This thread is meant to focus all Epic scale theories and wishlisting. You may talk about the SSD here, but keep it to how it will be played, and think of other ships beside the SSD, such as the Bellator and the Praetor, and any ships that could be used for a Rebel Epic.

I think forum members very frequently exaggerate the firepower of epic ships. Just because a ship has 10,000 turbolasers doesn't mean it can fire all of them on a single corvette. I think epic ships should generally have 2 AS dice and slightly more firepower than an ISD-II. Hull values and squadron values should be ~2x a large base ship. Command 4.

Look up a CR-90 and an ISD on Wookiepedia and tell me Armada doesn't already use a sliding scale for Hull ratings and dice.

From an in-universe point of view, how likely is it that Han, Luke, or Vader would be killed in a typical dogfight? Basically zero. But they die all the time in Armada.

I see no reason why epic ships could not be priced reasonably, modeled at a reasonable size, be destroyable after 3-4 rounds of concentrated fire and included in 400 pt. games.

From an in-universe point of view, how likely is it that Han, Luke, or Vader would be killed in a typical dogfight? Basically zero. But they die all the time in Armada.

You assume they die rather than just bug out. But, y'know, if you're going to exaggerate and berate, you're going to exaggerate and berate

Now that we have some information on additional abnormal 'defenses' and the like (the Armed station with, what, 4 AA dice, 2 red 2 black?, even if we don't know how that functions) I could see an epic ship with 3 AA dice. I do agree with Bleezy, in general. A dual large base à la X-wing epic ships, measuring turns from the front of the rear-most base keeps it from swinging too wide. I could see some fairly intense arcs on some ships, meaning that it has a lot of firepower but it only ever comes into play when you're really dual-arcing with them, just like any other kind of ship. Command 4 I could see, but now I do worry about how a commander like Jerjerrod would function with even a 0-1 ship. Even a 0-0 could be interesting as it would require some set up to use (Navigation teams +token, or a set navigation command).

But I'd like something in the vein of a Bellator or even the Finalizer in the 190-245 point range, the real large scale battleships that are still heads and shoulders above an ISD without being Dominus ad mortem.... actually I'll just call any such ship that and be done with it

Would any X-wing players around here like to give us a run down of how Epic ships and Epic ship damage works so we can quickly form a template, adapt and compare? Not to start a debate (they're different games, we know) but it might give some of us laymen a bit on how one might achieve the effect of an oversized ship.

We played an epic scale 4 player game on a 6x6 play space with only one obstacle, a 12' styofoam planet in the middle. Fleets were 600 points, with admirals. It was a blast of a game to play. We adapted the 4 player FFG rules for imitative and decided to have no objectives except "death to all".

Here is a pic of the game. It was a blast.

Here's something I whipped up on KDY last night for the Bellator-Class Star Dreadnought. I tried to make it balanced as possible, but, it was about midnight when I made it. Not planning on using it, but thought that this could be a close representation.

Sorry for not getting the pictures aligned properly, hard to do on mobile. The fore section is supposed to be command 0, but you can't have a command 0 ship in KDY.

Not a bad idea for a thread. I just think people need to stop thinking that the Executor is the only SSD possible. There are other great ships that can be used that would make far more sense. As for rules discussion I am all for too. Like what's a good size? What is the max a fire arc should be? And should Epic ships always go last in a turn to represent its slower ability to respond and act?

Also I believe we may see some sort of SSD by the late half of Rebels season 3. Total speculation but with the inclusion of Thrawn it is very possible. But again I doubt it would be the Big Daddy.

Marauder that looks like a blast.

My friend and I started playing 700 point games before the summer break and we're having lots of fun.

2ISD VSD, Glad + a zillion fighters vs Home One, AF2, 2 MC30, Cr90, Neb B and many fighters. (basically, all the capital ships we have)

Games last about 2.5-3 hours and they're bloody. Once we get Wave 3/4 we'll start rotating the lists more, but we wouldn't want to go back to 400 points as this is too awesome.

Nothing like seeing a couple ISDs fully loaded with titles and all and a 6 Tie Bomber Rymerball escorted by 4 Tie Advanced with Interceptors and Fighters rushing to meet the enemy fighters.

The rebels could field the Annihilator SSD (Executor class, stolen by Pirates).

Or one of the 3 others the Rebellion/New Republic itself had captured.

The Viscount would be fun.

Marauder that looks like a blast.

