RZ-2s are such an odd duck. Flying against them brings a lot of the unfun of flying against aces, with how they can just slip around and keep shooting and you almost feel like you can't do anything.

Except.... they aren't *that* strong in the end. 2 red dice and 4 health each with only 5 ships is... kinda unimpressive. Remember when a single-point nerf was enough to kill the entire 5A archetype for a points rotation?

3 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Except.... they aren't *that* strong in the end. 2 red dice and 4 health each with only 5 ships is... kinda unimpressive. Remember when a single-point nerf was enough to kill the entire 5A archetype for a points rotation?

They are a solid A tier list. Decent to strong, but not overbearingly so. As to the second part, what single point nerf got rid of them and when? I honestly do not know what you are referencing here.

57 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

As to the second part, what single point nerf got rid of them and when? I honestly do not know what you are referencing here.

There was a time you could get all the named, with optics and two Talents. All with Crackshot and Heroic or Trickshot. When they all have Crackshot, it was actually kind of terrifying.

1 hour ago, 5050Saint said:

They are a solid A tier list. Decent to strong, but not overbearingly so. As to the second part, what single point nerf got rid of them and when? I honestly do not know what you are referencing here.

My memory was that 5A were mostly gone (or at least took a major dive) between the last June update when nearly everyone went up a point (L'ulo more), and the January update which brought them down and added the HS&A pilots.

These are ships which are kinda A-Tier now, but it's seemed like they've really been on the edge, and could easily been able to slip down to B or C with even slight nerfs.

25 minutes ago, gennataos said:

There was a time you could get all the named, with optics and two Talents. All with Crackshot and Heroic or Trickshot. When they all have Crackshot, it was actually kind of terrifying.

14 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

My memory was that 5A were mostly gone (or at least took a major dive) between the last June update when nearly everyone went up a point (L'ulo more), and the January update which brought them down and added the HS&A pilots.

Gotcha. Losing Lu'lo was the biggest thing, but having ran into several 5A at Worlds, I never really saw them as gone.

7 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

Gotcha. Losing Lu'lo was the biggest thing, but having ran into several 5A at Worlds, I never really saw them as gone.

Fair.

6 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Gotcha. Losing Lu'lo was the biggest thing, but having ran into several 5A at Worlds, I never really saw them as gone.

Zizi is way better than Lu’lo

1 hour ago, miguelj said:

Zizi is way better than Lu’lo

There was a pretty long stretch after L'ulo got priced out, and before Zizi existed.

8 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

There was a pretty long stretch after L'ulo got priced out, and before Zizi was around.

so, for all of Big Jedi meta? coincidence, or...?

Just now, svelok said:

so, for all of Big Jedi meta? coincidence, or...?

If you're asking about the span of time when 5A took at least a bit of a dip, probably not coincidence. The impression I've gotten onhere is that 5A is a list which is more vulnerable than most lists to "consistent green dice" metagames.

If you're asking about those times where L'ulo was nerfed before folks started flying Zizi, I was just filling in the other poster about the length of time between the adjustment which took L'ulo out, and the eventual release of Zizi. Mx. Tlo literally wasn't published yet.

So I think I also could have called this the Vonreg Principle.

I know this was discussed a few pages ago but its worth restating some of it.

Reposition options are limited enough to require generally “correct” dial choices, though daredevil mitigates that a good bit. Getting blocked is a big deal and ends with zero modification. Strain carried over between rounds communicates dial info. The blues on the dial are good but not so accessible or high speed as to make strain or stress trivial. His pilot ability is solid and impactful without just being dice mods. The ship cant easily defend against multiple shots with mods for each. Its defensive profile depends on specific repositioning order and flanking setup and the rest of the lists positioning. Its offensive profile depends on minimizing repositioning entirely for access to full modification, and leads to game changing impacts on defense. Lock set up and saving from prior rounds is pretty key in general.

Getting the speed and angle of approach right is key to keep arc on target over multiple rounds, another thing daredevil mitigates. Strain doesnt close off kturn options or prevent white maneuvers with actions, but it does give a real incentive to clear it as soon as you can and keeping the strain denies your ship ability. Playing without a kturn or sloop is key to, though Holo ignores that. And again there are plenty of spots where repositioning disengages are not 100% accessible or end in loss of modification or shot opportunities.

I think my favorite parts of this can be summed up as almost everything Vonreg does that “gains” him something has a legitimate mostly immediate in game “cost”.

