5 hours ago, Punning Pundit said:It would not shock me if he- like many of the people who work on the show Rebels- play X-Wing.
Or at least play the FFG Star Wars RPG. To be honest, when I'm watching an episode of Rebels, it feels like I'm watching a group of people playing a Star Wars RPG.
15 minutes ago, Shenannigan said:
Yep, definitely a raider.
That makes me IMMEASURABLY more confident that the story group is actually doing its job.
7 hours ago, weisguy119 said:
Wow!! That actually looks really good.
7 hours ago, LunarSol said:I'm fond of the Raider but the in game model is a little small. The Gozanti winds up looking larger.
In game model raider is at half scale much like the CR-90
The Gozanti is at the proper 1/270 scale
Well, the CR90 scale is "off" now anyway, I'm pretty sure it was 150m when FFG made the model, but now the official canon figure is 120 m.
1 hour ago, Forgottenlore said:Wow!! That actually looks really good.
Right? I'm not one for doing mods to anything in this game (I've never even bothered to repaint anything), but I'd legit buy a Raider on eBay for the parts for that.
Having seen it in motion, now I really, really, really want to see a Raider in a movie.
Y'know, when you think about the size of the engine in relation to the body, plus the sheer number of guns/tubes it's bristling with, it's not really a shock those panels are on it at all. Just, y'know, before someone starts moaning about the panels again...
34 minutes ago, Sithborg said:Having seen it in motion, now I really, really, really want to see a Raider in a movie.
Honestly, if you have a good TV/Monitor, if the BF2 game has some solid pre-rendered scenes it looks like some of those shots of it will be the same quality as if it was in a film.
It'll be interesting to see though if there's more anthology works around the time of the GCW if raider models start appearing in the background though.
24 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:Honestly, if you have a good TV/Monitor, if the BF2 game has some solid pre-rendered scenes it looks like some of those shots of it will be the same quality as if it was in a film.
It'll be interesting to see though if there's more anthology works around the time of the GCW if raider models start appearing in the background though.
The nice thing about the BF2 render is that it fixes the real problem with the FFG model.
Not that the panels aren't ridiculous, but whatever - those are forgivable, I guess. The problem is, as a ship, no possible deck plan for it makes sense. It's FAR too 'short', especially around its edges, for anything like a meaningful deck that humans could walk around in. And, similarly, the bridge structure is oddly shaped for the FFG model.
What we've seen of the BF2 render, though...seems like they addressed those issues. (Actually, watching it a few more times - dayum...that BF2 model is AMAZINGLY awesome...love that it seems to give the ship a 'blocky' and square-ish hull, which totally makes sense for a warship of this size, that then just has the problematic pointy-shape wrapping over it)
On 11/04/2017 at 7:58 PM, UnitOmega said:no ventral coverage and no aft coverage
Absolutely a design flaw. Given it's so called design role - anti-fighter - in X-Wing and even Armada (where it sports more anti-fighter weaponry) I find it quite poor for the cost of fielding it. For the same cost of a basic Raider you (and presumably the Empire) could field four souped up TIE Advanced or three x7 Defenders as a hyperdrive equipped task force.
Could be just me but I find the Gozanti is far better in this role in X-Wing with access to a turret and especially the ability to pop fighters out. It's also a better fit for the Empire being a carrier.
However as a model the Raider is awesome. 
7 hours ago, Sasajak said:Absolutely a design flaw. Given it's so called design roll - anti-fighter - in X-Wing and even Armada (where it sports more anti-fighter weaponry) I find it quite poor for the cost of fielding it. For the same cost of a basic Raider you (and presumably the Empire) could field four souped up TIE Advanced or three x7 Defenders as a hyperdrive equipped task force.
Could be just me but I find the Gozanti is far better in this role in X-Wing with access to a turret and especially the ability to pop fighters out. It's also a better fit for the Empire being a carrier.
However as a model the Raider is awesome.
I think the designated role is wrong. Anti-starfighter does not seem to be it's strong point. However, the engine power and forward directed firepower make it a better platform as a customs corvette to deal with smugglers and gun runners. It's much better suited for chasing down freighters than fighter squadrons.
