First we should all recognize that there are attacks that have 1 firepower, technically. Bombs and mines circumvent the problem of having to deal with the defense dice math by just not allowing them into the equation, and also preventing the user from being able to modify the bombs 'attack' with their own resources such as tokens. Excepting a few cases like Sabine which I suppose I could give you. In the end though the device attacks are stat-locked as to their success and outcomes. For example the new Thermal Detonators. It is a known chance, and that allows it to be predictable in general, but still have variance that keeps the risk calculation factor present.

These next few paragraphs are just had to be noted things for many of you. It should be obvious and maybe you've recognized it yourself but we don't talk about it much if we do. There is a not talked about beauty of the dice as is in X-wing though. And I strongly believe it's one of the lessons they learned from first Ed like Davy said. The engineered goal of the dice in X-wing is to generally allow things to be destroyed. This actually happens in two ways. The most obvious we all already know is that the dice are unequal one-to-one. The attack die is just better. So as long as you keep the pool-vs-pool within a certain range, that particular part of the intentional design works. But there's the rub, you have to keep them roughly equal so that the red dice can do their job.

To do that they've kept it close by having an baseline disparity that's allowed built in to the foundation. Generally speaking, if we look at it just from the starting points of the combat engines calculations, so we ignore some variables that are circumstantial such as weapons disabled or say some upgrades or pilot effects, attack pools cannot be less than defense die pools by more than one die. Very important that I emphasize again here that this is the starting point of the calculation. After it leaves this void of origin, it can get as weird as they want so long as it had game costs associated to it.

This is accomplished with a very simple design 'rule' they tend to stick extremely close to. That rule is: Their are four base attack values 2, 3, 4, 5. Some of those obviously are only via ordnance . And four base defense values 0, 1, 2, 3. Grab any two of those numbers at random and chances are the attack number you pick will be higher than the defense number. Duh right? Even cutting the two extremes which are very intentionally rare, 5 and 0, and just on it's own rarity let's throw out the 4 too, if you randomly pick one from each of the remaining values, attack can still at no point be less than defense by one.

This rule assures that the system naturally trend's toward reds favor by keeping the pools pretty close. And that's good, because the game must go on. Again, we don't want the combat engine to stall out. The design rule is simple. The max allowable starting deficiency of the attacker is to be behind the defense die by an eighth of a result average. So they'll have a chance by literally one die face as the defender. If they were to allow your 1 die primary, it creates a problem as that baseline changes to 5/8ths average ahead for green, and certain game states will then favor the defender. Because in that case green will too often not even have to try. 1/2 hits base is not allowed against 9/8ths evades base. You can only get that good/bad via game play after the base is set.

And I think it's rather eloquent in a way. There's this certain beauty to it of four numbers against four, offset by two. And it reminds me for some reason of a d6 system deep down and I find that kinda neat. Now I know I've written another term paper here so I'll leave it here and come back later. Thanks for reading if you got this far lol! 🍻

One last note. yes we need to have an objective system or similar. But they gave us three already, and none of them are required, and majority seems uninterested in them.

13 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

The 1 die attack needs to achieve something that isn't damage related....

A 1-dice "your primary weapon inflicts Ion tokens instead of damage" might be OK, or any other sort of negative token.

At least, it'd be OK on the right ship.

I have in my head some ship which has this as the primary, but maybe a config-based "cannon" which has more dice (3 dice + 1 in bullseye?) but can only be fired when you spend 3 recurring charges. Give it white flip moves, since I love the concept of a ship which has incredibly high time-on-target, but doesn't have a real attack every turn.

3 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

A 1-dice "your primary weapon inflicts Ion tokens instead of damage" might be OK, or any other sort of negative token.

Because 1 ion token is generally stronger than 1 damage, outside of firing on larges and mediums, it sorta makes the problem worse actually.

Like this hypothetical focused 1 dice ship attacking a 1 agility ship will ionize it more than 60% of the time, and will ionize it two turns in a row more than 30% of the time. Doing ion damage 'up front' is huge because vs low agility ships you can just 'stunlock' them.

But vs a 2 agility ship that is focused, this thing hits less than 75% of the time, and vs a 3 dice defender you may as well not have the gun, your statistically never going to land an ion over the entire game vs a TIE that doesn't want to allow it. The difference in outcome is 'any number of these ships probably do nothing until your allowed to have like 6 ships for the price of two' vs 'One of these ships has access to the most powerful disruption effect in the game, on demand, applied extremely consistently to the point your opponent loses control over a ship most turns it gets an arc for each ship you got.'

