Rather than any "carrier" ship, I'd rather see a basic upgrade that just lets you add 2x of the listed ship for its squadron cost. Right now, I can only see one carrier ship being in Armada: the Gozanti. You could even have two different versions: a more basic cruiser and the TIE docking clamp version so people don't have to use it straight up as the carrier.

Yeah there are very few traditional carrier classes in Star Wars. Most carriers aren't as well armed as other warships their size but have enough firepower to take on another warship.

I don't understand the problem here? In the games I've seen Squadrons are very important. There is a rock paper scissors thing going on in my area atm, which makes the meta interesting. You have to field SOME fighters or bombers will tear you up, and if your bomber player doesn't field some fighters his bombers are going to get torn up. But if they don't bring any fighters your interceptors are next to useless. So you can't bring too many interceptors... idk what game you guys are playing. But speaking as a Rebel player I use B-wings to kill the Demolisher EVERY Imperial player is fielding right now, and I worry about the Interceptor heavy list.

Was messing around trying to think of a carrier that could be added and how it can be implemented.

So far I have only looked at Imperial ships. I decided to go with the Ton-Falk-Class Excort Carrier.

The ship is only about 500 meters long and 150 meters in height, lightly armed (has 10 twin laser cannons and some concussion missles) and armored, and can carry a full 6 squadrons (72 fighters).

...

Thoughts?

Being a lover of the WEG Imperial Sourcebook, I quite like this idea of bringing in the old space brick as a dedicated carrier. I'm more of a fan of that than I am of the Secutor-class, even if the Secutor looks (somewhat) better. (It's still odd, though, IMO.)

However, I would be surprised if they decide to go that route. By-and-large FFG does not pull from the RPGs; they pull from computer games. Then again, they've adopted it in their own roleplaying game, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

I do think that dedicated carriers would do the squadron game a lot of good.

I don't think you nessicarily have to have a whole new ship to have a carrier. How about a victory-3, or a gladiator - 3? just another variant to go along with the 2 that we have. it would have less forward batter armament, a natively high squadron value, and there would be an upgrade card to extend the squadron command bubble. while I don't know whether or not squadrons need a buff, and I suspect they will have more tricks with the next wave, I do think that if you want a carrier based build right now, you are paying for a lot of offensive firepower on a vic 1 or 2 that you may not get optimal use out of.

I also think that having to effectively tether your fighters to a capital ship hampers them a lot (though, against capital ships, you don't always need a squadron command.

right now a carrier is a big points sink, I think a cheaper but weaker variant might be a good thing. who wants to do a card for a gladiator-3?

how about some stats? I'm thinking squadron value of 6, but less battery armament in the front 3 arcs. Anti squadron value of 2 blue dice?

do we need to adjust the upgrade bar? want to be able to take flight controllers and ex hangar bays, etc.

We also need an upgrade card or commander that increases the range of the squadron command. then we playtest it as a house rule.

I think the gladiator would keep up with the squadrons a lot better than the vic would.

how about a shuttle that issues squadron commands as well? think that may be coming in the next wave(s)?

I remember fighting the old space brick in the X-wing computer game and did that thing have shields and anti fighter fire power. It took me weeks and 100s of game hours to work out killing it and I don't think I ever did.

right now a carrier is a big points sink, I think a cheaper but weaker variant might be a good thing. who wants to do a card for a gladiator-3?

how about some stats? I'm thinking squadron value of 6, but less battery armament in the front 3 arcs. Anti squadron value of 2 blue dice?

do we need to adjust the upgrade bar? want to be able to take flight controllers and ex hangar bays, etc.

We also need an upgrade card or commander that increases the range of the squadron command. then we playtest it as a house rule.

I think the gladiator would keep up with the squadrons a lot better than the vic would.

how about a shuttle that issues squadron commands as well? think that may be coming in the next wave(s)?

This is where you run into issues though. The Gladiator is not a carrier, it can only carry 24 (2 squadrons) fighters, so even if they do a "3" class for one of our exisiting ships, I doubt that it will be the gladiator.

Also generally the Empires ships had only 1 or 2 varients. But who knows, with all the old EU being gutted it may change.

not sure how carriers are a point sink when you can get away with one or two cheap (relative to the price of the ship) upgrades. Perhaps if you only ever take a single ship and expect only that ship to issue squadron commands, then I could see it being a point sink but that's more of a failure in list building.

Lets say you take two fatties. One has hangars and controllers, the other has EA. Which of these is the carrier? The correct answer is both.

the hangar fattie can throw more squadrons and use them more effectively as anti-squadron, but there is literally zero difference in dice output against ships (apart from hangars throwing 1 more squadron). Sure, you might want to CF with the EA until you realize you get far more dice out of the squadrons than out of just the one from CF.

this is something I notice some local players screwing up when they lose one ship and suddenly a large body of their squads become useless. Squadrons come in with a lot of built-in restrictions already; there's no need to impose more on yourself.

as for imperial carriers, you don't need speed to keep up with squadrons as much as Rhymer so that your bullets can keep up with the enemy