Speaking as a guy who got way too into EA's Star Wars: Rebellion way back before the turn of the century, I'm an unabashed proponent of their ISD-countering rebel capital ship, the Bulwark Battlecruiser.

This ship is objectively ugly- but then, reality so often is. Consider the launch model of the Pontiac Aztek, for instance. Bulwarks are bristling with weaponry and have vast hangers; Wookieepedia uses the phrase "a veritable mobile fortress." I've seen them described here as "not worth using," and boy do I disagree.

So. Judge my creations:

That weird back-end in the art lent this design its greatest weaknesses- a dreadfully bad rear-arc and NO maneuverability until you fire up those massive engines-stalks.

I'm considering a pricey title that lets you fire out of three arcs but prevents you from resolving aim icons or critical hits if you do.

Thoughts?

Oh yeah, I'd totally support recanonizing this guy! and you have some great ideas there. I might throw one more die up front, probably a Black

Wait a second, that second image is one of my creations, I made that model back in my SWEAWFOC days

yes but let's not repeat the AFm2 mistake again. This one definitely calls for a redesign.

IN either format, the question becomes: "Why ever take a MonCal Cruiser again?"

13 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

IN either format, the question becomes: "Why ever take a MonCal Cruiser again?"

Opinion: This is the biggest pitfall of community designed ships. The people who create them do so because they really like the particular ship, but then they forget that the game must have balance or it becomes an auto include. Every ship in Armada has a negative side, so the creator of a new ship must keep that in mind when creating one.

You mentioned the negative of no clicks at speed one, which in my opinion is a slight negative, but what us the main drawback of this ship? As currently designed th only other drawback is a weak battery in the aft. This isn't a huge weakness, if I'm shooting more then once from the aft I'm in trouble.

Weak rear arcs are tough to ascribe a value to, anyway.

Sorry, but tangent time:

You know what made my day?

...

Reading a passage, in which someone truly, genuinely, implied that they were Jealous of the Insidious title...

It's true. Just something that has irked me about the move-shoot engine since day 1.

This should be a speed 2 ship. Was mentioned as a slow ship, similar to a Victory in that way, still should be 100+ points though, especially considering the shield and hull, tougher than and ISD, it shouldn't be....

The Bulwark was known for it's heavy firepower and armor. I like the 10 hull, i'd probably drop speed to 2 with no support team slot to give the MC80 the edge here. However i'd give the Bulwark the weapons team slot. Maybe 4 front 3 side and 2 for rear shields. Not as good as an MC-80 but just as strong as an ISD.

So... you want to create a ship that can go up to Fighter 7 with boosted comms (Squad 5, Exp Hangar, Token). Not even ISDs can do that, and they're the closest things to supercarriers we have in this game. MC80s are closer, but Fighter 7? At least you didn't give it a weapons team... but with that battery?

What follows is my unsolicited commentary if you choose to take it:

• I'd concur with others; Drop this down to speed 2 and take away the support team. VSDs have long lived in this hole of working only defensively... Rebels for their size class can match (or in many cases outrun) their Imperial counterparts. Do something different by forcing the Bulwark into defensive play. If you're making it a space tank, it shouldn't go fast. You could make it better than the VSD by giving it 'I' at all parts of the chart.
• If this is supposed to be the Rebel opposite of the ISD, give the Bulwark II blue-black on the AA. You pick the MK-III if you want range, the MK-II if you want a brawler like the ISD split versions.
• Drop Squadron rating on the MK-III down to 4, keeping the double offensive slots, which the Rebels don't have access to. If you go Fighter 5 you'll have to sacrifice something good, else the ship is too perfect.
• Engineering 3 is interesting, but I think you can bring this up to Engineering 4. No reason not to, if this is a big ship.

This would go a ways to making the ship feel better and actually have more emphasized character. It won't synergize well with a lot of other things, which is a problem the Rebels have as a whole. If the idea is to create a slow-moving impenetrable space brick... well, there ya go. Test what would happen if an initiative-carrying Demolisher rushes into close range and kicks the Bulkwark hard. If it survived well enough to fire back and destroy the Demolisher, you're on to something. Then the obvious counter play becomes Rhymer or plinking at it from long range to wear it down. This ship only has two reds on each facing with the batteries... ISD-IIs are going to get some nice advantages in ranged exchanges.

