2 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

Not sure on the names yet.

Ok

’Cause i thought for the discard/scatter idea something in the lines if “honorable captain” might be fitting as he “sacrifices” himself for his men...

but on the other hand i just might be overthinking all this

Generic Commander: After deployment, place one of each command token on this upgrade card. At the start of the Ship Phase of any round, you may discard one of these command tokens. If you do, one friendly ship gains a matching command token.

The danger with some of the ideas I see in this thread is that a niche fleet might actually prefer it to a unique commander. This one, I don't think would ever be superior to any unique commander, but it's "fine."

Heres my idea.

Make unique commanders and generic commanders extremely different.

While unique commanders have effects that are fleet wide and last the entire game, generic commanders are 1 use, like some of the ideas posted above with placing tokens and then spending those tokens at the start of a round to gain a command token.

10 hours ago, Nostromoid said:

Generic Commander: After deployment, place one of each command token on this upgrade card. At the start of the Ship Phase of any round, you may discard one of these command tokens. If you do, one friendly ship gains a matching command token.

The danger with some of the ideas I see in this thread is that a niche fleet might actually prefer it to a unique commander. This one, I don't think would ever be superior to any unique commander, but it's "fine."

The balance comes in with the fleet restrictions. You can stick to 299 and keep your generic commander, but you will get rolled when the 500 point fleet finds you.

You'll start with 2 150 point fleets, no large ships, but can combine them to reach 300 and get a unique commander. You won't be able to downgrade to generic and bounce commanders around. Once you pick it up, you're stuck with it until they die.

Fleets will expand pretty quickly. I have starting income at 130 per round, but ship destruction has also changed. Once a ship reaches it's hull value, it's disabled and loses all shields and moves forward 1. If it reaches hull value x2, it's destroyed. No scarring or repairing at half point cost. You'll have to buy everything at full and fly well to keep it alive. Since it's a new mechanic, I'm also writing alternative rules to allow people to play with scarring.

I'm not too worried about people making a niche fleet with a generic commander. I think I've put enough incentive to create a large fleet, but also very small ones for scouting.

12 hours ago, Nostromoid said:

The danger with some of the ideas I see in this thread is that a niche fleet might actually prefer it to a unique commander. This one, I don't think would ever be superior to any unique commander, but it's "fine."

What if generic commanders were randomly assigned so there would not be the option specifically build towards them.

Herm... what about something along the lines of:

________ Specialist Commander: Once per game you may resolve a _______ token as if it were a _______ dial.

You could have all 4 for each of the different command tokens (filling in the blank), and you could play test to adjust it to once per round or once per game, or refresh on turn 4, etc. Each one of them might be a different cost as well. A squadron token is the least useful compared to a squadron dial, where as an engineering token (with the exception of the Interdictor) only loses 1-2 engineering points. Plus you can't resolve two dials together but you can resolve dial + token, so the most effective repair is still to not use the commander. And the extra click of yaw can be critical, but it's not always required. But an extra die from a small ship can have a major impact on how much damage gets through compared to a reroll.

I updated the thread with the ideas that have been put up, and added some of my own. I tweaked them so they mostly follow the rules.

Ideally, I'd like to have a pool of at least 5 to give some variety, but I don't want to double dip with the same ideas. Like the command tokens has a lot of redundancy which isn't needed.

I also might tie most of the abilities to a command, so you don't get an outrageous buff. I think the Attack commanders are too powerful as a flat ability, but tying them to the CF command can restrain it.

Light Necro here

How about taking generic officers and then multiply their cost by the number of ships/squadrons in the fleet?