Talk:Quadjumper Expansion Pack/@comment-85.68.2.60-20161009104647/@comment-454133-20161009175710

As I formed my counter-argument, I gradually agreed with you. ^_^  Bomb tokens' size and shape matters, and you have to have enough for your extra munitions. Any old token can be used as tractor tokens -- I've used the circles I punch out of the center of dials.

But they have two very good reasons for not including more bombs. First, the tokens are large and thus expensive. In game design you start to become frighteningly aware of what everything costs, and desperate to reduce those costs down to what gives you the most customer satisfaction for every penny you spend, because you're mass-producing them.

And second, it helps to force the player to buy more expansions in order to have what he needs, be it cards or tokens or ships. The core sales mechanic of X-Wing is that nearly every expansion works with everything you have in some way or another, and that makes customers happy... but occasionally it rightfully feels like something critical is being held hostage behind a paywall, and it is. ;)

I'd assume the 5 tractor beam tokens results from direct customer complaints/requests, or to solve problems that came up in playtesting, or... they could very well have had space on the board by luck, and not wanting to waste it, filled it with a token that has been short in the past.