I've got a day of Epic play coming up on Saturday

I've got a straight 300pt small/large ships only deathmatch lined up (but it is rebs vs imps at least)

But with all this talk of objective based play I've started working on what might be a fun scenario and I'd really appreciate any feedback in how best I might make it work, tighten up the rules and the language, and keep the whole thing reasonably balanced.

A New Threat to Shipping - ARR Intelligence Briefing #536F

After our narrow success in preventing the Empire from disrupting our convoys with their experimental Gravity Well Generators (I'm nicking that if you don't mind Gadge), it appears the Empire are planning to further hamper our movements by placing unmanned combat drones at a number of Hyperspace jumping off points along The Outer Rim.

As these points are frequented by civilian convoys as well as our own, it is imperative that we do not allow this to happen.

Fortunately long range reconnaissance unit codename "Longprobe" has detected what appears to be the location for the initial deployment.

Furthermore, the presence of a VT-49 Class Patrol Ship, the size of the fighter escort and the volume of high level encrypted chatter suggests that several high ranking Naval officers may be present to oversee the operation.

With fighter wings of the first fleet less than a 4 hour hyperspace jump away, this presents us with an excellent opportunity kill 2 birds with one stone. Destroy the drones and disrupt the enemy's chain of command in this sector for some time.

Forces.

Rebel side - 300 points

Small and Large based ships only

Must contain at least 3 named pilots

Must contain at least 1 yt1300 or yt2400 but may not have more than 2 large-based ships in total.

Imperial - 250

Small and Large based ships only

Must contain at least 1 VT-49 Decimator with a named pilot, and one further named pilot

1 ship must contain a unique crew card

Special Rules:

In addition to his squadron, the imperial player takes 6 Satellite tokens.

These represent the Automated Drones.

Attack value 2

Agility 0

Hull 2

Shield 1

Range 2-3 - 360 arc - fires at PS0 - all attacks treated as primary weapon attacks for the purposes of determining range bonuses - when declaring an attack, the Imperial player must target the closest enemy ship to the drone then rolls 1D6 - on an even number damage is treated normally, on an odd number it is treated as an ion attack.

If the imperial player can declare a shot with a drone, he must, if no targets are available, the drone may recover 1 shield up to a maximum of 1.

The drones may not be fully autonomous yet and the Empire may be using one drone as a control node for the others - whenever a drone is destroyed roll 1D6 - on a 6 the Empire has lost control of the drones - they will now target the nearest ship (or drone)

At the start of each round the Imperial player may roll 1D6 - on a 1 he has regained control of the drones.

Drones are placed by the imperial player before asteroids are placed - their placement rules follow those for asteroids - likewise asteroids cannot be placed within range 1 of Drones.

Victory Conditions

Rebels:

Each drone is worth 1 point

Destruction of the named Decimator pilot is worth 2 points

Destruction of the ship carrying the unique crew card is worth 2 points*

6 points - modified win

8 points - full win

*If the imperial player has more than 1 unique crew card, he must nominate which card this victory condition applies to at the start of the game.

**If the unique crew card is discarded or flipped for any reason, that crew member is still considered a part of that ships crew compliment when it comes to allocating victory points.

Imperials

The Emperor will tolerate nothing less than the utter annihilation of his enemies.

So, what do you reckon - is that relatively simple to understand? does it seem more or less balanced?

I'd say it's easy to understand, but might be unbalanced in the Rebel's favor. The Imperials have 50-point gap to make up, and the automated drones are not going to be very effective with their current stats and deployment options. They're rather easy to destroy with Agi0, 2H 1S and unlikeely to get a shot off at PS0 (not to mention the chance of control loss after each drone is destroyed). Furthermore they're going to be pretty spread out across the map, and it should be quite easy for the Rebel to sweep through the map eliminating the drones, given their 300 points.

I've made a few epic scenarios that are along the lines of the game I think you want to play: Reconnaissance in Force, Attack run, Raid on Fondor. Those might have some elements you would be interested in, feel free to lift anything you see in there for your own game. One of my favorites to include my version of space stations; immobile huge ships, which are often hardened against regular attacks and are mainly vulnerable to ordnance weapons - the Research Station in Attack Run is an example of one of those.

In very general terms, it's best to have objectives that force both sides to split their forces into smaller groups to defend/attack objectives in different areas of the board. Make sure it isn't too easy to complete an objective - for example, a single A-wing or X-wing could reasonably be expected to take out one of your automated drones, but in order to protect a drone, the Imperial player would have to be able to destroy that ship before it killed the drone - an investment of considerably more points.

Defenders can be at a significant disadvantage in these types of scenarios because of what I call "Suicide Run Syndrome", where players send their ships on single-minded, suicidal, but effective attack runs against targets that have to be destroyed in order to win the game. It doesn't matter if you sustain 90% casualties and you don't land a single hit on the defender's ships, if you win the game because you blew up what needed to be blown up to win. Also, that sort of suicide attack, although effective, is not terribly fun to play. I always try to avoid SRS by insulating targets with intermediate barriers that have to be overcome, like minefields, an intercepting wave of defenders, etc., and even those solutions don't always work.

So from my perspective, the Rebels in your scenario should probably have less points than the imperials. If you have time, the best way to see how the balance works is to play it out in a rough test game. Vassal is a great way to do this, if you have it loaded.

Great reply - thanks!

I'd like to keep it as a large format game, so what do you reckon to switching the team's points and give the drones a buff - say +1 on each of it's stats ?

or perhaps keep their original values but have more drones on the table and have 2-3 control nodes - selected at random by a third party after the imperial player has placed them.

The rebel player only has to destroy 3 out of 9 to win - but he doesn't know which 3

If you place the drones first, what prevents the imperial player from placing all of the drones together in a cloud of friendly space, which also gives them an exclusion zone for asteroid placement?

Decimators don't last long in 300-point battles.