Not specifically a CCL entry, but might consider it if I like the end result (especially with quite a few people doing Dac veteran E-wings).


So - I was thinking about ships I'd like to see and one that popped into my head was the Droid TIE.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/D_automated_starfighter

These things popped up in Dark Empire, and even has its own lego set.
I do like it, because it's very recognisable - the instantly apparent TIE heritage, but visibly different from any other TIE fighter with the square panels and sealed-off droid pod.

Supposedly they were fast as hell (faster even than an interceptor!) and - being pilotless - were tolerant of extreme manoeuvres, but only packed the same 2 lasers as a normal TIE and were...if not exactly "stupid", no match for the deviousness of an experienced sentient pilot.

So....how to represent it in game.

Well, it's going to be worse than a TIE fighter, which is a problem. The Academy Pilot (or Binyare Pirate, or Bandit Squadron Pilot) intentionally represents a base minimum of competence in the game. Having a ship cheaper than 12 points presents a problem of the number of ships in the game (and hence the mental effort to fly them, and the amount of sideboard book-keeping, snowballing out of control.

So how do you use a ship that's worse than a TIE fighter without making it cheaper than a TIE fighter?

Answer: Have each 'game piece' represent a mob of them. They tended to fight in swarms anyway.




Imagine that a large base (which is roughly the same size as 4 ships flying in close formation) represents a pack of 4 Droid TIEs.

That way we can give the basic unit the 'composite' stats of a mob, and just have to find a way to reduce them as they lose members.



My suggestion: Each Droid TIE has only a single hit point. Since it has two lasers, and going from two to four is worth an extra attack die, let's also assume each Droid TIE after the first contributes a single attack die. They are at least as hard to hit (on their own) as a normal TIE fighter, but in a pack it's going to be shooting fish in a barrel (think sentinel swarms from the matrix).

Therefore, for the generic ships:

Ship Type: Droid TIE Swarm
Pilot Skill: 1
Primary Weapon: 5
Agility: 1
Hull: 4
Shields: 0
Action Bar: Barrel Roll, Evade, Target Lock, SLAM
Upgrade Bar: Systems, Systems

The action bar....Barrel Roll because it's a TIE fighter, and they all do that. Target Lock, because they're droids - locking on makes sense. I put in SLAM rather than Boost, because it allows for "faster than a TIE interceptor" even without an amazing dial, and comes at a cost of no shots that turn - making it good for repositioning, turning around, and coming back in again afterwards. Noticeably it doesn't have focus - focus is a very flexible action, and I'm deliberately making the droids inflexible. Besides which, "focusing" implicitly requires the possibility of "not focusing" - and the sort of droids we're discussing here (as opposed to IG-88 or C-3PO) aren't smart enough to get distracted.

The double systems slot.....partly because nothing else has it, partly because a large ship (and this is a large ship, regardless of what else it may be in game) generally needs some upgrade interaction to compete with smaller ships.

The squad needs a rule to control the swarmyness. It's rare, but not unheard of, for a generic ship to have 'ship text' - and certainly it's not unreasonable for the Droid swarm, which might have titles or upgrades, but won't have "veteran pilots" to need the space on the card. A slight modification of countdown's ability works nicely.

"Whenever one or more damage cards

would be assigned to this ship, it suffers 1

damage instead. For each damage card

assigned to this ship, reduce its primary

weapon value by 1 and increase its

agility by 1. "

Each point of damage therefore 'kills' one TIE in the pack - meaning less shooting at you but making it harder to hit the remaining ones.


I don't think there should be any named pilots (see above) but a few titles wouldn't hurt.

• Ace-6 Droid Brains

Title. Droid TIE only.

You may treat [Elite] upgrades as [system] upgrades.

Whilst the ship itself couldn't equip it, I wondered if a crew card of Arndall Lott might be cool - boosting the effect of friendly Droid TIEs.

I need to think - and probably have a playtest - to even try and figure out points for this thing.

Dial - well, it's a dumb droid in a fast fighter. It shouldn't have much (if any) red, but shouldn't have much green either.

I'm not sure whether to give it speed 1 moves or not - on the one hand, TIE fighters can't , but on the other, a speed 1 with a large base is a speed 2 without.