One down side of the scenario was that it almost forced it from a 1v1v1v1 to a 1v2v1. It might be more appropriate for a 2v2 type senario.

Yeah i could see how that would happen. Maybe in free for all it would be better to put 4 obstacles down, equidistant between the 4 fleets?

If I were going to do an "epic" ship, I would do the following:

* Fore and aft sections. Each section gets command dials, and can take separate actions. Each section keeps its own pile of command tokens.

* Each section has 3 firing arcs. Front has forward, left and right. Aft has left, right and rear. I would expect the front-left and rear-left to overlap, similar to placing two Home-One bases together.

* Each activation, it shoots from one front-end arc, one aft-end arc, and one arc that has not yet fired this turn.

* Each arc has shields, but the vessel still has only one Hull. The ship should have a single pool of defense tokens, possibly as many as six.

* Epic ship movement should use the same template, but the template-dock should be in the middle of the ship length, rather than at the front.

* Firing on an Epic ship can never be obstructed. Absolute condition.

Any thoughts on this?

I mean, that's pretty close to what I had posted above with the ship cards, except for the two separate command stacks and 3 attacks per turn. Overall, it sounds fairly balanced, though three attacks may be a little much, considering these things will be chucking a lot of dice. I kept with two attacks per round so that it will maintain some continuity with the original rules, and so that the ships could be significantly up gunned compared to the next largest ship, ISD in this case. The Epic ship will just have to try and line up double arcs if it wants to one-shot something.

I think of Armada as epic already. It's a fleet/task force level game with many ships on each side. Keep in mind my favorite games are ply at 600 points on a 4' x 6' mat. That said, how many points do you need to play to field a fleet with an SSD. How big of mat do you need to give people room to maneuver.

Another thought is that I think people will use at least 5 cr90's with rieeken and set them up to ram one every turn. Keep that big point sump held in place while you work it over. That ram damage on the front half doesn't hurt either. I wouldn't use that tactic, I think it would be boring. Of course I lose a lot too. The trick is to love the game even while it's happening

Yea, it is a lot like your idea.

As someone mentioned above, you can't bring all 10,000 guns to bear on one target. I'd like to see Epic ships get smaller dice-pools, but more attacks per turn. Lining up a double arc with an Epic ship will be tricky as all get out. If they could find a way to make it work, I'd rather see Epic ships get 4 or even 6 attacks at VSD level of dice rather than two attacks at ISD+ levels of dice.

As one that plays casual game at over 500 points do you think the game become unbalanced as points increase?

We play the regular 6x3 mat but I'm wondering what your thoughts are regarding objectives and admirals, i.e. is Ackbar's power far too powerful when applied to a larger fleet or do you think this all scales nicely.

I can imagine that a contested outpost become moot when one is fielding 2 ISDs, 2 VSDs and an Interdictor as you'd want to duke it out with the other huge fleet instead of sitting with many ships at distance 1 from a base.

Personally, we're having fun with 700 and have no plans to go back to 400 in our casual games, but I'm interested in your thoughts regarding the scale vs power vs balance

Epic ships would be amazing but also very very hard to balance properly and would require specific rules. Just seeing that the large ships barely fit in the deployment zone, an epic scale ship would need tailored rules.

I feel like at 600 pts. your choice of admiral is much more important, but none of them are broken.

one thing I should of mentioned, we do setup as though it was a 6' x 3' map. Each players setup area is as usual, just moved in 6" each. This allows fleets to reach combat range at the normal time but the extra map room is nice for maneuvering.

Yea, it is a lot like your idea.

As someone mentioned above, you can't bring all 10,000 guns to bear on one target. I'd like to see Epic ships get smaller dice-pools, but more attacks per turn. Lining up a double arc with an Epic ship will be tricky as all get out. If they could find a way to make it work, I'd rather see Epic ships get 4 or even 6 attacks at VSD level of dice rather than two attacks at ISD+ levels of dice.

I'd like to see that too. It would make more sense that they could engage more targets with about equal firepower. Alternatively, with two broadsides on each side and a mid-ship front and rear arc (4 extra hull zones) you could easily focus 3 attacks on a single ship unlucky enough to come in range.

Another idea I have would be to give each base its own hull points and upgrade slots (and keeping with iandeiger's concept of separate defense token pools). This way, half of the ship can be rendered useless while the other half can keep fighting, sort of like having hard points that can be taken out to reduce combat effectiveness. The rear base would be like the engine block and would be the base from which navigations are made (taking it out would constitute a mobility kill). Commands would stop being used once one section is destroyed (representative of the crippling effect of taking so much damage).

