force 👏 only 👏 regens 👏 on 👏 focus 👏 action 👏

I feel like the best fixes are usual the easiest. I have spent many hours testing and trying out variations only to scrap most of them because they were too complicated or ineffective.

Force can be changed to spend a force point to re-roll 1 die. Keep all the other mechanics around it. Gives better variance, but is no longer a regenerating calculate.

Tractor beams can be changed to you have to spend the tractor token to move an opponents ship. Have to choose between positioning or defense penalty.

Jamming beams should continue to the next round if not used in the round they were given. I've only used the jamming beam once in a clutch play, but watching your jam tokens go to waste is disheartening.

Overall I feel the designers have been doing a great job and I love what they have been doing for this game. I'm excited to see what is coming out next and how the Hyperspace meta will continue to evolve. Hoping to get back to my local store with my friends so we can destroy each other's tiny plastic ships and laugh about all the corny Star Wars jokes we can come up with.

I know this has little to do with the rest of the conversations y'all are having, but I wanted to throw my two cents in.

4 minutes ago, dunhop said:

Overall I feel the designers have been doing a great job and I love what they have been doing for this game.

Same Team. Its so **** close to perfect, as evidenced by current hyperspace. Just need to go that extra step and order 66 the “force” users.

26 minutes ago, dunhop said:

Force can be changed to spend a force point to re-roll 1 die. Keep all the other mechanics around it. Gives better variance, but is no longer a regenerating calculate.

This would make force... dramatically stronger... ?

12 minutes ago, svelok said:

(regen force only on focus action)

This is a neat idea... you regain force when taking a moment to collect yourself. IMO also recharge when you calculate, in the case of a droid packing a force crew (e.g. 4-LOM with Maul).

10 minutes ago, dunhop said:

I feel like the best fixes are usual the easiest. I have spent many hours testing and trying out variations only to scrap most of them because they were too complicated or ineffective.

Force can be changed to spend a force point to re-roll 1 die. Keep all the other mechanics around it. Gives better variance, but is no longer a regenerating calculate.

Tractor beams can be changed to you have to spend the tractor token to move an opponents ship. Have to choose between positioning or defense penalty.

Jamming beams should continue to the next round if not used in the round they were given. I've only used the jamming beam once in a clutch play, but watching your jam tokens go to waste is disheartening.

Memories of late first-edition jamming has me twitching at the idea of Jamming tokens sticking around... I feel like that might swing too far, but other people may not be so concerned. (also it'd be brutal against heavy munitions carriers and epic ships, but maybe it should be hahaha). At most, I'd have up to one jam token carry over and no more.

Force giving a reroll is a neat idea; it's far less certain, and doesn't mix with other rerolls (instead it mixes with focus/calculate, which could be a good or bad thing). It will produce a few more crits though, as reroll tends to do. Maybe modifying with a force locks the die so it cannot be modified again (by you or your opponent); you've "forced" the die result. That way it combines with nothing (not advanced optics, focus tokens, etc), and you're taking a proper risk with your free dice mod compared to spending a target lock, using Lone Wolf, etc.

The tractor idea feels nice, very minimal and elegant. I don't think it solves the problem FFG is trying to solve though, which is the power of being able to tractor someone into obstacles for a 2nd hit later, or toward the board edge, so I imagine they'd keep the rotation.

10 minutes ago, dunhop said:

Overall I feel the designers have been doing a great job and I love what they have been doing for this game. I'm excited to see what is coming out next and how the Hyperspace meta will continue to evolve. Hoping to get back to my local store with my friends so we can destroy each other's tiny plastic ships and laugh about all the corny Star Wars jokes we can come up with.

Agreed. A good thing to keep in mind, honestly things are overall good and we shouldn't get too lost in the weeds hashing out proposed improvements.

1 minute ago, svelok said:

This would make force... dramatically stronger... ?

Yea, being able to handle blanks and focuses, and then spend a focus after, is a really strong option since these pilots like being focused anyway. IMO that's why I'd say when you "force" a die to reroll it, it can't be modified again.

On 5/22/2020 at 7:19 PM, Wazat said:

Yea, being able to handle blanks and focuses, and then spend a focus after, is a really strong option since these pilots like being focused anyway. IMO that's why I'd say when you "force" a die to reroll it, it can't be modified again.

Or you make regen way harder so that force is good at first but focused fire melts them more consistently. You could even make the regen rules uneven for passive spending vs talent or action use.

In general lopsided mechanics are better than generically ok ones because it creates more interaction and builds a weakness into your mechanics that are not punishing in their use like an overt crude downside, but instead encourage your opponents to interact with them cleverly.

