FEEDBACK APPRECIATED, but here's my missileboat entry.
There's a new superiority fighter around, and this one means business. With the arrival of the Missileboat the imperials finish their shift away from disposable fighters and swarming tactics. Tie Defenders began this change, and now the Missileboat finishes it. These powerful fighters come at a cost, and still have not begin their production runs. Because of that it is not just the pilots themselves that are Unique, but the prototype missileboats themselves are unique too.
In your normal standard play, a unique ship acts like any other unique upgrade. You can only have one Missileboat. However, in Epic and Cinematic play instead the ships cost epic points, and you can field as many as you wish, but at one epic point each. This means you'll be passing on fearsome huge ships like an Raider-Class Corvette, or resilient carriers like the Gozanti-Class Assault Carrier.
Mu Squadron Pilot
Missileboat (Unique)

5 Skill
1 Attack
3 Evade
3 Hull
5 Shield
Barrel Roll, Target Lock, Focus, SLAM .
Elite, Missile, Missile, Torpedo, System.
41 points.

Yes That's a whopping 40 points, the ship is expensive, and on the face of it there's no reason. That's a robust stat-line but it's paltry 1 attack and health similar to an IG-88 at an extra 5 points what am I paying for? Well there's that SLAM, and with this dial, your slam can pull off some VERY hard maneuvers.

This is a ship that can SLAM into K-turns, SLOOPS, and T-Rolls. Not only that, it includes a green 4 straight that allows you to scream into battle at an effective speed 9 ! Ok, that's nice but who cares about positioning when you only have 1 attack die? Well, worry not because the missileboat has a pair of concussion missile launchers and they are itching to go:
Adv-Concussion Missile Launchers
Missileboat-only.
Attack [Target Lock]:
When determining range, you may use any part of the defender's base inside your firing arc.
You may change one of your blank results to a hit result.

Range 2-3
Attack 4.
1 point.

That's an endless supply of concussion missiles, that don't discard and don't require you to spend the target lock. They have built-in modifications, and that's if you don't use the target lock, effectively raising the ship's attack to at range's 2-3. Still though there's more. This ship can SLAM, and Imperial designers understand that even if you draw power from the weapons system to advance the motors, you can still fire missiles and torpedoes. Best of all, when you're going faster, your missiles are going faster, making them harder to dodge:
Agressive Slam
Missileboat-only. Modification.
When you would perform a SLAM action you may perform a Boost action instead. Then if you would attack with a secondary weapon this turn, reduce the defender's agility by 1.
2 points.

So this is a ship that can zip around the battlefield and hurl missiles into everything in sight. Sniping from a distance attacking and destroying before other ships are even made aware.
The pilots even allowed to test-pilot this ship are themselves a higher breed. Mu Squadron Pilot clocked in at PS 5, and the unique pilots flying this thing are the creme of the crop:
"Sawtooth"
6 skill
When attacking with a secondary weapon, you may treat it as if it was made with your primary weapon but with the secondary weapon's text and attack value.
43 points.
Sawtooth can fire his missiles with all the bonuses of primary weapons. This means he gets range bonuses and combos with cards like Howlrunner, all while still being able to reap the benefits of an Aggressive SLAM. Sawtooth can even Snapshot with 3 dice while the opponet is at -1 agility. Pairing with Sawtooth is a bloodthirsty Tie Interceptor veteran Vengence.
"Vengence"
7 Skill
After you perform an attack that does not hit, increase your attack value by one for the rest of the game. After an enemy ship is destroyed, return your attack value to 1.
43 points.
Vengence is an agressive shooter best at taking down large ships with plenty of hull that won't go down easy, and highly agile ships that want to sit behind stacks of tokens and modifiers. Eventually you'll have enough red dice that Vengence will get his and and be sated, until the next rebel upstart thinks he can survive.
The final pilot is Maarek Steele himself, returning with his signature pilot ability, as well as the experience he's gained from saving the Empire from not one but two treacherous admirals.
Maarek Steele
8 Skill
When you crit pick one of three.
Gets an Evade action
44 points.

Steele comes in with a pilot skill higher than he's had before and adding an evasion action to his action bar because this guy knows how to draw abilities out of his ship that other pilots can't.

The final new card in the expansion is a unique title, but the first one that isn't ship specific.
"Experimental"
Unique
Title.
You gain the Illicit upgrade.
2 points.

The experimental title continues the shift of imperial commanders towards new tactics and technology that smugglers and rebels have been using to great success. These normally illegal modifications have been adapted by imperial engineers in order to try and drive any edge they can out of their ships in an ever changing landscape.
Old cards included in this expansion are Proton rockets X2, Extra Munitions, Adv Proton Torpedoes, and let's say... Guidence Chips.

