Lack of Imperial flavor?

By RufusDaMan, in X-Wing

On 2/7/2018 at 3:49 AM, RufusDaMan said:

But... They don't?

Like literally the first time we got introduced to the bounty hunters, they were working for the empire.

We have this image of the empire, but it is not based on anything. The empire is as dirty as they get.

Bounty Hunters are a Lawful element though. Basically civilians who assist in the apprehension of fugitives.

The Empire has no "Bases".

That's the biggest problem. These TIEs? They're not meant to operate without one. It's the biggest design flaw in this game. No motherships, no starbases, no gun platforms, nothing. When doesn't The Empire operate with a staging ground of some sort?

All the other blokes don't use them.

I´ d love to see some more officer crews for the imperials... Things with a bit more oomph for swarm support. That make the Lambda, or bomber, worth bringing for backup on the swarm.

Something along the lines of...

Swarm Safety Coordination Officers: 2 crew slots: 4 points. Unique.

Action: If there are at least 3 other friendly ships within range 2, you may assign an evade token to up to 3 of them.

Friendly TIEs within range 2 may use an evade token to cancel one damage from a non attacking source.

....

Swarm Assault Coordination Officers: 2 Crew Slots: 4 points. Unique

Action: If there are at least 3 other friendly ships within range 2, you may assign a focus token to up to 3 of them.

Friendly TIEs within range 2 may use a focus token to add one damage to their attack result when attacking.

....

With the Swarm Safety Officers in a low PS ship supporting equal or higher PS TIEs, it can assign evades that let those TIEs use evades to avoid asteroid or mine damage. Harpoon splash would also be evadable...

For me this is the type of flavour that the Imps need. Bring back the swarm! Under Command....

Edited by Larky Bobble
36 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

The Empire has no "Bases".

That's the biggest problem. These TIEs? They're not meant to operate without one. It's the biggest design flaw in this game. No motherships, no starbases, no gun platforms, nothing. When doesn't The Empire operate with a staging ground of some sort?

All the other blokes don't use them.

A non mobile space defense platform/station would make an awesome Huge "ship."

You would have to make up for it being a "sitting duck," but I think it would be possible.

50 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

The Empire has no "Bases".

That's the biggest problem. These TIEs? They're not meant to operate without one. It's the biggest design flaw in this game. No motherships, no starbases, no gun platforms, nothing. When doesn't The Empire operate with a staging ground of some sort?

All the other blokes don't use them.

Use the turbo laser tokens from the Rebel Transport. That represents a capital ship just off the playmat providing cover fire. I wonder how many squad points that would cost.

Also let’s give TIE Fighters (and any other 2 die TIEs) a little boost:

Repeating Laser Cannons (modification, TIE only, Imperial only) 2 pts

you may equip this upgrade only if your Prinary Weapon value is less than 3.

If your primary weapon attack missed you may preform another primary weapon attack on the same target. No other attack may be made this round.

2 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Also let’s give TIE Fighters (and any other 2 die TIEs) a little boost:

Repeating Laser Cannons (modification, TIE only, Imperial only) 2 pts

you may equip this upgrade only if your Prinary Weapon value is less than 3.

If your primary weapon attack missed you may preform another primary weapon attack on the same target. No other attack may be made this round.

Battlefront II 2's laser barrage ability supports this one, so that'd definitely be something you could see in some kind of Inferno Squad package deal.

2 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Use the turbo laser tokens from the Rebel Transport. That represents a capital ship just off the playmat providing cover fire. I wonder how many squad points that would cost.

Imperials could very much use some kind of "Danger Zone" mechanic, where if a Rebel ship enters it, a Turbolaser at 2-3 dice rolls to attack. Any hit scored is one critical only, but you're getting crit because you're being hit by a Turbolaser. However, this Danger Zone unit in and of itself should be both expensive and destructible. The only things I'd allow it to take are titles that alter its behavior or mods that change that as well, so long as its base cost remains the same. Of course, to make it viable, it should reduce all generic pilot costs by a point count correlating with Pilot Skill PS1-3 would lose two points, PS4-7 would lose one point.

That lets you field (let's say the turbolaser array is 30 points) 7 Academy Pilots flat out.

Suddenly the TIE Swarm is much, much scarier. However, I imagine each turbolaser on the array is unshielded and vulnerable, and of course has a whopping zero agility, with little more if any armor than a TIE. I'm thinking three turbolasers on the bar at most. (One per foot of playspace.) And also does not get an attack increase at range 1- it's a damned turret.

How about instead of regen, because imperials have none, ties could equip a title that negates the first damage suffered each round? It still leaves them vulnerable to the natural predators of tlt and splash damage but the opponent has to try a lot harder. It wouldn’t be 1 and done for shieldless ships and kind of illustrate the fact that ties are supposed to be hard to hit. They fold like chairs to unavoidable damage. No damage should unavoidable completely to a tie fighter.

I am with you on the bases/support part, and I my view the imperial faction lacks a little “Umpf”. Furthermore, in most Imperial confrontations in the STAR WARS movies, there is a looming threat hanging over the enemy of the Empire: Deathstar, Starkillerbase, Dreathnaut getting ready to fire and the rebels either have to escape in time or take out the super weapon.

