Hi y'all,

Back in 1.0, there was the great Finger Four Formation by Jonathan Scott .
A list consisting of RZ1-A wings, 4 Green Squadron Pilots, each equipped with Push The Limit, Wingman and Hull Upgrade.
It wasn't a super great list in the TLT heavy meta, but for me, it felt like the heart of the game:
formation flying, pilots in their fast zipping spaceships, pushing their agile ships & themselves to the limit, all while looking out for each other, wingman style.
Plus it was a rewarding list, if you put in the effort.

I'm really happy with 2.0 in general, but I find it a bit sad that the RZ-1 A-wing lost most of its viability, along with most low to midrange initiative, high agility, low health ships that don't have a rear facing arc or a 3 attack dice front arc. At this point, I don't think that a point reduction could fix the problems the chassis has without rendering lower tier ships in general less viable.

Therefore, I would like to propose a card that could be a tribute to Johnathan Scott and his Finger Four Formation for RZ-1 A-Wings.
For this card, I had several ideas.
What do you guys think?

First idea:
A-Wing Wingman
Talent slot, RZ-1 A-Wing only,
At the start of the Combat Phase, you may remove a Stress Token from another ship at range 0-1 that has an equipped 'Wingman' card.
If you did not remove a stress token from the ship, it may gain an Evade token.
Adds Barrel Roll to Red Focus linked action.
11 points
=> this leaves room for 7pts, adding up to a total of 50pts per green Squadron Pilot (with Wingman & Juke for example)


Second idea:
A-Wing Wingman:
Talent slot, RZ-1 A-Wing only,
When a stressed friendly ship with an equipped Wingman card at range 1 attacks or defends, it may spend one of its stress tokens to change one blank result to a hit or evade result.
At the start of the Planning Phase, you may remove a Stress Token from another ship at range 0-1 that has an equipped 'Wingman' card.
Adds Barrel Roll to Red Focus linked action.
11 points

Third Idea:
Talent slot, RZ-1 A-Wing only
A-Wing Wingman
Friendly ships at range 1 that have an equipped 'Wingman' card, may treat your focus tokens as if it were their own calculate tokens.
At the start of the End Phase, you may remove a Stress Token from another ship at range 0-1, that has a 'Wingman' card equipped.
11 points

Hi, can you give a detailed analysis of what the PROBLEMS of the A1wing are?

Also, you make an assertion that point reductions cannot fix it without stating the reasons why. These reasons are not complete-publicly/implicitly obvious. Can you state why?

---

I do suspect it would be more fun to have more configurations for the Awing.

I don't like these stress removal upgrades. They're wordy, and I can't tell what their value should be. Frankly also, there doesn't need to be all sorts of convoluted extra interactions: for both the opponent and the player, this involves too much remembering range, knowing which stresses will come off instead of stay on, and involves too much changing of the game state.

If this was limited it would be easier on the brain.

Or something like Talent 1pt, one or two charges, if you have only one stress token, you may perform actions as if you had none.

What does the Rz1 need?

Tycho. It needs Tycho.

The relative success of the TIE/fo and even non-cannon Scyks shows the A-Wing is not without hope. The Phoenix is 4 points more expensive, for access to Boost and particularly Vectored Thrusters. But there's a limit to how much that 4 point differential can drop, before you get all the TIE/fo and Scyk players to change over.

I tend to think the A-Wing is a lot closer to good than many would think.

Top of the list for A-Wing Weaknesses: they often don't have anything worth doing with their Talent slots. Two talents is cool. Hyperspace has removed Predator and Crack Shot. Intimidation is good on Arvel, but after that... there's nothing until Outmaneuver, and on a 2-red, 4 HP ship, that's not a 6 points well spent. Snap Shot is pretty good, though. Rice Krispies (Snap, Crackle, Pop) are surprisingly solid, but that's an expensive built. There aren't really good cheap variants. If they had something roughly Heroic in power level, a nice minor perk for cheap, I think that'd make them rather tempting.

