Hello. This is a bomb-droid. Say hello, bomb-droid!

whrrRRRRRR BEEP BEEP BEEP

Ah crap! Go back to sleep! GO BACK TO

BOOM

........_Owie

It is PS 7, with 3 agility, an all-green dial, 0 attack, 1 hull, and the Cloak action.

It also has the following two pilot abilities:

When you are dealt lethal damage, each ship at Range 1 suffers 2 damage.

When you perform an attack, instead deal 1 damage to yourself.

It would be 10 points at max, and possibly as few as 8 or 7.

Would you field it? Would you call a suicide-drone overpowered? Would you call it Steve?

Just use the scum dead man's switch card coming out for a point on a ship that can actually attack

A 10-point support ship with no attack would be nice, actually. Support ships should have been like that in this game, I think. Not like how the HWK and Lambda are.

Well, let's consider it worst-case. Say it's 7 points, and I run a 100-point list of these. That gives me 14 bombs. At 2 points of damage each, that's 28 points of automatic damage, all bursting in a nice AOE bubble.

I'm going to have to call Steve a very, very bad idea.

I'm gonna say no. It may seem like a good idea, but the enemy is gonna love staying range 2+. That's not hard to do, really. Snipe 'em with a HLC, then watch the chain reaction as they blow each other up

I'd make it work more like Proximity Mines that you can guide. Ship that is attacked rolls two red dice, suffers all hits and crits rolled. Make it base contact. Say, 1 straight and banks, all 2's. Give it boost maybe? I dunno about that though. Maybe make it a bomb? That way you can drive by and kick the thing out like a proximity mine and it can chase down what you want.

Three agility and a cloak action? How does a mine have more agility than a star fighter?

Just use the scum dead man's switch

That's the inspiration. However, DM's Switch leaves the activation almost entirely to your opponent, where I want to set the chain off myself.

I also wanted a very difficult to hit ship with high mobility (thus 3 agility + Cloak, for 5, and a decloak to get behind someone).

I set the PS at 7 because I wanted some pilots to be able to say "Oh shi..." and get out of the way, but have this be a rarity.

...The enemy is gonna love staying range 2+. That's not hard to do, really.

Thus the Cloak action (more specifically, Decloak).

Well, let's consider it worst-case. Say it's 7 points, and I run a 100-point list of these. That gives me 14 bombs. At 2 points of damage each, that's 28 points of automatic damage, all bursting in a nice AOE bubble.

I'm going to have to call Steve a very, very bad idea.

28 points of automatic damage to my own fleet as well.

All it takes is a single attack to get through my 5 agility (after Cloak), and then my entire fleet blows up.

However, if you can't manage that, then yours has a tough match-up.

Should make for very exciting games

A 10-point support ship with no attack would be nice, actually. Support ships should have been like that in this game, I think. Not like how the HWK and Lambda are.

Thank you . This thing as a mini-swarm would be bloody terrifying with some good late-game flankers.

I'd make it work more like Proximity Mines that you can guide. Ship that is attacked rolls two red dice, suffers all hits and crits rolled. Make it base contact. Say, 1 straight and banks, all 2's. Give it boost maybe? I dunno about that though. Maybe make it a bomb? That way you can drive by and kick the thing out like a proximity mine and it can chase down what you want.

Also an idea I considered. However, if you think about it, this is like a droid with two seismic charges strapped to its chest.

Maybe the Prox-mine version is another "pilot" of the same "craft" with a different detonation ability?

Detonates for 3 direct damage to everything it's touching, and takes damage whenever it is rammed, or when it rams. Preferably a low Pilot Skill, though the lower it goes, the more expensive it should be. Fun!

I can see a Level 2 of this being worth 11-14 points.

They're really more like giant cherries...

They're a smaller target. Much harder to hit, but you need less effort to kill it.

Having explosives tied to something vital probably helps with their flinching as well. It'd work for me!

A 10-point support ship with no attack would be nice, actually. Support ships should have been like that in this game, I think. Not like how the HWK and Lambda are.

Well I'm replaying tie fighter at the moment and I have to say mine's are not hard to hit at all, they are stationery and easily hit.

Well, I meant that there should be support ships (ones that have area-of-effect abilities to boost allies or debuff opponents) that only cost 10 points. When you have HWKs and Lambdas that cost in the 20s, people aren't too jazzed to take them — even if they can attack, they can't do it as well as your dedicated offensive ships can — and they don't value the ships' support abilities enough to spend points on them instead of one more attacker.

A support ship should not be so expensive that it takes the place of an attacker. That's why they should cost, like, a dozen points at most, and preferably less. To stop people from breaking the game by swarming a bunch of 8-point ships, you give the ships 0 attack — which would fit their role of support ships anyway.

As for your, shall we say, suicide bomber idea, I think it would be an interesting thing to have in the game but it needs to be artificially limited in some way. It wouldn't be X-Wing anymore if a dozen little ships just bum rush the opponent, kill themselves and win in one turn. Allowing three at most (somehow) would be OK, though, I think.

A 10-point support ship with no attack would be nice, actually. Support ships should have been like that in this game, I think. Not like how the HWK and Lambda are.

the difference between the hwk and the lambda is with HLC and engine upgrade and it becomes a formidable dog fighter. The hwk is just awful

But then it's a 30-some-point ship that's kitted out to fight that also happens to have a support ability. It's not really a support ship anymore (and it costs a ton to do it, anyway).

A proper support ship should really just do supporty things (like the Rebel Transport) and be cheap enough to make it worth players' while.

