Long Range Missile System idea!

By Muelmuel, in Star Wars: Armada

Looking at the squad stands I think there is avenue for a long range guided missile component for this game!

Missile salvo:

Missile mini models on squad stands, representing a bunch of guided missiles being released. When deployed, place a lock-on marker on the defending ship and corresponding marker in the missile stand(redundant number tokens are very useful here), and each health on the stand represents the damage it can do to the enemy ship. It can move ? distance during the squadron phase. It can only damage the ship it is targeting, and must touch any hull zone to do damage equal to its remaining health to that hull zone, then removed from play. Squads and ships can shoot up these missiles using their as fire. It cannot be engaged by squads. It has one brace token. Everything else it behaves like a squad.

Guided missile system:

(Wep teams and ordnance slot dual card)

While attacking a ship at any range, you cannot have any black dice in your attack pool, and you may exhaust this card to deploy a missile salvo targeting the defender, with health equal to the number of black dice in your attacking hull zone, next to and within your attacking hull arc.

Points 7

Possibility for the broadside cruiser too?

Might try this in a casual game. What do you think? What are good tweaks? :)

Edited by Muelmuel

And maybe:

Guidance systems officer:

For each missile salvo you deploy, you may add a brace token to it.(or swap for a scatter?)

Points 3

Edited by Muelmuel

Cool idea, heavily disbalanced. There is only one rebel ship that could use those (cheap mc30). While there are 4 imperial ships that could make use of them. VclassI, both versions of gladiator, and RaiderI.

Seriously, we need more rebel players, come the light side guys, we may have not cookies, but we have wookies.

Battle Fleet Gothic had something similar. Any BFG players (past or present) care to comment?

Reminds me on Battlestar Galactica. I saw a lets play video, where they did the same with the missiles.

2 hours ago, xerpo said:

Cool idea, heavily disbalanced. There is only one rebel ship that could use those (cheap mc30). While there are 4 imperial ships that could make use of them. VclassI, both versions of gladiator, and RaiderI.

Seriously, we need more rebel players, come the light side guys, we may have not cookies, but we have wookies.

Rebels are mostly long range flankers/snipers already though. I thought of counting red dice for salvos but then ackbar might be a beast. Also I chose to fill wep teams and ordnance slots becoz those seem the most obvious to fill, and prevents GT from being used. That can change though. Suggestions? :)

Edited by Muelmuel
3 hours ago, Flengin said:

Battle Fleet Gothic had something similar. Any BFG players (past or present) care to comment?

Yeah, BFG worked like that.

You could fire a torpedo spread that was represented by a small template - the size of which depended on the number of torpedoes a ship could fire. These usually moved in a straight line (although guided ones were introduced in expansions).

They were often used earlier in a game to break up incoming formations as your opponent had a choice of flying through them (a valid tactic if your armour was good enough) or maneuvering around them as ships moved before ordnance.

The counters to them were:

  1. Just hit them and deal with it
  2. Fighter screen to shoot them down (e.g. Starbuck in BSG shooting down incoming nukes)
  3. Last ditch defense turrets (e.g. PDCs in The Expanse)
  4. Use a light ship as a sandbag to take the hits :)
2 hours ago, Muelmuel said:

Rebels are mostly long range flankers/snipers already though. I thought of counting red dice for salvos but then ackbar might be a beast. Also I chose to fill wep teams and ordnance slots becoz those seem the most obvious to fill, and prevents GT from being used. That can change though. Suggestions? :)

Well raiders capable of firing two of those at long range is pretty insane. Not to mention a demolisher sidehull... I think it should be an upgrade to every ship (but flotillas) and restricted to one use per game, or maybe based on Command capabilities to balance multiple ships lists so an ISD could still fire 3 missiles per game. Maybe also added in a new command, "fire missile" wich the token would allow you to speed up the missile or deploy a lesser version of the missile or something like that.

Liked the way it would be treated as fighter, they could have their own bases and miniatures representing multiple missiles with their own hp dial.
Also maybe even have their own phase, if not "commanded" previously, right after the squadron phase.

Edited by xerpo
14 minutes ago, xerpo said:

Well raiders capable of firing two of those at long range is pretty insane. Not to mention a demolisher sidehull... I think it should be an upgrade to every ship (but flotillas) and restricted to one use per game, or maybe based on Command capabilities to balance multiple ships lists so an ISD could still fire 3 missiles per game. Maybe also added in a new command, "fire missile" wich the token would allow you to speed up the missile or deploy a lesser version of the missile or something like that.

Liked the way it would be treated as fighter, they could have their own bases and miniatures representing multiple missiles with their own hp dial.

Well no, I wrote the upgrade card to read "at any range", but the dice pool rule still applies(if you don't have dice to hit them at that range, you can't hit them), so raiders can only fire missile salvo stands at medium range. GladII will be a beast though, since the side arcs have a red. However even with the ability to fire at long range the trade-off is that the damage is not immediate(your enemy still flies and can hurt you), can be shot down by as fire(though that is trade-off for the opponent's attacks too), and you are less potent at close range(no OE and ord-special-crit cards means you can't push for higher damage). A lot of it has to do with the speed at which it can fly(hence I put a ? there as I haven't figured what speed to give it). Maybe i should edit the salvo from doing immediate damage to rolling one black die for each remaining health it has when it contacts the defender?(still worth an expectation of 1 damage each, but higher variability)?

