Okay. So....the TIE Experimental project is an interesting bit of the background - designing remote-controlled fighters run from control ships.

You could easily duplicate this with a crew card for a TIE shuttle or Lambda Shuttle, at a risk of creating an even more extreme version of "must kill Palpatine".

But whilst that's true for any of the TIE experimentals, the TIE/M1 "TIE Bizarro" is a really unique ship - the TIE BigGun is essentially a TIE fighter with turret mounts, the TIE Warhead a TIE Interceptor with missile slots and the TIE Booster a TIE fighter with either Boost or SLAM.

The Bizarro, whilst weird as hell, does genuinely add something unique to the game - a small fighter built around not merely a cannon mount but an all-up capital ship hardpoint.

Plus, I kind of like it. Don't ask me why; I know it looks stupid, but I like it. It's grown on me - I guess it's the asymmetry.

Background-wise, both pods retained engines, so it's twin twin ion engines meant it didn't suffer in speed. Given that it had only one solar "wing", presumably it must have had either a big reactor or capacitor store on board somewhere.

In game, the mechanics would be easy enough; a fighter could have an energy score rather than a primary weapon value. Give it a single hardpoint, and a zero-cost title which lets you generate energy after executing a manoeuvre (I'd suggest basing it on manoeuvre colour, so 2 energy on a green - allowing firing a turbolaser every turn, 1 on a white - needing 2 turns to charge - and none on a red).

You wouldn't specifically need to include a range 5 ruler in the pack; just include a hardpoint weapon which is limited to range 3 max - if a player wants to fit a longer ranged weapon (say Single Turbolasers) then logically if they have the card they have the extended range ruler too.

how big a deal do you think a fighter with access to huge ship weapons would be?

This and the TIE Hunter are probably the two TIE variants that I'd most like to see.

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how big a deal do you think a fighter with access to huge ship weapons would be?

It'd probably be fine. The other hardpoint weapons all have pretty big range limits, were clearly meant to be used in groups and average out at 6-8pts each.

TIE/M1 was my ship in Emperor's Hammer Fighter Corps. Is it ugly? Yeah, probably. Would I buy it. Definitely.

A most pressing question is : where do you put the peg slot without having an ugly thing somewhere?

Either a Y-forking peg (like the Ghost) or put the thing at an angle and put it at the gunpod wing root (so the 'wing' hides it from above).

For that matter someone has already done conversions:

If it was me, as noted, I'd tilt the "gun" arm down a bit, so the ship is at a 45' angle (plus the gun should be a bit smaller and the pods a bit larger, but hey, it's someone's scratchbuild.

"Message from Liberty: she's under starfighter attack. Her shields are out!"

"Message from Liberty: Her hull is heavily damaged. She's been destroyed!"

#ragequits

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It'd probably be fine. The other hardpoint weapons all have pretty big range limits, were clearly meant to be used in groups and average out at 6-8pts each.

Indeed.

Assuming - as noted above - that green gets you 2 energy, white 1 and red none, you can make use of (almost) the full set of hardpoint weapons:

Heavy Laser Turret and Dual Laser Turret are both [ship type] only, so not available.

Single Turbolasers are expensive heavy laser cannon analogues. They'll make an agility 0-1 ship cry by thumping them with 4-dice attacks at range 3+ but are easy to get in 'too close'.

Ion Cannon Batteries are arguably better - they only have a range 1 blind spot (in return for not firing at range 5 which doesn't really matter unless two Bizarros are trading shots), and doing 1 ion token + 1 critical damage is a nasty combination.

Quad Laser Cannons are a good way of judging costs - because a ship so equipped essentially has no weapon on a red move, a 3-dice attack if it performs a white move, plus a gunner if it performs a green move.

I would suggest the 'included with ship' weapon should be something like 'light turbolaser'; from the RPGs, this is a thing (and it makes sense that'd be the first thing you tried to put in an upgunned starfighter chassis!). I'm not sure what you'd do to make it distinct from the Heavy Laser Cannon though. Adding in the 'double agility' is a nice downside, whilst keeping criticals is a nice upside, but then it's not massively different from the single turbolasers weapon.

A 1-energy weapon would be nice (allowing you to shoot every turn on white moves), possibly with a 'spend 1 energy to' effect, meaning that having that second energy still matters.

It looks like it could be a fun addition to the game. It should cost less than the TIE Fighter since

• You need another ship able to carry a crew to control this one
• Destroying that crew should destroy this ship
• It needs to equip a hardpoint weapon to have any attack power at all

This would keep it from being spammable and sniping large ships dead from the other side of the board since first round.

We could assume that the enabling crew, let's call it, TIE Experimental Operator , can control up to two TIE Experimentals. It could be quite risky bringing a squadron that depens solely on Experimentals. Considering that the cheapest would be to bring a TIE Shuttle with two operators to control 4 Experimentals, but that just by destroying the TIE Shuttle your opponent would win, it really requires that the experimentals are unexpensive so that you can squish in something else, or you can equip them good enough to be able to protect the TIE Shuttle.

I will say this... this would certainly be the imperial e-wing analog. Not stat or dial wise, just in terms of visual pollution. Lets save this for wave 36. Or at least the wave before the gunboat (or should I say noneboat?)

2 hours ago, NilsTillander said:

A most pressing question is : where do you put the peg slot without having an ugly thing somewhere?

Also, considering its space and zero gravity, you could turn the entire model 90 degrees and mount it to the peg on the "side"

There are cards already made to be used with m1-m5. Alien luxury miniatures has conversion kits available. Got mine yesterday and they're in primer now.

14 hours ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

I will say this... this would certainly be the imperial e-wing analog. Not stat or dial wise, just in terms of visual pollution. Lets save this for wave 36. Or at least the wave before the gunboat (or should I say noneboat?)

Oh, I have no issue with the Gunboat coming first.

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We could assume that the enabling crew, let's call it, TIE Experimental Operator , can control up to two TIE Experimentals. It could be quite risky bringing a squadron that depens solely on Experimentals. Considering that the cheapest would be to bring a TIE Shuttle with two operators to control 4 Experimentals, but that just by destroying the TIE Shuttle your opponent would win, it really requires that the experimentals are unexpensive so that you can squish in something else, or you can equip them good enough to be able to protect the TIE Shuttle.

If you really want to throw in the control ship/operator mechanic, then yes. I'm trying to think through the logic here (ow, my head hurts!)

The Heavy Scyk squad lets you field four ships, each with heavy laser cannons and pulsed ray shields.

Four ships with Single Turbolasers or equivalent other hardpoint weapons doesn't sound so bad, especially given their weaknesses.

Allowing for the single turbolasers (8 points) and the TIE shuttle (16 points), that leaves 13 points a ship (assuming the Experimental controller is free - the simplest 'controller' rule I can think of will namecheck another ship with a controller aboard, but won't say "these two are controlled by this one, these two by this one" - just make it a cheap double-slot crew!)

Give the ship a title which generates energy, and removes the ship as a casualty if no experimental controller is present on the board (so you can't have one without the other)

and you can tag a rule on the experimental controller (something like "action: any number of TIE experimentals can remove one stress token and perform a free action")

Mayyybe, this can lead us to another ship with assymetrical dial... Broken or not, I'd like the idea of assymetrical dial and a BIG Cannon. Maybe as Arc Caster, which needs to be recharged?

Would like this ship! Perhaps it should have a primary weapon value of one, just so it isn't completely helpless at non-hardpoint ranges. I have thought a lot about this ship and also the b-wing prototype. I think that could work as a hardpoint upgrade (through title, etc,) but not ever sure how either would work.