Well I'm replaying tie fighter at the moment and I have to say mine's are not hard to hit at all, they are stationery and easily hit.

These aren't mines.

These are Bomb-Droids.

These are tiny little kamikaze, whose mere existance calls ethics into question, and is a good part of why IG-88 wants to start a Droid Rebellion.

As for your, shall we say, suicide bomber idea, I think it would be an interesting thing to have in the game but it needs to be artificially limited in some way. It wouldn't be X-Wing anymore if a dozen little ships just bum rush the opponent, kill themselves and win in one turn. Allowing three at most (somehow) would be OK, though, I think.

I disagree.

1. If I swarm with them, the sheer number of ships I have on the table means that if a single one dies out of my control, it's very likely to kill comerades. Swarming this fleet essentially means that you've given all of your opponents Super-Ruthlessness, and your ships are extra-vulnerable to non-combat damage.

2. If I 'attack' remotely well, then I'll have guaranteed killed several of my ships. True, it hurts your fleet as well, but my numbers dwindle over time irrespective of who's winning.
   1. As such, my late-game is practically non-existant. It's like an Alpha-Strike fleet that has abandoned the long-range approach, but moreso.

3. If my target ship has an odd amount of HP, then it takes one extra ship for me to spend killing it. 3 of mine to kill a Rookie, 7 to kill a Wookie. Splash helps with this, but that's where the differences in maneuvering skills win the match.

4. If my opponent is flying a fleet with sufficiently high HP, I would need to splash a certain amount of damage to tie, much less to win. This becomes increasingly true if my opponents' guns find any purchase.

5. If my opponent is flying with Bombs of their own (now available to every faction), then I am in an extremely tough position, as a single Seismic Charge could decimate my entire fleet.
   1. Or force me to de-cloak to get around it, which leaves me open to their guns and out of the position i'd prefer, and therefore increasing my chances of a catastrophic chain.

      ​

A swarm of these only wins if I can actually out-fly my opponent. However, your comment is telling me that the Agility and the Pilot Skill can both be lowered, for balance purposes.

I disagree.

If I swarm with them, the sheer number of ships I have on the table means that if a single one dies out of my control, it's very likely to kill comerades. Swarming this fleet essentially means that you've given all of your opponents Super-Ruthlessness, and your ships are extra-vulnerable to non-combat damage.

I'm not sold sorry. It just sounds like a bad design. :/

For 12 points (FFG's minimum point cost), not sure.

Well for Epic we got the Rebel Transport. It has no attack. Is could do damage with the use of slicer tools and toyrn.

It's an interesting idea.

Since Steve has an area-of-effect when he attacks, does he have to follow printed firing arcs when attacking? Or can he just detonate whenever, as long as not cloaked?

Z-95 swarms approve, who have more HP than can be dealt if they fly out-of-formation.

Also happy is Oicunn, who can detonate your fleet in the activation phase regardless of cloak while his wingman stays out of range.

As long as they hit one that's in range 1 of another, DeciVaders relish the notion of sniping from Range 2-3; Doomshuttles as well but to a lesser extent due to arc-dodging. (But if they only hit one and it doesn't blow up any others, Vader's self-damage nullifies the point of doing so)

Ten Numb with a mercenary copilot can snipe at Range 3, too.

Assault Missile or Ion Pulse Missile Blount would likewise be happy to cut some of the Steve-fleet's damage potential down.

It would be a fun exercise for arc dodgers. Turr Phennir would especially love it, except for the fact that the auto damage would probably happen before he could do his thing.

Bombs could stand a reasonable chance of thinning the herd, too.

I think there's enough things around that could check this ship for it not to be OP.

Most of them are somewhat underused, which makes Steve a very nice anti-meta choice without being unstoppable and which would really bring out a much more diverse set of options in the metagame. Not only that, but flying with/against pure-Steve fleets would be a very different sort of match. Very little dice-rolling, very much based on your ability to outfly your opponents.

Steve as a filler in a mixed squad with a single powerful ship might get out of hand, though; you have all of a sudden a great way to take out any of that ship's greatest hindrances.

For instance, some people fly phantoms with the Rebel Captive to cripple other phantoms, because phantoms have a hard time against phantoms and RC interferes with ACD. If you just focus down the RC carrier with Steves, you've paved the way for your phantom to wreck, and presumably without too much difficulty at that.

You want cheap ships with a Dead Man's Switch from S&V added in. Possibly with APL as well.

Bomb droid

PS whatever

Cost whatever

attack 0

agility 0

hull 1

shield 0

When you execute a maneuver that causes you to overlap a ship destroy your ship. all ships at range 1 suffer 1 damage.

How about making this a bomb dropped by bombers and firesprays?

How about making this a bomb dropped by bombers and firesprays?

Seismic charges

Steve 2.0

Bomb. Cost 6

PS 12

Attack 0

Agility 0

Hull 1

Shields 0

When you execute a maneuver that causes you to overlap a ship, roll 1 red die. All ships at range 1 suffer the result.

Uses TIE fighter dial

You drop it, you get a combat phase. At the end of the next activation phase, it starts hunting, giving people time to scramble or even to kill it.

How about making this a bomb dropped by bombers and firesprays?

Seismic charges

Yes, but moving.

I brought this up a while back

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/111271-we-need-a-bomb-that-moves/?view=findpost&p=1162422

I don't want it to be a deployable. I want it to be a ship. Complete with model, possibly one that looks like Voltorb.