SOUNDS great, but unfortunately we're generally expecting individual ships to go for $15 - 16 each, so a $10 set increase cost for $30 worth of ships probably won't happen. Y'all willing to pay $65 instead?

IG-58 said:

I guess not - I'd sooner spend that money on 'expansion' ships.

Hopefully the $40 is the 'suggested' retail price, and stores might knock it down a bit. Do you guys think they'll do that, to be competitive, or can we expect to be paying full 'cover price'?

I. J. Thompson said:

I'm confident that we'll see vendors selling for less than $40. I've found one site that sells for about $27 pre-order price, but when you add shipping it's $35, so almost the same. But hey, I'm willing to save $5 -- that's 1/3 the cost of a fighter, right? Some FFG games are also being sold on Amazon.com for less than FFG's listed price, so there is reason to have hope.

@IG-58, yeah, I know it's a little farfetched to expect $50 for 5 ships. Would I pay $65 for a 5-ship starter? Yeah, I think I would; I'd like to have duplicates of at least a few craft, and they'd be slightly discounted in the starter. Are they likely to hike the price up that much? Probably not.

I was thinking that including only 1 x-wing would reduce the excitement of scenarios, but I guess nothing is stopping them from including scenarios with more ships than are included in the starter -- it's been done before (like in Starship Battles).

I'd better start planning on buying the first wave of expansion fighters along with the starter.

IG-58 said:

Right after I posted the 2:3 ratio idea, this is exactly what I was thinking. We can't expect the starter to be too cheap when we consider a $15 fighter expansion. I think it more likely that they'll tweak gameplay to make the 2:1 ratio more even, rather than keep the balance as it is and include more fighters in the starter. Not my preference, but that's what I predict.

Would I pay $65 for a starter that included 5 ships instead of a $40 starter with three ships? I think so. I'm willing to put money in to buy expansion ships anyway, so there's no reason for me to not pay a little more for the starter, if it includes more ships.

I. J. Thompson said:

Not to rain on your parade... but weren't Dutch and Pops Y-wing pilots?   After the debaucle that was WOTCs Starship Battles I'm not hoping for much with this game.  I'd love to be pleasantly suprised though!

Oboewan said:

You're not raining on my parade. Yes they're Y-wing pilots, but the discussion was about using named characters as generic pilots. What they were flying in the film is besides the point, since pilots can be swapped between ships in this game, anyway.

I. J. Thompson said:

We hope so, at any rate. It's still up in the air since, as far as I'm aware, all the pilot cards specifically stated whether they pilot X-wings or TIE/ln Fighters, which may indicate that pilots are craft specific -- a very dark path for FFG to go down. Let's hope that is fixed in the final edition.

 Oh crap, really? I haven't looked at those cards in a while.

Yes, FFG, let's keep things open to the maximum customization possible!

Oboewan said:

Go look at the WWII version of this, every pilot has a name. And since this game will just be a spin off, we aren't going to have a squad built up for 20 X-wings, more like 3-7 of them on the board so its easy to have a bunch of named pilots and not run out of names. Same for Tie-fighters. Plus like you said, you don't care, so it shouldn't bother you when they add a bit more life to the actual game instead of generic spam stuff that eventually gets phased out by better pieces in the future.

plokoon9619 said:

Are you replying to Oboewan, or to me?

If me, I'm trying to puzzle out what you're saying, here. Why would having named pilots in the game bother me? I only said that having generic pilots doesn't bother me. I simply don't feel that the stats of the 'minor characters' could be varied enough to force players to have to differentiate between Ed, Bob, Roger, Siggi, Fernando, and Gort. And if they're only using movie stills on the cards, that really limits their options to how many different characters can make it into the game (I'm assuming the Wings of War cards don't use photographs of real WWII pilots).

But I've already seen that this is a hot-button issue for you, and it's really not for me, so I'm lettin' it go... I just wanted to clarify that I'm not some kind of "no unique characters in the game" weirdo. If this issue is so important to you, you should start a thread about it where FFG can see it, and take it under consideration!