Given that the biggest issue with the current RZ-1 is its lack of pilots, the fix would be including a bunch of new A-wing pilots, preferably including options at i5 or i6 (or both. don't be shy now FFG! give us aces!)

I don't think it really needs anything else. It's a solid little ship that just lacks a diversity of options right now

6 minutes ago, Maui. said:

Given that the biggest issue with the current RZ-1 is its lack of pilots, the fix would be including a bunch of new A-wing pilots, preferably including options at i5 or i6 (or both. don't be shy now FFG! give us aces!)

I don't think it really needs anything else. It's a solid little ship that just lacks a diversity of options right now

I'm down for I5 Tycho with his old ability but limited by the "if you have 2 or fewer stress" that has popped up in 2nd Ed. Sabine with th esame ability would be a super fun and maneuverable ship to fly, but reined in by her low initiative. Maybe put Shara Bey in an A-wing since that is where she belongs.

All RZ-1 A-Wings need is more pilots, and for generics to be a bit cheaper.

I think 'it doesn't have good pilots' is merely a symptomatic issue of greater design forces in play. After all, Jake is top tier in rebels... again purely because he is the cheapest way to generate an extra action in a list and he can kinda protect himself, rather than anything to do with an A-wing (He could be in a Headhunter or Y and probably still be fine if obviously worse save for, you know, his ability requiring rolls and boosts, but the point is he is basically 'pass a focus without being in a Sheathipede' and not 'A good A-wing mini-ace'). The fact he can do 'A-wing things' is a complete side benefit because there are so many lists in the game where a 2 dice single modded attack does absolutely nothing.

Just like X-wing 1.0 had attack creep, I think the real thing hurting the A in 2.0 is defense creep: Too many ships exist in the game right now that combine high initiative and repeatable defensive boosts that let you get 2 evades consistently against a large number of attacks, which makes any 2 dice ship not outputting the volume fire of single modded shots that TIEs or Droids bring to the table extremely questionable. As @Target_2.0 said: Its fun to zoop around with the A-wings but being literally unable to push damage on ships normally relatively easy to kill if they get caught in multiple arcs (ex: Vader, who is very durable vs a ship or two before suddenly instantly spiraling off into space the second that 3rd arc lands on him or a big gun targets him) is... soul crushing.

Force is currently a problem mechanic for multiple reasons and I think the number one way to help 90% of ships in the game is for force to be less consistent on defense. It doesn't help that force shuts down a lot of the legitimately interesting tricks the A-wing can do (Juke, for example). I just... literally can't see 2.0 surviving with Force the way it is. In addition to totally locking out any ship not able to very consistently 3 dice single mod basically for free (which is why basically every played pilot can get that in some way), it also means crew slots always have to be compared to a passive calculate a turn, which generally has more value than some 8+ point upgrades like shield/hull upgrades because that dramatically extends the life of a ship, and it means force talents needing to be stronger than a passive calculate a turn for free to see play. "Force as Calculate" is just too much action economy and it de-values every other aspect of the game, including things like cheap blocker ships trying to 'chip' damage things.

A big thing that might come in that box that isn't a new pilot is a talent that actively targets force usage in some way that helps your unreliably in getting 3 dice single modded attacks matter, and make it priced REALLY aggressively. Two examples:

Unpredictable Shot (2 points): When making an attack, if you don't modify any of your attack dice, your opponent may only modify their defense dice with 1 green token.

Exploit Blind-spot (1 point): When making an attack, if you are not in your opponent's firing arc, they may only modify 1 defensive dice.

Those two hypothetical talents synergize with other talents (Snap shot and outmaneuver, respectively) and aren't very rewarding if your already rolling a chunky attack or are firing so many shots defensive mods are a super minor damage tax, but do a LOT for ships that can't consistently output 2-3 damage attacks to force through 2-3 modded defense dice with only 2-3 attacks. It gives the A-wing a cheap option to let them deal 1 damage more often without actually pumping their upper end of damage, and its still inconsistent so your still trying to play A-wings as blockers. This increased variance, especially with the first ability, obviously might be annoying for more competitive players, but a bit of a problem with X-wing at the moment is the lack of good control or distruption tools makes the game too 'mathhammery' and good games have disruption elements.

A big problem with the A-wing is that its trying to encourage you to find talent combos but talent combos are comically expensive (An A-wing with juke-snap is... comically expensive for what it does) and unless A-wings got a talent discount (to be honest I think ships getting an 'free upgrade pool' is the 'long term' fix for the game as a whole along with making force points overall weaker, as it lets ships be fine tuned better and prevents most of your card collection from being binder fodder, there is a reason 95% of wargames and minis games on the market go out of their way to make customizing your list more powerful than running generic squads). Another fix may just be to change the philosophy of X-wing's upgrade balance to better match most of the market and price upgrades to be generally assumed rather than 'only in the case they have a stupidly obvious synergy,' especially 'gimmick' upgrades that make a list fly more uniquely. You don't want to push A-wings below say... TIE/fo in price, so you can't make the A-wing 25 points, but if you made an A-wing with a homing missile cost 32 points rather than 34 because they had '2 free upgrade points' suddenly without making generic A-wings cost 27 points you managed to make A-wings overall cost a base of 27 assuming your upgrades offset exactly their points value. This increases granularity of balance because now there is an obvious draw to A-wings over a headhunter: They cost more and thus make you sacrifice upgrade cards or better pilots on the rest of your list still, but in exchange this weaker ship will come with upgrades even though it isn't the optimal holder for them. Bundling is a VERY useful design tool to help refine balance on things that can't be cheaper.

Tools to make manuverability matter more on low initiative pilots would both help the Ace Problem (it isn't a problem aces exist, but initiative is kinda in a wonky spot which is why lists are getting into like 20 point bids sometimes, it is bad for the game it is so all or nothing) and the A-wing, because the A-wing HAS to pay for its Vectored Thrusters, but on anything low initiative reposition is... just way less valuable than on a high initiative ship. Something to make its ability to link into reposition after everyone is done moving on a talent slot would be neat. An example talent:

Take Evasive Maneuvers (?? points?) After an attack misses you, if you have not barrel rolled this turn and you are not stressed, you may barrel roll.