11 hours ago, Wilhelm Screamer said:In game model raider is at half scale much like the CR-90
The Gozanti is at the proper 1/270 scale
I know, which is why I said my problem with it is that the in game model is too small. I get that the CR90 is too small as well, but it doesn't look nearly as out of place next to the Rebel Transport as the Raider does next to the Gozanti.
Well, the issue is a bit that FFG has marketed it as an anti-fighter corvette, and thus quite a bit of the lore they wrote and LFL approved for it is based around it being a design to hunt fighters. In reality, it's a versatile design, the heavy laser cannons on the dorsal are supposed to be accurized so they're pretty effective at slotting snub-fighters, they just don't have 360 coverage and it has no ventral guns. It has a pair of turbolasers on the front which give it decent anti-ship punching power, and in an anti-ship "fast attack" configuration it has ion cannons also, or an anti-fighter configuration it can be said to have cluster missiles. But it's not super optimal for either - it makes is a bit weird given the push in the minis games that it's this solo or with expensive escort patrol ship hunting fighters. In Age of Rebellion it appears a little better - they play escorts to an outdated Gladiator in the Outer Rim in their anti-ship configuration.
Frankly, why is anyone surprised Zahn named dropped the Raider?
He has a history of reaching for the games to bring in more information - he tapped the old d6 RPG for information when he wrote the Thrawn Trilogy in the first place.
My favorite thing about the new shot is that it proves my point that the Raider's top line is VERTICAL, not canted downward, as the person trying to make a deck plan insisted on. That means its deck plan goes something like:
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Where the = is the massive engine. This makes perfect sense to me. Deck 1 is the bridge. Deck 2 is mess/medical - narrower than the deck below. Deck 3 is storage/sleeping quarters/gun bays - because you've got a minimal complement you want your crew as close to the guns as possible in case of battle stations. Decks 4 and 5 are engineering.
As far as its anti-fighter role... it's meant to be close support, like a (modern) destroyer escorting a carrier. That means its first job is, really, decoy. If incoming fighters concentrate on it, they're not spending torpedoes on the ship that actually matters; if they go past it to the Star Destroyer, it's free to roll and present its top guns.
I do kinda wish its firing arcs didn't suck in X-Wing, but I guess they wanted to make a big ship that cared about where its nose was pointing.
4 hours ago, UnitOmega said:Well, the issue is a bit that FFG has marketed it as an anti-fighter corvette, and thus quite a bit of the lore they wrote and LFL approved for it is based around it being a design to hunt fighters. In reality, it's a versatile design, the heavy laser cannons on the dorsal are supposed to be accurized so they're pretty effective at slotting snub-fighters, they just don't have 360 coverage and it has no ventral guns. It has a pair of turbolasers on the front which give it decent anti-ship punching power, and in an anti-ship "fast attack" configuration it has ion cannons also, or an anti-fighter configuration it can be said to have cluster missiles. But it's not super optimal for either - it makes is a bit weird given the push in the minis games that it's this solo or with expensive escort patrol ship hunting fighters. In Age of Rebellion it appears a little better - they play escorts to an outdated Gladiator in the Outer Rim in their anti-ship configuration.
Anti-something irl doesn't mean the invulnerable hard counters that video games would have us believe.
Destroyers are often kitted to be anti-submarine or anti-fighter; this doesn't mean that submarines or fighters can't destroy them if deployed in groups. What it mean is that the destroyer will likely be able to destroy an infinite amount of single fighters or lone subs without taking significant damage, and can contribute well to a close maneuver if needed. A fighter costs less than a destroyer or missile frigate, but the presence of a missile frigate or destroyer severely makes it impossible to conduct a mission without taking fighter casualties.
The Raider doesn't need to take on entire flight groups alone to be a good anti-fighter ship. In a real military situation most ships and weapons don't pay for themselves in a single battle, and many are destroyed without paying for themselves. To use the Raider best (and I've said this before) you need to think like a military strategist and be mean with it.
