So we have white, Red and Purple actions in the game right now. With strain and depletes being introduced more and more is there a place for ships and upgrades that use blue actions?

What would it entail? Would you get to do the action and clear one red token? Or one red token from each type like a blue maneuver?

Should you be able to ignore the no action while stressed rule when using them, or only if you have another ability that allows that action while stressed?

4 minutes ago, Tyhar7 said:

Should you be able to ignore the no action while stressed rule when using them, or only if you have another ability that allows that action while stressed?

I started actually thinking about it, then read this and my brain melted out of my ears.

The stress/action dynamic is pretty fundamental. It's difficult to think of a way around it that doesn't drown in complications thanks to various mitigating mechanics and abilities that already exist.

I think I'm happier not actually thinking about it.... I'll leave it for others to explore.

I will say that reinforce sprang to mind, but I don't know why.

Perhaps because then the Bus can just sit in a corner and do nothing forever.

IMO it *could* go with a chassis ability. Something like

Evasive Frame: while you have 2 or fewer stress tokens, you can perform evade actions, even while stressed.

Then give it a blue evade. So when the ship fully executes a red maneuver, it can effectively treat it as white, but only if it evades too.

Maybe a neat trick but I don't see it as a huge design space.

Blue actions would require a largely red if not mostly red dial. It would have been a very interesting way to flavor The Fireball, honestly.

This was discussed back around the start of 2.0. The short answer is: no, blue actions would be too powerful, complicate the rules needlessly, and are not an interesting design space.

Longer answer:

• Blue actions make the rules for performing actions while stressed more complicated. You could get around this by having stress prevent blue actions, but a blue action could clear strain/deplete - but then you're already in the confusion zone because players will expect blue actions to clear stress. This isn't a major issue but it is worth noting.
• Blue actions are way too powerful. Performing an action is a benefit. Performing a blue action is a double benefit with no cost. Normally, extra benefits come with an extra cost (eg. stress for two actions). Hard decisions are what makes x-wing fun, and blue actions are the opposite of a hard decision.
• Blue actions don't add to the design space in an interesting way. We already have (limited) ways to perform actions or red maneuvers while stressed, and we already have ways to remove stress tokens (eg. Ten Nunb).

It would be way to hard to balance for future upgrades. It’s a nice idea, just too hard to implement and future proof.

It could work as part of a strange linked action. You take a red action first, and then if you want to clear the stress, you have to do the blue second part. i.e. red reinforce->blue boost/br. You want that action safely? Better reposition and plan around it. This does seem really good still, but on one ship, it could have a really strange place. It should probably never involve mods of any kind.

or this:

Upgrade, illicit, Jury-Rigged Transponder

Adds red co-ordinate->blue jam

When you jam, if there are no valid enemy targets, you must select a friendly ship within range as the target of the action, including yourself (reworded as necessary).

There are a lot of hurdles. The biggest one isn't balance so much as rules clarity. Either the blue action can be done stressed, or it can't, and both are confusing.

Balance wise the obvious problem is denying actions via stress is an important concept. It would need to be a ship that really wants to take one action to the point taking this hypothetical blue is almost a downside. An expensive ship with 2 dice that really needs to focus or lock, for example, but has a blue roll or jam or something. A blue calculate is a weird sidegrade/pseudo upgrade to force: You can use it to turn red manuvers white in essence while maintaining a mod, which is better than force if you want to do a red and worse if you want to do any other action like arc dodge. It isn't completely impossible to balance, especially with an ancillary cost.

I could also see it as an epic ship thing, sorta like how often they will link a calculate to a 'utility' action that would suck to go fully unmodded for.

That said, it isn't really that interesting a space for all the costs to the design, and if they wanted to explore the space of 'take an action and destress, but your not essentially making it so you can't ever be stressed' it would probably be better as an ability rather than actually a blue action for clarity's sake (Ex: After you preform X action, remove one of each red token on this ship' if it can't be used stress, 'If you haven't taken an action, gain X token or do X action and remove one of each red token from your ship' if it does) and sidestep the confusion problem overall.

The other problem is non-stress reds are often pretty easy to ditch anyway and their main purpose is to force your opponent to evaluate a predictable maneuver vs a minor efficiency loss. Making it too easy to shed these defeats their purpose and probably won't feel good, especially as these mechanics seem to have entered a space of 'guarenteed minor effect for unreliable ships' and thus making these effects even less effective than they already can be wouldn't be ideal. This bullies stuff like suppressive gunner, which already risks not having any effect just through natural play elements, quite hard.

I'm hearing a lot of people raise that stress and action dynamics are fundamental to the game and I agree, let's not mess that up.

For clarity we could say Blue action still cannot be done while stressed, no action can be done while stressed. I'm not personally looking for this to be a a way to remove stress.

However this still doesn't prevent a white move, blue action to remove depletes or strains.

It also doesn't prevent thing like afterburners allowing a blue boost if you had one, or AP5 coordinating you.

If that was the case how would you work blue actions?

Maybe blue actions don't remove red tokens but have some new benifit to the pilot.

Should they be limited to advanced chassis. Like Tie Defenders, T-85's.

Another problematic point about blue actions is how they should be treated when they fail and their interaction with composure.

If blue actions worked like red actions, they would clear tokens even when failing and then the ship would get a focus token from composure.

Ship abilites would make a lot more sense IMO.

M point of view: since you cannot do actions while stressed, there is no point in doing a blue action to remove a stress token.

Removing deplete or strain ? it may be a way, but I do not think it would be somthing constructive. More complicated, and you would have to put some blue actions on every ship.

I do think it would add some interesting design space.

