I've done a few rounds by myself to get the feel for it and I'm enjoying it, but I'll admit, I'm not 100% settled in. While I was playing, I couldn't help but think of idea to make it more dramatic (or harder) for players. Here are some of the suggestions I came up with:

- Damage carries over: A ship with a couple of facedown and faceup cards will have to deal with them during the refit/repair phase or they carry over to the next mission. I came up with a way to do this. Ships add extra refit points to their fleet based on their size. The ships would then spend 3-5 (Still working the numbers) refit points to discard a facedown or flip a faceup card over. The biggest issue I'm dealing with is scarred ship (ie: Ships with carried over damage being "Scarred" and being removed for the battle sooner during missions, as well as how to repair scarred ships in between missions). The best I could come up with a ship is not "destroyed" when scarred during a mission. The ship would technically have double it's hull value and when the first half of its hull is depleted, it is scarred. The opponent would still get the points for having destroyed it but it remains on in the battle and gains the scarred token. Between missions, ships can remove the scarred tokens by repairing the ship up to half the hull value (or 3/4 of the doubled value) then the player can remove the token as if it were a facedown damage card. Squadrons will have similar damage carryover rules, but I haven't dug into that yet.

- Non unique squadrons gaining promotions: Team cannot field the unique unnamed Squadrons (ie: Rouge and Black Squadron) when building fleets. Instead, when a non-unique would meet the requirements for veteran status, they become those squadrons (Example: an X-wing squadron defeats another squadron and survives. After the mission, that X-wing squadron becomes a Rouge Squadron). This would allow multiple copies of those squadrons in a given fleet. A promoted squadron cannot gain veteran status and tokens in future missions.

- Random Objectives: Instead of the attacker picking a defenders objective, like in standard games, the pool is shuffled and one is picked randomly. This also changes the Skilled Spacers tokens. The attackers can spend one or more to remove one or more objectives from the pool (as long as there is at least 1 left) then the defender can spend one or more to re-add them (or add new ones) before the shuffle.

- Larger Fleet Builds: Fleets are built to 500 points, with upgrades to 650. However, an Admiral can only bring 400 points (of ships and fleet commander only, other upgrades do not count) worth into a battle. This should mitigate the effects of carried over damage and harder retreat rules by holding a damaged ship back from a fight and replacing it with another to field the 400 point deployment.

- Harder Retreat Rules: Retreating follows the same rules but with the following additions. 1) A retreating ship at the end of the round must be within close range of one of the play area's border and have unobscured LOS to the closest point of the border still within the fore hull arc of the ship. 2) If the retreating ship is within an interdictor's area of affect at the end of the round, the ship's retreat is canceled.

These are just some ideas I have. As you can see, I'm still working of some of the details. Please let me know what you think.

A hard mode would be if destroyed ships are out of the game at the first time. Use refit points to buy new stuff. The rest remains.

1 hour ago, GeneralBergfrühling said:

A hard mode would be if destroyed ships are out of the game at the first time. Use refit points to buy new stuff. The rest remains.

You could just say things skip Scarred and become eliminated at first destruction, UNLESS a player spends Repair + Resource points equal to the cost of the ship, which then brings it back as Scarred (but next time it is destroyed it is lost for good). This still gives some incentive to repair ships rather than just buy new ones (e.g. Refit points only work on repairing).

That being said, this would not be a symmetrical system. Early in the campaign, if the Imperials all go for tanky ships with Gunnery Teams (e.g. Motti with VSDs and the other admirals with ISDs) it can be incredibly hard for Rebel fleets to kill these ships. Without fully kitted out MC30s or Ackbar Frigates/MC80s, it's next to impossible for a Rebel fleet to bring down an ISD with just one uprade per ship, unless their is a massive squadron advantage for the Rebels. EVEN THEN, the Imperial players can just bank stacks of Engineering commands in the final rounds and plan to Hyperspace out any threatened Motti VSD or ISD (since these ships will see their destruction coming turns early).

Those Rebel ships which are more susceptible to destruction will be penalized by this rule, whereas the ISDs/VSDs will be able to much more easily skirt it. So it would be a "hard mode" of sorts, but it would put the burdens asymmetrically upon the Rebels.


