My buddy (also an XMG player) has been filling me in on Squadrons lately...

One of the things he has noted is the the good ol Tie Fighter is a BEAST, feeling much more like an equivalent to the X-wing. Not shielded, but heavy-hulled.

He also said he watched some YouTube or other about the history of the squishy weak TIE coming from computer games more or less needing the DND goblin equivalent of weak monsters for the Level 1 Characters to smash through. Kinda interesting...

He was thinking it felt like the TIE Fighter was more 5 Hull similar to a Torrent.

🤔 🤔 🤔

I thought it would be interesting and fun to play some heavy TIEs.

I realize game-wise there’s probably no design space here... start stepping on the bomber and brute’s toes. But still.

57 minutes ago, JBFancourt said:

squishy weak TIE coming from computer games more or less needing the DND goblin equivalent of weak monsters for the Level 1 Characters to smash through. 🤔

Or, the effect comes from the OT where they are routinely one-shotted, one-killed.

The Squadrons game is gonna make them beefier EXACTLY BECAUSE no player is gonna PAY to be killed in a ship with one shot.

See Also: Hull Upgrade.

Hrm.

• TIE/ln Mk. II. Modification (or Config/Modification). +2 Hull. Grants Red Boost. "After you fully execute a white maneuver, you may remove 1 stress token. If you do, you cannot perform actions this phase."
  • I figure Mod slot, to prevent a double-dip with Engine Upgrade. Like, why break into configurations if we don't have to. Could be mod/config though. I like the thought of ruling out the Engine Upgrade or Targeting Computer.
  • Red Boost would be an interesting mobility option. To me, it feels pretty under-used, and more ships should have it. It keeps the TIE Fighter as the lowest offense ship, but it's strength is mobility.
  • White maneuver to clear stress without actions is mostly just a perk. Nice to have, but it'll never be busted.
  • So it'd end up a 2/3/5 ship, with Focus/Evade/Roll/Red Boost, with a pretty good dial, and it can deal with stress marginally better.
    • What's that cost at Init 1? I'm tempted to say the upgrade should be 10 or 11 points, for a 32/33 point ship. But it isn't super impressive compared to the 2/3/4 of a TIE/fo or Scyk at 25. And yet, if only 28 points, +6 for the upgrade, that feels... kinda cheap. Maybe it ought to scale by init. Howlrunner and Mauler Mithel deserve for this to cost a bit more.

54 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Or, the effect comes from the OT where they are routinely one-shotted, one-killed.

In the OT, X-Wings are not much more sturdy than TIES. A couple of shot from a TIE can destroy an X-Wing.

4:29

And then Vader flying a TIE Advanced gets similar results against Y-Wings.

6:59
7:13
7:21

Honestly it should be a little more durable but what's by and large being ignored is that Titan Squadron's TIE Fighters are not standard.

10 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Or, the effect comes from the OT where they are routinely one-shotted, one-killed.

All starfighters in the OT are basically killed in one-shot, including the X-Wings. There is nothing there indicating TIEs are inferior than X-wings, have no warhead launchers or are unshielded.

The TIE Fighter being so fragile actually started in the video games - games need a basic enemy, very easy to kill to fill up the screen. Yep, goblins. It was later that Legends came with all sorts of justifications for their fragility.

10 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Hrm.

• TIE/ln Mk. II. Modification (or Config/Modification). +2 Hull. Grants Red Boost.

Elite TIE (Empire small base TIE modification, Limited). +1 Hull. Add Red Boost if the ship doesn't have Boost. 8 points.

2 minutes ago, Odanan said:

Elite TIE (Empire small base TIE modification, Limited). +1 Hull. Add Red Boost if the ship doesn't have Boost. 8 points.

how about the new standardized keyword instead of limited? (or a combo of both)

10 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Hrm.

• TIE/ln Mk. II. Modification (or Config/Modification). +2 Hull. Grants Red Boost. "After you fully execute a white maneuver, you may remove 1 stress token. If you do, you cannot perform actions this phase."
  • I figure Mod slot, to prevent a double-dip with Engine Upgrade. Like, why break into configurations if we don't have to. Could be mod/config though. I like the thought of ruling out the Engine Upgrade or Targeting Computer.
  • Red Boost would be an interesting mobility option. To me, it feels pretty under-used, and more ships should have it. It keeps the TIE Fighter as the lowest offense ship, but it's strength is mobility.
  • White maneuver to clear stress without actions is mostly just a perk. Nice to have, but it'll never be busted.
  • So it'd end up a 2/3/5 ship, with Focus/Evade/Roll/Red Boost, with a pretty good dial, and it can deal with stress marginally better.
    • What's that cost at Init 1? I'm tempted to say the upgrade should be 10 or 11 points, for a 32/33 point ship. But it isn't super impressive compared to the 2/3/4 of a TIE/fo or Scyk at 25. And yet, if only 28 points, +6 for the upgrade, that feels... kinda cheap. Maybe it ought to scale by init. Howlrunner and Mauler Mithel deserve for this to cost a bit more.

