24 minutes ago, TBot said:

This is excellent! I do think that the ps 10 bump should only be for activation phase, not combat phase.

Thirded or fourthed whatever it's at. I'd cap at PS9 and make it activation only which is fair and makes them seem speedy like they should but a ps1 pud is still a ps 1 pud. I still don't know if all int's should get 2 ept's, maybe make it ps6 and under and adds 1 ept to a max of 2. This would give you a reason to take RGP over saber but it's a 1 point savings for 2 ps so fairly balanced. The higher ps ships would still take royal guard tie and int's would be the threat they should. Loving it.

Thanks for the comments all, can I suggest the following amendments, based on comments.
I'm worried the altered thrusters makes them TOO powerful, as a good approach makes bombs or blocking less effective, but did want something to give them some kind of wild emergency dodge. I'm also slightly weirded out canon-wise by a permanently PS10 interceptor that is always more skilled than vader, but wish to retain the ridiculous PS for arc-dodging. I think the suggestions above are some great fixes to this.

To gimballed thrusters, I kept the ability to pre-barrel roll on a straight maneuver, but reduced this to the 4 and 5 straights, and the longer K-turn. I also added that on the reveal you may shed 1 stress. This gives the ship a similar repetitive K-turn to a Defender, but without the ability to gain tokens. More importantly, the 5 straight effectively becomes a green, and the 4 straight becomes the one way to clear two stress from the ship.

I'm not sure if this is overpowered, but the point cost of 4 hopefully reflects this.

4 hours ago, RampancyTW said:

Definitely dig the general concept-- one tweak I would make would be to only apply PS10 during activation phase so that Fel's Wrath, PS6 generic, etc. maintain a purpose.

round 2:

11 hours ago, citruscannon said:

I was particularly excited about the upcoming Vaksai and Starviper title cards, and I was thinking about what kind of title might work for TIE interceptors. Specifically the issue is that it shouldn't compound with RGP, and to be honest, shouldn't give similar benefits, shouldn't always eclipse it, and if anything, make them more fragile.

Key aims:

• The upgrade should give at best a marginal boost to Carnor Jax, and Soontir Fel, and
• The upgrade should give a heavy boost to all ps 4-7 Interceptor pilots, which does not involve increased maneuverability, hull, shields or any kind of improved evasion.
• The upgrade should make these ships easier to kill outright than an RGP Autothrusters/Stealth device ship, but give improvement in some other category
• You should not be able to fit 4 interceptors in a squad if they take autothrusters.
• Saber Squadron should feel outrageously elite

Rationale:
I thought that perhaps along the line of these pilots being " the very best TIE unit in the Empire" at the time they started using blood stripes, giving them the benefits of extremely high PS, without any way of adding enough hull to make it overpowered could be a great way of creating some exciting options for the interceptor. These ships become pure arc dodgers, but suffer all the problems of being 3 hull ships with no stealth devices.

Suggested card:


How is this balanced?:
The method to the madness of such crazy PS here is a dual penalty. The upgrade costs 0 but you MUST spend 6 to use the title, and your only mod spot will probably end up being autothrusters or you're going to be splatted by PWTs in no time flat. This effectively levies a mandatory 8-9pt cost on top of the pilot cost to use the title, with the second penalty being the loss of using both SD and AT. Yes, your interceptor is wildly skillful, but it's also a whopping 35ish points for 3 hull with no stealth device. You probably get an offensive boost from your second EPT, like predator or expertise or outmaneuver, but the loss of the SD or shield is going to sting very badly.

This means the absolute minimum cost of one of these ships is 27 points, and 29 with autothrusters, which leaves little room for abuse of the generic saber squadron pilot. The strength of the ships becomes their high PS, which natively puts them above every other ship typically seen in the game, barring a VI vader. Most importantly, you can fly a canonical 3-ship saber squadron that packs a punch. The 1ps higher means there is a strong incentive to Soontir to take the title, but he does become more fragile in return for better offense, crucially, this upgrade doesn't make him invincible, but a little more survivable against ps9 aces. He still is probably the best pilot choice of all the interceptors with the extra focus token, on par with carnor. Carnor mind you probably prefers the old title in some squads, as survivability (and AT+SD) is what he needs, not more offense.

Interested in your thoughts if you think this has some merit or is ludicrous. I get that initially it may look horribly OP, but consider the point cost penalties and modification slot penalties. You are still super sensitive to stress and bombs. You've only got 3 hull, Palp just isn't as powerful anymore. One block and you're still toast, if not more so. But there is the strong possibility that all of a sudden, you feel like you're flying a 181st interceptor.

Also fixes Fel's Wrath ;). With apologies to Darren Tan for altering his artwork.

Unless you been testing these out I doubt your word on "balanced".. I like the idea of two EPT, but it is dangerous and might cause problems down on the line..

7 minutes ago, Zazaa said:

Unless you been testing these out I doubt your word on "balanced".. I like the idea of two EPT, but it is dangerous and might cause problems down on the line..

