:: broken record ::

Sure we have to give some suspension to belief on physics for a SciFi series, but @Vontoothskie is still right by the internal logic of the SW universe.

In general from every time we see it used, for a ship to be tractored, there's a small set of rules: The ship with the tractor had to be bigger than the target by at least some. The targeted ship had to be either unaware, disabled, or willing. There's some ability to resist it and break out but it's not easy. Occasionally a rule is bent but the other two still get followed when it does. Like quadrijets can affect something bigger, but they're tugs and would reasonably still have to affect something either willing or disabled as a tug should.

But ultimately, in combat situations tractors seem to be conspicuously absent in the available media. Vader's ship doesn't tractor the Tantive IV until it's disabled. DS1 doesn't use them to stop fighters at Yavin despite earlier hauling in the Falcon when caught unaware. Over Hoth the blockading ISDs don't get to lock on to the transports as they climb out. Vader's fleet eschews them at Endor when they could have been engaged to stop the Slash maneuver and keep Ackbars fleet at gun range. Amidalas ship slips by the separatist fleet under heavy fire but untractored in Ep1...

It's quicker to imagine that if we accept tractors work in combat, then pretty much no space battle in the universe makes sense. If we assume there's something that can foil them then we're good.

2 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

:: broken record ::

Sure we have to give some suspension to belief on physics for a SciFi series, but @Vontoothskie is still right by the internal logic of the SW universe.

In general from every time we see it used, for a ship to be tractored, there's a small set of rules: The ship with the tractor had to be bigger than the target by at least some. The targeted ship had to be either unaware, disabled, or willing. There's some ability to resist it and break out but it's not easy. Occasionally a rule is bent but the other two still get followed when it does. Like quadrijets can affect something bigger, but they're tugs and would reasonably still have to affect something either willing or disabled as a tug should.

But ultimately, in combat situations tractors seem to be conspicuously absent in the available media. Vader's ship doesn't tractor the Tantive IV until it's disabled. DS1 doesn't use them to stop fighters at Yavin despite earlier hauling in the Falcon when caught unaware. Over Hoth the blockading ISDs don't get to lock on to the transports as they climb out. Vader's fleet eschews them at Endor when they could have been engaged to stop the Slash maneuver and keep Ackbars fleet at gun range. Amidalas ship slips by the separatist fleet under heavy fire but untractored in Ep1...

It's quicker to imagine that if we accept tractors work in combat, then pretty much no space battle in the universe makes sense. If we assume there's something that can foil them then we're good.

precisely. Personally my engagement skyrockets when the game mechanic makes sense. First edition Oiccuns "Ramming" was just placing a model next to another, but in your head youre imagining this huge Decimator just crumpling the hull of a smaller ship as it bowls right over it while this insane bastard screams "RAMMING SPEED!!!" from the command chair... thats what these games need to be fun. the lasers are just dice if you dont "pew pew" a bit.

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

@Vontoothskie is still right by the internal logic of the SW universe.

...your first mistake, right there.

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

...i t's quicker to imagine that if we accept tractors work in combat, then pretty much no space battle in the universe makes sense. If we assume there's something that can foil them then we're good.

You're going by film/TV material. But X-Wing: The Miniatures Game is not based solely on the film/TV material. It's also based on a wealth of other material including the old EU, the Star Wars RPGs and of course games like Star Wars: Galaxies and the PC game that gave X-Wing: The Miniatures Game it's name.

The Tractor Beam we see in the Miniatures Game is based on the weapon of the same name seen in the PC games TIE Fighter and X-Wing: Alliance - used on snub fighters like the TIE Avenger and TIE Defender to control an enemy's ship's movement, make them easier to keep in your sights and hit.

It's mechanics really shouldn't be compared to the tractor beam used by capital ships like Star Destroyers, or the Death Star, when they're not actually intended to represent the tractor beams used by capital ships or the Death Star.

True physics should be taken with a grain of salt in the Star Wars universe. Spacetugs used tractor beams to move larger ships "through orbital transfer yards and transit corridors" so small ships using tractors to move bigger ships is canon.

51 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

True physics should be taken with a grain of salt in the Star Wars universe. Spacetugs used tractor beams to move larger ships "through orbital transfer yards and transit corridors" so small ships using tractors to move bigger ships is canon.

