Thanks bud.

More stuff now uploaded.

AI movement with a number of suggested Improvements included.

V1.2 with the 3rd mission.

I have 1 more mission left in the opening sequence then it's on to random mission arcs.

The next 2 arcs I am thinking of is:

Mission arc 1 Rebel Smugglers

Mission 1 searching Ions

We have Intel that the rebel are using the cover of an ion storm to route weapons to dissidents. Search the ion field for rebel ships and engage to flush them out of the ion filed.

Mission 2 hunting the cargo

We have been able to track cargo ships yt1300 with escorts now they cannot use the cover of the ion field, destroy the escort and disable the smuggler.

Mission 3 strike the outpost

Upon recovery of the smugglers vessel we have identified a rebel outpost in a nearby sector. The destruction of this outpost would provide us with much greater security in the sector.

Mission Arc 2 Rebel Stronghold

Mission 1 Ambush

We have identified rebel patrol routes in the system, you are to ambush them and prevent them reporting back.

Mission 2 blockade

Escort a squadron of bombers as they lay a mine field to prevent them escaping before our main strike force arrives.

Mission 3 operation clean up

As the main strike force attacks the rebel base you are to provide a clean up patrol and prevent any cargo ships escaping with the illegal weapons.

What would be good is if anyone else would like to create a mission arc an have it included. Design and do some of the playtesting before sending it where I and others can do more playtesting. I have been using publisher to do my work but could easily add PDFs to the mission book. I would of course do a credits page with names at end

Please let me know if you would like too

Any suggestions?

The hard part is ship AI- havig just worked up AI for the Tie FO, I'm not looking foreward to making HWK and Ywing AI.

I think Scum AI might be easier to work with as they are supposed to be untrained and more aggressive at first but less committed to the fight. (As soon as they take a damage card make them run away) and easier to pick off. Rebels would be the hardest AI as they have initiative and are often skilled in hit and run fights.

Hi Jameson Courage,

Ever since I started playing HotaC some time ago I have been trying to find time to try out your campaign. Being a Imperial player in X-wing, and a long time TIE-fighter the PC game fan, I really love flying TIEs. I also really like the idea to have wingmates, and sharing the kill in the wing. Kudos for that!

Now, I have some questions and comments after running 2 games, and preparing for the third game (Root Out Vermin).

Wingmate rules:

Q: How does the free Squadleader EPT relate to your own Squad? Does every player get to be Squadleader for their own squad?

Q: Is the intention that wingmates may have different EPT’s?

Q: Is the purchase of Imperial Pilot Talents for Wingmates limited by their Pilot Skill?

I think the way to upgrade your Wingmates could be simplified. I like the idea of upgrading TIEs and TIE Bombers to better Squadrons, but the jump to TAP and Interceptor is awkward. Say I start as an Academy Pilot, having one wingman. At PS4, I spend 5 XP to switch to a TAP. Now, I would like to have TAPs as wingmates. But according to the current rules, I cannot upgrade my wingmate TIE Fighter. Instead I have to buy a TIE Bomber first, then upgrade that to eventually get a TAP. This could be simplified like this: Once the player acquires a TAP or TIE Interceptor, it may (for the appropriate cost) upgrade their wingmates to the same ship.

Rebel AI:

Q: I see that you have simplified the way Rebels try to go to hyperspace by not having any hyperspace tokens, and rolling 3 dice instead of 2. Are they allowed to attack after failing to go to hyperspace?

Rebel Pilots

Q:I think you could clarify whether you always draw Rebel Pilot Cards or not for each and every enemy. It is not stated, and I got confused by the Rebel Pilot Cards since even the non Elite Pilot version is stated “Elite” on the card, while it says “Basic” on the HotAC cards. Why is that?

Mission setup:

Frankly, I think there is too much randomness in the missions. Random starting opponent ship types, random starting events/obstacles, random Twist events, random twist ships. All this leads to a lot of bookkeeping for the players. I think you mean that his leads to the decrease the repetitiveness of the missions, but I think you have gone too far.

One of the things I like in HotAC is that the missions are self-contained, meaning that you get a clear picture of what will happen throughout the whole mission just by looking at the 2 mission pages. You can see all waves of ships in the opponent squad table, and when they arrive. After determining the average PS of the players and the number of players, you can prepare the game table and collect all miniatures you need for the whole mission. That’s not the case in v 0.2. In worst case scenario, you might end up realizing halfway through the mission that you in fact does not own the miniatures necessary to fulfill all waves.

