed by its cost. Being outside bullseye is trivially easy, but rolling more than one focus result on defense is a fairly rare occurrence. This will probably save you one or two force per game, assuming you're getting targeted regularly which most force users want to avoid anyway. Vader will probably always prefer Hate, especially at the same price, as it gives him more force over the course of a game. CLT Jedi get something out of it as it makes their agility more valuable, but they tend to focus more often anyway, making it less relevant. It's close to useful. 1 might be too cheap, but 3 is almost certainly too expensive. 2 seems like the sweet spot.

• Hate (3/6/9) – The gold standard. Force regen is very powerful, and it scales appropriately to the chassis it's on. Possibly overpriced a tad at the top end, but certainly not by more than 2 points or so. Still a very good upgrade by any standard.

• Heightened Perception (3) – Here's one that's very situational, but quite possibly worth its cost. It's a sort of matchup-insurance that's especially valuable on I4 Jedi that are expensive but still get initiative-killed more often than you'd prefer. For 3 points and a force, you can reverse that matchup on your opponent. It is assuming you managed to get a shot on a higher-initiative pilot, and it does grant them the luxury of defensive mod priority which is usually reserved to lower-initiative pilots, but it's excellent in two situations: You think you can kill them or you think they can kill you. If you kill them at I7, they don't get to touch you at all. If they'd be killing you anyway, at least you can hurt them for it. Burning a force is worth it for saving yourself the damage or taking a shot you would otherwise miss altogether. You can tell me I'm wrong, but Meta Wing says this is worth its 3 points and I'm inclined to agree.

• Foresight (4) – Tricky, this one. An activation-phase attack with a mod, that also denies your opponent any mods but force, for only 4 points? Sounds too good to be true! Traditionally these weapons are better at low initiative, but even at higher initiative it can do a reasonable job of area-denial if not damage. At low initiative it certainly shines as a generic Jedi or Inquisitor can truly punish any ace by predicting its movement accurately. Definitely thematic for "foresight" as well, as it comes down to your ability to predict your opponent's dial choices.

• Sense (5) – Extremely good value at any initiative, on almost any ship. Not much needs to be said here. You get to see where they're going so you can either attempt to dodge it or else block it with perfect information. 5 is expensive but proven very well worth it, and not requiring force to use at R1 makes it a truly exceptional value.

• Battle Meditation (1,2,4,6,8,10,12) – This one is just ... weird... It's hard to know how to judge it. You basically want to use it for getting your clones focused or rolling them into blocks, but both of those are counterproductive to the average strategy. If you're focusing them, you're buffing your scrubs at the expense of your ace's action and force, which is dumb. If you're rolling them into a block then someone else has to take sense, in which case, why didn't you take that instead? It's cheaper anyway. I could see it being worthwhile to take on a high-I ace to get locks for your torrents to shoot their missiles off with double mods, if missiles weren't generally overpriced anyway. The long and short of it is it's too many costs at once for too little effect (force, action, and points with no way to mitigate any). Cheaper it could be quite good. As-is you're better off with Ahsoka (pilot or gunner).

• Precognitive Reflexes (3,3,3,4,7,10,13) – Here's another truly fantastic upgrade at a phenomenal price. 10 points to make Luke an unblockable monster ace. 13 to make Anakin absolutely insane. It is well-balanced by the loss of actions and the potential strain, but you can mitigate these with R4 for blues or Ahsoka/Coordinate for mods. I haven't seen it in the wild for long enough to say how good the pricing is, but I'm inclined to think it's spot-on; not busted, but a very good choice on the right pilots.

• Supernatural Reflexes (4,4,4,8,16,24,32) – For when you really, really need that extra something. The damage to boost isn't good for Vader, but he doesn't like losing all his actions from Precog either. Generic inquisitors get insane action economy out of it. Kylo adores it. Anakin loves it. If you want to put 120 points into a 5 health ship and experience the most gripping positional battle of your life, this is the way to go. While outshone by Precognitive Reflexes, it still remains a perfectly viable option if you're that confident in your own abilities.

The problem with most force upgrades is that they were poorly designed, and basically FFG failed to give them effects that were better than "change 1 eyeball". If a raw force charge is better than whatever effect I'm spending that charge for, it makes no sense to spend that charge rather than just keep it to modify dice.

