" Discipline was sloppy and morale was low, with the men simply whiling away time until they expected to be sent to their deaths by the political enemies who had gotten them transferred into the wing."

Is a fair enough statement for how I feel trying to fly a canonical 181st squadron these days. So how does one go about simulating the great skill of the 181st pilots with some kind of upgrade card or promotion?
Very simply, what would it take for a Squadron of Soontir Fel, Fel's Wrath and Turr Phennir to be ultracompetitive on the tables. I had a gander at this a month or so ago, with the blood stripes upgrade card. I have been thinking of alternatives to this, here's a different approach, going via an EPT slot, as well as a title. The idea of shields or stealth devices on 181st interceptors seems a bit strange to me canonically, they should just be really really good, but still somewhat squishy. A boatload of upgrades, including a TIE specific autothruster, and interceptor-specific upgrades for anything saber squadron or higher aims to achieve this.

Happy to receive comments and critique.

Blood Stripes: (TITLE) Designed to be an Interceptor "fix" for pilots missing an EPT for PTL. Additionally, and crucially, provides a unique tactical benefit of PS10 activation, simulating the coordination and teamwork and experience of pilots of the 181st.

Tactical Mastery: (ELITE PILOT TALENT) This card really works well on either low PS ships, or on high PS ships en masse. This is a teamwork card, the more you have of them, the messier it gets for the opponent, but that necessarily involves flying more interceptors.

Effectively allows you to implement an element of control with focused firepower. This represents the advanced training and simulation drilling of 181st pilots taking advantage of the Empire's vast knowledge databases, allowing pilots to be well-studied in the tactics and schematics of every ship they fly against. I would be comfortable spending an evade off of Kir Kanos for example if I knew I was only getting unmodified shots back at me, for example.

Gimballed thrusters: (MODIFICATION) Cost offset for the interceptors, with a lightly weaker version of autothrusters but still allows access to Twin Ion engine.

High speed drift: (ELITE PILOT TALENT) This gives you an extra maneuver up your sleeve, hit the jets, dodge a mine, get out of dodge. You may need a turn or two to get back, but it's a powerful option when facing bomb lists. Also enables very effective high speed hit and run tactics, giving you valuable green dice instead of mods for high speed maneuvers. Would allow you to charge an opponent head-on if you felt confident your barrel roll would let you approach without a bump!

EDIT: CARD TEXT HAS BEEN CHANGED, FROM THOE BELOW, SEE PG. 2 FOR LATEST VERSIONS

With an example of how these would work on Soontir Fel for example.

Holy OP Batman: Move at PS 10; strip focus & evades OR hand out stress; have rerolls for Predator; still be able to PTL; and have effectively the same as Autothrusters because you're going to be closing in to R1 to make your kill.

Gimballed thrusters is not limited, so you can have an infinite number of them, essentially making Soontir impossible to hit outside of arc. He's also 37 points, and any given stress mechanic will kill him in a single turn. Even if you avoid all that, bombs are a thing now so he'll die in a maximum of 3 turns, but much more likely 2 against any good bomb list.

I think what Interceptors need is some kind of "Shield Projector" equipped escort like:

Shield Projector (System, 3 Points, Imperial Only)
When a friendly ship at range 1-2 with no shields is defending, you may remove 1 or more shield tokens from your ship. For each shield token removed, you may cancel 1 of the attacker's [hit] or [crit] results.

So now your Lambda shuttle gives any escorting Interceptors 5 additional hull points. While it isn't useful against bombs, it's pretty much Palpatine but better. It also doesn't work for defenders very well, so hopefully it'll get Interceptors back into the meta (and maybe TIE fighters).

56 minutes ago, Dr Zoidberg said:

Holy OP Batman: Move at PS 10; strip focus & evades OR hand out stress; have rerolls for Predator; still be able to PTL; and have effectively the same as Autothrusters because you're going to be closing in to R1 to make your kill.

Go for gold right?

