One thing I notice coming up a lot is the belief that huge ships aren't worth their points: that is to say, a 130pt squad would just melt them. While there's definitely an element of us knowing the smalls and larges inside out and the same not being true of the huges, I find myself agreeing with the forum on this one. Every huge ship game I've played without a huge ship on the other side has been somewhat one-sided, and that lines up with the experience of others.

One obvious fix is to require use of the huge ship, but that does limit your building options.

Huges don't lack for firepower: they can compete with an equivalent list in damage dealing. Their issue is inconsistency: they can't modify their dice very well and their inbuilt modification (target lock) only modifies one attack (the attacks of several small ships replacing the huge are likely to all be modified). Therefore, I reasoned the best way to houserule the huge ship's power up without card errata is to enhance their dice modification.

All of these come with the house rule that huge ships cannot be affected by friendly pilot abilities.

Idea 1: Huge Ships have minifocus.
Once per attack, a huge ship may change one focus result to a hit result.

A huge ship can't receive focus tokens because it has a large crew: stress and focus don't apply. However, that doesn't mean all its gunners are completely unfocused. The benefit is this rule doesn't negate any abilities. It makes Single Turbolaser's ability a little less likely to trigger, but it does stack. Problem is applying to every attack for free all the time, although it does make lore sense. Doesn't make sense for the gunners to be worse shots when the pilots have to fly a ship at the same time, right?

Idea 2: Energy Focus
When attacking, a huge ships can spend one energy token from its aft section to change all focus results to hit results.
Against doesn't negate any abilities. Single Turbolaser is negated a little less that before. Mirrors equivalent in small ships in that flipping focus results has a cost. Problem is burning through the huge ship's limited energy pool, but it has a nice Power to Weapons vibe to it.

Idea 3: Universal Target Lock
Huge ships that perform the target lock action are instead assigned a target lock token (they target every ship) While a huge ship has a target lock token, it may reroll any number of dice on any attack it makes against a ship in target locking range. This token disappears at the end of the round.

This one makes a lot of lore sense (it's a huge ship covered in guns, how can it only target one ship?) but may be a little too powerful. It also renders Han Solo and one Raider title near useless. Makes Sensor Team work a bit differently.

Idea 4: Persistent Target Lock

Target Locks are not expended when a huge ship uses them to reroll dice.

Unlike Universal TL it doesn't render any cards useless or incompatible. It's one of the more elegant ideas but I feel it overly encourages focus fire on one ship and heavily encourages Weapons Engineer.

Idea 5: Unlimited Target Lock
Huge ships do not have a limit on the number of target locks they may maintain at once. They still only acquire one per target lock action.

The problem with this one is the potentially huge number of target lock tokens littering the board. Weapons Engineer overwrites it (its text limits you to two) giving the card a tradeoff. Nice interactions with the target locking Raider title. Nice interaction with Targeting Coordinator.

Idea 6: Both Sections Target Lock
Each section maintains its own target lock. When a huge ship performs a target lock action, both sections may acquire a target lock. A weapon may only spend target locks from its corresponding section.

Very powerful with Weapons Engineer but not as much TL spam as 5 and 7. Nice interaction with Targeting Coordinator. Makes one of the Raider titles pretty powerful.

Idea 7: Every Weapon Target Locks
When a huge ship acquires a target lock, assign one blue target lock token to the ship's fore section and one each equipped hardpoint. Each hardpoint may target lock a ship in range of its corresponding section. When attacking, a Huge Ship may only spend target locks corresponding to the weapon it is using.
Some interesting tactical depth to this one given you now all but select targets in the Activation Phase. This one's again fairly high token, and you'd probably have to ban Weapons Engineer from Huges with this one. Eight target lock tokens at once. Makes the Target Locking Raider title VERY powerful unless you limit it to the weapon that makes the kill, in which case you make that title utterly meh. Breaks Targeting Coordinator.

Any of these look interesting? Any of them have severe problems I didn't spot?

These are cool, but nothing with blanks...

Target Locks affect blanks as does Gunnery Team.

Target Locks affect blanks as does Gunnery Team.

Ok

I think I like idea 1 best. Although I have never played epic, I have read about the limitations of huge ships and how a small fleet of similar points (or even less) tipically outperforms the huge ships. The other ideas all have merit, but idea 3 does sound a bit too powerful. But again, what are huge ships if not icons of power?

I would prefer buffing the huge ships to giving them pity requirements. If they are really meant to be intimidating and dangerous they should be made that way.

The epic ships run into an unfortunate case of Tucker's Kobolds. The small ships used intelligently are much more powerful than the large ships because they are independant sources of damage and wounds that when combined far outdo the sum total of the large ship. To make large ships more balanced I would suggest one or all of the following.

