The interdictor cruiser has two basic purposes,

Prevent enemy ships from jumping into hyperspace

- Mechanic Ideas

• Game lasts one additional round as long as a interdictor cruiser is present (helps imperial destroy all rebel ships?)

Pull enemy ships out of hyperspace

- Mechanic Ideas

• Cancels the hyperspace objective bonus, forcing enemy to deploy in normal deployment zone (kind of weak IMO)
• Pulls enemies out of hyperspace early (Enemy can only deploy half fleet to start game, then the rest deploys at start of round 2 with zero speed)

I apologize as I have not read this whole topic thread so this may have come up already, but in the Thrawn trilogy the interdictor was used in a very unique way during one of the battles. The basic premise was, it was very difficult to jump into a system with absolute accuracy. You didn't always know where your ship was going to end up. So to overcome this, Thrawn used his interdictors to pull his own ships out of hyperspace exactly where he wanted them to be for flanking the enemy. I could see this mechanic working in Armada as well.

Sorry for the long post!

You could do an escape Objective. Where the 1st player gains additional points for destroying the interdiction cruiser and the 2nd player gets additional points for keeping it alive.

I very seriously doubt there will be a ship that only works with a single objective. If your opponent doesn't bring it then it is useless. If you bring it, well do you really want to block your own Hyperspace Assault?

I love the idea of the Interdictor, but I don't think it'll fit very well into Armada as is. Even if it comes with its own new objective that forces the enemy to reserve half his/her force that is still a single objective, and one that your opponents would never pick.

In Empire at war, Interdictors can not only prevent rebel fleets to escape from battle,

but their gravity wells can establish a defensive form of a screen that fends missiles and torpedos off.

In Armada this would be black dice?

For everybody suggesting rules effects for Interdictors, remember that there is no space on a ship card for special abilities. I don't think FFG is going to add a whole new text box for one ship: if they want to add special rules, it would either be through an upgrade card with its own upgrade slot (Gravity well generator?), or Objectives that can only be selected if you have an Interdictor in your fleet. Either could work without changing the basic game rules.

Personally, I like the idea of Objectives that come with the ship, and can only be selected if you have it in your fleet: it would be a way to make the Interdictor work, and add new Objectives to the game. However, the two most obvious uses for an Interdictor, ambushing the opponent and enacting a Thrawn Pincer of pulling your own ships out in a flanking position, are represented with the Objectives Fleet Ambush and Hyperspace Assault. They could be tweaked to include an Interdictor, but I don't know that they could be made meaningfully different. With that in mind, I doubt that we will be getting an Interdictor mini.

I must say I do like the idea of fleet-specific Objectives though, they would add a new layer to the game. I bring a durable freighter and an Objective that rewards you for destroying it, and me for keeping it alive: now we both have a different focus than just fleet conflict. They could be hard to design and make the ships worth anything, however, so I dunno.

As a Warhammer 40K player I still think that an Interdictor would be incredible powerful to have a redeployment abilitiy similar to "scout" in 40K.

Basically after all the forces have been deployed, scouts get to re-deploy with a certain distance of their original location.

You could do this with an upgrade card for "gravity well generator" with something like "After capital ship deployment has finished, but before fighter deployment, any ship within range 5 of this ship may redeploy within range 5 of its starting position.

When combined with the existing objectives this could be a huge impact on the game even without a new objective card, as it could be used in any mission and allows you to relocate a good portion of your forces to take advantage of your opponents deployment strategy.

The downside of course would be that an Interdictor wouldn't be the most combat effective vessel, but nor would it be entirely useless also.