Hey everyone, first post here. Not been playing the game very long, but I've been reading a tonne and watching lots of videos - I think I'm getting pretty addicted pretty quickly! I've been thinking about ways to add strategic depth to the game, and I thought I'd throw open an idea to the community.

I'd like to see the Delta Class DX-9 Stormtrooper Transport ( Wookiepedia) added to the game. I'm imagining stats somewhere around this:

i.e., 2 ATTACK 1 EVADE 5 HULL 2 SHIELD

I would say it needs at least one missile slot (possibly two) and two crew slots. I'd give the base model a relatively low points cost (perhaps 15 for the basic model with no special abilities).

So, that's a very basic ship, at this point - nothing very special, basically an imperial HWK or a Lambda clone. Where I see it being different is in the ship specific cards that the expansion could add. I'd like to see three new cards in the expansion:

Boarding Party

CREW

Attack Dice: 2 Range: 1

Attack: Discard this card to perform this attack.

If succesful, deal one damage. You may then flip one crew upgrade on the target ship face down.

Points cost: 3

Heavy Boarding Party

CREW

Attack Dice: 2 Range: 1

Attack: Discard this card to perform this attack.

If succesful, deal one damage. You may then flip one upgrade card of any type on the target ship with a points cost equal to or lower than your pilot skill face down.

Points cost: 5

Squad Leader

CREW

If a Boarding Party or Heavy Boarding Party attack is unsuccesful, do not discard that card.

Points cost: 2

Basically, I see this as a possible way to go some way towards tweaking the game balance awy from single ship killer-builds just slightly by giving players a way - a difficult way, granted, but a way, to mitigate some of those high impact cards like Gunner and C3PO.

Any thoughts?

how exactly do you dock with these tiny ships withou tractor beams?

I don't think it really suits the game that well. Boarding is makes sense for attacking larger ships that are not very agile. the only way that could even make sense against a falcon or some such is if it was ioned? The point cost also seems a little low for the amount of hull and still having 2 attk to the hwks 1.

Forgot to mention it would have to be restricted to range 1.

I guess that you'd need to build a list around the idea of boarding - possibly a DX-9 and an ion cannon equipped defender with a small swarm to go with it.

I suppose the base attack value could be dropped to 1, and the boarding party attack could be given two dice to compensate. I don't think the points value should get to high, since it won't be a very useful ship unless you can board with it, and I don't think it'd be used much without at least 5 points of crew upgrades. If the cost gets to high, it would dominate the total cost beyond its real value.

it wouldn't be a crew upgrade it would be a team upgrade.

As of now not much use as there is no docking bay or boarding platform. It is at a starfighter scale and not yet at the BIG SHIP level. You wont see a corvette swept up into the docking bay of a star destroyer soon.

However I am certain that there is some boarding mechanics in the Star Wars Armada. Lets see what they make of it first before we try to conjure up our own mechanics. (I'm still trying to think how pilot replacement can be viable without being broken or ridiculous, and also ways to balance epic Starfighter wing against Epic ship with Starfighter repairing docking bay.)

In a general sense, I like the idea.

That being said, IF a boarding mechanic was to become a thing, I would envision it as an action on the action bar, not as a crew/team-granted ability. I would also see it as limited to a ship that had been blocked, ionized or otherwise thematically "boardable". I don't think most small-base ships would make sense as a boarding "target" either (some possibilities in the lore do exist however).

As you have it set up, it seems to almost be a crew slot set up as a munition, except not requiring a target lock. Oohh! Side note, maybe require something like a "tractor lock"? Only if it isn't a one-time thing however.

I would love to see the idea further fleshed out!

In a general sense, I like the idea.

That being said, IF a boarding mechanic was to become a thing, I would envision it as an action on the action bar, not as a crew/team-granted ability. I would also see it as limited to a ship that had been blocked, ionized or otherwise thematically "boardable". I don't think most small-base ships would make sense as a boarding "target" either (some possibilities in the lore do exist however).