A talent that rewards manuverability at LOW initiative. Sure, Soontr could take this, but the reposition mostly would just help for a last ditch arc-dodge rather than setting up future attacks, and because he is repositioning with perfect information, they don't have much of a reason not to just do the roll+boost ahead of time if they thought it would clear them of arcs. Also fits the feel of flying in an A-wing in Rogue Squadron and getting hit with one laser which causes you to shout "OH GOD SPIN AND BOOST SPIN AND BOOST AHHHH." Probably like... 5 or 6 points, luckily I think the ship this would be the most gross on are Jedi and don't get EPTs so it might even work on 4. I think it is worth 'pushing' talents meant for weaker ship types like low initiative high maneuverability ships, and talents that aren't direct generic dice mods.

Finally, and most obviously, some sort of passive swarm modder would help. A problem in rebels is despite their focus on 'teamwork' it is almost exclusively ship to ship passing entire full mods, while it turns out that 'auras' passing calculate tier mods are much stronger. I think, as was said, some method of just making sure A-wings always have a calculate or focus is sorta the 'nuclear option' and is an admission that X-wing sorta... low key failed in a major way, in that you just need to have specific ship synergies to have a viable list and you HAVE to take the 'out of the box' synergy to function. But there are still interesting ways to handle this. For example, and I said this before, a 'micro-ace-swarm' may be a good place for A-wings to sit, if Jake-Wedge-Herra were I6, 5, and 4, or I6-6-4, and had range 1 support abilities that reward being near knife fighting buddies but which couldn't so broadly support a bunch of Headhunters, and collectively cost around 100-110 points, that would create an interesting new archetype in the faction. While I think depending on pilots is the worst case scenario for fixing a ship (Because it is the most narrow and doesn't solve fundemental problems unless the pilot can somehow help other ships of their chasis) there are options here: An A-wing 'defensive Howlrunner' giving a free green re-roll at range 0-1 would make it less absurd to invest points into A-wing upgrades as now they are less likely to die, as would a ship able to hand out calculates to other A-wings so they have a defensive mod to use. I would prefer this to be a config of some sort though so that you were less shackled to a support ship and so that it wouldn't risk becoming a super generic aura buffer for rebels which would encourage their faction to run even more generics, literally the last thing rebels need

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

I think 'it doesn't have good pilots' is merely a symptomatic issue of greater design forces in play.

Oh, I think Jake and Arvel are very good. But there are only *two* pilots. But having more pilots would help the ship see more play. Having an Init 5 or 6, even with an average strength pilot ability would just be a nice little pocket ace that would get more A-Wings on the table.

I think a lot of "A-Wings need more pilots" isn't so much saying that the ships are bad--indeed, most folks pair it with saying that A-Wings don't necessarily need massive buffs--just that folks love them and would like more variety. At least, with the thought that they don't need buffs outside the generics.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

Exploit Blind-spot (1 point): When making an attack, if you are not in your opponent's firing arc, they may only modify 1 defensive dice.

I kinda like it. I wonder if it's too strong, mathematically speaking, for a 1 point talent (that is, I really don't know how good it is or isn't!), but it might work. Particularly if it wound up being A-Wing only (renamed A-Wing Slash?), or limited to 2-dice attacks. Could also see a tweak on the conditions, or whatever. But something along the lines of "I have a pea-shooter, and I've gotten positional advantage on you, so my attacks shouldn't be so worthless." Should also be front-arc only, like proper Outmaneuver.

One issue with A-Wings is that, while they get great access to talent slots, there aren't a lot of talents for them to pick from. A few more cheap, weak talents would add a lot of fun and spice to A-Wings.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

Bundling is a VERY useful design tool to help refine balance on things that can't be cheaper.

Cheaper missiles on an A-Wing would indeed be a lot of fun, and inform a pretty different kind of strategy. What's nice, is that it's a strategy you'd still have to *WORK* for, not one which just drops in with better dice automatically.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

(An A-wing with juke-snap is... comically expensive for what it does)

Juke anything is comically expensive--and it should be. I'd love to see Juke just deleted, since it's either too weak or too toxic and oppressive.

Snap/Crack is still solid, though. Can't use the CS on the Snap Shot, but they'll both add up, and the ship neatly comes in at 40 points.

One issue with X-wing's design is that there seems to be an effort to balance options around their 'best case scenario' rather than balancing ships that synergize with certain options around having those options. This results in lists that are mostly generic ships, or ships with generically good high value options that have an obvious, direct, and immediate impact. For certain slots its fine that it isn't always filled, and ships that have LOTS of slots shouldn't feel obligated to fill all of them, but in general ships filled with highly competitive non-numerical or situationally numerical bonuses are more interesting than generic ships.

The EPT is a big offender, because the EPT is a great way to reward you for taking lots of 'mid grade' I3-4 ships, which suffer a lot right now. EPTs are nominally good enough that you are expected to pay a tax to get them at all on 'upgraded generics,' but most EPTs are overpriced and reduce your odds of winning purely off score value.

1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:

Juke anything is comically expensive--and it should be. I'd love to see Juke just deleted, since it's either too weak or too toxic and oppressive.

Juke-Snap was literally one of the example combos stated for A-wings coming in Hotshots and Aces to justify why A-wings weren't getting any real fixes to their design. So as an A-wing fan (And a fan of wacky combos in general) it is indeed kinda a sore spot for me not just that it is expensive (obviously it should be a bit) but it is comically not valuable, both because of how bad Snapshot is and because any upgrade you toss on the A-wing is you giving away more score.

I disagree heavily with the idea Juke is bad. Juke has only ever been oppressive in a very small number of lists with ships that literally get free evades, and in those cases the core ships were just too strong on their own. In reality, it is a very dynamic talent that doesn't let you get more damage but instead lets you more consistently get some damage, while still having very obvious counterplay options vs most ships. You can bump, shoot first, use attacks that are likely to bypass the evade making it less valuable, hold your focus for defense so that juke doesn't do anything offensively, arc dodge it to negate it which is easier because evades (usually) comes at either a stress or reposition which makes jukers fly more predictably. There are a lot of really positive aspects of Juke as a talent that are held back by this refusal to price 'hyper-evaders' appropriately factoring for Juke and instead pricing Juke factoring for hyper-evaders, and it would ultimately make a lot of ships that can realistically decide to take evade actions a lot more interesting if Juke was more accessible.

