13 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

Pilots with ini 5 should have bad or no abilities, ini 6 should not have any ability at all. Ini 3 and 4 "aces" should have the cool abilities!

note that this is how anakin is designed and it made everyone mad

1 hour ago, Managarmr said:

Pilots with ini 5 should have bad or no abilities, ini 6 should not have any ability at all. Ini 3 and 4 "aces" should have the cool abilities!

No pilot should have bad abilities. Every ability should be decent or better. Otherwise, the ability should exist.

I will however, acknowledge that the higher your initiative, the weaker your ability should be.

4 hours ago, Frimmel said:

I remain unconvinced any tractor rules should be in the game at all. Tractor rules in 1st Edition almost had me quitting just as I started or maybe that was just the TIE Defender. Either way I despise the tractor rules.

110% agree with you, I was the same way. The one shot in the gut I took on second edition to keep playing was that they confirmed they were here to stay. I always felt that of tractors were going to be in at all, it should have been a feature of Epic ships.

31 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

No pilot should have bad abilities. Every ability should be decent or better. Otherwise, the ability should [not] exist.

As if.

If every pilot has a "decent" ability, the least decent ability would be considered "bad." Then that pilot would be lamented as needing a stronger ability.

This is exactly how power creep happens.

Lesser pilots prove that the good pilots are good.

I think it would be a good direction to take the higher initiative tier abilities down a few notches too. Like for me, an I5 is fine and still plenty usable when it's ability isn't that great like in the way you have in Tallisan Lintara for example. Because as long as the price for it is reasonable, just having her as an I5 in the squad is plenty good enough and to heck if the ability never triggers.

What I'd like to see is the i6 range do something similar to that as well with an added light 'drawback' to make them more challenging to fly. Something that acknowledges that there's a level of easy-mode to that I6 while activating, so puts a wrench in your plans. Like for instance a line on Vader that says "while defending, you cannot spend Force tokens". That would then put a burden on the player to keep getting shots, not be able to run as easily and live, and survive mostly by arc dodging which the ship is good at anyway. Even a bit thematic for him in a way. Anything that puts a balance on the skill side. If it's an ace, you better fly it like one, y'know? This would meet a lot of resistance as an idea I believe, but I think it would be very interesting and helpful to use as a tool for balance. Basically make it that the point cost is still only calculating the ship as though it were an I5, and then the drawback is what you pay to get the 6.

20 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

I think it would be a good direction to take the higher initiative tier abilities down a few notches too. Like for me, an I5 is fine and still plenty usable when it's ability isn't that great like in the way you have in Tallisan Lintara for example. Because as long as the price for it is reasonable, just having her as an I5 in the squad is plenty good enough and to heck if the ability never triggers.

What I'd like to see is the i6 range do something similar to that as well with an added light 'drawback' to make them more challenging to fly. Something that acknowledges that there's a level of easy-mode to that I6 while activating, so puts a wrench in your plans. Like for instance a line on Vader that says "while defending, you cannot spend Force tokens". That would then put a burden on the player to keep getting shots, not be able to run as easily and live, and survive mostly by arc dodging which the ship is good at anyway. Even a bit thematic for him in a way. Anything that puts a balance on the skill side. If it's an ace, you better fly it like one, y'know? This would meet a lot of resistance as an idea I believe, but I think it would be very interesting and helpful to use as a tool for balance. Basically make it that the point cost is still only calculating the ship as though it were an I5, and then the drawback is what you pay to get the 6.

I would love pilots with "disadvantages" even at lower IN levels that got a bit of a point rebate because they are. . .dubious.

1 minute ago, Darth Meanie said:

I would love pilots with "disadvantages" even at lower IN levels that got a bit of a point rebate because they are. . .dubious.

Lol I just imagined a 3-limited genique TIE fighter

'Academy Washout, 20pts, When you fail to complete a maneuver, suffer one damage. When you end your movement touching a friendly ship deal it one damage.'

Lol I'm dying 😂

We don’t need a 3.0 right now. And we honestly won’t know what needs to happen in 3.0 because we are still exploring 2.0.

this bickering is pointless.

32 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

As if.

If every pilot has a "decent" ability, the least decent ability would be considered "bad." Then that pilot would be lamented as needing a stronger ability.

This is exactly how power creep happens.