In fact, I haven't played enough CC to know, but it seems like any Imperial Team that spams ISDs or Motti VSDs with Gunnery Teams as all of their starting upgrades will have a big advantage. A 1-upgrade-per-ship Rebel Fleet can't really hope to sink one, let alone two ISDs, as long as the IMPs are insulated enough against Bomber Spam. And even in the Bomber Spam match-ups, the ISD under threat (one will be and one will be full HP) can always probably hyperspace out before it is destroyed.


As such, a better "hard mode" rule might be to say that:

Ships which Hyperspace out retain their damage cards (justified by saying something like a ship that enters hyperspace with heavy damage exacerbates that damage, whereas ships with can stick around and repair before jumping avoid these issues). Then, allow Refit points to be spent in removing retained damage cards (maybe at like 5 or 10 pts per card). To make it really hard you could always assume that the losing team's ships effectively hyperspace out at the end of the Sixth Round, so the ships on the losing faction also retain their damage cards after 6 Rounds.

This then still allows a "harder mode" of play without innately favoring the big giant Imperial tanks that get so much **** mileage even with just their starting Gunnery Teams, because a concerted Rebel effort can still put them in situations where they may come out of heavily damaged even if they Hyperspace away prior to all 14 Hull (+2 Shileds / -1-2 damage card Repairs) being burned through.

I like the idea, but the thought that basically started the "Hard Mode" idea was that ships should carry over any damage from mission to mission no matter how or what they did during missions (unless repaired, of course). I liked the idea of having a faceup damage card affect ships even after the mission they received it is over. Maybe a change that only applies to faceup cards that carry over? Make it expensive to remove these cards both in and between missions. The issue I originally thought of was that this could cripple small and flotilla base ships. Lucky enough to lands 1 or 2 faceups? That small ship is basically a fly waiting to get swatted out of the sky in the next missions. But I suppose we could say the same for any carryover rule we discuss.

To AllWingsStandyingBy: Giving the Rebels even more of a disadvantage.

Face down cards could be removed, and face up become face down in the next fight?

I think the snowball effect is a real danger in a "hard mode" though.

3 hours ago, Gunner070 said:

Random Objectives: Instead of the attacker picking a defenders objective, like in standard games, the pool is shuffled and one is picked randomly. This also changes the Skilled Spacers tokens. The attackers can spend one or more to remove one or more objectives from the pool (as long as there is at least 1 left) then the defender can spend one or more to re-add them (or add new ones) before the shuffle.

I really like this idea.

I say remove the standard refit cost of half ship value. And say each ship most spend 6 point per dmg card received. Any dmg not removed carry over to next battle.

Squadrons still go. By half value.

I like the idea of promoting regular unit to named squadrons.

Otherwise i keep it the same

So I'm going to start building fleets for a full go at the CC base rules but keep any ideas we've discussed here in mind while I play. Maybe it'll spark more or better ideas.

Refit: Spend half the cost of the ship to get repair points equal to the Engineering value of the ship.

Intensive Refit: Spend the full cost of the ship to get repair points equal to 1.5x the Engineering value of the ship.

Thus, an ISD could spend 4 points (remove 1 damage card) when paying for a refit - or 6 points (remove 2 damage cards) when paying for an intensive refit.

All other damage carries over.

17 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

That being said, this would not be a symmetrical system. Early in the campaign, if the Imperials all go for tanky ships with Gunnery Teams (e.g. Motti with VSDs and the other admirals with ISDs) it can be incredibly hard for Rebel fleets to kill these ships. Without fully kitted out MC30s or Ackbar Frigates/MC80s, it's next to impossible for a Rebel fleet to bring down an ISD with just one uprade per ship, unless their is a massive squadron advantage for the Rebels. EVEN THEN, the Imperial players can just bank stacks of Engineering commands in the final rounds and plan to Hyperspace out any threatened Motti VSD or ISD (since these ships will see their destruction coming turns early).

Those Rebel ships which are more susceptible to destruction will be penalized by this rule, whereas the ISDs/VSDs will be able to much more easily skirt it. So it would be a "hard mode" of sorts, but it would put the burdens asymmetrically upon the Rebels.