What Juke probably actually needs is dynamic scaling costs on initiative, as it has rather extreme interactions with initiative. An I6 with juke is getting the ability to reserve a defensive mod while still getting something almost (but not quite) as valuable as an offensive mod, while an I1 or I2 which might want to evade still gets some value out of Juke but is more interacting with that Juke skill game I mentioned ("I don't think I am in danger, do I spend the evade and lose juke even though the shot doesn't even halve me if I don't?" "Should I use my focus offensively vs this Juker or hold it so I can't be juked?" ect).

Quote

Snap/Crack is still solid, though. Can't use the CS on the Snap Shot, but they'll both add up, and the ship neatly comes in at 40 points.

You get 1 extra damage through on a snap shot you would have got on another shot anyway. CS is a VERY good talent and should be the baseline they balance towards (AKA: "Why WOULDN'T I take this?" being answered with "Because there are 3 other talents you will say that about"), but it doesn't have any special synergy with snapshot.

On top of that, the value of a snappy-cracky A-wing at 40 points is terrible. Why aren't you taking an X-wing at that point? By making the A-wing 40 points your now tossing 20 points to your opponent any time you take 2 damage. An X-wing taking 4 gives your opponent half as many points as your opponent doing 4 to an A-wing. Points to HP is a VERY big deal for non-aces, and its part of the problem with A-wings: They want all these upgrade cards but you need to fly A-wings assuming at least they will be halved, so every 2 points of upgrades are an extra 1 point of score you just are giving to your opponent.

To be clear, Snapshot is just... bad. A 2 dice unmodded attack is absolutely terrible in X-wing and needs some sort of pseudo mod to function at all. Even unmodded 2 dice defenses take an average of .5 damage from each Snap Shot attack. It just isn't good, and because it is priced assuming synergy with 3 ships in one faction, of which only one is currently hyperspace legal. It has seen no tournament play in the last month, and has seen a 2% play rate from its release to now, and does bottom 25% in tourmanets very consistently when it does.

It both reflects a poor choice of balancing around 'maximum synergy' rather than 'what most ships that want to take it will get' and with the over-abundance of strong defensive modding that makes 2 dice attacks really terrible. It probably should come down quite significantly to ever make any sense.

3 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

All RZ-1 A-Wings need is more pilots, and for generics to be a bit cheaper.

I'm realizing that a recurring theme in the how to fix X genre is that it's not always or maybe even often people wanting something to be good, as a game piece; but good in absolute terms, as measured by game impact / table presence

34 minutes ago, svelok said:

I'm realizing that a recurring theme in the how to fix X genre is that it's not always or maybe even often people wanting something to be good, as a game piece; but good in absolute terms, as measured by game impact / table presence

Yeah. A lot of the ships that see little play do so because they actively feel awful to fly because they don't accomplish anything. "The worst result to come from a choice you make in a game is for nothing to happen."

The K-wing is not a great ship, but when it hits the table it makes things happen regardless of it is acting as a command ship passing focus or firing the big booms. E-wing is similar, it is BAD but its rare the E-wing doesn't put up a fight and do 'E-wingy things.'

The A-wing is significantly stronger, down to having one of its pilots be a big part of the rebel meta, but because the actual fantasy of flying an A-wing is not at all achieved with that piece. Combined with the fact the A-wing's offense tends to result in 0 hits vs many targets, and its defense is so inconsistent those green dice your paying for end up doing nothing, and your left with a ship that is actively frustrating to play with. I have literally left game nights early once or twice after trying a list that featured an A-wing other than Jake, or having upgraded A-wings, and having 3 entire turns result in no hits on focused range 2 shots and blanking out on all my greens one too many times.

It just Does Not Feel Good to fly it, which is WORSE than it being weak.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

On top of that, the value of a snappy-cracky A-wing at 40 points is terrible.

All I'm saying is that it's a really fun and interesting list to fly against, and my opponent had a lot of fun playing it in those games, too. That's the sweet spot, isn't it?

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

I disagree heavily with the idea Juke is bad. Juke has only ever been oppressive in a very small number of lists with ships that literally get free evades, and in those cases the core ships were just too strong on their own. In reality, it is a very dynamic talent that doesn't let you get more damage but instead lets you more consistently get some damage, while still having very obvious counterplay options vs most ships. You can bump, shoot first, use attacks that are likely to bypass the evade making it less valuable, hold your focus for defense so that juke doesn't do anything offensively, arc dodge it to negate it which is easier because evades (usually) comes at either a stress or reposition which makes jukers fly more predictably. There are a lot of really positive aspects of Juke as a talent that are held back by this refusal to price 'hyper-evaders' appropriately factoring for Juke and instead pricing Juke factoring for hyper-evaders, and it would ultimately make a lot of ships that can realistically decide to take evade actions a lot more interesting if Juke was more accessible.

What Juke probably actually needs is dynamic scaling costs on initiative, as it has rather extreme interactions with initiative. An I6 with juke is getting the ability to reserve a defensive mod while still getting something almost (but not quite) as valuable as an offensive mod, while an I1 or I2 which might want to evade still gets some value out of Juke but is more interacting with that Juke skill game I mentioned ("I don't think I am in danger, do I spend the evade and lose juke even though the shot doesn't even halve me if I don't?" "Should I use my focus offensively vs this Juker or hold it so I can't be juked?" ect).

Naw. Juke reduces really quickly to unlimited Crack Shot in the full arc. Any time where Juke gets good enough to see play, it's horrible.

It's no use pointing to times when Juke's bad to try to explain why it isn't a problem. It isn't a problem because it's bad. If it were good, it'd be a problem, even without Hyper-Evade ships.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

One issue with X-wing's design is that there seems to be an effort to balance options around their 'best case scenario' rather than balancing ships that synergize with certain options around having those options. This results in lists that are mostly generic ships, or ships with generically good high value options that have an obvious, direct, and immediate impact. For certain slots its fine that it isn't always filled, and ships that have LOTS of slots shouldn't feel obligated to fill all of them, but in general ships filled with highly competitive non-numerical or situationally numerical bonuses are more interesting than generic ships.

The EPT is a big offender, because the EPT is a great way to reward you for taking lots of 'mid grade' I3-4 ships, which suffer a lot right now. EPTs are nominally good enough that you are expected to pay a tax to get them at all on 'upgraded generics,' but most EPTs are overpriced and reduce your odds of winning purely off score value.