Having distinct upgrade slots would also allow for multiple officers to affect the same ship (much ship needs much command), but would also serve to increase the points cost of getting, say, enhanced armament onto both the front and rear bases. So rather than adding 4 dice for 10 points, you pay 20. ECMs would only affect the tokens of the base they're equipped to, each base could have 1 modification, etc...

And this is the point where I tie back in to giving epic ships more attacks per turn but with the equivalent firepower of just a little more than a VSD. It keeps balance with the cost of the upgrade cards. The ship can make 3 attacks per round, maximum of twice from each base. It presents a unique problem to opponents in that they'll want to focus down one base at a time it they'll need to avoid triple arcs. It presents a unique problem to the user in that they desperately need to protect both bases from destruction, or else the battle pretty much goes downhill from there...

Also, a note on the inevitable CR90 kamikaze runs... The same way that FFG made a special rule for flotillas, this could be similar- "when a collision occurs between an epic and a small base, the small base draws 2 damage cards instead of 1, and the first is face up." And on the note of avoiding collisions, the epic ships should absolutely be given a high enough stand so that all small bases can thread the needle between the epic's bases. And blocking.... Ugh, I'll stop here, but epic ships should not be able to be blocked by anything less than an ISD

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/206434-lurtzs-wip-carriers-gameplay/

You might glean some insight/ideas from my past foolings around.

Yea, it is a lot like your idea.

As someone mentioned above, you can't bring all 10,000 guns to bear on one target. I'd like to see Epic ships get smaller dice-pools, but more attacks per turn. Lining up a double arc with an Epic ship will be tricky as all get out. If they could find a way to make it work, I'd rather see Epic ships get 4 or even 6 attacks at VSD level of dice rather than two attacks at ISD+ levels of dice.

I'd like to see that too. It would make more sense that they could engage more targets with about equal firepower. Alternatively, with two broadsides on each side and a mid-ship front and rear arc (4 extra hull zones) you could easily focus 3 attacks on a single ship unlucky enough to come in range.

Another idea I have would be to give each base its own hull points and upgrade slots (and keeping with iandeiger's concept of separate defense token pools). This way, half of the ship can be rendered useless while the other half can keep fighting, sort of like having hard points that can be taken out to reduce combat effectiveness. The rear base would be like the engine block and would be the base from which navigations are made (taking it out would constitute a mobility kill). Commands would stop being used once one section is destroyed (representative of the crippling effect of taking so much damage).

Having distinct upgrade slots would also allow for multiple officers to affect the same ship (much ship needs much command), but would also serve to increase the points cost of getting, say, enhanced armament onto both the front and rear bases. So rather than adding 4 dice for 10 points, you pay 20. ECMs would only affect the tokens of the base they're equipped to, each base could have 1 modification, etc...

And this is the point where I tie back in to giving epic ships more attacks per turn but with the equivalent firepower of just a little more than a VSD. It keeps balance with the cost of the upgrade cards. The ship can make 3 attacks per round, maximum of twice from each base. It presents a unique problem to opponents in that they'll want to focus down one base at a time it they'll need to avoid triple arcs. It presents a unique problem to the user in that they desperately need to protect both bases from destruction, or else the battle pretty much goes downhill from there...

Also, a note on the inevitable CR90 kamikaze runs... The same way that FFG made a special rule for flotillas, this could be similar- "when a collision occurs between an epic and a small base, the small base draws 2 damage cards instead of 1, and the first is face up." And on the note of avoiding collisions, the epic ships should absolutely be given a high enough stand so that all small bases can thread the needle between the epic's bases. And blocking.... Ugh, I'll stop here, but epic ships should not be able to be blocked by anything less than an ISD

You mean like an A-Wing ramming an SSD?

First off wold love to see a Viscount Class love me some Mon Calla. I love the idea of a Epic ship but looking at the pricing between 50-100 US for the X-wing epic i can only see the Armada Epic being priced at 80+. I just dont know many players jumping at that price point. I still see a lot of gaming stores with there first epic ships still setting on the shelf's. Yes we see them but really one maybe from that one player that just gets everything. the average player will get 2 or 3 ISDs before they get a 80+ ship that they only use 1 or so every few games. I guess what i am asking is haw do you see them (FFG) making it cost effective for a game that is already a pricey buy in (39 for x-wing and 99 for armada).