Hi guys!

We had a great turnout for the first round of voting in the Custom Card League, and I'm ready to announce the four custom ships that received the best scores in the voting and will be heading soon to Vassal! Keep in mind that these versions aren't final, and everyone is invited to submit modified versions of these ships for the next and final round of voting for custom ships! Everyone is also invited to submit unique pilot cards and upgrades for these ships - the deadline for unique pilot and upgrade submissions is midnight Wednesday.

Please submit tweaked versions of this ship below, in this thread. Refer to the ship submission template if you want to know what information is needed for a submission. You can change just about anything about the ship; statline, dial, upgrades, actions, cost... but try to stay true to the original design idea and try to perfect it.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to cook up a submission for the League, and I hope you take a look at these four ships and offer tweaked versions for the second round of voting.

The Four Winners:

Odanan's Assault Gunboat

Mangipan's V-Wing

VanderLegion's SoroSuub Luxury Yacht 3000

Odanan's TIE Avenger

5 rho squadrons with manglers!

Aww, no rebel ship. Out of curiousity, what was the highest voted rebel ship? And how'd the DQed ships from wave 9 end up doing?

Wow! Assault Gunboat AND TIE Avenger!

Nice!!!!

(now let's tune them up)

Great questions!

The DQ's ships - the ARC-170s did well but would not quite have won a top 4 spot. The Mandalorian protector did very well and would have taken the TIE Avenger's spot in the top four. The TIE/SF did well, but not well enough to be competitive for the top 4 spots.

The top voted rebel ships, aside from the ARC-170s, were your StealthX Vander, and the RVN-290.

Everyone; please submit tweaked versions of these ships in this thread!

OK, let's discuss the Assault Gunboat. Here is what I planned:

I'm compiling here most of my custom cards.
I try to always follow the lore and balance (costs follow the Ships_Stats_formula_14_08_21.xlsx).
WARNING: I'm not the author of the original images, though most of them feature heavy editing.

Assault Gunboat custom expansion pack:







Gunboat showcase (using edited Mel's mini):

CONSIDERATIONS:

It's an expansion not only to add the "Imperial Y-Wing", but to offer some useful upgrade cards.

The dial is a cross between the X-Wing and the Y-Wing. Maybe too good? The ship was quite capable of keeping track of the enemy in the PC games.

One agility because this was hard to dodge enemy fire (maybe because of the large profile?). But 5 hull (equivalent to the Y-Wing) and 3 shield (better than the X-Wing), make it tough to kill.

It has only 2 missiles (lore accurate) and the cannon, but an upgrade that allows it to replace 1 missile for 1 torpedo (the ship was known to sometimes carry torpedoes).

The "Alpha Strike" elite upgrade can be used pilots with more than one ordinance/canon/turret, but it is specially useful in the Gunboat, allowing an easy canon+missile combo. Would Tomax Bren be broken with it? You tell me. (if yes, I can restrict the upgrade to the Gunboat)

The Gunboat is the most produced/deployed Imperial hyperspace capable starfighter, which I explored in the title: "Imperial Reinforcements". It adds an interesting mechanic, which really differentiate the Gunboat of the TIEs. Since the common TIEs had no hyperspace, and the high tech, hyperspace capable TIEs (Defender, Avenger), are so rare that wouldn't be available anywhere, that's the job of the Gunboats. (sure, the title also boosts the Firespray, the Lambda and possible future non-TIE ships, like the Skipray. That's not exactly bad)

It also emulates the massive military power of the Empire and remind the PC old sims (where the Imperials are able to call Gunboats as reinforcements).

I don't know if the price is right (is deploying later, but where you want, actually a drawback?)

Xeal is a colleague of Mareek Stele's who was MIA and later returned to action with "Killer Eyes".

Noble Calder's ability is kind of uninspired, so suggestions are most welcome. Not many information about this guy, except that he was the commander of a squad (?). Maybe he could be the lower PS unique pilot instead of Xeal (swap the PS of both).