Force is hurt by its very bland 'always good always there' status and it may be improved by having its power level be more focused into a short burst of consistency and then very little rather than just a permanent passive mod. Increasing the reward for correctly pushing through force but the penalty for failing to do so may be the ticket and more thematic: you can have a great destined moment or two but 2 clone troopers rapidly dumping shots in your back still 66's you.

I actually like the Force a lot. It's such a strong part of the lore and it's users are basically superheroes. It shouldn't feel like just an alternate mechanic. However, game-wise, I'd totally agree it's a bit too bland and powerful.

With theme generally being a good thing, I wouldn't like to see it overly nerfed. Requiring a focus action to regen might make a heavy dent and the timing may open some lateral strangeness. Not that I've that more than a cursory thought....

Lore wise, Force does require comcentration though, rather than just freely gushing, (unless pumped on Hate). Being stressed, or at R0 of a thing switching off the regen might be alright....

You need to pressure a force user or they will just swan around, casually doing superhero stuff. Requiring them to tiptoe around the focus action, without pressure, feels a little restrictive to me.

Part of the Force problem is that some of the users are adding it to an already formidable array of abilities. Another case of too many tools in the box.

This is entirely aside from me anti-thematically putting Maul on Han, just cause it really helps with all that being stressed, R0 of stuff and not focussing 😄

I guess it's possible he'll be coerced into giving Maul a lift somewhere in Solo 2: I Had Forgotten Any Of This Happened By The Time I Met Obi Wan

20 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

This is entirely aside from me anti-thematically putting Maul on Han, just cause it really helps with all that being stressed, R0 of stuff and not focussing 😄

I guess it's possible he'll be coerced into giving Maul a lift somewhere in Solo 2: I Had Forgotten Any Of This Happened By The Time I Met Obi Wan

Part of the appeal of wargaming is invented scenarios. Actually one of the things that turned my bud off from X-wing is that while he wanted to use some canon elements, the game heavily pushes away from the 'your dudes' aspect.

'Fanfic' lists (Like Jyn-Kyle lists, because they both are the people who got the Deathstar Plans) are really popular. No shame in having Maul and Han bud it up! Throw Boba in there too why don'tcha? Or don't, actually.

17 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

No shame in having Maul and Han bud it up! Throw Boba in there too why don'tcha? Or don't, actually.

Too late, I have. And Greedo 🤣

Han is suitably impressed.

1 hour ago, Cuz05 said:

Requiring them to tiptoe around the focus action, without pressure, feels a little restrictive to me.

On reflection, I'm realizing this also may just make the cagey aces even more cagey, since they'll want to be back to full force before engaging again. It's R2 Astromech's drive to disengage & regen all over again, and IMO we could use far less of that.

Ideally the change encourages active interaction to interfere with force, rather than it being (or just being, force should probably be less action efficient no matter what) an efficiency reduction on stressful actions, bumping, or taking target locks.

Also, some force users already can essentially evaluate their force regen as 1 free focus action a turn anyway through Fine Tuned Controls on turns you repo, or Vader overall. It would hardly affect those two to only get it back on focusing.

7 hours ago, dezzmont said:

Ideally the change encourages active interaction to interfere with force, rather than it being (or just being, force should probably be less action efficient no matter what) an efficiency reduction on stressful actions, bumping, or taking target locks.

Also, some force users already can essentially evaluate their force regen as 1 free focus action a turn anyway through Fine Tuned Controls on turns you repo, or Vader overall. It would hardly affect those two to only get it back on focusing.

Yea, and Obi Wan on your team basically turns his force into a focus when they spend a focus. There are some very efficient abilities out there that can make do just fine with a lot of proposed changes.

Force is so established and touches enough cards that it'll be tricky for FFG to fix. But interaction to interfere with force might mean adding a few pilots/crew/etc that prey on force users, or interfere with their abilities. There's probably something in the lore somewhere FFG can draw from (quality may vary, haha).

But when force isn't being used super-efficiently it's a lot of fun, as pointed out above; ideally whatever the fix, it wouldn't be chopped up so bad it stops being worth having around.

12 minutes ago, Wazat said:

But when force isn't being used super-efficiently it's a lot of fun, as pointed out above; ideally whatever the fix, it wouldn't be chopped up so bad it stops being worth having around.

I think preventing force charge use or regen in the same way that actions are prevented by blocks, rocks, and stress is a good incremental step that wouldn't kill whats powerful about it or add complexity. Playing force pilots better would lead to avoiding those blocks, rocks, or stress and getting the full value.