Lesser pilots prove that the good pilots are good.

That's semantics of what good, bad. and decent are. I don't care about moving goalposts. I care about poorly designed abilities. They should not exist.

2 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

No pilot should have bad abilities. Every ability should be decent or better. Otherwise, the ability should exist.

Actively negative abilities are a super interesting, nearly completely unused design space.

1 hour ago, FlyingAnchors said:

this bickering is pointless.

They've disbanded the Moderators.

Fear will keep the players in line. Fear of more Conversion Kits.

37 minutes ago, svelok said:

Actively negative abilities are a super interesting, nearly completely unused design space.

Negative abilities in X-Wing are pretty much trade abilities. Suffer this negative effect to either trade it for a negative effect elsewhere or suffer a negative effect to trade it for a positive effect. The only straight negative I can think of is that the Fireball starts with a damage card.

2 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Negative abilities in X-Wing are pretty much trade abilities. Suffer this negative effect to either trade it for a negative effect elsewhere or suffer a negative effect to trade it for a positive effect. The only straight negative I can think of is that the Fireball starts with a damage card.

That's his point I believe. The first two formats you mention are costed abilities, not negative. The fireball I think your right it's the only negative.

20 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

The fireball I think your right it's the only negative.

I thought flipping it allows you to remove weapons disabled?

Quote

"Tractor Stuff"

Control options need to exist in X-wing. Right now the game heavily biases towards pure jousting, arc dodging swarms, or aces, because the only thing you can do outside of directly increasing your own offensive and defensive power is modding. This results in lists ending up 'samey' because a huge area of the design doesn't exist.

That said, I think they shot themselves in the foot making tractoring so strong, jamming so weak, and ioning repeatable, because these effects you want to be a cheap tax on your ship to have, rather than priced equivalently to an upgrade that flat out lets you kill a ship due to how potent the effects are. You want to be able to tech away from modding or killing power and towards these and not actively lose ships like you do now, just changing how your ships fight. Tractors have the issue that they immediately move you, and on top of that move you while also providing a big value gain to swarms.

An example potential change to the 3 'EWAR tokens'

Tractor Tokens: No longer instantly moves you, but instead moves you after your next manuver (requires you to track who gave the tractors, but its a small cost to make the ability 'reactable.') which maintains it as a tool to gain some control over enemy manuevers but no longer is it as an extreme a punishment for sitting next to a rock. No longer applies a -1 to defense because those abilities while thematically related don't mechanically mesh well. Tractor beams do 1 damage AND 1 tractor on their first hit, and 1 tractor future hits.

Ion: Stays mostly the same, but now you can't be ionized the turn you perform an ion manuver, so ion turrets can go back down in price a bit again and you can be less stingy with ion weaponry: You can no longer be chain ion'd out, but an ion list rather than banking entirely on chain ioning to secure kills has the room to casually include an ion package.

Jam: Jamming weapons like the jam beam have the ion damage effect where the first hit deals damage, rather than jamming. When you have a jam token, you take -1 to all defense. Jam tokens are removed at the end of manuvers after you recieve them. Jam has a problem in that passive modding is too pervalant, and does nothing in some match-ups or if your target just decides not to mod. Now, refusing to clear the jam token has a serious cost, and it makes the jam token into the dedicated 'get this guy' token! It also solves the issue of the concept of jam as an aspect of an attack: Its an attack that removes a token to make a guy easier to hit... but regular attacks already are good at removing tokens so why bother? Now the beam has a large reward if the target gets enough jams to be 'holding' a token rather than losing a focus, calculate, or target lock.

3 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

I thought flipping it allows you to remove weapons disabled?

It does, but that part is a trade off, a negative for a positive. The taking a damage card at the start is all downside though.

3 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

I thought flipping it allows you to remove weapons disabled?