A small rebel outpost has two or three two-fighter patrol teams around it: a Raider would be perfectly capable of moving from team to team, destroying each pair without sustaining more than shield damage in each engagement and then moving in on the base or jumping away before the main squadrons could attack it. A group of TIE fighters might try the same thing, but they run the risk of being whittled down one ship at a time. Attacking six or seven fighters head-on would be a waste of resources; it's just that since X-Wing is all about equally-balanced dogfights that the Raider seems underpowered. Imagine for a second that you were facing a Raider: you can have as many small ships as you like, but they come on the board two at a time, and only one pair every two turns. How long would it take for you to win?
It is probably capable of chasing down transports and corvettes as well, the small ones that slip by Star Destroyers; but in the end it is meant to beat the Rebels at their own game by hunting down small strike teams and performing hit-and-run raids.
That's my theory anyway.
25 minutes ago, iamfanboy said:Frankly, why is anyone surprised Zahn named dropped the Raider?
He has a history of reaching for the games to bring in more information - he tapped the old d6 RPG for information when he wrote the Thrawn Trilogy in the first place.
My favorite thing about the new shot is that it proves my point that the Raider's top line is VERTICAL, not canted downward, as the person trying to make a deck plan insisted on. That means its deck plan goes something like:
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--------------------------------------
=================--------
=================---
Where the = is the massive engine. This makes perfect sense to me. Deck 1 is the bridge. Deck 2 is mess/medical - narrower than the deck below. Deck 3 is storage/sleeping quarters/gun bays - because you've got a minimal complement you want your crew as close to the guns as possible in case of battle stations. Decks 4 and 5 are engineering.
As far as its anti-fighter role... it's meant to be close support, like a (modern) destroyer escorting a carrier. That means its first job is, really, decoy. If incoming fighters concentrate on it, they're not spending torpedoes on the ship that actually matters; if they go past it to the Star Destroyer, it's free to roll and present its top guns.
I do kinda wish its firing arcs didn't suck in X-Wing, but I guess they wanted to make a big ship that cared about where its nose was pointing.
It's a trick of perspective and camera angle.
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You'll see. Vindication is coming. 
Also when you decide to draw up your own deck plan buster, you can make the decks however you like. I already said you could use the tileset if you liked; so go make it already! You only need MS paint!
43 minutes ago, iamfanboy said:Frankly, why is anyone surprised Zahn named dropped the Raider?
He has a history of reaching for the games to bring in more information - he tapped the old d6 RPG for information when he wrote the Thrawn Trilogy in the first place.
Well... When he was contracted to write Heir Lucasfilm sent him a big box of reference and gaming books and said "here, use these".
23 minutes ago, OneKelvin said:It's a trick of perspective and camera angle.
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You'll see. Vindication is coming.
Also when you decide to draw up your own deck plan buster, you can make the decks however you like. I already said you could use the tileset if you liked; so go make it already! You only need MS paint!
The problem is that I have a huge tray full of Malifaux minis to paint on commission and I'm far more interested in that than spending time making a deck plan that I'll personally never use. I had my fill of Star Wars RPG'ing back in the '90s, and I actually, honestly, HATE the FFG game.
8 hours ago, LagJanson said:I think the designated role is wrong. Anti-starfighter does not seem to be it's strong point. However, the engine power and forward directed firepower make it a better platform as a customs corvette to deal with smugglers and gun runners. It's much better suited for chasing down freighters than fighter squadrons.
Sounds like anti-straship to me... 
Had an interesting thought about the solar panels. They could serve another purpose when flying into a swarm of Rebel ships who rather like to pop off salvos of warheads. If those torpedoes or missiles impact on one of those panels, they're likely to detonate on the panel itself and not the main hull. Even concussion missiles might be fooled into thinking that it had punctured the primary hull and that the gap it was in was a deck full of fleshy crew and delicate systems. In other words they multitask as a secondary hull or RPG nets.
