It would be nice if some illicit cards were available to other factions more often. Like Rebel Renegades have them. So why not some Imperial Remnants that are risking some weird tactics to hold on to their reign? On a very limited basis, I think it would be kinda neat.

But full candor, I really don't like a lot of the illicit upgrades that are out as is. Too many of them just flip the game into NPE modes. The scum faction unfortunately excels at that in general actually. 😑

33 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

But full candor, I really don't like a lot of the illicit upgrades that are out as is. Too many of them just flip the game into NPE modes.

What illicits are flipping the game to NPE mode for you? General consensus from Scum players is that illicit lack strength. False Transponder Codes is the first one that I've seen with potential on level with Contraband Cybernetics, but no where in the tier of NPE. Other than those two, illicits seem near worthless.

56 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

...other than those two, illicits seem near worthless.

...sounds like I need to introduce you to my Deadmen Marauders.

1 hour ago, 5050Saint said:

False Transponder Codes is the first one that I've seen with potential on level with Contraband Cybernetics, but no where in the tier of NPE. Other than those two, illicits seem near worthless.

CC at 3 points is also worthless. 2 points was great. It was used since it was the only one worth paying for. 3 points is in the category of "dumb list-building mistake" again.

1 hour ago, 5050Saint said:

What illicits are flipping the game to NPE mode for you? General consensus from Scum players is that illicit lack strength. False Transponder Codes is the first one that I've seen with potential on level with Contraband Cybernetics, but no where in the tier of NPE. Other than those two, illicits seem near worthless.

Gecko beat me to it, Deadmen switch. It plus lots of bombs leaves you in a really weird no good approach situation that penalizes you for trying to win. Bombs that can move like ships and shoot back are not really fun for me.

Bomb map in epic, CC when it's costed aggressively, even IDs can be kinda frustrating throwing off some plans. Top that with many of the abilities scum have on their pilots and it adds up quickly. I'd be lying if I didn't say I did some pretty ignorant stuff with cloaking X-wing's myself. I haven't played against false codes yet, but it seems really REALLY good for 2 points. It grants counterspell to an opponents action, or double action to the user. With upgraded range and no downside. That's nothing to joke about Y'know?

Really it comes down to scum stuff being the 'blue' from Magic equivalent for X-wing. And when you think about some of the boogie men that have come out of the game, scum is almost fittingly a usual suspect. FennRau, Boba, quadjumpers, and those are just from second ed.

1 hour ago, FTS Gecko said:

...sounds like I need to introduce you to my Deadmen Marauders.

54 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

Gecko beat me to it, Deadmen switch

Not to sound cocky, but DMS switch doesn't scare me 98% of the time. Only massed DMS Fireballs have caught my attention.

55 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

Bomb map in epic, CC when it's costed aggressively, even IDs can be kinda frustrating throwing off some plans... I'd be lying if I didn't say I did some pretty ignorant stuff with cloaking X-wing's myself. I haven't played against false codes yet, but it seems really REALLY good for 2 points. It grants counterspell to an opponents action, or double action to the user. With upgraded range and no downside.

Bomb map is cool but nowhere in the realm of NPE and limited to Epic. IDs were only good and NPE on Rebel Han, and that has been fixed for over a year, for everyone else it is class F sucktacular. Cloaking Device is cheeky but not NPE. If it didn't turn itself off 3/8 of the time, I'd give it more credence.

Contraband Cybernetics had the best potential, but it has it's own drawbacks, namely the single charge use and the stress retention. As @ClassicalMoser alluded to, at 2 points it was good, but at 3 usage will drop off significantly. FTC is the best candidate for NPE since it is double action economy, but I already acknowledged that. Currently withholding full judgment on it.

@5050Saint DMS doesn't bother me too much either as a one off. Maybe even as a twofer. But I'm guessing similar to geckos, or this dead Zed redemption you mentioned, when there's a squad full of them? And they all have bombs as well? Your just taking non interactive damage, non stop, and getting slapped for trying to advance the game state. It's pretty demoralizing when you start getting halved and dead ships that never rolled defense dice but maybe once or twice. The bomb map in epic just compounds that problem in spam lists. If Deadmen was limited, I wouldn't have as much issue. Thank Obi Wan the map is.

Like you said, ID was busted on some things. Like I said, it can can be problematic.