The BA does somethings extremely well and others intentionally very poorly. End result is an i6 ace thats actually got some depth to it, though it walks a line for sure as it can still lean very hard on init kills to bail it out of spots it shouldn’t be. Main thing is it doesn’t get equal offensive and defensive modification and repositioning options in all situations. All three of those things are at constant odds which leads to good gameplay. Poe starts the games with these trade offs in place. Vonreg ends up with more and more negative consequences the worse your decisions are. This is awesome.

I hope future aces like the Eta2, Vwing, and Tri will follow similar logic.

Only way I can see some existing aces fitting this category without drastic price increases to deny upgrades is if force rules were adjusted enough. Its kinda clear that 2.0 Force was a mistake and needs a rules change as part of this edition. I think that is the one option besides upgrade slot removal that could fundamentally change my opinion on how high some of these ace costs need to go. Force removes to much from the game as part of the statline at the start of the game.

There needs to be something that works as “built” in game trade offs for multiple mods and repositions.

Just making some outlier aces more and more expensive would for sure work eventually but is kinda boring. Lets make them “bad” like Vonreg and Poe. Maybe removing upgrade slots and changing force rules is the best way to do that without destroying what people enjoy about current force aces, mainly that they are dirt cheap and you can spam 3 of them.

22 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

[Vonreg's] pilot ability is solid and impactful without just being dice mods.

While I agree with your overall point, I'm just going to call out this bit: Vonreg's pilot ability is awful and basically meaningless in most situations. More than any other ship in the game, you are paying him for that big orange number and basically accepting the entirely blank pilot ability box.

Is that a bad thing? Maybe. It's better than the alternative of him having an ability more like Soontir's or Wedge's, but I do wish his ability was at least situationally useful, like say Anakin's, rather than completely irrelevant.

The Force is a really good mechanic. I’d be disappointed to see it changed dramatically.

Also, the TIE/ba doesn’t necessarily carry Strain around after using its ship ability. You can also choose to gain Deplete (often this is much smarter).

As for Vonreg’s ability being relevant or not: I’ve used it a number of times. Yes, the opponent can dial in a blue to remove it; but there aren’t always viable blue options. It often leads to choices like, “do I keep this Strain token, and fly over there, where I get shot by two guys, or do I make a blue maneuver, lose the Strain, but got shot by three guys?” So I think there are times when Vonreg forces bad choices on the opponent, and even if the token doesn’t stick, it affects the game.

OK, I’m ducking out again. 🙂

1 hour ago, DR4CO said:

Is that a bad thing? Maybe. It's better than the alternative of him having an ability more like Soontir's or Wedge's, but I do wish his ability was at least situationally useful, like say Anakin's, rather than completely irrelevant.

counterpoint: high vs low initiative is in and of itself an interesting design space. Uniqueness dots are also an interesting design space. I don't understand why the things need to always be linked. High initiative pilot = uniqueness dots makes sense to me because of ace spam, but high initiative = uniqueness dots = ability doesn't really make sense to me. Why, from an actual game design perspective (not just feels) is it bad to have a limited, high initiative pilot with literally no ability?

Just now, Kyle Ren said:

counterpoint: high vs low initiative is in and of itself an interesting design space. Uniqueness dots are also an interesting design space. I don't understand why the things need to always be linked. High initiative pilot = uniqueness dots makes sense to me because of ace spam, but high initiative = uniqueness dots = ability doesn't really make sense to me. Why, from an actual game design perspective (not just feels) is it bad to have a limited, high initiative pilot with literally no ability?

It would not be bad for a high-initiative pilot to have no ability. That's basically what Rush is in the latter half of the game, and I wouldn't mind seeing FFG print someone who just skipped Rush's conditional effect and was just i5/6 with a blank text box.

What is bad is for a pilot to have an ability that so bad that you and your opponents both laugh at the fact you're not even bothering to trigger it. Unfortunately this is where feel does come into it, because from a cold, analytical design point of view, having a useless ability and not having an ability at all are basically the same thing. But the player is not expecting anything out of a ship with no ability. He will expect that, if a pilot has been given an ability, that it should actually do something, and it feels like you've been hoodwinked when it doesn't.

I mean, it's giving them the token, idk.

It's not my jam, and based on a lot of the other conversations we've had seems like it might not be your favorite thing either but (I think I had a convo with @GreenDragoon in the Krayt thread about why this is the case) a lot of players just love building lists, all day long. I feel like it may well be intentional to have really random bad abilities to give people an extra puzzle to think about for a bit and wonder if there's some use for it?

unrelated I missed the conversation but I also hate RZ-2 A-Wings

4 hours ago, DR4CO said:

While I agree with your overall point, I'm just going to call out this bit: Vonreg's pilot ability is awful and basically meaningless in most situations. More than any other ship in the game, you are paying him for that big orange number and basically accepting the entirely blank pilot ability box.

