Hey guys, I've been wondering if there's any correlation of weapons (both type and number) on the ship to dice used that we can figure out.

On weapon types:

From the VSDs I think we can deduce that Turbolasers are represented as red dice, Ion Cannons are blue dice and Missile Launchers are black dice. Does this hold for the rest of ships? And are there any other weapons out there?

Point-Defence laser cannons provide blue dice for anti-squadron. Maybe we'll see in further waves that some ships have anti-squadron weapons that grant other type of dice or even combinations.

On weapon numbers:

Is there any correlation between the number of weapons to the number of dice that they have?

On the other stats:

I have no idea how the other stats correlate to the tabletop, like shields, engineering, squadrons or maneuverability.

I know all this makes no difference on the tabletop, but since someone was trying to design a Raider with homebrew rules, I just found it to be a good thought experiment.

What do you think??

I doubt you will need to homebrew a Raider for long...

Well... The Raider wasn't exactly my point, I mean, if there's a sort of system for this then pretty much any ship could be converted, including Venators, but most importantly I just found it to be a good thought exercise. Wasn't meant to be accurate or anything beyond that

I was wondering a bit about this myself. I'm pretty sure the numbers of dice, hull and shields are representative rather than being based directly on previously established numbers/stats. Given the often contradictory figures, lack of figures, or just plain mental figures occasionally seen, this is the best way to make for balanced ships in the game.

Most capital ships have never actually had canon stats for shields, hull, speed etc. They've had some RPG and other game ones, but thats about it.

I do agree that missiles give black dice, ions blue and turbolasers red in general, so that gives us a basis to work with.

Standard lasers/quad lasers most likely add to anti-fighter rating.

As for points.....not even the slightest idea what formula (if any) they are using at this time!

Well,

I've decided to try my hand at this and see if I can make my beloved Venator SD in game... Just an exercise in wishing and numbers...

Venator-Class Star Destroyer

Hull: 10

Anti-Squadron: 2 Blue

Command: 3

Squadron: 5

Engineering: 4

Defense Tokens:

Redirect x2

Halve Damage

Same movement as VSD

Front:

5 Red

2 Black

4 Shields

Sides:

3 Red

1 Black

3 Shields

Back:

2 Red

1 Shield

Upgrades: As VSD-I (Not sure if anything more)

Points: 104

Sound balanced? Might've high-balled something, but it's meant to be the largest medium ship (and it's weaponry is meant to be as powerful as an Imperator's main battery) before we get to the large ships such as the Imperator.

Opinions?

It's hard to guess balance for a game that isn't actually out yet, but I think the three numbers that stood out to me as potentially high-ball (in conjunction with one another) were the two anti-squadron, the ten hull, and the five forward reds.

I think one of the above values need to come down in order to balance it out a bit (I would choose hull). Alternatively, lowering the rear or side gun values a bit to make it more vulnerable to flanking might work.

As I said, though, it is very hard to guess balance at this point, and what you have here actually looks pretty good to me. I like the balance of reds with blacks, and also like the shield distribution.

As a fellow fan of the Venator, I may just run this...

Well, I kept it like that since the Venator is meant to be the Victory's big daddy, but I think you're right in that the balance for the front batteries is off. 4 red and 3 black sound better? (has to be stronger than the VSD)

As for the anti-squadron, the Gladiator has 2 point laser defense bateries and has 2 anti-squadron. The Venator has ~8 times more surface area and has 52 point laser defense cannons, thought that 2 dice was appropriate for that.

Lastly for the hull, since it's almost 250m longer than the VSD, I just assumed that it'd have more hull points.

Might've been that it's just lowly priced? 110-115 points sound better?

And I was thinking that the second variant might've been the one with the SPHA in the hangar bay (giving an additional red die to the front and reducing the Squadron to 4) or one replacing some of the turbolasers for ion cannons.

I think you're way over doing the firepower of the Venator. It was actually quite lightly armed....certainly not really better armed than a Victory. It was very much more of a heavy carrier than a Battleship. Even the wiki states: "Despite possessing powerful weaponry and being on par with the Victory-class....".

It had the main heavy turbolaser batteries (which were powerful, dont get me wrong), but very little in the way of backup weaponry. it's short range armament especially was weak (4 torpedo tubes and 2 double turbloasers, compared to the Victory-I's 80 missile tubes and 10 Light Quad Turbos).

I would give it a hefty red dice attack (5?) to represent the heavy turrets, and maybe 1 black dice.

This would give it a nice role as a long range attacker. Give it a high Squadron Rating and Anti fighter 2 (it had a ton of point defense) and it makes a great command ship/carrier, which better reflects its role.

Shields look ok to me. Hull maybe a touch high....although it was bigger than a Victory, that massive dorsal hangar was a known weakness and the hull strength was badly compromised due to it. I'd stick to 8, same as it's smaller but tougher cousin.

My 2c anyway. it wasn't THAT powerful a ship, and was roughly equal to a Victory going by most sources (though with a truly obscene fighter complement....fully loaded it would of course trash a Victory, but thats like....35 squadrons or whatever worth of points to add on......).