This post reserved as a changelog.
1. typo with Vengence fixed. Picture still has old wording.
2. A) Stats changed: 3 Hull/5 Shield

B) Missileboat (the ship) made unqiue. Rules for unique ships added.
C) All ship costs reduced.
D) Missile-launchers now work if part of the ship is in the range 2 band, and only don't work if it is completley within range one.
E) Removed outdated pictures.

I think the price is too high; the dial with the slam is scary, but 50+ points really is a lot. I'm also not sure the stat line needs to be so shield heavy. 3/5 seems a lot more reasonable to me.

I think you should put this on a tabletop and see how it performs. I think that without an ability to fire missiles after slamming, it will have trouble holding its own

I don't get Vengeance's pilot ability. What is the purpose of increasing you attack value after missed attacks on a ship that can only shoot once a round? The bonus goes away at the end of the round so really he/she effectively has no ability.

It's a typo of English vs rules. The bonus should be forever. A late game 8 die attack if you just. Can't. Hit

I think the price is too high; the dial with the slam is scary, but 50+ points really is a lot. I'm also not sure the stat line needs to be so shield heavy. 3/5 seems a lot more reasonable to me.

I think you should put this on a tabletop and see how it performs. I think that without an ability to fire missiles after slamming, it will have trouble holding its own

As for the shields I remember reading somewhere that it had twice as much as a defender, but I'm not married to 2/6. It's more to just stand out than 3/5 would. It's a subtle difference (one less critical chance) that makes the ship feel better than it is,and that's what it's supposed to feel invincible. Yet still killable so your opponets can feel the huge reward when they take it down.

With all the means of getting crit cards through shields these days, it would royally stink to see half your points explode from a lucky Direct Hit draw.

With all the means of getting crit cards through shields these days, it would royally stink to see half your points explode from a lucky Direct Hit draw.

But yea, might have to change that shield balance.

There's also Proton Bombs and "Wampa" + Lieutenant Colzet.

50 points is a lot of points to get killed in a single round of firing without regen.

Which make no mistake is *exactly* what will happen, even with 8 HP behind 3 greens. It's the reason no-one really uses /Ds and they only cost 37-38 points base.

Starting at 50 and going up from there (because you're never not going to put some missiles on it) this is more than half your list that will take less than half of most lists to kill. If you want it costing 50 you really need to give it a way to maintain focus/evade reliably every round, or make it a LOT more shooty so it doesn't need to.

I mean, for the cost of Maarek with advanced concussion and some 2 point EPT you could get 2 delta/x7s. And 2 delta/x7s would be SO much better.

And yeah, not to mention that Slicer Tools, Kylo, AHM, Wampa and a bunch of other ways of dealing damage cards own this to a potentially hilarious degree.

OK, so what if I made the missileboat itself unique? Put a dot next to the word Missileboat, and then I can get my one-per-list theme across without having to price them at 50 points each. I can put Mu at 42, change the hull/shields to 3/5 I basically get a super brobot on a small base for a few points cheaper and only one ability.

OK, so what if I made the missileboat itself unique? Put a dot next to the word Missileboat, and then I can get my one-per-list theme across without having to price them at 50 points each. I can put Mu at 42, change the hull/shields to 3/5 I basically get a super brobot on a small base for a few points cheaper and only one ability.

That's an interesting idea. I think we could certainly arrange for that if needed, if we needed to make an faq or ref card to clarify what that meant.

So I made some changes: First, I moved a point of shields to hull to give them a little survive-ability.
Next I made them all cheaper, the base model now comes in at 41 points, so they're a but more affordable.
Third, I made the ship itself unique. Now under the current rules, uniqueness only works if the name of the card was unique, so I added a little blurb to make sure that it will work here. In normal play it works like you think it does, but in Epic play, each ship costs an epic point.
Lastly I made a small change to the Adv. Concussion Missile launchers, so that if a ship is stradding the range 1/2 line, you can still shoot at it. That's the goal of the interaction, and some unintended consequences are that if you wanted something to be at 3 when it is at 2, it is technically possible. I don't think it works with Biggs because the way I see it it you decide Biggs is too far and go to declare a new target, but then Biggs says "Hi! I'm still at range 3, you just measured wrong last time" and you get stuck in an infinite loop until you give up and shoot Biggs. But then again, it requires a target lock to shoot so that should be the tiebreaker anyways.

Some design space isn't explored because it's not good design space: very, very expensive ships and similarly cheap ships are examples of these spaces.

When FFG designed the TIE defender they could have made a 50 point god ship but instead they made a sturdy 30 point ship with some new mechanics. With its Imperial Veterans upgrade it's the most powerful small ship in the game when cost isn't an object but it's not leagues ahead of everything else. A 40 or 50 base cost TIE defender simply closed too many other options off.

By taking this approach with the Missile Boat you'll make a more widely useable expansion.