I'm not taking a stand on whether Tractors should be in the game, but Space Tugs aren't doing this *in combat.*

Should be trivial for something like a Quadjumper which is 75% engine to push around something much bigger that has powered off it's engines and is letting itself be moved .

6 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

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.

That's an idea. Maybe you can only tractor ships of smaller base than yours? But you can still tractor yourself.

Maybe an upgrad that allows extra tractoring that lets you affect same size bases?

3 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

True physics should be taken with a grain of salt in the Star Wars universe. Spacetugs used tractor beams to move larger ships "through orbital transfer yards and transit corridors" so small ships using tractors to move bigger ships is canon.

They don't have to be "true physics." They do need to be constrained in some ways. And the whole thing does need some grounding in the way things we can relate to in the real world work. And ships in transfer yards are acquiescing to being moved. They are there to be moved. The Coast Guard doesn't use tugboats to catch drug runners in race boats.

3 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

...your first mistake, right there.

You're going by film/TV material. But X-Wing: The Miniatures Game is not based solely on the film/TV material. It's also based on a wealth of other material including the old EU, the Star Wars RPGs and of course games like Star Wars: Galaxies and the PC game that gave X-Wing: The Miniatures Game it's name.

The Tractor Beam we see in the Miniatures Game is based on the weapon of the same name seen in the PC games TIE Fighter and X-Wing: Alliance - used on snub fighters like the TIE Avenger and TIE Defender to control an enemy's ship's movement, make them easier to keep in your sights and hit.

It's mechanics really shouldn't be compared to the tractor beam used by capital ships like Star Destroyers, or the Death Star, when they're not actually intended to represent the tractor beams used by capital ships or the Death Star.

One of the things that plagues licensed games is the tendency to think everything in the movie needs to be put in the game even if it might not make sense within the game. I think tractor beams are a poster-child for this.

38 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

O ne of the things that plagues licensed games is the tendency to think everything in the movie needs to be put in the game even if it might not make sense within the game. I think tractor beams are a poster-child for this.

We could probably make exactly the same argument for Ion weapons.

Because as far as the films go, IIRC we only ever see them used against Star Destroyers, which they basically leave dead in space.

I don't think we EVER see Y-Wings use their turrets. Again, these are features that were adapted - like many others - from the PC games, rather than the films.

This shouldn't really come as a surprise - FFG has adapted any number of old favourite PC games into tabletop games.

The old X-Wing and TIE Fighter PC games illustrated perfectly how fighter-to fighter tractoring would work. Basically, it was a limited-energy weapon that massively reduced the speed and agility of an enemy if you managed to hit them with it. It was equipped only to technologically advanced craft like the TIE Defender, and was primarily used to combat extremely nimble opponents like A-Wings.

The way one might imagine Tractor Beams working in X-Wing is that it’s like watching a car going around a racetrack, and suddenly it hits a three-foot deep pool of mud. The car wouldn’t stop, necessarily, but it would instantly decelerate, and maneuvering accurately would become very difficult.

5 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

The old X-Wing and TIE Fighter PC games illustrated perfectly how fighter-to fighter tractoring would work. Basically, it was a limited-energy weapon that massively reduced the speed and agility of an enemy if you managed to hit them with it. It was equipped only to technologically advanced craft like the TIE Defender, and was primarily used to combat extremely nimble opponents like A-Wings.

The way one might imagine Tractor Beams working in X-Wing is that it’s like watching a car going around a racetrack, and suddenly it hits a three-foot deep pool of mud. The car wouldn’t stop, necessarily, but it would instantly decelerate, and maneuvering accurately would become very difficult.

Applied in the correct location and you could cause the "car" to spin or tumble...

This is usually where the discussion grinds to a stop on the tractors line when it's come up in the past: the debate between primary and secondary sources, how much of which is good, bad, needed or not, rabbit hole next right. I don't imagine will get through it this time any more successfully than before. This is about the time we see the lines in sand start showing up and all we get is further defined lines in sand. Cest la vie. It says something about the subjects perennial nature that we have the flow of it down and figured now 😂

Fortunately, there's other stuff to chat about in the topic then tractors.

