....and on today's episode of FFG Overreaction Theatre, one game, with one build, against one opponent is enough to fully judge the overall effectiveness of a ship's abilities and potential.

Good job I sold all my B-Wings on eBay after they got trounced by a TIE swarm in their first game, innit?

So, by that same logic a 2 12-point TIEs should not be able to take down a 24 point X-Wing in two turns. Yet, no one bleats 'unbalanced!!' when they do so.

Not that I have ever seen they don't. Without howlrunner support 2 TIES are going to have trouble even getting enough explosions to have a chance, much less factoring in the X-Wing dodging a couple of them. Most of the time 2 naked TIES have trouble landing ANY damage, much less destroying a ship in 2 turns.

Okay, so you maxed out firing your 6 squints at the corvette and it took you two turns to do so.

Dude, that's 3x6x2=36 red dice against something that doesn't have any agility!! Of course you destroyed it.

I'm not sure why you think it should be otherwise.

Because 150-something points of Interceptors should not be virtually guaranteed to destroy a 150-something point model in two turns. That defeats the purpose and fun of taking said 150-something point model.

So, by that same logic a 2 12-point TIEs should not be able to take down a 24 point X-Wing in two turns. Yet, no one bleats 'unbalanced!!' when they do so.

Keyword here is reliably. Can 2 12-point TIE's take out an X-wing? Yes. Can one 24 point X-wing take out 2 12-point TIE's? Also yes. Piloting skill and luck of the dice decides the victor in this battle.

But 150 points of Inteceptors versus a 150 point Corvette? Dead Corvette in turn 2, pretty much guaranteed. The Corvette simply doesn't have the survivability or firepower to deal with this. Not unless your opponent hands you some easy kills on a silver platter by flying in front of your Corvette so you can squish them.

And while it is a customizable multi-purpose craft, that means that when you customize it for combat, it should work in combat. Right now, it doesn't.

Sure it does, when flown correctly. According to the OP's second post, the player flying the Corvette was having his first go at it. Yes, it is a tricky beast to harness, but that doesn't mean you can't do so. It just takes some experience.

Also, the OP says this was a team game. I've played a team game controlling the Corvette with a partner flying the escorts. It's flippin' hard, because there are (potentially) intricate synergies between the corvette and it's escort, and if your partner is not on the level with you, he's flying out of boosting range, or he's flying too close and getting squished. That, or he's swatting at TIEs when the Squints are the real danger, as the OP said what the case in this scenario.

My point was that the Corvette is not a specialized warship, the way - say - a Lancer-class frigate is. This is an consideration from the lore of the Star Wars Universe. I understand that we're talking in the context of game balance and point-cost. I just traveled outside of that context for a moment. My apologies if this was not understood.

Genuine curiosity here, I'm all ears as to how you should fly a battle-geared Corvette correctly.

Reading the replies from you, and knowing that you are all right for the most part...

I say again, just increase the energy.

If you cannot get friends to allow this who understand why it needs to be done, well then they ain't really your friends.

Keyword here is reliably. Can 2 12-point TIE's take out an X-wing? Yes. Can one 24 point X-wing take out 2 12-point TIE's? Also yes. Piloting skill and luck of the dice decides the victor in this battle.

But 150 points of Inteceptors versus a 150 point Corvette? Dead Corvette in turn 2, pretty much guaranteed. The Corvette simply doesn't have the survivability or firepower to deal with this. Not unless your opponent hands you some easy kills on a silver platter by flying in front of your Corvette so you can squish them.

[...]

Genuine curiosity here, I'm all ears as to how you should fly a battle-geared Corvette correctly.

Well, if it's just 150pnt Corvette vs. 150 points of Interceptors, I'd say that the game is indeed rigged in favor of the Interceptors. However, I don't think that's the point of the Corvette. Half of its forward actions are for boosting its escorts.

I'm no expert at flying the thing, but in the game that I did win flying it, I made sure that I had a full stock of energy (incl. my quads loaded up) before I encountered the enemy. Also, I was flying the Transport alongside it. Once that was the case, I made sure that my corvette and escorts had tons of target locks, and that my enemy didn't dare stress himself out (slicer tools). Also, once I did have the energy, I charged straight into his flank, running over a Firespray and sending the rest of his fleet into the asteroids. In the asteroid field, he had a helluva time not doing red maneuvers with my slicer tools ready to make fine work of any who did so.

I also didn't fly it predictably, as he found out when I steered it into the asteroid field ("Asteroids do not concern me, Admiral!"), squishing more of his fighters. (Also, my partner made a piloting mistake, and so Biggs died underneath the Transport.)

Now, by the end of the game, my Transport had been destroyed, as well as most of my escorts. It was the Corvette that was the last man standing. Sure, it was bludgeoned (including by the asteroids and the large ship it had run over), but the game lasted... er... 10 turns?