Mareek Stele piloted the Gunboat, but this wasn't one ship who made him famous (like the Defender, the Avenger and the Missile Boat).

Possible pilots: (most in Legends)

• Gunboat generics (Squadrons): Nu, Tau, Mau, Mu, Rho, Eagle, Raven, Talon, Veerpal
• Gunboat uniques: Arajen Turmen, Noble Calder, Xeal (but not specially this ship)

Oh I do not like a bomb being on that V-Wing one bit.

Oh I do not like a bomb being on that V-Wing one bit.

Why not? Looks to be lore-accurate according to wookiepedia:

Oh I do not like a bomb being on that V-Wing one bit.

Why not? Looks to be lore-accurate according to wookiepedia:

Armament

• Twin laser cannons(2)^[1]
• Some were equipped with Flak guns and Proton bombs ^[4]

Battlefront 2 (a game that gets far more acclaim than it deserves) had a really bad habit of misrepresenting ships just to pile them into gameplay roles, that's where the cannon/bomb stuff comes from.

WIP:

TIE Avenger custom expansion pack:

To do:
- Add some more upgrade cards.

Showdown:


CONSIDERATIONS:

Dial might look strange, but it is a cross of her predecessor's and successor's: TIE Advanced and TIE Defender. Could add some s-loops or t-rolls on it. Input is most welcome.

The weaker hull was made to differentiate it from the Advanced and Defender, while stressing this ship wasn't the most armored one. This is compensated by the 3 points shield.

Title TIE/ad: adds the canonical tractor beam and explores the famous high recharge rate of the ship.

Title TIE/x2: could make it more similar with the TIE Interceptor? or TIE Advanced?

Abilities were inspired by the pilot's personalities. Sedaya is known to be very accurate and Nerwal is know for his highly customized ships (might change the wording of his ability).

Possible pilots: (most in Legends)

• Avenger generics (Squadrons): Avenger (along with Interceptors), Night Hunter (along with Aggressors), Dire Cat.
• Avenger uniques: E.C. "Easy" Nerwal, Max'al Aylor (also the Scimitar and Bomber), Captain (Quinllan) Yorr (already in the game), Lieutenant Tanbris, Sedaya Morning Star

Still needs more upgrade cards. I would like to find upgrades that are thematic for this ship but not exclusive to it (could help other ships).

Here's the 2 unique pilots I built for the Luxury Yacht and their respective titles

The jade's fire had a track-back firing system that would track incoming shots to shoot back at the attacker with the turret. The limitation against firing your turret more than once per round is to encourage you to still want/need arc on people. If you hvae a shot in arc, you can get 2 attacks per round (normal attaack + revenge shot with turret), if you don't have arc, you can make a normal attack with your turret, but odn't get the revenge shot.

Mara's ability is basically a reverse R4 agromech, and synergizes with the title.

For lando's ability, i wanted to keep the gambling theme from his crew card. You have a 3/8 chance to avoid taking stress on red maneuvers, but conversely you have the same 3/8 chance of not CLEARING stress on a green maneuver. The Lady Luck had more heavily upgraded weaponry (5 retractable laser cannons), hence it's title giving a better primary weapon. I might actually ditch the part about not equipping turret upgrades (I made this long before we got the ghost with a 4 attack primary AND a turret upgrade slot).

Oh I do not like a bomb being on that V-Wing one bit.

Why not? Looks to be lore-accurate according to wookiepedia:

Armament

• Twin laser cannons(2)^[1]
• Some were equipped with Flak guns and Proton bombs ^[4]

Battlefront 2 (a game that gets far more acclaim than it deserves) had a really bad habit of misrepresenting ships just to pile them into gameplay roles, that's where the cannon/bomb stuff comes from.

Gotcha. Hadn't actually looked at the source for it.

Can we submit an upgrade card for these ships?

Got a plan to balance these? You can't decouple upgrade card design from the core ship statline / cost. Getting inputs and ideas from multiple people is good, but design by committee will likely turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.