Without an intact palpatine, and with stealth devices out of the question with the title, you're horrendously squishy to any of the large number of ships pumping out fully modified 4 die attacks.

Considering that you can have a bb8, intensity, primed thrusters, autothrusters, 3 shield 3 hull poe for 41 points that is relatively immune to stress, gets two tokens and a BR every turn, for 4 more points... is it really out of the ballpark?

Not disagreeing with you that it's potent. Is it too potent?

5 minutes ago, Astech said:

Gimballed thrusters is not limited, so you can have an infinite number of them, essentially making Soontir impossible to hit outside of arc. He's also 37 points, and any given stress mechanic will kill him in a single turn. Even if you avoid all that, bombs are a thing now so he'll die in a maximum of 3 turns, but much more likely 2 against any good bomb list.

I think what Interceptors need is some kind of "Shield Projector" equipped escort like:

Shield Projector (System, 3 Points, Imperial Only)
When a friendly ship at range 1-2 with no shields is defending, you may remove 1 or more shield tokens from your ship. For each shield token removed, you may cancel 1 of the attacker's [hit] or [crit] results.

So now your Lambda shuttle gives any escorting Interceptors 5 additional hull points. While it isn't useful against bombs, it's pretty much Palpatine but better. It also doesn't work for defenders very well, so hopefully it'll get Interceptors back into the meta (and maybe TIE fighters).

good points all!
I really like the shield projector idea, but I worry about improving the defence of interceptors, especially if they have modifications like this. Interceptors should stay really squishy, and be really fast, in my mind.
I had wondered about something where you roll evade dice equivalent to the speed you moved that round, so you can up your defence by hitting the jets, that might be another way around it.

3 minutes ago, citruscannon said:

good points all!
I really like the shield projector idea, but I worry about improving the defence of interceptors, especially if they have modifications like this. Interceptors should stay really squishy, and be really fast, in my mind.
I had wondered about something where you roll evade dice equivalent to the speed you moved that round, so you can up your defence by hitting the jets, that might be another way around it.

I like the shield projector idea because it focuses your opponent's attention on the (inevitably) lambda shuttle. It'll only last through a single turn of fire, but it gets interceptors into the flanking position they like without having to go through a super-joust first.

The trick with rolling evade dice equivalent to your speed is that it only triggers on 4- and 5- speed maneuvers in an interceptor which are rarely used in comparison to hard turns.

45 minutes ago, Dr Zoidberg said:

Holy OP Batman: Move at PS 10; strip focus & evades OR hand out stress; have rerolls for Predator; still be able to PTL; and have effectively the same as Autothrusters because you're going to be closing in to R1 to make your kill.

And that's where the meta is at... even a PS10 ultra action efficient/strip opponent token interceptor with full mods is just a touch above the current power level. It's not the interceptor's fault; that's where everything else sits.

31 minutes ago, citruscannon said:

Interceptors should stay really squishy, and be really fast, in my mind.

How about a double move mechanic instead of multiple actions? Have to be an ept so you couldn't stack it with ptl ot intensity but after your move and action you could make an additional maneuver of the same speed but any bearing treating the second move as a red move limited to max 3 speed.

Just now, Astech said:

I like the shield projector idea because it focuses your opponent's attention on the (inevitably) lambda shuttle. It'll only last through a single turn of fire, but it gets interceptors into the flanking position they like without having to go through a super-joust first.

The trick with rolling evade dice equivalent to your speed is that it only triggers on 4- and 5- speed maneuvers in an interceptor which are rarely used in comparison to hard turns.

Yea, absolutely. Regarding the 4 and 5 maneuvers, having that kind of bonus available rewards hit and run tactics, which makes for a more dynamic engagement than hard 2 hard 2. Just a thought.

I've added an EPT to that effect up above

This is a little crazy, but what if Tactical Mastery let you move at PS 10 OR PS 0? You decide at the beginning of the Activation Phase. That feels like a very Interceptor solution to the problem. Hard to bomb because you never nlknow where they'll be.

