So, I've experienced the transport, and I finally fought the Corvette yesterday. The rules for the huge ship suck! Those things are fragile like hell. While there might be a point about it for the transport it makes no sense for the corvette, which is some kind of battleship (although it's a small one). I took it apart with a couple of Interceptors, a Defender and a Phantom; a bunch of TIEs were there for distraction, but if the Squints would have had a hard time I would have thrown them against the Corvette too. As it went, it wasn't necessary.

I don't think that the current rules represent the huge ships well. My opponent spent some 130ish points on the corvette, he would have gotten quite some firepower if he would have taken normal fighters. That doesn't make sense; I know the game is about fighter dogfight, blabla, but since they released the huge ships in that environment they should have given some useable rules here.

I was thinking about it and I decided that we will playtest the huge ships with some own table rules:

Any non-huge ship attacking a huge battle ship (so far the Corvette and the transport with the combat retrofit upgrade) with it's primary weapon has to remove any die that shows an hit at the beginning of the "Modify Attack Dice" step. Then turn any critical hit into a normal hit. Proceed with combat as normal.

With this rule you can't bet on bunch of TIE fighters to bring down the huge ships. You want to bring some bombers for that job (secondary weapons are not affected).

I expect the huge ships to hang around a lot longer, giving them time to earn back their investment. Will report back how it went.

Do you have any concept of how long a game would go with a rule like that?

I think it would far better simulate "real life" ( ) than the current rules.

As things stand currently, and if the same rules applied in real life, I could take a couple of row boats against a nuclear powered air craft carrier and apparently win handily.

Taking down a huge ship should be doable, but should take a concerted effort, with many, many attacks.

Put simply, IT SHOULD TAKE A BUNCH OF TIME.

Were you starting the game with energy on the corvette? That helps a ton. Also do you have gunnery team on it? Turning a blank into a hit helps too. Don't overload the big ships, but don't underestimate the power of the big ships now that they start with energy. The new FAQ helped a ton. Also Jan Dodonna on the transport next to it causing crits helps too. Also don't forget to take all of the actions it gets each turn. Each section gets an action. You just need to play with it some and don't forget all of your actions and make good use of your escort ships.

What I've seen of huge ships on the table is that they're like just about every other ship -- when used skillfully, when properly outfitted and when the dice are falling in their favor, they're worth the points you put into them. They're great support ships even without upgrades. They can also deliver a lot of damage at long range.

Have you played many Epic games? Is it possible that you're finding huge ships easy to kill because your opponents haven't had much practice with them? Are you sure they're making full use of them? The Corvette can do a lot of stuff in a single turn.

I'll go along with what DagobahDave just said, because he and I have had the same experiences (from different sides of the mat) with huge ships. I think they're absolutely awesome to play with, but they do cost a LOT of points.

It's also hard to build up experience with them, because you really shouldn't be flying them in 100 point battles. To get experience with them you need to sit down for the best part of the day to fly an epic battle.

It's also hard to value them in the same way as small ships, because their value is not in their shooter capacity (despite the Corvette's guns). Their value is in their ability to assist their escorts and to force the opponent to do things they otherwise wouldn't. You REALLY don't want to get into a huge ship's flight path. Therefore, many of your movements will be dictated by the necessity to stay away from their bows. Also, get some slicer tools on that Transport, and your opponent will think twice about any actions or movements that cause stress.

Seriously, huge ships are a lot of fun. Once the Empire gets a huge ship or two, they will be much more fun.

Are you sure they're making full use of them? The Corvette can do a lot of stuff in a single turn.

Yeah my first thought when I saw this was that someone was doing something wrong. A CR-90 is actually kind of hard to kill if the person uses it correctly. The biggest threat to them are bombers with ord, Tie Fighters aren't a huge problem, if you kit out the CR correctly.

Are you sure they're making full use of them? The Corvette can do a lot of stuff in a single turn.

Yeah my first thought when I saw this was that someone was doing something wrong. A CR-90 is actually kind of hard to kill if the person uses it correctly. The biggest threat to them are bombers with ord, Tie Fighters aren't a huge problem, if you kit out the CR correctly.

Yes, and bombers with ord should be the most dangerous to the huge ships, because that's what the Empire intended them for. Now, in your experience, what ord do you most like to use on a CR-90?

One would think that Advanced Proton Torpedoes should shine, but that range 1 limitation and the 6 points seems just as prohibitive with huge ships as it does in a regular dogfight.

HOUSE RULES my dear Fellow EPIC Wingers...

We love FFG for making this game... don't we?

I do.

Be that as it may, I do what I want to do with the toys that I own. If you are not happy with the way a model works... FIX IT!

I do not do everything (at all hardly) that my little girl friends want done, and certainly not ever how they think it should be done.