Still able to "calc calc + target lock" or "calc calc focus evade" for defense against multiple shots or "single/double reposition + no modding action + calc calc" etc.

If that doesn't help the situation they could do something more significant later on.

Not in response to anything specific above, but... I keep thinking back to my conversation with my X-Wing buddy who played Jedi Aces at the time (months ago during their regen delta7 height). He disliked the playstyle of shield regen, but felt trapped with it. There was no change he could make to his list that didn't give up a huge part of its effectiveness by removing that artoo unit. And he really hated that, being stuck with a playstyle he didn't enjoy simply because it was so, so much better than all other options, and not playing that way would put him at a sizable disadvantage.

Once he was done with tournaments he immediately switched out that R2 and one of his pilots for more interesting and experimental stuff, like Luminara Unduli with C1-10P and CLT Anakin with R4-P44. He genuinely had fun trying these lists out. Eventually the meta solidified around other stuff though, and since he was primarily focused on tournaments, that meant he had to adopt the strong lists again.

That's expected when chasing tournaments. But IMO, the meta is way better for tournament and casual players alike when one dominant strategy (like shield regen) is muted enough that they're not trapped into adopting it. The more wiggle room a list has to experiment with and be viable, the more a player can customize a strong list to their playstyle and come at the tournament with something novel, even slightly novel, to shake things up.

That's the goal IMO with force, ace pilots, etc. Don't trap them into just a few optimal iterations -- narrowing their options too much by having something too powerful or weakening too many of their options just forces them to take what's left. Ideally, there will be several viable options, with a small enough difference between them that it's not a big deal which they choose as long as they practice well... and make sure those options are inches instead of miles ahead of the baseline power level you want the game to operate at, so whole other playstyles can go toe to toe with them.

It's... a lofty goal. But I like to keep going back to that experience (and others) in my head whenever we get into these conversations. People flying the top meta often feel trapped if there's just no viable variation, or if there's a dominant playstyle or list that's required to compete. They benefit just like we do when things are brought into line and there's a lot of variety out there operating at approximately the same level of viability. That should be the goal, and I like hearing from the people who fly Force or Aces or Beef etc to understand their perspective while talking about how I'd like those lists adjusted. Sometimes they want to push back because they feel (fairly or unfairly) pressured by the limits of the supposedly OP list they fly, and sometimes they want to push forward because imbalances just hem them into a corner and there's no option to customize their favorite stuff, to express their own style in their tournament play. A game this focused on customization really wants to continue making sure customization remains an option, even at the top. An overly-sharp-peaked meta doesn't serve most of the community.

Metas are like pandemics: we want to flatten the curve. 😉

5 hours ago, Wazat said:

But when force isn't being used super-efficiently it's a lot of fun, as pointed out above; ideally whatever the fix, it wouldn't be chopped up so bad it stops being worth having around.

I would say Force should be tweaked to encourage you to 'deal with it' in a sense. Part of why control mechanics and things outside of just arc dodging/beating on a target are fun is because they introduce a new dimension into decision making. Passive mods like force meanwhile just reduce the amount of things you can really do to handle a situation.

Making force behave less like a passive mod and more like an active mod (like with @Boom Owl 's suggestion that it essentially only comes back if you COULD do an action helps. But I think it should go one step beyond and actively encourage you to do something to a force user to not just negate one turn of force regen, but actively set them back. There should be an envisioned condition not just where force isn't useful, but your actively able to be put into a negative position. It doesn't mean making force users 'worse' than regular pilots in some situations, so much as creating a situation for a force user that is actively disempowering (such as not just failing to regen, but losing force points). This creates a dynamic where your opponent wants to engineer a certain situation that both can put you at a big disadvantage, but also informs you of something that you should avoid allowing to happen making you both more predictable in goals but not specific outcome (which increases strategy: your opponent knows you don't want to allow that situation to happen but doesn't know exactly how you will avoid it) and allowing you to 'bait' your opponent (Anyone who is a fan of torps knows that the limit to not being able to shoot at range 1, while clearly a disadvantage, can be exploited to control behavior).