In our campaign, Caldias brought down an ISD with 2 MC30s and an AF the first campaign round. And he didn't lose any ships. And his opponent is an excellent player, so player skill doesn't have much to do with the loss of an ISD. And the ISD had Motti on it.

It is very possible to take down and ISD with 1 upgrades on MC30s.

47 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

In our campaign, Caldias brought down an ISD with 2 MC30s and an AF the first campaign round. And he didn't lose any ships. And his opponent is an excellent player, so player skill doesn't have much to do with the loss of an ISD. And the ISD had Motti on it.

It is very possible to take down and ISD with 1 upgrades on MC30s.

Did the ISD have Gunnery Team? What was the rest of the fleet?

Just now, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Did the ISD have Gunnery Team? What was the rest of the fleet?

I'm not sure. I was playing next to that game, so I didn't check the lists. But I played against it the next match and by then it had 3 Goz, 1 ISD II and 1 Vic II and a lot of Tie/I, and I know the rebel squads took a beating. No Gunnery Teams. That could have changed the game.

2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I'm not sure. I was playing next to that game, so I didn't check the lists. But I played against it the next match and by then it had 3 Goz, 1 ISD II and 1 Vic II and a lot of Tie/I, and I know the rebel squads took a beating. No Gunnery Teams. That could have changed the game.

This may sound harsh, but any Imperial admiral who takes a VSD or ISD and does not put Gunnery Teams on them is making an unforgivable mistake. This explains that first round game a bit better. Also, I'm positive that the Motti ISD could have had an opportunity to avoid destruction, either by speeding up or using Hyperspace Escape on Turn 4 or Turn 5. There's really no excuse for getting a Motti ISD killed in the first round of the campgain, since worst case if the opponent makes a hard push on your ISD you can Hyperspace Escape Round 4. It's hard for a list to "surprise kill" an ISD, especailly in four turns. Also, I suspect the Imperial Player did not just stack Nav and/or Repair Commands...doing this also makes it difficult for the ISD to get killed.

Had an idea during a game this week. Bear with me, this changes the fundamental rules for deploying ships.

Instead of deploying ships according to the rule book, do some sort of hidden deployment.

- 2nd (or defending) player first places their ship cards face down in their deployment zone. These cards essentially replace the ships you would deploy during this step. Since there are facedown, the 1st player won't know which ship in your fleet is deployed at a location, just that they know a ship is there. In cases were you have multiple ships of the same type, the ID token would be placed under the card hidden.

- 1st (or attacking) player can spend Spynet tokens to attempt to reveal ships before they deploy. They place a token on a facedown ship card they hope to reveal. After player one is done using Spynet tokens (if they choose to use any), the 2nd play can spend their's to cancel any that the 1st player used. When player 2 declares that they are done spending Spynet tokens, any of their ships that still has a token on them is reveal (flip faceup) and deployed on the battlefield (details to follow).

- 1st player deploys their ships (not cards) onto the battlefield.

- If the 2nd player still has any Spynet token, they may spend them to swap the locations of 2 facedown ship cards with each other. Each swap cost 1 Spynet token.

- 2nd Player then reveals and deploys their ships. The ship's base must cover as much of the card as possible when deploying them. In the case of ship bases being smaller than the cards, they can put the ship any where as long as the entire base is in the ares covered by the card. If the base is bigger than the card, they can go anywhere as long as the card is still completely covered.

- After both players deploy ships, they deploy their squadrons, according to standard rules (ie: 1st player deploys two, then 2nd player deploys 2, etc.)

Example deployment:

Rebels (2nd player) has a MC80 and 2 CR90s (ID 1 and 2) with 2 Sypnet tokens. Imperials have a ISD and VSD with 2 Spynet tokens.

- Rebels place facedown CR90 (ID: 1) card on the left, CR90 (ID: 2) in the middle, and MC80 on the right.

- Imperials places 1 spynet on the left card and their 2nd spynet on the middle card. Rebels use one of their tokens to cancel the one on the middle card.

- Since the spynet on the left card is still there, Rebels reveal and deploy CR90 (ID: 1) to that location.

- Imperials deploy their ISD and VSD, knowing the RC90 (ID: 1) is on the left but don't know which of the other 2 ships is on the right or middle.