So you have this massive problem: If you allow people to spam this as a mega cheap ship because 'its one dice' suddenly any ship with 1 or 0 agility kinda sucks. But if you make it expensive to handle the fact that a duo of these ships can basically guarentee a kill on a Y-wing or whatever while taking zero damage just by pushing them off the board, forget having a seconds ship hang out with this thing and hammer on its rear, if your opponent has a list with something as 'dodgy' as an X-wing you probably lose the game for taking these. Taking into account both these realities in pricing just makes it kinda bad at all levels: Sticking it in the 'middle' doesn't actually make it 'less bad' in its bad matchups because you still probably lose the game investing into a 1 dice gun, but now your reward vs a list its good at gets worse.

1 attack dice that interacts with evade results just is a dead end design space. Its very common in design for a particular option to have to many problems in terms of disparity of matchup or pricing, which makes the design non-viable, and a 1 attack dice effect lands squarely in this zone where you just can't place it somewhere you would both want to take it at any point and it not being radically overpowered. Even if you 'reduced' the effect to 1 damage it still would be one of the best filler ships if priced appropriately towards 'I do nothing in 95% of the matchups in the game.' FFG obviously doesn't have an interest in printing plastic that no one will ever want to fly ever, so cutting off this 'nothingburger' design space is a smart plan: 2 attacks do poorly against 3 focused agility but they do SOMETHING and boosting to 3 by being at range 1 helps a lot, the main trouble they got into was just making a few ships that are comically defensively potent there which invalidates the 2 spot in a similar way to how 3 agility invalidates the 1 spot.

A 1 attack dice ship would need to do something to essentially guarentee it doesn't do a lot vs low agility characters (and 'a lot' includes something as simple as 'do 1 damage, so the effect has to be crazy minor) and at the same time it has to have some consistent (Though obviously less so is acceptable) effect vs a 3 agility character. This basically involves doing what @ForceSensitive said and making it into something that isn't a weapon at all, and making the effect tiny like a jam, but that isn't a weapon at all at that point and doesn't really make sense to solve the thematic issue that an A-wing is equally as deadly as a space tugboat.

On 10/16/2020 at 8:28 PM, ForceSensitive said:

One last note. yes we need to have an objective system or similar. But they gave us three already, and none of them are required, and majority seems uninterested in them.

The issue is the scenarios mostly have different point requirements, so you have to build for specific sides of specific ones, making it hard to just plug them in at your local game night.

I'm not sure what else you consider an objective system, unless you are counting 1e scenarios separately...

Edit: I suppose you could count the cards in the bomb pack if you stretch, but the ones in the obstacle pack are just different board layouts and in no way resemble objectives.

3 hours ago, Matanui3 said:

The issue is the scenarios mostly have different point requirements, so you have to build for specific sides of specific ones, making it hard to just plug them in at your local game night

True, though planning ahead can result in some really fun games out of the epic battles box.

Epic battles tend to be pretty involved and more resemble 'apocalypse' level play from 40k. Its great that they exist, but they were not at all an attempt to make a 'standard' objective play mode.

I think what people want from scenarios are the more simple stuff. "Here are 6 objectives, each player places 3 under these limitations, if you have more points alive near an objective end of game its yours. Most objectives wins" is complex by X-wing standards, but simple by 40k standards and is the 'main mode' because such play encourages interaction and different types of units (Ex: Points inefficient units that are super tough to hold objectives or push through firing lines, troops that aren't great but count double and can contribute with some special attacks, hero killers to instantly fry high 'points density' units, ect) to interact in the same list.

Maybe something as simple as 'two objectives, king of the hill, objective control is scored each turn to encourage you to try to lay claim to it' would do a lot. It helps reduce the value of 'non-interaction' abilities and rewards ships that normally are terrible due to bleeding MOV due to their ability to try to hold space well. Some problem pieces, like Boba, become more managable: Boba is still good because he would be great at holding objectives, but you wouldn't have 'points fortress' Boba just running away any time a bunch of people looked at him because you lose if you refuse to ever engage on offense. Running arc dodging aces in a list that isn't all arc dodging aces makes sense because they can exist to kill important pieces but struggle to hold ground, where in a 'mixed list' the non-aces just are MOV bleeders. And lists that are still broken in some mode where your contesting something like Spamtex could probably be evaluated as truly broken and nerfed.