And for the cloaking x, let's put it this way, I was politely asked to stop playing it by a more than a few people. You only have to pull it off once to get a super arc dodging X-wing into a good position for the mid game. Or save it for your disengage. 3/8 break was not a problem at all. Getting two crazy teleports is often enough and not that uncommon to get even with the break chance. Statistically your likely to get a second use of it technically. It's not super comp, but holy Force ghosts was it annoying.

But let's look at it this way, we've kinda danced around it a few times. Many of these upgrades have something in common that at one cost their great, but up them one single point and they disappear. That's not a great sign of a solid design in general to me. And as it is we totally agree on the codes at the moment. Scary, but untried.

9 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Not to sound cocky, but DMS switch doesn't scare me 98% of the time. Only massed DMS Fireballs have caught my attention.

6 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

@5050Saint DMS doesn't bother me too much either as a one off. Maybe even as a twofer. But I'm guessing similar to geckos, or this dead Zed redemption you mentioned, when there's a squad full of them?

This. DMS on it's own ain't no great shakes. Five or more in a swarm causes you to pause for thought.

A four health ship only needs to take two damage before it's at half health. Suddenly all those ships do not want to be engaging at range one, ever.

Pre lockdown I'd just took my FIVE. to the cut at Nationals and one Hull point from the cut at Euros (unfortunately that Hull was on Soontir, and despite half a dozen shots at him in the last two turns before time I just couldn't push one more through). I'm far from a good X-Wing player, so I was looking forward to seeing what someone who is could do with it.

The point reduction on Marauders allowed my list to smuggle in a couple of False Transponder Codes. Being able to potentially drop a Jam on one of those squirrelly low health ships while taking a Lock could make a big difference.

Deadman's Switch isn't that bad considering the squad is either tightly packed to spread arcs and maximize fire OR spread out to not splash each other. I get why CC was bumped up, combined with cards like Elusive it's a great way for Scum ships to get great positioning without losing an action AND stay alive a bit longer. I don't think we have a 'problem' with generics or swarms in general though. A lot of the digital games have let people spam ships, but I think iirc it was GSP that pointed out, "Who owns 6 nantex IRL?" So once this plague is over and we can play more in person I think you'll see more 3 of +1or 2 other ship lists. Or big name, and a couple of generic wingmates. (Like Boba and 2 Skulls)

17 minutes ago, KingmanHighborn said:

Deadman's Switch isn't that bad considering the squad is either tightly packed to spread arcs and maximize fire OR spread out to not splash each other.

A lot of the digital games have let people spam ships, but I think iirc it was GSP that pointed out, "Who owns 6 nantex IRL?"

You haven't played against some of the insane Deadmen lovers I've seen then. Rarely do they care about the splash so long as they get some damage on their opponent. And it's just crazy how it works. One time they intentionally hit a rock to roll for their last hull, got a hit, exploded, killed another of their own ships at range one which I was going to avoid shooting that turn, it exploded and killed my ship that was at range one of it (and damaged another) that in the engagement phase after I had successfully arcdodged and setup a kill shot on a completely different third ship. That was rough. Also, not fun. And I still technically lost points on that round exchange 😓

In my area 1 in 4 players had the ability to field 6-tex if they wanted. Not even kidding. I was seeing that list from before when it was the hotness as it was from at least one player. I don't recommend relying on any pod casters take on anything. If your meta is fortunate to not have to deal with that, consider yourself lucky.

Yeah, DMS Marauders don't mind taking one or two friendly splash damage, so long as they're dropping health on an ace or lower health swarm.

It's a pretty forgiving list - they have the firepower to hurt health heavy lists, are fairly tanky themselves and the potential for DMS damage forces problems on low health ships.

Has Rigged Cargo Chute become irrelevant? Was used pretty frequently for a while...

20 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Don't you dare Greedo my Han! Who do you think you are, George Lucas??! 😂

Maclunkey.

1 hour ago, FTS Gecko said:

Has Rigged Cargo Chute become irrelevant? Was used pretty frequently for a while...

Kinda depends on who flies with it, right? I don't know that it ever saw much play without either 4-LOM or particularly Koshka Frost, and it Koshka is out of favor, maybe it just doesn't make sense.

17 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

CC at 3 points is also worthless. 2 points was great. It was used since it was the only one worth paying for. 3 points is in the category of "dumb list-building mistake" again.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I think the original 3-point price wasn't tempting, and so folks mostly left it unexplored. On someone like Boba, the single point difference isn't that huge. The buff to 2 points got folks excited about it, got folks used to using it when they hadn't bothered before. But folks know how useful it can be in the right list.