Is that a bad thing? Maybe. It's better than the alternative of him having an ability more like Soontir's or Wedge's, but I do wish his ability was at least situationally useful, like say Anakin's, rather than completely irrelevant.

I also think Kylo and Anakins abilities are solid so to your point I might not be the best person to describe pilot abilities. I don't have high expectations of them.

I think of Vonregs as coordinated locks for Rivas/France which is probably its biggest contribution for me. The less serious thing is a bit of dial knowledge for everyone when deciding my dials and actions. That seems solid even though the opponent might ignore it and accept the strain or deplete in favor of non-blues but that varies from ship to ship. If they go with a blue it helps a bit with blocking and positioning, though they dont have to and dials are so blue in general theres still alot to guess in some cases.

3 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

The Force is a really good mechanic. I’d be disappointed to see it changed dramatically.

The Force is probably one of my least favorite 2.0 mechanics because its just THERE. It is everything people complained about with 1.0: Just some super strong thing that escalates the power level of ships and has little to no interactive element. Dice modding is the best thing in X-wing and Force lets you just constantly do it regardless of actions or game state. The fact Force is just 'always there' and comes back 1 a turn hurts a lot of aspects of the game. Like Jedi Starfighters can literally view their force as always getting a free focus every turn, which is a bit silly and oppressive if your rolling spammy low dice attacks or are trying to do stuff like use juke or whatever. If I had a magic wand I would dramatically change force so it was mostly a way to fuel force talents and its base use was weak, rather than such a titanic ability that it was stronger than most pilot abilities.

Even something as minor as 'if you bump you lose ALL your force as you lost focus" would be a titanic improvement. I hate that the force, rather than being this thing that subtly changes how a ship flies, just makes the pilot categorically better in every way. Its the worst aspect of old EU writing.

3 hours ago, Kyle Ren said:

Why, from an actual game design perspective (not just feels) is it bad to have a limited, high initiative pilot with literally no ability?

It is possible to make a limited, high initiative pilot with a mild ability that flavors the pilot without being overwhelming. One of the problems with X-wing though is that any time an ability doesn't revolve around giving dice mods they sorta... chicken out on it, where that is where a lot of interesting design space lives. I have to admit I wouldn't like a ton of pilots existing without any abilities because the ability helps make the character feel like the character, and one really good thing X-wing (generally) does is evoke the 'lore' as it were via character abilities. Arvel, Baby Annie, Porkins, ect really make it feel like a Starwars game. I could accept high initiative limited generics of course, but they should really be limited to elite ships and not be common.

I would rather Aces have abilities that are useful but not generic, which most aces are. Imagine an Ace who had to charge up 3 turns to get to give their attack the ion rules? Or who could nom a stress off an ally once per game? A big problem with Ace design is basically every Ace focuses on some variation of 'modding dice' rather than 'do something unique to make the pilot's theme shine through.' Why does Boba get a bonus for flying near people? I dunno, just a good excuse to give him a condition for a super strong modification. Why does Vader get a bonus action a turn effectively when like the main thing we saw him doing in the movies was failing to take a Target Lock action for way too long? Whatever, it lets him always have focus or a passive mod of similar power while repositioning which because its so common in Aces is effectively a requirement.

That ship has sailed a bit, so any Ace that doesn't just do dice mods is now fighting a really big uphill battle sadly, unless they basically nuked those aces from orbit.

41 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

I would rather Aces have abilities that are useful but not generic, which most aces are. Imagine an Ace who had to charge up 3 turns to get to give their attack the ion rules? Or who could nom a stress off an ally once per game? A big problem with Ace design is basically every Ace focuses on some variation of 'modding dice' rather than 'do something unique to make the pilot's theme shine through.' Why does Boba get a bonus for flying near people? I dunno, just a good excuse to give him a condition for a super strong modification. Why does Vader get a bonus action a turn effectively when like the main thing we saw him doing in the movies was failing to take a Target Lock action for way too long? Whatever, it lets him always have focus or a passive mod of similar power while repositioning which because its so common in Aces is effectively a requirement.

I dont have a problem with pilot abilities that grant mods necessarily, Vaders is an example of a reasonable one. I do take issue with them not having constraints or in game trade offs or vulnerability to some combination of blocks, rocks, and stress.