Having a hard time forking through this word salad, but I think it's mostly good that ships have a really different texture based on upgrades. A-Wings being cheap ships which can take advantage of talents is pretty neat, makes them distinct from TIE/v1. Or at least the Baron of the Empire. Why a Green costs 2 points more is kinda beyond me, but still.

It's just a fact that a lot of ships are going to feel pretty similar just due to statlines. Making sure that they build different, that they alter the same-y chassis with interesting upgrades, seems a net positive. The A-Wing being the double-talent ship makes it fairly distinct.

1 hour ago, svelok said:

I'm realizing that a recurring theme in the how to fix X genre is that it's not always or maybe even often people wanting something to be good, as a game piece; but good in absolute terms, as measured by game impact / table presence

Yeah, probably.

A-Wings are the Rebel Gunboats. People want them to be good SO MUCH because they just love the ships. Folks want to be able to put them on the table without feeling like total chumps. Now, some of that is probably a mistake of perceptions. Arvel and Jake are pretty good, and the generics aren't far off, and folks would be less chump-like than they'd expect.

But still, a 29 point A-Wing is just worse than a 28 point Autoblasters Scyk. The mobility is nice in theory. On the score board, the Scyk massively outperforms it. Being worse than a cheaper ship that's very similar is just going to stick in a lot of craws.

4 hours ago, dezzmont said:

Exploit Blind-spot (1 point): When making an attack, if you are not in your opponent's firing arc, they may only modify 1 defensive dice.

3 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I kinda like it. I wonder if it's too strong, mathematically speaking, for a 1 point talent (that is, I really don't know how good it is or isn't!), but it might work. Particularly if it wound up being A-Wing only (renamed A-Wing Slash?), or limited to 2-dice attacks. Could also see a tweak on the conditions, or whatever. But something along the lines of "I have a pea-shooter, and I've gotten positional advantage on you, so my attacks shouldn't be so worthless." Should also be front-arc only, like proper Outmaneuver.

Did a bit of playing in the dice calc.

Against 3 green dice, it's about twice as good as Heroic, but significantly worse than Predator.

Against 2 green dice, it's a little better than Heroic, not a lot.

In either case, real Outmaneuver is a lot better. I'd probably be quite happy with Baby-Outmaneuver. A single point for: "While you perform a [front arc] attack, if you are not in the defender’s firing arc and there are 2 or fewer attack dice, the defender cannot modify more than 1 result."

2 hours ago, svelok said:

I'm realizing that a recurring theme in the how to fix X genre is that it's not always or maybe even often people wanting something to be good, as a game piece; but good in absolute terms, as measured by game impact / table presence

The other recurring theme of the fix it threads (and one that I'm certainly guilty of) is the fix needs to complement the poster's playstyle. It doesn't matter if a ship has viable role if you dont like the role or are bored by role.

Luckily A-wings are popular. Phoenix squadron gives them a lot of key pilots. I could see rebels getting a second talent selflessness is terrible for a wings.

proud tradition really helped some ships for first order I think a new rebel talent would be great for A-wings. It could also help ships like e-wing as well.

12 hours ago, dezzmont said:

Juke-Snap was literally one of the example combos stated for A-wings coming in Hotshots and Aces to justify why A-wings weren't getting any real fixes to their design.

The reason A-Wings didn't get any fixes in Hotshots and Aces was that A-Wings were wave 6, and Hotshots and Aces only addressed ship from Wave 2 to 5. Anyone who justified that the A's weren't getting fixes because of Juke-Snap was wrong.

I'll also jump on the bandwagon that Juke can't really be allowed to good on some ships without it becoming oppressive on other ships.

36 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

I'll also jump on the bandwagon that Juke can't really be allowed to good on some ships without it becoming oppressive on other ships.

I'll go further. Even with advanced pricing techniques, some sort of a spreadsheet where TIE Phantoms and Defenders still pay 7+, but TIE Fighters spend less, the instant Juke crosses over from being too expensive to bother with, it's toxic AF.

Like, Howl/Iden + 4, all with Juke, is still gonna suck, or adding Juke to Sloane Swarm (double stress prevents someone from focusing next round = jukefest!). Drea + 6 Juke TIEs too.

Juke/snap shot need some unique dots.

Then you wouldn't have to worry about spamming. Also, it would indirectly buff the A wings by giving them actually decent upgrades.

(P.s. try a Phoenix squad pilot with squad leader. It's good)

On 7/22/2020 at 9:52 PM, theBitterFig said:

Naw. Juke reduces really quickly to unlimited Crack Shot in the full arc. Any time where Juke gets good enough to see play, it's horrible.

Through X-wings entire logged tournament history on Metawing over 2 years, Juke has only seen play in serious numbers on the 3 Phantoms that can take it, and specifically Rexler. Every other potential pilot fails to break the 100 mark and thus 1% of squads.

Even on ships that 'merely' synergize with Juke, like Sabine, it just isn't good enough to be oppressive. It is always merely 'ok.' But it did see good tech play across a lot of ships! Juke generally has high performance when played on a bunch of ships, and those ships used it often enough that it wasn't some random fluke experiment in a tournament but it only ever became a problem on 4 pilots in the entire game. 3 of those ships all got evades, essentially, for free, and had other serious issues to the point they continued to be nerfed even after Juke 'went away.' Like, one of those ships was so strong it was undercosted, even without juke, by 5 points and it had a crew slot at the time Jukeageddon was going on. Meanwhile, the defender chasis has heavily struggled (Though I agree it can become a serious problem if allowed to joust too efficiently).

Its super clear Juke can be at a point where it is possible to see good performance from it without it going nuts, and as someone who specifically enjoys techning lists, I think the community heavily undervalues the distinction between 'off meta' and 'non-viable.' There is a point between 'it shows up on meta swarm lists' and 'it is embarrassing to take it even on one ship because its so comically overpriced it tanks your list.' Juke is priced out of the game right now, and it really doesn't need to be.

