As we all know Imperial ships lack upgrade slots (with the possible exception of the SF) and this is generally the main reason imperials feel like they get the short end of the stick a lot. If their pilot ability or dial isn’t outright amazing, the ship ends up mediocre at best because we have no upgrades (unique to the Empire or not) to fix the problem.
Imperial ships are based on mass, identical productions that are cheap. So giving us only a few upgrade slots actually makes sense thematically. However; what is missing is the training!
Academy Training Ref Card
Academy Training upgrades are an Imperial Only upgrade that is not found on the upgrade bar. Any Imperial ship with less than 2 crew and is PS3 or higher may equip an Academy Training upgrade.
The point of Academy Training cards: These upgrades will focus on pilot-centered upgrades, similar to EPTs. However simply giving us double EPTs would cause a whole slew of problems (do you really want a PS11 soontir?) and it would feel more like a cheap bandaid rather than a new mechanic.
The reason for the limitations are thematic because the Academy training focuses on Fighters, so such training wouldn’t be very valuable if you are a shuttlecraft. This unfortunately makes the TIE Shuttle unable to access it, and that’s the one ship that would make sense for it to still have Academy Training cards, but if I had a TIE only limitation then the Gunboat or any future non-tie ship cant get them either. I put the PS3+ restriction on there because the only pilots we have lower than that are called Trainees or Rookies, they havnt gotten their “wings” yet so no training bonuses.
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Upgrade Ideas:
Note: * means Unique
Deadshot Ace
Slot: Academy Training
Cost: 2pts
Text: When attacking, if you are not stressed you may mod one [Focus] result to a [Crit]
Explanations: This gives us a soft-mod to a wide array of ships, but we must avoid being stressed. Therefore unless you are a Defender you wont get this on a turnaround maneuver and you must not be using self-stressing mechanics, so no boost/barrelroll and still get a focusmod for you! (unless youre Vader). Reason its 2pts is because its only a single mod and is stress cancelled, while Calculation is 1pt but requires a focus (which can be gotten while stressed in various ways).
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Danger Thriller
Slot: Academy Training
Cost: 2pts
Text: When you execute a maneuver and overlap an obstacle roll a green die. On an Evade result, ignore the obstacle. If you land on an Asteroid you still cannot attack in the Attack Phase.
Explanations: Its RNG, but its RNG that may keep your action/not get stressed/not have a chance at damage. 2pts sounds fair, since its powerful but not something you should be doing every time. Also like Dash, if you land on a rock you still need to get off of it to get an attack.
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Leadfoot Pilot
Slot: Academy Training
Cost: 3pt
Text: When you reveal your dial and you are not stressed, you may increase the speed of the maneuver by 1.
Explanations: This one feels like it should be expensive since it gives practically all of our ships a slight reactive play, however unlike Juno its stress cancelled and only works to go faster. Therefore it doesnt improve our destressing ability. Biggest strength is being able to extend our turnaround maneuvers so its harder to block them (albeit slightly). This technically does give the SF a white 3Turn, but it’s a 3pt upgrade on an already fairly pricy ship.
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Bottom of the Class
Slot: Academy Training
Cost: -2pts
Text: You may not perform the Focus action or receive Focus tokens. You may not equip this card if you are PS5 or higher.
Explanations: With every class, theres always that guy that somehow passes even though hes terrible. Basically, any of our lower generics or a few specific named pilots can get a -2 cost if you don’t think you need a focus (TIE fighters always evade anyway). Both thematically and for balance reasons you cant put this on a PS9 powerhouse QD/Vader, since clearly they are not bottom of the class types (as you would just put Expertise on them for 2pts and sacrifice the defensive focus)
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*Undivided Attention
Slot: Academy Training
Cost: 0pt
Text: After placing forces but before dials are set, choose one enemy ship and assign it the
Watching You
condition card. Until that ship is destroyed, other ships attacking you may utilize a Focus token without spending the token and you may not utilize a Focus Token or Focus modding effects against any other ship.
*Watching You:
Someone has a death stare on you. You may not benefit from Focus Tokens or Focus Modding effects when defending against or attacking a ship that has Undivided Attention.
Explanations: In light of the new “!%&* Your Mods!” that Wave12 brings, heres another similar to the Debt To Pay mentality. Its free, but it’s got a big drawback. You are so focused on killing that one ship that nomatter what he does you see it coming (hence the ship with Watching You cant use focus results except to reroll them via Targetlock or other generic reroll effects, but not Focus-specific ones liked Wired), but as a result you lose track of the rest of the battle and everyone else gets the upper hand on you.
The “may utilize a focus token w/o spending the token” is to somewhat limit the severity of this. They still NEED a focus token, but basically while they have it theyre Super Poe where they mod all focuses and can even utilize Deadeye or other abilities that spend a focus token and still keep it.
A Debt To Pay makes both ships hit each other slightly better. This makes the ship with the card cripple the enemy ship, but anybody else will probably punish him for it.
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Expert Piloting
Slot: Academy Training
Cost: 1pt
Text: When defending, if two or more of your green dice are blanks you may reroll 1 blank result.
Explanation: Imperial ships suffer from green dice problems, as they can either dodge everything all day or blank out and go poof. The idea behind this is to mitigate the worst case scenario of blanking out without providing a top-end evasion Stealth Device can do. Without anything increasing our agility, this means any of our 3agi ships can get 2 evades a bit more reliably (initially roll 1evade 2 blanks, reroll 1 blank). 2agi ships w/o LWF can still benefit from it but obviously they’d have to completely blank out.
Course given the scenario it may stack with other rerolls. For instance, Lone Wolf…2 blanks triggers Expert Piloting and any blanks triggers Lone Wolf so reroll both blanks. Wired may also trigger it if you had a blank/focus, reroll the focus into a blank, now you have 2 blanks so reroll the blank you had earlier.
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Closing Thoughts:
These are of course just a few of the many possibilities that could be implemented into this slot. FFG does not release general upgrade packs otherwise this could be a great candidate for that; however they could easily just start slapping these in future imperial releases. Obviously I didn’t spend a ton of time trying to balance the costs/effects since this is an idea pitch not a CCL type thing. I suspect some of these are a little over the top in some scenarios.
This would give all of our ships (except our nonfirespray larges and tie shuttles) another upgrade slot to mess around with. No matter what theres always going to be that one ship that only wants one upgrade card in a slot (i imagine Deadshot to be common for Vader, Maarek, or Wampa) so thats a given. The point is Imperials generally are only given ordnance if they have upgrades at all, and with LWF/Mk2 around our mod is practically auto-taken anyway.