I'm thinking something much like the TIE striker's dial - the problem is that it doesn't feel faster than the freighters and patrol boats.

Possibly a TIE phantom's dial.

The one thing I might throw in (again, hard to pick up stress, hard to shed it) is a large shiptallon roll, partly because we've not seen one and partly because if it doesnt get a kturn, bringing it around becomes an awkward task (as it should be for a swarm).

So - first suggestion: start with the TIE phantom dial and swap the two koiogans for speed 3 tallon rolls....

My suggestion: Each Droid TIE has only a single hit point.

Nonononono. The TIE/D is actually better armoured than a regular TIE/LN. If you make it Hull 4, give it a better dial than a LN, remove EPTs and reduce PS to 1 you should hit at least 12 points.

This is an interesting solution to an interesting problem. Representing athese ships as a swarm makes a lot of sense.

If you decide to enter this in the CCL I expect you would want to use a different format for the entry ( every entry format includes 2+ unique named pilots). I think in this case we could make exceptions and work out a fair entry format for the droid TIE

The idea of swarm ships is great. But it's something that would better fit for CIS droid starfighters.

I like the idea of a Tie Droid. I actually have been playing around with making my own version for the last few weeks. I was thinking of making each ship it's own small base,(attack 2, Defense 2-3, Hull 4, and 0 shields - for about 8-10points at PS0) but make you have to purchase a "Droid control specialist" crew to prevent a crazy swarm. Then I was going to make "programing" titles for a point or 2 that took away the required crew, and gave a trait of some kind. I was thinking a totally white dial, but no actions at all

Then each title would allow you to evade, or Target Lock, or boost. Just my take. I kinda like the mechanic of multiple units on a base and having the stats change when damage is taken. That is how I do my space troopers.

Been one of my wants for awhile. I'd love a small ship and a large ship swarm personally.

Small Ship:

2/3/4/0

BR, TL

Immune stress

All white dial (FO dial?)

Titles that do cool things like allow you to use other TLs from other droids, titles that make them unique pilots!

The idea of swarm ships is great. But it's something that would better fit for CIS droid starfighters.

I totally agree with this. Your idea of all four ships on a large base should be for Vulture Droids

Been one of my wants for awhile. I'd love a small ship and a large ship swarm personally.

Small Ship:

2/3/4/0

BR, TL

Immune stress

All white dial (FO dial?)

Titles that do cool things like allow you to use other TLs from other droids, titles that make them unique pilots!

This is my exact idea! We are on the same page.

The idea of swarm ships is great. But it's something that would better fit for CIS droid starfighters.

I'm not sure that there should be any functional difference between CIS droid fighters and Imperial droid fighters. Main differences to me seem to be the timeline factor and canonicity. Timeline factor is in favor of the TIE droid, and we haven't blanched from using legends ships in the past.

I think they could be 12pts and have good free titles and a few titles that aren't expensive but give good abilities. Tie Droid only mods to help... good stuff.

Hi, I've been pondering a similar idea a while ago, and needed some "drones" for a more mission-oriented game.

I've picked the Vulture Droid Starfighter, as I'm not a big fan of stuff that didn't have any screen time, myself.

Here's some bits of inspiration for my design process.

First off, you don't want the cost to go down below TIE/ln, as it's supposed to be the lowest base-line.

So I though - I'll need to reuse it's main stats, not to disturb the balance, but also make it FEEL like these are drones and not pilots.

First off, to indicate the AI being fast to act, but not very thoughtful, I've given them 0 PS.

They can't "react" to actions of their human counterparts, they just follow predefined patterns.

I've also added a tiny fluff bit with ion dealing extra damage, since it can fry their "brains" too.

Then I focused on available actions, and realized that the strongest indicator of a non-human pilot, would be the lack of Focus action!

How to better describe the lack of adaptability, than denying the most versatile action...

That's it, I've given it Target Lock instead, as it felt very droid-like, and also dropped Evade, for reasons described later.

Here's the complete pilot card (ignore the "unique" dot, without it, Strange Eons does not allow "game effect/ability" text on generics).:

From the very beginning, I've had this idea that the lacking Focus needs to be replaced with something similar in effect, but less flexible.

