Take the right-most dial, replace the bottom (1) row and far right column with the ones from the middle dial, and on the action bar I could take or leave Boost. That seems like a pretty cool dial.
If I was going to Re-Build the Defender, (Just for Fun)
I have a number of fun Boss Upgrade cards. One is "Linked Weapons" which gives the well equipped ships +1 attack.
I use this on Defenders, Interceptors, B-Wings and X-Wings These ships are bristling with weapons and this upgrade fits great for them and adds a lot to my enjoyment of this awesome game.
Defender would be cool like it is it it would be less expensive. Onyx would need EPT.
Delta Squadron Pilot: 26 Points
Onyx: 28 Points + EPT(!)
Vessery: 32 Points
Rexler: 33 Points
I know 4 lasers and two Ions. We should link them all together! Teach those rebel scum some, hey, what a minute. DOn't you fly a y-wing?Good Lord that looks HORRIBLY unbalanced not to mention incorrect in matters of canon. The Defender has 4 laser cannons, not 6
What we have could use a bit of a boost, but besides that, it looks about right.
Shh it's my alter-ego 
No, and...Pilot skill 0/12
...definitely no.Primary Weapon 3/3
The Defender's only major flaw is its cost.
Who said the Defenders was Flawed,
. And the pilot skill of 0/12 is for one defender pilot special abilty is too much but Corran Horn's ability isn't. Interesting.
Please explain. A Tie Fighter has 2 lasers and an Attack of two. A Tie Interceptor as 4 Lasers and an Attack of 3. A Tie Defender has 6 lasers and attack of 3. So if the defender has 6 laser why does it only have 3 attack?
one ion, one norm
Start with the Pilot skill, none under 5. Defender Pilots,(As well as Tie Advanced Pilots), are the best in the Empire. (I'm scratching my head trying to figure that out why there is pilot skills of 1,2 or 3.) Though a good pilot ability for one defender pilot would be Pilot skill 0/12, which means the pilot always moves first and always fire first.
Primary Weapon 3/3, the defender has 6 laser, the Defender fire two attacks of 3 red dice, (4 red dice if with in range 1). Both shots must be of the same target.
Evade 3 green dice
Hull 4
Shield 2
Defenders are super fast the 3 turns and banks are easy for it it's the close turns and banks that are very hard! This is what I think the defender should have been built according to the information that I ready. Please feel free to commit. :-)
Kinda cool you are making rules for the version of TIE Defender that had six sfs 9.3 heavy laser cannons. The only named pilot to do so was Cap'n Fel / Baron Fel. He could use your 0/12 special ability.
The Defender was the fastest and most manuverable imp fighter. Its biggest draw back was its blind spots exploted by TIE Interceptors, Avengers, and A-wings. TIE Phantoms were created to counter the Defender, is a screat only the GA involved with the Phatom project knew about. IMO better idea than building a Misle boat to deal with Defenders because misiles can be spoofed or just fried witth lasers.
The number of attack dice doesn't equal the true power of the ships weapons in tis game, directhits atleast.
A4s have two heavy long range laser cannons but only two atack. A-wings have two compact reg laser cannons but also get two. Attack dice. Avengers, Defenders, and Interceptors are all carrying sfs ls 93 laser cannons, all at the least very very ery powerful laserr cannons. One beam is good enough to vap a and x wings. One beam is good enough to blast aprt s3. One volly of four 9.3 laser beams is good enough to blast very hugh chunks of cap ship armor off of cap ships.
Kinda cool you are making rules for the version of TIE Defender that had six sfs 9.3 heavy laser cannons. The only named pilot to do so was Cap'n Fel / Baron Fel. He could use your 0/12 special ability.The Defender was the fastest and most manuverable imp fighter. Its biggest draw back was its blind spots exploted by TIE Interceptors, Avengers, and A-wings. TIE Phantoms were created to counter the Defender, is a screat only the GA involved with the Phatom project knew about. IMO better idea than building a Misle boat to deal with Defenders because misiles can be spoofed or just fried witth lasers.
The number of attack dice doesn't equal the true power of the ships weapons in tis game, directhits atleast.
