Hey guys,

My brother John and I have played 4 games in this format this weekend. For the first two games we both started with 200 points but whatever I did the Transport just got focused down by the time it got halfway.

For the second two games I started with 200 points and John started with 150 with the rule that each time each of his original ships was destroyed a reinforcement could come in. The new ship would be the same model but be PS1. Once a reinforcement was destroyed that was it. Although the second two games were closer it was still squarely in favour of the Imps and I lost both.

I think what's missing is a secondary objective that makes it slightly more complex than 'shoot the Transport!' but I'm not sure what that should be.

I think that I made a mistake with the ships I used (2 Rookies, 2 Golds with Ion Turrets, Wedge and Wes) so I need to work on that but I'm looking to you guys for some thoughts with the rest of it?

Are you talking about the Escape From Hoth campaign missions or just a match with the Rebel Transport in it?

What size was the play area? What obstacles were allowed? You can give the Transport a better chance by setting up in such a way that your opponent has to fly through obstacles in order to meet up with the Transport.

Generally, higher-point matches work best with cheap tanky ships like Bs, Ys, Bombers. Defenders (which are not cheap) can be a good choice, too. Swarms can work (Academies, Bandits) and that means you should consider Assault Missiles and Ion Torpedoes to discourage formation flying, which cuts down on the focus fire.

Keep your space potato back instead of sending it forward, and send the rest of your ships to intercept.

In any case, your scenario seems very poorly balanced. Your opponent needs to knock out a single 40-ish-point ship with no Agility, and you need to destroy about 200+ of theirs (counting reinforcements). Naturally, you're going to lose that fight.

If your objective is to get your Transport off the other side of the play area, make sure it has Engine Booster and Combat Refit. Put Draw their Fire on some escorts. Use the Transport's ability to ram smaller ships to pieces as a threat, and try to block off approaches to the sides and rear.

Did you start off the game with the transport having a full bank of energy to use? This can help but still it is a tough scenario for the transport to survive.

Cheers

Eboli

Escort scenarios are a little tricky to balance. You need to weigh the ability of the attackers to kill the target against the time it takes for the target to leave the area and the ability of the escorts to kill the attackers before they damage the target.

Straight-up even balance like 200 vs 200 is usually unfair to defenders because they need to prevent the enemy from killing only a portion of their list (say 50 points), while their job is to take on the entirety of the enemy list. High point lists exacerbate the problem.

With the rebel transport, matters can become worse if you require the transport to escape off a board edge that is far away. Transports are perhaps the slowest ship in the game, and moving at high speed comes at the cost of their support and defense abilities. They don't like to hoof it across long boards while being harassed by fighters.

Giving the defender more points than the attacker is also difficult, because if the defender has enough points to outright defeat the attacker, they could possibly just engage away from the transport and win a regular dogfight.

Oddly, I don't have a good freighter-escort style mission in my personal Mission Control collection, possibly because of these difficulties. Steel Trap is maybe the closest I get to this kind of mission, and I don't require the transport to escape off a board edge.

OK in order....

TIE Pilot, nope just a scenario my brother and I are cooking up.

DagobahDave, we were using 3x3, we used 4 asteroids at first but then went to 6. Agree with all your points my friend it has been very one sided even though it hasn't necessarily started that way.

Eboli, good shout!

Babaganoosh, I think you may have a point there it's going to be very difficult to balance. I'll take a look a Mission Control

I've been thinking more about the problems with escort missions, and I remembered one mission I wrote up a while back for my former game group to play (I actually have trouble remembering all the missions I made), called Run the Blockade.

That involves multiple huge ships escaping off a board edge, running through a minefield while being attacked.