So now FFG is costing these upgrades that give you a force charge and an ability that requires you to spend that charge, and they are costing these cards as if you are getting both, but really you are just getting a force charge and the option to trade that force charge for a weaker effect. The majority of these cards should be costed just as upgrades that give you a force charge and no more. Obviously there are exceptions whose abilities are much stronger than a single force charge, like Luke gunner and Vader crew. I'm talking about things like Ezra gunner, Ahsoka gunner, senator palp crew, Dooku crew, etc.

2 hours ago, SuperWookie said:

I agree that having an EPT on Force pilots would be nice. At least ones that were designated as fighter pilots in the movies like Plo Koon and Darth Vader; Ones that actually trained instead of relying solely on the Force.

Disagree. I don't want to see a Debris Gambit on Vader or any of the Jedi.

15 minutes ago, Octarine-08 said:

Disagree. I don't want to see a Debris Gambit on Vader or any of the Jedi.

Agree to disagree, but how would a white evade, when near debris, break them for you?

Couldn't figure out how to delete. I understand where you are coming from.

2 hours ago, Cloaker said:

The other part that no one is probably considering much yet is the day when FFG releases The Upgrade . You know the one, the one where it suppresses enemy Force Values/powers or reduces them. That card is going to be probably part of a very pricey expansion!

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ysalamir

9 minutes ago, SuperWookie said:

Agree to disagree, but how would a white evade, when near debris, break them for you?

Vader is already quite hard to take down with his craft's agility, deep pool of force, and his initiative. Adding guaranteed damage mitigation in an evade edges him over the top.

Jedi don't evade because of the force cost. Being able to evade with no force cost ups their runaway game which is already problematic. They can finely tune and then take a guaranteed mitigation if it looks like they will get caught, while potentially still having force to mod any focus results.

The full token stack is something that should be rare.

19 hours ago, Nyxen said:

My problem with this is that it basically reads dark side users are now statistically better than light side users. Obviously points can fix some issues, but it's not wrong to say red dice win games.

Points would be one way to balance it. Another would be through Force upgrades.

Those upgrades could even be further balanced with different costs for Light and Dark users. Brilliant Evasion could only be 1-2 points for Light Side users, as it doesn't add much to them, but could be 6-8 points for Dark users who now have no innate way to spend Force points on defense.

Dark Side users would also be much more vulnerable to focus fire under this change, as they can't freely spend Force points to defend while replenishing themselves with Hate.

Whatever it is it should be simple.

Sadly Ly this game is now having to tackle its literal main pillars: pilot skill issue and efficiency issue. Starcraft kind of avoided this by changing the economy of the game and increasing the need to micro (fly better). Right now though flying better is sometimes not as value about a double mod. Boosting into a 4 dice no focus shot is worse than 3 dice focus

My problem with Force is that, and I'll say it as someone who flew nothing but and not a one for a while, is that honestly it IS an easy button.

Hit an obstacle? K Don't care.

Red move? Panicked pilot? K Don't care.

Accidentally blocked? Flat blocked? Creatively skill blocked? Yeah k eff yu Don't care tolololol

So what's not to think it's broken? Force ignores some of the pillars of the game. It's like we didn't learn anything from PTL and Auto-thrusters at all.

And yes it pushes a multi-action economy on the player. But not every chassis can get that. Even the Clone Y wing is starved for actions compared to literally any Jedi. Poor things struggle to get a single mod let alone an arc against Delta Hypermobility. Trying to chase any given Delta is hella like trying to catch first edition Soontir.

On 11/6/2019 at 4:36 PM, svelok said:

The pathway to worthwhile but not broken force power upgrades, is when they start having a purple "-1" printed on the right.

I feel you...but like a lot of cool space to play around with vis a vis force charges, it's worthless on the 1-force generics or weaker dudes like Ezra, Bariss, etc.

13 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

Trying to chase any given Delta is hella like trying to catch first edition Soontir.

not at all! First edition soontir couldn't double repo and then 1-turn, 5-straight, 1-bank, 3-bank, or change his dial after revealing it. As far as getting shots on target, 1.0 soontir was way easier.

Now doing damage with those shots was laughable, but that's a different problem. a solved one, actually.

Lol yeah don't remind 😆

13 hours ago, pyoinator said:

If this happened, Brilliant evasion might actually see play!

I only use this on Luke Skywalker. You always will have a single force (at minimum) when defending. It hasnt happened alot, but it is good when it does happen.