“Single Reactor Ignition” 0pt

In final salvo the Imperial player rolls 1000 extra red dice ;D

I've been flying the grey and and blue since day 1... the empire's flavor is everything they have superiority in the rebels and scum will get it and better. We used to at least have 7-8 ship swarms, but force of numbers was determined to be too strong, then countered easily, now it just doesn't make sense since generics are mostly DOA.

As already noted, there are tons of imperial officers and crew in STAR WARS but hardly any in Xwing. The ships that can carry them for the empire is small in number and all of them are at the bottom of the heap as far as efficiency or too expensive to run with any force in a 100pt game.

The scope of Xwing doesn't fit the Empire's canonical value.

10 hours ago, LordFajubi said:

How about instead of regen, because imperials have none, ties could equip a title that negates the first damage suffered each round? It still leaves them vulnerable to the natural predators of tlt and splash damage but the opponent has to try a lot harder. It wouldn’t be 1 and done for shieldless ships and kind of illustrate the fact that ties are supposed to be hard to hit. They fold like chairs to unavoidable damage. No damage should unavoidable completely to a tie fighter.

I thought they had this already. It’s called ‘evade action’.

2 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

I thought they had this already. It’s called ‘evade action’.

No it’s called do that and nothing else without ept help. I was suggesting a constant freebie. ?

Edited by LordFajubi
On 6.2.2018 at 4:09 PM, RufusDaMan said:

I invite you to check out the Scurrg and TIE Aggressor. Same wave. Look at the generics. It is clearly not the case.

Gunboats. :P
The answer is always Gunboats. :P

1 hour ago, LordFajubi said:

No it’s called do that and nothing else without ept help. I was suggesting a constant freebie. ?

Oh. Fly defenders?

10 hours ago, Rakky Wistol said:

The scope of Xwing doesn't fit the Empire's canonical value.

Sure, you can't drop an ISD on the table, but there are plenty of ways this could be mimicked in terms of better support ships, crew, and even off-table conditions to represent imperial military might and training.

So, I really don't buy the notion the Empire can't be represented well in XWM.

Edited by Darth Meanie
3 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Oh. Fly defenders?

Again this is evade, does nothing to bomb or splash damage and is preventable by bumping and token nullification. I get not all ties should get this but vanilla ties and interceptors would greatly benefit from a defense against the numerous answers to swarms.

Edited by LordFajubi

Oh. Bombs. Well, ban Sabine, duh.

ah, that’s right, they don’t ban anything in this game. I guess Squints are just screwed until Autothrusters 2.0 are released allowing a Broll/boost when in range one of a detonating bomb. Obviously this mod will be available in the new Scum Huge ship this year.

Edited by GrimmyV

I'd love a crew like this,

Tactical Support Officer: 4 points. Crew. Imperial Only. Limited. Your action bar gains the Coordinate action. When performing a coordinate action, you may choose up to two friendly ships instead of one to perform a free action.

Slap him on a TIE Shuttle and you're cooking.

Wrong Forum.

Imperial Favor is a Legend of the Five Rings thing.

:lol:;)

Imperials taste just fine... a little lemon, some tartar sauce; perfect.

Well at first Imperials were light on upgrades but made up for it with more pilots per ship. The issue was the PS game made it that in most ships (especially Imperial) that only the extremes of pilot skill are worth their points, and they didn't have any middling pilots skill with an incredibly pilot ability like Biggs.

Now that still holds true, Imperials have more pilots than any faction but they have access to the fewest upgrades, they haven't exactly proven to be balanced out. Now while one could argue that percentage wise there are just as may useless upgrades as they are useless pilots, a useless upgrade could all of a sudden become useful with the right pilot/upgrade combo (remember Deadeye) where as a useless pilot, remains a useless pilot (sorry Fel's Wrath).

Now of course to even it up we could get a new Imperial only upgrade slot. <Imperial Astromech> sounds good to me. Heck we could even fill in the options about it by getting an Imperial Reprogramed Astromech where the Imperials can take one non-unique <Astromech> upgrade. All we need is the ships for it. How about the V-wing (clone wars) and an Imperial Y-wing (clone war model)?

On 2/7/2018 at 8:59 AM, RufusDaMan said:

As I have said in my original post, there are examples of dirty imperials (just like there are examples of different flavored rebels and scum) in various star wars media. Heck, the first order makes weapon deals with them. The Empire deals with the Hutts regularly.

722YwTc.jpg

On 2/9/2018 at 1:41 PM, Darth Meanie said:

Sure, you can't drop an ISD on the table, but there are plenty of ways this could be mimicked in terms of better support ships, crew, and even off-table conditions to represent imperial military might and training.

So, I really don't buy the notion the Empire can't be represented well in XWM.

Oh it certainly can be, just isn't using the current rules. Imperial officers that don't have to be included in ships and can award conditions would be a lovely imperial only mechanic. It's just not happening right now.

23 minutes ago, Rakky Wistol said:

Oh it certainly can be, just isn't using the current rules. Imperial officers that don't have to be included in ships and can award conditions would be a lovely imperial only mechanic. It's just happening right now.

Yeah, Krennic could have been the perfect card for that. Though it is an dangerous game in context of point fortresses. Once you have 15 points of commanders even soontir becomes a 50 points fortress.

Edited by SEApocalypse

Point fortresses are easily addressed by rules changes. Krennic is a great example of how things can be done. The empire needs more and cheaper shuttles if that's the route they are going to go though.