Haha, tested, and it's fantastic fun, but it's only an estimate. I suggested restrictions that were hopefully sufficient, but I don't have statistical evaluation and sufficent dataset to truly determine if it's balanced, it's a best guess :).

4 hours ago, LordFajubi said:

Thirded or fourthed whatever it's at. I'd cap at PS9 and make it activation only which is fair and makes them seem speedy like they should but a ps1 pud is still a ps 1 pud. I still don't know if all int's should get 2 ept's, maybe make it ps6 and under and adds 1 ept to a max of 2. This would give you a reason to take RGP over saber but it's a 1 point savings for 2 ps so fairly balanced. The higher ps ships would still take royal guard tie and int's would be the threat they should. Loving it.

yea, I wondered about capping at 9 instead of 10. I'll playtest the second set of revisions and report back

Really like this idea - a return to dogfighting rather than just amassing tokens and exchanging broadsides...

15 hours ago, IG88E said:

The Interceptor is well balanced and competitive. I play them all the time with very good results

What tournaments did you win since the release of Imperial Veterans? With an interceptor list?

EDIT: My hope lies in the TIE Interceptor / FO. Maybe it comes with an upgrade card "TIE Interceptor" only that could be used with the old and new alike!!!!

Would be great

Magnificent idea to save the TIE/in. Here is a "diet" variant of your card:

Does it work as intended?

The main problems the interceptor faces right now are:

• Being blown up by high-accuracy alpha strikes (e.g., the winning Worlds list)
• Being blown up by Miranda /w Sabine

Maybe something like this? It would prevent a TIE interceptor from being killed in one shot and about halves the damage from a Miranda/Sabine combo.

Reinforced Blast Armor

Title. TIE only.

When defending, if you would suffer 3 or more damage or critical damage from an attack that hit, you may suffer 2 damage and cancel all dice results.

During the Activation phase, if you would suffer 1 or more damage or critical damage, you may suffer 1 damage instead. You cannot suffer damage again until the start of the Combat phase.

You can equip this card only if you have a Shield value of 0.

2 points

2 minutes ago, kraedin said:

The main problems the interceptor faces right now are:

• Being blown up by high-accuracy alpha strikes (e.g., the winning Worlds list)
• Being blown up by Miranda /w Sabine

Maybe something like this? It would prevent a TIE interceptor from being killed in one shot and about halves the damage from a Miranda/Sabine combo.

Reinforced Blast Armor

Title. TIE only.

When defending, if you would suffer 3 or more damage or critical damage from an attack that hit, you may suffer 2 damage and cancel all dice results.

During the Activation phase, if you would suffer 1 or more damage or critical damage, you may suffer 1 damage instead. You cannot suffer damage again until the start of the Combat phase.

You can equip this card only if you have a Shield value of 0.

2 points

This would be fun and make more sense as an X-wing fix.

Just now, AwesomeJedi said:

This would be fun and make more sense as an X-wing fix.

I think making the X-wing tougher is a bad idea, just because Biggs exists.

I modeled the anti-missile defense on R4-D6, with damage in lieu of stress, so this kind of mitigation is already somewhat available to the X-wing.

I was just thinking about Hyperwave Comm Scanners, and I was thinking that kind of flexibility would be amazing to buff interceptors during activation. However, I am hesitant to give them another EPT slot, because it feels like it cancels out the A wing completely, but adding an EPT if there isn't one would be great for the middling pilots with no EPT slot like Kir Kanos and Lt. Lorrir. It could instead read like this:

Blood Stripes (Title)

"During the activation phase you may instead choose to activate this ship at PS0 or PS10"

If your upgrade bar does not have a (Elite) upgrade icon, add 1 (Elite) upgrade icon.

PS0 would either you immune to blocking and hard to hit with mines for a round, but really susceptible to arc dodging and bombs. PS10 makes you weak against mines, but great at arc dodging. It wouldn't really help any of the problems against alpha-strikes or durability, but it would definitely help making interceptors a more viable ship in a tournament lists by removing some of the rock-paper-scissors element from matchups.

On 5/31/2017 at 8:38 AM, citruscannon said:

Thanks for the comments all, can I suggest the following amendments, based on comments.
I'm worried the altered thrusters makes them TOO powerful, as a good approach makes bombs or blocking less effective, but did want something to give them some kind of wild emergency dodge. I'm also slightly weirded out canon-wise by a permanently PS10 interceptor that is always more skilled than vader, but wish to retain the ridiculous PS for arc-dodging. I think the suggestions above are some great fixes to this.

To gimballed thrusters, I kept the ability to pre-barrel roll on a straight maneuver, but reduced this to the 4 and 5 straights, and the longer K-turn. I also added that on the reveal you may shed 1 stress. This gives the ship a similar repetitive K-turn to a Defender, but without the ability to gain tokens. More importantly, the 5 straight effectively becomes a green, and the 4 straight becomes the one way to clear two stress from the ship.

I'm not sure if this is overpowered, but the point cost of 4 hopefully reflects this.

round 2:

Looking at Blood Stripes again, it should say "that cost 3 or more squad points ."