1 hour ago, brupl said:

Back in 1.0, there was the great Finger Four Formation by Jonathan Scott .
A list consisting of RZ1-A wings, 4 Green Squadron Pilots, each equipped with Push The Limit, Wingman and Hull Upgrade.
It wasn't a super great list in the TLT heavy meta, but for me, it felt like the heart of the game:
formation flying, pilots in their fast zipping spaceships, pushing their agile ships & themselves to the limit, all while looking out for each other, wingman style.

I won't deny that there's something sweet about that, but I really hate all the suggested talents. They've got too many extra wrinkles (free Evades + Juke isn't a good solution to anything ), as @Blail Blerg says. Just make it cost 12 points, remove the stress at some timing, and grant an additional hull. Is it silly to have a Talent grant a Hull increase? Sure, but mechanically it does the trick.

12 points leaves 6 per ship in a 4-per list. That'd be Concussion Missiles, Outmaneuver, or Crack Shot/Predator and a lesser missile to bring it up to 50 points. I think it'd still be bad, but it'd be sweet.

//

Moving on from Talents, it'd be nice if there was a weaker version of Proton Rockets. Something like a 3-dice, Range 1-3/Ordnance, Bullseye only, Attack: Focus. 3 charges for 3 points?

I’m not even sure if he’s complaining about lack of damage. I’m not an heavy Awing user (I’ve used jake plenty).

outmaneuver and Juke and stuff is good for getting them to punch harder.
I kind of wish you could get outmaneuver for 4 points on generics. And bring it down to 5 points for everyone else.
yeah hey why not. Outmaneuver to cost 4 pts if I1-3 and 5 pts for i4-5, 6 pts for i6

frankpy though that’s just using an existing bandaid. Some new configs would definitely be welcomed.

but if outmaneuver was costed like this and the Awing1 came down one point I think even the genetics would be eminently playable in extended. And that’s what people have forgotten. More options there definitely leads to more fun builds. And I’d definitely take those i1 Awings vs a top tier meta list.
the balance is better than ever nowadays. The gap isn’t very big between T1 and T2-good-non-meta-list

I so want a free config that adds a mobile arc like the RZ-2 but every time you use it, you have to roll a die and have a chance to flip the card and lose the rotate action.

Too wordy and the printed arc wrecks it but man it sounds fun to me.

To me I think the big problem with the A-wing is that it isn't efficient without the bells and whistles because it HAS to cost a bit more than things like the TIE/Fo, but all of its advantages are pretty de-emphasized in the system's mechanics (ex: Boosting+modding is not generally valuable if you aren't at arc dodging initiatives, upgrades trend towards not moving how powerful a ship is so if a ship is inefficient to begin with it merely is more inefficient with upgrades).

I don't think mobile arc is the way to go. As a lover of A-wings and someone who tries to fly as many as they can in lists even though they Don't Work the issue comes down, in my mind, to A-wings really wanting upgrades but upgrades not being points efficient. Even 'good' upgrades on A-wings like Snapshot are you investing 25% of the hull's cost into the upgrade and pushing it to prices approaching an X-wing, and two upgrades (assuming you don't value Geenie's initiative, as in a lot of metas 3 initiative isn't that much better than 1, and your second upgrade is crackshot) runs you around 40% of the hull's price! Ouch!

This is why I think X-wing needs to cleverly bake variable upgrade pricing into the rules in a way that don't make the game too mathy. The A-wing WANTS to be a ship where your trying to run some weird talent combo or a talent and a missile and is a bit 'delux' but it is in this weird points no-mans land when you do that (Is an A-wing with snap and crack actually better than a naked X-wing or even close to as good when almost every list has so much mod power that the snap shot is you rolling dice to miss a ton? The answer may not surprise you!) and fixing it would require prices to get weird for every other ship. This, along with a general inability for upgrades to see play on anything besides aces, makes me think upgrades should be tweaked to be 'presumed there' rather than 'presumed absent' and ships to have baked in free upgrade points, but that is pretty radical. I think it would be better for the game's health overall (It helps make under-performing ships more resilient to points changes to key upgrades for those ships that need to go up because they generally over-perform without having totally different upgrade prices per-ship) but it isn't the only thing that could be done if you didn't want to totally rebalance and redesign list building and every upgrade in the game like some sort of weirdo who hates massive upheavals in a game that needs a steady competitive environment. That may be in X-wing's future at some point, but probably isn't an immediate response to the many problems the A-wing (and the rebel faction as a whole) are facing.

