I like this game. I like it a lot. It's fun and simple and doesn't take too much to play. But at the same time 'over' time there's only so much they can do with canon ships. Only so many X-wing repaints and new pilot cards they can do so how do they move the game on and keep it interesting? They have a wealth of ships from E.U and with the HWK-290 we know they're going to use at least some of them but that still leaves the question of keeping things fresh.

So what additional rules, moves, ship stats do you think 'could' be added? My first thought on this as mentioned in another thread was shields.

We know from the films and the games that power to deflector shields can be moved around so there's a potential add in for more strategy. Shields that can be moved. As an action lower front shields to re-enforce the rear or side etc.

What else do you think we'll see, or would like to see?

I'm not a game designer but I have been wondering how are they going to keep balance and uniqueness and keep adding ships without invalidating older ships or breaking core balance by adding to many evade or atk die to certain builds. Its already ridiculous you can have certain ships rolling up to 7 atk die vs 2-3 def die. Its pushing into almost guaranteed kill territory.

They can keep adding modification types such as a tractor beam slot on ships such as the gun or assault boat or capitol ships. Imho this will likely be some form of improved target lock. Allowing a ship to fire its primary weapon at a ship even when it moves outside its firing arc.

I see ion torpedoes, and proton rockets being added to the game.

and ultimately I foresee improved die for capitol weapon batteries and special high powered fighters. Imagine a purple atk die with 1 less blank and 1 more crit icon. This will significantly increase a ships damage potential without adversely effecting balance. A tie avenger might roll 1 purple and 2 red atk die, a capitol weapon battery could roll 3 purple die. The chance to roll crits/hits will increase and yet the game still has the chance where a defender can still evade the attack completely. This also fits with cannon since certain ships just had a more powerful primary weapon.

Your idea might work as well where a ship can lose all shields for a full turn and add a red atk die (likely to powerful) or exchange a red attack die into a purple atk die (more balanced and just increases chance to hit, while leaving your hull open to atk)

How about this? Maximize your shields?

4 Points, Declare Before Shooting begins, this player may state he is maximizing shields in Rear or Front. If he does so, then the area not declared will take all hits as with 0 shields, but when the area declared is hit, the defending ship may reroll 1 blank result on the Defense Die.

What do you think?

Exactly my sort of thinking yeah. Just trying to think of little additions that will upscale the tactics without completely breaking the game. I think that shields idea would work well.

The shield idea with a new die is cool.

Add a purple die= Brilliant!

The rules themselves are fine. In fact, the rules are darned near perfect.

It's the pilot/upgrade/modification cards which gives this game so much insane flexibility. "Maximize Shields" fits right in there, without having to amend/overhaul the existing rules.

So far as potential "overpowering" of ships is concerned, even that has some balance. Those tend to be the ships that come at a higher cost... and a skillful opponent CAN overwhelm them with greater numbers and/or selective upgrading on their own part.

It's part of the metagame which makes X-Wing so darn fun along with actually *playing* the thing

Originally I was thinking...

Wouldn't it be nice to have separate pilot and ship cards. Maybe after looking at another game that does this I'm less impressed. It almost seems to hurt the balance and can come up with weird combinations out of theme. Not that I mind necessarily but if you could take any pilot with any ability with any ship I think this may (just a thought now) hurt more that help.

With the pilot cards we have being assigned to ships the balanced is fixed and the sides are chosen, the theme works, Que Imperial March music.

I like that Idea.
Here's my take on how it should read:

"Stablize your rear deflectors" [3]

Rebels Only; Snub Fighters only

Action: At the beginning of the Combat phase, when this ship is being attacked from outside your ship's firing arc, this player may roll an additional Defense die. This action may only be used once per Combat Phase.

I definitely agree with new Attack and Defense dice idea, it would be a good way to give a ship a better attack. It's very easy to get to the stage if you up the attack dice number, that the enemy just has no hope of defending, where as being able to swap in a better dice keeps the same max hits, but makes those hits more likely.

I really like the idea of boosted shields but I think there should be more of a drawback. In the x-wing game you had to either take power from engines or weapons to reinforce your shields. Could be as simple as: action: lower your pow or evade by 1 to gain an extra shield for a round.

One of the things that makes this game amazing is it's simplicity. It is a quick game to pick up and play, but is infinitely intricate in that (barring tourney scene) there are a great many list combinations and strategies to use them. I think we will see small rule introductions as different subsystems are brought into the game. Fortunately, none of them really seem to break anything else in the game.

This puts the design limits in the hands of the gamer, in my opinion. That is something that not a lot of games do with their rule set. Look at all of the things we are talking about here in this thread. I would bet that one day some of them might show up. We're pretty fortunate to have a decent company behind this product.

