I've been enjoying Jrose11's pokemon challenges where he takes a weak pokemon through 1st generation and figures out how well it does. For example, beat the game with a squirtle (never evolving it), and compare that to a ghastly. A major component of the challenge that makes it possible is the 1st gen AI, bless it, which can be exploited heavily, and also challenged over and over again until he figures out a strategy or at least gets lucky enough, and makes it through. And it's got me thinking, that would be an interesting challenge to set up for X-Wing.

Essentially, this would be a single-player game vs AI where you want to defeat a series of standard opponents, then a set of elites with strong fleets. You pick a fleet and try the challenge.

I believe we have the needed components:

• an AI opponent (which, as I understand it, is implemented to auto-run in TTS and maybe Vassal? has anyone tried it?)
• imperfections in that AI to exploit
• assorted fleets that are interesting to fight as the gyms
• strong fleets for gyms and the elite four (which might not be so strong in the hands of the AI: it doesn't necessarily fly aces perfectly, for example, but every elite four needs a Bruno)

Each Gym Leader would represent a common (though not necessarily powerful) theme, such as Rebel/Resistance Beef, TIE Swarm, Scum Junkyard (kihraxz + kimogilas), FO Aces, Resistance A-Wing Swarm, TIE/sf missile team, two-ship list like Hera(VCX) + Dash or Dengar+Fenn. The elite four would be the strongest teams like a vulture swarm, imperial aces, boba-fenn, and jedi aces, nantex swarm, etc.

But here's the quirk : For a first go you can bring something really strong and just plow through the AI. However since it's an AI opponent and you can keep retrying, the challenge isn't to bring something you know can win, but to bring something bad , or at least not great. I'd take Wullffwarro War Crimes or Hate-Asajj+Torani+2xJakku , Four Kimogilas , etc. Your fleets that don't compete, perhaps don't even belong on the table, the ekans and krabbys of the x-wing world now get their time to shine.

Since there's no leveling system, you might as well be allowed to challenge the gym leaders in any order. Though maybe Brock of the bunch could be a two-ship bulk list like Dash-Hera.

The main problem I see with this challenge is, x-wing matches are much slower than pokemon, so iterating on a tough fight could be time-consuming. That said, the AI opponent doesn't know how to rely on NPE strategies like running away for 75 minutes to eek out a small MOV victory, or fortressing, etc, so a lot of matches could be over pretty quickly either because one side or the other crumples, or the player knows it's done and calls it.

Extra thoughts to consider, but not too deeply:

• Extra idea: Gym trainers are optional battles that would have just one or two of the ships on the gym leader's team. You can bring points equal to theirs plus up to 10. These fights help you practice various late-game pairings, e.g. if you're down to your support ship against a couple of TIE Fighters. If you're over the 10 point limit, you're assigned a faceup status-related damage card etc per 10 over (so you can field the k-wing in a 25-point battle but you'll start the fight with weapons malfunctions etc). How you limit yourself is up to you since these are optional practice rounds for approaching the gym leader. Not sure if this is worth defining out though.
• Extra idea: If you want to compare your fleets against one another in a ranking, good metrics include how far they got (total gyms & elites they could beat, if you hit an impassable wall), your total MOV, and perhaps total time taken.
• Extra idea: Rival fights in addition to the gyms, and they'll be your final elite fight. Pick a combat style that's not easy for you to defeat, and that's your rival, e.g. aces or swarms or beef. We could define a few fleets per style that your rival would cycle through, of increasing power, until they get to the really solid version of that fleet design for the final showdown.
• Extra Idea: You're allowed to minorly adjust your fleet as you fight the gyms, as you shake out how it should be built, but you must keep your fleet the same through all the elite four members.
• Extra idea: You have the option of saving in between elite four members or having to beat them in sequence without failure. It's more challenging to have no saves, but also potentially very time-consuming.
• Extra idea: If you cannot beat the challenge, you may add points to your fleet until you can. This is like over-leveling your pokemon to power past stronger opponents. This would be included in the comparison rankings.

