The other problem with an ISD is the sheer firepower and durability it has. It would be completely unbalanced or if balanced would be ridiculous to call it an ISD.

24 proton torpedoes punching through in two volleys normally takes one down in books, and snubfighters are too fast for it's guns to handle. It'll basically sit on the table and eat '90s and '75s while snubfighters launch missiles into it's guts and blow it to pieces

Which would actually be another concern of mine. The game didn't model torpedoes in a way that makes sense for capital ship fights, it modeled them in a way that makes sense for dogfights. PTs are dangerous in the books precisely because they ignore shields, which isn't something that is modeled in the game at all, because the game wasn't written to deal with that scale.

Any game has a scale it is optimal for and points at which it breaks. X-Wing doesn't do a great job simulating individual, super skilled pilots going against each other, the small scale damage and effects that contribute to such a fight, the specific equipment and maneuvering profiles of the ships, and the complex decisions, skills, and maneuvering that would entail. It does well simulating small groups of dogfighters and how they interact with each other.

Similarly, it doesn't do well simulating extremely large engagements, or even particularly large ships. The rules weren't built around that.

Which, again, is why I would just assume not see it in this game. The rules just aren't built to simulate the types of tactics and equipment that work against something that size. And the proton torpedo issue is just one of many issues that could be brought up.

I think that, with their "it feels right" scale, the biggest I would want to expect on my table would be a Nebulon B Frigate.

That's about where I am. I could the a Neb-B being a huge centerpiece, seriously threatening the entire board and requiring squadrons worth of star fighters to take down. And a Star Destroyer is something like an order of magnitude more massive and well equipped.

Even playing devils advocate here - they put an Star destroyer in the game. 2 feet long, 6 feet long, whatever, it's in stores for a boatload of cash.

How would it even function with the games mechanics? How do regular snub fighter weapons feasibly cause critical damage? Because torpedo (and missile) weapons work basically the same as laser weapons and are only distinguished by the likes of more dice and/or re-rolls, how would a squadron of x-wings with proton torpedoes, which in-canon poses a hefty threat to the well being of a star destroyer, possibly pose a threat to one using in-game mechanics? You'd need to attack it with 30+ ships, with near irrelevancy of whether or not they'd be shooting lasers or torpedoes.... which is fairly stupid and not in the spirit of the star wars universe.

TL;DR - the way torpedoes / rockets are designed for gameplay in FFG's X-Wing Miniatures means that the portrayal of Capital ship sized vessels (and taking them out) would be dumb.

Make two damage decks, as with the other large ships, but rather than fore and aft, have Primary and Secondary decks, where crits with the Primary are things like double damage (oh no, not 2 of my 40 hull gone!) and minor effects ("Choose 1 secondary weapon. That weapon loses 1 attack die. Action: roll 1 attack die, on a hit, flip this card facedown.",) and the secondary deck is MASSIVE damage crits ("This card counts as 6 damage", "Discard a secondary weapon.", etc.)

The scale issue is just for looks and does not affect game play. The base the ships are on is the important thing, I wish there had been more of a variety in base sizes as it would have added even more variety to ships then they already have

I think what we want is the triangular look of the star destroyer. I just checked the vigil and it's right on target.

Even playing devils advocate here - they put an Star destroyer in the game. 2 feet long, 6 feet long, whatever, it's in stores for a boatload of cash.

How would it even function with the games mechanics? How do regular snub fighter weapons feasibly cause critical damage? Because torpedo (and missile) weapons work basically the same as laser weapons and are only distinguished by the likes of more dice and/or re-rolls, how would a squadron of x-wings with proton torpedoes, which in-canon poses a hefty threat to the well being of a star destroyer, possibly pose a threat to one using in-game mechanics? You'd need to attack it with 30+ ships, with near irrelevancy of whether or not they'd be shooting lasers or torpedoes.... which is fairly stupid and not in the spirit of the star wars universe.

TL;DR - the way torpedoes / rockets are designed for gameplay in FFG's X-Wing Miniatures means that the portrayal of Capital ship sized vessels (and taking them out) would be dumb.

Make two damage decks, as with the other large ships, but rather than fore and aft, have Primary and Secondary decks, where crits with the Primary are things like double damage (oh no, not 2 of my 40 hull gone!) and minor effects ("Choose 1 secondary weapon. That weapon loses 1 attack die. Action: roll 1 attack die, on a hit, flip this card facedown.",) and the secondary deck is MASSIVE damage crits ("This card counts as 6 damage", "Discard a secondary weapon.", etc.)

You certainly could hack together rules to make it work, but that is exactly the problem. Torpedoes are just one of many issues with scaling the system up, and you are going to have many such circumstances where you need to hack together new rules, which leaves you with an extremely bloated, confusing, and complex rules system.

