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I know Armada exists but there is just something amazing about the scale of x wing that attracts me more. When i hold a star destroyer in Armarda I just feel like I'm holding a toy or a model but when I have the Epic x wing ships in my two hands I just feel like I have something awesome! Something that feels big! Feels like it would be a capital ship in battle with x-wings and TIEs flying around it as a big battle goes on. In fact, I wish the sbips were more true scale alongside other stuff because it would just look amazing on larger tables.

This is one of my hopes for 2.0. An expansion and increase in support for Epic. FF brought out these expensive well made ships but just neverseemed to care or want to support them or the Epic game. So I really hope in 2.0 they do focus on it as an expansion and also bring some new ships out. If they brought out the victory star destroyer or hammer head I'd flip my table in joy! I'd happily pay £100 (coming from 40k) for a model like that (although I'd buy one once a year for my birthday or something).

However, they need to streamline epic and make it a beter and fun experience that makes people want to play it and buy the ships. Some of the problems I saw a lot was 1. Time of games. 2. Ships being used to ram everything.

1. This could be improved by making a squad system. Tie squads moving and firing together for example. Or it could be improved naturally by 2.0 streamlining of ships. Or it could be improved by limiting upgrades to only bigger ships. (Smaller ships just come as stock for example).

2. A lot of the time the ships were more useful as a blunt weapon than an actual tool. Even in fun casual games like Epic people love to win and will not take something unless it's useful. So we need to improve this. I suggest smaller ships can fly over or under the epic ships (maybe a negative modifier for dojg so like using up an action). Or just make the ships serve a purpose rather than just being x wing but bigger.


What donyou guys think are the problems in 1.0, how would you fix it and what do you hope for?
   
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Honestly, the main thing holding back Epic in 1.0 was just that the ships themselves were pretty bad. Make those ships fun to play and the whole thing has a lot more appeal.
   
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 LunarSol wrote:
Honestly, the main thing holding back Epic in 1.0 was just that the ships themselves were pretty bad. Make those ships fun to play and the whole thing has a lot more appeal.


Yeah, i habe no interest in the rebel ships because they just seem boring. Give them way more support roles and maybe an Armarda feel and it might work well.
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






Step 1: put awesome Epic model on your display shelf.

Step 2: forget that the rules exist. X-Wing just doesn't scale up well past the standard 100 point level, and I don't think anything is ever going to fix this.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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 Peregrine wrote:
Step 1: put awesome Epic model on your display shelf.

Step 2: forget that the rules exist. X-Wing just doesn't scale up well past the standard 100 point level, and I don't think anything is ever going to fix this.


"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softlybecause you tread on my dreams"

And then out of the shadows swoops Peregrine to shoot Sean Bean in the face

Poor Sean Bean...

Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

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Pretty pessimistic. I expect this in the 40k threads but not x wing.
   
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Its sad but true, in V1 take any half competent ordnance carrier in any thing like numbers and it will nuke an epic ship off the map.

Unlike Perry though I love v1 at 200pts plus, providing you are playing with friends/not donkey-caves the potential is endless for the fun stuff you can come up with. The first time I played against 24 TIE/ln was a truly epic moment...

On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
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Outflanking

 lolman1c wrote:
Pretty pessimistic. I expect this in the 40k threads but not x wing.


Meet Peregrine.


As for epic ships, The best use that I found for them in 1.0 was as part of a narrative campaign. Problem is, they just aren't worth their points in regular play. However, having a narrative battle of "Rebels must transport GR75 off of far table edge", and throwing in some extra rules, such as preventing enemy ships from targeting the transport while at range 1 of a friendly fighter, is an extremely interesting way to shake things up from a standard 100 vs 100.

So, I feel that FFG would need to embrace Epic not being standard Xwing, and add a big emphasis on scenarios and wotnot. See the scenario systems from Legion and Armada. Having scenarios revolve around Huge ships, and giving huge ships rules to feel like a powerful force on the battlefield

Also change the way that energy works. Right now, it is so restrictive that it makes huge ships feel less powerful than large ships. Probably make it easier to gain, but also easier to spend.