The not soapboxy problem that doesn't let me get to be grumpy about not being able to do weird stuff with the A-wing is really that the Rebel identity is a totally hot mess far more defined by what it can't do rather than what it can, and the A-wing is a huge casualty of that. Rebels suffer heavily from their faction not really getting new content and its identity being the worst defined from the conversion kit as this grab bag of mechanics and concepts with very overt and deliberate holes left in them to try to create an identity which newer factions lack, meaning they have some serious legacy design flaws.

1-2 legit aces so rebels could fly a tri-ace list with actual reposition power on most of the list, or which could supplement itself with A-wings that almost hit ace like Jake would help a lot. Rebels didn't get Aces because there was a fear a faction with its teamwork power with aces would be too strong, but that clearly isn't a concern anymore considering that Republic has very similar teamwork potential to rebels but their ace lists really don't utilize those aspects. Turns out synergy is a bit overcosted consistently for rebels due to this fear and rebels lacking really viable arc dodging platforms doesn't make sense, so there is room to print say... an I6 Wedge and Hera, or an I5 Wedge if we assume young Wedge was not as on the ball, give them abilities, mix them with Jake, and basically give Rebels the identity of having the ability to run a 3 mini-ace list inside a list with another named ship of some sort, or even two. Even if the more expensive ship was double Jake's cost (which would make them 5 more points expensive than freaking VADER, so that is extremely unlikely) and the other was half-way between you would have 38 points for another ship, and more realistically we are talking 50-60 at least, depending on the abilities.

This would would be unique and would help Rebels move out of the extremely thematically inappropriate 'blue squadron' space it ended up in. After all, who plays rebels to NOT fly named characters and iconic ships? It would especially be cool and in the Rebel's identity if these were 'support aces' in the vein of Jake, not really getting amazing modding themselves but more focused on trying to harass to help their buddy ship out, creating a sort of dynamic where these ships aren't the real threat but you need to keep them honest and spending focus defensively to stop them from causing your ships to hemorrhage bits of damage, all while some 60-80 points of other ships are trying to get things done.

The other thing Rebels really don't do well is area passive modding, which is fine because that can be a boring archetype, but it measn that the idea of the A-wing as a budget manuverable/blocky swarm doesn't work. An A-wing that is good at wide passive mods in a way the A-wing wants (ex: Any time a ship in range 3 say... boosts or rolls give it a calculate) so that your A-wings get a little more value would do a lot for the chasis, like making boosting in to land a block less suicidal on a 4 health ship likely in a lot of fire lines, and make the 2 dice attack far more consistent without having to go for an unmodded 3 green defense as your primary way to stay alive (which, obviously, is a losing proposition due to how unreliable unmodded greens are). A big problem with the A-wing is that despite being statistically deeply inferior and priced lower, TIE/lns sorta are low key better because Howlrunner and Iden exist which help make a group of 2 attack 3 defense ships way more viable, and rebels very conspicuously lack 'wide' modding, favoring 'powerful' peer to peer modding (which isn't that great both because it tends to be weirdly priced due to living on I4 ships which have pricing issues, and because its generally better for your entire list to gain the effect of a focus than for one ship to gain a calculate, especially on low dice ships) that the A-wing doesn't particularly want. Some way for rebels to hand out calculates to multiple allies would make the A-wing's nominal boost in defense over the Headhunter more consistent would make it not only a bit more worth it to run it over the headhunter (saving 7 points is titanic, that is, again around 25% of the ship's cost, and easily worth losing the green which is the main real benefit, to put it in perspective if your list has 2 A wings and you have 3 points you can shave anywhere on your list your able to swap those two out to a Headhunter and X-wing to gain a red dice and 2 health) but would make running upgrades on it less... overtly dumb, because you can now expect your A-wings to both do things AND not instantly die!

