THE CASE FOR X-WING 2.5 - Discussing which rules to use in the future of X-wing

[@Oli186]

It's really nice to hear a balanced view on the good the bad and the ugly, I'm hopeful that we can give a game back to the community that they can enjoy!

[@robertomendeztorres]

I believe that the main issue with scenario play was that it should have been introduced as more of a beta, a work in progress, earlier in the development process. They were released as the "new way to play tournaments, and right from the get go there was huge problems with scoring, when you could score objectives right from Round 1. Still today, I think that you score too many points from objectives, in the overall of the game, and that leads to games lasting way too few Rounds. Changing scoring of the scenarios with more objectives is something I think could be checked, making it so that players score a point if they hold objectives, and 1 more to the player that has more objectives than their opponent (instead of scoring 1 per point). On top of that, I'm sure that there is space to create new scenarios that promote different strategies than simply "bring more ships to the table", for example there could be scenarios where each player has some points in their deployment zone that their opponent can destroy to score points (so do you defend, attack, or split your forces?), or some where each player is escorting a ship, gaining points if it reaches certain places in the board, but you are also trying to prevent your opponent from doing so (then you would promote bombs and ion). I'm sure that there are many more ideas that could be tested. Having a larger pool of scenarios that rotate in and out would be awesome. Also there could be small iterations of existing ones, even if it is just changing the deployment, instead of having two of the edges of the table, you could deploy in opposing corners, or even have each player deploy in two opposing edges, having to split their list (try to merge your forces and destroy one of the opponent's halves, before he does the same to you).

[@HairyNick]

Well said. Agreed on all points.

[@markmittelbach7975]

The scenarios put out weren't fully baked, and looking at the problems they had is important, but so is looking at what they were trying to do and where they succeeded. Where they succeeded is that it made ships have to go places and do things, and it made very round matter. Too few rounds was a problem in 2.5, but at the end of 2.0 in tournaments too many games would have a lot of rounds would happen, but nothing would happen in most of those rounds. Toilet bowling, corner camping, running from engagements. Where they were trying to get was rewarding being able to do different types of things that aren't just killing your opponent's ships but killing your opponent's ships was still useful, and to increase variety because of having different goal. But that didn't actually work out because the best way to win was pretty boring and samey, and there wasn't much enjoyable variety.

[@jobearesto9746]

Flippin love x wing talk... some good stuff in this video. I agree you can disagree with the way in game is played without being a negative nelly. I have not played competition since co-vid. Just some causal play. love the format of the video. Long live x-wing

[@HrClaims]

When friendly ships bump, they should take a strain instead of taking damage. I think shooting at range 0 is OK (not sure completely...) but the red-focus is not OK. It is not punishing enough. interesting that you like ROAD. I was not initially against it and went with it in 2.5. But recently I played a 2.0 game (haven't in years) and it was so good to not roll the dice for that! It made the game much more fluid.

[@HairyNick]

Yeah strain on friendly bumps is an interesting idea! In the 2.0 game you played, was it an i6 mirror? Cause that's when the system really brings the feel bads. It's those rare but usually once-per-tournament matches that really bring out the NPEs.

[@HrClaims]

@@HairyNick yes it was i6 mirror! We did 2 games with each time we had Midnight in Tie Fighter vs Darth Vador.

[@PsychJ7]

Great vid! I certainly of the opinion that scenarios need to be further expanded on to help facilitate more dogfight play instead of leading away from it. Honestly the Armada scenarios have a great library of options that can be translated for xwing to really push that without relying on scenario points. There are scenarios that can assist with offense for players that control that space or make a particular ship a designated target increasing it's points value. These would be options to the game that can enhance the experience and should be part of a tourney rotation even if for a season. I would like to give ROBD a try to see how that plays giving yourself full information about initiative.. Can't wait to see further expansion on the topic of hero wing.