Boba’s rerolls should at minimum be single round regen charge based. Ideally with only 1 charge. If its more charges than 1 the ability should probably not work while blocked, rocked, or stressed.

Vaders pilot ability in particular is made more powerful by how over the top Force Rules are though. Thats the real issue. His ability is not very concerning to me overall and pretty much fine as is because I can stop it by blocking or forcing him over a rock without burners or with stress. Its not a huge outlier.

Cant restate this enough, Force Charge rules in 2.0 are probably the games single biggest problem besides premovement cards. They need to come up with a way to give every ship in the game options for “disabling” force charges beyond bringing specific control pieces or shooting at a target over multiple rounds. I agree that the most immediate way to mildly address that would be disabling force entirely via blocking.

17 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Vaders is an example of a reasonable one

Vader is downright my fave ace to fly against because, again, it feels so good to kill him. It is just notable that this sort of effect is so oversaturated that it almost is a requirement, which is part of why Vonreg feels so bad despite it actually being like... an interesting nuanced ability with a lot of interaction?

Like yes, sometimes it isn't perfectly what you need. Good. That is what an ability should be, especially on an Ace, and the best part is it isn't random if it is useful or not, it depends on the context of if the token and the maneuver are both relevant or not.

7 hours ago, DR4CO said:

While I agree with your overall point, I'm just going to call out this bit: Vonreg's pilot ability is awful and basically meaningless in most situations. More than any other ship in the game, you are paying him for that big orange number and basically accepting the entirely blank pilot ability box.

Is that a bad thing? Maybe. It's better than the alternative of him having an ability more like Soontir's or Wedge's, but I do wish his ability was at least situationally useful, like say Anakin's, rather than completely irrelevant.

This conversation was happening in a different thread, as well. As a good design principle, the higher a pilots initiative, the less useful their ability should be. I think Vonreg hits this nail on the head: a decent I6 ace, with an okay ability. I hope FFG tries to embrace this principle moving forward.

There are inherent problems with this philosophy, though, as an ability might only be a strong ability on a high initiative pilot. If we swapped Soontir Fel's and Turr Phennir's initiatives, I think we'd believe Turr Phennir's ability was too good, but as it is, it's lackluster. But outside of those specific kinds of abilities, give the strong abilities to low initiative pilots. Finn is a good example of this.

8 hours ago, DR4CO said:

More than any other ship in the game, you are paying him for that big orange number and basically accepting the entirely blank pilot ability box.

I believe this can also be referred to as "Odd Ball blindness".

On 5/19/2020 at 10:04 AM, svelok said:

Pilots:

• Soontir +5 = 58
• Vader -2 = 65
• Grand Inquisitor +4 = 56
• Duchess +0 = 42 (remove mod slot)
• Whisper +7 = 64 (remove gunner slot)
• Rex +0 = 81
• Redline +0 = 52
• Guri -4 = 60
• Boba +5 = 90 (remove crew slot)
• Kylo +0 = 76 (remove all upgrade slots. I don't trust a single one of you.)
• Holo +5 = 59
• Anakin +4 = 66 (theme on point)
• Obi Wan +5 = 53 (CLT i3/4/5/6 prices from 2 3 4 5 -> 2 3 6 9)
• Plo +5 = 49 (see above)
• Sun Fac -18 = 36 (gain mod slot, Ensnare +100. DWYWM)
• Luke +0 = 62

Upgrades:

• Advanced Sensors: i4/5/6 from 10 10 10 - > 10 25 40
• Slave 1 +5 = 6
• Maul +0 = 12
• Fifth Bro +1 = 12
• Passive Sensors: i4/5/6 from 3 3 3 - > 4 6 8
• Sense +7 = 12
• Afterburners: i4/5/6 from 6 6 6 - > 5 9 13
• Precog: i4/5/6 from 7 10 13 - > 10 20 30
• Super: i4/5/6 from 16 24 32 - > 20 32 44

👀

😡 Force 😡

10 hours ago, dezzmont said:

If I had a magic wand I would dramatically change force so it was mostly a way to fuel force talents and its base use was weak, rather than such a titanic ability that it was stronger than most pilot abilities.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what FFG had in mind. It's certainly how it felt starting out. It's only as the game matured that we've realized just how strong force is as a mechanic.

IMO I'd be less brutal with my hammer, but as long as we're exploring potential nerfs to bring its dice mod aspect in line... I'd be inclined to reduce force's use to spending one force charge per attack/defense for its focus->hit/evade effect. If the pilot has some separate effect (like Brilliant Evasion), that can be spent separately. Cards like Fifth Brother (Gunner) might be reworded to "when you would spend a force to change a focus to a hit, you may change a focus to a crit instead", so your one change per attack is slightly more powerful, but that particular card doesn't let you spend 2 force at once if you have them. But that's not going to affect pilots/crew that only get 1 force charge.