A4s have two heavy long range laser cannons but only two atack. A-wings have two compact reg laser cannons but also get two. Attack dice. Avengers, Defenders, and Interceptors are all carrying sfs ls 93 laser cannons, all at the least very very ery powerful laserr cannons. One beam is good enough to vap a and x wings. One beam is good enough to blast aprt s3. One volly of four 9.3 laser beams is good enough to blast very hugh chunks of cap ship armor off of cap ships.
And yet none of this is useful from a design perspective, and it's 50/50 inaccurate from the fluff side as well.
Honestly a 0 cost fire link BTL style title would probably work fine and be balanced: The defender is already overcosted by 3 to 1 points ish and adding cannon costs to the top of that would make it even more expensive.
However... that ship will be effing BRUTAL. And also focus fired like you wont believe. You think HLC sycks attract attention, imagine 3red primary + 4red HLC 7 dice a turn defenders.
Kinda cool you are making rules for the version of TIE Defender that had six sfs 9.3 heavy laser cannons. The only named pilot to do so was Cap'n Fel / Baron Fel. He could use your 0/12 special ability.The Defender was the fastest and most manuverable imp fighter. Its biggest draw back was its blind spots exploted by TIE Interceptors, Avengers, and A-wings. TIE Phantoms were created to counter the Defender, is a screat only the GA involved with the Phatom project knew about. IMO better idea than building a Misle boat to deal with Defenders because misiles can be spoofed or just fried witth lasers.
The number of attack dice doesn't equal the true power of the ships weapons in tis game, directhits atleast.
A4s have two heavy long range laser cannons but only two atack. A-wings have two compact reg laser cannons but also get two. Attack dice. Avengers, Defenders, and Interceptors are all carrying sfs ls 93 laser cannons, all at the least very very ery powerful laserr cannons. One beam is good enough to vap a and x wings. One beam is good enough to blast aprt s3. One volly of four 9.3 laser beams is good enough to blast very hugh chunks of cap ship armor off of cap ships.
And yet none of this is useful from a design perspective, and it's 50/50 inaccurate from the fluff side as well.
Thats not true, everything I wrote is supported by lore. As for reasons why I wrote what I wrote, I noticed some say that the Defender is littile more than a rocket when it comes too flight characteristics. Aslo what Iwrote is useful. Just for example since Interceptors, Avengers, and A-Wings were manuvrrable enough too keep up with Defenders, and some exploted the Defenders blind spots this re-designed Defender could be penalized when attacked from behind at range 1 by Interceptors, Avengers, and A-Wings. It loses one or two defence dice.
Since Phantoms were going to be used too counter TIE Defenders if they weree ver used agianst the Empire maybe the TIE Defender should be penalized when fighting Phantoms? Or just give the Phantom something when dealing with Defenders? At range 1 Phantoms gain a free focus while cloaked when attacking TIE Defenders.
Thrawns idea for countering Defenders with the Missile boat was stupid compared too the Grand Admiral who was in charge of the Phantom projects idea too use them too counter Defenders. Althouggh it waas ment to curb the Rebs fighter force Baron Fels ideas for how Phantomss hould be used was better. When he flew them for testing hd felt they would make great recon craft despite them being assault craft. If they had been used in this way the Rebs may have never learned that the IMPs had this craft. They may haave never boown up the produuction plant nether.
Edited by Black Knight LeaderCan people please research ships before suggesting rules?! I'm tired of house rules for ships that reflect what stats people want rather than matching an resemblence of the ship in question. It's like redesigning the lambda to have white one K turns.
The Defender had four times the X wings shields... FOUR!
Two shields is way to low. This thing was a beast and was meant to outlast, outfly, and outfight any contemporary. This was the Empire pooring credits into a program to annihilate the Rebels at their own game.
Also the Defender was the most maneuverable ship in the Imperial inventory. This includes the Interceptor. Turning should not be an issue for them. Speed two turns especially.
Also as others have mentioned the Defender infact has the exact same lasers as the Interceptor. The top wing is ion cannons.
As Vorpalsword said, this things weakness is its cost..It would take up most of your points. Meaning that while it would be extremely deadly, it would leave you with few ships and with a lot of eggs in one basket.