Reading the replies from you, and knowing that you are all right for the most part...

I say again, just increase the energy.

If you cannot get friends to allow this who understand why it needs to be done, well then they ain't really your friends.

Oh, we do houserules. Our own houserule is that the first shot of a quad laser is free, with any following shot costing energy. But houserules are temporary patches, not solutions. We prefer not to use them if at all possible, since they have a tendency to confuse new players.

I should say that I spent 151 points on both the Corvette and the Transport. So, the Corvette was not completely tricked out. It just had one set of quads, a targeting coordinator and a weapons engineer. I forget the rest.

The Transport was pretty tricked out, however. It had comms boosters and the slicer tools.

The other 149 points went to my partner, who had 2 Z-95s, 2 Y-Wings and Biggs. All named but for a single Gold Squadron.

Ideally, house rules should be adding new elements and diversity to a game, not patching stuff that doesn't work.

In my longer initial reply to this excellent topic I pushed my little increase the energy token's value approach.

This is not changing any rule at all other than they actual value of each energy token.

The main problem with all of the Huge Ships ( I say all because future ships will likely be starving for energy too) is that they have not got enough energy to do what they are designed to do and should be able to do. Other ships get to attack and defend, but not the Huge Ships, due to this ridiculous and desperate either-or choice they are forced to make.

Me no like it... so I fixed it with a handful of cute colored glass beads.

I use the beads to count the energy, three per token is how I run it. Thus if a ship has three tokens say and two beads; that means (In Boss' Game Parlor) that the ship has eleven energy at the moment.

That is the easiest way that I found to solve most of the issues I did not like... just give the **** things a reasonable amount of energy.

The main problem with all of the Huge Ships ( I say all because future ships will likely be starving for energy too) is that they have not got enough energy to do what they are designed to do and should be able to do. Other ships get to attack and defend, but not the Huge Ships, due to this ridiculous and desperate either-or choice they are forced to make.

Sure, there is energy scarcity, and of course you're free to do what you want to make the huge ships more powerful if you think they're under-powered.

But, in my experience, I usually had an abundance of energy, because I figured out ahead of time what things require energy, and which require actions, and I made my parsimonious build around that. Okay, so there were a number of times that I gobbled up all of my energy, because I needed to replenish my shields.

I think you're only lacking in energy if you're trying to do too much with your Corvette. It's probably best to not put all your points on one platform, but invest in more escorts instead. (Or a pretty space whale with slicer tools.)

Even if the OP and keroko's thesis is correct, this should all balance out once the Empire gets some huge ships going too.

Yeah and they will likely have little upgrades and fixes and goodies like all of the other ships in this great game.

So, by that same logic a 2 12-point TIEs should not be able to take down a 24 point X-Wing in two turns. Yet, no one bleats 'unbalanced!!' when they do so.

Not that I have ever seen they don't. Without howlrunner support 2 TIES are going to have trouble even getting enough explosions to have a chance, much less factoring in the X-Wing dodging a couple of them. Most of the time 2 naked TIES have trouble landing ANY damage, much less destroying a ship in 2 turns.

BS. Two naked basic TIEs are just fine against an X-Wing. You have to use the agility that the X-Wing doesn't have.

I think you're only lacking in energy if you're trying to do too much with your Corvette. It's probably best to not put all your points on one platform, but invest in more escorts instead. (Or a pretty space whale with slicer tools.)

But if you're not going to do much with the Corvette, why take a Corvette over two or three additional transports?

Even if the OP and keroko's thesis is correct, this should all balance out once the Empire gets some huge ships going too.

I hope so. I've always loved the big ships over the smaller ones. I'd like them to be actually fearsome beasts rather than annoying, tough obstacles.

I think you're only lacking in energy if you're trying to do too much with your Corvette.

Like shoot?

If you want to add house rules to make the Corvette easier/better to fly, try disabling the doubling of agility with turbolasers and/or upping those attack dice. The ship is supposed to attack starfighters after all, it should be able to hit something.

Or add a crew member card:

. Chief Engineer

+2 on all energy limits. Engineering teams are twice as effective.

7 points

Dude, that's 3x6x2=36 red dice against something that doesn't have any agility!!

If Reinforce was in play, that would mean there should have been 12 automatic Evades on those 12 attacks or 36-48 dice depending upon range of the attacker! So that means at ranges 2+ there would have been a maximum of 24 hits, and all attacks at range 1, a total of 36 hits. Since it has 10 shields and 16 hull, it is definitely "doable!" Hence, the escorts are very important!

I missed the fact that at Range 3, the CR90, would also get an evade die against each attack, potentially negating up to 6 more attack die out of the 36...