Questions:

1. Is this possible & viable with the solo rules?
2. Would you try doing this challenge or does it sound too flawed?
3. What fleets should be in the regular season (gym leaders), and how many would you have? (doesn't have to be exactly 8 )
4. What fleets should be in the playoffs (elite four/five)

Opponent fleets should range from off-meta to quite strong (elite four), without being overwhelming (for this challenge we probably shouldn't pick a fleet the AI can use so well that even good fleets struggle, if any such list exists). I'll need help on picking good opponent fleets... I haven't been keeping up with the meta these last few months, and with the points change I don't have a firm grasp on where the nantex swarm and its normal prey stand now.

I do things like this all the time in FlyCasual, and that seems like it would be a lot better than Vassal or TTS. My variation though is usually trying to use like a single 100 point ship (or 2 ships that add up to 150 points) against a more expensive fleet (either 130 or 200 respectively). FlyCasual also handles the iteration part much better since so much more is automated than either Vassal or TTS. The main downside of course it may be missing a few cards that you could use in those systems. It also I believe has a better AI than the rule-set FFG presented.

More automation is much preferred. Sounds like it's time I tried Fly Casual... I dislike rolling dice and a few other steps in TTS that slow it down.

Better AI could be a plus or minus, haha. Pokemon's bad gen 1 AI is a "feature" for a challenge run more than a bug.

The AI in FlyCasual will still sometimes fly itself off the board, so there is that. Really that program in general is responsible for keeping me as interested (And buying product) in X-Wing as anything due to a lack of other opportunities to play normally. The big downside of it, is it's multiplayer support is comparatively weak next to Vassal and TTS (which shouldn't matter for this), however once you get used to the automation in FlyCasual, Vassal and TTS feel painful by comparison (FlyCasual is much closer to a board game made into a video game like Talisman or Catan on Steam, than a virtual tabletop).

Unfortunately my first game ended in a UI deadlock while using Thane's ability -- nothing will respond except the stats and menu buttons in the bottom-left. So that wasn't a good first try...

That's unfortunate. In general I don't run into many bugs, and it's even more rare for them to truly lock the game (the one or two times I have seen a weird situation where ships were allowed to be overlapped, while problematic from a balance perspective you could keep going quite easily). I hope you next attempt is better and you don't give up on it since I do think it is close to what you are looking for, for your challenge.

Speaking of, have you solidified any of your ideas? I have been pondering this in my head, and I would probably take a factional theme approach instead of a mechanical theme one. Which is nice since you could have each faction be one "gym" (or if you really want 8, split Scum into Bounty Hunters/Hutts/Black Sun, and Scoundrels/Mandolorians). Expanding on that here is a slightly more concrete set of rules I would try:

The player gets a 150 point fleet. They can change upgrades between non-elite four matches, but not pilots.

Each gym has a generic fight at 150 points and a leader match at 175 points.. The generic fleet can't use any single dot pilots/upgrades and no more than 2 types of pilots. The generic fleet should follow the factional theme in lore (Imperials and Separatists would be swarms. First Order, higher tech swarm. Republic support+heavy or light fighters. Rebels average beef. Resistance, talented beef. Scum, screw with terrain/tricks?). The leader match would have a single dot pilot (that can also take single dot upgrades) and then other ships to complement them (The leader should be obvious for the faction, Luke for Rebels, Soontir Imperials, Kylo First Order, Rey Resistance, Boba Scum, Republic would be one of the Jedi, and Seps I am unsure on).

For the elite 4, I would think 3 or 4 (one from each era, and maybe 1 scum) squads of 200 points each, each led by an I6 (ideally) pilot with a squad supporting them. So far the obvious choices would be Poe, Han/Wedge, and Soontir. The Clone Wars era pilot is a puzzle to me, since I would want someone iconic but I don't want to repeat a character, and since I don't think there is an obvious one... let me end on my idea for the champ's squad.

Fly Casual has some cool mods for some pilots in alternate ships, and an option for turning off point limits. So I think the champion should be Darth Vader in a TIE Defender, supported by the Emperor in a Generic shuttle supported by 2 Saber Squadron Pilots. Each ship should be loaded to the gills with upgrades with no thought given to cost, just what makes them the most dangerous (the AI is a little dumb so something that may be more powerful in the hands of a good player that knows how to time it right may not work for the AI).

Thoughts, or is that straying too far from what you had in mind?

