14 hours ago, Norsehound said:An Imperial Commander's perspective: Optimization
Putting this bluntly, the universe rewards you if you have more ships. There are two significant reasons for this.
- First is the power of being able to delay-activate your opponent's primary ship into range, where it receives damage first by forcing it to skip it's attack and being subject to yours when you are in range. This back-and-forth of whom determines the first alpha strike can quickly determine how a match will go from there on out. This is why Demolisher is so powerful, because it gets around this limitation by choosing where to deliver its alpha strike. As a whole though, making your opponent's big-bad gunship skip its activation gives you a significant advantage. This is why there has been a rise of flotillas, more than any other reason.
- Second is the power of spamming a key upgrade. We see this with Raiders running Screed and APTs- you can deliver as many face-up crits on a target you choose when you get into range. This is why CR-90s are so powerful with TRCs. Hammeheads with XI7s, DTTs, spinals, or intel officers for raw damage repeated on a target. The net effect of this attack spamming means a single ship receiving the damage has to blow through its defense tokens a lot quicker in response. This is also why fighters are particularly powerful, and why Yavaris is as strong as it is.
These are the Rebel ways. I have always wondered how badly Clon damaged Imperial list building. The Clonisher used activation for control, however, as was quickly proved in the aftermath, rebels do it better, but imps have long help on to the idea they can compete here.
14 hours ago, Norsehound said:Activations and upgrade swarming give Imperial players an uphill struggle on choosing optimal lists, because for both of these things, the Rebellion does it better and more cheaply. There are two significant problems as a result of the above:
- First, Imperial ships as a whole are more expensive. We are expected to do more with less. For instance, your ISDs are so heavy in points you're expected to be able to counter-attack swarms of smaller ships. Indeed, the ISD can very capably one-shot almost any other ship in the game... though as above, it only has four damage tokens. Devestator was created for the inevitability of being swarmed to death by fighters/Multiple-small-units because it can very quickly run out of them when under attrition attack.
Still, not all ships can be the toughest starship in the game. Half the Imperial inventory is made up of medium and heavy ships, which cannot be spammed and do not have the resiliency of the Imperial. Case in point is the Victory Star Destroyer, a heavy cruiser which cannot survive well against heavy ship attack barrages and struggles in the face of MSU shots. More than the ISD, the VSD has to assuredly kill the lights-and-mediums sent against it, but thanks to cards out there such as Rieekan, Cracken, and Mon-Mothma this is no longer a certainty.
The only exception that comes to mind is the 'wall of victory' list of VSDs with Motti... but I've never heard of this list topping at a major event.
- The second problem is that when it comes to Imperial ship-spam in response, we do not do it so well. The Raider is our equivalent corvette, but it suffers tremendously from defending better at long range, but being effective at close range. Spamming APTs with screed is an adventure because Raiders can very easily be popped- unless you have first-last advantage, be prepared to lose one of them without any return. Other Empire players can offer up the Gozanti as another swarm unit, but unlike the Hammerhead, the Gozanti doesn't have any slots to enhance the firepower it puts out except taking an Intelligence officer (though going this route makes the Gozanti more expensive than it is survivable worth). Leaning on Gozantis for your swarm attack advantage is also relying entirely on Red Dice, which more than one player in my earshot has cursed for it's unpredictability.
I agree with you, Imps do not do it as well.
SO STOP TRYING!
Lets look instead at what the Imps do well!
Specialised Squadrons
Specialised Ships
Obscene damage at close range from all ships
Best Relay in the game.
High Hull making the ships able to withstand most burst shots.
My daughter just made some treats for a school economics project. She made some strawberry flavored treats by adding 3 0.5-oz packages of freeze-dried strawberries, lightly broken up, to a standard batch recipe. They were absolutely amazing.