I dunno, I say keep it as a Configuration. Let people pay for Afterburners/Engine Upgrade/Targeting Computer if they want to... it’s not like any of those are free. And I mean, 10 points for the Config, plus another 6 or 7 for something like Afterburners or Engine Upgrade, and suddenly you have a near 40 point i1 2/3/5/0, which seems REALLY expensive and not worth it, even if it can Boost.

EDIT: Didn’t realize Engine upgrade scaled by base size until just now. Interesting. It’s still probably fine, maybe just drop the perk text about white maneuvers.

Another route over straight hull is something akin to other things we see in the game with the bellyrub or rep y.

I would still like to aim for the equivalent of a TIE/fo or Torrent at about 25 points. Keep in mind the FO gets a shield, s loops, amazing dial, and tech slot for 3 pts!!!! And now the faction has similar force multipliers too.

TIE/ln MK II (Title or Config) - 3 pts

Restrictions: Imperial, TIE/ln

1 non-recurring charge

”While defending you may take one strain token to modify a (crit) result to a (hit) result. When you suffer a critical damage, you may spend one charge to discard that card if it is a ship trait.”

12 hours ago, Koing907 said:

In the OT, X-Wings are not much more sturdy than TIES. A couple of shot from a TIE can destroy an X-Wing.

4:29

And then Vader flying a TIE Advanced gets similar results against Y-Wings.

6:59
7:13
7:21

OK, seriously, I've seen the movie.

Point taken.

5 hours ago, Odanan said:

All starfighters in the OT are basically killed in one-shot, including the X-Wings. There is nothing there indicating TIEs are inferior than X-wings, have no warhead launchers or are unshielded.

The TIE Fighter being so fragile actually started in the video games - games need a basic enemy, very easy to kill to fill up the screen. Yep, goblins. It was later that Legends came with all sorts of justifications for their fragility.

Depends on how closely you look at the stills, and whether or not you attribute the (consistent) differences in visuals to deliberate decisions, or artifacts of how the models and effects interacted. I'll try to find the old blog that discussed this, but I get the feeling its no longer on the internet.

EDIT: Okay, the old blog seems to be gone, and my attempts to use the wayback machine have come to naught. I'm afraid I don't recall the article well enough to summarize it. My apologies.

2 hours ago, JBFancourt said:

I would still like to aim for the equivalent of a TIE/fo or Torrent at about 25 points. Keep in mind the FO gets a shield, s loops, amazing dial, and tech slot for 3 pts!!!!

Yep, that's unfair. For starters, they should decrease the TIE/ln price by at least 2 points.

41 minutes ago, Odanan said:

Yep, that's unfair. For starters, they should decrease the TIE/ln price by at least 2 points.

I see things the other way. TIE/fo and Scyk should maybe be 26. I think there's been a bit too much power inflation over the last few points cycles, and I think doing primarily nerfs for the next few rounds of pricing might be good.

If upgrades on non-aces were a bigger part of the game, one could easily represent a Titan Squad TIE with just a config that grants more slots and a minor ability, and then assume all of the Titan TIEs had a hull upgrade, and took some repair mod and a torp or something. Titan TIEs are the same TIEs, just enhanced, but enhancing ships in X-wing sorta isn't a thing.

The problem here is that X-wing is in some ways a good Star Wars game, and in other ways a bad one, and one of the ways its a REALLY bad starwars game is how heavily it discourages caring about ship loadouts, upgrades, and customizations, which are kinda an important concept in a lot of EU materials.

X-wing biases towards non-aces or endgame ships basically not getting any major upgrades due to its rules for victory and just how the points are balanced, which is not an inevitable result, but is the world we live in right now. If they wanted stuff like Titan and Vanguard Squadron to be more of a thing they would need to raise the prices of spam ships AND Aces, lower the prices of upgrades, and basically push the game more towards having 3-4 mid initiative ships loaded out with toys rather than these extreme 'all high initiative ultra fat ship vs super wide low initiative naked ship' lists.