3 isn't going to be a spam-on-every-ship price, but it ought to be worthwhile on those ships where it's strong. I tend to believe that folks decline to fly good stuff, and continue to fly bad stuff, for all sorts of reasons other than a pure and accurate understanding of value. Sometimes a buff-then-nerf is all it takes to change minds.

30 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Kinda depends on who flies with it, right? I don't know that it ever saw much play without either 4-LOM or particularly Koshka Frost, and it Koshka is out of favor, maybe it just doesn't make sense. . .

I remember seeing it on Trick Shot Han quite a bit, but the Rebel version was always more effective with Leia

1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:

I'm not sure I agree with that. I think the original 3-point price wasn't tempting, and so folks mostly left it unexplored. On someone like Boba, the single point difference isn't that huge.

I agree that making it 3 points doesn't kill it. Boba and Dengar will both likely still take it, it just won't go on every ship in a 3+ list (not that we saw much of that). At least it isn't the original cost of 5 points. That was criminal pricing and would definitely make it worthless.

On 12/8/2020 at 10:09 PM, theBitterFig said:

I think there's a limit to how much efficiency can be improved to buff bad ships and still get a dynamic game out of it.

I'm not sure whether things have gone too far, but I think things can't really go much further. T-70s, for example, can't be buffed any more without seriously crossing some breakpoints that probably shouldn't be crossed.

My preference would be for a great many things to get at least +1 points added. I don't want to see lackluster Academy Pilot TIE Fighters get cheaper, I'd rather most other stuff go up. X-Wings, TIE/fo, Scyks. A lot of stuff that, in some ways, doesn't really need nerfs... but I think it'd be better to shift the scale upwards, and not just down. Aces probably benefit if nearly everything goes up, but aces would also go up, and get fewer toys.

But maybe that's a misdiagnosis of some deeper issue... I wonder if there's just fundamental problems with how initiative works. Generics kind of need to have massive efficiency, or else they just get wiped off the board by aces. But when they have too much, the lists become kind of unkillable.

//

Time to go fully off the rails...

Right now, Low Init only blocks, and High Init has both Arc Dodging and Initiative-Killing. Change how IKills work, lessen the penalty for being 0HP before shooting (maybe a smaller penalty, maybe none). I keep thinking... what if the engagement phase didn't flip initiative order? What if every round was low-to-high?

I don't think it works with all the current initiatives (Han and Kylo, for example, ought to be changed to Low-Init, to shoot early). However, I think there's theoretically an interesting version of the game where there are both aces and generics at high and low and middle initiative, and it's not clean-cut whether you want high or low. An arc dodger like Soontir or Fenn Rau would have to wait through everything, trusting their position and green dice. A quick shooter like Han can put a lot of hurt out early, but most opponents can react to him. Would an Ordnance carrier like a Gunboat or a K-Wing rather be High Init for easy locks, and rely on their toughness to get their shot off, or would you rather have difficulty getting locks but shoot quick at Low Initiative?

My gut says that gives players a lot more choices, and there's a reason to take generic pilots at different parts of the init scale. And if you're not paying also for the initiative boost, only for the pilot ability, maybe mid-tier limited pilots become a lot more tempting, too.

lower initiative also knows if they need to keep or spend their tokens (not much but something

4 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

At least it isn't the original cost of 5 points. That was criminal pricing and would definitely make it worthless.

You remember when CC cost about the same as Rebel Leia? That was an interesting wave.

2 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

You remember when CC cost about the same as Rebel Leia? That was an interesting wave.

CC at 3 points and Leia at 2. Yeah, that was bonkers stupid.

At 2pt, CC did indeed just get randomly thrown into my lists. At 3pt, it's still well worth including in my lists that really wanted it. Mostly YV/Lancer builds, but point heavy ships in general.

The one place it becomes a more considered choice is on 2x PerCo Bounty Hunters, where it was massively useful, the extra 2pt has an impact on ship no.3. Particularly now I'm also looking at CIS, where the combo is 6pt more than the old Scum pair. Makes for a very skinny Grievous. Maybe just as well

20 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

I remember seeing it, (cargo),on Trick Shot Han quite a bit, but the Rebel version was always more effective with Leia

Rigged Cargo is something I look at very intently with Scum Han. He gets so many bonuses from a good drop.

17 hours ago, freakyg3 said:

lower initiative also knows if they need to keep or spend their tokens (not much but something

I think that is definitely something. Actually very useful information for aces.