On 10/16/2020 at 9:28 PM, ForceSensitive said:

One last note. yes we need to have an objective system or similar. But they gave us three already, and none of them are required, and majority seems uninterested in them.

If they decided to have a hyperspace season where at least a third of the matches were objective based the community would either really get into it or just play extended. They should try it. In my experience the crowd that plays in the stores plays a very official style of x-wing (200 points, 2-8 ships, 6 asteroids, and 75 minutes) even the players that never play in tournaments. This isn't just x-wing either pretty much all table top games at the store level are played like its a tournament. There are good reasons for this who wants to lug their whole collection every time they go to FLGS or you might be matched up against that guy (you know the "casual" player who painted his Nantexes and wants to see what's it like to run 8 of them).

If you made a season pack that had victory counters, objectives, missions and to sweeten the deal include new pilots and reprinted upgrades people would at least try it. I just think the store playing community is too enamored with OP to push it any other way. The only epic variant I've seen at league night was Aces High when there weren't enough tables and everybody wanted to play.

Don't get me wrong I like and enjoy OP but it has a huge impact on how people play the game. If we want to nudge the game towards objectives it needs to work under the 2-8 ship, 200 point, timed game format. Which would be nice if it led to more players trying epic missions and huge ships or at least helped versatile lists. The current scene chases too many new people out of the store.

@Matanui3 Those would be the three, yes. Epic, Never Tell me the Odds, and Fully loaded. The 1e scenarios are not that good honestly, I was not counting those. The old epic content might be convertible, but even those were all designed to showcase the box content, not be a competitively balanced game experience.

New Epic gets in because of obvious reasons. Building for both sides shouldn't be a problem as an event requirement. It wouldn't be different from the old Hangar Bay format really. Each round you randomly determine who will be what side, place your list for the determined side on the table, and off you go. Challenge the player to come up with attack and defense plans. Sounds fine to me, Netrunner had that as part of it's core. And the wild thing is the point levels for most of it aren't even that high. 300 points is pretty common in that book. That's just a normal game and a half, picking up 1-4 ships max.

The NTMtO your right it's just setup and game events, but that's all that many objective based games have for many of their options so I don't see why that should discount it here. Armada has several "Objective Cards" that just modify the terrain and setup only. It's two thirds of the legion Draft system. Environment modification is a way to create emergent game experience with already present content, while simultaneously shaking up the meta with it's implications to what is best in those environments. Fully loaded does mostly the same thing.

Back to general at all.

Largely though X-wing had never been very easy to squeeze any other kind of traditional Objective scenario into. The game just moves too quickly. It works great for fast paced action, but the things that make it work good for that hamper it for objective play. Even the new Epic takes this into account by making it's scenarios time based, or have game ends conditions that can come up fairly quickly. Like I don't think I've seen an epic Game from the book get to turn 8 even if there was no limit on time. I guess the lesson there is that 'race' objectives and scenarios are the way to go for epic, and maybe any objective system X-wing gets.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

Epic battles tend to be pretty involved and more resemble 'apocalypse' level play from 40k.

I think what people want from scenarios are the more simple stuff. "Here are 6 objectives, each player places 3 under these limitations, if you have more points alive near an objective end of game its yours. Most objectives wins" is complex by X-wing standards, but simple by 40k standards and is the 'main mode' because such play encourages interaction and different types of units (Ex: Points inefficient units that are super tough to hold objectives or push through firing lines, troops that aren't great but count double and can contribute with some special attacks, hero killers to instantly fry high 'points density' units, ect) to interact in the same list.

Maybe something as simple as 'two objectives, king of the hill, objective control is scored each turn to encourage you to try to lay claim to it' would do a lot.

It has be more a little more complex than king of the hill or people will just play swarms. Ideally you would have some missions that swarms are better at and some that 2-3 ship lists would be better at. Ships in the 4-5 range would benefit from not being too penalized at either mission.

I do agree that set up needs to be easy and missions like the meteor swarms where the obstacles move are too much. It is difficult to make missions for x wing. Most objective based games have units that can camp on the objective something you can't do in x wing.

