Empire is all about size and control. One ship will be BIG and the other will be more transport in size.

How big is big, do you think? Would they take a similar or slightly larger ship and shrink it to the Corvette's table size? Or, just a thought, might we see a three-base imperial huge ship? (both rebel ships are two bases)

Empire is all about size and control. One ship will be BIG and the other will be more transport in size.

How big is big, do you think? Would they take a similar or slightly larger ship and shrink it to the Corvette's table size? Or, just a thought, might we see a three-base imperial huge ship? (both rebel ships are two bases)

I think three bases will be likely simply from the point of view of balance. If they choose a triangular ship, it will need to have a wider stance to prevent it from toppling over on other miniatures. It may require a different movement template though to prevent excessive fishtailng.

What are the dimensions for the Imperial Escort Carrier

Actually, a 'launch' action would be great. You could build your squad just like normal, but opt not to place certain ships. Then as an action, you could launch a certain number of them (likely dependent on ship size, much like how D&D has rules for size and capacity when you get swallowed by something). This would give new and interesting flanking and deployment strategies and challenges.

Actually, a 'launch' action would be great. You could build your squad just like normal, but opt not to place certain ships. Then as an action, you could launch a certain number of them (likely dependent on ship size, much like how D&D has rules for size and capacity when you get swallowed by something). This would give new and interesting flanking and deployment strategies and challenges.

Or they could just have options for the ship to buy TIE fighters that it can launch. Possibly at a discounted rate depending on the launch mechanism you might buy launchable TIE fighters for 10 or 11 points.

Empire is all about size and control. One ship will be BIG and the other will be more transport in size.

How big is big, do you think? Would they take a similar or slightly larger ship and shrink it to the Corvette's table size? Or, just a thought, might we see a three-base imperial huge ship? (both rebel ships are two bases)

The Vigil is stated at around 255 meters. That's almost a 100 meters bigger than the Tantive. And that is the Empires small class corvette. I could see a 3 base triangle formation for the Vigil. I think they would keep it bigger than the CR90 but on a sliding scale.

For the function of the tractor beam I could see it being used more on large ships and it would pull off energy tokens for each one applied. Put 3 energy tokens into your tractor beam and pull 3 off your target ship. Small/large ships would decrease their movement by one for each energy token spent on the tractor beam until they reached 0 and then their movement would be stopped and they would skip their perform action step. This would make me believe that the empire ships would have a higher maximum energy total for the larger ship with more systems.

I would like the idea of a fighter bay where you could keep some fighters in the hold until you launched them. They would start at range 1 of the base of the big ship and appear during the planning stage. Once launched you could not recover the fighters until the end of the game. The turn around time for recovery, rearm, and relaunch would not be able to be done in time to make it effective for combat purposes for this game, it just happens too fast so I don't see this as a good mechanic in this game.

All of this is of course just conjecture. But it's fun to think of the possibilities.

The Rebels got an unarmed transport and a light gunship. Expect the Imperials to get a heavier gunship meant to take them down or board them (e.g. assault transport or SPC).

An assault transport with "Stormtrooper" crew effects (for boarding or something) would be really interesting.

The Empire have an assault transport.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Assault_transport

What would a stormtrooper do? Fire a 100 shoots to hit once?

my guess is, that they won't do mirror matching the rebel huge ships, they haven't done this with the smaller ships and I doubt they will change this strategy - from my perspective a strength of this game.

on first glance, for new game mechanics I could see:

- tractor beams

- TIE carrier style (even if it is just for a handful of TIEs, there are some examples of that)

- boarding actions

while each of those need some careful thoughts, they should be possible to balance and would fit right in with the imperial style.

on how those mechanics would be distributed over huge ships, here my guess is still a 4pointer and 1 pointer ship in epic terms. It would nicely play with the imperial use of bigger ships than on the rebel side and would still work in the 5 point epic format, even if you might have to add a ruling for using the 4pointer in a team situation.

Whatever Imperial Huge ship is released it will need to have a completely obvious weak spot where a single missile/torpedo or other object will quickly cripple it in one shot.

These design flaws are surely the work of several "oversight" committees keeping the Imperial bureaucracy busy.

Grand Admiral Thrawn - Crew

Imperial Only. Huge Ship Only.

Treat all friendly ships as if their Pilot Skill was 2 greater than it actually is.

I some what have a problem with the rule you gave Grand Admiral Thrawn. Grand Admiral Zaarin should have that ability since he is the best star fighter tactician. Zaarin even beat Thrawn twice in two seperate conflicts before dying.

I supose if you had to keep that ability for Thrawn you could give Zaarin the ability that grants any TIE Avenger, TIE Defender, and moded TIE Interceptor in his fleet to lower there pilot skill by two durning move phase.

Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik should have an ability that lets all non-starfighter to ignore one attack dice roll from every enemy attacking said ships.

Grand Admiral Militin Takel, easily the best Grand Admiral, he should be very expensive and have a super green ability. Since he has non-force telepathy he should get the ability that alows him to see the dial of all level 0-3 pilots in the enemy fleet before picking manuvers for his fleet, all pilots with ability to do a diffrent manuver than what there dial says is unable to use that ability.

Grand Admiral Martio Batch allows all TIE Phantoms in his fleet to remain cloaked when attacking TIE Avengers, TIE Defenders, and Moded TIE Interceptors and other advanced TIEs except Phantoms. If Zaarin is on table all Phantoms can do a 3 forward or barrel roll when decloaking.

Grand Admiral Thrawn - Crew

Imperial Only. Huge Ship Only.

Treat all friendly ships as if their Pilot Skill was 2 greater than it actually is.

I some what have a problem with the rule you gave Grand Admiral Thrawn. Grand Admiral Zaarin should have that ability since he is the best star fighter tactician. Zaarin even beat Thrawn twice in two seperate conflicts before dying.

I'm aware, but I wrote him that way for two reasons.

Firstly, I don't really think they'd do Zaarin for some reason. Not sure why, but somehow I don't think he's got nearly as much EU shine on him to be recognizable enough.

Secondly, It's to show him as a master combat tactician. I originally thought about having it be the movement phase, but that leaves your entire squad open to be blocked much more often. It'd have been a shame to have a character intended to make your fleet look like a masterwork of deadly precision, only to have them instead be blocked everywhere and make your squad look like a flock of blundering geese on a bad acid trip.

How about this for the master tactician:

Thrawn:

Once per round during the planning phase you may swap two friendly ships' dials. They must use these dials for the remainder of the round.