While I think doing this to some extent is a good idea (X-wing has a huge problem where a lot of its most evocative content is garbage that seriously needs to be solved as a long term limit on how much the game can grow), I think going full hog and making the game entirely about X-wings and TIEs that fill 4 slots of upgrades probably wouldn't be fun or popular either. This is more of a 'The way X-wing scores and works enforces lists that optimize for one hyper-niche strategy' problem anyway.

9 hours ago, dezzmont said:

If upgrades on non-aces were a bigger part of the game, one could easily represent a Titan Squad TIE with just a config that grants more slots and a minor ability, and then assume all of the Titan TIEs had a hull upgrade, and took some repair mod and a torp or something. Titan TIEs are the same TIEs, just enhanced, but enhancing ships in X-wing sorta isn't a thing.

The problem here is that X-wing is in some ways a good Star Wars game, and in other ways a bad one, and one of the ways its a REALLY bad starwars game is how heavily it discourages caring about ship loadouts, upgrades, and customizations, which are kinda an important concept in a lot of EU materials.

X-wing biases towards non-aces or endgame ships basically not getting any major upgrades due to its rules for victory and just how the points are balanced, which is not an inevitable result, but is the world we live in right now. If they wanted stuff like Titan and Vanguard Squadron to be more of a thing they would need to raise the prices of spam ships AND Aces, lower the prices of upgrades, and basically push the game more towards having 3-4 mid initiative ships loaded out with toys rather than these extreme 'all high initiative ultra fat ship vs super wide low initiative naked ship' lists.

While I think doing this to some extent is a good idea (X-wing has a huge problem where a lot of its most evocative content is garbage that seriously needs to be solved as a long term limit on how much the game can grow), I think going full hog and making the game entirely about X-wings and TIEs that fill 4 slots of upgrades probably wouldn't be fun or popular either. This is more of a 'The way X-wing scores and works enforces lists that optimize for one hyper-niche strategy' problem anyway.

On the OTHER hand, emphasis on upgrades very easily leads to the "combo-wing" boogieman of 1.0, so it's more like a lose-lose situation.

1 hour ago, Matanui3 said:

On the OTHER hand, emphasis on upgrades very easily leads to the "combo-wing" boogieman of 1.0, so it's more like a lose-lose situation.

Most games thread the needle. I think FFG themselves have realized that they retreated (with good reason!) a bit too hard from any sort of combo-able element in 2.0 that might cause people to see ghosts of 1.0, and its resulted in them struggling to shake up the meta, which is why the current wave pricings have been extremely upgrade focused in a lot of ways.

13 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I think there's been a bit too much power inflation over the last few points cycles, and I think doing primarily nerfs for the next few rounds of pricing might be good.

This.

On 11/10/2020 at 6:49 AM, Odanan said:

All starfighters in the OT are basically killed in one-shot, including the X-Wings. There is nothing there indicating TIEs are inferior than X-wings, have no warhead launchers or are unshielded.

The TIE Fighter being so fragile actually started in the video games - games need a basic enemy, very easy to kill to fill up the screen. Yep, goblins. It was later that Legends came with all sorts of justifications for their fragility.

In my head-canon the X-wings and Y-wings were running full power to engines mostly to stay elusive enough to avoid the Turbolasers. It was basically thought to be a suicide mission so go full speed and **** the shields. I do wish there was a line in there to mention that.

1 hour ago, Jo Jo said:

In my head-canon the X-wings and Y-wings were running full power to engines mostly to stay elusive enough to avoid the Turbolasers. It was basically thought to be a suicide mission so go full speed and **** the shields. I do wish there was a line in there to mention that.

There is a line mentioning shields...

BTW, I just found this old discussion:

http://www.swtor.com/community/archive/index.php/t-802460.html

I'm happy the guy says basically the same as I did about the starfighters' durability.

4 hours ago, Odanan said:

There is a line mentioning shields...

Man... totally forgot that line. It has been a good minute since I've actually watch ANH.

Let's try making the good ol' TIE/ln a point cheaper and see what that does.

Also on board with a small nudge up on the TIE/FO and Scyk.

On 11/11/2020 at 9:43 PM, Jo Jo said:

Man... totally forgot that line. It has been a good minute since I've actually watch ANH.

In the PC videogames, double front mean nothing on the rear. In the game, it need 4-5 shot from a tie to destroy a Y-wing without shield, and 2-3 for a X-wing.

They should have balance their shields when TIE fighter show up, because it was like fighting them without shield if they catch you from behind (but like playing with renforce on front)