A. Increase their hull points and shields. These ships are about 20X the volume of a heavy fighter with only 4X the stats. It doesn't add up.

B. Make them Immune to criticals until the second half of their hull points. These things are not fighters. Once you breach the shields there are layers of armor, corridors, and redundant system to dig through before you get to anything important.

C. Give them more shots. These ships have multiple guns and should be given more attacks or a better base attack to offset the lack of focus action. It's already been noted that the chance of a positive red die roll without the ability to use Focus is only 1/2 while with it is upped to 2/3, meaning that 5 dice per attack on a huge ship is only about as good as 3 on a Focused fighter.

But this is only if the prevailing attitude is right. Epic games happen less often than regular and the price of huge ships means that we see them less often.

Therefore I SUGGEST A CHALLENGE!

(Full italics, caps, and bolding for maximum implied announcer voice.)

The rules say that using epic ships in regular games would be unfair. We say it is- to the huge ships. I propose that if you own an epic ship that you play a few rounds of semi-epic games with the following rules.

Cybrarian Ambush

1. One player uses a capital ship. And only a capital ship.

2. The capital ship player may spend as much or as little as he/she wants on upgrades and equipment, up to 150 points.

3. The opposing player must build a force of fighters/large ships equivalent to the points spent by the capital player.

This is not only a challenge in name. The huge ship captain will be at a significant disadvantage, and have multiple hostiles to deal with at all times. If you are the capital ship captain expect to lose, winning will be seldom and hard-earned. At least, at first.

The point of this exercise is to develop new strategies for the effective use of capital ships as they have been developed for fighters. We have pages of formations for TIE swarms, dozens of builds for the Aggressor alone, and ways of beating the TLT meta are tried and failed every day; but the huge ships do not see nearly enough use to have this level of general understanding., and I think that should change.

Can you ion your enemies off the board with turrets? Can you protect your blind spots with obstacles or the edge of the map? What mix of crew is the most potent versus swarms? Versus Aggressor squads? Bombs?

The scenario is my idea of applied scientific method. Cut away all of the rest of the epic battle, boil it right down to equivalent forces, one of which is a capital ship, and make the capital ship earn it's points.

Any questions?

Ok look. I don't know what games you're playing, but there are ways to build huge ships and their escorts to be very good now. Esp with all the errata about energy. I don't think this is as neccessary as you think.

One thing I notice coming up a lot is the belief that huge ships aren't worth their points: that is to say, a 130pt squad would just melt them.

This is correct. Capital ships suck against fighters.

From my experience with Huge ships (several games): You need to make them harder. They break apart too easy. I came up with the following house rule:

Non-Huge primary weapons attacks must discard half their hits, rounded up, starting with discarding crits first, when attacking Huge ships.

That way you get those TIE and Interceptor swarms out of the way, or the Z-swarms. You need to bring some heavy stuff, cannons or torpedoes, to do the job. These "dangers" can then be targeted by your escorts, all the sudden you have like mini missions inside your game where the ordnance carriers try to get in range while your escorts want to stop them.

I could also see something like a target priority rule, where you are not allowed to shoot the Huge if there's a Non-Huge inside your firing arc and within R2 (or R1, not sure R2 might be too much).

I have several little rules too. One of the most simple and easy to apply in game is Secondary Hull points.

Basically you double the ships total health by doubling it's hull. So as an example if a section had 5 hull it would have another five secondary hull.

The first half; the armored part, ignores crits. The sections inner half starts to take crits, since the outer armor has been blown away.

I also double energy values.

Ok look. I don't know what games you're playing, but there are ways to build huge ships and their escorts to be very good now. Esp with all the errata about energy. I don't think this is as neccessary as you think.

It's hard to say if it's necessary, but what is true is that a circa 130pt Huge doesn't outdo a circa 130pt squad of smaller ships in firepower, durability, maneuverability or flexibility. I'm not sure what they've got going for them.

I also double energy values.

As in capacity or as in energy per move?

Ok look. I don't know what games you're playing, but there are ways to build huge ships and their escorts to be very good now. Esp with all the errata about energy. I don't think this is as neccessary as you think.

It's hard to say if it's necessary, but what is true is that a circa 130pt Huge doesn't outdo a circa 130pt squad of smaller ships in firepower, durability, maneuverability or flexibility. I'm not sure what they've got going for them.

I also double energy values.

As in capacity or as in energy per move?

Capacity... this represents the batteries. Also cards that grant extra energy and such.

I actually never played epic yet but I like the idea to reduce primary and cannon damage against huge ships. This would make ordnance more useful and reduce the effectiveness of swarm of light ships against huge ships. Maybe remove one hit result or remove one red die. What do You think ?

Edit: reduce not rescue

Just make big ship shields twice as tough. To drop a shield you need two hits or one crit.