So instead, they get the following dual-card title:

Now they get a "free" Focus effect each turn, but only for either attack, or defense, not both.

You'll also notice an interesting quirk here, they can only actually flip the title card after performing an action.

Any kind of action denial like stress, collisions, etc. will force them to stick to the previously selected "protocol", to illustrate the fact that AI is now using most of it's resources to regain stability.

This alone did not feel as enough of a downside. Offensive potential of "free focus for one red" coupled with TL re-rolls, made it better than TIEs offensively, even if partially dampened by lower PS.

So I've countered this last bit of assumed imbalance with a dial of very limited greens. They do gain 3-Sloops, but stress is way harder to shed (again, CPU going nuts), and that means both lack of actions, and inability to "switch protocols".

Here's the last missing puzzle, it's dial.:

Hope you've enjoyed it, I'm quite happy with the results, both gameplay and fluff-wise.

Instead of putting them all on a single large base make each unit of them consist of 3 small base ships with a 1/2/2/0 stat-line. Modifications (and possibly other upgrades) are shared across the unit.

During the planning and activation phases they activate as independent ships but during the combat phase only one model in the unit can activate. The ship that is making the attack gets an additional red die for each unit member that is at range 1-2 of the defender.

Price it around 17-20 points.

I had tossed this idea around before Swarm Leader was released. In light of that card it may make sense to make sure that Evade is not on the action bar.

The idea of swarm ships is great. But it's something that would better fit for CIS droid starfighters.

I'm not sure that there should be any functional difference between CIS droid fighters and Imperial droid fighters. Main differences to me seem to be the timeline factor and canonicity. Timeline factor is in favor of the TIE droid, and we haven't blanched from using legends ships in the past.

I'm all for more Legends ships and no CW Era in X-Wing.

I was aiming at the fact that the TIE/D should have 4 hull and 2 attack thus making it unsuitable for swarm bases.

Have you seen the D&D Attack Wing game?

Another flightpath system game made by Wizkids that actually had quite a lot going for it before they decided to cancel it. It had troop blocks, 6 minis that all had their own base and lined up in a block, moved as one, had one stat line, etc. The card showed the stats for 1 mini, then then it came with tokens in the shape of the stat line on the card, showing the stats for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 mini units. At max size, they had a lot of attack and no defense, then as it got lower they lost attack and gained defense, much like you've described above. You might want to take a look at their system, see if there's anything that might be useful for your swarm idea.

Have you seen the D&D Attack Wing game?

Another flightpath system game made by Wizkids that actually had quite a lot going for it before they decided to cancel it. It had troop blocks, 6 minis that all had their own base and lined up in a block, moved as one, had one stat line, etc. The card showed the stats for 1 mini, then then it came with tokens in the shape of the stat line on the card, showing the stats for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 mini units. At max size, they had a lot of attack and no defense, then as it got lower they lost attack and gained defense, much like you've described above. You might want to take a look at their system, see if there's anything that might be useful for your swarm idea.

My suggestion: Each Droid TIE has only a single hit point.

Nonononono. The TIE/D is actually better armoured than a regular TIE/LN. If you make it Hull 4, give it a better dial than a LN, remove EPTs and reduce PS to 1 you should hit at least 12 points.

Whilst they are mentioned to be better armoured, they're also expendable swarms - that was the whole point of them - and the game is already fairly cavalier with 'canon' compared to getting the feel of the unit right (a TIE defender as described in X-wing would have stats up around the IG-2000's). Equally, a piloted TIE might be better capable of operating whilst damaged (I doubt a droid could have brought in a crippled TIE like Qorl.

Equally, 'plot armour' is - lets be honest - a very real thing in star wars. Recognisable and important characters tear through nameless opponents in numbers out of all proportion to the theoretical balance of firepower, and no-one does "nameless goon" like battle droids.

Finally, remember that the rule makes the damage something of an abstraction anyway because damage is always reduced to one point. You caused one hit? Lucky shot, but it killed a droid TIE. Fenn Rau just dropped five hits on you? Still just does one damage and kills one droid TIE.