These ideas aren't even strictly speaking incompatible, getting more even I4 and I5 pilots for A-wings with remotely useful abilities, and a crew member (Maybe AP-5?) who helps nimble ships nearby would create a neat archetype of 'A-wing Mini aces+command ship.' Bonus points for it helping out another few rebel ships without homes (The VCX, HWK, Sheathipede, K-wing, and YT-2400).

There are other solutions of course, but X-wing players are leery of ideas that get too... colorful, like double talent slot talents, chasis specific talents, or talents that reward the ship. A good hypothetical talent for an A-wing would be one that awards a strain if you bump the target at any point, so that a team of A-wings can do more offensively and you can get value out of their speed and bumpatude outside of the relatively finicky intimidation. But, again, pricing is a huge issue for these ships, as upgrade costs are proportionally bigger for cheap garbage ships than they are for really strong ships.

I don't actually think the chasis is THAT off, its just hard to fix with 'passive' tools like points changes. It more is fundementally lacking options. It isn't even like they can't do work (Homing missiles, ion missiles, or magpulse missiles if your into the freaky stuff, I won't judge, are deceptively useful on the chasis) so much as the fact that you are throwing good points after bad if your directly modding each ship individually, and Rebels as a faction... really struggles due to its toolset being underdeveloped.

As someone who absolutely loves A-wings and wants to see them do well: RZ-1s seem fine and their only major problem is that there aren't enough of them. RZ-1 A-wings and TIE Interceptors remain the most criminally underserved ship chassis in the game. I would like to see at least 3 more pilots get added to the RZ-1 roster, preferably two at i5-6 and another at middle initiative with a support ability. I'd love to see them get more tools to be fun and effective because I love the ship, but I don't really think it's in a bad place to begin with, much less someplace so bad that it requires new cards to fix. But then I also don't think that every ship needs to be effective when spammed, and even though the RZ-1 a personal favorite, I'm fine with the Rebels having more efficient and effective spam options than A-wings.

Here's what I'd like to see: configuration cards that added "free" upgrades. That way you could have ships equip certain upgrades for less points (you would pay only the price of the config), allowing the use of many upgrades outside the usual powerful combos.

Imagine something like this for the A-wing:

- Lightweight Loadout (3 pts): equip Juke and Elusive

- Heavy Loadout (4 pts): equip Proton Rockets and Predator

Ships like the Y-wing and K-wing would love to have some loadout configs, too.

Would a lightweight version of autothrusters help? Still punishes positional mistakes, but provides some benefits to plink from the edges.

Configuration:

If you are at range 3 or outside of the attacker's primary arc, you may change one green result to a focus result.

are we sure the rz1 isn't fine and it's just that aces are broken

like we all accept that jake is good right? ... right? its just that the generics aren't good, like the vast majority of generics?

7 minutes ago, svelok said:

are we sure the rz1 isn't fine and it's just that aces are broken

like we all accept that jake is good right? ... right? its just that the generics aren't good, like the vast majority of generics?

Lots of generics are good. Generic T65/70, tie SF, arc170, torrents, trade fed drones etc.

I wouldn’t say the majority are not good

The Rz1a is one of my favorite star wars ships. Love the way it looks and its fun to run next to Luke or Han.

I don’t think the ship needs more passive mods or more red dice/ace equivalents to compete. Greater access to evades or control would be a pretty unwelcome change for me.

Its a 2 attack ship on 3 agility with 4 hp and most importantly access to boost. At the right cost it could do alot of awesome fundamental things outside of formation either in a mixed init list supporting a rebel ace or it could become the basis of a very mobile swarm. Crackshot alone opens things up nicely already.

The rz1as issues are a question of point cost for itself and the passive mod aces it has to fight around it that stack defensive mods to shrug off 2 dice attacks.

I view it as a boosting Tie FO, which is in a very similar place mechanically with boost being a key difference. The rz1a fundamentally solid though weak in current metas and could play a variety of roles in lists if things were priced differently. Especially since its one of the few generic platforms that has a talent at low init which makes crack possible, something I wish was more common for generics broadly to tell high init token stackers to get rekt. They shouldn’t need snapshot or control or missile upgrades either to become relevant. If those are remotely necessary it probably indicates some other problem around it.

