After taking a couple days to absorb the in game rules that are now available for the Raider I class Corvette, what are peoples thoughts on it as an effective fighting ship? Compared to similar sized ships, does ithold up? Is it under powered, over-powered or find a nice balance?

Just for quick reference... Its 150m long, has 92 crew (plus 30 troops), Sil 5, Spd 4, Hand -1, 2 for all Def, Armor 5, HT 45, SS 25, Class 2 Hyperdrive, Long range sensors, Chin mounted twin light turbolasers, Chin mounted Ion canon and 6 turret mounted (retractable) twin heavy laser canons.

Looking forward to reading peoples thoughts on the ship. Personally I was very eager to get RPG stats for this ship after purchasing it for the Xwing miniatures game... I'm still torn if it lives up to my expectations.

6 heavy lasers, ions, and twin turbolasers sounds about right. It is actually even heavier armed the the vigil class, faster on top, smaller, leaner. Though I would have expected a class 1 hyperdrive and at least one heavy weapon, preferable the ion cannon. The raider class appeared always like some fast attack ship which fits into the imperial fleet doctrine as something which can come in hot, strike hard and fast and take prisoners as necessary. But the weapon config suggests a patrol craft instead, aimed at smugglers and their sil 3-5 freighters and not against other sil 5+ combat ships. Still a fine ship, even when a little bit more redundant than I thought as the vigil does basically the same job, just with tractor beams instead of an underpowered ion cannon.

Great review and comparison, thank you SEApocalypse

It is designed as an anti fighter ship for the xwing game.

I think this is definitely more a big patrol ship then something intended to support a battle line in a fleet action. That said if I were playing an Imperial fleet commander I would take this over a Lancer any day. Though I would take a Vigil over a Raider

I hope I'm not breaking any necromancy taboo by bumping a month-old thread, but I saw this and I had to jump in.

Thanks for posting those stats, I've been looking for the crew number for the Raider forever, as I need to know how many NPC's I'll have to recruit to man the little beastie. All I need now is the price tag...

Looking at the stats, it actually has two roles.

Role number one is as a fast patrol craft, which is probably how the players will encounter it most of the time. (unless they're driving one, which is my goal for the current campaign. That's what the Ion cannon is for, enforcing Imperial law. It will run down pretty much any freighter not named [timeframe] [bird], and pound the crap out of it without taking return fire.

Role number two is as a roving anti-starfighter escort. The Lancer and the Immobilizer 418 have excellent anti-starfighter guns - but they're Close range, and both ships are Speed 2, which is helplessly slow. They're stuck where they are in the formation, and can barely even cover other ships with their guns. The Raider on the other hand is fast enough to intercept enemy starfighters before they can get to Close range of their targets and fire their own weapons, and it has the range to start shooting them up before they can shoot back. And then once they start running away, the Raider can actually keep up with most of the older fighers like the Z-95 or the Y-wing.

Basically the Raider's role in large engagement is to intercept enemy fighter-bombers, maul them while they're closing to attack range, keep mauling them while they run away, and then repeating until the sky is clear, while keeping away from anything with turbolasers that isn't otherwise occupied, in which case it can sneak a pot shot.

The Raider as written above won't win against a CR90 if both are alone, because the it can kill the Raider much faster than the Raider can kill it. Add in a fighter squadron on both sides, especially a fighter-bomber squadron, and the situation is reversed - if the CR90's fighters go after the Raider, they die, and then the Raider's fighter-bombers are free to murderize the CR90 as its guns suck for anti-fighter work.

The Raider II, which appears from the Armada game card to trade ion cannons for concussion missiles, would most likely be even nastier than the regular Raider for anti fighter-bomber work, and would let it deal some more damage to enemy heavies if it gets through to short range. It'd be less useful as a system patrol craft though, as concussion missiles don't tend to leave anything to board.

8 hours ago, Winchester3 said:

I hope I'm not breaking any necromancy taboo by bumping a month-old thread, but I saw this and I had to jump in.

Thanks for posting those stats, I've been looking for the crew number for the Raider forever, as I need to know how many NPC's I'll have to recruit to man the little beastie. All I need now is the price tag...

Looking at the stats, it actually has two roles.

Role number one is as a fast patrol craft, which is probably how the players will encounter it most of the time. (unless they're driving one, which is my goal for the current campaign. That's what the Ion cannon is for, enforcing Imperial law. It will run down pretty much any freighter not named [timeframe] [bird], and pound the crap out of it without taking return fire.