Pretty much what @5050Saint said. While it's not terribly significant thanks to being an interaction point on the unit as a whole, it is still a drawback with no traded inherent upside in return from the point it's dealt to you. For instance anything that would trigger off you being in the damaged state is automatically 'on' for your opponent to use against you in the case of a few things. And your just giving some one a reason to concussion missile you. 😂

Borrowing a thought from another thread:

• Suppose we really broke through the 1-is-worst, 6-is-best?
• Suppose every phase (System, Maneuver, Engagement) starts with Low initiative, and goes to High Initiative.
  • So if the three things a ship can do are Arc Dodge, Block, and Initiative Kill, the pairings got shuffled up. Now you no longer have Dodger/Killers, but Blocker/Killers. Arc Dodgers only Dodge and can't Init-Kill, Instead of Blockers only Blocking and being stuck shooting last.
  • Low is fast and always goes first. High is slow and always goes last.
• I'd pair this with a complete rethink on what each pilot's initiative is.
• I'd also maybe make it a 1-7 standard scale, so there can be a 4 in the middle, rather than having 3/4 be just off the middle. Anyhow, the point is that 4 ought to be the average.
  • Han Solo becomes a 1, because Han Shoots First. It also means he moves that big old Falcon first, so your opponent has a chance to react.
  • Soontir Fel becomes a 7. Anyhow, dude is is a cautious ace, he moves last. He's still the arc-dodger-of-arc-dodgers. However, this also gives his opponents a chance to shoot him first, this puts him at risk of being shot down before attacking.
  • Fenn Rau would also be a 7. He gets to park himself in front of someone, and take the gamble that his green dice will hold out for a major payoff. I think that'd be a lot of fun.
    • Heck, all the Fangs!
      • Zealous Recruit: Init 1. They're wicked eager.
      • Kad Solus: Init 2. Early enough that he's probably able to fully execute his red moves reliably.
      • Old Teroch: Init 3. Old men are always up wicked early. He moves late enough that he can token-strip any of the quick-shooting pilots, but he's still on the early side.
      • Skull Squadron Pilot: Init 4. Middle ground. Dodge some, outshoot others.
      • Joy Reckoff: Init 6. Higher Init means she'll have an easier time getting Locks, if she wants them, to allow her to use her Torpedoes in different ways (for Outmaneuver or their normal effect). She's also significantly different from a Skull or Kad Solus.
        • Fang aces now has two really different flavors. Fenn/OldT/Joy to lean into arc dodging, and Fenn/OldT/Kad to lean into blocking and Init-killing.
  • A few generics:
    • Academy Pilots and Blue Escort X-Wings become would both become Basic 4s (dang it... now I'm hungry). Moves in the middle, shoots in the middle.
      • I might leave someone like Luke Skywalker or Wedge Antilles at a 4. There ought to be a few aces who are in the middle.
    • Obsidian/Partisan become a 5s. They lag behind, which is probably worse, but it'd be a choice.
    • Black Squadron TIEs or Red Squadron Veterans become 3s. They're quicker on the draw, more likely to be able to pop an enemy first.
  • TIE Silencer becomes pretty interesting.
    • Impulsive Kylo is an Init 2.
    • Cautious Blackout is a 6, and so is clean-up man Avenger.
    • Basic Engineers are 4s.
    • First Order Test Pilots are 5s, Recoil is a 3.
    • Rush... Rush would need a redesign... they start at 4, but when they lose their shields, they get to pick 1 or 7, and are that for the rest of the game.
• I go back and forth whether I'd pair it with the lower penalties for getting Initiative killed, with only a Jam or Deplete instead of removal before it can attack.
• Overall, each step you move towards shooting first gives one more level of opponent the advantage on you in terms of arc dodging. Each step you take towards arc dodging better means someone else gets to shoot you first. Anyhow, I think such a scheme would represent a serious choice between whether you want to go first or last.
• Haven't changed my mind since last night, and I still love it.

On 5/19/2020 at 7:34 PM, 5050Saint said:

It does, but that part is a trade off, a negative for a positive. The taking a damage card at the start is all downside though.

On 5/19/2020 at 7:48 PM, ForceSensitive said:

Pretty much what @5050Saint said. While it's not terribly significant thanks to being an interaction point on the unit as a whole, it is still a drawback with no traded inherent upside in return from the point it's dealt to you. For instance anything that would trigger off you being in the damaged state is automatically 'on' for your opponent to use against you in the case of a few things. And your just giving some one a reason to concussion missile you. 😂

It also allows you to trigger friendly damaged abilities, like the ship ability, without needing to be shot. Not strictly a downside imo.

1 hour ago, Do I need a Username said:

It also allows you to trigger friendly damaged abilities, like the ship ability, without needing to be shot. Not strictly a downside imo.

