4d agoedited 3d ago
Salvage Mission is far and away the most divisive scenario out of the existing 5. There are some players that like it, primarily for the unique list-building considerations that it requires. But the majority of players are frustrated by how much it restricts creative flying, how polarizing the advantage is if only 1 of the players has specced into Salvage (such as via a swarm list or crit-generating upgrades), and how boring it is to interact with as a scenario. All of these complaints have been highlighted recently due to the comparison to Ancient Knowledge, which is the scenario that XWA created and is well-beloved by the majority of players despite having a lot of similarities to Salvage Mission on the surface. Many people feel like Knowledge is what Salvage should've been, even going so far as to request removing Salvage entirely due to Knowledge filling such a similar role and feeling more interesting and fun to play. However, I do believe that Salvage Mission has enough unique aspects that it deserves to remain in the game, and with a few minor tweaks to its existing rules I think we can mitigate some of its frustrations, better balance the disparity for disadvantaged lists, give more agency to the ships that pick up crates, and add creative options at the players' disposal.
Suggestion #1
My first suggestion is the simplest, and aims to slightly reduce the heavy advantage that some lists are able to snowball with from the very start of the game, as well as fix a thematic discrepancy.
- Change the beginning of paragraph 4 of the "Scenario Action: [Tow]" section: "When a ship that is towing a supply cache is dealt a faceup damage card or is destroyed, the supply cache is jettisoned."
This simple change would make it so that ships only drop their supply cache if they take a crit after their shields have been depleted. As it is now, large ships with high health and shields, which you would expect should be synergistic with towing cargo like a big-rig, are actually some of the worst ships to pick up the objective due to their low agility making it exceptionally easy to accidentally let a crit sneak through and make them drop the crate as soon as it is picked up, even if the crit only hit their shields. But with this change, those large ships that typically have low agility but high shields would at least have a bit of a buffer before a crit would deal a faceup card and thus force them to drop the crate.
One of the other issues this solves is how overpowered crit-generating upgrades are if the match's scenario happens to be Salvage Mission. If a list has a few ways to consistently convert hits into crits, then they gain an almost insurmountable advantage due to reliably making their opponent drop crates as soon as they are picked up. With this change though, there would at least be a slight buffer in the early-game before those powerful abilities result in crates being dropped.
Additionally, this would give another type of ship a minor advantage within this scenario, which is sorely needed as only high-agility ships that have little incentive to reposition, or cheap ships that are not as valuable to waste shots on, are the only "good carriers" that exist, (which usually means that swarm archetypes benefit overwhelmingly from this scenario). Every other type of ship either relies on repositioning so doesn't want to carry, or has low agility so will drop the crate quickly. But with this change, ships with high-shields would be able to serve a niche role within this scenario as decent reliable carriers, allowing for a variety of lists to gain some much-needed versatility in effective strategies beyond just "shoot at enemy carriers and hope you get a random crit".
Along with all of these benefits, this simple change also fixes a thematic discrepancy that has never felt quite right. It has always been strange that a crit hitting shields resulted in a crate being dropped, as the whole purpose of shields is that they are meant to reduce the devastation of crits to the point that hits and crits are treated the same. But this core aspect of the game's systems and how it adds to diagetic immersion is disregarded within the existing rules of this one scenario, making it stand out as confusing and counter-intuitive. So changing the rule so that crates are only dropped when the crit deals a faceup damage card would fix this discrepancy and make a lot more sense given player expectations of how shields should function as a protective layer over the ship.
Suggestion #2 and #3
The final 2 suggestions go hand-in-hand, and if implemented would give players more agency with controlling the supply caches, as well as opening up the potential for creative tactics within a scenario that has typically felt far too restrictive.
- Change the beginning of paragraph 2 of the "Scenario Action: [Tow]" section: " At the beginning of a ship's activation, a ship may choose to jettison its supply cache."
- As well as changing the next sentence: "If it does, remove the supply cache from the ship's card, then that player places it in the play area at range 1 of their ship."
As it currently stands, I have never once seen a player intentionally choose to drop a supply cache. This is due to the choice only being allowed at the end of the ship's activation (which would allow no opportunity for reposition actions until the next turn), and because choosing to drop it still gives the opportunity for the opponent to place the crate in a location that favors themselves exclusively. For these reasons, it is practically never a good idea to intentionally drop a crate, so that aspect of the rules is never even used. But by allowing players to drop a crate before a ship activates, this gives the opportunity to strategically jettison the cargo to allow for repositions on the same turn that the player would want to use them. This could make for clever tactics such as repositioning a ship that your opponent thought wouldn't have that capability due to starting the round as a carrier, at the expense of dropping the crate and missing out on objective points unless more actions are invested to pick it up again.
Which leads into the 2nd part of this suggestion; that if a player chooses to intentionally jettison a crate, that player should be the one to decide its placement location. It has never made sense that choosing to drop a crate yourself suddenly gives control of it to your opponent when you are the one making the choice at the detriment of your control over objectives. You have already invested an important action (that is almost impossible to Link another action off of) to pick up the crate in the first place, so deciding to get rid of that investment should not result in further punishment.
And while this change would allow for the possibility of "hot potato-ing" the crate between a player's ships, rather than being a bad thing I actually think that would add an interesting tactic to an otherwise bland scenario. Performing such a strategy would also require a massive investment of actions, and the fact that scenario actions can only be used during the proper "Perform Action" step heavily restricts the ability to exploit this tactic. Not to mention that due to that exclusive "Perform Action" window required to pick-up a crate, a ship would never be able to pick it up and drop it within the same turn. This restricts the "hot potato" strategy to only allow the crate to move from 1 ship to 1 other ship in the same turn, and only if a ship is carrying the crate at the start of the round. And that's assuming your opponent isn't able to intercept it and pick it up themselves before your intended recipient gets a chance.
Overall, I think these 3 suggestions are simple to understand and implement, would mitigate the main frustrations that players have with Salvage Mission, would balance out the strangle-hold advantage that some archetypes/upgrades have, and would supply some much-needed agency and creative expression when playing an otherwise plain scenario.
TL;DR
A lot of players hate Salvage Mission and think it's just a worse version of Ancient Knowledge. To fix this, I think crits should only drop a crate if it deals a faceup card, the opportunity to intentionally drop a crate should occur before activation rather than after, and intentionally dropping should let the player that is dropping the crate decide where it is placed instead of the opponent. With these 3 changes the roughest edges of the most disliked scenario would be smoothed, it would be more consistent thematically, advantages from list-building would be less polarizing, and it would gain some more interesting choices and interactions that would help differentiate it from Ancient Knowledge in a positive way.