It would still be bad at 6, or even probably 5, on most ships. I could see an argument for it being dangerous at 5 on some high initiative ships, but again there is a tool for that in the game of dynamic initiative pricing. Would something like 4/5/6/6/7/8 really be spooky? The only people who can both evade and get this at the cost of 5 or lower would be Muse, Generic RZ-2s and Ronith (Who has direct anti-synergy with Juke), Vagabond, the RZ-1 A-wing, and the headhunter if Jyn is in squad. Most generic+'s would be at I3 and thus paying 6 for the thing, which still saw some tech play, and most aces who took it would be paying the current cost.

On 7/22/2020 at 9:52 PM, theBitterFig said:

Juke reduces really quickly to unlimited Crack Shot in the full arc

Juke ONLY becomes crack shot in main arc on a very limited number of ships. Crack Shot does not require you to take an action that is generally low value offensively. meaning its just a flat extra damage over the course of the game if you line up a bullseye ever. Juke, for most ships, has an action cost that actively lowers your expected damage output when you take Juke compared to just focusing.

A 2 dice attack on a 2 dice defender with jukedoes an .89 on average for their attack, while focus does a .85, which is a gain of only about .4 damage. 2 dice vs 3 dice it goes from .69 to .75. The effect is lessened the more dice you have innately, and the fewer defense dice your target has, and reverses pretty hard. For example, A 3 dice attacker with focus vs a 1 defense ship does 1.8, while a juker does 1.5. This means Juke mostly is either a super minor damage gain in its 'best case scenarios' or a meaty damage loss in its worst cases, and in such cases where you trade focus for juke specifically to push more damage without caring about the defensive benefits, it is at most 1/10th a crackshot per-shot, at 7 times the price at the moment. The virtue of Juke from a purely offensive standpoint is that it serves as an excellent 'tech choice' vs highly defensive ships as it significantly improves your odds of hitting, without improving your upper end damage that much. Basically you wiff entirely less often.

Obviously there is a problem with that as many defensive ships in X-wing have passive modding and you will only get the benefit of juke if you focus fire on a ship likely to be an arc dodger, which is rough. In the case where Juke 'does nothing' due to a free pilot focus or force being in play, with 3 dice vs 3 defense you lose .4 damage, and 2 v3 you lose .1 (But that is 50% of your damage, honestly a 2 dice shot vs a force user may as well not exist, so we can assume that doesn't actually strip the force in any circumstance). In addition, you need to do at least 1 damage with the lost evade to get them to spend a force, which only occurs 40% of the time. This means that for juking to make sense against such a target with only one force, you need to attack 5 times in one turn to get an improvement in damage. This is a problem with Juke (though I would also argue that defensive force is a problem in general right now) that makes it extremely low value vs Jedi and to a lesser extent droids and aces who get a focus despite repositioning. If there was an 'upgrade sideboard' to tech to your opponent's faction, this may not be a problem, but it does likely mean despite Juke being able to survive as a healthy niche pick for lots of ships before, it sadly would probably be very unfun and unreliable now and hard to price where it is consistently 'worth it' without it being a blow out vs non-Jedi or re-rollers.

Juke's main advantage in a 'swarm scenario' is that it is a strong defensive tool that does not need to be spent defensively if you shoot first (Again, it may just be an initiative scaling ability, it directly gets better if you shoot first, unlike other initiative scaling upgrades like the repair droids which merely associate initiative with defensive ability and points to recover) or you get lucky defending, but as a 4 point upgrade it doesn't actually push that much damage compared to Crack Shot, especially if your opponent ends up holding focus on their attack sometimes. Yes, it would help TIE Swarms statistically over a fight because evade+juke would be better for them, but it wouldn't help that much compared to taking crack and just focusing. A TIE on defense reduces incoming damage by around .22 a shot vs 3 dice ships, which definitely matters, and which is more the concern than pushing around .1 extra damage an attack. This effectively reduces the incoming damage on the TIE, assuming it is only attacked once a turn, by 50%, and dramatically extends its lifespan. Once you get focused fired of course you probably still die, and we all know to do that to TIEs that are focused anyway, but it still is a meaningful defensive advantage because it makes 1v1ing that TIE really hard.

And, of course, this evaluation falls apart once you account for the fact that Juke is much stronger if you shoot first because it allows you to passively use your defensive resource as a pseudo-focus, where most of the time you are choosing between either modding attack and defense, or just one of those with a reposition. This is part of why TIE Phantoms were so terrifying: You (pre-information at least) re-positioned with cloak, got a free evade, got a focus to attack mod on top making Juke legitimately a Crack Shot that was always on, and then defense modded with the evasion token so you didn't even need to think about offensive modding with your focus or target lock, and you defensive modded TWICE if you were Whisper, making you borderline unkillable while firing off pseudo-double modded attacks every turn while zooping around all over the place. Initiative costing would be critical, because yeah it might get intense for Howlrunner to casually Juke into a defensive mod, as well as a pseudo-target lock and a pseudo 'anti-focus' that forces their opponent to decide if they want to try to push damage on the evading Howl or eat an especially nasty attack.

In a hypothetical world with 4 point Juke on TIEs, would Sloan Swarm be willing to pay 29 points per-TIE (As the base TIE can't run Juke), as opposed to 22? For TIEs this is a big difference, the swarm is losing an entire TIE to kiiiinda double the survivability of the TIEs, but in reality probably not because obviously focus fire exists. Would this be too strong? I dunno, but it wasn't a think when Juke was cheap. It seems awfully similar to just replacing your swarm with TIE V1s unless your confident you can force your opponent to split damage on most turns, especially early turns. If you are just using Juke to force your opponent to land one extra shot on a focus fire/joust, the extra health is in some ways more flexible, as you can more often 'let damage ride' to get your mod in on the return shot, and you more often actually survive two shots compared to the Juker. You also get better actions and a dial. But Juke does really help vs aces unable to focus fire. I wouldn't say this is terrible, but it could be an issue. At 6 points? I doubt it, your giving up two whole ships to do that, or downgrading your carrier even more than just droping a second useful crew or its upgrades. 4 Juking TIEs is just not good enough at 31 or 30 per TIE.

I can definitely see not wanting Juke to be good purely because it really isn't fun to either have your upgrade do nothing because of passive modding, or because it isn't fun to have the excitement of rolling an evade unmodded and then having to swap it. I could also see a desire to reduce defense in X-wing overall (Which would mean the main advantage of Juke enabling 'trash ships' to do more consistent damage would be unneeded) just by re-evaluating and re-pricing strong defenses in general, as it locks out a lot of things. But that is more a game feel/pacing issue than 'Juke inherently run rampant any time its played.'

