30 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Well, the 2 points are tied together. The Imps could use some better crew, and and a solid officers' corps would be distinctly Imperial. (Although I guess not unique, since all factions have crew. OTOH, as I pointed out earlier, most other crew help the boat they are on; Imperial crew should help the fighters near them. That would give crew their distinctly Imperial flavor.)

The Shuttle/Officer solution is only working if we get some proper shuttles. If imperial crew helps other ships, the ship its placed on will be bad. That's at least a 3rd of your list.

To compete with a bad ship, and two good ships, the officers need to be at Palp level in terms of power.

Imagine this: The rebels/scum get a ship, and they turn it into a murder machine by using their crew options. That ship is now really dangerous, and costs some fair points. Let's talk about the same ship, for the sake of the example.

You have the Upsilon shuttle. Rebels would probably slap Kaanan on it to open up the dial, maybe also adding some offensive capabilities, by Finn, or defensive by 3PO. That would be a fairly expensive ship floating around 40-50 points depending on your build, but it is a potent ship taking up half your list.

If you let imperials take the same shuttle, and slap officers that help other ships, the shuttle doesn't get THAT much cheaper, but loses a lot in potential. The aces have to carry the game, which is fine.

What is not fine is to add a card that is so powerful that an Ace or two can carry a game. That was Palpatine.

Simple things like "hey, here's a free action" is not the thing we need. We already have that. It doesn't do enough compared to others. We would need something powerful to boost the ships into usefulness, but at that point we are at the beginning.

100/6 is too small of a game scale to justify "useless" ships. Everybody needs to carry their own weight.

In Epic, imperial Doctrine is much much better. You can use a Gozanti as your command craft, and protect it easily with swarms of fighters. In small scale, that doesn't seem to work, unless your cards are too powerful.

I think that what is being overlooked by some is that, overall, the Imperial faction has the most ships with the Evade action, the most ships with native repositioning, the most pre-positioners (excluding the use of Advanced Sensors), some of the best dials, I could go on for a bit.

Since the Evade action mostly belongs to the Imperials, upgrades that more effectively use Evade tokens on small ships would be nice to see. Additionally, if wasn't faction restricted, we could see some more use of the E-Wing, A-Wing, many TIE variants, Scyk, and G1-A.

If the game shifts back into a meta where maneuvering matters again, I bet you'd see many iterations of Imperial Aces back on the board since it thoroughly embraces what makes the Empire unique: highly maneuverable, evasive ships that have efficient costs for their abilities and survivability.

Actually, yeah. I've been thinking about upgrades that offer alternate or boosted ways to use and spend evades for a while now, it would be nice to see the Imperials get some of those.

Maybe 'during the end phase you may spend an evade token to flip a face up damage card face down or discard a face down damage card'.

1 hour ago, RufusDaMan said:

The Shuttle/Officer solution is only working if we get some proper shuttles.

100/6 is too small of a game scale to justify "useless" ships. Everybody needs to carry their own weight.

Agreed. The Lambda and the Upsilon are both designed as aggressors. The Imps need a defensive shuttle that has 1-2 attack (not 3-4), lots of shields, and maybe even the reinforce action. Then, "carrying it's own wgt" means forcing a decision between chewing down the shuttle to kill the officers vs. dealing with the fighters (maybe even a TIE swarm??) it is supporting. In essence, the classic dilemma of Epic: do you go for the Epic ship, or do you deal with it's fighter support. . .cuz you kinda can't do both at once.

2 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Actually, yeah. I've been thinking about upgrades that offer alternate or boosted ways to use and spend evades for a while now, it would be nice to see the Imperials get some of those.

Maybe 'during the end phase you may spend an evade token to flip a face up damage card face down or discard a face down damage card'.

Flip crit down maybe, but the last thing you or anyone wants is a "regenerating" x7 or soontir fel

It may sound cool untill you have to run into one, especially if you run into one while playing one for a never ending circle jerk experience

They could introduce some off the board upgrades that aren't tied to any ship. Some sort of military command or order upgrades that affect the entire game. Maybe off board fire or targeting support from a nearby Star Destroyer. I'd pay a fair price for off board Palpatine.

That, or release a lot of Imperial Only TIE Only upgrades (**** you Sabine).

Mass Produced

TIE Only.  Imperial Only.

Title.

You may equip one additional title.

-1 points

You could always have Non-elite pilot upgrade cards for specific ships. Example:

Speed training (1 points, EPT)

Tie Interceptor only

After performing a manoeuver that is a speed 3 or higher, you may perform a free boost or barrel roll action. You may equip this card, even if the pilot does not have an EPT slot. If you do, increase the cost by 1 point.

The shuttle problem would be fixed if games were larger. 150-200 point games are very managable, and a support shuttle doesn't eat up too much of your list.

