i've been playing X-wing for a year now, in which time I've been completely smitten with it as a system. It's had a serious design flaw this whole time, though, one that hasn't received much attention, but is often brought up, with a resigned shrug, whenever we talk about certain ships.

Huge ships have represented a terrible level of points efficiency. Their only competitive use was a buld that keeps points spend on them to a minimum, and uses them as battering rams to deny space and flatten the unwary. When viewed in proportion to the beauty of the models, this was the greatest failure in the game's brief history. The Tantive was 'the free ship that comes with 3po', the raider a beautiful but folorn ornament on many shelves, while its owner played yet another 100 pointer.

Not any more. We've only seen a few reveals of the contents of the Gozanti, but each of them is revolutionary to the way these ships can be played. Do you want your centrepiece to be tougher? Far more efficient? Or totally abusive of secondary effects including shield stripping, ioning and aoe damage?

I could talk about assault missiles alone, to be honest, and get giddy with the possibilities! My fear was that they'd be errata'd, given their potency in epic, but no - ffg have done the reverse, and brought to prominence the scariest secondary weapons in epic, and in doing so have made huge ships fearsome. By raising the stakes like this, ffg are introducing greater risk/reward relations into the game, so that we will start to see the urgent attempts to destroy these beasts, and defensive counterplay that seeks to shut these attempts down, in our games - preciselly the dynamic that should be at work in this level of play.

I wanted to start up a thread where we can talk about these upgrades, bask in the glow of imminent epic games sprouting up around the globe, and the start of the second wave of X-wing: the day the REAL huge ships finally landed.

the thing I don't know how it will work is,

Hardpoints you used to have to have energy to fire, and you can make as many secondary weapon attacks per turn as you had energy on your hardpoints.

does this mean only one missile attack per turn? as there is no energy on missiles

It's a good point - how will the new prominence of ordnance on huge ships interact with energy usage? If they can be fired each turn without energy being consumed, then we're talking some scary stuff right here. It will also have the knock on effect of making unique huge ship actions and upgrades more viable, as the strain is taken off of their energy economy.

the thing I don't know how it will work is,

Hardpoints you used to have to have energy to fire, and you can make as many secondary weapon attacks per turn as you had energy on your hardpoints.

does this mean only one missile attack per turn? as there is no energy on missiles

It's a good point - how will the new prominence of ordnance on huge ships interact with energy usage? If they can be fired each turn without energy being consumed, then we're talking some scary stuff right here. It will also have the knock on effect of making unique huge ship actions and upgrades more viable, as the strain is taken off of their energy economy.

As written, we have no reason to believe that these missile/torpedo attacks require energy to fire. So you can keep your energy for defensive purposes, as your offense is now much more efficient.

The limiter on Ordnance Tubes is that you still need target locks to fire. Ordnance is more range limited than the big guns and eats your actions, which are arguably more valuable than energy. Acquiring those locks on the smaller ships means not recovering or reinforcing, and once the target locking section on a Huge goes down all the ordnance tubes go down with it.

Nevertheless it's still three glorious Huge Ship fix cards.

Essentially we have an upgrade that improves action efficiency (take Recover or Reinforce after a non-Recover or Reinforce for one energy), an upgrade that takes the sting off packing a CR90 or Raider full of guns by making hardpoint energy cheaper, and an upgrade that with Weapons Engineer gives you endless Assault Missile obliteradoom.

They gave you the choice between:

• Play Huge Ships as you did now but with a ton more survivability/support action economy.
• Make hardpoints (especially en masse hardpoints) viable.
• FIRE ALL THE MISSILES!

The limiter on Ordnance Tubes is that you still need target locks to fire. Ordnance is more range limited than the big guns and eats your actions, which are arguably more valuable than energy.

Nevertheless it's still three glorious Huge Ship fix cards.

Essentially we have an upgrade that improves action efficiency (take Recover or Reinforce after a non-Recover or Reinforce for one energy), an upgrade that takes the sting off packing a CR90 or Raider full of guns by making hardpoint energy cheaper, and an upgrade that with Weapons Engineer gives you endless Assault Missile obliteradoom.

Still need Target Locks, and even more importantly, SPEND Target Locks.

the thing I don't know how it will work is,

Hardpoints you used to have to have energy to fire, and you can make as many secondary weapon attacks per turn as you had energy on your hardpoints.

does this mean only one missile attack per turn? as there is no energy on missiles

No, you have that wrong.

The rules:

During the Combat phase, each huge ship may perform one attack with its primary weapon and may perform one attack with each of its secondary weapons. Each attack must be fully resolved before it begins another.

Some hardpoint upgrades require you to spend energy in order to use them, but that is not a requirement of the attack rather than of the upgrade.

Missiles and Torpedoes do not require energy, but you can still use them.

This is exciting! I can begin to see some kind of rock-paper relationship emerging too, in how you kit out your capital ship.

Say you have a raider, set up for ion torps, assault missiles, chirpy and engine, being a bonafide anti-fighter cruiser, complete with cheap tie swarm as a screen, set up against a quad-cannon tantive with improved energy efficiency, han solo crew, and weapons crew. The tantive will be desperately trying to shove long range damage through while the raider tries to close and destroy the rebel (IA) X-wings. Sniping and defensive capability vs close range mayhem.

Some great points, Blue, and I see what you've pointed out leading to one ship in the imperial fleet getting an awful lot of mission assignments: the Impetuous!

