Ok, so my group us using a HWK-290 as its transport, and when looking at it, at first glance it's a great ship once you add a gun or two! But holy cow, does it seem to have an unrealistic hull and strain. 18 hull t. for a silhouette 3 ship, and 18 strain t. just seem too much.

I havent found any other sil 3 ships with that high of either hull or strain, and it even outclasses sil 4, especially when it comes to strain threshold.

My question is this, is there something Im missing? Did the person that wrote that Hwk-290 statistics just have a mad hard-on for the ship and wanted it to be awesome? Is there errata somewhere I dont know about? I know that the consistency of ship-statistics with ffg games is maddening, but this just seems ridiculous.

It's on the verY edge of being a sil4 ship. It's concept is a high-output courier ship. And because it's unarmed coming from the factory assembly it's extra tough to withstand some pirate attacks, before fleeing.

If you want to balance it out a bit, think about raising the fuel cost, because that thing is burning fuel like none's business. That's what I do about that ship.

It just such a good mini-shuttle.

Though it is not the only sil 3 party ship, the Aka'jor can take even a 5th party member via the astromech socket:

Aka'jor shuttle: Silhouette 3, Speed 4, Handling +1. Fore and Aft shield of 1 with 4 armor, HT 25, SS 15
Hyperdrive: 2, No navicomp, Astromech slot
Sensor: Long
1 pilot, 1 co-pilot
Encum: 75
2 prisoners
135,000 (R)/6
Hard Points: 1
S-Foiled Twin-Laser-Cannons and Proton Torpedo launcher.

If the hardpoints are really just one or if parts of the weapons or the astromech socket are aftermarket mods is unknown, the thing is from "Friends like these" and they call it already "modified" shuttle.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aka'jor-class_shuttle

4 hours ago, Spice Junkee said:

My question is this, is there something Im missing? Did the person that wrote that Hwk-290 statistics just have a mad hard-on for the ship and wanted it to be awesome?

Ain't got no guns on it.

With 5 hardpoints that hardly matters.

10 minutes ago, Plan b said:

With 5 hardpoints that hardly matters.

Except that guns aren't cheap. FFG has made it very clear that they consider cost a perfectly reasonable way to balance things.

45 minutes ago, Plan b said:

With 5 hardpoints that hardly matters.

It got no silhouette reducing abilities either.

It has very low armor.

It is barely fast enough for GtA.

It has no astromech socket.

Take the X-Wing by comparison: It has 1 HP, lower HT and SS, but comes with a quad-laser cannon, twin protons, an astromech socket and one speed and armor extra. This adds up to 7 hp worth of equipment in an X-Wing, while the HWK-290 has just his 5 hp and a really great HT and SS value to compensate. If you add the same weapons you are left still with a ship which still has problems with GtA against x-wings with High-Output Ions, has less armor or is easier to hit and detect than the x-wing, etc

All for benefit of having 8 HT more and maybe taking the quad-medium-lasers as turret. Depending on other factors I would count his on average taking one shot more. Thanks to his higher armor the X-Wing with PC pilot and astromech the X-Wing should usually blow up after two TIE-Fighter shots hitting him, meanwhile the HWK-290 goes down after three shots (assuming two hits per shot). But the X-Wing has an easier time with GtA. Second big benefit is the extra SS on the HWK. So yeah, the hwk is great, but it has its downsides as well and it is not that far off the curve. Now that MandalMotors shuttle still looks way better. That armor, a riggers dream.

There was a thread around here about modding a HWK-290 to be a capable starfighter, and while it looked promising, the real boon in my mind is the passenger capacity. It's not a starfighter, but it can play one on TV, all while having a crew of 3 and room for some crates of spice. Just having a co-pilot and an astromech socket in a ship this size radically increases the ability of the vessel. Imagine having someone barking fire control orders while they're at it. It fits a niche, albeit one that not everyone needs to have filled.

Plus there's the problem of it being so darn small. Have a crew more than 4? Need to evacuate that exploding ship and rescue orphans? You're probably out of luck.

You can store up to 25 of them in medium specimen containers.

I . . . um. You make a good point.

The orphans attacked me!

Because of our group size the HWK-290 has never been up for consideration, so I had to take a hard look at it now.

