Odd -- my experiences were almost exactly the opposite:
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Originally Posted by Magesmiley
The armor (thus far) is equal on all sides, which makes forward mounted weapons a considerably less great of a tactic.
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The main problem I saw with F-mount weapons was: The heaviest-damage weapons were all restricted to F or B arcs only; this meant pretty-much everyone in my games lost all their F armor on the first turn of combat.
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Originally Posted by Magesmiley
A driver and gunner are pretty much standard, so two weapon shots per firing (unless someone has offed one of them).
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The "custom car" event I was in, I only had one weapon per facing; it proved no major handicap...
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Originally Posted by Magesmiley
Given the armor, crew, and weapon situation, the best way to line up shots is often along the diagonals, allowing two sides of weapons to bear on a target and easy shifting of sides to soak up hits.
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...and this is why. :)
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Originally Posted by Magesmiley
And speed is the single biggest defense in the game. [...] One thing that was apparent though was on the small battlefields, staying at speed 5 all the time was tantamount to suicide. I *did* try the tricked out high speed car in one of the design our own games. Alternating between a speed of 3 and 5 courtesy of a couple of items (that I personally think were underpointed) and being tactical in my use of ace tokens that game proved very effective against the other players - two of the cars were nearly trashed and the third had a breach on one side. My own car was only down a couple of points of armor on any side - and while I didn't have the heaviest weapons, they were heavy enough.
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For the "custom" event, I also tried to design a "reroll generation machine"; at the start of each turn, I generated two Aces, and *seven* Control markers. Add to that the devices which negated engine damage from heavy acceleration and braking, and the device for converting a yellow maneuver die to a green -- well, at one point in the game, I performed *three* speed-5 D-2 maneuvers in one move, and suffered a whopping *one* point of tire damage. For this, I ended up with no fewer than *five* available rerolls. (And given my luck with dice, I needed them....)
That said: I spent most of the games at Speed 5, and never really had a problem with control -- the playmats were big enough to allow "edge of the world" tactics, saving Control for when it was needed. So I can't agree with the statement "staying at speed 5 all the time was tantamount to suicide".
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Originally Posted by Magesmiley
One other observation from the games (which I brought to Randy's attention to watch out for) - your best target is usually the player seated to your right. Why? Because you can change speed immediately before your move, and then make your moves. This can have a massive impact on the positioning and who can fire at whom (all moves are done before anyone fires). In the case of the player on your right, you will move after that player three turns out of four, giving you a big edge in determining the final position of your cars relative to one another... and which weapons both of you can use on each other.
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For me, this is where the game really fell on its face, and for this reason. Back'n'th'day, I was a master at "playing Reflex", always being in position to select my move after everyone else; knowing where everyone was going, I could then select a target, take him apart, and move on to the next. Here, it was "well, there's now way I'm going to be hitting any of those guys, while they will have every opportunity to hit me". It got old really fast.
One other comment: Instead of all the fiddly little bits which *will* get lost or ruined (so says the _X-Wing_ player with many minis, but few tokens), why not take a page -- or rather, a character card -- from _The Fantasy Trip_, and make the dashboards dry-erasable?