My ultra-Casual Wednesday group has now had two runs through HotAC, and we want to switch things up a bit by changing to MotAC. So far, so easy. Small base ships convert easily in terms of power equivalencies, X-Wing to Khiraxz, etc. We did homebrew rules for large base ships, although no one took advantage of them during the last campaign. However, large base is de rigeur for so much of Scum in the lore. Our first series had several pilots achieve PS8, and one reach 9. Second series was a bloodbath - no one got past PS6. The rules we set on required PS6 to buy into a large base Rebel ship - which may be part of the reason no one even tried in the last series. Given, however, that large base ships are so intimately associated with the Scum identity, I want to perhaps make it easier to get into one of the big boys. I'm just now sure how strongly/badly this will affect game balance.

Does anyone out there have any experience with this? @Refugeanoth ? What did your group do, and how has it been playing out?

Thanks for your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen.

our group has definitely pushed the limits of HotAC - we currently have 10 players, using ships from all three factions (including large bases) - and have found the missions hold up pretty well (we are playing the base HotAC missions)

the basics of what we did are;

starting ship - pick 1 faction - you can't change later, and it determines what faction you are for ships, pilot abilities, and restricted upgrades - you now have 26pts to spend on a single, small-based, generic ship, with a Pilot skill of 2 or less

at PS4 you can upgrade your ship, a small base ship costs 5pts, a large base costs 10pts

that is the basics of what we've done - we have also expanded all of the mission AI tables (counting large ships as 2 players), and added rules for buying a single title from another ship as a modification to increase customisation

We have 10 players also, we love the HoTAC campaign, my only grip (and I consider it a small one) no ACR-170's allowed, but we are hoping in version 2 for them to be allowed. We just out butts handed to us in the last mission, the Imperail AI was a bastard, we lost four ships (all the pilots lived), biggest loss was the HWK 290 (no not my ship). But overall we are enjoying the campaign a lot.

1 hour ago, Ghostrider58 said:

We have 10 players also, we love the HoTAC campaign, my only grip (and I consider it a small one) no ACR-170's allowed, but we are hoping in version 2 for them to be allowed. We just out butts handed to us in the last mission, the Imperail AI was a bastard, we lost four ships (all the pilots lived), biggest loss was the HWK 290 (no not my ship). But overall we are enjoying the campaign a lot.

we currently have 2 ARC's as part of our squadron - under our rules they are just as allowed as any other ship and so far haven't caused any real problems that the hoards of AI (or that's how its feels sometimes) haven't been able to deal with - I also forgot to mention, if we go above 7/8 players we tend to move to a 4x4 board to give the AI a bit more room to move and scale the setup accordingly

We ran two ARCs in our last campaign, too. We read somewhere someone saying that the ARC was a wee touch overpowered, so we costed the Alliance Overhaul as 5 points and filling a Modification slot. I ran into trouble with that, as I ejected multiple times (call sign: Laser Magnet) and lost my most expensive upgrade. I paid for that Alliance Overhaul a total of three times. We do it again, and the title will be free, and use the title slot as normal. ARC is fine as a second tier ship, pretty similar to the B-Wing for HotAC.

We're currently playing through the Battlestar Gozanti/Pallas campaign created by member Stefan I believe. It allows more ships than the original HotAC. We have a YT-1300 and I'm flying an ARC-170.

Well to be honest Scum as NPCs should go through a whole algorithm reiteration to give them a different flavor compared to the more organized and blind discipline of the Imperial.

• Target lock and Scum : Scum if they don't have a Target Lock they may make a free target lock action on nearest enemy as a free action. All movements are based on the ship that is target locked instead of the nearest enemy. However if a crit is rolled against a Scum pilot then the scum pilot makes a free target lock action against that player. When ever a Scum pilot that is not "bugging out" loses a target lock token it may immediately make a free target lock action at nearest enemy.
• Scum Actions : This is more of a reversal or change of priorities compared to the Imperials. For Imperials it is more for getting the attack off. For scum it is more of survival. So this would be the action priority.

1. If inside an enemy firing Arc-boost or barrel-roll outside of firing arc.
2. If cannot get out of an enemy firing arc but is still in firing arc then take evade action.
3. If cannot get outside of an enemy firing arc but locked target outside of their firing arc then boost or barrel roll to get locked target in arc.
4. If not in enemy firing arc and locked target is not in firing arc, boost or barrel roll to get locked target in arc.
5. If no other action is taken, make a focus action

• Bugging Out : Every scum knows dead people don't spend credits, and those that fight and run away live to fight another day. When a Scum pilot loses all shields discard the blue target lock icon and makes way for nearest friendly board edge. All scum with only 1 shield get a free shield upgrade. Scum with out blue target lock tokens are considered bugging out. (At start of game keep both blue and red target lock tokens with ship).
• Quirks : Scum with an illicit has a quirk that can affect the pilots behavior (note: still working on this)

1. Twitchy : (Glitter Stim w/illicit token) When both in arc and locked target in arc spend glitter stim. Does not bug out if shields are gone. Bugs out on the first turn after the last glitterstim is spent.
2. Kamikaze : (Deadmans switch) Does not bug out.
3. Merc : (Hot Shot Blaster w/illicit token)
4. Slicer: Feedback Array.

