I'll be doing a comparison between the HWK and the poster child X-Wing as far as a base of capability.

So I love ships. Alot... way too much. And when not making some weird homebrew job, im messing with attachments to see what looks pretty nice. Anyhow here we go.

Modded HWK: Total Cost 112,300

Quad Medium Laser

Twin Proton Torpedo

Carbon Durasteel

HO Ion Turbine

Stats:

Sil 3

Armor 3

Speed 5

Handling 0

HT 18

SS 17

Shields 1/1

Encum 75

Total personnel 4

Modded X-Wing: Total Cost 125,300

Quad Medium Laser

Twin Proton Torpedo

HO Ion Turbine

Stats:

Sil 3

Armor 3

Speed 6

Handling 1

HT 10

SS 9

Shields 1/1

Encum 10

Total personnel 1

As you can see I set the weapons up the same.

So, where as the X-wing can get taken out in 1 good hit from almost anything, lasers, ions, warheads.... The HWK could take MUCH more of a beating, almost twice the hull and strain.

The HWK also has over 7 times more cargo space. So it can be used for...things.

Here is the kicker. For some reason the HWK is listed as sil 3, same size as most snubfighters. By game rules you can fit a HWK into the same hanger space as a TIE, A-Wing, X-Wing etc etc

If a ship launched a group of X-wings at me I'd think It'd be tough but, I should be ok.

A group of 290's? I'm out!

The biggest issue in this case is crew. A squadron of 12 X-Wings can be handled by just 12 people. A creatively modified CR90 corvette could carry 12 X-Wings and 4 TIEs (in the novels, anyway), so you're looking at 16 people.

12 HWKs are looking at a crew of 48.

For smaller carriers, this is a rather prohibitive number.

Alternative view: the Wayfarer, modified with a hangar bay. After two of the HWKs, you'd run out of space for crew/passengers (and may have an understaffed carrier!), but the one carrying X-Wings can carry more due to the crew size.

Food for thought.

For someone who loves ships so much you forgot something really important.

Has anyone else noticed that the hwk-290 and the hwk-1000 have the same HT threshold? I just figured that the bigger ship would have more, that's all.

Has anyone else noticed that the hwk-290 and the hwk-1000 have the same HT threshold? I just figured that the bigger ship would have more, that's all.

Something had to give for the better speed/maneuverability, and they went the TIE route with lower hull for its size??

As FFG folks have often said... this still if abstract at best.

I would concur with the OP on this matter. I just built a beast of a starfighter with the HWK-290, rivaling the potential damage output of an ARC-170.

The advantage of such ship is that it's still a silhouette 3, has decent storage space for a party of PCs, and requires only a Pilot and Co-Pilot. If you add a gun turret (and I'm not even sure if the one on the Modly Crow required an on-site dedicated gunner or if it could be remotely manned by the two crew members), and all the guns you can expect on the wings (the Moldy Crow had 4 sets of twin laser cannons, which could just as well be two sets of quad medium laser cannons), you end up with enough space to even fit a bunch of Proton Torpedoes in a retractable ventral tube. A full team of 4 could man all the weapon emplacements and seriously threaten many ships larger than its size, while still having just enough HT/ST to survive more than one round and double up on starship maneuvers.

But it's a lot of eggs in one basket.

Still, as an escort fighter to a larger (Sil 5) freighter equipped with a decent hangar bay, this is an excellent addition, and very fun to play with!

You can't put a quad laser turret on the hwk-290 because it's silhouette 3 (unless the dangerous covenantso rules allow you to sidestep that restriction)

While having an astromech slot stock on an X-Wing is nice, according to the book the Astromech is stuck with a dice pool of YYG for Mech checks etc etc. No real hard rules on upgrading one. I'd rather have a dedicated engineer on hand. Price for an engi you ask???

Prepare for wonky math!

Using the ground car as a baseline at 2000 credits, I'll guess that is the equivilent as a "normal" new car nowadays. So let's say a Ground Car is $25000 USD. So the exhange ratio of credits to USD is x12.5. This would make an astromech cost a staggering, $137,500 if it has a market value of 11000 credits.