[@Tsotanga2]

Love the rule vids. On ROAD, I agree with you that it opens up the decision/flight path space, but clearly the 2.0 folks enjoyed more perfect information. Offering some kind of game mechanic (maybe an objective variant) that allows you to win initiative would be a neat way to split the difference - even if it just affects a single ship while it holds an objective area (I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND, ANAKIN) or maintains a special token. I was an old-school Halo 2 kid and loved the optional tactical struggle over power weapons in the middle of the map. You didn't have to care about grabbing sniper/overshield, but if you fought and won those objectives, it could change the way you play. I'd love to see X-wing objective maps explore this type of thing, maybe mario-cart style power-ups to increase/recharge shields or a way to add a die to the next attack. Another idea regarding objective game types would be 'active' obstacles, neutral entities that would attack ships directly. A big neutral pirate station that care fire at 4 range in the center of the map. Could get points for destroying the station and now we get even more diversity in flight path decisions similar to the stuff you're talking about with ROAD. You could get a nifty little flank on the next turn, but you'll have to withstand an attack from the pirate station with no evade. Other ideas could include global effects that affect all ships. Imagine environmental hazards that ionize or stress all ships during a round - could even be triggered by claiming an optional objective. Maybe if you blow up the pirate station, the debris explosion causes all ships to take a stress to evade colliding with debris. It feels like there's just this enormous play sandbox of possibilities that the XWA can play in and I hope they use objective gameplay as a way to 'salvage' some of the cool stuff we loved from former editions. Make a limited scenario that allows us to build ships that are outrageously OP like we did in 1E. Give us scenarios that allow us to gain initiative and limit perfect flight information more similar to 2E. If X-wing is ever going to successfully recombine the split communities, it truly seems possible thru variant objective play.

[@CaptBojangles]

Agree on all points. I think the loadout point system warrants a bit more talk; honestly once I got used to it, its probably my favorite aspect of 2.5. I really like the idea of getting to pick ships/names/pilots, then sort out upgrades later. However, I also really like granularity of 2.0's points... "hey, if i drop Luke's proton torpedoes, i can upgrade this generic Rz-1 up to Ahsoka!" Our local group has started playing both versions, and most people have started bringing a list for each format during open play nights; and we have a lot more engagement now.

[@HairyNick]

Yup. The granularity and player agency is the key elements I'm frustrated were taken out of the game.

[@rossthompson9711]

I like the idea of large ships being able to shoot small ships at range 0. Large ships always felt weak and it really sucks flying a large expensive ship into a swarm and your opponent is forcing bumps every turn.

[@danteunknown2108]

Big agree on a ton of points. I do have some thoughts. As you pointed out the AMG edition scenario are very gamified, often trying really hard to apply ground based objectives to a space game. The problem imho is scale. When it comes to an objective like “holding ground/airspace” it makes no sense to have to control a corner of the board, it would make more sense to control the *whole* board or at least half of it as a sector, which leaves you right back at a straight dogfight anyway, ruining the whole effect. If a scenario can be made to scale of the game as much as thematically, then I think it will succeed Bumping I think got a bad rap for it’s problems but never got it’s roses for it’s successes. The original rule was simple to resolve, had impact that could be quantified, but most importantly created asymmetrical interplay that was supposed to keep aces in check while giving generics a role. That was sacrificed with frankly a ham fisted crayon by just applying a series of penalties and negations of interaction just to get rid of an exploit which was self blocking for benefit which even I admit I abused, and fortresses which was a niche problem. So I say we backup and look at addressing the two exploits, and not losing the interplay. For this I propose adapting a rule from Blood Red Skies called “overshoot”. In BRS when a plane would overlap, instead of stopping short like in X-wing it keeps moving forward until it passes and is bases to base on the other side. That alone solves the problem of the corner fortress strat because the ships will slowly leapfrog into the center by constant overshooting. It solves the shooting a bumped enemy because you will just be passed them anyway so it’s not even in arc. It does have one Achilles heel and that’s exploiting it to go faster by trying to leapfrog so maybe it needs some modification in the form of your opponent deciding whether you overshoot or undershoot, or maybe a die decides, and that would prevent to a large degree how exploitable it would be without interfering with the original interplay of lower ships causing interference as their benefit. About ROAD, I feel it needs to be said that the original design is intended that both players know everything before the planning and changes to that premise are ill conceived. Perfect information was the point by intent. This last year I got to talk to Jay Little and hear him lecture about games design and it’s very core to his design philosophy. I-know-what-you-know-what-I-know, make plans, see results. That’s the game loop and that’s what gave it that chess like feel in my opinion. I understand your opinion that it can be unique and even intriguing to consider two configurations of board state progression, that was my conclusion after giving it a fair chance as well. However I don’t agree that’s a good thing. I agree with those who point out that when ROAD triggers in a game it either becomes best safest hedged bet guess, or craziest insane risk, but definitely not the best plan, and certainly also a trap of analysis paralysis. I do think ROB’D preserves the core game design philosophy but as you point out it stops the player from knowing what happens in the *next* round which is at least a balancing assist to the Ace specific core problem. And I’m very much in favor of keeping the core design while targeting the specific problem.