The huge ships we have now are already pushing the complexity of the rules about as far as I would ever want to see them go. I'm a software engineer, and this is a discussion I have with my boss all the time. He proposes something that wont work, and I start pointing out that it will increase the complexity of the code, and start giving him example of how. His response is always something along the lines of, "Well we can just do (x) to solve that problem, and I guess (y) to solve that one, and (z) to solve that one", and my response is always the same: the issue isn't that any individual problem can't be solved, it's that when you start seeing this many little issues come up it is indicative of a foundation problem with your system/plan. Each individual fix is possible and will not be too hard, but combining all the fixes for all the foreseen problems (which typically indicates even more unseen, unexpected problems) leaves you with a mess of a system that is impossible to use or maintain. At that point it is better to either just re-focus on what your system is supposed to do, or make a new system that actually does what you want. And I feel the same way here: stay focused on the scale this system can handle, or make a new one that handles what you want.

The scale issue is just for looks and does not affect game play. The base the ships are on is the important thing, I wish there had been more of a variety in base sizes as it would have added even more variety to ships then they already have

No, the scale issue effects game play greatly. Scale isn't just about model size, it's also about presence in the game. The scale of a Star Destroyer doesn't fit into the game rules-wise either. Look how powerful the Lambda and the Falcon are in a game. Then look at the corvette. It's a massive centerpiece (in gameplay, not just because of the model) that totally dominates both sides tactical and strategic considerations. Possibly one could go as far as a Neb-B gameplay wise, a ship which could possibly solo an entire 300pt epic army without any fighter support. I could see that.

Then how do you represent a Star Destroyer as anything but a Neb-B 1.5, or a corvette x2? It should dominate several Neb-Bs, and a dozen or more corvette's, but there is no way you could do that.

So you wouldn't only be fudging the model scale, but the rules scales to try and shoe-horn it into the game. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that right here, I'm just trying to illustrate it isn't just a problem of physical models. It's a problem of rules and gameplay as well.

You brought the Star Destroyer discussion back up.

WHHHHYYY???!?!??!?!?!?!

When you look at the amount of SW toys and games that have been released over the years, scale was never even considered. Probably because it got in the way of making money.

I love this game, and one of the reasons I love it is that it was in scale. Now, that has changed to allow us to increase the size of our games and ships (GR 75 & CR 90). The scale slides now and the engineer in me cries a little, but the geek in me still wants to play with these great toys.

I'm sure someone has mentioned this before, but the sliding scale works when compared to the furthest points, ie. look at the Transport and an X Wing. They look great together. Now, put that Transport next to the Falcon... Still cool, but something is starting to feel wrong.

i would not want them to push their scales too far just to include any particular ICONIC huge ships. But there are plenty of imperial ships of a similar size to the existing huge ships that will fit beautifully. SW geeks will just have to suck it up and take a dose of the *Ex* EU, in whatever form that came in...

Starting to ramble now, in summary... Scale is important to me.

You brought the Star Destroyer discussion back up.

WHHHHYYY???!?!??!?!?!?!

Probably because this is a discussion board, he is interested in discussing the subject, and wasn't involved in many of the previous discussions.

That's typically why things get discussed over and over on message boards. New people join and want to discuss something, or people who weren't involved in previous discussions on a subject discuss something. But that's not a bad thing. Those who are tired of discussing a subject are free to just ignore it when it comes up again.

i think the scalling is allright they made the firespray look bigger and he is a bit bigger as a tie fighter ;P. still looks good to me scaling isnt that important to me unless it looks unrealistic.

I think the "looks right" is the most important thing.

If they put a Lancer (for example) in the game, it would be about 1:1000 or so to make it the same length as the CR90. There would be a fair bit of griping from the purists, but visually it would work. Why? Because nobody knows what a Lancer looks like next to a CR90 or an X-wing. It would be fine.

The problem with the Star Destroyer is exactly why everyone wants it - it's well-known, it's popular, and it has absolutely perfect comparison shots. Nobody's going to have to take multiple background matte paintings and pull some Photoshop magic to move an A-wing over to compare it with a Y-wing to see if the scale's right. You watch the first TWO MINUTES of Star Wars, and you know how big a Star Destroyer is compared to a CR90.

And that's before you get to all the mechanical issues, which are even more considerable.

When you look at the amount of SW toys and games that have been released over the years, scale was never even considered. Probably because it got in the way of making money.

You know, I hadn't really thought of it this way, but, yeah, that is a huge reason scale in this game is important to me. Star Wars products have constantly ignored scale in favor of cashing in on a popular property, both in toys and games. In Rebellion SSDs were only twice the size of a Star Destroyer, which was only 2-3 times the size of a corvette. In battlefield miniature capital ships with a fraction of the fire power they should have duke it out with little to no effect, totally reliant on a handful of fighters and boarding crew to solve their problems for them. In X-Wing you practically solo shrunken down Star Destroyers. In fact, the latter happens in TONS of games. The Star Destroyer, always so popular that it MUST exist in EVERY game, jobs it like a crooked boxer with a terminal illness. Every. Friggin. Time.

But I never wanted to single handedly take one out, or if I did I wanted it to be an actual accomplishment, not a cardboard set piece set up to make me feel good.