7 hours ago, dezzmont said:

Epic battles tend to be pretty involved and more resemble 'apocalypse' level play from 40k. Its great that they exist, but they were not at all an attempt to make a 'standard' objective play mode.

I think what people want from scenarios are the more simple stuff. "Here are 6 objectives, each player places 3 under these limitations, if you have more points alive near an objective end of game its yours. Most objectives wins" is complex by X-wing standards, but simple by 40k standards and is the 'main mode' because such play encourages interaction and different types of units (Ex: Points inefficient units that are super tough to hold objectives or push through firing lines, troops that aren't great but count double and can contribute with some special attacks, hero killers to instantly fry high 'points density' units, ect) to interact in the same list.

Maybe something as simple as 'two objectives, king of the hill, objective control is scored each turn to encourage you to try to lay claim to it' would do a lot. It helps reduce the value of 'non-interaction' abilities and rewards ships that normally are terrible due to bleeding MOV due to their ability to try to hold space well. Some problem pieces, like Boba, become more managable: Boba is still good because he would be great at holding objectives, but you wouldn't have 'points fortress' Boba just running away any time a bunch of people looked at him because you lose if you refuse to ever engage on offense. Running arc dodging aces in a list that isn't all arc dodging aces makes sense because they can exist to kill important pieces but struggle to hold ground, where in a 'mixed list' the non-aces just are MOV bleeders. And lists that are still broken in some mode where your contesting something like Spamtex could probably be evaluated as truly broken and nerfed.

I wonder if in an objective-based X-Wing, giving some ships Objective Secured-type rules could help them be relevant. Could give generics more of a purpose if aces couldn't take objectives as well.

For non-40k people, Objective Secured is a rule for pretty much all troop units that gives them priority on holding objectives over non troops. So if my 5-man Space Marine Tactical Squad (which are troops with objective secured) and my opponent's 10-man Lychguard squad (which are not troops and don't have objective secured) are on the same objective, I control it.

That is needed in 40k because there are structural issues to troops that either make the game all about troops or not at all about troops.

I don't think X-wing needs it. Quite the opposite, it is a struggle to make it so swarms aren't OP in objective focused modes.

8 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

That is needed in 40k because there are structural issues to troops that either make the game all about troops or not at all about troops.

I don't think X-wing needs it. Quite the opposite, it is a struggle to make it so swarms aren't OP in objective focused modes.

The more I think about it, I think the missions have to be more than "hold objective," so ObSec wouldn't really work out anyway when movement is forced. Instead, it should be stuff like the shuttle from the original 1.0 box, where you have to protect a target (or maybe 2, for bigger games). You could also have stuff where maybe supplies have to be secured: a ship uses their action to pick up cargo, they drop it when destroyed, whoever has it at the end/holds it for longer wins.

I swear, this Vwing has me hooked by the brain stem.

All I can think about is zoomy 3green die Z-95s for cheap. How could I give this up.

55 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I swear, this Vwing has me hooked by the brain stem.

All I can think about is zoomy 3green die Z-95s for cheap. How could I give this up.

I just see another A-wing *shrug.

At least it's not a Jedi this time 😁

2 hours ago, Npmartian said:

The more I think about it, I think the missions have to be more than "hold objective," so ObSec wouldn't really work out anyway when movement is forced. Instead, it should be stuff like the shuttle from the original 1.0 box, where you have to protect a target (or maybe 2, for bigger games). You could also have stuff where maybe supplies have to be secured: a ship uses their action to pick up cargo, they drop it when destroyed, whoever has it at the end/holds it for longer wins.

Objectives a ship 'carries' do interesting things but may encourage non-interactive acing again unless your rewarded for sticking close. King of the hill still works if movement is forced because your rewarded for 'squad' uptime, not necessarily individual ships. It more functions to encourage your ships to stay in the fight than to actually have you 'hold' it. 40k rewards end of game scoring, but I think X-wing will require turn by turn objective tracking, so the objective needs to be something simple you 'know' is true each turn.

I think a solution for a 'simple' objective mode that does what the objective is intended to do (encourage you to not just run away the entire game and force player interaction by punishing you refusing to do so too consistently without making it just a straight up brawl) is possible for sure, its just a bit of a headscratcher.