Also, this also leads to it’s difficult to compare 2 missions when selecting which to play.

And, it must be impossible to playtest these missions for balance.

Here are some ideas to decrease the randomness in the missions and decrease the bookkeeping for the players.

Idea 1: Make the twist ship selection (twist ace and support twist vs first and second twist) fixed for each mission. Move these two table rows into the opponent squad table instead. This way all it will be much easier for the players to get an overview on what will happen and does not have to switch between 2 different documents all the time.

Idea 2: Remove any additional waves coming in at rounds not stated in the opponent squad table. For example, if you roll “Evade” during setup of Root Out Vermin, you state that another ship will arrive at turn 3. Instead that ship can arrive at the same time as the third rebel squad etc.

Idea 3: Clarify the obstacle generation. Ideally I would see that the obstacles are fixed for each mission, ie stated as in HotaC, on the page where the mission map is. Currently, you have a general rule stating that there should always be 6 asteroids on the field (rulebook page 8). For Root Out Vermin mission, are these supposed to override the obstacle rolled with the red dice? If not, you might end up with 18 asteroids on the field. If it overrides, you might end up having only the abandoned space station as an obstacle. Where then, should I put the tokens?

This became rather longish, but I really enjoyed playing the missions once I managed to sort out all the preplay random events. Good job!

PS: As some other commenters on this thread, I also would like to see Z-95’s as opponents in the starting mission(s).

/TreatRangeasRange1

I have been musing with the idea of changing space stations into something more effective than they have been in HotAC.
Currently Turbo laser turrets have little if any effect and leave the station a sitting duck with what is still fairly low shields.

My idea is to adapt the current upgrades available for huge ships (which were not available when HotAC was developed).

Weapons for the turrets:

Quad Laser Cannons
3 dice R1-2 if you miss you may perform the attack again.

Ion Cannon Battery
4 dice R2-4 if this attack hits the defender suffers 1 critical damage and receives 1 ion token then cancel all dice results.

Turbo lasers
4 dice R3-5 the defender doubles agility against this attack. You may change 1 focus to a hit.

Dual Laser Turret
3 dice R1-3

A gunnery team to allow once per round you may change a blank to a hit.

The weapons would have to be represented by a token on the turret to show which type, ion token on Ion cannon, maybe a number 4 token on the quad laser and a number 2 on the dual laser.

Do you think these would be a good alteration from the existing station weapons in HotAC?

Not sure if I want to go down the road of energy and shield regen or actions for the station it might over complicate it?

Not sure I'd change the turrets unless you want to cut down the empire forces massively. Those standard turbo lasers (4 dice r3-5) shred anything with 1 agi like arc-170, y- and b-wings absolutely to pieces, believe me, and that's before any TIEs show up on the battlefield. X-s, HWKs stand a bit more of a chance, probably really needs A-s to draw the turbo laser fire. But yea, be careful, the turrets are not as "easy" as they look.

I think a couple emplacements using those rules could be added for a mission or two involving bases, but as an upgrade to a couple of the other Turbolasers normally in the scenario. When more players are used.

Say upgrade one to a special turret for the cost of 1 TIE being added to the mission.

also I wouldnt mess with energy, it would further complicate matters. Just make it so that the Quad Laser Cannons can fire an extra shot if it doesnt hit...and any further energy requiring abilities (other than just firing them normally dont require energy to work.

Defenders of the empire v1.4 uploaded with some major changes please take a look

https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/135532/defenders-empire

A call out for Mission designers

Defenders of the Empire is an imperial campaign based on HotAC. In this campaign players are assigned ships and sent on missions to complete.

The 1st 4 Missions are a set gateway into the game and are in the Defenders of the Empire File

There will then be 4 sets of 3 missions before a final set of 4 missions to conclude the campaign.

These sets of missions are where help is needed and it is also a great opportunity to be a part of the community project – Defenders of the Empire.

If more mission arcs are created other than the 4 required then these will provide alternative arcs for players when they reach that point in the campaign.