And I was so excited about X-Wing, and am to this day, that the ships, by and large, reflect their appropriate power levels. Sure, things aren't perfect, it's not a simulation, but by and large it is treating the subject matter with respect and not just trying to cash in.

Which I think is probably why this subject threatens a lot of people, or at least how they feel the game should be. I think for a lot of us (definitely for me) one of the great and special things about the game would be lost if they just threw scale out the window so they could cash in on a popular model.

Could they do it well and make it still be a fun game? Maybe? But I think that really isn't the issue many of us have. It's that if they DID do it right and make it so it was a fun piece of the game, they would have to sacrifice so much of what we love about the game that it wouldn't be worth it, to some of us at least.

One of the reasons I started buying into this game is because all of the fighters and large ships are the same scale. I did buy the GR-75 and the CR-90. Next to an X-wing the 75 looks okay. Next to the Falcon it looks a bit ridiculous. I understand their reasons for the sliding scale, but still wish they had maintained the 1/270 scale for them. I can't bring myself to put the 75 on the table with any of the large ships. But I do enjoy it as a display piece.

When you look at the amount of SW toys and games that have been released over the years, scale was never even considered. Probably because it got in the way of making money.

And it always bugged me, even as a kid, the best toys were the ones that matched each other reasonably well, and didn't have any silly, out or proportion elements.

When WotC first came out with their Star Wars minis, I also considered taking a couple of the action figure size falcons and cutting them up to make a (more or less) 25-28mm scale falcon with a detailed interior.

I agree with what has been said multiple times already. Scale is important. I am willing to not worry if its not too crazy adjusted (such as the Cr-90) provided it still looks good with the other models (which it does).

I would play a separate version of the game more based on the capitals.

I would also greatly prefer they did models that had the Star Destroyer/Imperial looks without being an actual ISD/VSD in the correct scale. I think that's a great compromise. As has been said, the Vigil fits the bill pretty well.

I think the talk of novels and how easy it was to take a SD down is a wrong look at things. Novels are about the story, and usually, the good guys winning, talking .. or having to read about, a story where three chapters are devoted to ships fighting one of the most dreaded things in the galaxy isn't going to sell books.. in movies and video games.. a SD that takes half the movie or game to kill itnisnt going to draw fans to it... making you look heroic... that makes people want the game... or gives your imagination something to say.. yeah if I was a x wing pilot I'd shoot this or that to take out the big ship... this game is about balance and game mechanics.. you cant put in a ship that should destroy everythimg and make it killable by a couple small ships...

I would play a separate version of the game more based on the capitals.

This. 100%

Scale only matters for aesthetics.

Gameplay-wise there is no scale. There is only base size.

You don't need the miniatures to play the game.

I think the talk of novels and how easy it was to take a SD down is a wrong look at things. Novels are about the story, and usually, the good guys winning, talking .. or having to read about, a story where three chapters are devoted to ships fighting one of the most dreaded things in the galaxy isn't going to sell books.. in movies and video games.. a SD that takes half the movie or game to kill itnisnt going to draw fans to it... making you look heroic... that makes people want the game... or gives your imagination something to say.. yeah if I was a x wing pilot I'd shoot this or that to take out the big ship... this game is about balance and game mechanics.. you cant put in a ship that should destroy everythimg and make it killable by a couple small ships...

So what do we base things off given that every single ship in the game is based off of Story Performance. All there is is story performance.

Scale only matters for aesthetics.

Gameplay-wise there is no scale. There is only base size.

You don't need the miniatures to play the game.

But if aesthetics don't matter, why include a Star Destroyer at all as anything other than the turbolaser tokens seen in the GR-75 expansion?

Scale only matters for aesthetics.

Gameplay-wise there is no scale. There is only base size.

You don't need the miniatures to play the game.

Yes, but....

Miniature size and base size are related.

Somebody fetch Millenium Falsehood's post that killed off the ISD argument last time. The one with pictures.

This is my 1/270 scale CR-90 & GR-75 next to the FF model. I like things all in the same scale, but I realize that for game play scale needs to be fudged for the huge ships.

Unless you just want a really expensive version of Starship Battles, I feel FFG should stick with their current gameplan. Y'know, thay actually did the Huges just for us; they insisted forever long they wouldn't break Absolute Scale. I'm glad they caved; the ships are sufficiently believable. BUT, I also think it taps out both the visual and the tactical scale of the game; I hope they leave it basically at that. We could see a Corellian Gunship, or a Wild Karrde, or an Imperial Customs Frigate... but that's as far as I personally would like to go.

That said, I would TOTALLY support a Capital Ship spinoff of the game. I'd bet money such a thing is at least in planning/testing stage already. They'd be crazy to not at least consider it.

Boomer_J, that corvette's gorgeous! Where's it from?

I made it from plastic card stock. You can see more of it here http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/76844-1270-scale-cr-90-corvette-and-ef76-nebulon-b-escort-frigate-plans-in-1270-scale/

I think Millennium Falsehood made the paper model plans.