Could also loop into the basic MOV rules but just create more focus. Something as simple as 'if you have a ship within X of the center and your opponent doesn't end of turn, gain 10 points to your score' might force you to actually contest the center with aces or the like and reward having a MOV 'bleeder' who will die but can try to barnacle onto that objective without actively making the game entirely about it: You still can disengage but every turn you do so rewards your opponent more and more, and you still lose if you try to plant a swarm in there and find yourself outblasted. This also solves the 'bid as points fortress' problem by letting you score a lot of points if your opponent refuses to risk any of their ships and just tries to chew one of yours down to half and then refuses to let you touch Fenn or Boba.

Some swarms may need tweaking and overall I think one goal of an objective mode should be to encourage a more 'combined arms' style list anyway, either mixing powers on pilots and upgrades to help try to control the match, or using mixed ships. Less 'Just run 8 TIEs or 7 droids and a bomber to just overwhelm with a silly amount of firepower' and more 'Sloane in her command ship powering up her swarm that needs to still stay cagey.'

This is all pretty pie in the sky though and unrelated to the release at hand!

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

I just see another A-wing *shrug.

At least it's not a Jedi this time 😁

A-wing with bomber config? To me they're more like if the TIE/fo (especially with the new "advanced optics" look alike), crossed with the TIE/sa, with boost linked to lock, instead of barrel roll linked to lock. Even a little bit of scyk thrown in there with Esk(ion scyks).

I expect them to be good with just config, or as ordnance carriers...(missiles and/or devices). I definitely expect to see the i5s used with proximity mines too. Move last/late, boost into mine layer position.

7 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

I just see another A-wing *shrug.

At least it's not a Jedi this time 😁

Yes, that may be so, but at least its got an I5...

4 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

A-wing with bomber config? To me they're more like if the TIE/fo (especially with the new "advanced optics" look alike), crossed with the TIE/sa, with boost linked to lock, instead of barrel roll linked to lock. Even a little bit of scyk thrown in there with Esk(ion scyks).

I expect them to be good with just config, or as ordnance carriers...(missiles and/or devices). I definitely expect to see the i5s used with proximity mines too. Move last/late, boost into mine layer position.

Missiles? I don't think so. No missile was revealed in the article and I believe they showed almost if not all of the cards.

26 minutes ago, xanatos135 said:

Missiles? I don't think so. No missile was revealed in the article and I believe they showed almost if not all of the cards.

Lore-wise, V-Wings didn't have missiles, near as I can tell.

1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:

Lore-wise, V-Wings didn't have missiles, near as I can tell.

They have them as an optional upgrade in an FFG RPG book. Which in non-canon seems about as valid as them getting bombs through the config. Do we have the other config text?

46 minutes ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

They have them as an optional upgrade in an FFG RPG book. Which in non-canon seems about as valid as them getting bombs through the config. Do we have the other config text?

1 minute ago, Hiemfire said:

Oh yeah. I'm guessing we won't see the missile-version and even FFG doesn't see their inclusion in their own RPG book as enough of a reason.

EDIT: Also, Esk is kind of bad, right? The droid helps, and Marksmanship could help a bit

On 10/16/2020 at 12:07 AM, Giledhil said:

Why the **** is that guy limited to Republic, and not accessible to scum and rebels?...

Because while most people know that Order-66 involved exterminating the Jedi, they also specifically targeted Astromech as well. No-one knows why, but Palpatine just had it out for those little guys.

Anyway, as a result the number of Astromech droids dropped significantly during the Galactic Civil War and it wasn't until the New Republic was formed that Astromechs started being produced again.

All of that was of course a joke, and I have no idea why there hasn't been a generic Astromech released since the conversion kits.

11 minutes ago, joeshmoe554 said:

Because while most people know that Order-66 involved exterminating the Jedi, they also specifically targeted Astromech as well. No-one knows why, but Palpatine just had it out for those little guys.

Anyway, as a result the number of Astromech droids dropped significantly during the Galactic Civil War and it wasn't until the New Republic was formed that Astromechs started being produced again.

All of that was of course a joke, and I have no idea why there hasn't been a generic Astromech released since the conversion kits.

Serious response to your joke, Astromech production was outlawed during the period of the Galactic Civil War as they were commonly used by rebels. Because of how common they were pre-war, they were not outright outlawed, but no new models were being conspicuously manufactured until the defeat of the emperor.

Clearly the Emperor foresaw the role played by BB-8 and R2-D2 in his final(?) undoing....