As you have it set up, it seems to almost be a crew slot set up as a munition, except not requiring a target lock. Oohh! Side note, maybe require something like a "tractor lock"? Only if it isn't a one-time thing however.

I would love to see the idea further fleshed out!

I like the general idea as well, and really like the direction SWDad is taking it!! Keep the ideas flowing guys!

Personally, I'd still like to see it eat up the ships attack phase, but having a boarding action consume the action phase as well would make it quite a costly ability to balance out the fact that it could also be quite powerful. Possibly simply requiring a target lock would be enough for that purpose?

And yeah, restricting it to large base ships would be a sensible limitation. That still leaves Decimators, 1300s, 2400s, Firesprays and Lambdas as legitimate targets, all ships which tend to be buffed heavily with upgrades.

I guess the only issue I have worth you're ideas SWDad I'd that I'd be worried if a ship could board multiple times in a match it might become too potent... Although, given that you need to be range one and roll for success, it might bit be okay. If it wasn't a one time thing, then I'd probably remove the damage element, and have it purely be about flipping upgrades and crew cards instead.

I can think of other ways to negate crew, an alternate Vader with force choke or a radiation attack. I'm not sold on the need to do so. I think boarding anything smaller than a corvette, even thst was only boarded after it was in the bay of a SD. The mole miners from dark forces were used to board Capitol ships, agsin not small stuff.

I think boarding would be best in Armada. The scale of even epic doesn't suit it.

DX-9 should have ion cannons. Extra upgrade slot.

I reckon there should be a way to disable large ships and bigger for boarding. Will have to home brew a cannon upgrade that deals a different sort of token and when the target has accrued enough to match their starting Hull they are disabled and drifting.

If they don't have crew your basic boarding party is completely wasted. That's bad design practice.

Cards need some universal utility. See Predator: it grants one reroll (instead of two) if the ship under attack has pilot skill > 2. Autothrusters, blatant anti-turret but works at R3 so it's not a junk buy if you're not facing a turret.

Heavy Boarding Party is a bit better (although it interacting with titles, EPTs and mods makes no sense thematically) but I'm not understanding the rationale behind the pilot skill based restriction on it's function.

I always liked the DX-9, but i've yet to see a good boarding mechanic to make this work.

I designed these a while ago, before the Huge Ships came along:

Boarding might be an interesting option in a specific scenario, but for regular or tournament gameplay I don't see the need or logic of a ship trying to complete a boarding action in the midst of starfighter combat. Rightly or wrongly, I envision a standard game of X-wing to represent 3-4 minutes of "cinematic" time; I'd also guess that's roughly the quickest timeframe an already-docked ship could cut through the other ship's hull or override its door, enter, and achieve their objective. For a team to board another ship, that requires the two vessels involved to be either stock still or traveling at the exact same speed in the exact same direction. I just don't think all of that could happen in the same amount of time it takes an A-Wing to koiogran.

Boarding would just be an exceptionally unwieldy mechanic in the game, IMO. I feel like if the Imperials really had to board Outrider, they'd worry about popping the Z-95s flying alongside it first; that's the part that this game represents. If boarding actions had to be included I think it's reasonable that a successful attempt should probably take 3-4 turns minimum and should certainly require base to base contact between the attacker and defender. If Range 1 was meant to portray tractor beams, then instead implement tractor beams into the game to facilitate the necessary base contact.

That's kinda what I concluded when i looked into boarding.

A lot of people use "last hull point removed was an ion" as disabled to achieve disable objectives, and escort the boarder to the ship as boarding. The actual mechanic could be a game of imp assault or a dice roll, or just an auto success.

That's not to say boarding doesn't have it's place, if we had a dynamic campaign system it'd be ace, especially for space pirates in scum! (I had mentioned a capture mechanic to use ships in the future).