Just need a minor point decrease, very slightly cleaned up hyperspace format, and more globally aggressive ace prices for “force” equivalent aces. Something like Luke + AAXX with a couple copies of crack shot should be considered an "ok" list or even Luke + AAAAZ. Thats not the case currently but it could be for sure in Hyperspace via bans and with some adjustments across the extended card pool. Mixed rebel swarms are already almost workable if you take a bunch of crack Zs maybe a uwing and a couple As.

4 points

17 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Hi, can you give a detailed analysis of what the PROBLEMS of the A1wing are?

@dezzmont gave a great analysis!

17 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Also, you make an assertion that point reductions cannot fix it without stating the reasons why. These reasons are not complete-publicly/implicitly obvious. Can you state why?

again, @dezzmont beat me to it (thanks dezz), these are the excerpts:

10 hours ago, dezzmont said:

A big problem with the A-wing is that despite being statistically deeply inferior and priced lower, TIE/lns sorta are low key better because Howlrunner and Iden exist which help make a group of 2 attack 3 defence ships way more viable, and rebels very conspicuously lack 'wide' modding, favouring 'powerful' peer to peer modding (which isn't that great both because it tends to be weirdly priced due to living on I4 ships which have pricing issues, and because its generally better for your entire list to gain the effect of a focus than for one ship to gain a calculate, especially on low dice ships) that the A-wing doesn't particularly want.
Some way for rebels to hand out calculates to multiple allies would make the A-wing's nominal boost in defence over the Headhunter more consistent & would make it not only a bit more worth it to run it over the headhunter (saving 7 points is titanic, that is, again around 25% of the ship's cost, and easily worth losing the green which is the main real benefit, to put it in perspective if your list has 2 A wings and you have 3 points you can shave anywhere on your list your able to swap those two out to a Headhunter and X-wing to gain a red dice and 2 health) but would make running upgrades on it less... overtly dumb, because you can now expect your A-wings to both do things AND not instantly die!

and:

10 hours ago, dezzmont said:

X-wing needs to cleverly bake variable upgrade pricing into the rules in a way that don't make the game too mathy. The A-wing WANTS to be a ship where your trying to run some weird talent combo or a talent and a missile and is a bit 'delux' but it is in this weird points no-mans land when you do that (Is an A-wing with snap and crack actually better than a naked X-wing or even close to as good when almost every list has so much mod power that the snap shot is you rolling dice to miss a ton? The answer may not surprise you!) and fixing it would require prices to get weird for every other ship .
This, along with a general inability for upgrades to see play on anything besides aces, makes me think upgrades should be tweaked to be 'presumed there' rather than 'presumed absent' and ships to have baked in free upgrade points, but that is pretty radical.
I think it would be better for the game's health overall (It helps make under-performing ships more resilient to points changes to key upgrades for those ships that need to go up because they generally over-perform without having totally different upgrade prices per-ship) but it isn't the only thing that could be done if you didn't want to totally rebalance and redesign list building and every upgrade in the game like some sort of weirdo who hates massive upheavals in a game that needs a steady competitive environment. That may be in X-wing's future at some point, but probably isn't an immediate response to the many problems the A-wing (and the rebel faction as a whole) are facing.

Apart from these issues I feel RZ-1 A-Wings in general face, I was also looking for a way to pay tribute to the Finger Four A-Wing list, and how a similar 4 RZ1-Awing list could be made viable in 2.0.
Removing a stress token in the End phase from a friendly Wingman in range 1 stays close to the original Wingman talent, yet I fear this would not be enough to make a 4 RZ1-A-wing list viable, hence the three different ideas for an added ability.
This added ability in 1.0 was Push the Limit, but let's not make that mistake again, so I made up some alternatives in the original post.

An counter argument for one of these alternatives was this:

20 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

(free Evades + Juke isn't a good solution to anything )

My reply:
Well, it works for Defenders... They're very solid, yet beatable.