Lets get even more dumb...

The salary of an average Flight Engineer in the Air Force, lets say a married SSgt with 8 years in who is stationed in Tucson AZ **now why would he use that figure?**, is $54144 a year. 4331.52 credits a year salary.

TL:DR People are cheap. Astromech droids are made of hand spun Kuwaiti gold. The exhange ratio is probably not 1EC to 12.5USD.

You can't put a quad laser turret on the hwk-290 because it's silhouette 3 (unless the dangerous covenantso rules allow you to sidestep that restriction)

They aren't using the quad laser turret like on the Falcon. They're using 4 Medium Lasers in a turret mount.

While having an astromech slot stock on an X-Wing is nice, according to the book the Astromech is stuck with a dice pool of YYG for Mech checks etc etc. No real hard rules on upgrading one. I'd rather have a dedicated engineer on hand. Price for an engi you ask???

Prepare for wonky math!

Using the ground car as a baseline at 2000 credits, I'll guess that is the equivilent as a "normal" new car nowadays. So let's say a Ground Car is $25000 USD. So the exhange ratio of credits to USD is x12.5. This would make an astromech cost a staggering, $137,500 if it has a market value of 11000 credits.

Lets get even more dumb...

The salary of an average Flight Engineer in the Air Force, lets say a married SSgt with 8 years in who is stationed in Tucson AZ **now why would he use that figure?**, is $54144 a year. 4331.52 credits a year salary.

TL:DR People are cheap. Astromech droids are made of hand spun Kuwaiti gold. The exhange ratio is probably not 1EC to 12.5USD.

Er, I think your choice of baseline was inappropriate (the transport economy in SW is wiiiildly different to ours, a groundcar offers far less utility in a setting with airspeeders and routine interplanetary travel).

Far Horizons sets the monthly wage for a mechanic as 1-2k, so 12-24k/year, so an astromech is about as expensive as a year's starting salary for a mechanic.

Nothing says you can't put an astromech socket into the 290, if that's your fancy. OP makes a compelling case, considering the extra crew requirements of the 290 mean it can do more in a turn than the X-wing + astromech combo.

Nothing says you can't put an astromech socket into the 290, if that's your fancy. OP makes a compelling case, considering the extra crew requirements of the 290 mean it can do more in a turn than the X-wing + astromech combo.

Sure, but that takes a HP, which means one of the attachments has to go.

While having an astromech slot stock on an X-Wing is nice, according to the book the Astromech is stuck with a dice pool of YYG for Mech checks etc etc. No real hard rules on upgrading one. I'd rather have a dedicated engineer on hand. Price for an engi you ask???

Prepare for wonky math!

Using the ground car as a baseline at 2000 credits, I'll guess that is the equivilent as a "normal" new car nowadays. So let's say a Ground Car is $25000 USD. So the exhange ratio of credits to USD is x12.5. This would make an astromech cost a staggering, $137,500 if it has a market value of 11000 credits.

Lets get even more dumb...

The salary of an average Flight Engineer in the Air Force, lets say a married SSgt with 8 years in who is stationed in Tucson AZ **now why would he use that figure?**, is $54144 a year. 4331.52 credits a year salary.

TL:DR People are cheap. Astromech droids are made of hand spun Kuwaiti gold. The exhange ratio is probably not 1EC to 12.5USD.

But a flight engineer, even a skilled and handsome one stationed in Tucson, can't perform astromech maneuvers and actions, which can do quite a bit more then an engineer can. Boost Shields is nice, Watch your back, is arguably better.

Furthermore, Astromechs, like humans, bothans, twi'leks, hutts, aqualish, toydarians, selonians... can be PCs as well as NPCs. Having a flight engineer is nice, but we don't know if he's going the be a rival, nemesis, or minion, and so the cost for him will vary (not to mention droids don't need time off, sleep, food, water, a sex life, ect) so a direct 1:1 comparison is difficult to say the least.