Role number two is as a roving anti-starfighter escort. The Lancer and the Immobilizer 418 have excellent anti-starfighter guns - but they're Close range, and both ships are Speed 2, which is helplessly slow. They're stuck where they are in the formation, and can barely even cover other ships with their guns. The Raider on the other hand is fast enough to intercept enemy starfighters before they can get to Close range of their targets and fire their own weapons, and it has the range to start shooting them up before they can shoot back. And then once they start running away, the Raider can actually keep up with most of the older fighers like the Z-95 or the Y-wing.

Basically the Raider's role in large engagement is to intercept enemy fighter-bombers, maul them while they're closing to attack range, keep mauling them while they run away, and then repeating until the sky is clear, while keeping away from anything with turbolasers that isn't otherwise occupied, in which case it can sneak a pot shot.

The Raider as written above won't win against a CR90 if both are alone, because the it can kill the Raider much faster than the Raider can kill it. Add in a fighter squadron on both sides, especially a fighter-bomber squadron, and the situation is reversed - if the CR90's fighters go after the Raider, they die, and then the Raider's fighter-bombers are free to murderize the CR90 as its guns suck for anti-fighter work.

The Raider II, which appears from the Armada game card to trade ion cannons for concussion missiles, would most likely be even nastier than the regular Raider for anti fighter-bomber work, and would let it deal some more damage to enemy heavies if it gets through to short range. It'd be less useful as a system patrol craft though, as concussion missiles don't tend to leave anything to board.

Great analysis, thanks Winchester3!

Things to note: The Vigil is speed 3, the lancer is speed two, the raider is speed 4 and a CR90 is speed 3. Mechanical most of the time the vigil and the raider are equal in speed, and even the slow vigil movies range bands at the same speed.

And btw, the CR90 has long-range guns, while the raider has medium and short range lasers… the CR90 can just start running away. The two twin-medium turbo lasers make actually short work of the raider, while it can only use the light turbo lasers for return fire as it never gets in range to use its short range heavy laser cannons. Assuming 1 success and two advantages, those medium turbos do already 36 damage in one turn. Meanwhile the raider does 14 HT and 8 SS in the second turn IF the raider moves first, else it actually might never made it into medium and using chase rules might become more appropriated.

OK, so I found the book and had a look at the stats (my GM will murder me if I look at the rest of the book though...)

The description notes that Imperial strategists were just as critical of the ship as some of you have been - "an ineffective frontline warship". It was however invaluable against pirates and rebel fighters as an anti-starfighter platform, and it was used as a system patrol craft in backwater systems, often in pairs and/or together with older and smaller star destroyer types like the Gladiator or Victory.

The laser guns are fitted with "state-of-the-art tracking sensors", and have Accurate 2 - that's the best accuracy I've seen on any standard armament so far, and IIRC it pretty much negates penalty for firing against fighters as a Silhouette 5 ship. That's huge. It also mentions that the ship typically carries sensor- and communications jamming systems, though they're not listed in the equipment (that's what the 2 upgrade hardpoints are for, I suppose).

Finally, the difference between the Raider I and Raider II is that the Raider I carried cluster missiles (which I don't know where to look for info on), the Raider II (introduced around the BOY) carries a *battleship* ion cannon. You know, the Damage 9, Breach 3, Slow-Firing 2 version.

It's pretty expensive though at 3,000,000 credits (R)/7 though. Luckily I have an Imperial security clearance...

Good catch on the accurate 2, I have somehow completely overlooked that.

It gets even better as auto-blasters, blaster-cannons, laser-cannons and quad-laser cannons count the ship's silhouette 1 smaller for firing from a capital ship. 267 E-CRB grey box. Though what exactly is a capital seems to be mostly GM decision and I am not sure if FFG is still happy with that rule for sil 5 ships.

Either way, the anti-fighter performance should be quite good.

The whole question of "what constitutes a capital ship" has always been strange in Star Wars, because if you look at which ships were deemed capital ships in the West End Games version, where the whole split between capital and other ships comes from, there is no simple rule I could write that does not have exceptions, possibly going both ways.

For example, the Imperial Sourcebook had the Skipray Blastboat and the Assault Shuttle, which were smaller than the Millennium Falcon but were classed as capital ships due to being so powerful. Note that the first appearance of the Skipray in non-RPG materials after that was the Thrawn trilogy, where Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade fly these things solo over Myrkr, and dogfight in them. But IIRC we also had 100-meter long transport vessels that were starfighter-scale.

Anyway, from what I can tell in the FFL games, in EotE and FaD, anything that's not a starfighter/shuttle/patrol boat/scout ship (all of which are variously lumped in under the same heading depending on which book you're reading) or a transport/freighter/yacht is listed under the heading of "capital ships" in the books, pretty much 100% of the time. That includes the CR90, the DP20, and the CR92a, for example. Age of Rebellion doesn't use a "capital ships" heading at all, but splits things into Gunships (which is where the CR90 and the DP20 end up), Cruisers and Battleships.