1 hour ago, Biophysical said:

This is a little crazy, but what if Tactical Mastery let you move at PS 10 OR PS 0? You decide at the beginning of the Activation Phase. That feels like a very Interceptor solution to the problem. Hard to bomb because you never nlknow where they'll be.

I like this idea. What if you switched Tactical Mastery and Bloodstripes abilities? Seems thematic and cool to me.

High Speed Drifting should say "When you reveal" instead of "If you reveal".

Gimballed Thrusters needs to be Limited. It also doesn't seem thematic on TIE Punisher though, who would be able to take it.

Everything else looks fun and I would enjoy playtesting these.

Bloodstripes needs a PS 3 skill restriction, otherwise it makes the Avenger Squadron Pilots useless because you would just slap it on a PS 1 TIE Interceptor and it would be cheaper.

1 hour ago, AwesomeJedi said:

I like this idea. What if you switched Tactical Mastery and Bloodstripes abilities? Seems thematic and cool to me.

High Speed Drifting should say "When you reveal" instead of "If you reveal".

Gimballed Thrusters needs to be Limited. It also doesn't seem thematic on TIE Punisher though, who would be able to take it.

Everything else looks fun and I would enjoy playtesting these.

okay, fixed up. I added in a line on the gimballed thrusters that they can boost even with stress. not sure if it's too much, but means there is some benefit to interceptors over every other AT out there. I took out the barrel roll so it can't be abused with high speed drift. That said, not sure if that restricts it too much to be useful.

this is how a 37pt Fel looks. Pretty ridiculously maneuverable, very squishy if bumped. High speed drift is really only available to ships that aren't stressed, so maybe it opens up intensity for interceptors? maybe HSD should include speed 3 straight maneuvers as well. Would really open up a new archetype of interceptor that doesn't have PTL glued to it.

I really want to try and make autothrusters/gimballed thrusters be a choice. with pros and cons either way, I'm thinking with GT the way it is now the loss of the evade at r3 may not be sufficient to balance out the point drop and gain of boosting ability. Thoughts appreciated.

Pfff...

Do we not remember about a year ago, when Aces were the most OP thing ever and everyone was flying them. I hate the current meta as much as the next guy, but there's plenty of other ships that need sorting more than Imp Aces.

And if we did make something like this, which would bring interceptors up to a top level it would a) Wipe out anything that already found interceptors tricky and b) would make them hideously good if the power level resets.

Awful.

Just now, The Penguin UK said:

Pfff...

Do we not remember about a year ago, when Aces were the most OP thing ever and everyone was flying them. I hate the current meta as much as the next guy, but there's plenty of other ships that need sorting more than Imp Aces.

And if we did make something like this, which would bring interceptors up to a top level it would a) Wipe out anything that already found interceptors tricky and b) would make them hideously good if the power level resets.

Awful.

I'm very much not a fan of the imperial aces build that involved palpatine, which is what made fel and jax super viable. What I'm interested in most is simply making the canonical 181st squadron of Fel, Fel's Wrath, and Turr Phennir a strong squad.

I very much believe that if you have a ship that can take no more than a focus and an evade, has no way of taking those when stressed, and has only 3 hull with a maximum of 3 agility, then it's stoppable via multiple paths, but it is a very fine balance.

Palpatine was what made flying against fel a nightmare, since out of arc you could turn 3 blanks into 3 evades with a token, palp and autothrusters. I'm trying to leave the inherent flaws of the interceptor intact here but make it faster, with stronger tactical options.

2 hours ago, citruscannon said:

I'm very much not a fan of the imperial aces build that involved palpatine, which is what made fel and jax super viable. What I'm interested in most is simply making the canonical 181st squadron of Fel, Fel's Wrath, and Turr Phennir a strong squad.

I very much believe that if you have a ship that can take no more than a focus and an evade, has no way of taking those when stressed, and has only 3 hull with a maximum of 3 agility, then it's stoppable via multiple paths, but it is a very fine balance.