Force's biggest problem is that it is a passive mechanic in more ways than one. It is more interesting for a mechanic to give you a really big advantage when it works and a small one not worth the price (or even no advantage) when it doesn't, rather than just always kinda being a value add. 4/2s are more interesting than 3/3s, in MTG terms. This is why I like the idea of conditions that don't just stop force from recurring (it already isn't too much an issue of recurring force because the counter already exploits this: Shoot at a force user with more than one ship) as much as conditions inherent to the game where you lose force: because now your opponent is proactively rewarded over more than just one turn for creating that condition. That said such a system would probably require a little buff to force in other ways (It would, for example, probably justify changing force to re-rolling one dice, which is more thematic and a bit more powerful if you also can focus, if you lose force on taking stress/damage/a bump). That kind of extreme change needs a high level of testing, and probably wouldn't be a good short term fix compared to 'you don't regen force if stressed or bumped.'

5 hours ago, Wazat said:

But interaction to interfere with force might mean adding a few pilots/crew/etc that prey on force users, or interfere with their abilities. There's probably something in the lore somewhere FFG can draw from (quality may vary, haha).

There are some clear winners in the old EU, but I doubt they could be fit into ANY faction. More critically, while tech is good, 'hate' generally is less interesting: There is a reason most protection from color effects in MTG no longer have a static color target anymore, and that is in a TCG where you have 60 cards and can afford to sideboard a card for a matchup! Imagine in X-wing paying even 3-4 points for a crew that shuts down force users and does nothing else if there aren't any force users in play! It would need to create an absurd win rate disparity just to even have a chance to see play, and that would result in games being decided at list building, which is the opposite of the goal in flattening the meta.

While lopsided mechanics that encourage you to try to seize control and actively mess with your opponent's plans are good (A classic example is cornering someone in a fighting game putting some characters at a really huge advantage as rushdown characters, while others want to be far away to zone and thus despite lingering near a corner hate being actively cornered) you don't want things that make individual matchups too deterministic (You don't want, for example, character A to have an 80% win rate vs character B, or even a 60% win rate vs more than maybe one or two characters). The first leads to players actively jockying for control over the match in a way that exposes themselves to danger (getting near a zoner requires agressive play vs dangerous attacks trying to keep you out, zoning inherently can be risky if your near a wall) while the second makes matches a foregone conclusion and, essentially a waste of time.

Tech better sits in the vague 'It is a general ability that clearly is a bit harsher vs some archetypes.' Trajectory Simulator is a decent example of a tech card: Its general winrate is low, but it is always at least somewhat useful, but vs some archetypes like swarms that need to fly in formation it is more distruptive than normal, without actually winning the game: Like it isn't game ending for droids to be unable to fly safely straight at a list with a bomber with this, it just means their optimal plan isn't on the table but plenty of other strengths about a formation swarm like droids still work and there is clear play around that make it worth playing out the game. An example of a bad effect of this nature is . Meanwhile, Magva Yaro, who is both too non-impactful in their good matchups to be worth risking having a bad one, and does essentially nothing in their bad matchups.

Any card that directly referenced an opponent's force points without also referencing an alternate mechanic it could affect if they didn't have one would probably be bad for the game, and even one that explicitly tries to pick on force harder is a bit rough.

16 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

I think preventing force charge use or regen in the same way that actions are prevented by blocks, rocks, and stress is a good incremental step that wouldn't kill whats powerful about it or add complexity. Playing force pilots better would lead to avoiding those blocks, rocks, or stress and getting the full value.

Part of this feels quite difficult to implement.

Not being able to spend Force charges while stressed is the easiest 'fix' as it just becomes a generally applied rule and you have the stress token there to remind you. It's kind of thematic too. Can't use the Force so well if you're concentrating on something else and stressed out.

It makes Maul a trickier choice, of course. Probably weakens him enough to bring him down in cost. But I don't think it breaks anything else. It means that Vader has the same choice to make on a Tallon Roll as everyone else, which is probably good.

My only concern is that it makes it different from every other token. No other token is blocked from being spent by a stress token. Does this make the rule too complicated?

I suppose you could also add that the Force can't be spent if there is an enemy ship at range 0. This sort of gives you the same modifcation denial as being blocked. Problem is, there's no way to distinguish whether you were blocked and should be denied the Force use as though you'd been denied an action or if you executed your maneuver fully and then someone deliberately crashed into you. Seems a bit arbitrary, honestly. And you have the same issue as above where no other token spend is blocked under these conditions.

Which leaves targeting the recover part instead of the use part.

I think that's even trickier to implement. That little recover icon is printed on the card and the current rule and timing is incredibly succinct. Adding any complication to that is going to run into the danger of rule bloat.