- Rebels use their 2nd spynet to swap the facedown CR90 (ID: 2) to the right and MC80 to the left. Then Rebels reveal and deploy the CR90 (ID: 2) to the right and MC80 to the middle.

- Imperials start deploy 2 squadrons, then Rebels deploy 2, etc.

Just another idea (and this would mean changing some of the objective's special deployment rules), but what do you guys think?

@Gunner070 Some day, when somebody designs a playable X-Wing plus Armada plus Imperial Assault supergame, your deployment idea sounds perfect for a way that IA games can influence Armada. Whosever strike team is successful on the ground mission gains sufficient intelligence for their space forces to out-deploy the enemy.

@Nostromoid I see where you're coming form, LOL. I know 4 Spynet tokens are impossible (at least I'm pretty sure), I just wanted to cover all possibilities. As for the Supergame, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about making one. It's just too much for one person to make and I'm not a big part of the Bay Area meta enough to get a group together.

I really don't know how you could do CC in hard mode? When I think hard mode I think of difficult AI. Sort of like X-com or something. CC is nothing like HotAC for X-wing. There are at least two players, (more like two teams) so if you want a Hard mode make sure you play against better players lol.

However I do think there could be some house rules for CC to make things more interesting. As I said before I wish there was a little variance on the RYB mission selection. The additional missions do help and so do the special green missions. Still I think they could have done something better with the mission theme. Sort of instead of a RYB or G, a RRR, YYY, BBB, or G depending on what you are trying to do. If you want to take over systems and gain territory then select 3 Red missions for your turn If you win you gain that system. If you want to protect one of your vital systems then select 3 Yellow missions. If you win that system cannot be the target of a Red move. If you are trying to get your fleet to a more strategic target select 3 blue missions. Blue missions don't capture or defend systems instead they allow your fleet to move through systems (even if they played yellow on them).

As for more punishing scaring you could have ships gain a face up damage and Aces are replaced by a generic squadron.

Iron-man mode is no scaring destroyed is dead.

Or you could make scaring not as punishing.

3 scars you're out mode

For ships 1st scar discard 1 token, 2nd scar discard on token and take 1 face up damage 3rd scar is death

For squadrons 1st scar -1 hp, 2nd Scar -1hp and reduced to generic. 3rd Scar gone.

Generic squadrons don't get scars. They just go bye but are cheaper to get. (unique squadrons cost bot the cost of the squadron and the cost of the generic). Upgrade generics is possible but expensive (you have to purchase the unique squadron that replaces the generic).

See, I am not a big fan of most of what you said but the non-unique squadrons becoming the named but not ace squadrons is a really really cool idea.

On 1/26/2017 at 10:52 AM, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

This may sound harsh, but any Imperial admiral who takes a VSD or ISD and does not put Gunnery Teams on them is making an unforgivable mistake. This explains that first round game a bit better. Also, I'm positive that the Motti ISD could have had an opportunity to avoid destruction, either by speeding up or using Hyperspace Escape on Turn 4 or Turn 5. There's really no excuse for getting a Motti ISD killed in the first round of the campgain, since worst case if the opponent makes a hard push on your ISD you can Hyperspace Escape Round 4. It's hard for a list to "surprise kill" an ISD, especailly in four turns. Also, I suspect the Imperial Player did not just stack Nav and/or Repair Commands...doing this also makes it difficult for the ISD to get killed.

Nope I did it twice in 2 separate campaigns on round 1. Not against Motti, but with Sato I took out 1 ISD in one, and an ISD, interdictor, and raider(?) in another by the end of round 4. I went second both times. And I found that it wasn't lack of gunnery teams (because one guy had them) making the difference, it was lack of Xi7s. The rebels rely on those redirects.

For hard mode, I think "no scarring, instant death instead" is too harsh. Still quite punishing, but not as horrible, is the idea that ships are perma-killed the first time, unless you pay to refit them on that same turn. In that case, they are merely scarred, and they remain scarred until the end of the campaign. In this imagined campaign ruleset, they can be refitted multiple times, but if you provide a mechanic to finally remove scarring make it more rare, such as access to shipyards that can dry-dock a ship.