And it wasnt designed as the Victorys big brothers...they were contemporary designs directly designed to rival each other. The Victory designers went for a heavy cruiser direct combatant, and Kuat went for a heavy carrier instead.

my 2c anyway....i do find people often over estimate the actual power of a Venator. It's mostly fighters to give projection of power.

Fair enough, I was going by what the wiki says about the DBY827 turbolasers actually rivalling the main battery of the Imp SD, but then again it also says that the weaponry was on par with the VSD. (4 red dice to the front, 2 black from the heavy proton torpedoes)

Hull down to 8, sad I can't go for 9 but that would be fanboyish, (the 4 shields in the front are due to it having extra strong shielding because of the hangar), also due to the shape of the Venator it wouldn't be that much larger than a VSD in terms of mass.

How about this:

Venator Star Destroyer Mk. I

Hull: 8

Anti-Squadron: 2 Blue

Command: 3

Squadron: 5

Engineering: 4

Defense Tokens:

Redirect x2

Halve Damage

Same movement as VSD

Front:

4 Red

2 Black

4 Shields

Sides:

3 Red

3 Shields

Back:

2 Red

1 Shield

Upgrades: As VSD-I (Not sure if Missile upgrades or there will be Torpedo upgrades)

Points: 94

And I was thinking that the Mk. II could switch out some of the turbolasers for ion cannons... And then you could have 3 weapon upgrades on it

What do you think?

That looks far better, i think thats a very fair reflection of the ship. Balance-wise it'd have to be tested for points etc, but on paper...looks good!

I'm liking it, but it's a bit on the expensive side for a naked ship. I'm thinking drop the engineering by one, and then take one red dice from each side and make it black. That makes sense to me since the forward arc is just the focus of the two side arcs on a star destroyer. Between that and the obvious vulnerability on the back arc would let you drop 20 points or so off the cost and I would easily start taking this as a super heavy fighter escort.

Oh yea, forgot to adjust the points, I'll knock 10 points off to 94 as balance. Basically I'm comparing it to the VSD-II, in comparison it has:

• +2 Squadron (6)
• +1 Anti-squadron dice (3)
• +1 Shield to the front (?)
• Changes 3 blue to the front for a red and 2 black (-3)
• Changes the blue dice to the side for red (2)
• +9 points

The bracketed points are from what I can gather from other ships that it'd cost. For a whole list of what I can find (Obviously all this is ignoring the fact that some ships have smaller command stacks, hull points, etc. Just a ballpark figure):

• Between a VSD-1 and VSD-2 we can gather that changing 5 blacks for 5 blues costs 12 points, so 2.4 points per upgrade from black to blue.
• Between a GSD-1 and GSD-2 we can gather that changing 2 blacks for 2 reds and +1 anti-squadron costs 6 points.
• Between both Nebulons we can gather that +1 Squadron and +1 Anti-Squadron costs 6 points.
• Between both Corellians we can gather that changing 5 blues for 5 reds costs 5 points, so 1 point per upgrade from blue to red.
• Between both Assault Frigates we can gather that +2 Blues, +1 Anti-squadron and -1 Squadron costs 9 points.

A summary of what I suspect might be a decent ballpark figure for all this:

Black dice: 2 points

Blue dice: 4 points

Red dice: 5 points

Squadron: 3 points

Anti-Squadron: 3 points

Shields: ?

Hull: ?

Engineering: ?

Movement: ?

@CobaltWraith: The reason why there's all red dice on the sides is due to the Venator having turbolaser turrets that are specific just to the side arcs (hence the extra red die that doesn't show up in the forward arc). Black dice are for missiles and torpedoes it would seem and the Venator has them at the prow. In terms of Engineering, the Venator was one of the most efficient craft designed in terms of engineering (thanks to the work of both Blissex's in its design), certainly a match engineering-wise for the VSD.

Hey guys, I've been wondering if there's any correlation of weapons (both type and number) on the ship to dice used that we can figure out.

On weapon types:

From the VSDs I think we can deduce that Turbolasers are represented as red dice, Ion Cannons are blue dice and Missile Launchers are black dice. Does this hold for the rest of ships? And are there any other weapons out there?

Point-Defence laser cannons provide blue dice for anti-squadron. Maybe we'll see in further waves that some ships have anti-squadron weapons that grant other type of dice or even combinations.

I wouldn't be surprised if a Anti-Star fighter ship like the Lancer had 3 anti-squadron dice, maybe 1 blue and 2 black. Representing its bristling but close range star-fighter defense.

Well thought out, I like it!

I'm nuts about homebrewing and maths btw, I'm going to keep a formula evolving like Smotherman's for BFG but for Armada... Might even happen that it's actually useful. I'll take a look at the formula for fighters some other day as well.

I just like the whole theorycrafting thing and hopefully one day I'll be able to play with the ships without homebrewing, anyhow, I'm gonna make an archive of my conversions of different ships from SW lore to Armada as a hobby, and I'll post a few here later.

Well, I've decided to add another homebrew to the pool: Got a bit of time on my hands so I made the Raider class Corvette card. What do you think? How should I tweak it?

I'll do the one for the Venator later.