I think you could get away with no Force regen while stressed. That's not too bad to check. Just change the rule to be 'the little arrow on the card means you recover one Force at the start of the round unless you are stressed'. I don't think that's too hard to remember, and it kinda ties with all the other things stress prevents. It also makes Maul a really interesting card, IMO. Basically turns him into a 'get Force now at the cost of not getting it next turn' card, which I think is pretty cool.

No Force regen on a bump though? That's hard. It's hard because it means you have to move the Force regen step into the Activation step and that breaks a whole bunch of things.

It totally breaks Supernatural and Precog on 1 Force ships. Maybe that's a good thing, but it still essentially invalidates two upgrades. It also breaks Sense. Again, it doesn't get used much anyway and it's arguably pretty NPE, but still.

I know it seems fair for Force to suffer if you bump, but I just don't think there's a way to neatly implement it without overhauling the entire mechanic.

I'm not so invested in this. I don't play a ton of competitive games, I'm nowhere near that high skill ceiling level of play where stuff like this matters. I kinda feel like the Force is mostly fine, I have a lot of fun playing Luke and Vader.

But if the rules were changed so that only one Force charge could be spent per dice roll and it didn't regen if you started the round stressed, I'd be cool with it. I think those are pretty simple changes that are easy to remember and would go a decent way to undercutting some of the power of Force charges. It also means cards like Brilliant Evasion have a reason to exist, which I think is good. I like the Force Power as an upgrade slot idea and I wish there was a reason to take any of them that weren't Hate. Speaking of which, Hate would probably need to get an errata here to include 'if you are not stressed' otherwise it would bypass the new mechanic and get stapled to every Dark Side pilot.

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

No Force regen on a bump though? That's hard. It's hard because it means you have to move the Force regen step into the Activation step and that breaks a whole bunch of things.

I envisioned it as a simple check during the usual step. Are you at R0 of any ship or object? Stressed? Yes? No regen for you.

4 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

My only concern is that it makes it different from every other token. No other token is blocked from being spent by a stress token.

It isn't a token in the rules. Like Shields and Energy it is a subtype of Charge.

6 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

I know it seems fair for Force to suffer if you bump, but I just don't think there's a way to neatly implement it without overhauling the entire mechanic.

There's a much cleaner way: When you bump, you lose a force charge. Just like skipping your action step while distracted, the bump denies you the concentration you need to stay in tune with the force. Might be worth doing the same on hitting certain obstacles (e.g. asteroids), either always or maybe only if you roll a bad result (whichever is a better overall balance). Essentially if you miss your action step, you might lose a force point in the process too. You might combine that with not regenerating force at end of round if you're stressed for a relatively rules-lite rebalancing:

1. You do not regenerate a force charge at end of round if you are stressed.
2. After partially executing a maneuver, lose a force charge.
3. optional : After you suffer damage from an asteroid or a strain token from a gas cloud, lose a force charge (or something similar).

(or even simpler version of #2 & #3 but maybe too harsh: if you skip your action step, lose a force point)

Thoughts?

No force regen while stressed makes for interesting movement choices. I like it! While this wont affect most force users, since they rarely get stressed anyway, it does help limit the over-potency the force currently has. I have no problem with the force mechanic the way it is, but I do understand the complaints people have with it.

If the force regen was changed to only on a focus action, I feel that would severly nerf the force mechanic, unless you changed the force to rerolls instead of a super-calculate.

3 minutes ago, Wazat said:

• You do not regenerate a force charge at end of round if you are stressed.
• After partially executing a maneuver, lose a force charge.
• optional : After you suffer damage from an asteroid or a strain token from a gas cloud, lose a force charge (or something similar).

I think #2 and #3 might be a bit harsh. I could see having a force ability that lets you perform an action by spending the force after performing a partial maneuver (heavily costed ability), but to just lose it straight out... feels bad.

13 minutes ago, dunhop said:

If the force regen was changed to only on a focus action, I feel that would severly nerf the force mechanic

that is, indeed, the objective

1 minute ago, svelok said:

that is, indeed, the objective

While I do like the thematic element of your suggestion, the thing I don't like about making Force only regen on a focus action is there is too much redundancy to make the force relevant. The Force is essentially an extra calculate that you get for free each turn. Since calculate is a weaker form of focus, you limiting getting a weaker ability only to when they spending their action to get the stronger one. They are not free to reposition, target lock, or take any other action that makes them more relevant on the map. Force users are supposed to feel powerful, I mean "Space Wizards" are part of what makes Star Wars unique and interesting.

If you were to limit force regen to only on a focus action, then change the force to be rerolls to avoid redundancy. Not being able to regen force while stressed is also thematic, but not as heavy-handed of a nerf.