Dawned on me we might get Death Trooper stats, which I have been looking forward to seeing. And Shoretroopers, and maybe even those sweet looking double-barreled blaster rifles they wield.

On 10/11/2017 at 7:47 PM, Krieger22 said:

He's probably an anchor baby.

"When Orto Plutonia sends its people, it isn't sending us its best. They're sending us their nerf herders, their spice heads, and their bounty hunters - and some of them, I'm sure, are good people."

-Jabba Desilijic Tiurre

On 29.9.2017 at 1:53 AM, KRKappel said:

I mean, what was Rogue One if not a unique take on a story that partially took place on and around the Death Star? Clearly, there is more storytelling potential to consider over it's nearly 20 years of construction.

Also, consider that. 20 years of construction. The second Death Star is fully operational and visually like 66% built by ROTJ, just 3 and a half years after ANH. So it would seem the second death star is under construction long before A New Hope. There are perhaps others in various stages of construction as well.

There was an EU source that suggested the ultimate plan was to have a Death Star in every oversector (there were like 20?) for each Grand Moff to keep their local regions in line. So maybe they were on a plan to roll out another Death Star every 5 years or so, which means there might be up to two other death stars in earlier phases of their development out there somewhere. They PROBABLY don't have working superlasers yet, but who can say. And who knows who got a hold of them as the Empire fragmented.

I am late to the party I know. I am just flabbergasted how weak the stats for this death star are. Armor 20 means that the thing literally can be killed by a single X-Wing. And I don't mean by hitting a known weak spot, but with shooting a few torpedoes into it's face and roll a proper critical hit.

A rather questionable result. But hey maybe the preview just used some placeholder stats or left out some special rules.

There's definitely got to be special rules for it; I assume it'd have a boatload of points in Massive, and probably some starship equivalent to Durable.

The image of the stat block appears to be incomplete...just enough to cause a double-take, while keeping some details up their collective sleeve.

21 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

The image of the stat block appears to be incomplete...just enough to cause a double-take, while keeping some details up their collective sleeve.

That's an effective way to generate discussion.

Absolutely, Stan. Quietly slipping the partial stat block in there was almost certainly done to start us talking. Mission accomplished.

And that's exactly what promotional material is designed to do.

On 12.11.2017 at 5:20 AM, Tom Cruise said:

There's definitely got to be special rules for it; I assume it'd have a boatload of points in Massive, and probably some starship equivalent to Durable.

Massive gets ignored by exhaust port. Now while thematic you still just fire torpedos into it without any special requirements and it's still just exploding after a few hits and a few destiny points spend. ;-)

You're not wrong, but honestly I think handling any encounter with the Death Star using straight starship combat rules would be... odd. I look at these stats the same way I look at stats for Star Destroyers; a vague mechanical backing I can use for narrative encounters, not something I'm ever likely to use in a straight combat.

8 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

You're not wrong, but honestly I think handling any encounter with the Death Star using straight starship combat rules would be... odd. I look at these stats the same way I look at stats for Star Destroyers; a vague mechanical backing I can use for narrative encounters, not something I'm ever likely to use in a straight combat.

Which makes them vaguely a waste of good paper, money and time, because we already have that idea just from watching "A New Hope"
And to be honest, star destroyers are fun targets, they are just the right size to be not necessary used via mass combat rules and get beaten after a decently hard fight by an experienced AoR-group. See Rebels for examples. Or to get ambushed and wiped out before they can launch fighters. ;-)

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Which makes them vaguely a waste of good paper, money and time, because we already have that idea just from watching "A New Hope"
And to be honest, star destroyers are fun targets, they are just the right size to be not necessary used via mass combat rules and get beaten after a decently hard fight by an experienced AoR-group. See Rebels for examples. Or to get ambushed and wiped out before they can launch fighters. ;-)

So you/ your-GM don't/doesn't have your/his star destroyers deploy tie fighters the moment the drop out of hyperspace and jump to hyperspace just as soon as the last tie fighter docks?

Yeah, sure, you could take out the Death Star in 3 or 4 rounds with some good torpedo hits. Good luck surviving those 3 rounds with the 500 minion groups (each with 6,500 minions in each) hot on your tail.

