So I'm looking through Stay on Target and have come across one of my favorite EU ships, the XG-1 Assault Gunboat. It's suitably beefy, but seems to come up a bit short when compared to its Rebel rival the Y Wing. I can accept the massively increased cost of the Star Wing when compared to the Y Wing. A modern fighter still in use by the Empire should be harder to acquire than Clone Wars era surplus.

However beyond this the Gunboat seems to stack up poorly to its older counterpart, a lower system strain threshold and much poorer handling rating all seem to suggest the Star Wing is grossly inferior. The two bright points in the Gunboats favor seem to be its improved sensor range and customization hard points. These are not insubstantial improvements, buts still leave the Star Wing a touch under powered feeling.

The final concern I have is that the Star Wing's Ion Cannons seem oddly anemic, they are described as "Forward Mounted Ion Cannons" and are given the same stats as a set of linked Light Ion Cannons. IF this was a typo and the cannons were meant to be a pair of Medium Ion Cannons then I would be much happier with stats for the Star Wing. It would be a a fairly nasty combatant at Short Range, but unable to effectively dogfight with dedicated fighters that could close the distance with them.

Now I realize in an RPG ships don't need to be balanced in the same way as they might need to be in a miniatures game like X Wing, but the way the XG-1 comes across as so deficient bothers me. It currently doesn't seem to be any more capable than a ship 20 years older and close to half the cost.

All of this having been said, I am very happy to have the XG-1 stated out, and it is very nice to have such a useful multi-role ships available as a GM. Personally I am thinking I will be buffing the ship slightly to include medium Ion cannons simply to make the ships a little more interesting as strike craft.

Would be happy to hear other people's thoughts on this ship. Are you happy with its current stats? How are you using it in your games? I personally love its versatility, being able to use it as a heavy strike craft to seek out and destroy the PCs home base/ship, as a dangerous alternative to regular customs ships, or as a heavy raider conductive hit and fade attacks on Rebellion sympathetic targets independent of a carrier.

A well thought out review of the ship design. Don't think it matters since they will hardly change the stats any time soon. You will have to just make the adjustments you feel are needed in your own game or hope your GM agrees with you.

Looks like Frep here developed his thoughts further for http://www.d20radio.com/main/?p=4075- I'm a big fan of his Echo Squadron suggestion. Battle of the Atlantic in space with the PCs playing anti-stealth escourts? I'd run such a game in a heartbeat.

The only thing I have to say about switching from light ion cannons to medium is that medium ion cannons can only be put on ships that are silhouette 5+ per the upgraded weapons attachment. While some of the ships that have stats in this game include weapons beyond their silhouette limitations, there aren't many of them.

With that being said, when adjusting printed stats, my advice is try not to change things such that it pisses off players. Altering the game to keep everyone having more and more fun, great! Altering the game to give yourself shiny toys and never let the players have them (not saying that you're doing this), generally leads to no players.

If the gunboat is for the players, and you want it to be better for them for whatever reason, go for it. If the gunboat is something just for you to use instead of TIEs, leave it as is. If you want to make a signature, cooler gunboat, go for it, but make it rather rare, or unique, and definitely showcase it against regular gunboats, to help get across how much cooler it is.

The FFG iteration of the Xg-1 did take me a sec too. Fortunately I've also been playing TIE Fighter as of late, so a little thought in context and I was able to figure out the idea.

The Ion cannons are just the standard fighter Ion cannons, they're there more for flexibility then hard hitting attacks.

In this version it feels like a medium range strike and patrol fighter, intended to be a bit of a jack of all trades without the expense of something like the Defender. While reasonably maneuverable, it has a pretty big silhouette (narratively, not stats) so a less experienced pilot may need to get used to all those wings and fins. Likewise all those moving parts means you need to handle it with a little TLC, but the actual spaceframe itself is pretty solid, hence the WT and SST. The big note for me was the Sensors, which start at Short, and the big beautiful missile pods on the sides. The sensors are long for a fighter, and the missile payload is pretty big.