How about for ships of the same size, both receive -1 to agility. The player of the larger ship can relocate the smaller ship regardless of which ship used the tractor beam; smaller ship receives -1 to agility. Friendly fire is allowed.

on the tractors thing, in a properly utilized multi-format system, we could have both.

Hyperspace - competitive format, balanced card pool, emphasis on good game design (things like tractor are missing)

Extended - casual format, more options, emphasis on theme (includes weird other stuff that isn't going to ever be in the competitive game)

Currently both formats are being limited by being forced to both do a little bit of what the other one is actually good at

5 hours ago, Kyle Ren said:

Hyperspace - competitive format, balanced card pool, emphasis on good game design (things like tractor are missing)

There are a few problems with this. Firstly, most competitive games DO have control, CC, ect options. I get there is a lot of trauma from 1.0, and 2.0 did a poor job with tractors, but the idea that the game should have no options that remove control from your opponent is literally antithetical to good game design. You want, in earned situations, for one player to have more limited options than another, and honestly one of my least favorite thing about 2.0 is that they didn't fix the fundemental issues with a lot of the control options in the game and instead just priced them out so they couldn't see play.

An option that makes it easier for lots of less accurate attacks to hit is totally good game design (Heck, that is literally part of the faction identity of Tau in 40k with Markerlights, which allow that army to be a 'shooty' army despite its troops not being great shots). An option that forces movement is also good game design (40k's morale effects that force fall back are arguably WORSE than tractoring due to the only way to really avoid big attacks against a unit weak to certain long range weapons is cover and LOS gaming, but they create counterplay to gun lines that force you to enter their LOS, and I doubt many people would complain they are fundamentally unfair, heck one of these powers literally lets you count another unit as your own for a turn to gun down an enemy squad with their strongest weapons and it is still fair because 40k has a mostly healthy attitude about utility vs stats, in that your list probably needs both to work rather than it being presumed you go all wacky nonsense or all hyper-efficient troops choices.). A big issue with tractors is that it does a lot of stuff at once, not really that any of the core concepts are too strong. But tractoring doing both is weird because it gives you a lot of control that opens up ships to an unearned level of pain.

You kinda want nuanced effects like tractor movement in high end play. If high end play devolves to just tossing fat ships at each other or fat aces then the game... is kinda bad? Like that is equivalent to the dark ages of 40k Mathhammer where you just ran maxed out troop slots and the cheapest HQ you could. Games need options that are more complex than 'move around trying not to get shot and shoot as hard as you can with the most health you can.' Even MTG's green isn't just 'play fat creatures!' Without enough moving parts it becomes too solvable and the game stops really being a game, and control/combo elements are those moving parts.

This kinda stuff matters and it needs to matter at high end play. Imagine if MTG just... removed blue or combo decks from tournaments and said that it was only allowed in casual environments and the riots it would cause for them to declare zoo/agro the only viable deck for competitive play. No game would tolerate that, and outright telling combo players that they can't run combo/gimmick lists at tournaments would be a REALLY easy way to kill X-wing off. You might as well pre-print lists at that point saying 'ok you can take this set of TIEs, this tri-imp ace, this droid swarm, this jedi swarm, and that is it.' Once nuanced control and combo effects leave a game it devolves into 'what is the strongest aggressive archetype in the game? That is now 100% of lists.'

Honestly, I just would move the -1 agility effect off tractors and onto jamming (because jamming is nominally meant to be the effect that makes it easier to deal with a powerful heavily modded ship but just... doesn't) so that with a tractor your paying entirely for repositioning games rather than power.

5 hours ago, Kyle Ren said:

Currently both formats are being limited by being forced to both do a little bit of what the other one is actually good at

Formats aren't really magic bullets in most other competitive games. Like MTG manages to just fine include wacky stuff in standard and hyper competitive stuff. Neither format is holding each other back, it comes down to a lot of core issues with how x-wing decides to do things (Pricing upgrades assuming their best case scenario reduces options for everyone to handle things, a huge focus on generic numerical effects is easy to design but ultimately means that lists don't really interact with each other and instead huck numbers at each other and MAYBE maneuver, some core systems like force and tractor were radically overtuned meaning anything with these options has to either be finicky, bad, or broken) rather than the formats.