Palpatine was what made flying against fel a nightmare, since out of arc you could turn 3 blanks into 3 evades with a token, palp and autothrusters. I'm trying to leave the inherent flaws of the interceptor intact here but make it faster, with stronger tactical options.

I think you've created some interesting and well written cards.

This is the reason for my personal "thing I want" - rather than 'fix XYZ' ship, I'd really like to see "squadron" cards - such that you'd spend X points and get a "Saber Squadron" card, providing bonus special rule(s) but with a cost that are limited by pilot (rather than just by ship), rather than umpty-ump copies of cards attached to each pilot)

That way, you don't get the option of Jax or Kanos (they'd be name-checked on a 'Royal Guard' squadron card, along with Kagi and Palpatine). For that matter, I'd be tempted to remove the Saber's access to the Royal Guard title entirely.....although I know that'd be a bit harsh.

Note that this doesn't mean "you can't take royal guard soontir anymore", it means "if you want to take the Saber squadron card and get that benefit, you don't get royal guard titles on the pilots as well".

So.....a theoretical Saber Squadron should allow you to take up to 4 of the following (because that's as many as can fit in a squad):

1. Soontir Fel
2. Turr Phennir
3. Tetran Cowall I guess even though he's not actually an especially good pilot and it bugs me a bit that they didn't pick any of the umpty-ump named aces rather than Soontir's "I-was-monty's-double" .
4. Lieutenant Lorrir
5. Fel's Wrath
6. Saber Squadron Pilot

If you take away Royal Guard TIE, and start with the inevitable "Push The Limit" for everyone who can take it, what do you have/need?

• Autothrusters are still a **** good modification, and probably the default choice (especially if there's now only one slot)
• The "saber squadron" ability, whatever it is, doesn't really need to benefit Soontir that much relative to the other pilots; his PS9 and pilot ability kind of sell themselves.
• The 'worst' pilots in the list are by some margin Cowall, Lorrir and Fel's Wrath. Fel and Phennir are/can be PS9 and have decent abilities; Cowall, Lorrir and Wrath have pretty garbage abilities, low PS, and in two cases no elite slot, meaning no Push The Limit.
• The saber squadron ability, therefore, needs to benefit the generic saber and these three best of all.
• @citruscannon 's idea of boosting their activation order pilot skill makes sense, although PS10 generics might be pushing it. I get that a TIE interceptor needs to be able to outfly opponents for it to matter, but when we're talking about a 21 point generic pilot, moving after Wedge Antilles and Darth Vader is a bit much. PS8 sounds fine - it's essentially 'as good as it gets' aside from the 2-3 absolute top end uniques on each squad, and more importantly, increasing you to PS8 unless you would otherwise be higher means Soontir Fel is still detectably better than his wingmen (as he should be).
• TIE interceptors live and die by three things: action economy, green dice, and manouvrability. Push The Limit is a good way of getting the first, which can be leveraged into the second or third as required. Fel's 'free focus' just makes it better. The problem with Push The Limit is always managing the stress tokens (which is why stress mechanics originally became such a vital part of the game as even before stuff like Latts Razzi or Black Market Slicers, they were a way of shutting down the interceptor aces). Which is a nice point to pick up on, because if you give Sabers some mechanic to manage stress, Cowall and Lorrir (and fel!) can use their abilities more effectively.
• Green dice are and always will be an issue for the TIE interceptor. The Royal Guard Autothrusters/Stealth is a good combination, but it also really, really needed palpatine to back it up because it's essentially virtual invulnerability right up until the point a single hit sneaks through at which point everything collapses - first you lose 1/3 of your hits but also the stealth device and - since crits get cancelled last by your string of tokens and modifiers - there's disconcertingly high odds you've got a face-up damage card on you.
• A generic interceptor with "just" autothrusters and focus/evade can more or less handle a generic primary weapon turret (and I don't think 'Autothrusters but TIE interceptor only and free' make much of a difference to the normal autothrusters card), and should stand a chance of dodging the arc of 'normal' fighters. The problem is turrets with Zuckuss, or Lieutenant Kestal, or TLT Miranda Doni - the 4-dice turrets and the 'kill your green dice' turrets, plus bombs.
• The latter is the real killer - automatic damage - be it Black Market Slicer Tools, Bombs, Darth Vader, or Captain Oicunn, are the real nemesis of TIE interceptors and the thing they really want a means to protect themselves against.