The stats don't seem unreasonable to me. Comparing size and scale, she's easily a Sil 3 ship and with no weapons, you are going to spend a lot of HP on weapons if you hope to be able to go toe to toe with another ship. And its small size will limit what you can mount on this chassis too.

Looking at this ship I expect it to be kinda nimble, but not enough to out turn a Tie/ln or an X-wing, so the handling seems realistic too.

The SS and Hull seems okay too. It's bulkier and looks more durable than the X-Wing, so I expect that it can soak up a bit more punishment.

So no. I don't think its a mistake.

On 2/23/2017 at 3:13 AM, SEApocalypse said:

It just such a good mini-shuttle.

Though it is not the only sil 3 party ship, the Aka'jor can take even a 5th party member via the astromech socket:

Aka'jor shuttle: Silhouette 3, Speed 4, Handling +1. Fore and Aft shield of 1 with 4 armor, HT 25, SS 15
Hyperdrive: 2, No navicomp, Astromech slot
Sensor: Long
1 pilot, 1 co-pilot
Encum: 75
2 prisoners
135,000 (R)/6
Hard Points: 1
S-Foiled Twin-Laser-Cannons and Proton Torpedo launcher.

If the hardpoints are really just one or if parts of the weapons or the astromech socket are aftermarket mods is unknown, the thing is from "Friends like these" and they call it already "modified" shuttle.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aka'jor-class_shuttle

What book is this from?

Friends Like These

Friends like these.

The H-wing from Stay on Target can also take 4 PC's and is sil 3, it's only speed 3, but it comes up 2/1 defense and armor 4, and it has 3 weapon systems stock (turret mounted medium laser cannon, twin light ion cannons, and proton torpedos) and a HP to add one more if wanted, it also has a class 1 hyperdrive.

I agree that it is not too unbalanced. The group I GM for has taken a different approach with it, to kind of show case the versatility here. They scrapped the Cargo Capacity and instead installed seating for up to 12 boarding party members. They now use it as a short range assault transport that launches with a boarding team from their main ship (was a Gozanti Transport, is now a CR-90 Corvette). With 2 weapon emplacements and a Stinger Boarding Tube, it suits that role perfectly, given that their main ship does the majority of the fighting. Given an example deck plan, this "retro-fit" is not infeasible.

http://starwars-exodus.wikia.com/wiki/HWK-290

If money is not an object and pilot skill being equal, a deck out HWK-290 is far superior than any silouette 3 currently in the game. Arguably the mandalorian heavy star fighter is number two.

27 minutes ago, Arrakus said:

If money is not an object and pilot skill being equal, a deck out HWK-290 is far superior than any silouette 3 currently in the game. Arguably the mandalorian heavy star fighter is number two.

Show us. I mean really, show us what will make it better than that Mandalorian shuttle, keeping in mind it will take 4 hard points just to gain a set of forward guns, a torpedo launcher, and an astromech socket. What you have left is one slot-which the shuttle can match--and no way of getting Long range sensors or Armor 4.

So this is has been proven before. Numerous times. By a few different posters. Just search the forums. Really search. And not just throw post saying "prove it".

I am speaking to just silouette 3 ships.

1 minute ago, Arrakus said:

So this is has been proven before. Numerous times. By a few different posters. Just search the forums. Really search. And not just throw post saying "prove it".

Those don't compare it with the Mandalorian shuttle since it wasn't out at the time, so...

Prove it.

1 minute ago, HappyDaze said:

Those don't compare it with the Mandalorian shuttle since it wasn't out at the time, so...

Prove it.

ROFL. Touché!

hwl- 290: ECM, Nightshadow, Astromech, sil 0 reached, add quad-mediums and it becomes interesting, sil 0 vs sil 1 for firing is a small advantage, but not really enough to compensate for the torpedo launcher. Might be still better against bigger, but unskilled minion groups.

Now High-output ion turbine, quad-torpedo launchers, quad-medium lasers, astromech might be have an have an easier time to control the fight with GtA and hits so hard that winning initiative against most targets should be enough already and even losing initiative would be fine if you can survive the first volley, which you may or may not against Kad Solus's ship.

Either way, the ships are rather close imho.

17 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Those don't compare it with the Mandalorian shuttle since it wasn't out at the time, so...

Prove it.

Prove that it doesn't match up.

Seewhatididthere.

Look I'm not going dance this game. Nor am I going to go do the works for others. Everyone here are highly capable individuals with the same access to the same information.