Some observations:

In the lore, the TIE Avenger's maneuverability makes the TIE Interceptor look like an X-wing by comparison. The dial needs to be significantly changed to be accurate.

I had worked on a custom Assault Gunboat with one of the gentlemen in my local area and submitted it to a reddit competition several months back. The cannon slot is mandatory from the lore but adds some balance challenges. HLC becomes auto-include, so you want a 2nd, new option that works for the assault gunboat. HLC is good against high AGI targets, so you want a 2nd option that is good against low AGI targets. (These are difficult to find competitively in the current AceWing meta, but bear with me...) Here's some versions that we were playtesting and I was balancing:

Slaved Missile System (testing v2)

Assault Gunboat only
Missile Slot, System slot
Cost: 2
3 dice
Range 1-3
Attack (Target Lock)
After you perform a primary attack that hits, you may perform this attack on the same target.

Slaved Missile System (testing v3)
Assault Gunboat only
Missile Slot, System slot
Cost: 2
2 dice
Range 1-3
Attack (Target Lock)
After you perform a primary attack that hits, you may perform this attack twice on the same target.

The costs are based on the existing statline and ship cost that we were using, which were different, so this would not be a drop-in replacement for Odanan's stat line. We obviously also had a system slot in our version, so you would need to drop that requirement. Note that it requires you to have both arc and a target lock on the target to trigger SMS.

This was before wave 8 so it probably wouldn't pull its weight anymore vs Scouts, Inquisitor, etc. But the general principle applies. You want to avoid making a ship (like the Assault Gunboat as shown) that is purely a one-trick pony that has one and only one way to outfit it competitively.

Got a plan to balance these?

I think that's the idea for the second round of voting, tweak the ships to where they're in a good (and preferably balanced) point

And I actually like his title version to get the tractor beam without adding a full cannon slot.

Got a plan to balance these?

I think that's the idea for the second round of voting, tweak the ships to where they're in a good (and preferably balanced) point

Updated my above post, the point is this:

You can't decouple upgrade card design from the core ship statline / cost. Getting inputs and ideas from multiple people is good, but design by committee will likely turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.

Got a plan to balance these?

I think that's the idea for the second round of voting, tweak the ships to where they're in a good (and preferably balanced) point

Updated my above post, the point is this:

You can't decouple upgrade card design from the core ship statline / cost. Getting inputs and ideas from multiple people is good, but design by committee will likely turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.

Makes sense. I know I always try to cost my custom cards as accurately as I can (mostly from comparing it to existing ships that have similarities), but that doesn't mean I'm always successful . I think I based the luxury yacht pricing mostly on the lambda since it's got a lotta similarities (1 more health though 1 less shield, 1 less attack, loses a crew slot but gains a turret upgrade slot.

Not entirely sure on the cost for the +attack on the Lady Luck. If you make it cost much more than I have it at now, you basically lose any reason to take the title, since you can take an HLC for 7 points and get 4 attack at range 2-3 while denying the range 3 bonus die and still keep your turret slot, albeit at the cost of only throwing 3 dice at range 1. If I removed the loss of the turret slot (since the lady luck did actually have an ion turret), it could cost more probably since while your opponent gets the range 3 bonus die, you also get a 5 die attack at range 1 and can roll crits on the first roll

Got a plan to balance these?

I think that's the idea for the second round of voting, tweak the ships to where they're in a good (and preferably balanced) point

Updated my above post, the point is this:

You can't decouple upgrade card design from the core ship statline / cost. Getting inputs and ideas from multiple people is good, but design by committee will likely turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.

But at least it will be our collective fault for voting a bad card into the game. And this is theoretically for just one tournament, so the worst disaster is we have an OP card for one tournament. And while I expect to have some op cards in the final product, I don't expect obviously overpowered cards to be voted in; because they would seem obviously overpowered during the voting. Unexpected interactions will be our main problem, probably. Good mathematical analysis of the ship prototypes above would be more than welcome, though.

