5 minutes ago, Battlefleet 01 Studios said:

The Venator also shouldn't have a ton of firepower. It only had 8 heavy turbolaser turrets. The majority of its weaponry was point defense oriented.

I agree, but search any discussion where they are trying to make a Venator and people want 5 fighter activations with a Home One type of broadside. To me that is insane.

9 minutes ago, mcworrell said:

I agree, but search any discussion where they are trying to make a Venator and people want 5 fighter activations with a Home One type of broadside. To me that is insane.

That makes no sense. I think if they do the Clone Wars the weaponry and shielding and cost need to be scaled down. Look at battles like Bothuwai from the Clone Wars show and that is six Munificents vs three Venators.

I agree. Venator with 5 dice broadside 3 or 4 front and 2 rear. 3 squad although I think 4 squad is more accurate.

I think the Venator should be around 75 points.

I just hope we see more ships.

Maybe something out of the Clone Wars or Rebels shows.

We already have a medium dedicated carrier in the Quasar.

Medium carrier/gunship hybrid is the Victory.

Large ship carrier/gunship is the ISD.

The Venator wouldn't qualify as a large pure gunship.

What new role would the Venator fill?

15 minutes ago, mcworrell said:

I agree, but search any discussion where they are trying to make a Venator and people want 5 fighter activations with a Home One type of broadside. To me that is insane.

The overall strength of the card will depend on whether the "baseline" to be balanced against is GCW (in which case it represents an old ship with an outdated design and a second-rate crew) or whether it is designed purely for Clone Wars scenarios (in which case it represents the pinnacle of warship design, fresh from the factory and manned by top-notch Republic clones).

For example, the Clone Wars ships in Armada Shipyards are all designed to be compared with each other , not with the GCW units. Points-wise, they'll still be relatively balanced, but thematically the "power scale" is a bit different in order to increase available design space. You could visualise it as 1 red die representing "5 Megabooms" for GCW units but only "3 Megabooms" for CW units.

In that context, a broadside Venator with large fighter complement makes sense. But it's not a card you should ever field alongside ISDs or other "modern" ships. Our approach in Shipyards was to release a second card for the GCW Venator ("Imperial refit"), with vastly inferior stats.

That makes a ton of sense.

5 minutes ago, DiabloAzul said:

The overall strength of the card will depend on whether the "baseline" to be balanced against is GCW (in which case it represents an old ship with an outdated design and a second-rate crew) or whether it is designed purely for Clone Wars scenarios (in which case it represents the pinnacle of warship design, fresh from the factory and manned by top-notch Republic clones).

For example, the Clone Wars ships in Armada Shipyards are all designed to be compared with each other , not with the GCW units. Points-wise, they'll still be relatively balanced, but thematically the "power scale" is a bit different in order to increase available design space. You could visualise it as 1 red die representing "5 Megabooms" for GCW units but only "3 Megabooms" for CW units.

In that context, a broadside Venator with large fighter complement makes sense. But it's not a card you should ever field alongside ISDs or other "modern" ships. Our approach in Shipyards was to release a second card for the GCW Venator ("Imperial refit"), with vastly inferior stats.

I love the work you guys do over at the Shiphyards! I see the effort and time you take into crafting cards that could work. My concern is that when others, who haven't thought about everything you put into you process, start talking about this ship they want it to be the be all and end all. The 2 variants for the 2 different eras is great.

5 minutes ago, Democratus said:

What new role would the Venator fill?

Maybe a medium boarding focus? I mean, we see these things launch TANKS onto enemy capitol ships in the Clone Wars series? Might be interesting to see them as a sort of Imperial medium ship equivalent of the hammerhead. Giving them 1 red dice 3 blue dice side arcs and a very narrow Arquitens-esque front arc with 1 red 2 blue or something, but with access to two gunnery teams slots and 2 offensive retrofit slots (at the expense of just about every other slot) could set them up as an interesting carrier/boarding specialized hybrid that we don't currently have available.

I don't think small dice arcs with multiple gunnery or offenseive retrofit slots could be abused outside that role, but could give you some really interesting interactions if Imperials got a Cham Syndulla sort of unique boarding team in the pack as well.

5 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

I don't think small dice arcs with multiple gunnery or offenseive retrofit slots could be abused outside that role, but could give you some really interesting interactions if Imperials got a Cham Syndulla sort of unique boarding team in the pack as well.

Would be fun to see a 3rd Darth Vader unique card as a boarding party.

20 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

Maybe a medium boarding focus? I mean, we see these things launch TANKS onto enemy capitol ships in the Clone Wars series? Might be interesting to see them as a sort of Imperial medium ship equivalent of the hammerhead. Giving them 1 red dice 3 blue dice side arcs and a very narrow Arquitens-esque front arc with 1 red 2 blue or something, but with access to two gunnery teams slots and 2 offensive retrofit slots (at the expense of just about every other slot) could set them up as an interesting carrier/boarding specialized hybrid that we don't currently have available.

I don't think small dice arcs with multiple gunnery or offenseive retrofit slots could be abused outside that role, but could give you some really interesting interactions if Imperials got a Cham Syndulla sort of unique boarding team in the pack as well.

Creative.

3 hours ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

Hm, I made the calculations once, but I'll just take your word for it out of laziness.

Re: Correct dimensions of the ISD

If anyone is curious... Here's that old thread (there could very well be others)... page 2 is where you'll see both how the Armada model matches up to the ESB production model and how camera proximity can radically alter the apparent size of the bridge relative to the wedge

Hope it isn't a Scum faction. It's turned X Wing into a generic space game that often has no resemblance to Star Wars. It's also overpowered to the point where there is little point in turning up with TIE fighters, indeed Imperial as a faction are very weak now. I wouldn't want Armada to go the same way.