If I wanted to give the Sabers one or more rules, therefore, my thoughts would be:

1. Increase to PS8 unless they would be higher (wording to be fettled depending on whether you want Veteran Instincts Turr Phennir to be PS7+2 or PS8+2)
2. Gain a mechanic to let them shed stress tokens at the end of the combat phase. This means you can Push The Limit and still use more of your dial, and Lorrir/Cowall can use their abilities more effectively.
3. Gain a 'saving throw' when assigned damage cards (roll a/some green di(c)e, on [result], don't receive the card or cards?). Depending on how you word this, this gives you a slight increase in toughness to make up for the lack of stealth device or palpatine dice ju-ju, but more importantly gives you a mechanic to limit automatic damage - rocks, bombs, etc or zuckus/crackshot/omega leader/tailgunner where your green dice are essentially taken away from you. Making it a percentage chance on top of percentage chance rather than making the existing roll that much more garuanteed to produce 3 evades also stops you being immune to 2-dice normal attacks - they may be incredibly unlikely to hurt you (which is fine) but you don't produce the situation where " I have an evade token, a focus token, autothrusters and palpatine and therefore literally cannot roll less than three evades meaning that you rolling the dice is totally irrelevant ", which as someone who's flown a TIE fighter swarm since ever, I can assure you is bloody annoying. Having to get through a roll with a 75% chance of stopping the attack, then another with a 75% chance of stopping the attack, means I probably won't do anything, but there remains a chance . As a side bonus, if you can design the 'damage card save' rule correctly, it might be possible to make it make Fel's wrath more interesting.

6 hours ago, Astech said:

Even if you avoid all that, bombs are a thing now so he'll die in a maximum of 3 turns, but much more likely 2 against any good bomb list.

The same is true for pretty much all TIE Fighters, Interceptors, Phantoms or fo's (and A-Wings).

You should be able to use Evade tokens against Bomb damage.

You should be able to use something, anyway.

Losing a 12 point academy pilot to a cluster mine....fair enough. I have 7 more, after all.

Losing a 30-odd point ace to the same target, with no chance to defend him.....rather more of an issue.

I've made some playtesting-influenced edits. Stress control and token stripping was too strong, as was the low cost of the high speed drift. These have been adjusted, for a sample squad shown below:

Naturally ImpAces are only viable when you can run a squad of three of them at PS10 with PtL + TWO other EPTs + "Autothrusters" + Another Mod ....... ummm


This is the most epic over-correction I've seen yet

PS: It's also interesting that the only thing keeping Imp Aces like Fel/Ing from still dominating the meta is the auto-damage of Sabine Bombers which is not at all addressed by these fixes.

Be wary of upgrades from anyone that's trying to create upgrades specifically for ships they love.

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Naturally ImpAces are only viable when you can run a squad of three of them at PS10 with PtL + TWO other EPTs + "Autothrusters" + Another Mod ....... ummm


This is the most epic over-correction I've seen yet

PS: It's also interesting that the only thing keeping Imp Aces like Fel/Ing from still dominating the meta is the auto-damage of Sabine Bombers which is not at all addressed by these fixes.

Hi there, hey look, on the face of it, it may look a little silly, but there is a couple considerations here.
the things that spell very swift death for interceptors are autodamage, stress mechanics, Kylo Ren, bomb damage, blocking, 4 dice attacks, slicer tools, and of course pilot error.

the above cards address bombs only slightly, as in a situation where you feel you might get auto-bombed you drop the PS to 0 and go first and try your darndest to get to a non-bombable position.