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 lolman1c wrote:
Pretty pessimistic. I expect this in the 40k threads but not x wing.


Epic seems to be the rare outlier that diverts our more civilised subforum down the dark path from time to time

Whilst the models are cool, they were an unasked for bolt on for game system that can't really deal with them outside of as Crazy said Narrative scenario's or self-comping/house ruling


"AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED." 
   
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Philadelphia PA

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
 lolman1c wrote:
Pretty pessimistic. I expect this in the 40k threads but not x wing.


Meet Peregrine.


As for epic ships, The best use that I found for them in 1.0 was as part of a narrative campaign. Problem is, they just aren't worth their points in regular play. However, having a narrative battle of "Rebels must transport GR75 off of far table edge", and throwing in some extra rules, such as preventing enemy ships from targeting the transport while at range 1 of a friendly fighter, is an extremely interesting way to shake things up from a standard 100 vs 100.

So, I feel that FFG would need to embrace Epic not being standard Xwing, and add a big emphasis on scenarios and wotnot. See the scenario systems from Legion and Armada. Having scenarios revolve around Huge ships, and giving huge ships rules to feel like a powerful force on the battlefield

Also change the way that energy works. Right now, it is so restrictive that it makes huge ships feel less powerful than large ships. Probably make it easier to gain, but also easier to spend.


Scenario would be the way to go. I think part of the issue is people gravitate towards the 100 point (soon to be 200 I guess) tourney format because it's what you're going to play for events. If FFG can break that expectation up a little, which they seem to be trying with those set loadout cards, then there may be more room for Epic and other styles of play.

The other issue, as Peregrine touched on, is points scaling up. For the same cost as an epic ship I could easily get several small based ships that are going to be much more effective. I'm not sure how to solve this as I never played much epic myself. It seems like you'd need really strong abilities for epic ships or some other way to balance them out.

I prefer to buy from miniature manufacturers that *don't* support the overthrow of democracy. 
   
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Douglas Bader






Scaling isn't just a balance thing, it's a functional problem. Space gets too crowded, maneuvers get too difficult to plan, and the game devolves into a giant blob in the middle of the table where everything bumps and exchanges dice until someone wins. The game just isn't designed to have that much stuff on the table.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/25 18:56:40


There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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And tbis is why i was thinking about ways we can add epic ships in. What changes would you make?

Maybe make a two layer system where epic ships exist on a different theoretical level so small ships can't crash into them. It means that space no longer becomes an issue.

Or, silly funny idea, play armada rules but with the big ships. XD
   
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Not being able to smash littler ships is an idea (though it makes the GR-75 mostly pointless) but the only close to successful way we have had to make them playable is to play on a 12'x6' table, which allows for some room to maneuver and limits the middle of the table pile up that Peregrine describes above. Problems with that though are pretty evident.

On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
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Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

I expect they'll probably be giving Epic a reboot in 2.0, but it might be a while.

The issue isn't necessarily that the rules don't support it. Its that you'd get bogged down with book keeping. I think the game would be fine from a balance perspective at most any point level, and assuming you made the map larger as well. But the real issue is keeping track of all that damage, shield tokens, charge tokens, etc... Unlike a game like 40k or Warmachine, even the most basic unit in Xwing has multiple wounds and tokens to keep track of.

I think once you're past 15 or so ships per side you become a little too unwieldy, definitely for competitive play anyway.

That said, I think you could definitely have Xwing function at 400-600 points as a viable tournament game and larger scale dogfights I think would add some good dynamics. Anything beyond that would take too long and be best for a funzies game in the basement.

Scenarios also are a must for a larger game too. You need a goal beyond simply killing each other. Something involving escorting a shuttle to the other side of the map, stealing some plans from a space station, escaping a blockade, etc...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/27 04:30:34


Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

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 ingtaer wrote:
Not being able to smash littler ships is an idea (though it makes the GR-75 mostly pointless) but the only close to successful way we have had to make them playable is to play on a 12'x6' table, which allows for some room to maneuver and limits the middle of the table pile up that Peregrine describes above. Problems with that though are pretty evident.


