2 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Gunboats seem to be addressing upgrade slot concerns with titles, especially in being the only double cannon small ships for linked batteries

It is also the only adv slam ship with reload thus far

Empire doesn't really need unique upgrade slot to be unique, as much as ships with unique capabilities. This means more gunboats, strikers, x7s (still amazing even with no upgrade slots outside mods and epts) and less stuff like gressors and tie adv prototype

Gunboat will even have 3 cannon slots with the title!

I dont go to agree on the unique slot. It would be nice. I like the idea of the thread starter. Further diversification of the factions is very welcome!

Other than this: The empire should have gained the Bullseye Arc. Not necessary with the GUNBOAT. But Bullseye screams to me Empire. High Damaging precision weapons is the department of the empire! Or at least it should be!

Now the upgrade slots and the pool of available upgrades are getting mixed up here

i suspect the Silencer to have the bullseye.
It is, after all, a bit of a "silencing" effect.

If anything should get the bullseye it should be the x

I mean, that four cannon fire converging at a Central point is perfect

If I were to implement an Empire fix based on a lack of upgrades, I would try to target something that would help their generic fighters. Initially, you had Howlrunner and her tie swarm, but by today's standards, Howlrunner would fall in a heartbeat. So maybe I would go something along this route:

Title: Tie Fighter Squadron (not unique, 0 points)

Tie fighter only

After performing a movement, if you are within range 1 of another ship with Tie Fighter Squadron, you may perform a free barrel roll action.

Something that would capitalize on the strenght of the empire.

I'd really like to see an empire ship or crew that can remove damage cards from low hull TIEs not as an auto ability there needs to be some risk and reward in the mechanic , TIE Reaper expansion (since it's a shuttle with Death Trooper Crew, Director Krennic crew and then either a crew, upgrade, title or MOD that allows the reaper to "repair" for lack of a better word low hull TIEs under a risk / reward mechanic with a range limit. Canocially it doesn't make sense but it would be the Imperials version of Regen and hopefully keep TIEs in the fight longer.

What if we brought in something new? Not a title or a crew, but a named condition card type: Commanding Officer.

You could have different named commanders and admirals (even Palpatine and Vader) with different squad point counts that provide different abilities to your ships?

Example: Thrawn would cost 7 points, but allows all imperial ships 2 modifications and reduces those costs by 2. Vader could do something with damage or dice results. Palps could be a little figurine with a speaker that cackles and **** talks the whole game. Kylo Ren allows you to violently yank the play mat if you're losing.

These commanders could be represented by a small Star Destroyer miniature that sits off the side of the play area and can't be targeted or attacked.

Have no fear, Gunboat is here

While i used this for my Academy Training post, this could also apply as a TIE Only mod that would benefit from this post quite well. Course the name Expert Piloting wouldnt make sense as a mod so just change the name:

Reactive Engines
Slot: Mod
Cost: 1pt
Text: TIE Only. When defending, if 2 or more of your defense dice are blanks you may reroll one blank result.

Helps mitigate utter flopping on defense without providing a potential ridiculous dodge-rate (see Soontir with SD/PTL...it will help you get at least 1 evade potentially 2 but it wont help you get 3 consistently)

I think the Empire could use a thematic EPT that lets them push the TIE fighters beyond the theoretical limits of their performance; something that lets them try to keep flying when their hull is theoretically at its limit.

For example, after a TIE has received its three damage cards, it remains in play. At the end of each turn, add a stress token. Green maneuvers are safe. White adds another stress. When the total stress tokens equals your hull value, or if you are damaged again, you are destroyed.

Stress cannot be removed for any reason after hull is compromised.

Fits the "coffin jockey" nickname sometimes given to TIE pilots...

Some sort of TIE tracer guns mod along the lines of

1pt Tie only mod: If you make a primary attack with an attack value is 2 or less, your opponent rolls one less evade dice, to a minimum of two.

Empire is falling behind because other factions are getting multiple arcs or pwt ships that can carry crew AND other combos.