Edited by All Shields ForwardWhat I would do if I were rebuilding the TIE Defender to be closer to the lore:
-PS 3 and 5 generics, with the Skill 5 having an EPT. Now, one might say "oh, the Defender is a new and experimental ship, and an ace in an Interceptor might not be that good in a new ship"...to which I say that the Empire has the time and resources to fully train pilots on their new craft, and to not do so when both the veteran pilot and the advanced starfighter are rare and expensive commodities is utterly stupid. And besides, a veteran pilot in a ship that is new to him will be far better at combat than a newbie - there will still be some learning, and the veteran won't be able to fully push his ship to the edge of the envelope, but transitioning to a new ship won't erase the hours of flight and combat experience, the months or years of pilot training, and the combat instincts and reflexes learned over that period. Also, the TIE series starfighters are pretty similar, and the learning curve to go from TIE Fighter to TIE Interceptor to TIE Defender would be much shallower than, say, going from X-Wing to A-Wing or Y-Wing to B-Wing, or even T-16 to Z-95 to T-65.
I have to disagree with your statement about the difficulty, rather how much easier it is for a IMP pilot to adapt between usin a TIe/LN and Defender vs the TIE/INT. The Interceptor is the only TIE with a manually coontrolled thrust vector setup. It is concidered to be unstable. Att he same time its because of this design that the Interceptor is the Empires best dogfighter. ref SW CV. There is a reason Fel chose the Interceptor over every other IMP craft. Heck he killed a Defender ace and she may of had the most advanced Defender ever the Red Star 1.
Can people please research ships before suggesting rules?! I'm tired of house rules for ships that reflect what stats people want rather than matching an resemblence of the ship in question. It's like redesigning the lambda to have white one K turns.
The Defender had four times the X wings shields... FOUR!
Two shields is way to low. This thing was a beast and was meant to outlast, outfly, and outfight any contemporary. This was the Empire pooring credits into a program to annihilate the Rebels at their own game.
Also the Defender was the most maneuverable ship in the Imperial inventory. This includes the Interceptor. Turning should not be an issue for them. Speed two turns especially.
Also as others have mentioned the Defender infact has the exact same lasers as the Interceptor. The top wing is ion cannons.
As Vorpalsword said, this things weakness is its cost..It would take up most of your points. Meaning that while it would be extremely deadly, it would leave you with few ships and with a lot of eggs in one basket.
The Defender was tinkered with prob because of mission requirements and well the prototype. Defenders have had 6 "9.3" cannons, some were done up to have a super fast shield recharge, double what you see in the Stele chronicles.
Cost may have been an issue but having the blind spot it had I say is a worse problem. What I wrote rules wise for the Avenger, A-Wing, and Interceptor vs Defender is based off the old 1995/1997 card games rules for Defender.
I have to disagree with your statement about the difficulty, rather how much easier it is for a IMP pilot to adapt between usin a TIe/LN and Defender vs the TIE/INT. The Interceptor is the only TIE with a manually coontrolled thrust vector setup. It is concidered to be unstable. Att he same time its because of this design that the Interceptor is the Empires best dogfighter. ref SW CV. There is a reason Fel chose the Interceptor over every other IMP craft. Heck he killed a Defender ace and she may of had the most advanced Defender ever the Red Star 1.
The Interceptor's ion stream projectors could be manually controlled - that doesn't mean it was a must. I imagine that the Interceptor's maneuvering system was computer-controlled (similar to the modern F-16 Fighting Falcon), just with a manual override...and there is no reason why it wouldn't be computer controlled. Having the ion stream projectors solely operate on manual control is silly, as no human would even come close to having the sort of reaction time a computer would be capable of.
Also, the Interceptor wasn't the Empire's best dogfighter - that was the subject of this thread, the TIE Defender. The Interceptor was designed as a quality starfighter that ideally combined price, ease of production, speed, agility, and firepower into a single package; the Defender was the Empire essentially writing Sienar Fleet Systems a blank check and telling them to make the best starfighter possible, no matter the cost.
As far as Fel using the Interceptor, remember that the Defender was exceedingly rare...and I don't think Fel would accept using a fighter that the rest of the 181st couldn't have. Honestly, I think there were fewer TIE Defenders made than there were Jedi who escaped O66 and the first couple years of the Jedi Purge.
Also, from a reader's perspective, I don't think Fel would be perceived as being that great of a pilot if his usual ship was a Defender. He's a great pilot, but the fact that he does it in an Interceptor could be why fans view him as an amazing pilot rather than an Imperial Mary Sue.