Imperials get one unique/cool thing! Tie Phantoms!
Nobody else can decloak shoot then cloak again!
They are super awesome!

Oh wait everyone is ps 10-11 with turrets now........

16 hours ago, RufusDaMan said:

I mean... I really don't care WHAT at this point. Just something to show that FFG is aware of the problem, and they are trying to fix it.

I am not sure what the "problem" is other then some weird thing in your head that says every faction needs something unique to them.

18 hours ago, RufusDaMan said:

There have been many ideas floating about Imperials lacking a specific upgrade type, and how to fix this problem. I'm not here to talk about those, but rather the eventual possibility of their inclusion.

Do you think it is possible that Imps will get something only available to them? Let's not talk about the what , there are plenty of threads about that, I'm more interested in the if and the how .

To me it seems obvious that without an answer to this problem the long term balance of the game is at stake. Obviously there are difficulties in implementing such a change so late in the game, but the problem isn't going to get any better as more and more waves are released.

Do you think we are too late for something like that? Or it is feasible that this problem will be solved in a future expansion or errata?

(If you don't think this is a problem, let's save ourselves from a long and tiring argument, and just keep it to yourself.*)

(*He said cynically)

IMO it is possible but it does not have to be a new upgrade type. I would prefer if we just get unique cards for the upgrade slots already in place. Unique crew, EPT, tech, system, mods and why not unique ordnance? The one i would like the most is a repair droid crew so Imps are the only faction with hull regen. Most (if not all) of our ships with a crew slot need a boost anyway. It would need to be carefully balanced both way (ie not OP but not UP either) but it is feasable.

There are so many possibilities for unique Imperial upgrades.... and yes, it's needed.

Imperials get nothing.

Rebel and Scum Only.

Also remeber that one cool pilot which was the excuse why Imperials cant have regen. What was his name starts with an O he was leader of something?

Well we don't need Imperials anymore.

9 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Imperials get nothing.

Rebel and Scum Only.

Also remeber that one cool pilot which was the excuse why Imperials cant have regen. What was his name starts with an O he was leader of something?

Well we don't need Imperials anymore.

Seriously!?! Maul is Scum AND Rebel only???? This is just insulting

1 minute ago, Hooba Jooba said:

Seriously!?! Maul is Scum AND Rebel only???? This is just insulting

"Formerly Darth, now just Maul"

it makes sense thematically since Maul cut ties with the emperor LONG before the empire even existed

and, really, are we missing that much? the crew is exceptionally situational for how expensive it is

The thing Imperial players have which is unique is their eternal ability to be salty.

They could be 8/8 top slots at Worlds, Nationals and Regionals, and somehow, they'd complain about how people were still playing Rebel and Scum at all.

7 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

"Formerly Darth, now just Maul"

it makes sense thematically since Maul cut ties with the emperor LONG before the empire even existed

and, really, are we missing that much? the crew is exceptionally situational for how expensive it is

I know he cut ties. But at least he HAD ties. The whole point of this thread is Imperials have nothing unique, and I just feel this added weight to the problem

20 minutes ago, RufusDaMan said:

kind of like the last FAQ.

Just now, Hooba Jooba said:

I know he cut ties. But at least he HAD ties. The whole point of this thread is Imperials have nothing unique, and I just feel this added weight to the problem

oh no, imperials don't get a unique crew character released in a rebel expansion pack.

I'm also gonna second the Maul not being ideal. He's like red Zuckuss with an extra effect. Only now you can put him on very specific rebel squads and do weird things there. Scum will probably not be preferring him over their other options.

6 minutes ago, Hooba Jooba said:

I know he cut ties. But at least he HAD ties. The whole point of this thread is Imperials have nothing unique, and I just feel this added weight to the problem

I don't know, there's nothing particularly unique about "Dengar crew, but really crappy"

3 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

I don't know, there's nothing particularly unique about "Dengar crew, but really crappy"

Zuckuss and Dengar did the fusion dance.

Poorly.

There's a big list of rebel and scum ships that would love to take Light Weight Frame.

Just saying

15 minutes ago, Hooba Jooba said:

I know he cut ties. But at least he HAD ties. The whole point of this thread is Imperials have nothing unique, and I just feel this added weight to the problem

Maul never had ties with the Empire. He had ties with Sidious, briefly, well before he was emperor or even anything more than a single senator of thousands.

He was never going to be an Imperial character.

18 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Maul never had ties with the Empire. He had ties with Sidious, briefly, well before he was emperor or even anything more than a single senator of thousands.

He was never going to be an Imperial character.

Darth Vader = Imperial

Darth Sidious = Imperial

Darth Maul = not Imperial???????

Unless they add a faction, Darth Maul is Imperial.

3 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Darth Vader = Imperial

Darth Sidious = Imperial

Darth Maul = not Imperial???????

it's not Darth Maul

it's just Maul