Couple of very broad questions for fleet building (no missions in mind)
Is a more ships but run them with minimal/no upgrades a good idea?
Whats a good amount of fighters for a 400 point fleet? When I'm trying out builds I seem to be going a full 130 point anti-fighter & leaving the ship destroying to my ships (ie: no bombers). When I see a lot of builds on here the seem to do around 100 points of fighters/bombers and sometimes even a very minimal fighter screen. Good idea?
Nowadays the minimum fighter build has gone up to around 60 points. The old days of 3 Tie fighters drip fed in to keep the bombers busy on turns 3,4&5 are gone thanks to intel.
For Imperials I look for 4 Tie Int as a bare minimum. They have a decent punch with the swarm rerolls and it costs enemy squadrons more casualties to kill them thanks to counter (again with rerolls). Usually I add Zertek Storm to keep them alive-n-killing for one more turn. I rarely use his reroll ability (unless shooting a juicy target with 1 health remaining) but just the double brace on a 15 point escort is worth his use. Next I consider Howlrunner and maybe upgrade an interceptor to Sabre squadron to help tweak enemy intel. Mauler is fun but Mauler also needs a source of intel and maybe a second escort and that takes you well into the space superiority point category of 95+.
For rebels 3 X-wings and Jan are a great minimum. They escort her while she lends them braces and keep them moving. Adding Biggs is a good next step to further prevent kills and thus keep your fighter screen effective for another turn. Next I would look to add an A-wing or character A-wing just to add speed to pin half a Rhymer ball from the other side and force the intel to go back and free up those bombers and now you have split Dengar away from the pack or forced half the pack to sit still for a turn.
Running nearly naked ships can work but sometimes the extra upgrades compound and compliment each other to make good combat vessels. ISD-II with ECM & Gunnery teams is ok or ISD-I with Flight controllers, Ex hangar & boosted comms. Rebel CR90A with TRCs are excellent hand have no need for further upgrades except maybe Janna's Light on your first one in each list. Arquitens with DTTs are similar with TRC & Needa on the first Arquitens per list.
17 hours ago, ISD Avenger said:Couple of very broad questions for fleet building (no missions in mind)
Is a more ships but run them with minimal/no upgrades a good idea?
Yes, as long as you have a right fleet. For example, I prefer to run Raiders without any upgrades and have very small amount of upgrades on all ships in general, however I prefer to run 5-activations fleets so points are at premium for me.
QuoteWhats a good amount of fighters for a 400 point fleet?
It depends on a fleet. I think that even nowadays one can get by with 20-40 points of investment in fighters as long as it is backed up by ships. (In my last regional I ran Cienna Ree/Valen Rudor as my only squadrons and was able to hold a full strength Fireball (Rhymer/Dengar/Adv/4xFiresprays) in place and to kill half of it)
20-40? Wow, I wasn't expecting a viable force to be that low. But thanks for the input. Very interesting.
On 07/02/2017 at 3:56 PM, pt106 said:Yes, as long as you have a right fleet. For example, I prefer to run Raiders without any upgrades and have very small amount of upgrades on all ships in general, however I prefer to run 5-activations fleets so points are at premium for me.
It depends on a fleet. I think that even nowadays one can get by with 20-40 points of investment in fighters as long as it is backed up by ships. (In my last regional I ran Cienna Ree/Valen Rudor as my only squadrons and was able to hold a full strength Fireball (Rhymer/Dengar/Adv/4xFiresprays) in place and to kill half of it)
Heh. I run Ciena, Dengar and Valen as my anti-fighter compliment. Which theoretically would work if I could ever do more than a single damage at a time with any of them... My ability to fluff fighter rolls is terrifying.
On 02/08/2017 at 3:58 PM, ISD Avenger said:20-40? Wow, I wasn't expecting a viable force to be that low. But thanks for the input. Very interesting.