You pay 81 points - for the cheapest (initiative 4) Defender, Juke included.
For this you get:
Initiative 4
7 health (4shields, 3hull)
3 Attack,
3 Agility
Relatively easy conditions to get a free evade action
Juke
limited hard turns
a white K-turn (that triggers the free evade action)

Now tell me, in comparison to the Defender, at how many points would you set this RZ1 A-Wing:
Initiative 3
4 health (2 shields, 2 hull)
2 Attack
3 Agility
A great dial
Red K-turn & S-loops
Juke
With this ability added:
'Wingman'
Talent slot, RZ-1 A-Wing only,
At the start of the Combat Phase, you may remove a Stress Token from another ship at range 1 that has an equipped 'Wingman' card.
If you did not remove a stress token from that ship, if that ship doesn't have any Evade tokens, it may gain an Evade token.

Would it be broken to set this build below 50 points, so you could fly 4 of them?

remember:
- the Wingman upgrade would be unique to A-Wings
- no red manoeuvre possible after getting a free evade token from a Wingman at range 1 (the ship would still be stressed)
- no stress token present = no free evade token gained
- no stacking evade tokens
- after executing a (partial) red manoeuvre = add free evade token OR remove stress (both only if there's a Wingman at range 1)
- 2 attack dice...

2 hours ago, ImperialAce95 said:

4 points

Range 2-3:
- 1 hit = 1 damage
- 2 hits = 2 damage
- 3 hits = 2 damage

Range 1:
- 1 hit = 1 damage
- 2 hits = 2 damage
- 3 hits = 2 damage
- 4 hits = 2-3 damage*

*The only problem is that if you roll 4 dice at range 1 and only 3 hits go through, it knocks it down to 2 hits. You would have to have all 4 dice hit to get the max damage of 3. The choice of whether or not to spend your mod for offense starts to get a little muddled if you roll focus results. Not sure how the probability of accuracy / expected damage works on this (especially at range 1), but it kinda feels bad.

You could also design a charge based version of this, but it would have to be pretty wordy, and I like the relative simplicity of the version here.

3 hours ago, ImperialAce95 said:

4 points

5 minutes ago, ImperialAce95 said:

Range 2-3:
- 1 hit = 1 damage
- 2 hits = 2 damage
- 3 hits = 2 damage

Range 1:
- 1 hit = 1 damage
- 2 hits = 2 damage
- 3 hits = 2 damage
- 4 hits = 2-3 damage*

*The only problem is that if you roll 4 dice at range 1 and only 3 hits go through, it knocks it down to 2 hits. You would have to have all 4 dice hit to get the max damage of 3. The choice of whether or not to spend your mod for offense starts to get a little muddled if you roll focus results. Not sure how the probability of accuracy / expected damage works on this (especially at range 1), but it kinda feels bad.

You could also design a charge based version of this, but it would have to be pretty wordy, and I like the relative simplicity of the version here.

You're critiquing your own hypothetical upgrade?

1 minute ago, Hiemfire said:

You're critiquing your own hypothetical upgrade?

... yeah, kinda.

im doing it just to throw out some numbers. If someone would want to work out the probabilities/expected damage compared to a regular 2 dice attack, that'd be great! I wonder if its similar to advanced optics RZ-2s.

I dunno, the hypothetical situation stuck with me after thinking about it for a few minutes that I thought I would share it. wanted to see if others thought it affected the card's viability.

3 hours ago, ImperialAce95 said:

4 points

If you change it to

While you perform an attack at range 2-3, yaddayadda...

you don't need the charge adjustment.

this thread is like watching 1.0 happen in fast forward

44 minutes ago, ImperialAce95 said:

... yeah, kinda.

im doing it just to throw out some numbers. 1. If someone would want to work out the probabilities/expected damage compared to a regular 2 dice attack, that'd be great! 2. I wonder if its similar to advanced optics RZ-2s.

I dunno, the hypothetical situation stuck with me after thinking about it for a few minutes that I thought I would share it. wanted to see if others thought it affected the card's viability.

