House Rule to make Huge ships more shooty and less rammy

By Marinealver, in X-Wing Epic Play

So this is two set of house rules to try and reballance huge ships against starfighters making them more of a shooting platform than just bowling in space. The first rule i cannot take credit for as I saw it on the main forum but I can't find where it was. As for the other one it was my idea to change huge ship overlap rules.

So first one.

Errata Huge ships to have no limit on Blue target lock tokens. It is still limited to only 1 target lock token per action (unless weapons engineer which allows two). Also only 1 red target lock token per opposing ship so it can't stack target lock on the same ship. This will help ships that use ordnance tubes as well as keep huge ship firing characteristics of depending on rerolls since focus does not affect huge ships. Well it is at least a simple house rule and could easily be added as an errata.

The next one on Huge Ship overlapping Small/Large based ships.

If a Huge ship executes a maneuver that would cause the huge ship base to overlap a small/large ship that ship may have the opportunity to make an evasive maneuver. A ship can make an evasive maneuver. A ship that makes an evasive maneuver will roll a single green die (cannot be increased). It can be modified with evade or focus tokens. If an evade result comes up move the ship the shortest distance forward or backward until its base no longer overlaps a ship then move the huge ship. If no evade results is shown then the ship is immediately destroyed and the huge ship rolls a red die (or two red dice if a large ship) and suffers the damage shown. A ship cannot make an evasive maneuver if one of the following:

  • A ship is stressed
  • A ship has 1 or more ion tokens (2 if it is a large ship)
  • A ship has an Agility of 0 (including tractor beam tokens and face up damage cards).

Any ship that has one or more of the above cannot attempt to make an evasive maneuver and are immediately destroyed rolling damage for the huge ship. Once all ships in the path of the huge ships have made an evasive maneuver or have been removed and the spot is clear complete the huge ship maneuver as is. Any small or large ship touching the base of the huge ship is considered overlapping and cannot make an attack against that huge ship unless it were able to attack an overlapped ship otherwise (i.e. Zeb <crew>). A Huge ship can still make attacks against a small or large ship its base is touching.

So again less rammy but more shooty. Hitting ships is not automatic instant death but it is still deadly to smaller ships and moving into the path of a huge ship comes with great risk. Also if by chance they survive the near miss they could still find themselves blowing up to the guns that they have no means of attacking back that turn.

So good idea, or bad idea. What do you think? Or do you have any other ideas about huge ship overlapping?

Interesting ideas. Many players are not very pleased about the "Battering Rams". Star Wars or War Galley? Will try this variant in a near future, I think.

Thanks for sharing your idea.

I am all for the Target Lock option, at the very least for the corvettes. They are meant as combat ships and probably have computer cores the size of a small based fighter. They easily should be able to track 5-10 targets at a time. Heck, the F-14 Tomcat could track a dozen targets at once with 1970's technology.

Your collision rules are better than what they are now, I think, but I wish there was a better way. Almost wish you could just fly the smalls in between the plastic stand pegs on the huge and ignore its base. just set your model on the huge base and not be able to shoot.

10 hours ago, pickirk01 said:

.. . Almost wish you could just fly the smalls in between the plastic stand pegs on the huge and ignore its base. just set your model on the huge base and not be able to shoot.

That is for the very large ships like Nebulon B and Star Destroyers. ;)

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/267142-is-the-star-destroyer-really-too-big-for-epic/

Have an influence zone between the huge ship bases and have all ships in the zone declare if they are above or below the Massive Capital ship indicated by a token.

Edited by Marinealver
On 1/21/2018 at 9:01 AM, pickirk01 said:

I am all for the Target Lock option, at the very least for the corvettes. They are meant as combat ships and probably have computer cores the size of a small based fighter. They easily should be able to track 5-10 targets at a time. Heck, the F-14 Tomcat could track a dozen targets at once with 1970's technology.

Very much this. Something the size of a passenger car vs the size of a small building. Yes huge ships need more locks.