The Missile Boat is a fast ordnance carrier that can fire missiles while SLAMing, tractor beams ships into its missile launchers to destroy them and counters the TIE defender. This can be achieved fairly simply while still having a ship with tactical depth and a cost that doesn't cripplingly limit the rest of the list.

Some very rapid mockups for the sake of demonstration (I can already see things I'd change in these were I putting time into this design so don't waste time analysing them too deeply.)

(I haven't costed these so don't take their pricing as what I'd price them as given time to think).

Give it a sensible dial and you have a ship that doesn't play like an existing ship, is good against the TIE defender when equipped with Homing Missiles and doesn't dominate your list.

It may be worth giving cheaper designs some consideration: you may make a better ship by toning it down.

Third, I made the ship itself unique. Now under the current rules, uniqueness only works if the name of the card was unique, so I added a little blurb to make sure that it will work here. In normal play it works like you think it does, but in Epic play, each ship costs an epic point.

Epic points are just a neat way of saying you can have two Epic ships but only one can be a corvette/future Epic ships that fit into that role. To treat it as another set of squad points is to misunderstand its purpose.

Yes the price is high but that's the point. I REALLY want to make it impossible to field two.

Why? If it's not a unique ship then there's more that one of them: why can't they be in the same place?

I don't agree that this design space isn't worth exploring, and the Decimator is an example of exploring this space. We've had expensive ships before and we'll have them again.

Next, how is this not in line with the use of epic points? You can have one corvette, two support ships, or a squadron of your premier, top of the line, as valuable as a star destroyer, fighters.

Lastly mostly fluff. I want it to feel rare, and if a list can afford two then running two will happen and that takes away the mystique and also allows you to make the ship better knowing you can't run multiple.

I don't agree that this design space isn't worth exploring, and the Decimator is an example of exploring this space. We've had expensive ships before and we'll have them again.

The Decimator is a large base ship. It's also functional unupgradedm has entirely health based defence meaning it will be burned down under focus fire and has no shortage of upgrade slots with which to add mechanical depth. Even then, it and the Falcon have been heavily criticised over the years for making games boring.

Next, how is this not in line with the use of epic points? You can have one corvette, two support ships, or a squadron of your premier, top of the line, as valuable as a star destroyer, fighters.

Epic points are a way of unambigiously, simply and tidily limiting you to two Epics so you don't create a GR-75 ramming fleet. They're not another form of squad points.

I can say with reasonable confidence that the only Epic point values we will ever see are 2 and 3. Any ship priced over 3 cannot be run in Team Epic Dogfight. Any ship priced 1 Epic point can be in in a set of five, defeating the point of Epic Points (preventing huge bases from being spammed and turning the map into ram hell). Giving any ship that isn't on a huge base an Epic Cost unnecessarily limits the use of the huge ships Epic is designed to use.

Think of it this way: why would you want to prevent the Missile Boat from being run with the Raider and the Gozanti? What is gained?

Lastly mostly fluff. I want it to feel rare, and if a list can afford two then running two will happen and that takes away the mystique and also allows you to make the ship better knowing you can't run multiple.

Why does rare mean singular? Furthermore, the way you make a ship rare in X-Wing is by making it overpriced: then people don't run it much and you don't see it.

I don't agree that this design space isn't worth exploring

Didn't say it isn't worth exploring, I said that it's usually bad design space. Ships that cost this much usually either have a ton of health based defence, aren't worth their points as they get focused down too fast or have a hard to counter survival trick that is endlessly complained about.

[/quote ] Tricks like a get out of jail free card like a 4+4 SLAM? Or three dice agility with a wide open dial? Plus eight health?

I don't agree that this design space isn't worth exploring, and the Decimator is an example of exploring this space. We've had expensive ships before and we'll have them again.

The Decimator is a large base ship. It's also functional unupgradedm has entirely health based defence meaning it will be burned down under focus fire and has no shortage of upgrade slots with which to add mechanical depth. Even then, it and the Falcon have been heavily criticised over the years for making games boring.

So is your complaint that what I came up with is boring or that it is bad? I honestly don't know because you're not talking much about it.

Next, how is this not in line with the use of epic points? You can have one corvette, two support ships, or a squadron of your premier, top of the line, as valuable as a star destroyer, fighters.

Epic points are a way of unambigiously, simply and tidily limiting you to two Epics so you don't create a GR-75 ramming fleet. They're not another form of squad points.

...and the natural conclusion of this thinking is that epic points are used as a limit on the number of huge ships present on the table. It's not that different from squad points already and who cares if it is? We're creating custom cards and the rules are ours to bend and change as we see fit. If you think epic points are so sacred that they can't also be used to limit the presence of rare and powerful ships so be it. You are entitled to your opinion and I disagree.

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