The problem with a large table is that splitting up your forces is a poor strategy and so you almost inevitably end up with a giant blob in the middle of a roughly 3x3 space on the table and a whole lot of empty space that might as well not exist. It may take a turn or two longer for the blob to happen, as all of the ships converge on that spot, but with such short ranges relative to the table size not much is going to be happening on those early turns besides moving everything back into a 3x3 area.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/27 07:13:39


There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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 Peregrine wrote:
 ingtaer wrote:
Not being able to smash littler ships is an idea (though it makes the GR-75 mostly pointless) but the only close to successful way we have had to make them playable is to play on a 12'x6' table, which allows for some room to maneuver and limits the middle of the table pile up that Peregrine describes above. Problems with that though are pretty evident.


The problem with a large table is that splitting up your forces is a poor strategy and so you almost inevitably end up with a giant blob in the middle of a roughly 3x3 space on the table and a whole lot of empty space that might as well not exist. It may take a turn or two longer for the blob to happen, as all of the ships converge on that spot, but with such short ranges relative to the table size not much is going to be happening on those early turns besides moving everything back into a 3x3 area.


That doesnt match my experiences, I wonder if people locally tend to take more AOE stuff than you see?

The mini campaign that came with the CROC was alot of fun, but I really hope FFG never try to make competative Epic. The balance of the game changes so much in bigger games that it would require alot more errata/playtesting/angst and I personally would rather keep it for fun. Though running V1 Zuckuss on the CROC is always amusing.


On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
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Outflanking

 Peregrine wrote:
 ingtaer wrote:
Not being able to smash littler ships is an idea (though it makes the GR-75 mostly pointless) but the only close to successful way we have had to make them playable is to play on a 12'x6' table, which allows for some room to maneuver and limits the middle of the table pile up that Peregrine describes above. Problems with that though are pretty evident.


The problem with a large table is that splitting up your forces is a poor strategy and so you almost inevitably end up with a giant blob in the middle of a roughly 3x3 space on the table and a whole lot of empty space that might as well not exist. It may take a turn or two longer for the blob to happen, as all of the ships converge on that spot, but with such short ranges relative to the table size not much is going to be happening on those early turns besides moving everything back into a 3x3 area.


Converging into one area is a remarkably poor strategy when the scenario objectives are spread out across the board.

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A: A Maniraptor 
   
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But what we are missing is that 2.0 is a huge reboot with new rules and the likes. There is nothing to say they won't fix everything by making epic a completely new mode with new rules.

Not saying they will but what would you guys do to fix it? You keep telling me problems but arn't suggesting many ways we could make it work
   
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Mississippi

The rules for Epic intimidated me, that was one reason that I never really put my Raider on the board, and only used the tie carriers a couple of times.

The Raider and Tantive in are in a really weird position - they’re too big for X-Wing and too small for Armada. It would be nice if they worked on a system where they could be the main focus (fighting each other) and then find a way to work in X-wing support, maybe a little streamlined from regular X-Wing (like maybe 3 fighters to a stand, move/shoot as 1).

Right now, it feels like they had to nerf the big ships down so they wouldn’t dominate an X-wing game too much, which leaves them feeling fragile.

It never ends well 
   
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So something like Adeptus Titanicus

Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

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 lolman1c wrote:
But what we are missing is that 2.0 is a huge reboot with new rules and the likes. There is nothing to say they won't fix everything by making epic a completely new mode with new rules.

Not saying they will but what would you guys do to fix it? You keep telling me problems but arn't suggesting many ways we could make it work