1. Your hypothetical upgrade:

With Focus vs 2 green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAAAA

With Focus vs 3 green with Focus (basically target is a range 2 TIE or range 3 X-Wing) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAAAA

With Focus vs 4 green with Focus (target is a range 3 TIE) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=hAAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAAAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 2 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=QQgAAAAAAAAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 3 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=QQgAAAAAAAAA

For range 2 and 3 add the 3 hit probability to the 2 hit probability. multiply by 100 = %chance

For range 1 add the 3 hit probability to the 2 hit probability, 4 hit probability is the new 3 hit probability. multiply by 100 = %chance

Regular 2 die:

With Focus vs 2 green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAAAA

With Focus vs 3 green with Focus (basically target is a range 2 TIE or range 3 X-Wing) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAAAA

With Focus vs 4 green with Focus (target is a range 3 TIE) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=hAAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAAAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 2 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAAAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 3 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAAAA

2 die with Optics:

With Focus vs 2 green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAEAA

With Focus vs 3 green with Focus (basically target is a range 2 TIE or range 3 X-Wing) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAEAA

With Focus vs 4 green with Focus (target is a range 3 TIE) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=hAAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAEAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 2 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAEAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 3 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAEAA

2 die with Optics and Heroic: (I suspect this is what you meant by Advanced Optics RZ-2)

With Focus vs 2 green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAGAA

With Focus vs 3 green with Focus (basically target is a range 2 TIE or range 3 X-Wing) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAGAA

With Focus vs 4 green with Focus (target is a range 3 TIE) : http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=IQgAAAAAAGAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 2 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAGAA

Range 1 with Focus vs 3 Green with Focus: http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=gwAAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAGAA

2. Your upgrade is stronger than 2 die with Heroic and Optics.

the RZ-1 as is is one of my favorite ships

it just needs to be about 2 points cheaper

I think if it changed to be more like the RZ-2 like the suggestions in this thread propose I would never feel compelled to play it again

Me: *Likes the RZ-1 and wants to see it do well*

-Reads thread-

Me(inner thoughts): "Hmm, what if we make the primary weapon, but better"

Me: *proceeds to unknowingly make TLT 2.0, but with the potential to do more total damage, cuts out the middleman extra attack, is more powerful than Heroic/Advanced Optics/RZ-2s, and a weapon that surpasses Metal Gear*

"...Yeah, feels pretty good"

-is shown the data-

Me:

22 minutes ago, ImperialAce95 said:

Me: *Likes the RZ-1 and wants to see it do well*

-Reads thread-

Me(inner thoughts): "Hmm, what if we make the primary weapon, but better"

Me: *proceeds to unknowingly make TLT 2.0, but with the potential to do more total damage, cuts out the middleman extra attack, is more powerful than Heroic/Advanced Optics/RZ-2s, and a weapon that surpasses Metal Gear*

"...Yeah, feels pretty good"

-is shown the data-

Me:

No worries, been there a couple of times. 🙂

Compare 2attack dice ships that are not support ships/pilots. Most of them have some sort of force multiplier available to them. Either the amount of shots is increased, or the number of dice per shot is increased, or the quality of the shots is improved: Extra bodies, time on target, better/extra mods. And most 2attack dice ships have something like that:
Howlrunner (TIEs), Drea (Scum), Optics (RZ2, FO), Cannons (Scyk), Turrets (Y-wings), Barrage (K-wing, /bomber/punisher), other source for a permanent extra die (Jumpmaster, HWK), pilot abilities (Blount, Resistance pods, v1s), ship abilities (tie advanced, v1 for the force) or something to imporve time on target (RZ2, /SF). If they don't then they are cheap enough (fireballs, z95s) to add an extra ship which also adds more shots.

The RZ1 has the extra talent slot, or gets one at i1.

That means you can bring 6 at i1 and get 4pts upgrades per ship. The only thing that comes close to such a force multiplier is intimidation. But that does not improve your own red dice, unlike all the others above.
A similar kind of force mutliplier is crackshot. Again, does not improve your red dice. But at least leaves room for 6 at i3 - in extended.

The point is, the RZ1 would need something as force multiplier. The only options available are either extended or pretty hard to pull off, or they require you to add another ship type. You can't play 4-6 RZ1s at the moment because they simply lack the punch.