[@whittaker007]

Some great points Nick, and I agree with you for the most part. Objectives: Objectives were a positive addition to the game, and I disagree that they took anything away from competitive play in favour of RNG. They fundamentally changed the game, so that you need to understand where your points are going to come from in a given match and drive home the need to execute your plan and adapt to the objective situation. Even if you decide to ignore the objectives yourself and go for a kill list, you need to have a plan for which enemy ships to target and your thresholds for letting them dominate the objectives. High level objective play is still high skill X-Wing, it's just a different set of skills than straight up dogfighting. I do agree with you on the choices of scenario missions being not the most thematic, though it's really only the picking up of crates that's a thematic disconnect for me. I think the area control, tagging and dogfighting ones are fine. I would like to see the addition of some more classic scenario play and asymmetric missions. For example: Escort mission (one side needs to protect an NPC ship and have it escape the opponent's board edge, while the other side tries to destroy it), Ambush (one side starts with some ships in reserve which appear at a later turn), High Value Target: one ship on each side is worth double points. Stuff like that. Heck, maybe even have different objectives per player so you can each earn bonus points for doing different things? Maybe some missions that involve Epic ships as centrepieces with special rules and interactions? Bumping: I'd prefer a simple, single bumping rule that affects all ships the same way. I think it could be as simple as taking a strain and losing your action, no range 0 shots (unless you have a range 0 weapon). A strain makes you more vulnerable to an attack, so it is a disincentive for swarms to bump for position, but not as punishing as taking a damage. I think red focus actions are slightly problematic as they allow many abilities and weapons to trigger from gaining the focus. ROAD: Really a non-issue. It's a perfectly fine way to do things. But maybe we could make initiative determination a randomised part of setup? Maybe sometimes it's ROAD, sometimes ROBD, sometimes randomly determined at the start of the match, sometimes Alternating. Maybe an asymmetrical mission works best if one side always has the initiative? Or maybe each player chooses a subset of missions that their squad is best at, and randomly determine the player with initiative, who then has to pick one of their opponent's missions to play?

[@petervonbleichert9688]

Thanks for doing this

[@joehendrson3815]

love it Nick. I want dog fights back as main format and harpoon missels back.lol

[@HairyNick]

Well I certainly agree with half of that statement! :p

[@fieldmarshall]

Can you do more XWA videos? I would love to see your take on the new rules for wings and huge ships. Are there any ships you see coming out of the junkyard? Any lists that look good on the XWA points beta?

[@VictorKolbe]

YESSS this is the video I was waiting for!

[@HairyNick]

Thankyou. :)

[@Anondod]