I dunno, maybe I am missing something critical, but the danger of Juke pretty clearly was based around free evades making tanky ships also ridiculously deadly offensively

10 hours ago, Roller of blanks said:

Juke/snap shot need some unique dots.

Then you wouldn't have to worry about spamming. Also, it would indirectly buff the A wings by giving them actually decent upgrades.

Dots on Juke wouldn't be terrible. It prevents it from becoming a swarm tool and allows it to assist an otherwise low value shooter that wants to 1v1 someone, and combined with a scaling initiative cost it would allow it to go back into that space where it exists to support some interesting surprisingly high preforming off-meta combos.

Snap shot going down in price but getting dots is DEFINITELY an exciting idea. Snap shot shouldn't be meta, but I can see the issue with the entire concept of 6 snap shotters, even as a joke list, just being misserable. Giving snap shot room to be 'bad but fun' probably does involve limiting it to 2 copies.

I also think its as much about upgrade diversity as the quality of upgrades on the A-wings, but more low cost upgrades that matter helps that, because the cost of trading a good talent for a sub-optimal one is way less intense than taking a sub-optimal talent over the nothing when that is optimal, weirdly enough.

10 hours ago, Roller of blanks said:

(P.s. try a Phoenix squad pilot with squad leader. It's good)

😲 Holy crud that is clever! In my next squad for sure!

23 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

The reason A-Wings didn't get any fixes in Hotshots and Aces was that A-Wings were wave 6, and Hotshots and Aces only addressed ship from Wave 2 to 5. Anyone who justified that the A's weren't getting fixes because of Juke-Snap was wrong.

I can understand how I worded this in a confusing way.

On a stream one of the designers, I believe Max Brooke, in direct response to being asked if A-wings would get more points adjustments, said they were not because they wanted to see how they interacted with things in Hotshots and Aces, and then in a Hotshots and Aces Q&A stream they specifically then mentioned Juke-Snapshot as something they were excited for on Green Squad. They did not imply this specific combo was what they were referring to in the points update Q&A, but they DID note they thought Snap Shot would do a lot for A-wings (Which is, obviously, absurd at its current cost). Not that they weren't in Hotshots and Aces as pilots because they thought Snap+Juke was already enough, because yeah they were not in the timing window.

I also get how little that matters to most people and its irrational to be that hung up on it, but it really hit me at a low point in my enjoyment for X-wing and really made me realize how much this game caters to Spikes and actively rejects Johnnies. So its kinda a stupid sore spot I shouldn't have brought up (Because no sane player should have expected anything from that, and I was a bloody fool for falling for the hype and deciding to bite the bullet and get a 3rd A-wing in anticipation!).

19 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

It would still be bad at 6, or even probably 5, on most ships. I could see an argument for it being dangerous at 5 on some high initiative ships, but again there is a tool for that in the game of dynamic initiative pricing. Would something like 4/5/6/6/7/8 really be spooky?

Then. Why. Bother?

If Juke is still going to be 4-5 points on Mining Guild TIEs (the cheapest spammable Juke ship), what's the benefit? It'd still be too bad to use, and would never see play.

Reduce it to 2 or 3 where it'd see play, and it's once again pretty much BS and toxic.

Where is the gain to the game? What's the upside? There is none. The closest thing to a place where Juke actually gets fun is ships without free Evades that will often shoot first. An A-Wing like Tallie, for example. Juke for a minor loss in attack value, for the double-dip defensive benefit. But Initiative pricing would wipe this out, so ****ing why? Ships that attack second don't gain anything, since Focus is about as good as Evade on 3 green dice, and if you're going 2nd you can't double-dip and get both offensive and defensive benefits, and it's just wasting points. But buff it to a low price where it isn't a waste of points, and it's horrible for anyone on the other end. There's no middle ground.

If there is one upgrade that just shouldn't exist, it's Juke. It seems almost like it was a good design, but it really isn't.

45 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

The virtue of Juke is that it serves as an excellent 'tech choice' vs highly defensive ships as it significantly improves your odds of hitting.

But you contradict this later.

50 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

This means that for juking to make sense against such a target with only one force, you need to attack 5 times in one turn to get an improvement in damage. This is a problem with Juke (though I would also argue that defensive force is a problem in general right now) that makes it extremely low value vs Jedi and to a lesser extent droids and aces who get a focus despite repositioning.

If Juke fails when it goes up against these token stacks, it really doesn't serve as a tech choice against high defenses. Juke then only punishes normal ships--the generic A-Wings and TIE/x1s and even X-Wings.

An upgrade being bad against Droids and Jedi but good against everything else is like the worst possible upgrade for the health of the game.

56 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Juke is still going to be 4-5 points on Mining Guild TIEs (the cheapest spammable Juke ship), what's the benefit. It'd still be too bad to use, and would never see play.

That is just completely incorrect. A lot of Juke's best cases in the game were on I3 ships, for example, Sabine, who never was meta (Juke-Sabine was only used in 1.5% of tournaments through the game's history), but who preformed well when she showed up. Seevor likewise has a low occurance rate but high performance.

There is a world of difference between off meta and non-viable, because off-meta choices can show up as tech options or ways to personalize a squad. Something not being good enough for top tier tournament play isn't the same as something being so bad you can't effectively use it. At 4 points on a mining TIE it MIGHT see play, which is different than 'it wouldn't even be worth thinking of playing this thing.'

Even IF you can't ever make it good, it exists as a card in the game and deliberately keeping it 'extra bad' is... not great? Like actively punishing someone for experimenting with Juke is... a great way to make people hate your game. Even if you can't make something good safely, you don't want to make it so bad it actively creates a bad time for trying it. If you sincerely think a 4 point I1 juke isn't good enough to use, it still 'reduces the harm' of Juke existing as a trap option. So even if you want to give up on balancing it, either it should be totally removed from the game (which only makes sense if you think Juke is an NPE not balance wise, but because it doesn't 'feel good' to 'lose' an evade, which doesn't seem to be the point your making) and the list builders and such, or it should be put as close as it can be to ok but weak without going overboard, so that it doesn't feel as bad when someone experiments with it. An important thing to avoid in customizable games is 'option stomp' where an option is bad enough that it 'tricks' you into having a bad time. Juke can be way closer to 'value neutral' than it is, even if you insist it can't ever be made value positive, because value negative options in a game's design are generally bad and make players disengage with your game.

