I like thinking of thematic ways to make specific pilot abilities or such things. One of the ways I do this is think of unique ways that represent movie characters, pilot abilities, or things that are just outright fun! I was hoping to bounce ideas off of folks to see what works and what doesn't. Some of the ideas are insanly powerful, but are also reflected in the upsides/downsides of the card. Here are a few that I thought up that might be useful.

Expert Wingman (Pilot Upgrade)

Cost: 5pts

Action: Nominate one friendly ship within range 1 to add your base attack value to their attack roll. You may not roll any evade dice if defending. You may not perform any attack the turn you use this action.

C3-P0 (Unique, Crew)

Cost: 3pts

Action: You may roll an additional evade die for every evade or focus result on your defense rolls. Add a stress token for each additional evade die roll.

R7-D5 (Unique, Astro)

Cost: 3pts

Other ships cannot gain any additional dice while attacking this ship from pilot abilities or range bonuses.

(This one is from a campaign I am running to simulate a jamming frequency that the R7 unit emits).

Stress Induced (Pilot Upgrade)

Cost: 3pts

Place an evade token on your ship after receiving a stress token.

Advanced Weaponry (Ship Upgrade)

Cost: 5pts

Increase your primary weapon attack value by 1.

Vectored Thrusters (Ship Upgrade)

Cost: 4pts

All straight and bank manuever difficulties are decreased to a minimum of (green).

(Red turnes to white, white to green)

Ejection Seat (Ship Upgrade)

Cost: 1pts

If this ship is destroyed, subtract the pilot rank off of the ships squad points value when determining the enemies victory point total.

(They don't get points for the PR of the ship, IE Wedge with this upgrade would only get 21 points [29+1=30 - wedges PR of 9])

Heavy Proton Torpedoes (Torpedo)

Cost: 6pts, Attack: 4 Range: 2-3

Attack (Target Lock): Spend your target lock and discard this card to perform this attack. All (hit) results may be changed to (critical hit).

(I think this one may be under priced.)

Homing Torpedoes (Torpedo)

Cost: 5pts, Attack 4 Range:2-3

Attack(Target Lock): Discard this card to perform this attack. One (Focus) result may be changed to a (hit).

Ablative Armor (Ship Upgrade)

Cost: 3pts

Increase your hull value by 1.

Chaff Launchers (Ship Upgrade)

Cost: 2pts

Discard this card to perform this ability. You may re-roll evade dice for this turn only.

Fancy Paint Job (Ship Upgrade)

Cost: 1pt

If you are the closest ship to an attacking ship that can be targeted, the attacking ship must attack your ship.

Shielded electronics (Ship Upgrade)

Cost: 2pts

Increase the number of Ion tokens required by 1 before suffering from ion effects.

Does anyone else have any ideas that they would like to share?

I have also been kicking the idea of allowing multiple ship upgrades on a ship. Thoughts?

Force Precognition

4pts - Elite Pilot Upgrade

May only be chosen by a pilot of skill 7 or higher

During the Manuevers phase, you may choose not to allocate this ship a maneuver normally. If you choose this, after all manuevers are selected but before any are revealed and resolved you may look at one unrevealed maneuver dial without resolving it. You must then choose any of the maneuvers this ship can perform and immediately perform it. This ship may not take any actions during its perform action step this turn, but may perform actions if allowed to by other card effects

My conribution. Would love this on Wedge. Would let you peek at an opponent's dial, then jump on whatever he was doing, which sounds fun. I think the points and drawbacks are sufficient, but feel free to let me know I'm crazy =)

nimdabew said:

nimdabew said:

To facilitate that (once more ship upgrades are available), there could be something like:

Expanded Memory (Ship Upgrade) - 1pt
You may take 2 additional ship upgrades.

On another note, I really like the reroll agility idea, especially since it's a mechanic that hasn't been introduced yet. I would expect it to be more restrictive though (realistically).

Chaff Launcher (Ship Upgrade) - 4pts
While defending, you may reroll your agility roll. If you do, you must reroll all your dice.

Another defensive idea:

Sense The Future (Pilot) - 2pts
Action: While defending, you may change 1 blank result to an {evade} result.

nimdabew said:

i actually think the tie advanced need something like advanced weaponry to bring them up in power level.

id love to see an ability that improves the effectiveness of missiles… how about:

HAWKEYE - pilot skill, costs 2. reroll all blank results when attacking with a secondary weapon. If that weapon is a missile all focus results become hits and all hits become crits. (insanely powerful i know but still fun!)

how about a series of mid-range power pilots ffor each ship:

X-Wing Pilots for: Rookie Pilot, Red Squadron

Y-Wing Pilots for: Gold Squadron, Grey Squadron (wish these guys had a pilot skill slot!)

A-Wing Pilots for: Prototype Pilot, Green Squadron Pilot

These could have a pilot skill slot or innate ability (or both)

same for Imperials…

Tie Fighter Pilots for: Obsidian Squadron Pilot, Black Squadron Pilot (already has pilot skill slot)

Tie Advanced Pilots for: Tempest Squadron Pilot, Storm Squadron Pilot

Tie Intercepter Pilots for: Alpha Squadron Pilot, Avenger Squadron Pilot

would add another level of team building and give these lesser flown ships more status above a fuller ship.

The ships need more pilots really. More Garvens and Night Beasts for all of the expansion. I would like to play the Imps and have 20 different pilots just for the tie fighter, 6 for the advanced, 8 for the interceptors etc. There are a TON of x-wong pilots; why are we not seeing them?

I'd like to see some sort of Pilot Renown Card for all ships. Kind of a cross between modifications and title cards. Any pilot on any ship can take one Pilot Renown Card, but they are unique in that you can only have one ACE or One SURVIVOR on each side, Rebel and Empire

Pilot Renown ACE: "You may add one elite pilot talent to your uprgrade bar even if you already have an elite pilot talent" 2 pts

Pilot Renown SURVIVOR: "Add the Evade ability to your action bar" 1pt

Pilot Renown STEADY HAND: "After spending a target lock, if all hits are canceled, you may reaquire a target lock on the same ship" 2pts

Pretty useful i think. For example, something like that would let y-wings have better chances of surviving and allow them to have the elite pilot talent. And it would let some pilots have more than one elite pilot talent, allowing for some pretty awesome and powerful combos I'm sure

jedi moose said:

i like this idea although id up the cost of the evade ability. an x-wing with a cheap evade action would be too good imo. i like it, just make it cost 4 or something.

The_Brown_Bomber said:

Yeah my point cost might be way off. I was basing that one on the Falcon Title card which cost 1 pt and does the same thing. But maybe for other ships it should cost more.