Granted, It is particularly debatable on that one ship because it's so linked into it's chassis design. Mostly what folks are suggesting though for 'drawback as a price for greatness' is that it wouldn't necessarily be linked as closely to the whole chassis design, but just to the pilot. In other words let's say they're was an i6 Fireball pilot and their drawback was you started with TWO damage instead of one.

Like, not advocating this, just exploring outside the box, what if you had a simple flat penalty across the board rule like "at the beginning of the match reduce the Agility value of the highest initiative or ties for highest pilot on the board by one." So bringing a i6 sucks because it's going to be flat -1 green no matter what. Basically, you bid defense dice to move last and shoot first. That would be weeerid

On 5/19/2020 at 2:10 PM, svelok said:

Actively negative abilities are a super interesting, nearly completely unused design space.

IMHO, from playing other games, negative abilities fall into two camps:

1. Those which are so debilitating, the card or such never sees play.
2. Those whose downside can get mostly ignored, and the card just winds up with a power level more than the costs.

It's really hard to make a negative ability which is balanced. I probably wouldn't be excited to see a ship with actively negative abilities show up, since I just don't trust that it could walk that knife's edge between being trash and overpowered.

6 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

IMHO, from playing other games, negative abilities fall into two camps:

There are a few more, such as options where the downside turns out to be an upside when its built around (Ex: In HS, units that need to be healed in decks that reward you for healing), options where the downside can be ignored by a clever ploy so your inefficient card becomes very efficient in the right situation ("When played from hand" effects when you revive the card from the dead), when the option is so overwhelming in both upsides and downsides that it stops really being a downside ability and more a change to how the rules fundamentally work for that option (ex: Tyranids in 40k and Synapse, which makes them immune to a LOT of things relating to morale effects or the rules around charging, but also creates unique weaknesses in the entire army to replace those rules where if certain units die suddenly you start being affected by morale and essentially auto-fail and your units stop being able to charge well and just kinda meander).

X-wing doesn't really have one for the first option because X-wing, while it has obvious intended unit synergies (ex: The Rebel Squad leads) it doesn't really have 'archetypes' so to speak, though droids are low key changing that and Republic's Generic love also tried to move that dial. The second we got only really the Fireball right now.

Third is where I think the interesting design space is. I toyed with it when making a custom card for a friend based on their character in an RPG, a rookie Mandalorian with a lot of potential and a lot of nervous energy from what she has to prove who got caught up in the criminal underworld trying to get stronger by 'earning' some cybernetics. Their gimmick was they were in a Fang their initiative score was equal to non-recurring charges on their pilot card, and every time they did damage they got 1 charge and de-stressed, and every instance of taking damage they lost 1 and gained a stress. So if they flew well they 'evolved' during the game into an Ace and got to get rid of stress after maneuvering, but if they were flown poorly things rapidly degraded for the poor girl. Also, I feel particularly clever for making the card synergize with the contraband cybernetics that got them involved in the plot!

This probably isn't a super great ability (Its way worse to suddenly get stress than to get rid of it, and she can only remove 1 bonus stress a turn realistically but could gain a LOT at once) but seems to me to be the angle you want a 'downside' ability to be in X-wing: It shouldn't be a binary always on and its either too big or too small thing, but should be something that encourages interaction and thinking about during the game, and how 'bad' it is should change from game to game and how well you fly.

On 5/19/2020 at 8:10 AM, Frimmel said:

I remain unconvinced any tractor rules should be in the game at all. Tractor rules in 1st Edition almost had me quitting just as I started or maybe that was just the TIE Defender. Either way I despise the tractor rules.

Tractor beams should only be for huge and large size ships.

it makes no sense that a scyk can tractor a decimator and not get ripped in half. mass and all that

2 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

Tractor beams should only be for huge and large size ships.

it makes no sense that a scyk can tractor a decimator and not get ripped in half. mass and all that

Get out of here with your "logic" and your "real world physics".

35 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

Get out of here with your "logic" and your "real world physics".

I mean, yes. correct. I have brought dishonor to my name by projecting the tyrany of true space upon the table realm.

But Mechanically it makes more sense too. Tractoring wouldnt be so annoying if it was a special thing some of the big boys got to do to smaller ships.