To say that the Huge ships are worthless is frankly wrong. But to say that they are absolutely fine and measure up completely to their points value is also a little... naive.

If you are getting decent rolls and have a trim build to do exactly what you want the CR90 to do, it will hold its own and generally benefit you. Just not as much as taking the same number of fighters. TIE Advanced ships are inefficient, but that doesn't rule out winning matches with them.

Energy is only a little bit of the problem with Huge ships. If you take a CR90 and a couple Quad Lasers to defend against fighters, you are likely using more energy than your ship can even generate in one turn. That's before other things, like a Gunnery Team or boosting its primary. But the only reason you want to volley fire with ALL of your weapons on a CR90 is because there is very, very little way of giving your attacks consistency. If you take a Gunnery Team, you get to guarantee one hit for one attack that entire round, which is likely going up against 3+ agility defense rolls. TLs don't help the CR90 too much, because you can only TL one ship per round. Even a Weapons Engineer only allows you to TL a separate ship, so you can't focus your attacks. Then with Han Solo, you gain some flexibility, but no actual increase in damage capability - It's still either a Focus or a TL, not both or a mix.

It feels like the most effective way of running a battleship CR90 is to take only 1 or 2 hardpoints (because the primary won't always be able to see a target), Han, a Weapons Engineer, and Gunnery team. You can super charge two attacks per round with TLs and basically use all your energy efficiently. But then you're still paying too much, as the majority of the ship's points is in its base cost, not the upgrades. Over 100 points for two or three decent attacks per round. OR, you could just bring an entire Elite Phantom + Mini Swarm in its place.

So people have pointed out, "Well, you have Coordinate as an action, and many upgrades that you can boost your escorts with like Comms Boosters and Slicer Tools." Sure, but if you want to use any of those, forget about using any of those fancy weapons you purchased or Recovering your shields. If you really want to focus on handing out actions or focus tokens, there are SO MANY different possibilities for Rebels already in just their small ships alone with more coming out as soon as Rebel Aces hits the shelves.

Running two GR-75s, one with a Frequency Jammer and Duty Free (I think that's the name) plus some Comms Boosters, and other with Slicer Tools, will be both cheaper and also more effective than a CR90 or CR90 + GR-75 combo. You will then also have more escorts due to less points spent.

Honestly, the GR-75s are quite average in terms of a points/effectiveness ratio, and it really makes the CR90's underperformance stand out when compared side by side.

But I want to emphasize that I do not think this is a problem of core game mechanics. I see the Huge ships being like the early days of regular X-Wing, where upgrades and abilities were very conservative in order to err on the side of caution. They have a lot of customization possibilities (in that there are a ton of upgrade slots) but there isn't actually much to put in there at the moment. If they release more Huge ships, I believe the greater variety of upgrade cards will allow for more specialization, leading to a higher efficiency in fulfiling whatever task you've designed it for.

But, in my experience, I usually had an abundance of energy, because I figured out ahead of time what things require energy, and which require actions, and I made my parsimonious build around that.

That's because you didn't even put a full load of guns on it. Once you have to spend 3-6 energy per turn just to fire all of your guns you're stuck doing 2-straight maneuvers (with an engineering team!) and never using any energy-spending upgrades. And that just isn't fun.

I think you're only lacking in energy if you're trying to do too much with your Corvette.

I don't think that "using all three turret hardpoints" is really "doing too much" under any sensible definition. We're just talking about using all of its weapons every turn, not shooting at full strenght with energy-cost dice modification and buffing its escorts and repairing all of its shields every turn.

Even if the OP and keroko's thesis is correct, this should all balance out once the Empire gets some huge ships going too.

Except it really won't. If the imperial huge ship is as weak as the rebel one because it has the same energy problem then it will also be unappealing from a competitive perspective. If it fixes the energy problem and is fun and competitive then it will completly dominate the corvette and nobody will play rebels in epic games.

I think you're only lacking in energy if you're trying to do too much with your Corvette. It's probably best to not put all your points on one platform, but invest in more escorts instead. (Or a pretty space whale with slicer tools.)

But if you're not going to do much with the Corvette, why take a Corvette over two or three additional transports?

I didn't say "do much" I said "do too much".

Look, just like most ships that you can load up with upgrades, at some point you're putting too many eggs into a single basket. The corvette is no different. If you arm all the hardpoints, you're going to run out of energy, unless you can run it really slow at a distance so that you're not consuming all your energy keeping your shields up. I only put one quad laser on there and I had too much energy on my hands. The happy medium is probably two quads.

I think you're only lacking in energy if you're trying to do too much with your Corvette.

Like shoot?

See above.