FFG Made polite rules for these ships. They deserve a lot of appreciation from us for bringing the best STAR WARS Models to our tables too. That however does not mean that we have to do things exactly as they are written by our FFG friends.

One fix, that I feel is absolutely 110% reasonable is to simply double the energy gain. If you move ahead 1 then add six to your pool, rather than three. These HUGE Ships (like an aircraft carrier) DO HAVE Freaking powerful batteries. Starting the games with no energy at all is polite and cowing down to stupid people (that are tourist in our world of X-Wing Epic)...PERIOD.

Uh no...

I am not about to allow these easily upset FFG lookie-lous to downgrade my enjoyment of my game and affect how my beautiful models are played.

Hell-Nah!

Another fine fix for our energy starved Huge ships is to simply treat their max energy as 1x3. So lets say a transport has the top off energy capacity (what it can earn from movements) of five. That is fine but each token counts as three so it really has fifteen total energy when there are five little pink stars amongst that paper work.

I admit that this is kinda heavy duty. Another of Boss' Game Parlor Rules (Ha, Ha!) for Huge-babies is to simply start the game with that max energy then build it up a little each turn with your top-off movement gains. I use colored beads to represent this extra energy, but soon I will have enough legitimate tokens.

I kinda love my toys... and thus I treat them nice you know. Allowing them to function in a manner that lessens them is not showing them proper love.

Yes it takes hours to play an EPIC Game... and I love it!

I just do my best to crash my CR-90 into herds of TIEs. I call it the "$100 battering ram".

Are you sure they're making full use of them? The Corvette can do a lot of stuff in a single turn.

Yeah my first thought when I saw this was that someone was doing something wrong. A CR-90 is actually kind of hard to kill if the person uses it correctly. The biggest threat to them are bombers with ord, Tie Fighters aren't a huge problem, if you kit out the CR correctly.

Yes, and bombers with ord should be the most dangerous to the huge ships, because that's what the Empire intended them for. Now, in your experience, what ord do you most like to use on a CR-90?

One would think that Advanced Proton Torpedoes should shine, but that range 1 limitation and the 6 points seems just as prohibitive with huge ships as it does in a regular dogfight.

Proton torpedoes and homing missiles shine against them. HLC is also good. Any time you get extra dice against them they crumble. The main issue is getting that ordinance through the escort fighters. Also if you can you want to get closer to the corvette because the quad lasers base 3 attack is weak. Any critts that get through devastate the corvette. My play group tends to do about one team epic a week and it is kind of more fun than the standard 100 point games if it didn't take so long.

Uhhh the Bright Hope is borderline amazing with multiple Comms Boosters. For ~40pts you get a metric ton of stress support and focus tokens.

I really like the huge rules. The ships are balanced.

IMO the problem with the corvette isn't the durability, it's how little energy you get compared to how much you need to spend. Even if you take an engineering team, only do 2-straight maneuvers, and never use any energy-spending abilities you can't keep turbolasers firing every turn or use the second-chance shot on the quad guns. If you dare to use any energy-spending abilities or try to maneuver it gets even worse, and pretty quickly you find yourself shooting ever other turn, maybe even less often if you're trying to use those energy-hungry turbolasers. I really have no idea what FFG was thinking when they wrote the energy rules, it's incredibly frustrating and makes me have no interest in epic games.

The Corvette is way too weak and struggles to use its guns.

It looks great, but the side using it should get about 100 points for free just to compensate for having it.

IMO the problem with the corvette isn't the durability, it's how little energy you get compared to how much you need to spend. Even if you take an engineering team, only do 2-straight maneuvers, and never use any energy-spending abilities you can't keep turbolasers firing every turn or use the second-chance shot on the quad guns. If you dare to use any energy-spending abilities or try to maneuver it gets even worse, and pretty quickly you find yourself shooting ever other turn, maybe even less often if you're trying to use those energy-hungry turbolasers. I really have no idea what FFG was thinking when they wrote the energy rules, it's incredibly frustrating and makes me have no interest in epic games.

Cannot like this enough. I've been resisting posting in this thread because I have only been able to play with the corvette once so far, but that one time it was so starved for energy it was beyond comical, and I only had one turbo laser and one quad. Think I inflicted a total of two points of damage with the weapons the whole game.

It was still very useful for the actions, and I was jamming enemies and then slicing them with the transport. And I managed to run over a couple of key ships (unfortunately I also hit a couple of my own). But there was never any thought of moving more than minimum every turn, energy was simply too scarce to not get as much as possible.

It was a team game, 200 points each players, 4 players, 2 each side. So the corvette had enough points, and there were points left for some escort; I admit that I had played several epic games before, while the player flying the corvette used it for the first time (and I don't know how many epic games he had before). His partner was used to epic games, while I had a total rookie at my side (his second game ever). So much for the experience levels.