You make a point about a ship being able to drop two stands on one turn though. That might clog the game. What if I made the card an exhaust to proc?(once a turn action)

Or change the whole upgrade to be a one time discard?

Edited by Muelmuel

These rules sound like a cross between BFG torpedoes and SFB drones. I would make the warhead/hit point strength a set value rather than depending on the black dice battery. A six point version has warhead/hits of 6 and costs 6 points and is available to large or medium ships. A 3 point version is available to all ship sizes. They could occupy a slot on the ship or could be purchased from the 134 squadron points.

Launch in the game from outside long range. Possibly using a squadron command. This means the missiles must spend a turn or more on the board able to be mitigated, otherwise people would just wait till last activation at close range then pop the missiles for guaranteed damage.

As no dice are rolled for them to hit I presume the target could brace, scatter,contain or redirect them.

Make the missiles fly at speed 2 or 3 directly towards any point on the target's base. This lets you lead a target slightly by aiming for the front corner in the anticipated direction of travel.

Edited by Mad Cat

So basically is giving a short range based ship long range capabilites. Wich is awesome for imperials but meh for rebels. If its instead a thing that every ship can do then we have something. If not its just an insane boost to imperial fleets.

6 minutes ago, Mad Cat said:

could be purchased from the 134 squadron points

Thats actually a good idea

I think Leviathans has the mechanics you want. Every ship with torpedoes declared targets. You left a marker at launch and at end points. After everybody moved, you looked down the direct line the torps would travel and they automatically hit the first ship (friend or enemy) in that path.

They were really powerful but clumsy weapons. More useful for forcing awkward movements on players than doing damage

this weapons system belongs in the Honor Harrington universe not Star wars. :)

16 hours ago, xerpo said:

Cool idea, heavily disbalanced. There is only one rebel ship that could use those (cheap mc30). While there are 4 imperial ships that could make use of them. VclassI, both versions of gladiator, and RaiderI.

Seriously, we need more rebel players, come the light side guys, we may have not cookies, but we have wookies.

Pfft we'll use our wookies to go steal the Imp's cookies :D

I got an idea. A card that allows you to fire 3 black dice at long range (IE only at long range not medium or short.) The kick is that you are provided a token similar to the grav well tokens to place. You can only attack targets at close range of the token. You can either move the token or attack with the black dice. You can only fire from your front arc and must have line of sight on the target etc and obstructions count. It would be an ordnance upgrade so no APTs or ACMs.

I like the long range ordnance idea as it promotes using old ships in an entirely different way.

How about;

Diamond Boron Missiles (ordnance): You can not use your black dice armament when attacking ships. When declaring an attack from a hull zone, for each black dice in that hull's armament, place a barrage token at medium to long range within your firing arc set to the inactive side. Every time a ship or squadron ends its movement within range 1 of an active barrage token deal it 1 damage. During the clean up phase, remove all active barrage tokens then flip each inactive barrage token to its active side.

Naturally this is strong against large and slow ships and can break up fighter formations.

For guided missiles, how about a system where you place a Missile Target token at range 5 in addition to the Missile 'squadron'. On your activation you may move the target distance 1 from where it was, but remaining at range 5. The 'Squadron' must move speed 2-3 directly towards the target during the end phase, and detonates if it overlaps a ship or the target. This way the trajectory of the missile can be modified, but is limited and it can't do bizarre things like turn on a dime.

On ‎4‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 9:52 PM, Mad Cat said:

These rules sound like a cross between BFG torpedoes and SFB drones. I would make the warhead/hit point strength a set value rather than depending on the black dice battery. A six point version has warhead/hits of 6 and costs 6 points and is available to large or medium ships. A 3 point version is available to all ship sizes. They could occupy a slot on the ship or could be purchased from the 134 squadron points.

Launch in the game from outside long range. Possibly using a squadron command. This means the missiles must spend a turn or more on the board able to be mitigated, otherwise people would just wait till last activation at close range then pop the missiles for guaranteed damage.

As no dice are rolled for them to hit I presume the target could brace, scatter,contain or redirect them.

Make the missiles fly at speed 2 or 3 directly towards any point on the target's base. This lets you lead a target slightly by aiming for the front corner in the anticipated direction of travel.

I tried BFG app on the phone and liked the mechanics, but unguided missile system seems too clumsy for armada. Also the ability to hit ships other than the target seems a bit finicky to play with.

Maybe to prevent users from abusing guaranteed damage at close range this can be changed to rolling blacks for each remaining health on the missile stand, plus ignoring crits. OE rerolls are also negated by the wep team slot already being filled. that would also allow evades to be used against them(if the defending ship uses mm).

I agree with the idea of flying directly toward the opponent, removes the possibility of pooling up mass missile stands shenanigans or something. Perhaps to be even more exact, the missile stand could be made to fly only toward the yellow LOS dot of the hull zone that was initially targeted? :)