Also you're completely right about ship design and upgrades being linked. This is why the basic ship design went before the upgrades; so that upgrades could be designed with knowledge of what the ships look like. The ships (generic pilots) Will be completely finished before the final round of development on the upgrade cards.

In the lore, the TIE Avenger maneuverability's makes the TIE Interceptor look like an X-wing by comparison. The dial needs to be significantly changed to be accurate.

True; but there's plenty of precedent for dial variance from the fluff when we look at our old friend the TIE Defender, which incidentally comes from the same source as the Avenger. I'd say there's room for interpretation here, but that said I'd definitely make some changes to this dial. I think that the ship really wants at least one more option for a flip-around maneuver, so that it can have some unpredictability when that type of maneuver is called for. I think you could definitely justify a 3-Tallon Roll or S-loop on this dial. I'm good with pretty much everything else, dial-wise. The red hard-1s are fine, especially considering that the ship also has a straight-1. I could also see the ship getting white hard-1 turns, but then I'd want to lose the 1-straight.

I wonder if the Gunboat has a little too much going for it on the dial? The hard 1s feel too swift for my memory of it in the games. It was slow and turned like a pig, but it was a brute.

I don't think in game it should move better than a T-65. Maybe a few more greens to keep up with the dial creep.

Why aren't the gemeric Gunboat pilots caled Tau and Nu?

I wonder if the Gunboat has a little too much going for it on the dial? The hard 1s feel too swift for my memory of it in the games. It was slow and turned like a pig, but it was a brute.

I don't think in game it should move better than a T-65. Maybe a few more greens to keep up with the dial creep.

Yeah, but don't forget it's a red hard-1. The B-wing gets one, and that ship turned slower in the games if memory serves. And the gunboat will not benefit from a system slot (for advanced sensors or FCS) to retain action economy while doing red maneuvers. Also keep in mind that it only has one set of white turns (2-turns). It's dial is pretty middle-of-the-road in my opinion, which seems about right. I would probably add one more K-turn; maybe a 4 speed. I don't like ships with just one flip-around maneuver because it can make them too predictable in certain situations.

Great questions!

The DQ's ships - the ARC-170s did well but would not quite have won a top 4 spot. The Mandalorian protector did very well and would have taken the TIE Avenger's spot in the top four. The TIE/SF did well, but not well enough to be competitive for the top 4 spots.

The top voted rebel ships, aside from the ARC-170s, were your StealthX Vander, and the RVN-290.

Everyone; please submit tweaked versions of these ships in this thread!

As someone that made their own Avenger expansion, and even tested it, the Avenget looks a little overcosted. 24-25 was what we found to work and our dial was slightly better.

It also could use s turns or a t roll. The Empire is short on those now and it helps make it distinct from both the Interceptor and Defender.

I feel like with the default Hull rating of TIEs being 3 (everything but the Bomber, Punisher and TAP), it feels off to have 2 Hull on the Avenger. I'd have swapped it to 3/3/3/2 instead, befitting its original lore as being the final production model of the TIE Advancedx1. There's nothing about the TIE Avenger that suggests it would be more structurally fragile than the line fighters. It's a fairly beefy ship.

Its dial is somewhat lacking too, and uncharacteristic of TIEs with the 1 straight. A drawback of TIE craft in X-Wing is that they are almost too fast for their own good. The Avenger was supposed to be another ship in that vein. I'd like to see it sit somewhere unique in the TIE meta, rather than just be sort of an Interceptor/Advanced Prototype mash-up with a little Defender flavor mixed in, but still maintain that feel the game has established for TIEs. Strip the 1 straight, and maybe even the 1 turns (bringing it in line with the Advanced), and replace them with the 2 Sloop. That gives it some kind of unique position in the game, but keeps it in line as the TIE Advanced's upgraded successor. Then flip either the 1 banks or the 2 turns to green to offset the lack of the straight 1 green (I'd go with the 1 banks).