Mef82 - looks really cool. I agree with no focus action (I did the same). The protocols idea is nice, but I'd be hesitant as written because the focus effect is unrestricted by stress and stacks with target lock (or barrel roll), essentially giving the ship baked-in push the limit. I'd just stick to lock or evade, although a protocols 'droid only' ept which restores access to focus might be nice. I may steal that idea, if you don't mind.

I did consider PS0, but decided to stick at '1' - droids are notably worse than a good pilot, but can still keep pace with a trainee. More importantly, PS0 only comes in game from criticals, or someobe explicitely buying enhanced scopes (to move first for bombs, for example), and I didn't want what is one way or another a 'special' game state to be overriden by the default stat.

Jjfdvorak - a nice idea. I know the remote-operated TIEs seen in x-wing alliance were a fundamentally different set of designs, but the onemight well be considered a protoype for the other (dark empire is set some time after), so it's not unreasonable that the early TIE droid might gave been run partially as a slaved remote. Which would work for another title - if the Ace-6 droid brain is one title, letting you use systems as elite upgrades, then a slaved remote might let you use them as crew upgrades instead (allowing some limitations to prevent palatine showing up!). Lott did start out developibg remote slaved stuff before moving up to truly autonomous stuff.

And, since the follow-on graphic novel featured shadow droids (a dark side empowered aces brain in a jar) then maybe a third could be shadow droid prototype - the chassis is obviously not the same, but it's the control method thats the poibt of the title, and an existing chassis is tge sort of thing that might have been used when they were testing the shadow droid concept to begin with.

If you base it on the game I first saw it in, Rogue Squadron, I think it should be the fastest, most maneuverable Tie Fighter in the game, that said, it has to be utterly defenseless.if it gets tagged by a enemy. This was one of the hardest Tie to dog fight with, especially against the Falcon, as that ship could seemly ALWAYS dodge its combat arc, or zip away in. The easiest way to take them out is to literately fly away, then fly in a straight line though the combat zone, and try to tag one or two with missiles or blasters.

they had something similar to that for fighters in the star trek game. I'm pointedly trying to keep it simple and avoid having unique rules for formations or extra stat block cards.

Fair enough, I meant more that looking at some of their upgrades and abilities could give some cool ideas for you own about how groups might fight differently.

Thats a fair thought. I'll have a look.

If you base it on the game I first saw it in, Rogue Squadron, I think it should be the fastest, most maneuverable Tie Fighter in the game, that said, it has to be utterly defenseless.if it gets tagged by a enemy. This was one of the hardest Tie to dog fight with, especially against the Falcon, as that ship could seemly ALWAYS dodge its combat arc, or zip away in. The easiest way to take them out is to literately fly away, then fly in a straight line though the combat zone, and try to tag one or two with missiles or blasters.

Which it will be - sort of. Speed 3 turns and banks with a large base will be slightly faster than any turn a small based ship can do, and SLAM gives it that extra bit of speed for disengagement or flanking

Plus, if you've taken out three of the four, the last one has an effective agility of four, making it a pretty fierce target, especially if youve used one of the systems slots for a sensor jammer.

Of course, as a large base, you'll get half credit for killing two.

Thanks for reminding me of Rogue Squadron - trying to remember any characteristics you saw in that game, like minimal shields oe anything.

Okay..... so.

D&D Attack Wing had some 'troop only' heroic upgrades (think EPT in a false nose and glasses) called "[insert name here] formation".

• Line Formation & Wedge Formation - perform attacks against every opponent at range 1-2 in forward arc, not just one (range and melee respectively, not that it matters to X-wing)
• Column Formation - treat all red manoeuvres as white
• Square Formation - allowed range 1 (melee) attacks in any direction

I might dig out the Age of Rebellion squad rules - there are some named 'formations' in there.

I don't want too many "Droid TIE only" cards, though.


Ship:

Ship Type: Droid TIE Swarm
Pilot Skill: 1
Primary Weapon: 5
Agility: 1
Hull: 4
Shields: 0
Action Bar: Barrel Roll, Evade, Target Lock, SLAM
Upgrade Bar: Systems, Systems

"Whenever one or more damage cards

would be assigned to this ship, it suffers 1

damage instead. For each damage card

assigned to this ship, reduce its primary

weapon value by 1 and increase its

agility by 1. "

Dial :

4 - Straight

3 - Straight , Bank, Turn, Tallon Roll

2 - Straight , Bank , Turn

1 - Turn

Titles:

Ace-6 Droid Brains
Droid TIE only. Title
You may equip [Elite] upgrades as [system] upgrades

Slaved Controls
Droid TIE only. Title
You may equip [Crew] upgrades as [system] upgrades

Shadow Droid Prototypes
Droid TIE only. Title
???

