Protective Locks Against Jam Is Bad Game Design

I hope I'm in the right place for this. I know that a rules update is in the works and would like to try to get this thought in front of someone involved such that whether or not it is implemented, it is at least considered.

I believe that the interaction of taking a lock at the beginning of the game to prevent jamming is altogether bad game design. In my observation it is a simple gate check with no cost and requiring no more skill than just remembering to do it. In return, an entire game mechanic that the opposing player built around and/or payed for is functionally disabled for all but the highest initiative pilots.

Any pilot activating before the ship it wishes to jam must functionally jam itself for a turn (by spending its action to do nothing) in order to be able to jam at any other point in the game, and it must do this for each enemy ship. This is even worse in the case of abilities or upgrades like False Transponder Codes or Interference Array that have a limited number of uses, as they simply become unusable. This interaction's balance of cost (none) to availability (almost universal) to effectiveness (see above) gives such free value that it results in a version of the same question being asked at the beginning of nearly every game: "Does your list have jam?" In most competitive game design spaces something this pervasive would be designated meta-warping and would require fixing.



So how should we fix it? I've thought about the answer to this for a while. I once thought I had the perfect solution, but through conversation I have discovered it not to be quite as airtight as I first believed. Still, I think it's a good starting point.

The jam rules read:

"A ship is jammed if it has at least one jam token. Jam tokens are circular, orange tokens. When a ship becomes jammed, the player whose effect caused the ship to gain the jam token chooses for the ship to either remove one of its green tokens or break one of its locks. If either effect is resolved, it removes the jam token. If the ship does not have any green tokens or is not maintaining any locks, it remains jammed."

My original idea was to simply make this portion of the effect optional so that the 3rd sentence reads:

"When a ship becomes jammed, the player whose effect caused the ship to gain the jam token may choose for the ship to either remove one of its green tokens or break one of its locks." The last sentence would be removed.

This way, a lower initiative ship can choose not to break an existing lock when jamming. The next time the jammed ship would gain a green token or take a lock, the regular effect of the jam token would break it like normal, allowing the jam to be used as intended.

However, the issue that arose in conversation is that this language would allow the TIE/wi Whisper, most notorious wielder of jam, to jam itself while retaining any tokens or locks acquired before the jam token. This is probably not an insignificant consequence as it would, in most situations, give the chassis an extra evade die to roll.



At the moment I see 2 potential solutions to this. The first is to split the rules language into something like:

"When a ship becomes jammed, if the player whose effect caused the ship to gain the jam token owns that ship, that player chooses for the ship to either remove one of its green tokens or break one of its locks. If the player whose effect caused the ship to gain the jam token does not own that ship, that player may choose for the ship to either remove one of its green tokens or break one of its locks. If any effect is resolved, it removes the jam token."

This solution is not as elegant as before. Repeating the similar sentence works, but feels messier to read. Perhaps the language can be cleaned up while retaining the meaning. As for the mechanics, similar functions already exist in tractoring, where the effect is applied differently depending on whether it is done by the ship's player or their opponent. With this approach, the effect of the fix is retained for most jamming cases, while preventing the TIE/wi from taking undue advantage of the new mechanic. It is still possible, however, that a savvy player with a high initiative TIE/wi could jam a lower initiative ship in the attack arc and choose not to apply the token's effect in order to reap the benefits of higher agility similar to the way a Nantex with Gravitic Deflection might benefit from a tractoring a nearby enemy. If that proves to be still too consistent, then I'm lead to the 2nd approach.

The 2nd approach would be to apply the fix as is and re-balance the TIE/wi as necessary. If the TIE/wi could retain a token while staying jammed, it would have a more consistent defense while remaining modded. But, that effect still comes at the opportunity cost of not jamming opponents. Play testing could reveal how powerful that effect truly is, and in the case that it is too much so, could suggest how to re-balance the chassis with that in mind. It's possible that with some tweaking, the ship remains reasonable.



Both of these solutions would obviously require play testing and probably further tweaking to figure out what is most viable. Perhaps the language needs to be split for friendly vs. enemy ships AND the TIE/wi would need to be adjusted. Perhaps there is an even better option that is nothing I've suggested. I welcome other solutions. Regardless, this interaction should not exist, and as such I hope that it can be addressed. If you made it all the way through, thank you for reading.

I agree that locking rocks only to avoid jam is kind of lame/feels like wonky design as is, but perhaps there’s a way to invert that whole notion:

The first sentence under lock reads: Ships can lock to use their computer to acquire targeting data on environmental hazards or other ships.

That actually sounds thematically rich and begs for their to be strategic reasons for locking obstacles other than this found anti-jam thing we all do.

Locking obstacle benefits could include one or more of the following:

-While making an attack that is obstructed by an obstacle they have locked, the attacker may spend the lock to force the defender to reroll all bonus dice granted by the obstruction..

-While defending against an attack obstructed by an obstacle they have locked, the defender may spend their lock to reroll all of the bonus dice granted by the obstruction

-While moving through or overlapping an obstacle they have locked, a ship may spend the lock to reroll any HIT result for the obstacles negative effect (read: a crit can’t be rerolled, and for gas clouds, it would be written to allow the reroll hit thing to happen before the gas cloud breaks it)

-Maybe ships overlapping obstacles they have locked, COULD spend the lock when they engage to make a primary attack when they engage, but they would gain a deplete token, and could not modify any dice during the attack (or something so its always a weak attack).

another possibility to consider is (with or without the above):

Maintaining scans on environmental hazards seems harder to do vs ships because ships have heat signatures, ions spewing out the engines etc.

So what if, under LOCK and JAM there are things that say:

(1) In the end phase, a ship must break all locks on obstacles that aren't in their front arc.

(2) When a ship becomes jammed, it FIRST breaks all locks on obstacles not in the jammed ship's front arc... then does all the things Jam already does (break a focus or a lock)

This could make the counter play less abusive and more sensical (its a temporary thing that wont protect you for long!)

I also agree that locking obstacles for the purpose of bypassing jam is lame. I lean more toward the first response with slightly tweaking the jam rules to not HAVE to take something off an enemy ship whenever jamming them but an obligatory loss of a green token or lock when a player jams their own ships. I'm currently playing a list with a TIE Whisper and a Xi Shuttle with Hondo Ohnaka on it so I do see that problem of playing against an ace like Soontir Fel or Fenn Rau that will just lock an obstacle and never move that lock for the rest of the game, making me have to either accept I can't jam that ace or if I have multiple sources of jam, close down that ace and throw on many jam tokens. I think its a little broken that high initiative ships, specifically aces that never rely on locks when attacking, can play against jam really well just by doing that simple action in round 1.

Locking a rock makes High initiative ships Compoletely immune to Jam.
and low initiative jam a totally useless action.
Its anooying and low skill. I hate the question at the start of the game "do you have anything that can jam?... yes? ... ok ill lock that rock with all my ships turn 1 and be immune for the rest of the game.
Being able to choose when to spend a jam Token to jam off any green would make it bearable.