I actually never played epic yet but I like the idea to rescue primary and cannon damage against huge ships. This would make ordnance more useful and reduce the effectiveness of swarm of light ships against huge ships. Maybe remove one hit result or remove one red die. What do You think ?

The Reinforce action already does something similar.

I want to use my Raider really badly, but I can recognize it can't really compete with an equal points value of fighters.

From the point of view of enhancing huge ships from thematic perspectives:

They definitely lose on action efficiency. I liked the two focus ideas from above (mini-focus of changing 1 focus result per attack) and of a focus action that applies in similar fashion to all attacks.

From a defensive standpoint, I prefer to make modifications that are simple and thus easy to implement. Doubling Hull/Shields would be easy to implement.

BUT, I really like the idea of removing some of the attack strength of the primary weapons of small ships.

Remove 1 hit, remove 1 attack die, etc., all sound very approachable and make a huge ship more survivable straight away.

I especially like the idea of changing the meta of epic builds so that taking secondary weapons a necessity. More points per small ship means a reduced action efficiency (fewer ships, fewer actions); it also enables the small ships defending the Huge to concentrate on important threats and the attacker on protecting important assets from attack on the approach to the Huge.

That makes an Epic battle involving a huge ship seem like a true epic battle.

But the issue of primary and secondary armor also makes good sense. Perhaps a requirement that it takes 2 'primary weapon' critical hits to inflict a faceup crit card, and only 1 from a secondary weapon.

One important note about Epic Games:

NEVER ALLOW ETAHN A'BAHT IN EPIC LEVEL GAMES!

His special ability is ridiculous when he can surround himself with ships.

It's like popcorn...

I had a much better time with my Corvette when using Han crew. He is great, but it also feels a bit weird that he increases efficiency so much and is one of the only ways to use focus results on attack.

I like the option of using energy from the store to flip focus results on both attack and defence as an alternative. Energy still needs to carefully managed.

On the defence side of things I wonder if both section should always have a reinforce token, then the reinforce action lets them reinforce one section so it has 2 tokens. Either that or make an upgrade card that has a sensor jammer like defensive effect.

One important note about Epic Games:

NEVER ALLOW ETAHN A'BAHT IN EPIC LEVEL GAMES!

His special ability is ridiculous when he can surround himself with ships.

It's like popcorn...

Ah well. I've played 200 pt. games where Etahn was good.

One important note about Epic Games:

NEVER ALLOW ETAHN A'BAHT IN EPIC LEVEL GAMES!

His special ability is ridiculous when he can surround himself with ships.

It's like popcorn...

...while in 100 pt. games, he's not really worth his points.

Ah well. I've played 200 pt. games where Etahn was good.

He's not /that/ bad at 100, just got PS-screwed a little. With the meta dropping, I could see him being workable despite the expense.

I've been toying with two house rules, both to help the feeling of Huge ships being Huge:

Huge ships ignore the one Damage Card from each attack of a non-Huge ship.

Yes, this means that Ion Cannons don't actually scratch Corvette hulls, but that's OK - they're still hitting the energy reserves, yeah?

This very much improves the odds of Ordinance (And, admittedly, HLCs, but whatchagonnado) coming out to play, and making those secondaries prime anti-capital firepower. It shuts down TIE Fighter swarms needling a Huge ship to death, too, which always felt... odd.

A Huge Ship attacking a ship it has Target Locked may spend 1 Energy to regain a Target Lock immediately after spending it.

This one fixes any semblance of a firepower issue. Can't use Focus? Don't need to now. It represents a Huge ship locking on and then everything unloading. Sensor Jammers and Autothrusters become pretty darn popular, let me tell you.

I note in passing I wouldn't reccomend both fixes... but if you did, no-one would ever complain about these suckers being too weak again, eh?

Hold up, hold up, hold up.

Do the huge ships start the game with no energy or fully charged? I can find no mention in the rules and no FFG FAQ mentioning it at all. It makes 1-2 turns worth of difference for abilities and firing secondaries, which is huge in alpha strike potential.

Gladly, you start with everything fully charged, it's in the Epic Tournament FAQ under Deplyment Procedure.

We had great, balanced epic games with the following house rules:

- Each side requires exactly one CR90 or Raider. Scum is using a hijacked CR90

- The game is won by destroying the enemy huge ship

- Deploy on the short edge of the 6x3 game area so that the fighter screens engage first

- To speed up the game and to not have to track all the different crit effects, all crits are a Direct Hit.

Admitedly I've only played a few games of epic, 100 pts is more my thing. But the Raider is a beast.

If anything it's a bit to good. I've never even come close to loosing it. And the rebel transport is very very good. The Cr90 seems the least impressive. But still dangerous.

The Raider + Palpatine. = win.