I am so pumped for these upgrades. I'll be writing a blog post about them this weekend as a sort of interlude to my work-in-progress guide to Epic play, since I'm betting nobody wants to wait weeks or months for my guide posts to catch up to the Gozanti.

Some great points, Blue, and I see what you've pointed out leading to one ship in the imperial fleet getting an awful lot of mission assignments: the Impetuous!

Some Missiles don't use locks. You could fire off three Homing Missiles off of one.

Some great points, Blue, and I see what you've pointed out leading to one ship in the imperial fleet getting an awful lot of mission assignments: the Impetuous!

Some Missiles don't use locks. You could fire off three Homing Missiles off of one.

Indeed, but Ion torps and assault missiles both do. I can foresee the impetuous getting in some very satisying cascading attacks, with a weapons engineer aboard!

Some great points, Blue, and I see what you've pointed out leading to one ship in the imperial fleet getting an awful lot of mission assignments: the Impetuous!

Some Missiles don't use locks. You could fire off three Homing Missiles off of one.

Automated Protocols is the most intriguing for me. A Raider or CR90 could do their target lock, spend one energy to Reinforce, and use their remaining energy to Recover. They can also use the Repair Droid with minimal consequence.

The GR75 is a tougher call, as these mods lock it out from Combat Retrofit but give you greater versatility and freedom to Jam.

I've said this in the past. Ordnance is great in Epic. Okay maybe it's not as good as you want in standard death matches but in Epic it works. Now with these new releases it can truly come to the forefront. Maybe somethings work better in some areas and not everything is perfectly balanced for 100 point death matches.

Ordnance is great in Epic.

Just sayin'

If the target is unfortunate enough to leave their ship in the sweet spot. Two of those attacks will have minimal modifiers, though.

Homing, not Advanced Homing.

Why not advanced homing, the auto crits seem REALLY useful against rebels. Especially against other capital class ships.

Some great points, Blue, and I see what you've pointed out leading to one ship in the imperial fleet getting an awful lot of mission assignments: the Impetuous!

Some Missiles don't use locks. You could fire off three Homing Missiles off of one.

If the target is unfortunate enough to leave their ship in the sweet spot. Two of those attacks will have minimal modifiers, though.

Automated Protocols is the most intriguing for me. A Raider or CR90 could do their target lock, spend one energy to Reinforce, and use their remaining energy to Recover. They can also use the Repair Droid with minimal consequence.

The GR75 is a tougher call, as these mods lock it out from Combat Retrofit but give you greater versatility and freedom to Jam.

Nope. Huge ships can't take free actions. That card is worthless.

What are the chances here? That ffg allows itself to be stymied, and a card intended to revolutionise epic is never ever played, or the rules are errata'd, allowing protocols to work as intended? If I was a betting rodian...

What are the chances here? That ffg allows itself to be stymied, and a card intended to revolutionise epic is never ever played, or the rules are errata'd, allowing protocols to work as intended? If I was a betting rodian...

I really have to wonder if someone is running into someone else's office right now going "oh sh$t. We forgot that huge ships can't take free actions!!! How're we going to fix this?"

FAQ/ERRATA.

That card is not worthless, it'll be faq/errata'ed to be usable. Obviously. As usual, the sky is not falling. Those are bits of debris and escape pods FROM THE EPIC CORVETTE BATTLES.

FAQ/ERRATA.

That card is not worthless, it'll be faq/errata'ed to be usable. Obviously. As usual, the sky is not falling. Those are bits of debris and escape pods FROM THE EPIC CORVETTE BATTLES.

+1 this; this is already being discussed in a few other threads.

Yes seriously the sky is not falling and rules lawyers across the world will loose this case should they take it up.

Play or debate, your choice of which is more fun.

FAQ/ERRATA.

That card is not worthless, it'll be faq/errata'ed to be usable. Obviously. As usual, the sky is not falling. Those are bits of debris and escape pods FROM THE EPIC CORVETTE BATTLES.

+1 this; this is already being discussed in a few other threads.

Yes seriously the sky is not falling and rules lawyers across the world will loose this case should they take it up.

Play or debate, your choice of which is more fun.

Je$us guys. Nobody is saying the sky is falling. Nobody is saying FFG won't fix things so the card is usable the way we all know it is supposed to be. We're just commenting "huh, amusing note, FFG forgot that huge ships can't use free actions. I wonder how they'll fix it. "

You're the guys who are blowing everything out of proportion.

Je$us guys. Nobody is saying the sky is falling. Nobody is saying FFG won't fix things so the card is usable the way we all know it is supposed to be. We're just commenting "huh, amusing note, FFG forgot that huge ships can't use free actions. I wonder how they'll fix it. "

You're the guys who are blowing everything out of proportion.

Not trying to 'blow everything out of proportion"; that's already been done. You're one of the first to post "I wonder how they'll fix it". Most have said that it's useless, etc. and I was simply commenting on that. Some people do focus on rules to the exclusion of actually playing the game and I thought that was humorous.

That's all. I agree they'll fix it and said as much.

So we're in agreement.

Game on

There was a post literally saying "wow this card is worthless". last page.

I was responding to that.

Nope. Huge ships can't take free actions. That card is worthless.

Man...you're right. Tell you what, when you get your Gozanti, I'll take those cards off your hands. No cost, I'll do it for free