Oh, I took it as a joke, don't worry. Intent just gets lost over the internet!
Too true. And my comment about taking this too seriously was not directed at you either. Just a general prod at the SW nerds getting flustered over a concept that some other nerds made up, and being way too opinionated over such things. 
There is no prescribed definition of "fat" in this sense. it is essentially a sorites problem. As you load up a ship with upgrades it becomes "fat", but there isn't a clear line.
A 61 points Ryhmer isn't fat, so much as he is a sad bloke with a thyroid problem.
Edited by RadzapThere seem to be two definitions of "Fat", both of which fit "Fat Han"
Definition 1: When a ship's upgrades are primarily Defensive, to the point of being substantially difficult to kill, even while under focused-fire.
Definition 2: When a ship has more than 12 points of upgrades.
Personally, I prefer Definition 1. Definition 2 also includes HSF, which is not Fat Han.
Moreover, Definition 1 is a strong concept, and mirrors "Hypermobile", in which a ship's upgrades serve to increase it's mobility and arc-dodging skill.
In general, a 'fat ship' is a heavily upgraded ship. But that's not enough because a heavily upgraded Airen Cracken wouldn't be called a 'fat ship'.
A fat ship is more accurately part of a squad concept. It's role in the squad is to protect as many squad points as possible, and it must survive the game so you give your opponent as little score as you can. You then pair it with something that's either very hard hitting (Corran Horn, Soontir Fel, Whisper), or really efficient jousting (Z95, TIEs) so the 'fat ship' protects the points while the other part rips into your opponent's squad.
You want the 'fat ship' to take up the majority of your squad value, and you want it to be extraordinarily resilient. You want it to suffer as little as possible from variance, and ideally you want it to be able to hit pretty hard on it's own as you will typically have less dice on the table than your opponent.
More specifically a fat ship will have have;
- a high amount of raw hit points (resilience)
- lower agility values (less prone to variance)
- lots of upgrades (bigger increases resilience long term from defensive upgrades)
- turrets (can almost always fire)
- high pilot skill (kill first to mitigate return fire, arc dodge)
- engine upgrade (arc dodge)
- Pilot abilities that help the ship either do damage, or mitigate damage (Han, Chewie, RAC, Kenkirk)
So they're (almost) always going to be large.
You really some flat damage reduction, like evade or 3PO, because it has a non-linear effect with large/expensive ships and you want to get to a 1v1 end game senario. The point at which a ship becomes 'fat' is the point that it can fulfill the that role while leaving the points available for whatever flavour of support you give it.
That's my take on it anyway.
I quite like your take.
However, I'd say that there are ways of achieving low-variance without high HP / low Agility.
Soontir Fel + PTL + Autothrusters + Stealth Device, for instance, usually generates 2 focus tokens and/or negating an entire attack with arc-dodging.
Autothrusters alter 1 Blank to a Squiggle if in Range 3 or out of arc. With PS 9 and the sheer mobility, this is normally active.
Focus Tokens alter all Eyes to Squiggles by spending one of two tokens. Against most fleets, raw dice + Autothrusters mean you will not be in a position to have needed 3 tokens.
Stealth Device nets you 1 additional Die. This is used to further enable the Autothrusters + Double Focus continuance, and pushes your expected mitigation to well above the threshold that most fleets can manage.
Is it Fat? No, because it acts more as an arc-dodging flanker than the role you describe. The ROLE is of the in-your-face meatshield.
Once your mother boards the ship....
Once your mother boards the ship....
Yo Han is so fat he circumnavigated yo mamma in only 11 parsecs.