Unfortunately that's because fixing it is really, really hard and requires a rewrite. I know this is doing what you have decried in your post but lets take for example the no squishing smaller ships and add it to the rules.
So how does this work? Like a normal bump? If so do you generate full energy for completing the maneuver or not? If so then I will just park a TIE/ln in front of my raider and use it as a range 5 bunker, if not then I will just park a TIE/ln in front of my opponents raider and they can have a 400pt brick that doesn't do anything all game. Our you change how the energy gaining mechanic works but on small tables your epic ship could be off the board in three turns of fast movement, especially as their turning circle is massive.
Lets say instead that you move an epic ship onto littler ones and it forces the little ones out of the way (its pretty thematic after all), so hows that going to work? The epic bases have the footprint of 10-12 small bases so can completely cover whole squadrons of small ships so where are they going to go and how? Closest edge of the epic base? Its going to be hard to determine exactly where that is whilst keeping the ship to its relative bearing but then what if there are multiple ships in the same aspect? Do they conga line up the table? What about rocks? Table edges? other epic ships? In a game where 5 degrees can mean you are in arc or out imagine how many arguments that will cause at a tourney. How about if we get littler ships to keep their momentum so they move forward an equivalent amount along their line of travel (also thematic) well I just put my CROC behind a Shadowcaster which was at range 4 of the enemy, now with the movement of both its at range 2...

Which of these solutions is best to keep the game flowing and be fair (I am sure there are others as well)? That is just one issue now imagine having to do that for the entire game in order to make it tourney viable, its just too hard and I don't see the devs putting in that sort of effort especially when there are still two entirely new factions to release and balance. Now thankfully X-Wings player base is generally very chilled out and you tend not to get the gamesmanship that we see elsewhere but the rules have to be written tightly or we will start seeing that sort of behaviour. Personally I say keep it for fun only as with a like minded group of people its a bit of a giggle and if anyone starts trying to be TFG, well the raider is long and pointy...

On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
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Huge Hierodule






Outflanking

 ingtaer wrote:
 lolman1c wrote:
But what we are missing is that 2.0 is a huge reboot with new rules and the likes. There is nothing to say they won't fix everything by making epic a completely new mode with new rules.

Not saying they will but what would you guys do to fix it? You keep telling me problems but arn't suggesting many ways we could make it work



Unfortunately that's because fixing it is really, really hard and requires a rewrite. I know this is doing what you have decried in your post but lets take for example the no squishing smaller ships and add it to the rules.
So how does this work? Like a normal bump? If so do you generate full energy for completing the maneuver or not? If so then I will just park a TIE/ln in front of my raider and use it as a range 5 bunker, if not then I will just park a TIE/ln in front of my opponents raider and they can have a 400pt brick that doesn't do anything all game. Our you change how the energy gaining mechanic works but on small tables your epic ship could be off the board in three turns of fast movement, especially as their turning circle is massive.
Lets say instead that you move an epic ship onto littler ones and it forces the little ones out of the way (its pretty thematic after all), so hows that going to work? The epic bases have the footprint of 10-12 small bases so can completely cover whole squadrons of small ships so where are they going to go and how? Closest edge of the epic base? Its going to be hard to determine exactly where that is whilst keeping the ship to its relative bearing but then what if there are multiple ships in the same aspect? Do they conga line up the table? What about rocks? Table edges? other epic ships? In a game where 5 degrees can mean you are in arc or out imagine how many arguments that will cause at a tourney. How about if we get littler ships to keep their momentum so they move forward an equivalent amount along their line of travel (also thematic) well I just put my CROC behind a Shadowcaster which was at range 4 of the enemy, now with the movement of both its at range 2...

Which of these solutions is best to keep the game flowing and be fair (I am sure there are others as well)? That is just one issue now imagine having to do that for the entire game in order to make it tourney viable, its just too hard and I don't see the devs putting in that sort of effort especially when there are still two entirely new factions to release and balance. Now thankfully X-Wings player base is generally very chilled out and you tend not to get the gamesmanship that we see elsewhere but the rules have to be written tightly or we will start seeing that sort of behaviour. Personally I say keep it for fun only as with a like minded group of people its a bit of a giggle and if anyone starts trying to be TFG, well the raider is long and pointy...


For bumpin,g use Armada Rules. The player who did not overlap chooses where the fighters go.

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Doesn't really work in x-wing that relies on arcs though, so my opponent overlaps a pile of both of our ships so I place all of his with their arcs facing into the void (or the ships on rocks) whilst mine all get nice juicy range 1 shots.

It is a nice and simple solution but can you see that flying?

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Outflanking

Consider it motivation not to bunch up.