The corvette did some amazing damage to my shuttle, using it's primary weapon. It got 2 shots off with that. It also did some minor damage to the defender, with the side weapons.

The corvette was destroyed in the 3rd turn!

I got 6 Interceptors on it's flank and attacked the aft section, crippling it within one turn. The return fire was a joke. His escort was mainly occupied with the TIEs, plus on the other side (and you know that crossing the corvettes path can be the last thing you do). I admit I maxed out against the corvette, but seriously, there wasn't a moment when I wished for a bomber - the squints did a perfect job here (the attack from Rexler was nice, but not needed); in my mind it shouldn't be like that, hence my approach to add some durability next time.

I also though that the corvette might do better if properly supported by a transport, but that would be even more points to sink into that huge ships, while removing more points from your attack pool (the transport is not doing much damage). And really, no matter how crappy it was flown, you shouldn't be able to cripple/destroy it within 2 turns with 6 interceptors! That seemed wrong to me. I nearly felt sorry for him that he bought it (well, the model looks nice, so even if he will not play it again there's something for a showcase).

I would really like to see some of the lists for a 400 points game from the people claiming that the corvette is balanced and fine the way it is... I haven't had the time yet to wrap my mind around that, so I'm not sure if it is possible to come up with a build for the corvette that can hold itself.

Just a word about "it has many actions, you have to use them all": Sure, it comes with some nice tricks, but for 120 points I get 5 decent fighters, that make 5 attacks (with 3 dice each) from 5 angles if I choose; in my experience so far that's a lot more effective then what the corvette offers.

The huge ships just show again that the game mechanics favor quantity over quality.

I'll say now that it's no battleship. It's a retrofitted transport.

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.

Believe me, I get it. When you build a list with a corvette, you're aghast at how many points you're sinking into it, and how vulnerable it is to being shot at. Your escorts have a lot of heavy lifting to do. If both the corvette and the escorts are being flown right (as in, the escorts not straying out of the corvette's range to offer any assistance), then things should go alright.

Also, when you said that the Corvette is a battleship, I don't agree. It's a customizable multi-purpose craft; not by design a battleship.

Ninja's by Captain Lackwit

Curse you, Captain!!

Also, why were those escorts pre-occupied with fighting TIE fighters, rather than going after those squints?

HOUSE RULES my dear Fellow EPIC Wingers...

We love FFG for making this game... don't we?

I do.

Be that as it may, I do what I want to do with the toys that I own. If you are not happy with the way a model works... FIX IT!

House rules are good temporary fix for games between friends, but they are neither the ideal solution nor should we be doing FFG's job.

The huge ships just show again that the game mechanics favor quantity over quality.

I don't think that's really true. If the corvette's guns didn't cost energy (freeing you to maneuver and spend energy on all those powerful support abilities) it would absolutely murder stuff. Turbolasers let you get in early damage while everyone else is out of range, while the quad guns are effectively YT-1300s with gunner. And since you have energy free to use those dice-modifying abilities you're going to get much more consistent hits, while the additional maneuvering options make the ramming threat a lot scarier. Meanwhile on defense you're getting automatic evade results against every attack (crippling to a swarm) and can repair damage every turn. Sure, it will die if you get a whole squad into range without the escorts stopping or disrupting anything, but it could easily provide 150 points worth of value before going down.

The problem is that FFG completely screwed up with the energy mechanic. You can't do any of that even in ideal situations, and if you try to maneuver you're stuck with a useless paperweight. Instead of the awesome concept of a powerful gunship driving straight into the battle and blasting stuff into wreckage in all directions before exploding under mass fire we got a game of "what can I afford to use this turn".

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.

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.

My (limited) experience with the Corvette suggests kitting it out to be an awesome support ship that is fully capable of defending itself. I think it's actually a giant mistake to kit it out with Single Turbo Lasers- spending a bunch of energy to make a 4 die attack against a 6 die defense is a bit silly. But the Quad Laser Cannons? Those things are beastly! You spend 1 energy to make an attack, and there's a built-in gunner mechanic if you have an extra energy on the card.

The Corvette's aft section is-every turn- either mitigating a hit from _every ship that attacks it that turn_, or is regenerating its shields- effectively nullifying whatever damage was done to it the previous turn.

If you're taking a Squint against a Corvette, you'd better have a target lock and focus. On average, 3 naked attack dice are going to do less than 1 hit against a ship with a Reinforce token. A focus or target lock brings that up to 1.3 hits for 3 dice. If you have both, you might be able to reliably score 2 hits on the Corvette. All that math assumes you're attacking from range 2. Attacking from range 3 is worse. Attacking from range 1 is suicide.

And, of course, the Corvette can heal itself next round.