As for the lack of rear weaponry. I'd hazard that the Empire doesn't believe that there should be anything still alive once a strike group has passed through an area. Considering the Empire's firepower vs. that of their usual opponents, that isn't an unreasonable assumption and in line with Imperial arrogance. Anything that is agile enough to get into that blind spot would be set upon by the fighter escort and 4 TIE Advanceds are going to be a downer for any fighter group without a giant spearhead slinging out quad lasers and missiles.
As for deck plans, the GR-75 manages to have room for a decent sized bridge crew despite the tiny blip that is the command tower. I'd imagine a lot of the Raider's slanted sides make room for ordnance and retractable turrets. The Raider in the trailer has nothing sticking out of it unlike the FFG model and the design of those turrets points heavily towards retracting into the hull. Given that the Falcon's turrets allow folks to effectively function in positions perpendicular to the ship's center of gravity, it makes little sense to increase the profile of the ship by bulking out the edges.
Edited by flyboymb1 hour ago, flyboymb said:Had an interesting thought about the solar panels. They could serve another purpose when flying into a swarm of Rebel ships who rather like to pop off salvos of warheads. If those torpedoes or missiles impact on one of those panels, they're likely to detonate on the panel itself and not the main hull. Even concussion missiles might be fooled into thinking that it had punctured the primary hull and that the gap it was in was a deck full of fleshy crew and delicate systems. In other words they multitask as a secondary hull or RPG nets.
As for the lack of rear weaponry. I'd hazard that the Empire doesn't believe that there should be anything still alive once a strike group has passed through an area. Considering the Empire's firepower vs. that of their usual opponents, that isn't an unreasonable assumption and in line with Imperial arrogance. Anything that is agile enough to get into that blind spot would be set upon by the fighter escort and 4 TIE Advanceds are going to be a downer for any fighter group without a giant spearhead slinging out quad lasers and missiles.
As for deck plans, the GR-75 manages to have room for a decent sized bridge crew despite the tiny blip that is the command tower. I'd imagine a lot of the Raider's slanted sides make room for ordnance and retractable turrets. The Raider in the trailer has nothing sticking out of it unlike the FFG model and the design of those turrets points heavily towards retracting into the hull. Given that the Falcon's turrets allow folks to effectively function in positions perpendicular to the ship's center of gravity, it makes little sense to increase the profile of the ship by bulking out the edges.
Whipple Shields. That is the term for the thing you have described.
2 hours ago, iamfanboy said:The problem is that I have a huge tray full of Malifaux minis to paint on commission and I'm far more interested in that than spending time making a deck plan that I'll personally never use. I had my fill of Star Wars RPG'ing back in the '90s, and I actually, honestly, HATE the FFG game.
Come now.
This is all you need to play Malifaux:
Turn, flip, chainshot snipers, dogpile objective, turn, flip, chainshot snipers.
On 4/11/2017 at 1:18 AM, banjobenito said:Still don't get the Raider hate from a lot of people. I love both the concept and the design!
Design is kinda lazy (everything's a wedge!), and the giant panels are weird-looking and seem to be somewhat detrimental to weapon firing arcs and needlessly exposed to damage. Why does such a large craft need them?
3 hours ago, OneKelvin said:Whipple Shields. That is the term for the thing you have described.
Come now.
This is all you need to play Malifaux:
Turn, flip, chainshot snipers, dogpile objective, turn, flip, chainshot snipers.
it's not about merely PLAYING the game, (and why would I play the filthy Guild oppressors anyway?) it's about being able to paint beautiful minis like this one:
And besides which, you name-dropped the wrong Master: Colette is all you need to play and win.
4 hours ago, VaeVictis said:Design is kinda lazy (everything's a wedge!), and the giant panels are weird-looking and seem to be somewhat detrimental to weapon firing arcs and needlessly exposed to damage. Why does such a large craft need them?
I don't know... The ship looks pretty great in action here, if you ask me. Compact, scary, dangerous. Oh, and in the next Battlefront game!! 
Also, I don't think the aesthetic would be helped by plucking the ship's wings off. They serve a purpose...