The only empire ships that fit the bill is Decimator (aka only imp list to make top 16 at gencon and worlds) and Firespray which is way overcosted with weak abilities.

Tie bomber, can only support crew OR ordinance. Lambda and Upsilon have a single arc.

Meanwhile rebels have Arcs and Falcons and Auzitucks and Outriders and Kwings and Ghosts, even the attack shuttle. All crew carriers with turret or pwt. Even the **** HWK. What are their weak carriers? Uwing. Slow single arc crew carrier, bwing technically can take a crew.

Dont think scum needs an explanation.

Which kinda leads into a bit of a design annoyance the imps have

We have a whopping 1 small ship with a crew slot. Firespray is trash in almost all accounts and the rest are large, fat ships that are super expensive. Heck even our only single crew ship the Phantom is a fortune so its not a valid "random crew" carrier either.
As you said the bomber cant do anything other than take crew, which makes it just as bad as the shuttles (too expensive for what it does, atleast the shuttles can tank some damage).

Yet rebels have a ton of single crew slots, as do scum. Rebel have gotten a crew slot the past EIGHT releases (9 if you count Heroes box) and even more annoyingly a TIE FIGHTER has a crew slot....wtf? Surely if the smallest TIE of them all can somehow cram a crew in there our larger TIEs could easily do it (punisher, striker, defender, or nontitle bomber for instance)

Makes one wish that ships like the TIE Striker or the TIE/sf had been shown to be more than a single seater. Oh, wait...

And even if we had the slots, we'd lack crews that buff the ship they are on. Kallus, Mara Jade and Rebel Captive, all situational, and very little synergy. That's it.

20 hours ago, RufusDaMan said:

Just wait until people come here and tell you that the Empire is fine, and when you ask them about the lack of upgrades and slots they quietly walk away without responding.

Because all your arguments make sense if you are selective about your facts.

In this thread, I would like to ask people not to do that. Either acknowledge that the empire has problems, or defend your position against this argument (lack of upgrades). It's hard to take people seriously when they refuse to engage in argument as soon as they run out of answers.

I feel one of the major reasons Empire is struggling is the tournament structure.

Empire had two lists that held MOV - Palp Aces and Palp Defenders. One got a nerf, the other has seen at least 1 upgrade or pilot ability in the last 5 waves designed to take them down.

And yet Rebels now have a list that is basically Palp Defenders in survivability, that can just roll on time and win at Salvo.

Not only do Empire have to lose ships in the fight (this is actually a good thing for the game) they also have many ships with a native 2 attack dice that is improved by an upgrade or title, so that Final Salvo will never go their way.

It's true that Empire don't really have their own upgrades (though currently Tech feels almost exclusively theirs because their Tech ships are better), they also have less crew options, no cheap crew options (like how is Rey 2pts), and limited faction identity.

Here is an imperial fix for you.

Shield Battery - Imperial Only, Small Ship Only, Missile Slot - During the combat phase when your have the opportunity to attack, regen a shield instead of attacking. 2-3pts (though honestly it could be free, but regen Quickdraw is likely the biggest problem).

It really helps Advanced, TIE/D and SF and turns them all into true Heavy Tanks. They do probably want to disengage to regen though and that can be super risky at times, just as it is with Rebel Regen Aces.

With the current tournament rules as they are, something like this is desperately needed.

8 hours ago, SabineKey said:

Makes one wish that ships like the TIE Striker or the TIE/sf had been shown to be more than a single seater. Oh, wait...

Par, the SF 2nd guy is actually a Gunner

He's too busy gunning unlike that ******* in the copilot phantom seat getting a free ride

Even when you shoot foward, that extra die comes from your normal TIE fighter guns being supplemented by the little turret (which can rotate to fire foward)

Not that it really needs crew in the first place. The SF has some great upgrade slots as is

22 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

If anything should get the bullseye it should be the x

I mean, that four cannon fire converging at a Central point is perfect

Agreed, but rather than a linear field of impact, it would rather have a specific location of its bullseye; only the convergence point would have that effect. Perhaps it would effect only when its in arc and the end of a range one ruler overlaps its base? range two? IDK....