In the stress rules, just update them to say "You cannot perform action while stressed, *unless they are blue*." and that's about it. Not so complicated.

However, blue actions should not be just the usual actions (lock, focus, evade, reinforce, etc) but blue. That would be too powerful.
In the same way that blue maneuvers are something of a limitation because they have the main benefit of removing bad tokens, I think blue actions should be something negative to balance out the positive effect they have of removing stress, strain, and deplete tokens.

When you perform a blue action, you first get the effects of the action, then you remove either a stress, deplete, or strain token.

Some examples of blue actions.
Redirect weapon power : Gain a deplete token.
Redirect engine power : Gain a strain token.
Redirect shield power : Spend a shield.
Overload : Gain an ion token.

Some examples of linked actions including blue actions:

Boost > Overload
Reinforce > Redirect weapon power
SLAM > Redirect engine power

Hmm. I think "blue actions" in general may be confusing, but if they were to exist, I think it should interact with the stress mechanic because that is what "blue" does in X-Wing.

I don't see a clear design space for "blue evade" or "blue focus" and agree it should not be normal actions that also clear stress. But what about only having 1 Blue action called "Recover." It could remove 1 of each red token and you could do it while stressed? So, you could use it after a white manuever to clear stress for next turn or after a red manuever to clear stress.

It would probably be safest to lock the Recover action into a single chassis where the dial could be controlled, because Recover would have the potential to make any ship able to K-Turn turn after turn after turn. And we wouldn't want that, TIE Defenders (and Porkins!) would get jealous

_____

EDIT: I guess you could have Blue Actions that do not clear any red tokens, but you can simply do while stressed. So maybe a ship can always evade stressed or not, etc. That may work and fit thematically somewhere?

The ghost of Tycho Celchu would like to have a word.

11 hours ago, HanScottFirst said:

EDIT: I guess you could have Blue Actions that do not clear any red tokens, but you can simply do while stressed. So maybe a ship can always evade stressed or not, etc. That may work and fit thematically somewhere?

I think this would be the best way to make that work. It doesn't require figuring out arcane timing rules, and it would increase the number of ways a blue action could be used reasonably without breaking things.

Possible interesting ways they could use it:

1. The obvious is only one or two blue actions among other actions that can't be done while stressed.
2. Red action linked to a blue action, where the linked action isn't available un-linked, so the only way to do it is by performing a stress-inducing action first.
3. Upgrades that grant a blue action, albeit with requirements (similar to Expert Handling, it could require having a white action of that type already). How about a talent or modification that converts a white reinforce into a blue one? Just don't make any upgrades that convert Focus or Lock into a blue action.

I think having Blue actions be ones that can be performed while stressed without having them provide any other benefits is the most likely implementation for FFG to go with, really. It opens up new design space without being entirely broken or complicated.

22 hours ago, Npmartian said:

It could work as part of a strange linked action. You take a red action first, and then if you want to clear the stress, you have to do the blue second part. i.e. red reinforce->blue boost/br. You want that action safely? Better reposition and plan around it. This does seem really good still, but on one ship, it could have a really strange place. It should probably never involve mods of any kind.

or this:

Upgrade, illicit, Jury-Rigged Transponder

Adds red co-ordinate->blue jam

When you jam, if there are no valid enemy targets, you must select a friendly ship within range as the target of the action, including yourself (reworded as necessary).

That's not even a downside. Either you get a free jam, or you clear the stress with no downside, because a jam on yourself goes away at the end of the turn.

And since you coordinated, you won't have a token to jam off this turn anyway.

1 hour ago, Matanui3 said:

That's not even a downside. Either you get a free jam, or you clear the stress with no downside, because a jam on yourself goes away at the end of the turn.

And since you coordinated, you won't have a token to jam off this turn anyway.

That's true. Consider this, then.

Jury-Rigged Transponder

Adds red coordinate.

At the beginning of the engagement phase, you may perform a white coordinate action, then jam the ship that you coordinated. That ship cannot perform a Boost or Barrel Roll action.

I know it has nothing to do with blue actions now, but it's a neat little "token-swap" mechanic.

2 hours ago, Npmartian said:

That's true. Consider this, then.

Jury-Rigged Transponder

Adds red coordinate.

At the beginning of the engagement phase, you may perform a white coordinate action, then jam the ship that you coordinated. That ship cannot perform a Boost or Barrel Roll action.

I know it has nothing to do with blue actions now, but it's a neat little "token-swap" mechanic.

What does that leave to coordinate to them? Just jam or another coordinate?

I am not sure blue actions are a good idea but the bit above about an action or ability that would let you remove stress or other red token is interesting all on its own. Seems like it might make a neat talent or modification upgrade. I generally think there are not enough talents and modification to improve the performance of the ships. I suppose that is part of balancing the ships such and such chassis only gets to what is on the dial.

9 hours ago, Matanui3 said:

What does that leave to coordinate to them? Just jam or another coordinate?

The idea is you can coordinate a ship that has a green token already but has an action that produces a different green, and let them take that action, using the jam to ditch the other token.

The main issue is that it probably would only be useful for very specific combos, or on a high initiative character to give them a red coordinate, so it would have to be initiative scaled which hurts the utility quite a bit.

9 hours ago, Matanui3 said:

What does that leave to coordinate to them? Just jam or another coordinate?

Basically, if they have an evade that they took as their action, this could swap it to a focus or reinforce, or maybe a lock. I specifically didn't want to allow engagement phase repositions. This thing would be pretty cheap, likely initiative scaled though.

Blue action - have a smoke and chill

14 minutes ago, freakyg3 said:

Blue action - have a smoke and chill

Glitterstim: At the start of engagement, you can take a calculate and lose a stress, but gain X strain perhaps?