Thought of another one. Dynamic point values in the app. So that when certain powerful combos show up you can tack on a few points to the combo itself and not just the two parts of it.

38 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

Thought of another one. Dynamic point values in the app. So that when certain powerful combos show up you can tack on a few points to the combo itself and not just the two parts of it.

No. Just... no. Keeping track of dynamic points on individual upgrades is bad enough. I imagine I’m not the only guy who likes to theorycraft X-Wing lists in the shower, mowing the lawn, whatever. I don’t want to have to remember what sort of points premium goes on a Tractor Beam if and only if Unkar is also in the list, and is that different than the one it gets if Ketsu is present instead, and what if both are present? Jesus.

Besides, how do you justify that? The Empire totally had the resources to install Passive Sensors on Major Vynder’s StarWing, but it was prohibitively expensive to do so on Lord Vader’s TIE. Silly. Not that “flavor” should ever trump “balance,” but things need to make some sort of sense when possible.

An easy way to 'fake' dynamic pricing is to bake some free upgrade points onto ships and as ships over-perform reduce those points! I know I float that idea a lot but it really is kinda silly X-wing doesn't have dynamic pricing while most wargames do, and while I get why there is a way to sort of simulate the benefits of recognizing a certain army/squad list selection is going to be way stronger when upgraded than anything else.

Vader+an upgrade over-performing but the upgrade is otherwise healthy? Lower Vader's free upgrade points, which means upgrading him is 'more expensive' than on other ships. No one flying Defenders but you don't want to change its core break points? Give it an extra upgrade point so that its breakpoints don't change but the same amount of ships are still stronger cuz you can put a bit more junk on them. Instead of having to remember the price of every unit-item combo, you can just remember that Vader gets no freebies but you have X points that you get to toss on your A-wing or Scum Falc while you are scrub a dub dubbing.

I should clarify it seems. I was referring to ship-upgrade pairs only. As it is now, when we have an upgrade that is otherwise okay but way overpowering on a certain ship or two, when the ship is itself otherwise okay, then the process of raising the price of either the ship or the upgrade kinda backfires as you lose the one you raised in points on all the things it was fine for.

It sucks when you run into a really fun upgrade that is priced out of viability on anything because they had to change it based on one offending combo. For the across squad thing, I would just leave that. Because that would still be adjusted with the 2.0 methodology.

Er, nothing wrong with speculation on a new edition, but I still think this is what happens because people are too beholden to RAW, tournament infection, and the spirit of gaming.

i still play first edition. My point is instead of speculation, why don’t you just institute changes you think should happen among the people you play with? With whatever edition you have right now?

Never have I stuck with a group that holds rules over friends, happiness and comraderie. If you have that, you can make whatever changes you think should be made right now without having to guess at whatever the next edition will bring.

check out the Banhammer thread, I think they’re onto it. Sorry if this is too much of a tangent but I see you’ve done a lot of thought and you should just institute your good ideas without waiting!

@KelRiever , because long gone are the days of just having a small group of friends who meet up to play and never see any other players. There are 3 distinct playing groups in my local area, and we are in regular contact with groups in neighbouring states, whose events we often travel to (and they often travel to ours). Sticking to RAW means we have a consistent experience across the groups and can just rock up and play without having to spend an hour going over all the things each group has decided to house rule.

The thing with Tractor, Jamming, and Ion is that they were not very faithfully represented in the miniature game, as compared as how it was in the simulators.

The original effects in the X-wing PC games were:

• Ion : If shielded, did nothing different than a laser hit. If unshielded, it caused malfunctions to individual systems in the ship, without damaging its hull.
• Tractor : Lowered the maneuverability of the other ship, so that it couldn't speed up or turn, leaving it vulnerable to ordnance attacks, or lasers. This effect costed energy and was like passive while it was on, however, you had to be quite precise to hit the target with the beam.
• Jamming : It used energy, and the same as tractor, you had to be precise. It prevented the target from launching ordnance or firing its weapons.