Also another thing you missed is the base rarity. The HWK is noticeably harder to track down then an X-wing, ensuring that it will typically require a check one level harder to even find one.

Look, a tricked out HWK is a beast, no question, but it's no fairer to compare it to an X-wing then it is to compare tricked out C-7 Caribou to a A-1 Skyraider. They are both amazing, but one is not the other.

Sure, but that takes a HP, which means one of the attachments has to go.

True - is this build using all 5 slots? I'm AFB and my favorite online tools do not make it clear. If I recall correctly, the astromech socket requires 2 hardpoints.

I don't like this
It should be the other way around.

How do you propose to homebrew a fix?

Also reviewing it I think the HWK mod is overloaded. Linked weapons take 2 HP do they not? That one is always confusing.

But that would put it at 7 HP

I don't like this

It should be the other way around.

How do you propose to homebrew a fix?

Considering that the HWK (both versions) start out with 0 weapons and the XWing has both laser cannons and a proton torpedo launcher out of the box, I'm fine with this. In fact I prefer it. The HWK needs some love compare to how offensively pathetic it starts out at.

I don't like this

It should be the other way around.

How do you propose to homebrew a fix?

Considering that the HWK (both versions) start out with 0 weapons and the XWing has both laser cannons and a proton torpedo launcher out of the box, I'm fine with this. In fact I prefer it. The HWK needs some love compare to how offensively pathetic it starts out at.

Agreed. Sometimes finding the weapons can take a while, and if you are on the fringes of society and going to war against the biggest war machine out there, time isn't on your side.

Also reviewing it I think the HWK mod is overloaded. Linked weapons take 2 HP do they not? That one is always confusing.

But that would put it at 7 HP

You never "pay" 2 HP when adding/upgrading weapons, but you always pay 1 HP if putting Linked +X on anything that's already there, but it's still 1 HP if you add a whole new weapon, linked or not. The only instance where you don't pay a single HP is if you replace an already present weapon by a new non-Linked one.

Yep. That's why it's almost a blessing to start with an unarmed ship. Anything you want (limited by Silhouette) in any configuration (single, double, triple, etc.) with any facing/mounting for only 1 hardpoint.

The biggest issue in this case is crew. A squadron of 12 X-Wings can be handled by just 12 people. A creatively modified CR90 corvette could carry 12 X-Wings and 4 TIEs (in the novels, anyway), so you're looking at 16 people.

12 HWKs are looking at a crew of 48.

Nah, only 24. And that’s assuming you don’t use droids.

You can't put a quad laser turret on the hwk-290 because it's silhouette 3 (unless the dangerous covenantso rules allow you to sidestep that restriction)

Yup, the Oversized External Weapons Mount (page 60) allows you to mount weapons that are meant for a ship of one larger Silhouette, which means that the Quad Laser Cannon can be mounted. You spend 2HP, decrease Handling by 1, and reduce SS by 4.

And yes, that means that you can actually get a Turbolaser mounted on a Sil 4 ship!

While having an astromech slot stock on an X-Wing is nice, according to the book the Astromech is stuck with a dice pool of YYG for Mech checks etc etc. No real hard rules on upgrading one. I'd rather have a dedicated engineer on hand. Price for an engi you ask???

If you use the “Colonist Pay Scale” table from page 93 of “Far Horizons”, you will note that a Negotiations Team could make up to 20,000 credits for a single dispute, a Touring Band could make up to 25,000 credits for a single performance, a Researcher could make up to 8000 credits a month, and a Police Commissioner could make up to 5000 credits a month.

So, a droid that costs 10,000 credits and that costs … how many months of income for what kind of work?

Nothing says you can't put an astromech socket into the 290, if that's your fancy. OP makes a compelling case, considering the extra crew requirements of the 290 mean it can do more in a turn than the X-wing + astromech combo.

I might put an Astromech in there, but I wouldn’t necessarily put in an Astromech socket.

What’s the reason for the socket, and spending the Hard Point?