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A: A Maniraptor 
   
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Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

There are ways around that. For example the rule could say,

If an Epic Ship would end its movement on a non-epic ship. Each non-Epic ship landed on must immediately perform a maneuver on its dial that would move that ship out from under the Epic ship's landing space. Treat the chosen maneuver as Red.

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 Grey Templar wrote:
There are ways around that. For example the rule could say,

If an Epic Ship would end its movement on a non-epic ship. Each non-Epic ship landed on must immediately perform a maneuver on its dial that would move that ship out from under the Epic ship's landing space. Treat the chosen maneuver as Red.


That could be doable, just have to allow it double stress ships if applicable.

Been thinking my way through this a little more and wonder if the whole energy thing is actually required in 2.0. As energy is used to fire weapons and activate some special effects I wonder how much of these could be replaced with charge tokes instead? I am thinking along the lines of allowing each hardpoint to fire once per turn (off the top of my head the CR-90 and Raider both have 3 hardpoints, the CROC and Gozanti have one and the GR-75 has none?) and any other effects that currently require energy could instead be given charges that regenerate or not as required. By doing this I am thinking that the effectiveness of an epic ship is no longer tied to the speed it moves and instead it just becomes a normal ship. So bumping could then be done as normal. I appreciate that it would make the two combat chassis much more deadly but isn't that the point of them? Costs could then be adjusted as required. The other main issue with Epic ships is their durability, this should already be some what improved in v2 as a lot of the excessive red dice creep has already been nuked, but this could also be improved by simply increasing hull/shields or maybe by giving a reinforce token per section if the ship fully completes a maneuver.

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 lolman1c wrote:
You keep telling me problems but arn't suggesting many ways we could make it work


I keep telling you problems without solutions because there is no way to make it work. X-Wing doesn't scale up to the size of Epic very well, and to change this you'd have to create an entirely new game. Let Epic die. Now that Armada exists there's just no reason to have an awkward conversion of X-Wing for capital ship combat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 ingtaer wrote:
That doesnt match my experiences, I wonder if people locally tend to take more AOE stuff than you see?


Possibly. The last time I made the mistake of trying to play Epic it was before trajectory simulator was a thing. Though I'm not sure that an increased presence of bombs is really a solution to make a good game...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Converging into one area is a remarkably poor strategy when the scenario objectives are spread out across the board.


That sounds good in theory, but you're talking about objectives that have to overcome the fact that converging is an utterly dominant strategy outside of those objectives. Doing anything other than blobbing up is an instant game loss, so how do you make objectives that are sufficiently valuable to offset the sheer kill:death ratio imbalance? And how do you do it without spacing things out too much and turning the game into a bunch of separate fights on different parts of the table, none of them really interacting with each other? It's a very delicate balance to maintain, and I'm not convinced that it's possible at all.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/08/28 09:45:21


There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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Personally, I quite liked how the presence of the huge ships affected maneuvering. I also think its pretty important to play Epic on the 3x6 the long way. I think it could really use 4x6 but I don't have the mats for it.
   
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Mississippi

 Flinty wrote:
So something like Adeptus Titanicus


More like Renegade Knights. I’d like to see a straight up duels between the Epic ships be fun and viable, with or without star fighter support. (Armada is the Adeptus Titanicus/Epic of Star Wars).

Changing Energy to Charge tokens seems like a good change to make, and I would like to see the “crush fighters” changed. Besides bumping, the ships are big enough you could treat them like moving obstacles, allowing smaller ships to overlap the base, but block firing and risking taking damage. Of course, you’d either have to let the fighter get carried along when the bigger ship moves or “counter-move” overlapping fighters (I prefer the latter, but could get tedious).

It never ends well 
   
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I mean most gaming shops have larger board for warhammer games. It wouldn't be out of this world to think that these boards could also be used for xwing (ground attacks or just but two star matts down for a larger space to play). It seems like a lot of the problems wuth x wing could be split into have two halfs of s board. 1 half dedicated to epic ships and the other half dedicated to smaler fights with big ships probably able to move between the two. Then the winner of the big fight might be able to aid the small fighting in some way.
   
 
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