17 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Yeah, sure, you could take out the Death Star in 3 or 4 rounds with some good torpedo hits. Good luck surviving those 3 rounds with the 500 minion groups (each with 6,500 minions in each) hot on your tail.

500 minion groups are not going.to be where the PCs are...probably like 4 or 5. Then another 4 or 5 and so on

If I'm GMing an attack with a Death Star, you bet your *** that the fighters are going to be out patrolling in force and generally stopping people from shooting my Death Star with torpedoes.

35 minutes ago, Desslok said:

If I'm GMing an attack with a Death Star, you bet your *** that the fighters are going to be out patrolling in force and generally stopping people from shooting my Death Star with torpedoes.

Sure. But they are not all going where the PCs are. Cause to patrol they need to spread out...A LOT. You know because the Death star is rathet large and id they are all where the PCs are...well tgat leaves pretty much everywhere else un patrolled and vulnerable.

Eh, the radar dude on the Death Star was pretty good at spotting 30 ships heading their way, plus you know - they noticed the Falcon amid all that Alderaan line noise. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to spot and intercept a lone X-Wing on attack vector before they get into firing range.

I can neither confirm nor deny the DS will be fine, at least until the silly farm boy shows up....

3 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

So you/ your-GM don't/doesn't have your/his star destroyers deploy tie fighters the moment the drop out of hyperspace and jump to hyperspace just as soon as the last tie fighter docks?

While my star destroyers actually do this, it doesn't seem standard procedure in star wars. Neither in Legends, nor in Canon. Having the ability the jump faster into hyperspace seems to be rated higher than having a fighter screen and patrols in place immediately after entering a system.

Basically the imperials thrust their sensors to pick something up early enough and react to it in time.

@Desslok Even against 30 Starfighters neither Tarkin nor anyone else from the DS Officers seemed interested in launching fighters. We are actually not even sure if someone bothered getting fighters onboard, outside of Vader's Black Squadron guys. This means that you are actually right about getting a fighter screen ready for the DS, after all the one at Yavin was not deployed regularly, but taken directly out field testing into battle. (see Rogue One). A proper and fully equipped death star might be harder to get into range and fire at. Meanwhile a small fleet with MC30 torpedo frigates would still blast it in a few shots ... so you need a huge fleet around the death star to protect it on top of the larger fighter screen ... or in other words, those stats make the death star look way more fragile than it should be imho. Regular torpedo hits should imo not have an easy time to penetrate the armor. But maybe I am biased towards impenetrable armor from the silly EU story which had the rebels firing 500 torpedos at the DS1 before the battle of Yavin and failing utterly to even make a dent onto the thing, while the empire was still building it.

5 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Even against 30 Starfighters neither Tarkin nor anyone else from the DS Officers seemed interested in launching fighters.

Plot armor for Farmboy aside, honestly Tarkin was an idiot. "Hey boss, they're shooting at a hole that goes directly to our reactor. You want I should call down to the Supply Stores and get 5 bucks worth of rebar and chicken wire to plug it up?"

"Naw, bro - I got this. Hold my beer."

5 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

the silly EU story which had the rebels firing 500 torpedos at the DS1 before the battle of Yavin and failing utterly to even make a dent onto the thing, while the empire was still building it.

God that was daft, wasnt it. Okay, assuming that the Death Star sat there totally inert and did nothing in response to the X-Wing attack, and that the Rebels had 500 years of flight time and unlimited God Mode ammo turned on, they would have never been able to do enough damage to the Death Star to render it inoperable. Even if the capital ship rammed the thing, it would have been pretty negligible. Whoever ordered that attack was a bigger idiot than "No Chicken Wire, thank you".

Honestly, until we actually see the entire stat block, I wouldn't worry about Happy Fun Ball getting shot down. There has to be some kind of modifier in play that we're not seeing.

2 hours ago, Desslok said:

Honestly, until we actually see the entire stat block, I wouldn't worry about Happy Fun Ball getting shot down.

Bingo.

Oooh, bold, underlined AND Font 14 Size. It must be correct!

3 hours ago, Desslok said:

Oooh, bold, underlined AND Font 14 Size. It must be correct!

I don't know. The penguin doesn't look trustworthy …

Something just feels not right.

2 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Something just feels not right.

Five Nights at Desslok's.