The main problem with making it an action, is that it would really only be valuable on high pilot skill level pilots. Since if you had a low pilot skill and went first before everyone else, you would never use it. That's why I made it before the shooting phase, because everyone has moved by then.

The main problem with making it an action, is that it would really only be valuable on high pilot skill level pilots. Since if you had a low pilot skill and went first before everyone else, you would never use it. That's why I made it before the shooting phase, because everyone has moved by then.

it could be instead of shooting

I think what I like the most of this game is its simplicity, now with all pilots, skills, modifications, crews, secondary weapons, etc, I’m afraid it is moving towards to become another Warmachine that I actually dropped because it was too much homework to play (maybe I’m just being lazy) anyway, I believe the Cinematic Play mode it is exactly what we’re discussing in this thread and the objective FFG is aiming for is to keep it fresh

My two cents would be to save boosting shields for the larger ships that would have a larger pool of shields to begin with and that might have multiple areas of coverage already. Currently the small ships essentially have one shield facing, so moving shields around really doesn't work.

On a side note, I was really disappointed that the Star Trek version of this game didn't take more from the old star fleet battles for the ships. The movement and range stuff could have been kept as is, but shields and ship components and damage should have been much more granular and tracked on a much more detailed ship card. I'm kind of hoping that the Star Wars capital ships adopt more of this approach.

I'm not a game designer but I have been wondering how are they going to keep balance and uniqueness and keep adding ships without invalidating older ships or breaking core balance by adding to many evade or atk die to certain builds. Its already ridiculous you can have certain ships rolling up to 7 atk die vs 2-3 def die. Its pushing into almost guaranteed kill territory.

They can keep adding modification types such as a tractor beam slot on ships such as the gun or assault boat or capitol ships. Imho this will likely be some form of improved target lock. Allowing a ship to fire its primary weapon at a ship even when it moves outside its firing arc.

I see ion torpedoes, and proton rockets being added to the game.

and ultimately I foresee improved die for capitol weapon batteries and special high powered fighters. Imagine a purple atk die with 1 less blank and 1 more crit icon. This will significantly increase a ships damage potential without adversely effecting balance. A tie avenger might roll 1 purple and 2 red atk die, a capitol weapon battery could roll 3 purple die. The chance to roll crits/hits will increase and yet the game still has the chance where a defender can still evade the attack completely. This also fits with cannon since certain ships just had a more powerful primary weapon.

Your idea might work as well where a ship can lose all shields for a full turn and add a red atk die (likely to powerful) or exchange a red attack die into a purple atk die (more balanced and just increases chance to hit, while leaving your hull open to atk)

7 attack die?? How do you even do that??

I'm not a game designer but I have been wondering how are they going to keep balance and uniqueness and keep adding ships without invalidating older ships or breaking core balance by adding to many evade or atk die to certain builds. Its already ridiculous you can have certain ships rolling up to 7 atk die vs 2-3 def die. Its pushing into almost guaranteed kill territory.

They can keep adding modification types such as a tractor beam slot on ships such as the gun or assault boat or capitol ships. Imho this will likely be some form of improved target lock. Allowing a ship to fire its primary weapon at a ship even when it moves outside its firing arc.

I see ion torpedoes, and proton rockets being added to the game.

and ultimately I foresee improved die for capitol weapon batteries and special high powered fighters. Imagine a purple atk die with 1 less blank and 1 more crit icon. This will significantly increase a ships damage potential without adversely effecting balance. A tie avenger might roll 1 purple and 2 red atk die, a capitol weapon battery could roll 3 purple die. The chance to roll crits/hits will increase and yet the game still has the chance where a defender can still evade the attack completely. This also fits with cannon since certain ships just had a more powerful primary weapon.

Your idea might work as well where a ship can lose all shields for a full turn and add a red atk die (likely to powerful) or exchange a red attack die into a purple atk die (more balanced and just increases chance to hit, while leaving your hull open to atk)

If think they still have plenty to do. If they screw up the game, just stop buying just before they introduced the addition that makes it a different game. Then you can keep playing with the ships and rules that you can roll with. Forget the rest. It's not like all your X-wing stuff will melt if they don't expand the game.

7 attack die?? How do you even do that??

Advanced proton torp + Jan Ors + Opportunist.

Of course, to even make that happen, you're looking at 35 points minimum with a Range 1 attack and you have to be unstressed when making the attack. If you drop it on Wedge, you can even get the -1 defense die in there too, but you may have issues stacking the target lock with the focus needed to make it truly deadly.