If you are using your Squints to attack the Corvette, the X-Wings are having a whole lot of fun attacking your Squints from behind. And actually, about those target locks and focus tokens your Squint had? My friend Wes Janson would like to say "hello". When he shot at you he stripped it off. Since those Squints were so busy lining up a shot on the Corvette, my friend Wedge was able to get behind you. With Outmaneuver. His action + the free action from the Corvette's Coordinate action means that Wedge has 3/4 attack dice + Target Lock + Focus, plus he's Wedge, so you have 1 less... dude look. You you just lost a Squint. For your sake, I hope it wasn't Soontir Fel.

So all that has happened, and the Corvette hasn't even had a chance to fire its several attacks this round.

As far as Tie Fighters attacking the Corvette... That seems like a bad idea. Even with a focus token, you're not doing 1 damage per round per Tie (on average). A Tie Fighter against a Reinforced huge ship at range 2 is doing 0.2 hits on average.

The other important thing to understand about Corvettes is that they have a huge number of ways of healing themselves every turn. So when I read someone saying that:

"Taking down a huge ship should be doable, but should take a concerted effort, with many, many attacks.

Put simply, IT SHOULD TAKE A BUNCH OF TIME."

I think you're half-right. It should and does take a concerted effort, but "time" is the last thing you want to give a Corvette! You want to land a bunch of hits on it in one turn. You want to overwhelm it with so much damage that it cannot heal it in one turn. You can't do that with fragile fighters that plink against its (reinforced!) shields. You need torpedoes, and heavy laser cannons. You need tanky ships that can survive more than one attack. You need, in short, bombers and defenders.

Which is exactly the way it should be.

My (limited) experience with the Corvette suggests kitting it out to be an awesome support ship that is fully capable of defending itself. I think it's actually a giant mistake to kit it out with Single Turbo Lasers- spending a bunch of energy to make a 4 die attack against a 6 die defense is a bit silly. But the Quad Laser Cannons? Those things are beastly! You spend 1 energy to make an attack, and there's a built-in gunner mechanic if you have an extra energy on the card.

The Corvette's aft section is-every turn- either mitigating a hit from _every ship that attacks it that turn_, or is regenerating its shields- effectively nullifying whatever damage was done to it the previous turn.

If you're taking a Squint against a Corvette, you'd better have a target lock and focus. On average, 3 naked attack dice are going to do less than 1 hit against a ship with a Reinforce token. A focus or target lock brings that up to 1.3 hits for 3 dice. If you have both, you might be able to reliably score 2 hits on the Corvette. All that math assumes you're attacking from range 2. Attacking from range 3 is worse. Attacking from range 1 is suicide.

And, of course, the Corvette can heal itself next round.

I'm very curious where you got the energy to do all that. Because if you attack, you won't have any energy to regenerate shields, and vice versa.

If you are using your Squints to attack the Corvette, the X-Wings are having a whole lot of fun attacking your Squints from behind. And actually, about those target locks and focus tokens your Squint had? My friend Wes Janson would like to say "hello". When he shot at you he stripped it off. Since those Squints were so busy lining up a shot on the Corvette, my friend Wedge was able to get behind you. With Outmaneuver. His action + the free action from the Corvette's Coordinate action means that Wedge has 3/4 attack dice + Target Lock + Focus, plus he's Wedge, so you have 1 less... dude look. You you just lost a Squint. For your sake, I hope it wasn't Soontir Fel.

At that point cost, Wes included and assuming you took only two quad lasers, we're looking at 160-ish points at the lowest. Since we've already established that weight of fire = dead Corvette, and you won't be putting down a lot of fighters yourself, there's no reason for me to pump points into a Glass Fell, or any other expensive Interceptor.

Which means I can field 9 Interceptors. The odds of Wes and Wedge surviving the first round of combat are... slim at best. Assuming you take down -let's be generous- 3 Interceptors in the first round, that's still 18 red dice a turn pounding your Corvette.

If you shoot, you won't have the energy to regenerate shields. If you don't shoot, those Interceptors will keep hammering your Corvette.

Pick your poison.

I think you're half-right. It should and does take a concerted effort, but "time" is the last thing you want to give a Corvette! You want to land a bunch of hits on it in one turn. You want to overwhelm it with so much damage that it cannot heal it in one turn. You can't do that with fragile fighters that plink against its (reinforced!) shields. You need torpedoes, and heavy laser cannons. You need tanky ships that can survive more than one attack. You need, in short, bombers and defenders.

Which is exactly the way it should be.

Most ordnance as is is too unreliable. You need at least two turns to set up a semi-accurate torpedo (as I assume Jonus will be the primary target of any sane player) so that leaves us with... Proton Rockets I guess? A single 5-dice shot for at least 19 points doesn't exactly sound like Corvette killing to me.

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.

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.