Again, keep in mind the caveat: the rest of the fleet has to support this light a fighter screen. I myself currently run 0 squadrons in my most common tournament list, but that is becoming rare to non-existent with the explosion in heavy bomber builds out there.
The important thing, imo, is to have a plan for defending yourself from bombers, regardless of what form that takes. And "just shoot the **** things with my blue-black AA, HAHA!!" doesn't count. Generally speaking what you'll see is that these kinds of light fighter fleets will be built to get in and kill things fast, rather than skirt the edges and win the battle of attrition. I use 4 MC30's to do this; PT uses a pair of ISDs.
What you can't do is give those bombers time, because the more time you give them, the longer they have to wear through whatever defenses you brought to get to your tasty ships.
A good rule of thumb is 60-70 points in dedicated squadron defense should get you by. In a pitched fighter battle against a full-strength wing, you'll likely lose the squadron game, but if you're taking 60 points in squadrons and he's taking 130, that's an extra 70 you have to spend on your ships. If you can make those points count, losing the fighter battle shouldn't matter.
Edited by Ardaedhel2 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:The important thing, imo, is to have a plan for defending yourself from bombers, regardless of what form that takes. And "just shoot the **** things with my blue-black AA, HAHA!!" doesn't count. Generally speaking what you'll see is that these kinds of light fighter fleets will be built to get in and kill things fast, rather than skirt the edges and win the battle of attrition. I use 4 MC30's to do this; PT uses a pair of ISDs.
Exactly. To be fair, in that particular game I didn't have ISDs and used Raider and kitted out Interdictor (Combat, Kallus, QLT) as ship AS support and was able to catch Fireball with the Raider (my opponent started attacking Raider but then was locked in place by my squads - Valen locked attacking 2 Firesprays and Cienna locked Dengar and remaining Firesprays, so I got 1 or 2 AS shots from the Raider and AS shot from Interdictor 2 rounds later). What matters about Cienna is that she's almost impossible to kill with squads that have a native 3-die attack or less and is immune to flak from 1-die ships.
Edited by pt1062 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:Again, keep in mind the caveat: the rest of the fleet has to support this light a fighter screen. I myself currently run 0 squadrons in my most common tournament list, but that is becoming rare to non-existent with the explosion in heavy bomber builds out there.
The important thing, imo, is to have a plan for defending yourself from bombers, regardless of what form that takes. And "just shoot the **** things with my blue-black AA, HAHA!!" doesn't count. Generally speaking what you'll see is that these kinds of light fighter fleets will be built to get in and kill things fast, rather than skirt the edges and win the battle of attrition. I use 4 MC30's to do this; PT uses a pair of ISDs.
What you can't do is give those bombers time, because the more time you give them, the longer they have to wear through whatever defenses you brought to get to your tasty ships.
A good rule of thumb is 60-70 points in dedicated squadron defense should get you by. In a pitched fighter battle against a full-strength wing, you'll likely lose the squadron game, but if you're taking 60 points in squadrons and he's taking 130, that's an extra 70 you have to spend on your ships. If you can make those points count, losing the fighter battle shouldn't matter.
in my last tournament, the guy who won had a 3 MC30s + Home One No squadron Rieekan list. Even if you took a ship down, he made sure the carriers would die and the bombers would become useless.
On 2/8/2017 at 3:58 PM, ISD Avenger said:20-40? Wow, I wasn't expecting a viable force to be that low. But thanks for the input. Very interesting.
Yep. It all depends on the support. The imperial matchup given is fantastic, and for the Rebels I've done Dutch/Wedge with Yavaaris and Rieekan as the commander. 40 points of squadron investment that shuts stuff down.
22 hours ago, herod1204 said:Heh. I run Ciena, Dengar and Valen as my anti-fighter compliment. Which theoretically would work if I could ever do more than a single damage at a time with any of them... My ability to fluff fighter rolls is terrifying.
I feel you, i often roll one hit die per 3 or 4 dice i roll :/ is it possible for me to hire someone to roll dice for me? Lol