Either that or make recharging force slightly harder, e.g. only on red maneuvers or when suffering an attack that deals at least one hull damage (like a one recharge per attack version of Hate, baked into force).

Or building on ideas above, force cannot be spent on dice modification under the following circumstances: while in the attacker's bullseye or while at range 0 of an opponent's ship.

Lots of ideas... What would be the consequences of this? IMO drastic, at least for certain force pilots (e.g. Jedi) and some force crew. It would absolutely make sense for a lot of them to be much cheaper, since the newly nerfed force was generally a large part of their cost. And I can see Force Upgrades getting a new life, now that spending force on dice mods isn't such a drastically better option than most other choices, bringing force more in line with that original intent. But I honestly don't think it'd be an unambiguously good change either, there'd be lots of complications to work out; I'm not so optimistic that an unproven proposition will just fix-the-thing magically. We've seen too many things blow up in the past. But it's nice to speculate on possible fixes without having to do the real work of testing & rebalancing.

10 hours ago, dezzmont said:

One of the problems with X-wing though is that any time an ability doesn't revolve around giving dice mods they sorta... chicken out on it, where that is where a lot of interesting design space lives.

Dice mods are easier to understand and predict, while something neat like Turr Phennir , Echo , or Kare Kun is viewed by FFG as a lot more dangerous. Hence a lot of mechanically interesting pilot abilities are deliberately not given to aces, but to inits 4 or lower. Viktor takes equipment and/or positioning cleverness to use well, but has a neat incentive effect when he works. Shadow Caster and other scum tractor shenanigans were too evil and clever and had to be destroyed (not just because of the accursed Nantex though that was the final catalyst, but also because tractoring was considered NPE in all its forms). Even just at init 5 on Ketsu , it was considered too much. Torani ? My beloved Kimogila, relegated to low init because... uhh, because they're scum faction haha. But also because the ship and pilot abilities would be so much stronger on an ace.

Numeric bonuses like dice are also way easier to think of and understand. Graz is a delightful pilot because he gets a neat bonus, but only under very specific conditions that are tougher to consistently produce at init 4. Kad gets some nice dice modification on a red maneuver. After Soontir positions perfectly, his ability says "Hey guy, have a focus token!" (in that South Park Terrance & Phillip voice, of course; this is the narrator's voice in X-Wing, I hope everyone knew that). Adding dice or dice mods is a really basic and easy core mechanic, and so it's easy to think up abilities that play with that for pilots of all initiatives.

But could you imagine if Soontir's ability wasn't dice mods, but was instead something like: "At the start of engagement, if you have no red tokens and there is an enemy ship in your bullseye, you may perform a non-action boost or barrel roll. If you do, gain a strain token." (or a stress/ion token; pick your poison for balance) That's both much more interesting but potentially far, far more powerful in the hands of an ace. Or if Soontir just had Turr's ability, even restricting it to after attacking a foe in bullseye, that's still really strong on an init 6 (offering amazing arc-dodging during engagement). That's a lot harder to gauge at first glance than "you get a focus token", but we all immediately suspect it's hazardous because of what we've experienced on high-init pilots in the past. In contrast, I don't think Turr would be too powerful with Soontir's ability; at init 4 it's just no bother.

Dice mod abilities are just way easier to come up with and to balance, so it's not surprising we have so many.

8 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

As a good design principle, the higher a pilots initiative, the less useful their ability should be. I think Vonreg hits this nail on the head: a decent I6 ace, with an okay ability. I hope FFG tries to embrace this principle moving forward.

I really like the abilities for Vonreg, Kylo Ren, Quickdraw + Dengar, even Fenn Rau & Wedge. They feel interesting, useful, and distinct; even though I forget to use Kylo's ability, I love its design.

However Han Solo's Scavenged YT ability oddly feels like a wasted slot since it's tough to ever have a desirable use for it, and with his ships' cost he doesn't see much play anyway. Compared to an ability I rarely think to use (e.g. Kylo) or have to think about a lot before using (Vonreg), or a straight bonus (Fenn, Wedge), Han feels like I'm paying just for his initiative on an expensive ship not optimally set up to take advantage of it. And I'm not paying much for that initiative boost, but it still oddly feels bad anyway that I can't (or don't wish to) use his ability. Kind of a strange juxtaposition.