56 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

But Initiative pricing would wipe this out, so ****ing why

Well, again, initiative pricing can like... be tuned? Tali is I5, so you could just... you know... set the I5 slot to be cost 7, which means literally nothing changes for her? Or put it at 6, or whatever.

56 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Ships that attack second don't gain anything, since Focus is about as good as Evade on 3 green dice

We are literally talking about this in the context of how, in fact, ships gain something from Juke offensively if they are low attack dice even if they attack second as compared to a focus because it allows more consistent chip damage. I did a bunch of math on it, it is literally an aspect of this discussion everyone agrees on and its why it is being had in the context of the A-wing, a ship hampered by the fact it struggles amazingly hard to do damage to 2 and 3 defense ships.

Saying that there is no reason to take Juke on select ships in a mixed ship list is kinda silly in this context.

Also? 'About as good' isn't 'as good.' Especially when the outcomes actually can get significantly different. The fact the average absolute change is small simply means that, yeah, the points should go down a bit when your defending, but in reality your expected TTK goes up quite a nice amount of 3 and 4 health ships with 3 defense dice using an evade vs a focus. Specifically, an evade vs 3 attack dice means you NEVER get one shot as a 3 health ship by a 3 attack focused attack, and vs 4 you still only get one shot %7 of the time as opposed to 1 in 10. That is pretty significant, even ignoring the fact that you also increase the chances of it taking 3 shots to kill you with a focused 3 quite a lot with an evade.

In a sense, when your getting shot at? Juke is sorta like heroic (an upgrade that sees quite play on A-wings as it turns out!). It doesn't improve the average outcome that much, but it ensures you don't ever blank out, which is kinda what these ships need. A heroic defending A-wing with a focus has similar statistical outcomes to a non-heroic one in terms of average damage taken, but the result of 3 damage on a 4 dice focused attack is cut just a little less than what the evading one is, down to 8% as opposed to 12%.

Overall, the result of depending on evade rather than focus with the option to use it offensively if you get lucky on green dice allows you to increase your average TTK to 3 shots by a pretty significant margin. This makes Juke worth something to be sure, and thus there is a sweet spot between 'Oh god 8 Juking Sloan TIEs!' and "The idea of putting Juke on this Mining TIE or A-wing to help its longevity is absurd because it is going to probably get halved in 1-2 attacks and I just gave up 3-7 scoring points for a really small preformance increase when I coulda just pushed it up to a Y-wing or something.'

Yes, I literally specifically pointed this out to establish why it was not oppressive to these types of ships. Because most ships of this nature have passive mods. It still HELPS against them a bit, but not as much as you might expect, hence why it is not an oppressive hard counter and could afford to go down.

56 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

An upgrade being bad against Droids and Jedi but good against everything else is like the worst possible upgrade for the health of the game.

To be clear, Juke isn't 'good against everything else.' Juke is REALLY specialized, and even against ships it works against it doesn't work wonders, it is a pretty minor mathematical upgrade. This isn't a 'Hard counter' against non-jedi/droids. The fact it doesn't do great against those things doesn't say a lot because... most mechanics aren't good against droids and jedi right now.

If you removed everything that doesn't function against droids and jedi, but worked against other things, you wouldn't be helping solve their issues for game health, because that is most things which indicates that in reality droids and jedi are so unhealthy they need to be adressed themselves, rather than adressing things that do... bad against them. Like that isn't how game design works, you don't nerf things that do poorly against oppressive aspects of your game that are hurting its health. By that logic we should nerf... I dunno... Dorsal turrets.

The community has endlessly talked about the problems of force points and droids and the like. Honestly, I don't have too much of a problem with Juke just being kinda 'meh' against these options as long as the cost of them isn't so big that you absolutely have to get extreme value out of them. 7 points is an APT, its an upgrade to a Y-wing, or a named Headhunter, or upgrading your X-wing to Wedge if its already named. It isn't something you can justify for a maybe. 4 is way different. It won't make it so good you always take it, but it helps make it a better tradeoff, which makes the meta more diverse which... I hope is obviously a good thing.

I do agree that upgrades that just get totally blown out by certain lists are a problem, and its an NPE, but juke is already blown out by that list. So reducing the points literally makes the problem better.

Please stop trying to make Juke good. We've seen what happens when Juke is good, and it's not good. As much as I want to be able to run Juke to make my n-1s viable, I'm willing to accept that hit if it keeps Juke away from the likes of defenders and phantoms.

If you need something to fill that niche, nuke Juke to 10+ points and replace it with a similar but less oppressive talent, a la Supernatural Reflexes -> Precognitive Reflexes

15 minutes ago, Maui. said:

Please stop trying to make Juke good. We've seen what happens when Juke is good, and it's not good. As much as I want to be able to run Juke to make my n-1s viable, I'm willing to accept that hit if it keeps Juke away from the likes of defenders and phantoms.

If you need something to fill that niche, nuke Juke to 10+ points and replace it with a similar but less oppressive talent, a la Supernatural Reflexes -> Precognitive Reflexes

Again, there are ways to make Juke not show up on Phantoms and Defenders that... allow it to exist in the game on other less oppressive ships. X-wing is the only game I have seen that has this weird attitude with the baby and bathwater when a very specific mechanic interacts poorly with a general one, where it nerfs the general, rather than the specific.

That said, it isn't a terrible idea to make less oppressive versions of talents, and in the case of juke, it probably is a case of needing to just make a new version so people don't freak out, especially because Juke DOES have negative aspects unrelated to its perceived balance that could be fixed in a second pass. While Juke swarms aren't good, they are a bit too griefy in terms of defense, and the 'flip an evade to an eye' isn't fun to do after 'getting' the evade, so having a similarly functioning low cost generic pseudo-heroic is totally doable without the controversy and baggage of the talent.