Add all that up and some basic tactics will fall into place. First off it's not really for TIE fighter pilots (Minions) give this thing to Aces and custom rivals and nemesis and by extension plan encounters accordingly. This can mean the ability to slap a couple ranks of Skilled Jockey onto the pilots to offset the handling penalty if you like, as well as other talents like Full Throttle if you want to dogfight. Similar to larger American fighter craft the Xg-1's primary armament is it's missile payload. Able to detect targets in the Short-Medium range band, the Xg-1 will likely open any engagement with a volley of missiles from Short range, and then either try and evade larger hard targets, or move in to mop up lighter targets with laserfire or disable with ions.Considering how powerful missiles are in the RPG, that will make the opening salvo pretty scary, so in the encounter design phase of things, a GM should be sure to evaluate the players suvivability vs. missiles when determining how many Xg-1s will be required to meet the encounter objectives.

For placement, typical Xg-1 Missions will include forward recon and long range patrol missions where they can use their sensors and hyperdrive, so a couple Gunboats might make for a good opening scene for that Base Evac adventure. Search and Destroy would also work well, so while not necessarily a direct encounter, you might want to substitute Gunboats for bombers in some situations where you want an enemy overhead looking for big juicy targets. Alternatively you might put the gunboat in a strike support role, scanning and painting targets for bombers while simultaneously providing escort. Interdiction and inspection missions would also be a good fit, so if you're a smuggler entering a busy spaceport a gunboat might conduct scans in a customs support role.

I wouldn't put the Xg-1 in space superiority or interception type missions unless I was showing desperation, or trying out new tactics. They aren't great for going fighter to fighter except for that opening missile salvo, so while it might be cool to have a flight of XG-1s show up as the first responder to a distress call or something, they'll likely call for backup at the first sign of any serious trouble and bug out shortly there after. Similarly when faced with high performance opponents, a sharp commander might order his TIES to engage directly and his Xg-1s to conduct a wide flanking maneuver, targeting the high performance craft with missiles while the TIEs keep them distracted. Bombers could do this as well, but the Gunboats would have the advantage of being able to drop in from hyperspace and surprise their prey.

It's an acceptable multi-role ... it's got 5 mounted weapons (2 laser cannons, 2 ion cannons, 1 torp launcher), and room for mission customizations (2 HP). And it carries twice the torpedo load of the Y-wing.

They packed almost the same gear into the same space... so something has to give; in this case, structural integrity. At the timeframe of the game's primary era (1ABY to about 15 ABY), it's being supplanted by specialized TIEs... it's fragility isn't an issue for an Empire who considers the TIE/ln acceptable... Pilots are expendable. Individual fighters are expendable.

A squadron of XG-1's provides the ability to KEEP hitting cap ships... and it's pretty clearly the problem to which the MC-30's cluster mines are the solution...

Lots of good thoughts here folks, looks as though many of us has similar thoughts on how to best make use of the XG-1. Has anyone made much use of it around their table?

I'm running a star fighter themed campaign for my group, and am likely going to throw some gunboats their way to liven up the current line up of TIEs they've been facing. Though I think I'll be holding off on using Echo Squadron for a while, waiting until the PCs establish themselves a bit before throwing any special opponents at them.

I'd use them against the PC squadron when the PC's have to escort a convoy of freighters. TIEs to distract the players while gunboats go after the freighters in an attempt to take out their engines/hyperdrives. A Gozanti assault carrier or two to bring the TIE's if you don't want to use models with hypderdrives. Have the Gozanti(s) hang back while the snubs do their thing.

Uhm, did I miss something. I can not find the gunboat on stay on target. Actually I can not find a better space superiority fighter than the X-Wing in the whole thing.

I was actually looking forward most to get a TIE/AD Avenger and stats for a gunboat, but instead all the ships did fall flat on their nose. Instead I guess the good old X-Wing will be the superior choice for everything involving dog fighting. Well, at least if I can not get my GM to pimp up some of the imperial ships.

Uhm, did I miss something. I can not find the gunboat on stay on target. Actually I can not find a better space superiority fighter than the X-Wing in the whole thing.

I was actually looking forward most to get a TIE/AD Avenger and stats for a gunboat, but instead all the ships did fall flat on their nose. Instead I guess the good old X-Wing will be the superior choice for everything involving dog fighting. Well, at least if I can not get my GM to pimp up some of the imperial ships.

It's in Fly Casual, not Stay on Target.

I like the fixes Emperor Norton made to space combat. Once of them was to raise the Handling of the Gunboat to 1, representing it's ability to dogfight with some amount of grace.