Are you able to design a set of 3 missions that fit into one of these categories:

Select a mission set and 1 of the ship types shown, the players will all then fly that ship, the player PS level has also been indicated for each mission to help with play testing to get the correct level of difficulty.

Missions 5-7 M5=PS3 M6=PS4 M7=PS4

Tie Bomber

Tie Interceptor

Missions 8-10 M8=PS5 M9=PS5 M10=PS6

Tie Bomber

Tie Interceptor

Tie Advanced

Missions 11-13 M11=PS6 M12=PS7 M13=PS7

Tie Punisher

Tie Interceptor

Tie Advanced

Missions 14-16 M14=PS7 M15=PS8 M16=PS8

Tie Punisher

Tie Advanced

If you are willing and able to help out please do contact me by mail and I can arrange for needed files to be sent over.

Thanks greatly to the forum for the ideas I have used and to those who have already lent a great hand already in this project and to those who decide to help out further 

Storgar, if you are on the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster Facebook group I'm sure some people might want or be able to play test or create missions for you if you ask them for help.

I and my gaming group are about to start playing the Imperial campaigns (yours and another one) and I'll let you know what we come across while playing.

I've updated the Facebook page. I've also posted your call for mission designers. I'd love to mark an Imperial campaign as ready to play.

I not on FB would you be able to post on there and direct them to the bgg page?

How many are in your group?

At the moment we are at 802 members and growing. I did provide a link to this thread for folks to join in.

It seems someone else posted it for you yesterday.

802 members are in the group.

Really good to hear, hopefully a couple will want a crack at doing some missions

I did some playtesting of the existing 4 missions on Vassal and I had some thoughts.

The existing rules might give out too much exp. By the end of mission 4 I had PS5 with every upgrade slot filled. In HOTAC that took more like 7-8 missions. I like the idea of a team pool for escaped ships, but maybe everyone getting a point when one pilot gets a kill is too much. Although I do think there should be incentive to preventing rebels from escaping. Also if the exp gets tones down, then the missions need to be rebalanced. Even with fully kitted ties, throwing 2 red dice against As and Xs is rough.

Mission 2: the shuttle is too slow for the amount of turns given. If you bump once in a maneuver, you probably wont be able to do a full lap and escape off the edge (and that's assuming you do not miss one of the satellites.) I think we should either get a faster ship/engine upgrade, or put the satellites one box closer to the middle so that there is a little more wiggle room on maneuvering.

Mission 4: I was unclear on the rules, are the bwings not able to shoot the fuel containers until the shields are down completely? or do they just get evade dice from the remaining shields?

Either way, with the spawn points being where they are, both times I played this mission the b-wings took out both shield generators very quickly. It did not seem like there was much I could do about it, because the bwings spawn in range of one of them, and half of my squad has to come from the hangars. I think this might not be as much of a problem with the 2 player or 6 player station (I was playing with 4 players)

Has there been any progress on the next sets of missions? I haven't seen anything in the facebook group lately.

Well playing around with algorithms and this was some of the things I'd figure out is that you will actually need 4 AIs algorithms to match characteristics. One for Imperials (which we already have), one for scum (which I believe is easier than rebels), one for rebels (which I cheat a little making it slightly player controlled as an ally) and one for civilian.

Scum and Civilian focus on defense and survival, so early bug-outs mechanics (but not too early). Unlike Imperials who are committed to each engagement to life even.

Rebel and Scum doctrine depends more on pilot initiative so instead of using the nearest enemy fighter for AI algorithm Rebel and Scum uses the Target Lock Tokens and select their target to attack. Scum autolocks on the nearest AI and then attacks until target is destroyed or Scum bugs out. For the Rebels I cheat and have the player give the target for the rebel ally wingman.

Civilian needs more of a separate movement tile as with all the current AI is for closing in and engaging enemy, Civilian ships would be trying to do the opposite.

Either way, I think the best approach for adding factions to HotAC would not be switching sides but instead setting up like the Imperial Assault Campaign where you get your main Rebel campaign against either Scum or imperials (or both). Heck if the 3 way is done right you could have Scum and Imperial AI fighting both Rebels and each other.

Defenders of the empire v1.6 is up

https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/135532/defenders-empire

if anyone is on the Fb group for aturi cluster feel free to post the update.

thanks hope you enjoy.