Something like: "When you attack you may spend an evade to set a blank or focus result to a hit if your opponent does not have a focus" achieves similar(ish) statistical results on 2 dice while also dodging the droids and jedi problem, and avoiding the 'whammy' of the non-evade. If you miss or your opponent doesn't attack that ship, you get a very consistent low damage attack, if you are attacked, you more consistently are able to avoid popping, and spending the evade means you can't passively get a double modded attack with phantoms or defenders while still holding onto defense. Could even probably tap it down to 1 point if you make it only work on focus results.

Doesn't play well with snap, but eh, who cares. Point is now your little blocker ships don't pop quite as fast and can poke back harder if ignored at the same time.

1 minute ago, dezzmont said:

Again, there are ways to make Juke not show up on Phantoms and Defenders that... allow it to exist in the game on other less oppressive ships. X-wing is the only game I have seen that has this weird attitude with the baby and bathwater when a very specific mechanic interacts poorly with a general one, where it nerfs the general, rather than the specific.

Alternate theory: experienced X-wing players know what makes Juke problematic and the issue is very much general and not specific to phantoms

Granulating pricing can't 'fix' juke without becoming extraordinarily complicated. Making Juke unplayable and replacing it with a similar but healthier card is far simpler and easier

17 minutes ago, Maui. said:

If you need something to fill that niche, nuke Juke to 10+ points and replace it with a similar but less oppressive talent, a la Supernatural Reflexes -> Precognitive Reflexes

Make a unique single dot version? It seems silly to do, but I want it for strong but unopressive pilots like AS Sabine and Seevor.

10 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

Even IF you can't ever make it good, it exists as a card in the game and deliberately keeping it 'extra bad' is... not great?

Sometimes, yeah, the best solution is to just totally make it unplayable.

It's going to vary, depending on what the best case and worst case scenarios are. Worst case for Juke is pretty bad, and the best case... kinda doesn't really exist. Seevor and Sabine get a hair better. Is that enough of a benefit to the game for the hassle of initiative pricing (nice job moving the goal-posts on the Tallie example, BTW... you're entire initial argument was that Juke should be expensive at High Init, not cheaper), and worth running the risk of Juke-swarms? Not really.

My preferred solution is to literally delete Juke from the game. Not because it's the most oppressive card, but because it's something which is impossible to make fun.

30 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

By that logic we should nerf... I dunno... Dorsal turrets.

Naw, because these things are entirely different.

Juke doesn't really open up options. It modifies only dice in the most unfun way possible. It doesn't work to claim it'd be good as a tech choice for dealing with "highly defensive" ships when that's not what it does. Those kinds of highly-defensive ships aren't punished by Juke, instead it hits hardest single action ships, and pretty much that kind of ship specifically.

Dorsal Turret, for example, DOES change gameplay. More firing arcs means ships can position in different ways. Meanwhile, it doesn't specifically target single-action ships. Getting more shots or different and maybe better positions is pretty handy against everyone. In the abstract sense that everything is better against weak ships than strong ships, sure, this too would be better against average ships. But it doesn't go out-of-it's-way to target them specifically.

2 minutes ago, Maui. said:

If you need something to fill that niche, nuke Juke to 10+ points and replace it with a similar but less oppressive talent, a la Supernatural Reflexes -> Precognitive Reflexes

Suppose a Juke alternative something like "When you perform a primary attack, if you are evading, you may reroll 1 focus result." That's more boring, but it's like a non-toxic crayon. Still shouldn't eat it, but far less poisonous. I can't be bothered to run the math, might be better, might be worse. IDGAF. However it'd work out mathematically, it's far better for the game. The "fix Juke" crowd need to realize that having your green dice messed with makes people uniquely unhappy, and this is a game we all play for fun. Juke cannot be saved.

9 minutes ago, Maui. said:

Please stop trying to make Juke good.

Like, I just don't understand why JUKE of all things is the hill folks want to fight on. This is the one bad upgrade we need to make good? Not missiles or whatever? JUKE.

I guess the alt-arts that everyone has 15 copies of are pretty, but still...

3 hours ago, dezzmont said:

made me realize how much this game caters to Spikes and actively rejects Johnnies

This is part of the difference between a card game and a miniatures game (that has cards in it).

X-Wing makes for a good miniatures game, but a really mediocre card game. Pushing it to be more of the latter and less of the former is trading a good, unique thing, for a bad version of something you can get in so many other places.

Juke is problematic in large part because the evade is not spent. Thus, when ships can get an evade and a way to modify attack dice--and can still then use the evade on defense--Juke becomes good enough it is hard to price right. To really get Juke pricing right you would need a grid, where cost increases both for (1) ship initiative and (2) the number of copies in the list.

So, FFG has already shown that they "fixed" Supernatural Reflexes by making the cheaper and less-powerful Precognitive Reflexes. What about the same approach for Juke? Maybe something like this:

Zeroed In: (2 or 3 points?) "While you perform an attack, you may spend an evade to change 1 of the defender's <evades> to a <focus>"

X-Wing is most fun when trying to decide between 2 options where one is not clearly better, just different. I feel like having to spend the evade puts players in that situation where you are forced to decide between offense right now or better defense later. Right now, Juke is not really decision (other than choosing to get an evade); it just happens for free.

P.S. If spending the evade seems to weaken it too much, you could add "OR change one of the defender's <focus> to a <blank>" to Zeroed In to buff it a little.

3 minutes ago, HanScottFirst said:

Juke is problematic in large part because the evade is not spent. Thus, when ships can get an evade and a way to modify attack dice--and can still then use the evade on defense--Juke becomes good enough it is hard to price right. To really get Juke pricing right you would need a grid, where cost increases both for (1) ship initiative and (2) the number of copies in the list.

So, FFG has already shown that they "fixed" Supernatural Reflexes by making the cheaper and less-powerful Precognitive Reflexes. What about the same approach for Juke? Maybe something like this:

Zeroed In: (2 or 3 points?) "While you perform an attack, you may spend an evade to change 1 of the defender's <evades> to a <focus>"

X-Wing is most fun when trying to decide between 2 options where one is not clearly better, just different. I feel like having to spend the evade puts players in that situation where you are forced to decide between offense right now or better defense later. Right now, Juke is not really decision (other than choosing to get an evade); it just happens for free.

P.S. If spending the evade seems to weaken it too much, you could add "OR change one of the defender's <focus> to a <blank>" to Zeroed In to buff it a little

I like the P.S. part.

The other version is just straight worse than focus