The gradual increase of firepower on the II is interesting. I wonder how that plays.

I took the Bulwark to be more of a counter to the SSD (if the PC game is to be used a reference. Which I also loved).

So maybe (thematically) it needs more guns?, to differentiate from mon cal cruisers. I'll leave others to work out how this affects point/fleet sizes etc.

Maybe the ship could be 'penalised' with a very limited upgrade slot allowance to simulate high maintenance perhaps?

I can only lol at this, many of you guys were posting on the venator class thread brainstorming cool ideas and by the end of the thread resulting on a complete substitute of the Vclass destroyer and possibly the ISDI as well.

So funny comming in this thread and all I read is: this is so OP, it needs weaknesses, it will substitute the MC80 and blah blah blah.
Seriously?

9 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

IN either format, the question becomes: "Why ever take a MonCal Cruiser again?"

Or really, why ever play Imperials?

Keep the repair three it is consistent with the lore that these beast were nightmares to repair.

A ship that equip ET to go speed 4...to unload 12 dice while dbl-arcing...or maybe 14 with Exp Launchers and XI7s? And who needs GT when you can roll LS with this. Plus it's the most defensible ship to date.

10 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

IN either format, the question becomes: "Why ever take a MonCal Cruiser again?"

Could always make the weakness something to do with the arcs. Like taking a victory's front arc and using it as the rear arc.

Just a thought

Titles:

Dustbuster &

Dirt Devil

I too would love to see this ship, eventually. Keep in mind this ship is huge. It is not very long at 'only' 1.5x an ISD, but it is like 10 times as high and twice as wide. In the Rebellion game where it made its introduction it was the counter to the SSD.

iirc the original description also mentioned it was plagued by reliability issues.

As for why take MC cruisers when you can have a Bulwark -> same reason why introducing a SSD won't kill the use of ISD's: point cost.

10 minutes ago, Lord Tareq said:

I too would love to see this ship, eventually. Keep in mind this ship is huge. It is not very long at 'only' 1.5x an ISD, but it is like 10 times as high and twice as wide. In the Rebellion game where it made its introduction it was the counter to the SSD.

iirc the original description also mentioned it was plagued by reliability issues.

As for why take MC cruisers when you can have a Bulwark -> same reason why introducing a SSD won't kill the use of ISD's: point cost.

Except these are ISD-costed...

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE homebrew, but it has to try to fit into the existing framework.

Ship is ridiculous for its points cost.

Virtually every upgrade you could desire, double brace, massive hull and shields and huge dice pools, all for cheaper than an ISD, no wonder you love them.

I want this ship for Sato. Turbolaser, ordnance and ion slot? XI7, APT and LS!

Drop support team on both. Drop ion slot on MKII. Drop 1 offensive retrofit on MKIII. Make it speed 2.

7 minutes ago, TheEasternKing said:

Ship is ridiculous for its points cost.

Virtually every upgrade you could desire, double brace, massive hull and shields and huge dice pools, all for cheaper than an ISD, no wonder you love them.

Its obviously a ship to flank, maybe some imperials would enjoy the change on the navigation approach, rather than going straight forward and roll dices. Is not cheaper than ISD, it cost the same fleet points for an ISDI and 5 points more expensive than the ISDII. It also has less hull. And globally only 1 more shield, that feels pretty useless with only 1 redirect token. Also has the engineering value of an average medium ship, 1 less than the ISD. Nothing to go mad about.

Rebles are lacking exactly this kind of ship. For those who complain about the framework.

I could never spend so many points on something so ugly.

I think the mark II should be command 3, squadron 3, engineering 4. The Mark III can be Command 3, Squadron 4, Engineering 3.

No ordnance slot, but weapons team to add OE to aid black dice.

Mk II 7 front dice-4 blue and 3 red, 5 side dice-3 blue, 2 red and 2 rear dice-2 blue

Mk III can have 4 red/3blue front , 2 red, 1 blue, 2 black sides and 1 red/1blue rear