21 hours ago, Odanan said:

Magnificent idea to save the TIE/in. Here is a "diet" variant of your card:

Does it work as intended?

This works better for me. I don't like cards that demand me to buy 2 upgrades for a least 3 points (each?)!

I would even remove the minimum pilot skill requirement.

What 2 EPT you guys would equip? PTL and Predator?

All after all even Fel's Wrath could be of some use with the Blood Stripes ...

Run it a few times with Kit and Lorrir. If they still aren't interesting enough, it's not good enough. If you would still prefer Canor or Fel, it's not specific enough. If it makes Turr feel as good or better than Fel then it's perfect.

5 hours ago, Rakky Wistol said:

Run it a few times with Kit and Lorrir. If they still aren't interesting enough, it's not good enough. If you would still prefer Canor or Fel, it's not specific enough. If it makes Turr feel as good or better than Fel then it's perfect.

But Turr isn't a better pilot than Fel...

On 5/31/2017 at 7:38 AM, citruscannon said:

Thanks for the comments all, can I suggest the following amendments, based on comments.
I'm worried the altered thrusters makes them TOO powerful, as a good approach makes bombs or blocking less effective, but did want something to give them some kind of wild emergency dodge. I'm also slightly weirded out canon-wise by a permanently PS10 interceptor that is always more skilled than vader, but wish to retain the ridiculous PS for arc-dodging. I think the suggestions above are some great fixes to this.

You could just make them PS9 instead of PS10. Even being the SAME skill as vader is probably weird, but not as bad as being better. And PS9 is still enough to get the PS for arcdodgning most pilots, you might just need to take an initiative to guarantee it.

On 5/31/2017 at 7:38 AM, citruscannon said:

To gimballed thrusters, I kept the ability to pre-barrel roll on a straight maneuver, but reduced this to the 4 and 5 straights, and the longer K-turn. I also added that on the reveal you may shed 1 stress. This gives the ship a similar repetitive K-turn to a Defender, but without the ability to gain tokens. More importantly, the 5 straight effectively becomes a green, and the 4 straight becomes the one way to clear two stress from the ship.

I'm not sure if this is overpowered, but the point cost of 4 hopefully reflects this.

I think gimbled thrusters is probably fine on blood stripe interceptors (though I don't think it's really needed. It's a better autothrusters that ALSO lets you remove stress, when autothrusters tend sto be plenty still for arcdogers if you're out of arc). Where it becomes a problem is on someone like, say, soontir with royal guard title instead. Now if he's out of arc, he's rolling an extra defense die and changing 2 blanks to evades. that makes him pretty much impossible to hit if you can't get him in arc. Oh, and now he can also k-turn, AND pre-move barrel roll...

50 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

You could just make them PS9 instead of PS10. Even being the SAME skill as vader is probably weird, but not as bad as being better. And PS9 is still enough to get the PS for arcdodgning most pilots, you might just need to take an initiative to guarantee it.

I think gimbled thrusters is probably fine on blood stripe interceptors (though I don't think it's really needed. It's a better autothrusters that ALSO lets you remove stress, when autothrusters tend sto be plenty still for arcdogers if you're out of arc). Where it becomes a problem is on someone like, say, soontir with royal guard title instead. Now if he's out of arc, he's rolling an extra defense die and changing 2 blanks to evades. that makes him pretty much impossible to hit if you can't get him in arc. Oh, and now he can also k-turn, AND pre-move barrel roll...

fair points all.
Hm, yea, I really don't want to buff Fel, and that certainly poses a problem with RGP. The K-turning was more with Tetran Cowell in mind as being the best beneficiary.

I really would like to find some way to reward interceptors that don't stress themselves. It certainly would make that kind of upgrade particularly useless on Fel, I'm just not sure how to factor it in yet.

6 minutes ago, citruscannon said:

fair points all.
Hm, yea, I really don't want to buff Fel , and that certainly poses a problem with RGP. The K-turning was more with Tetran Cowell in mind as being the best beneficiary.

I really would like to find some way to reward interceptors that don't stress themselves. It certainly would make that kind of upgrade particularly useless on Fel , I'm just not sure how to factor it in yet.

Maybe some bonus that only triggers on a red (or maybe white) maneuver? That way if you PTL every round and have to do greens it doesn't work. If you make it some form of free action (such as the barrel roll you had above), then you can't just do a white while stressed and get the benefit anyway.

I guess if it triggered on reds and gave a free ation, would have to trigger on reveal like the above gimballed thrusters so you could still get it bfeore being stressed

1 minute ago, VanderLegion said:

Maybe some bonus that only triggers on a red (or maybe white) maneuver? That way if you PTL every round and have to do greens it doesn't work. If you make it some form of free action (such as the barrel roll you had above), then you can't just do a white while stressed and get the benefit anyway.

yea, the original iteration of the GT card was to give the BR bonus on all speed 3 maneuvers only. I mean the idea is simply to make an autothrusters card that rewards arc-dodging, and assists marginally with dodging things. I felt a pre hard turn BR was too powerful