Well as you can see this is still a work in progress. And Idea is to make optional side missions that fight scum instead of Imperials, The reward would be for an Ally Wingman which has similar characteristics from Scum and Imperials. Further incursions against the pirates result in wingman upgrades or getting a new wingman (if pilot skill is high enough)

• Bandit Squadron (Z-95 Headhunter) the Z-95 is too weak of a ship to be a player ship but makes a perfect ship for wingman. Always Available as an Ally to recruit.
• Rookie Pilot (X-wing) Bring X-wing back in X-wing. An idea of what should be the most common wingman. Available at pilot skill 3 (Rookie starts at 2).
• Iron Squadron Pilot (Y-wing starts at PS 1). This is supposed to be a rare wingman You have to be a high pilot skill before you can get it. Gives your single torpedo/missile slot a munition token
• Prototype Pilot (A-wing) This is supposed to be the final Ally you will be able to git (if you can make it that far. Have to be at-least Pilot Skill 9 before you can take one as an ally.

We have mixed scum ship cards into our AI deck for random draws, and we have them simply heading for the nearest table edge once they take a certain amount of damage ( the amount depends on the type of ship)

18 hours ago, Surak said:

we currently have 2 ARC's as part of our squadron - under our rules they are just as allowed as any other ship and so far haven't caused any real problems that the hoards of AI (or that's how its feels sometimes) haven't been able to deal with - I also forgot to mention, if we go above 7/8 players we tend to move to a 4x4 board to give the AI a bit more room to move and scale the setup accordingly

Oh yeah we have done that on a couple of missions, we used two 4x4 matts to get all the Imperial ships in/on the board.

43 minutes ago, Surak said:

We have mixed scum ship cards into our AI deck for random draws, and we have them simply heading for the nearest table edge once they take a certain amount of damage ( the amount depends on the type of ship)

Fair enough but as I said again, I don't think the imperial algorithms are proper for scum. For scum you should have a different set of algorithms to represent the characteristics. For example, using the target lock token as a basis for movement instead of just the nearest enemy unit. Also an emphasis on defensive play instead of imperial offensive play. Scum should feel like a entirely different opponent. By now (almost) everyone knows how to fly against imperial AI, Scum should be enough of a curve ball to make people rethink how they approach them.

4 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Fair enough but as I said again, I don't think the imperial algorithms are proper for scum. For scum you should have a different set of algorithms to represent the characteristics. For example, using the target lock token as a basis for movement instead of just the nearest enemy unit. Also an emphasis on defensive play instead of imperial offensive play. Scum should feel like a entirely different opponent. By now (almost) everyone knows how to fly against imperial AI, Scum should be enough of a curve ball to make people rethink how they approach them.

I can understand the thinking behind that, but with the large numbers of AI ships we have to deal with we went for the simplest option as we have quite a tight time limit on our game-nights - and i can definitely say that we haven't learnt the AI as they still manage to catch us out

Last session an AI lambda managed to block my Aggressor in such a way that i got run over by our friendly GR-75!

On 4/29/2017 at 9:47 AM, Kleeg005 said:

My ultra-Casual Wednesday group has now had two runs through HotAC, and we want to switch things up a bit by changing to MotAC. So far, so easy. Small base ships convert easily in terms of power equivalencies, X-Wing to Khiraxz, etc. We did homebrew rules for large base ships, although no one took advantage of them during the last campaign. However, large base is de rigeur for so much of Scum in the lore. Our first series had several pilots achieve PS8, and one reach 9. Second series was a bloodbath - no one got past PS6. The rules we set on required PS6 to buy into a large base Rebel ship - which may be part of the reason no one even tried in the last series. Given, however, that large base ships are so intimately associated with the Scum identity, I want to perhaps make it easier to get into one of the big boys. I'm just now sure how strongly/badly this will affect game balance.

Does anyone out there have any experience with this? @Refugeanoth ? What did your group do, and how has it been playing out?

Thanks for your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen.

We made all large base ships count as 2 players for the sake of scaling and seriously reworked the volume of elites and the potency and composition of squadrons including a top-bottom restructuring of clustered ships behavior. We've been going strong for 8 months and we're heading into season 2 with no signs of slowing down much less stopping.