That might be closer to the pokemon games, where the opponents don't have powerful teams necessarily (and even the elite 4 are not optimal powerhouses, they're just high level with solid teams). And it's thematic to have each gym be a faction, though I'm more inclined to have some gyms be a playstyle like aces or swarms or beef. I'm not sure I'd want to force an init 6 into each elite 4, since that limits them in how they can play (e.g. an elite 4 member might really like rebel beef, a tie swarm, vulture swarm, scum beef, triple aces, etc; they should be playstyle-centric not faction-centric). Perhaps that's how the gym leaders would work though... at least 7 gyms, one for each faction, and they can experiment with fleet styles but the faction identity is the most on display. Each gym has one or more simple trainer battles that could try a few fleet styles, but then the gym leader will have an ace leading some team, possibly going to 225 points or so (against the player's 200 so the player will need to be clever).

I like the idea that your pilots must stay the same but your upgrades can change per battle.

My original idea was to pit my more derpy casual fleets that don't belong on the table against fleets that would normally be scary, but because it's an AI, they're more approachable and I can also keep retrying after failures. Not sure how to reconcile that with a more thematic pokemon-like world, but perhaps it can be both with the elite 4 covering the really tough battles and the gyms being nice & faction-themed. After all, most pokemon gyms are somewhat easy and only become scary if you're underleveled or doing a challenge run, so the gyms here don't have to be ultra strong and a good theme is more valuable.

It might be worth having some sort of xp system, like you start at 150 points, each of the 8 gym leaders gives you 6 or 7 squad points to take you to 200 by the time you hit the elite 4. You can fight the trainers in the gym for 1 - 2 XP each if you need to level a bit more. But then that means some gyms need to be much easier than others and that may not fit well with the faction theme, since one or more factions have to be super easy. Alternatively don't make the gym leaders worth points, and you start already at 200; you need to beat gym leaders only for their badge. But their optional trainers are an opportunity to go over 200 points to deal with the elite 4 and champion, and you can always go back to a gym to fight the trainers there if, for example, the elite 4 are too strong for your fleet.

As for the bug, it was... frustrating. I was doing well but Thane had taken some nasty hits from high dice variance and my own carelessness, and I was excited to see if I could get the clutch kills before he could be finished off... but now I won't find out. I don't like when a program is buggy and waiting to die on me. It's not so bad when the games are short each time, but given that x-wing games are 30-75 minute investments, a lethal bug near the middle or end ruining the game means I'm discouraged about trying again, especially when I don't know how to avoid not having the same issue over and over (don't bring Thane? or was it something else?).

Failure should always be my doing. I can't solve game-breaking software bugs by getting better at the game, I can only avoid the cards or situations I speculate were related. It wasn't as bad as trying to use the official squad builder (hah!), but it's still quite frustrating to get wrecked by the wrong opponent, like some clumsy oaf crashing into the table mid-game and throwing models everywhere -- you want that drunkard thrown out before you set up for your next game, but that's not really an option here.

Also I noticed the points were wildly off from YASB (it claimed I had 20 - 30 points unspent in my fleet but it's actually 199 in YASB), and I treat YASB and the wiki as sources of truth for points etc. I'm guessing Fly Casual is just behind, or one or two cards are wrong or something.

I'll try again at some point. I guess I need to rip Thane out just in case, so maybe I'll upgrade back up to Wedge...?

Yeah I hear you on being beaten by the program rather than the game inside it. I guess I am just more amenable to it at times since my job involves getting used to and overcoming that opponent. Also the automation is much better than everything else, so I am willing to tolerate the bugs that come with it (though I am open to be schooled on the automation in Vassal or TTS being better than I think). As for the points, an update just came out this week from FFG, you usually need the next new build after a points update to get the new slots and points. I would guess a new build is coming in the next week or 2. I am anxiously awaiting it as a matter of fact since I am excited to try out the Eta's against the AI and with their having Cannon, Mod, and Talent slots to go with the Force and Astro they are going to be fun to fly. I kind of want to build an Anakin and Obi list and just fly it through a faction generic lists like we are talking about for the gyms.

If you are going to use 200 point fleets to begin with, I think your right with the idea that you would need leaders at the 225 level, and elite 4 lists probably at 250 if you want to make them a serious challenge. Though I do think the biggest challenge is going to be coming up with lists the AI is good with rather than may be good in general. My suggestion in that regard is to use more upgrades and pilot abilities that give passive bonuses and don't rely a lot on timing. Luke is a good example of this, talents like predator and crack are also good. If you have to think about when to use an upgrade to get the most out of it, you probably don't want it on the AI.