As a perk however, it also makes blocking these interceptors very very difficult, due to that same mechanic. The ludicrous PS in the activation phase makes them very hard, possibly almost impossible for a good pilot, to keep in arc of all of your ships at the same time. That said, technically, if you assume you need PTL, you've got only one other EPT you can take, not two, and only on a few pilots.

The general aim is to really not touch any of these things that make them vulnerable directly, but improve their positioning ability to make them less susceptible. Interceptors should be no problem to land hits on if you've got any of the above mechanics, and in arc of one or two of your ships.

Maybe making it non-compatible with evades is a good option? Ie. so you give up tokens as cost for the improved maneuverability. not sure how it would be worded.
Happy to hear your thoughts on this.

3 minutes ago, Rinehart said:

Be wary of upgrades from anyone that's trying to create upgrades specifically for ships they love.

an optimum scenario would be one where the opponent felt as much satisfaction from flying against them as the person flying them.
I'd love a set of cards where getting the **** things in arc is really hard, but if it happens, to allow the other player to punish them mercilessly for doing so.

And if it involves a few interesting mechanics to do it, the better.
but can't get there faster than with some good crowdsourcing to speed up the playtesting

11 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

This is the reason for my personal "thing I want" - rather than 'fix XYZ' ship, I'd really like to see "squadron" cards - such that you'd spend X points and get a "Saber Squadron" card, providing bonus special rule(s) but with a cost that are limited by pilot (rather than just by ship), rather than umpty-ump copies of cards attached to each pilot)

I'd like to have had some sort of squadron mechanic built in from the start, something that would encourage the use of the generics. Something along the lines of a points discount for each pilot with the same name.

For example, one Red Squadron Pilot would still cost 23pts, but if you're flying multiples you would subtract (for example) 2 points per, so they'd really be 21pts each in groups. So you could field two for 42 points (23 + 23 - 4) or three for 63 (23 + 23 + 23 - 6) etc. Specific values would have to be worked out, of course, and the "Squadron Discount" would have to be specific per ship (two points feels like a LOT on an Academy Pilot, for example) so it would be super-messy to add at this stage of the game.

Would adding a 1 point PS bump to all non-unique ships in the squad be too much?

Then also allow for a Squad Leader Elite Skill where if there are two or more ships getting the Squadron Discount then you could apply the same discount to ONE unique pilot who qualifies for an elite skill.

It's a pipe dream in the place we're in, but something like this would definitely go on my wish list if a 2.0 were being developed.

7 minutes ago, NotBatman said:

I'd like to have had some sort of squadron mechanic built in from the start, something that would encourage the use of the generics. Something along the lines of a points discount for each pilot with the same name.

For example, one Red Squadron Pilot would still cost 23pts, but if you're flying multiples you would subtract (for example) 2 points per, so they'd really be 21pts each in groups. So you could field two for 42 points (23 + 23 - 4) or three for 63 (23 + 23 + 23 - 6) etc. Specific values would have to be worked out, of course, and the "Squadron Discount" would have to be specific per ship (two points feels like a LOT on an Academy Pilot, for example) so it would be super-messy to add at this stage of the game.

Would adding a 1 point PS bump to all non-unique ships in the squad be too much?

Then also allow for a Squad Leader Elite Skill where if there are two or more ships getting the Squadron Discount then you could apply the same discount to ONE unique pilot who qualifies for an elite skill.

It's a pipe dream in the place we're in, but something like this would definitely go on my wish list if a 2.0 were being developed.

That's a neat way of doing it.

I like the idea of upgrades that diminish as your squad is killed off, or that have range restrictions that reward good tight flying.
Within the context of this squad, what about this?
forces you to take more interceptors? This would reward having a ps3 pilot, or ps5 pilot, a range of PS values in your squad hinged on having an ace. This might be really cool!

Does it tone down the potential advantage of high PS, but retain good flexibility?