(Probably an increase in pilot skill, plus some other ability.

Adding Focus to the action bar, or getting a free focus action, maybe?)

That's probably more than enough specific-to-ship type cards.

A few suitable-but-not-restricted upgrades might be good - let's say two elite upgrades (maybe one of the 'XYZ formation' or 'ABC doctrine'), a couple of crew (Arndall Lott and Director Lenzer would be good, but should ideally not have droid-only effects......although I guess any non-unique ship could in theory be a slaved remote), and one modification (the TIE Droid was designed for mass-production literally during combat, so maybe there's some mileage there?).

I would change the wording of the special rules to

"Whenever one or more damage cards

would be assigned to this ship, it suffers 1 damage instead. For each damage card

assigned to this ship, reduce its primary

weapon value by 1 to a minimum of 2 and increase its

agility by 1 to a maximum of 3"

I think that would be better than at the end having a large base flying around that is impossible to hit(4 agility) and does no damage(1 attack)

Or it's a tie LN but its pilot skill is equal to the number in play.

I would change the wording of the special rules to

"Whenever one or more damage cards

would be assigned to this ship, it suffers 1 damage instead. For each damage card

assigned to this ship, reduce its primary

weapon value by 1 to a minimum of 2 and increase its

agility by 1 to a maximum of 3"

I think that would be better than at the end having a large base flying around that is impossible to hit(4 agility) and does no damage(1 attack)

If you stick to 5 attack, 1 agility, then by the time you're down to one hit left, you're on two attack dice.

4 agility is harsh but not unheard of (its no worse - not as bad, in fact - as a ptl stealth autoceptor, and you only have to get one more hit through and it's kablooey.

a hull upgrade could be annoying. A ship thats taken 4 hits will be a bugger to finish off, but its not like it'll achieve much. Specifying limits might be sensible nevertheless.

Been one of my wants for awhile. I'd love a small ship and a large ship swarm personally.

Small Ship:

2/3/4/0

BR, TL

Immune stress

All white dial (FO dial?)

Titles that do cool things like allow you to use other TLs from other droids, titles that make them unique pilots!

This is what I've always seen as being the Droid TIE. Give it PS 0 to mimic the 'dumbness' of the pilots. A fancy enough dial with no worries about stress should more than warrant a 12 point cost at least.

As far as mods I have a couple ideas of my own.

'Insulated Droid Brain'

Mod (2)

Droid TIE only

When dealt a Pilot critical damage card, turn it facedown without resolving the effect.

You must have at least 2 ion tokens in order for the ion effect to take place.

This geared towards the solo Droid ship. It takes a ship that is innately immune to stress and tacks on high resistance to ionization and Determination lite.

'Networked Droid Brain'

Mod (2)

Droid TIE only

Each friendly ship equipped with this card within range 1-3 raises your Pilot Skill by one.

The opposite end of the spectrum. With perfect flying, you could achieve PS 7 for all of your ships. Not enough to outfly aces, but enough to try to shoot down the odd TLT Y-Wing or unmodified Glaive.

These titles along with the stressproof nature of the fighters an otherwise barebones stats ought to put them in a totally different category than the Strikers or Fighters.

I don't object to no red. All white might be bad as you can get stress from elsewhere, though. Althoughyou don't need much green.

total immunity to stress.... I'm less of a fan of. Immunity to one aspect or another, fair enough, but it's too much a core game concept for complete immunity not to be an issue.

If they were going to have a white "about face" , then a talon roll might be good - it prevents "Just jousting" as a fast 3 talon roll with a large base leads to fast swirling turns like a t-70, which (currently) no imperial ship can do, and puts them tactically as far as possible from the TIE/x7 defender.

Immune stress is just to keep it simple and clean. Lists of stuff to do just all of them get complicated quickly.