So a closer implementation in the miniature game could have been:

• Ion : Each ion token dealt is immediately spent by removing one shield. If there are no shields left, then assign the Ionized condition to the defender. Ionized : When defending, roll 1 fewer defense die. Whenever you perform an action, roll an attack die per ion token on you. On any hit or crit result, the action fails. Action : Discard all ion tokens and this condition. This action cannot fail.
• Tractor Beam : 2 charges. When an enemy ship is defending, if it is in your bulleye arc at range 0-3, you may spend 1 charge. If yo do so, assign a strain token to the defender.
• Jamming Beam : 2 charges. When an enemy ship in your bullseye arc at range 0-3 is attacking, you may spend 1 charge. If you do, assign a deplete token to the defender.

Note that the proposed Tractor and Jamming Beam aren't attacks. But passive abilities that cost charges to use.

On ‎5‎/‎25‎/‎2020 at 7:27 PM, DR4CO said:

@KelRiever , because long gone are the days of just having a small group of friends who meet up to play and never see any other players. There are 3 distinct playing groups in my local area, and we are in regular contact with groups in neighbouring states, whose events we often travel to (and they often travel to ours). Sticking to RAW means we have a consistent experience across the groups and can just rock up and play without having to spend an hour going over all the things each group has decided to house rule.

That's too bad. I'd personally argue that you could easily have these discussions by email before you get together, but that's just me. It also takes a willingness of course.

My solution for sure costs less in money though. And for us, it's both fun and leads to way more fun because the game is the way our group likes it, not dictated to us by a company. I understand the appeal of universal rules, but to me, when the universal rules become a burden, sort of like FFG's have, it's time to talk with (or email) friends :)

On 5/30/2020 at 2:52 PM, Azrapse said:

The thing with Tractor, Jamming, and Ion is that they were not very faithfully represented in the miniature game, as compared as how it was in the simulators.

The original effects in the X-wing PC games were:

• Ion : If shielded, did nothing different than a laser hit. If unshielded, it caused malfunctions to individual systems in the ship, without damaging its hull.
• Tractor : Lowered the maneuverability of the other ship, so that it couldn't speed up or turn, leaving it vulnerable to ordnance attacks, or lasers. This effect costed energy and was like passive while it was on, however, you had to be quite precise to hit the target with the beam.
• Jamming : It used energy, and the same as tractor, you had to be precise. It prevented the target from launching ordnance or firing its weapons.

So a closer implementation in the miniature game could have been:

• Ion : Each ion token dealt is immediately spent by removing one shield. If there are no shields left, then assign the Ionized condition to the defender. Ionized : When defending, roll 1 fewer defense die. Whenever you perform an action, roll an attack die per ion token on you. On any hit or crit result, the action fails. Action : Discard all ion tokens and this condition. This action cannot fail.
• Tractor Beam : 2 charges. When an enemy ship is defending, if it is in your bulleye arc at range 0-3, you may spend 1 charge. If yo do so, assign a strain token to the defender.
• Jamming Beam : 2 charges. When an enemy ship in your bullseye arc at range 0-3 is attacking, you may spend 1 charge. If you do, assign a deplete token to the defender.

Note that the proposed Tractor and Jamming Beam aren't attacks. But passive abilities that cost charges to use.

Now this, I like.

9 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Now this, I like.

I think the proposed Tractor and Jamming effects would be quite useful to be equipped on cheap generics, like scyks, b-wings, or starwings, so that you could have a couple of cheap debuffers "painting" targets for your heavy hitters with their tractor beams, while still having a chance to do their attacks in their turn.

Or one or two guys softening the opponent's alpha strike or large/huge ships turrets with their jamming beams, as you approach with your heavy hitters.
Imagine one wing of B-wings attacking a huge ship, while equipped with jamming beams. It would not only be effective, but also really lore-friendly.
Or some TIE Bombers escorted by jamming Starwings.

I think the key is that they must not be attacks, but passive and limited with charges, so that using them doesn't mean that guy doesn't contribute to deal damage that round.

On 5/21/2020 at 5:44 PM, theBitterFig said:

• 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 know the conversation has moved away from this, but I just wanted to say this idea is really really cool. If there were ever an overhaul to 2nd eds rules and a bunch of it's cards (like a 2.5) or a whole new edition however many years down the line, it would be awesome to see this system implemented.