1 minute ago, clanofwolves said:

Agreed, but rather than a linear field of impact, it would rather have a specific location of its bullseye; only the convergence point would have that effect. Perhaps it would effect only when its in arc and the end of a range one ruler overlaps its base? range two? IDK....

Too complicated; bullseye

9 hours ago, SabineKey said:

Makes one wish that ships like the TIE Striker or the TIE/sf had been shown to be more than a single seater. Oh, wait...

Agreed, they should both have a crew slot, and the Striker should have a single bomb slot or there should be an Imperial (Sabine like) crew card. FFG missed the mark on these ships being useful in the top of the meta.......missed oprotunity.

4 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

Agreed, but rather than a linear field of impact, it would rather have a specific location of its bullseye; only the convergence point would have that effect. Perhaps it would effect only when its in arc and the end of a range one ruler overlaps its base? range two? IDK....

2 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Too complicated; bullseye

So when you declare an enemy ship to attack and you put your range one ruler in the front guides to see if it touches the target ship to get your bonus, that's too complicated?

On 8/25/2017 at 8:05 AM, GreenDragoon said:

But we all know that FFG prefers to fix by powercreep, not by nerf. So obviously yours won't happen.

Right. I wouldn't be surprised to see this:

*We Screwed Up

Empire Only

Modification, -3 points

This card has a negative point cost. You may equip 1 additional Modification Upgrade.

There, a single unique card that basically lets Empire take 103 point squads. Finally you can run Howlrunner with the 8 Tie swarm.

7 hours ago, RufusDaMan said:

And even if we had the slots, we'd lack crews that buff the ship they are on. Kallus, Mara Jade and Rebel Captive, all situational, and very little synergy. That's it.

52 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Par, the SF 2nd guy is actually a Gunner

He's too busy gunning unlike that ******* in the copilot phantom seat getting a free ride

Even when you shoot foward, that extra die comes from your normal TIE fighter guns being supplemented by the little turret (which can rotate to fire foward)

Not that it really needs crew in the first place. The SF has some great upgrade slots as is

While it might have been fun to slap someone like Hux on QuickDraw, my main gripe about the sf not having a crew slot is a little crew called Tailgunner. QD would have liked it to make her back arc better and BD would have killed with it.

100% Agree the Tie Striker and Tie SF should have crew slots baked into their Title Cards.

Tail Gunner on QD would be fantastic

Intel Agent on low PS Strikers would be generally amazing.

Makes soooo much sense and could be added via Errata.

The TIE Reaper needs to be in this game, it doesn't have the turrets or aux arcs like the scum and rebel crew carriers but if it came to the game as a durable and maneuverable small base shuttle that could carry crew like Death Troopers and Director Krennic that have some amazing support abilities for Empire the empire wouldn't feel as much as an uphill struggle as it does.

They might as well bring the Delta Class Shuttle in as well (since I think that would qualify as small base too) and if that was the case stick Krennic in the Delta expansion with a crew like Death Trooper Squad Leader and put Shore Trooper Sergeant (just throwing things out there) in the TIE Reaper box with w/e new crew comes out with it. However its all put together the, after reading everyones input I agree that the empire needs cheaper support ships that come with some amazing support crew and the ability to carry those crew. There was once a argument that the Empire had too many shuttles and on paper it seems that way, but if the Delta Class and TIE reaper were affordable small base shuttles and the TIE Reaper was at least maneuverable or more maneuverable than the shuttles already in the empire's roster it may really boost the factions abilities as a whole.

I know previously I mentioned that the TIE Reaper could come into the game with either a crew, mod w/e to remove damage cards with a risk / reward mechanic from low hull TIEs but that canonically doesn't make sense and after reading more posts in this thread I agree with everyones sentiment, cheaper, more durable small base Empire Crew Carries that come with Crew that are Empire Only and on par with the amazing Scum and Rebel Crew already in the game.