For extra weirdness, in AoR the Gozanti is a Cruiser, but in Edge of Empire it's a Freighter, rather than a capital ship.

Anyway, I'm currently working on indexing all the ship types that have been printed in the various books - so far, just a list of which ship is in which book. Holy hannah are there a lot of ships and vehicles already, though.

On 2/21/2017 at 6:30 PM, Winchester3 said:

I hope I'm not breaking any necromancy taboo by bumping a month-old thread, but I saw this and I had to jump in.

Thanks for posting those stats, I've been looking for the crew number for the Raider forever, as I need to know how many NPC's I'll have to recruit to man the little beastie. All I need now is the price tag...

Looking at the stats, it actually has two roles.

Role number one is as a fast patrol craft, which is probably how the players will encounter it most of the time. (unless they're driving one, which is my goal for the current campaign. That's what the Ion cannon is for, enforcing Imperial law. It will run down pretty much any freighter not named [timeframe] [bird], and pound the crap out of it without taking return fire.

Role number two is as a roving anti-starfighter escort. The Lancer and the Immobilizer 418 have excellent anti-starfighter guns - but they're Close range, and both ships are Speed 2, which is helplessly slow. They're stuck where they are in the formation, and can barely even cover other ships with their guns. The Raider on the other hand is fast enough to intercept enemy starfighters before they can get to Close range of their targets and fire their own weapons, and it has the range to start shooting them up before they can shoot back. And then once they start running away, the Raider can actually keep up with most of the older fighers like the Z-95 or the Y-wing.

Basically the Raider's role in large engagement is to intercept enemy fighter-bombers, maul them while they're closing to attack range, keep mauling them while they run away, and then repeating until the sky is clear, while keeping away from anything with turbolasers that isn't otherwise occupied, in which case it can sneak a pot shot.

The Raider as written above won't win against a CR90 if both are alone, because the it can kill the Raider much faster than the Raider can kill it. Add in a fighter squadron on both sides, especially a fighter-bomber squadron, and the situation is reversed - if the CR90's fighters go after the Raider, they die, and then the Raider's fighter-bombers are free to murderize the CR90 as its guns suck for anti-fighter work.

The Raider II, which appears from the Armada game card to trade ion cannons for concussion missiles, would most likely be even nastier than the regular Raider for anti fighter-bomber work, and would let it deal some more damage to enemy heavies if it gets through to short range. It'd be less useful as a system patrol craft though, as concussion missiles don't tend to leave anything to board.

My question is why you need a price? you dont buy them... you steal them

Just now, Daeglan said:

My question is why you need a price? you dont buy them... you steal them

Because my Spy character is essentially playing Rogue Trader - we're hauling high value cargoes for the Empire, with the occasional side order of black ops for this or that Imperial Governor, and building ourselves trading/anti-pirate fleet - while reporting on everything we're doing to Alliance High Command, or what there is of it right now since we're still pre-Rebels timeline-wise. If our group stole one of these things, we'd never be able to use it for our business, there's be a recapture-or-destroy-on-sight order on the ship pretty much immediately. If we bought one legitimately, maybe with a special dispensation from a Moff who owes us a favor, I'd still be welcome in any Imperial port.

At any rate, that's still in the future, as even if I do have the money right now (our last customer was very generous), the ships haven't been built yet at this point in the timeline. So I'll have to content myself with paying a visit to Corellia next session and putting down a down payment on our first CR90 - which I know is objectively the better ship, but the Raider is the closest thing to a Star Destroyer I'll be able to enjoy operating.

Why not requisition it. As you don't buy things like this. they get issued or stolen... Now you could bribe a moff to issue it to your party... but that is different than purchasing it. As you don't really do that. Unless you are the government. And the builder does not sell to individuals...

2 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

It gets even better as auto-blasters, blaster-cannons, laser-cannons and quad-laser cannons count the ship's silhouette 1 small firing from a capital ship. 267 E-CRB grey box. Though what exactly is a capital seems to be mostly GM decision and I am not sure if FFG is still happy with that rule for sil 5 ships.

Either way, the anti-fighter performance should be quite good.

I tend to think that this rule is obsolete. That would explain why it never made it to AoR or FaD.

20 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Why not requisition it. As you don't buy things like this. they get issued or stolen... Now you could bribe a moff to issue it to your party... but that is different than purchasing it. As you don't really do that. Unless you are the government. And the builder does not sell to individuals...

We'll see how we solve the issue later. As I said, right now there aren't any Raiders available anyway, because they haven't been built yet. And I can make do with the CR90 for now.

What are cluster missles as the Raider 1 is said to have?

Compare the raider to the IR-3F "frigate", I think that they are pretty similar in terms of mission except the raider isn't confined to a single system.