Would a BTL-A4 for Defenders be too powerful?
Start with the Pilot skill, none under 5. Defender Pilots,(As well as Tie Advanced Pilots), are the best in the Empire. (I'm scratching my head trying to figure that out why there is pilot skills of 1,2 or 3.) Though a good pilot ability for one defender pilot would be Pilot skill 0/12, which means the pilot always moves first and always fire first.
Primary Weapon 3/3, the defender has 6 laser, the Defender fire two attacks of 3 red dice, (4 red dice if with in range 1). Both shots must be of the same target.
Evade 3 green dice
Hull 4
Shield 2
Defenders are super fast the 3 turns and banks are easy for it it's the close turns and banks that are very hard! This is what I think the defender should have been built according to the information that I ready. Please feel free to commit. :-)
The Defender was the fastest and most manuverable imp fighter. Its biggest draw back was its blind spots exploted by TIE Interceptors, Avengers, and A-wings. TIE Phantoms were created to counter the Defender, is a screat only the GA involved with the Phatom project knew about. IMO better idea than building a Misle boat to deal with Defenders because misiles can be spoofed or just fried witth lasers.
I'm pretty sure the Tie Phantom was in development before the Defender. Also, why the heck would they design a ship to counter another ship in the Imperial arsenal? That doesn't make any sense. The Tie Phantom was suppose to counter everything.
Would a BTL-A4 for Defenders be too powerful?
Yeah because Vessery. He'd be murderous. With HLC or Mangler he'd be throwing 7 or 6 attack dice with a TL to modify both attacks. Now if it was restricted to just the Ion or Fletchette cannon I think it could work.
Both the defender and phantom were developed post hoth.
The missileboat was created to counter the tie defender when the admiral who developed them went rogue and tried to overthrow the emperor.
You've clearly not played tie fighter.
Would a BTL-A4 for Defenders be too powerful?
HLCs might be, but an ion cannon with the BTL upgrade built in would work.
Fel's six cannon Defender only shows up in one source. The Defender has consistently been shown with four lasers and two ions. Until canon sources state this was a more pervasive mod I will continue to put this up to the author not being familiar with the source material.
The low capacity/high regen shields were done to balance the ship for a PVP game, and do not represent the actual canon ship.
I have to disagree with your statement about the difficulty, rather how much easier it is for a IMP pilot to adapt between usin a TIe/LN and Defender vs the TIE/INT. The Interceptor is the only TIE with a manually coontrolled thrust vector setup. It is concidered to be unstable. Att he same time its because of this design that the Interceptor is the Empires best dogfighter. ref SW CV. There is a reason Fel chose the Interceptor over every other IMP craft. Heck he killed a Defender ace and she may of had the most advanced Defender ever the Red Star 1.
The Interceptor's ion stream projectors could be manually controlled - that doesn't mean it was a must. I imagine that the Interceptor's maneuvering system was computer-controlled (similar to the modern F-16 Fighting Falcon), just with a manual override...and there is no reason why it wouldn't be computer controlled. Having the ion stream projectors solely operate on manual control is silly, as no human would even come close to having the sort of reaction time a computer would be capable of.
Also, the Interceptor wasn't the Empire's best dogfighter - that was the subject of this thread, the TIE Defender. The Interceptor was designed as a quality starfighter that ideally combined price, ease of production, speed, agility, and firepower into a single package; the Defender was the Empire essentially writing Sienar Fleet Systems a blank check and telling them to make the best starfighter possible, no matter the cost.
As far as Fel using the Interceptor, remember that the Defender was exceedingly rare...and I don't think Fel would accept using a fighter that the rest of the 181st couldn't have. Honestly, I think there were fewer TIE Defenders made than there were Jedi who escaped O66 and the first couple years of the Jedi Purge.
Also, from a reader's perspective, I don't think Fel would be perceived as being that great of a pilot if his usual ship was a Defender. He's a great pilot, but the fact that he does it in an Interceptor could be why fans view him as an amazing pilot rather than an Imperial Mary Sue.
I doubt the thrust vectoring was controlled by computer or came standard with the ability too switch between manual and computer controled. Also dont forget it is pretty likly a good chunk of the IMP pilots are people that probably should have been jedi or at least looked at by Jedi too see if they will be trained to be Jedi IF the Jedi org was still around like it was during the Republic. The IMP pilots are made up of the top 10% of the IMP NAVY fighter core. They are ether highy skilled, very lucky, or force sensitive, I would say without a doubt sensitive for the majority.