When discussing whether a certain change to the rules increases or reduces the skill level required to be successful at the game, I think it's also important to discuss whether the skills required are ones you think it's interesting to put focus on. As an example, I generally don't enjoy playing 18XX games because they usually require you to do a lot of mental arithmetic where you plan out your spending for the turn. Being good at that is an important skill for playing (most of) those games well, and I just find that boring. I like other types of games that have similar elements (spatial planning, stock markets etc), but those particular games require a skill I just don't want in my I'm-doing-this-for-fun activities. Some people do, and more power to them. I think that's the kind of thinking you need to do around the skills needed for X-Wing. What complicates this regarding bumps is that I think there are two main types of bumps: Surprise enemy maneuvers, and mistakes. But I'll try to get into it anyway. Starting with mistakes, I think this is the main source of feel-bad experiences. You thought the movement you were making would put you in one spot, but it moved you just a little too far or a little too short, and now you can't shoot and maybe your favorite ship is out of action, perhaps even get destroyed because of this. If that happens because you misjudged a distance by a fraction of a centimeter, that's rarely going to feel great. If you bump because your opponent made a maneuver you hadn't expected, that doesn't have the same feel-bad result. OTOH, if they have made you believe they were going to do something else than what they're doing, they should have other advantages regarding position. Fundamentally, how harshly bumping should be punished (if at all) depends on how much weight you want to put on the skills required to avoid it, or to cause advantageous bumps for your own side. As X-Wing is at its core a game about spatial positioning, doing that well should be a skill that's premiered... but should making judgements of a centimeter this way or that be the key part there? I'm honestly not sure. To me, bumping has always felt like a necessary rules kludge that became a much more important part of the game than it was ever intended to be. Because we're playing the game with physical miniatures on a 2D surface, we need to handle the situation when one plastic ship moves in a way that would make it overlap another plastic ship in a way the miniatures can't handle. But the way this became a core part of the tactics of the game does not feel like it fits with the theme or like it promotes fun gameplay. The sticky issue is that the rules can't distinguish between intentional, exploitative bumping (like the old infamous corner castles), bumps caused by intentional actions by your opponent, and simple mistakes, and I don't think it's possible to create those distinctions without a lot of unnecessary rules overhead and the creation of grey zone corner cases that will create more problems than they solve. So we're stuck trying to manage a situation where bumping is going to happen and it needs to have consequences, but we don't want those consequences to be so harsh that they dominate the game, while (at least from my perspective) simultaneously wanting to avoid making bumping a key part of tactical play.

[@HairyNick]

You're right, I do not think the game could realistically introduce mechanics to differentiate between accidental and intentional bumping, nor do I think it's wise to pursue that kind of mechanic. Having said that, I think there are strong options that still punish fortressing and dont drawback from swarm bumping TOO much (one other commenter suggested something like giving the ships strain tokens, which I like a lot!). I think you really hit the nail on the head in that flying is so fundamental to the game, that consiquences for accidentally flying poorly should be impactful. It sucks and it leads to feel bads, but does that mean people who are bad at FPSs should all play with auto-aim mechanics? Should people who are aweful at reading opponents bluffs in poker just get to look at a random card each round? These are fundamental core pieces of these games identity, and the best area to reward higher level play. I'm not going to tell new players to "git gud", but I certainly won't suggest we warp the game so high level play suffers for the sake of the more casual crowd.

[@Anondod]

@@HairyNick Strain for bumping seems like a good option to me. I guess I'm just leaning more towards rewarind players for flying well without necessarily punishing players (as much) for flying badly, if that makes sense.

[@Squirl513]

Cant really complain about any of your logic. Just gonna drop in my feels. The damage on friendly bumps made me completely write off running swarms. Losing a damage on 3 tie fighters in one turn during activation was not a positive play experience. If they want to keep the 20 point list building then every faction needs access to a 1 point ship. If my squad lands at 19, I need to rework the squad or hand points to my opponent every game. Thanks for the content. Looking forward to more. 👍

[@HairyNick]

Yup, whatever method of punishing fortressing needs to avoid this side effect. Swarming is a legit strategy that didn't deserve this unintended nerf. Deficit scoring needs to be removed from the game. There isn't a solid reason to keep it in the game, in my opinion. Without it 1 point ships won't be a huge nessesity, but I do agree some should exist (not all factions though, imo). Maybe a Vulte pilot, a scum Z95 pirate, a torrent fighter, could be good for the game! Even if there had to be further limits placed on them (say max 3 1 pointers per squad or something like that).

[@Squirl513]

@HairyNick if the 1 point ship were unique there would be no worries about spamming them. Thanks for considering my comment.

[@debadwolf9727]

I don't like the way you build your list in 2.5. However I do like how your list are bigger (more ships) in 2.5. I was looking forward to scenarios. Then scenarios came out. Agree that some do not feel like combat scenarios. Looking forward to seeing what XWA comes out with.

[@johnvrolijk2582]

I liked the missions of tbe first edition. Plus the scenario packs. Siege of Coruscant, the battle of yavin and the endor battle.