14 minutes ago, Bolshevik65 said:

Hope it isn't a Scum faction. It's turned X Wing into a generic space game that often has no resemblance to Star Wars. It's also overpowered to the point where there is little point in turning up with TIE fighters, indeed Imperial as a faction are very weak now. I wouldn't want Armada to go the same way.

Scum was good for X wing.
Everything else in your post was not.

8 minutes ago, FourDogsInaHorseSuit said:

Scum was good for X wing.
Everything else in your post was not.

My play group disintegrated because of the reasons I outlined. It didn't look good for the game to me!

Fortunately Armada is a superior game IMO.

I too have no desire for Scum. They're pants on head dumb in X-Wing (wee! a faction that can do almost everything Rebels or Imperials can, but better, and generates ridiculous free tokens while ignoring most game effects... and uses models that many casual fans would not recognize as Star Wars).

Equally an SSD isn't a very good unit for Armada. To be what it should be stat wise would be many points in one place and require games of beyond epic scaled totals... and the model would be scaled down to a very silly size to fit on even a 6x6 table

4 hours ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

In Legends the Hutts did have warships and the shipyards to build them. While I know that Legends is not canon anymore, that does not mean that it may not be brought back. Do you have a canon source that says that Hutts and other cartels do not have warships, the shipyards to build them, and/or the resources to procure them?

Also, why would it not fit their business model, and why should system states run by cartels not have warships? I guess we have different assessments of what counts as Scum. I would make the (racist) remark that the Hutts are Scum.

We all have our own head-canon. It seems that ours is at odds with one another. That only means we cannot say that the other is categorically wrong, while canon has not decided one way or the other.

I made a distinction - scum are those who do not own planets. People who belong to this category are Talon Karrde, Booster Terrik, etc. For them, they may have the resources to own warships, but not the need.

The other group, that of those who do own planets, both has the resources and the need for warships. Groups like these are the various members of the Corporate Sector, the Hutts, and to a lesser extent Hondo's Pirates. The corporate sector authorities had VSDs, Venators - outdated junk that the Empire a llowed them to have. I do not doubt that should they have gotten a competent military the Empire would have intervened. The Hutts had a better (I think) military, but were restricted to Hutt Space, and the Empire was fully prepared to crush them should they venture out of it. If the Empire had that power, then it implies that the contest was negligible, and thus it wouldn't be a nice balance for Armada. Hondo's pirates only had minor, corvette/frigate-type ships, and thus can be discounted.

So basically, those who can afford them either

1) Don't need them

2) Do not have enough new and powerful vessels to constitute a serious threat to the Empire, and thus wouldn't balance well in Armada.

But I agree, to each his own in these cases - perhaps your definition of a competent threat, or 'scum' varies from mine. I can but explain my position.

I think you have to rethink what a battle is for Armada. In other games I've played, you have factions that are huge armies fighting against skirmisher squads that, flavor-wise, would be performing a hit-and-run attack to get resources or divert the enemy away from a more important target. In that case, I can easily see a third, scum, cartel, Talon Karde, Hutts, etc faction work well.

I'm happy to allow a third faction and I think a CIS/remnant or reusing old ships faction would be a solid way to reintroduce some of the old prequel favorites without them trying to shoe them into the current factions.

The only thing they need to be sure of is making their role unique. As games go on, there is this inevitable blurring of lines for what each faction has for strengths/weaknesses.

I suspect the "something big" has already been seen....

....that's not the moon eclipsing the sun! That is FFG showing off their upcoming Deathstar model.

26 minutes ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

I think you have to rethink what a battle is for Armada. In other games I've played, you have factions that are huge armies fighting against skirmisher squads that, flavor-wise, would be performing a hit-and-run attack to get resources or divert the enemy away from a more important target. In that case, I can easily see a third, scum, cartel, Talon Karde, Hutts, etc faction work well.

I'm happy to allow a third faction and I think a CIS/remnant or reusing old ships faction would be a solid way to reintroduce some of the old prequel favorites without them trying to shoe them into the current factions.

The only thing they need to be sure of is making their role unique. As games go on, there is this inevitable blurring of lines for what each faction has for strengths/weaknesses.

The thing is, the game is about the Galactic Civil War. About the control of the Galaxy and the overthrow of a government. Small time raiders and pirate distractions have no place.

I'd be surprised to see a scum wave, and I hope we don't.

I'm ambivalent about an SSD. I don't want Armada to go its whole lifespan without one, but I don't see myself playing it a ton either so....meh.

I just want to see some good stuff in wave 7. So far wave six has been excellent imo. I'm still playing around with stuff. I love the quasar, I like the hammerheads even if i do need more practice with them, and I freaking love the upgrades that dropped. I want to see whats next for my week to week gaming more than anything bananas like a new faction or mega-ultra-grande-base ship.

I'd really love some new ******* titles. That would be cool but also wont be happening.

I'll just expect a 6x3 playmat, and I'll be happy if they exceed my expectations.

25 minutes ago, miferr said:

I'll just expect a 6x3 playmat, and I'll be happy if they exceed my expectations.

looking forward to your 6 1/3 x 3 1/26 map. ******* hoth.

6 hours ago, D503 said:

I grew up on the original star wars trilogy, but still like the prequels too. All of them. I know it's not a popular opinion, and some of the acting is worse than Sharknado , but they are still good enough for me to watch many times.

Darth Maul is my favourite Star Wars character.... even in the cartoons. First time I saw his lightsaber fight was the hardest my jaw hit the floor in any movie ever, and I have practiced martial arts to this day because of its awesomeness.

Back on topic, no SSD, 'big' will be the finaliser class. I'm going to paint mine black.

"Character"?! Until the cartoon he had no character at all! Literally, at all. Well alright, that's not fair. He was a man who wanted revenge for something.