The TIE Interceptor is the Empires best dogfighter as was stated in a fairly recent source book. Complete Vehicles. There many other things other than dogfighting aircraft or star fighters do. I am sure the Defender is one of the best overall fight craft the IMPs have BUT when it comes to dogfighting the Interceptor is better.
Fel if he felt like it could have used the Defender as well as had the 181st use them, lesser skilled pilots and their groups / squadrons were allowed to use them. We see plenty of times high ranking IMP pilots picking the craft the want to use like Stele for example. When the 181st used Defenders he choose too use the Avenger instead.
Start with the Pilot skill, none under 5. Defender Pilots,(As well as Tie Advanced Pilots), are the best in the Empire. (I'm scratching my head trying to figure that out why there is pilot skills of 1,2 or 3.) Though a good pilot ability for one defender pilot would be Pilot skill 0/12, which means the pilot always moves first and always fire first.
Primary Weapon 3/3, the defender has 6 laser, the Defender fire two attacks of 3 red dice, (4 red dice if with in range 1). Both shots must be of the same target.
Evade 3 green dice
Hull 4
Shield 2
Defenders are super fast the 3 turns and banks are easy for it it's the close turns and banks that are very hard! This is what I think the defender should have been built according to the information that I ready. Please feel free to commit. :-)
The Defender was the fastest and most manuverable imp fighter. Its biggest draw back was its blind spots exploted by TIE Interceptors, Avengers, and A-wings. TIE Phantoms were created to counter the Defender, is a screat only the GA involved with the Phatom project knew about. IMO better idea than building a Misle boat to deal with Defenders because misiles can be spoofed or just fried witth lasers.
I'm pretty sure the Tie Phantom was in development before the Defender. Also, why the heck would they design a ship to counter another ship in the Imperial arsenal? That doesn't make any sense. The Tie Phantom was suppose to counter everything.
Well Fel was test flying both, as well as other special IMP, around the same time. The X7 may have suffred the same issues the X2 did during development. The TIE Avenger was basically done for a good while, its development wasnt finshed till special hyper drives were fitted to them however.
The Grand Admiral in charge of the Phantom project had a bad feeling about Grand Admiral Zaarin and or his reasons for creating the X7 program.
Both the defender and phantom were developed post hoth.
The missileboat was created to counter the tie defender when the admiral who developed them went rogue and tried to overthrow the emperor.
You've clearly not played tie fighter.
Yeah I only beat it on the hardest setting with zero ships lost, as well as completed the most difficult mission in that game "Battle for Honor" the one were you can fight two squadron of Avengers with a Interceptor. I refrence that game and the complimentry book "Stele Chronicles" all the time, even using quotes from said book.
That being said Zaarin had next to nothing to do with the Phantom project, he may have never known it existed. I mentioned the Missileboat, it was designed by Vice Admiral Thrawn and it really isnt that great of a counter compared to the Phantom (in universe). Basic ECM is just about missing from the TIE Fighter game mechanics. Unless it had an extra special targeting computer and extra special eccm capabilities same with the missiles,, using the M.B. is a waste of resources. Even then they could just fry the missiles fired at them by turning towards the MB before getting a hard lock and lasing the missiles as they are fired.
Fel's six cannon Defender only shows up in one source. The Defender has consistently been shown with four lasers and two ions. Until canon sources state this was a more pervasive mod I will continue to put this up to the author not being familiar with the source material.
The low capacity/high regen shields were done to balance the ship for a PVP game, and do not represent the actual canon ship.
Fel was test flying the six LASER version, its obvious it was a prototype, he test flew other TIEs that had features not seen on the "production" versions. Fel maybe the reason most have two ion cannons because he felt that four cannons was enough firepower and this TIE could use other equipment like Ion cannons to broaden its mission capabilities.
Both the defender and phantom were developed post hoth.
The missileboat was created to counter the tie defender when the admiral who developed them went rogue and tried to overthrow the emperor.
You've clearly not played tie fighter.