Let's also remember that this is a fighters dogfighting game, not a capital ships game. The fighters should remain the focus of the action. There are a LOT of debates about this or that ship being under/overpowered. By and large, I think most of those arguments are bunk. I think that we get a lot more experience playing the small ships in this game and we've not gotten the huge ships down to a science yet. (Even MajorJuggler hasn't taken them up into his probability calculi.) With what little I've played with them, I've found them to be tremendous fun.

Because I don't have one, I've only really flown the corvette in the game I talked about earlier. I've had more opportunity to fly the Transport, because I do have one. I've found that if fire is concentrated on it it dies (... kind of like every other ship I have). Because it's big and prominent on the table, it tends to attract a lot of fire and die quickly. Guess what, so do Biggs and Howlrunner.

How about we get some more experience with them before we judge them too harshly.

If you want to add house rules to make the Corvette easier/better to fly, try disabling the doubling of agility with turbolasers and/or upping those attack dice. The ship is supposed to attack starfighters after all, it should be able to hit something.

The turbolasers are actually effective if you have the energy to use them. Remember, they're not primary weapons so you don't get the bonus defense dice at long range. Sure, they're not going to kill a PTL + stealth interceptor very often, but against less-extreme targets they're pretty decent damage at a range where the target can't return fire. The problem is that you just can't use them because of how little energy you have. Removing the double agility rule just gives you more theoretical damage on the weapon you can't use.

Look, just like most ships that you can load up with upgrades, at some point you're putting too many eggs into a single basket. The corvette is no different. If you arm all the hardpoints, you're going to run out of energy, unless you can run it really slow at a distance so that you're not consuming all your energy keeping your shields up. I only put one quad laser on there and I had too much energy on my hands. The happy medium is probably two quads.

Sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. Adding too many upgrades would be 3x turbolasers and every crew slot filled with the best possible choice. But we're not talking about that, you should be able to use all of the turret slots if you're going to have them on the ship. This is like having TIE bombers not have TL on their action bar and complaining that everyone is being so unreasonable by over-upgrading them with missiles.

Let's also remember that this is a fighters dogfighting game, not a capital ships game.

Then why include capital ships at all? If you're going to make them so weak that they aren't fun to use then just leave them out of the game entirely.

How about we get some more experience with them before we judge them too harshly.

Because you don't need much experience, you just need to look at the energy the corvette can produce compared to the energy it needs to spend every turn to fight even remotely effectively. And the answer is that you can't use even the smallest guns (at partial effectiveness!) every turn unless you do nothing but 2-straight maneuvers, and you can't use the bigger guns at all. And of course this leaves absolutely no energy to use any of the energy-spending actions or upgrades. Regardless of whether this is balanced in some abstract sense it just isn't fun.

I don't think that "using all three turret hardpoints" is really "doing too much" under any sensible definition. We're just talking about using all of its weapons every turn, not shooting at full strenght with energy-cost dice modification and buffing its escorts and repairing all of its shields every turn.

If we're going to play a game of definition gerrymandering, then this debate is going to get real annoying really fast.

I agree that if you load up all your hardpoints, you're going to find yourself running out of energy while also wanting to do other things. Those three hardpoints are options; they're not imperatives.

It's just like Corran Horn - you don't HAVE to put your shots on the credit card from the following turn. You don't HAVE to spend both energy point to fire the quads twice in a single round. You have options. If you don't know how to conserve and economize, then you're not going to do well in this game (or in life).

You're right, it's tempting to load up on every possible bell and whistle when you get the Corvette. But just because you have the freedom to do so, doesn't mean that it's a good idea.

Coming at it from the other direction, what I feel like the corvette SHOULD be able to do every turn if it is outfitted for heavy combat

Move a moderate speed, 3-4

Make 3 mediocre, unboosted or 2 boosted attacks

Regenerate a single shield

Spend a point of energy on supporting the rest of the fleet in some way

That is 5 points of energy needed each turn at speed 2 or 3. If it wants to go faster or maneuver hard it should loose an attack and one of the other things, if it goes slow it should be able to get in another weapon shot or repair a lot of shields.

I don't think this is an unreasonable or super powerful list of expectations. Right now it doesn't seem capable of doing it.

Sure, they're not going to kill a PTL + stealth interceptor very often, but against less-extreme targets they're pretty decent damage at a range where the target can't return fire.

At range 4, the Decimator will not benefit. The Shuttle will have 2 green dice. Firesprays and Bombers get 4. Everything else gets a minimum of 6 and that's before things like SD's (I'm presuming any and all Phantoms will stay cloaked as often as possible, putting their dice at 8).

6 green dice against 4 reds aren't bad odds.

Boosting attacks without using energy might be accomplished by for instance flying Etahn or putting Dodonna in a transport next to the Corvette, but then you're putting an awful lot of points in huge ships.