I brought up the small ship fortress for a couple of reasons:

- Fortress builds can include them, it isn't the norm but was a new idea for me.

- It was a recent event, having occurred at worlds. It might start to show up more frequently in tournaments.

I wonder if someone tried to camp 4 Y-wings with ion turrets near the corners and edge would work?

Gold + ion turret x 2 = 46

Gold + ion turret + hull x 2 = 52

98 points total

Problem is that it deals very poor damage at extreme range, which is easy for an opponent to exploit.

Ion Cannons would definitely be something to consider, though.

with the 4 Y or 3Y builds i find flying them close together as a mobile firebase makes them better than any stationary fortress anyway.

Exactly.

Hmm...
One more aspect of a good fortress: It must be more survivable at Range 3 than its opponent.
Among other things, that means no ships with only 2 attack (barring toolkit pilots).

That leaves us with:

Named Falcons
B-Wings
E-Wings
X-Wings
Cannonized YT-2400s

Aggressor
Firespray
StarViper

Firespray
Shuttle
Defender
Interceptor
Phantom
Decimator

for use as our main fortress-turrets.

Similarly, there are supporting cards that help the fortress.

Advanced Sensors is incredible, as it removes the main downside of the tactic (the action-loss).
The FCS/Gunner combo more than makes up for action loss.
Accuracy Corrector means that if I roll less than 2 natural damage, I in fact rolled 2 natural damage.

Ion Cannons paralyze your opponents, drawing them closer to your fortress than they would theoretically like.

Colonel Jendon, ST-321, and Fleet Officer all stack beautifully with the Adv Sensors, as they ensure multiple actions are used per round.

Howlrunner is not as good as a target lock, but is better than nothing, is cheap, and spreads to everyone.

Similarly, Captain Jonus is astonishing if I manage to fit in Cannons

Tetran Cowall's 1 Koiogran means he can definitely escape the fortress-furball.

Prince Xisor works well as the foremost position. Typically, this would be the ship most easily focused down at long-range, but with high agility and the ability to spread damage evenly throughout his fleet, he negates the downside of this position.

Lando Calrissian and Airen Cracken are the best ways for the Rebels to take up spare actions while ramming.

R2-D2 is great for that foremost position as well. The bumping maneuver is likely green.

Keyan Farlander would alternate stressful turns and green banks, gaining an offensive focus every-other turn.

Break it now so they can fix it so we don't get surprised later. I like it.

I think fortressing is a valid tactic and one that can be beat. That x-wing fortress is an impressive feat of skill and tactics. But all you need to do is to focus fire on that front x-wing and the whole fortress falls apart.

I don't think fortresses will become illegal, but I am sure FFG will make an upgrade or a pilot have an ability that disrupts fortress. The same way Blount with assault missile was made to work against against swarms. He was also made to eliminate the stealth device as well.

Heck, assault missiles will work great against a fortress.

You can have a ship with autoblaster and have that bump into the fortress and constantly blast away and then do a maneuver that makes it bump again and use the autoblaster again.

Use the fortress against itself. Have many ships bump into the fortress and fire away at one ship to break apart the fortress. When your ships are bumping his fortress, they at least have one less ship attacking it.

Be creative and stop whining. A boring tactic yes, but it took creativity to form this tactic. Form an anti-fortress tactic with the same level of skill and creativity.

For what it's worth, in the X-Wing and TIE fighter computer games, you could cut power to your engine and just chill in space.

The only time I would do this though is when those stupid minefields were present.

I wonder if they put in a new general rule that if opposing ships bases overlapped they each took 1 damage card (or rolled as if they went over an asteroid if their own ships overlapped), if that would be broken? What are the negatives around this idea?

- if a player pilots his own ships into one another they potentially get damaged/critted. The player learns to fly better or not keep such close formations.

- if a player blocks an opponents ship intentionally, he goes into it knowing he takes damage on his ship. Since many ships are moved into blocking to save them (when they have 1 hull left) this would risk the damaged ship in a sacrifice play to cause a pile up or loss of actions. I think that is a fair trade off.

- Furballs get resolved much faster as not only shooting damage but overlap damage is occurring.

This change would also speed up games as damage is now potentially occurring at a much higher rate. It also puts the weight on flying better. Fortressing would stop as it could lead to a player killing off his own squad.

Thoughts?

Great idea, if you want to make the Academy TIE the most powerful ship in the game. Using filler ships to block high-value enemy ships is already incredibly powerful; give them the ability to do damage while they're at it and you break them completely.

I think fortressing is a valid tactic and one that can be beat. That x-wing fortress is an impressive feat of skill and tactics. But all you need to do is to focus fire on that front x-wing and the whole fortress falls apart.

I don't think fortresses will become illegal, but I am sure FFG will make an upgrade or a pilot have an ability that disrupts fortress. The same way Blount with assault missile was made to work against against swarms. He was also made to eliminate the stealth device as well.

Heck, assault missiles will work great against a fortress.

You can have a ship with autoblaster and have that bump into the fortress and constantly blast away and then do a maneuver that makes it bump again and use the autoblaster again.

Use the fortress against itself. Have many ships bump into the fortress and fire away at one ship to break apart the fortress. When your ships are bumping his fortress, they at least have one less ship attacking it.

Be creative and stop whining. A boring tactic yes, but it took creativity to form this tactic. Form an anti-fortress tactic with the same level of skill and creativity.

If your enemy has an impenetrable fortress, see to it that they stay there.