Yeah I only beat it on the hardest setting with zero ships lost, as well as completed the most difficult mission in that game "Battle for Honor" the one were you can fight two squadron of Avengers with a Interceptor. I refrence that game and the complimentry book "Stele Chronicles" all the time, even using quotes from said book.
Rebuilding the Defender from scratch? Just for fun? Hm.
Swap the White 3-turn and red 1-turns colours; that way the ship can go fast in a turn if it needs to, but can maintain tight formation flying and dogfights with everything in the fleet. Consider adding a 5k to go with the 4k, so that way it's not completely predictable in terms of distance covered, too.
Give it a PS3 pilot and a PS4+Elite, represeting the equivalent of Obsidian and Black Squadron (and their interceptor counterpart) generic pilots.
Give it the System slot, and stick Enhanced Scopes in the pack in case anyone wants to go for the hard-to-block angle, which is supposedly why we were saddled with a PS1 Defender to start with.
Dock a point or two of cost, maybe though the PS boost will help there. If Rexler needs a boost, make him the anti-Chewbacca who just deals damage cards face-up; why's it cost him an action to deal autocrits anyway? Because they thought Saboteur was awesome too, that's why. ;-)
As a fix?
Well, we'll see what the upgraded TIE engines do, though I'm not holding my breath unless they're effectively an imperial R2 unit, and I doubt they'll be so aggressive. Possibly a title to give discounts on both the cannon and missile slots? That could be pretty funky, given the two slots don't synergise well. A system slot would be welcome, but as fixes go, TIE/Adv already did that. I doubt they'd repeat themselves.
I doubt the thrust vectoring was controlled by computer or came standard with the ability too switch between manual and computer controled. Also dont forget it is pretty likly a good chunk of the IMP pilots are people that probably should have been jedi or at least looked at by Jedi too see if they will be trained to be Jedi IF the Jedi org was still around like it was during the Republic. The IMP pilots are made up of the top 10% of the IMP NAVY fighter core. They are ether highy skilled, very lucky, or force sensitive, I would say without a doubt sensitive for the majority.
The TIE Interceptor is the Empires best dogfighter as was stated in a fairly recent source book. Complete Vehicles. There many other things other than dogfighting aircraft or star fighters do. I am sure the Defender is one of the best overall fight craft the IMPs have BUT when it comes to dogfighting the Interceptor is better.
Why do you doubt it? Think of the technology level in Star Wars - everything has computer support. Cybernetic limbs are common, artificial intelligences have been around forever, even Luke's binoculars and most of the other stuff on backwater Tatooine had integrated computers. Lacking something akin to modern fly-by-wire would greatly increase the pilot's workload, pushing his focus on managing the craft itself, and pulling his attention from the fight itself, as well as the severe drawback of a greatly reduced reaction time. And yet you're expecting me to believe your opinion that the Interceptor - the most advanced mass-produced Imperial front-line starfighter - wouldn't have a computer-controlled flight system?
As far as the majority of pilots being Force-Sensitive...no. Force-sensitives were very rare under governments that tolerated them. Under the Empire, however, one of two things happened - either the Force-sensitive was killed due to the potential threat to the Emperor's power, or was trained to be part of the Inquisitorius, Emperor's Hand, Royal Guard, or similar organization. Imperial Military Academies in particular were screened for Force-sensitives...so the likelihood of more than a handful slipping through the gaps and becoming TIE pilots is essentially null.
Does Star Wars: Complete Vehicles even acknowledge the existence of the TIE Defender? If not, then how can it be a reliable source when comparing the dogfighting capabilities of the two? Also, actually think what constitutes a good dogfighter rather than blindly accepting what a single source says - in real life, a good dogfighting aircraft combines low wing loading, good thrust-to-weight ratio, turning radius, and other factors...whereas in space, the only factors that matter are maximum speed, acceleration, turning radius, and ability to put the craft through maneuvers unattainable by most others (what is considered supermaneuverability in modern aircraft), with weaponry and durability as secondary concerns. The TIE Defender exceeds the TIE Interceptor in every category - so how can the Interceptor be the superior dogfighter overall when it is inferior in every category?
I was thinking about how it would it be reasonable to have 4 bank maneuvers on a fast ship like tie defender. It could be done by using one straight and then 3 bank templates (perhaps without placing the base of the ship in between). Generally this could apply to any fast ships and give more possibilities for the game.
What do you think?