[@HairyNick]

Yeah those are excellent. I think what needs to happen is a healthy medium between fun thematic missions, and something that applies to competative play.

[@TheSpaceNinjaPirate]

One of the key factors of the scenarios is that it led to a significant contraction in how many lists were considered "viable" for the game. Gone were the days of anywhere from 2 to 8 ship lists. Now everything had to essentially be 4, 5, or 6, with few exceptions. This severely reduced any form of list creativity and sucked a lot of the fun out of it for me. It didn't help that AMG didn't run the 2.5 ruleset as an open beta, if they had, they wouldn't have driven away quite so many players so suddenly and given them time to get things right.

[@HairyNick]

Yeah good point. The shift to 2.0 basically nuked 2 ship builds, but man I miss swarms...

[@mandomerlie1997]

Thanks Nick! Love the video. I guess I’m going to have to try ROAD now 😂. My whole gaming group dissolved after the first 2.5 tournament but I’ll have find someone to play with ROAD because you made it sound awesome. Thanks again!

[@johnvrolijk2582]

What about the bumping with huge ships also applying to large ships?

[@HairyNick]

I'm not sure I understand. What were you thinking should happen with huge ships? (Keep in mind huge ships aren't a core part of the competative main format so we can play it a little more loose with their mechanics).

[@johnvrolijk2582]

Bumping a huge ship results in damage for the smaller ships depending on the speed of the huge ship. This could be applied in basic rules for Large ships to give them a stronger stands against small ships bumping in swarms or solo small ships.

[@mazarmi]

I haven’t played in over a year but have a ship ton of it and want to start playing again, can anyone tell me what they are using to build a squad now ? Thank you in advance

[@HairyNick]

Yet Another Squad Builder is still the best list builder/ organizer imo. Btw it doesn't bother me, but youtube flagged your comment due to langauge. Just means I need to manually approve it. So long as you're not being aggressive I don't mind, but just be aware it makes the comment invisible for afew days. :)

[@Wh0isTh3D0ct0r]

My biggest problem with X-Wing has nothing to do with what rules are being used. It's that there's simply too much content to entice anyone new to jump into the game, and all the veteran players jumped ship prior to COVID. Combined with the fact that Star Wars has fallen from grace in many people's eyes over the last few years, there's simply no one in my area who is interested in meeting up to play the game. And I don't have the time available in my life right now to be the game ambassador in this area like I used to be.

[@HairyNick]

I also don't really have a local crowd. This is why I've pivoted to using Discord and playing games on TTS. If you're ever interested in running some games there are some great servers with very active LFG channels. :) Not to try and invalidate you're feelings on it, but I will say "this game has way too much content" has never been something that causes me to avoid getting into a new system. Quite the opposite, in fact.

[@petergarrod-martin2732]

I'm really glad you're talking about this and I think this is a really important discussion to have as a community. Personally I don't enjoy any of the changes that AMG made and I say that as a person who is actively playing 2.5 every week because that is what my local group is playing and I don't want the game to die but I would rather play 2.0 or even maybe 1.0 than 2.5. Personally I find the bumping rules have more downsides than upsides. I can see why some people like ROAD but personally I would rather lose the bid every time (as I usually did in 1.0 and 2.0) than have ROAD. ROBD does sound better though I haven't tried it yet. I just find that it slows the dial decisions down, as you said it is interesting to not know who moves first but I find it makes people play to try to hedge more because it can really punish you if you move in the wrong order, especially combined with red focus after bumping. I find a lot of people purposefully slamming into opponents ships to try to get the red action rather than risking being out of position or risking a punishing self bump. I'm in it for the long haul but I do hope we eventually get back to the x-wing that I love, something with at least the ethos of 2.0. (Also as a side note, I don't play unlimited but I think your videos on it are great)

[@michaelwray1097]

Excellent video, I am very interested by your insights here. Plus I'm always happy to see a ROAD enjoyer. I've played every system of X-wing since 2017, and I've taught so many friends to play X-Wing. In my opinion 2.5 is the best system X-Wing has had for new players *and* skilled players, It has both simplified it and made it more complex in interesting different areas