Are they ok?

Yes, they’re good. They do solid damage, have decent (if accuracy-vulnerable) defense tokens, and are reasonably cheap for what they do. Like many close-range ships, you’ll almost always want first player. The Gladiator-I is the common variant (APTs/ACMs, Ordnance Experts, optional Engine Techs and you’re good to go,) but the Gladiator-II combos well with Captain Jonus, or can even be used as a flak boat. Notably the Demolisher title is so good that “Gladiator” has become just about synonymous with “Demo,” because it’s wasteful not to run the first Gladiator that way. Multiple Gladiators in a list aren’t terribly common, but there’s no great reason for that (IMHO.)

For a longer, more qualified breakdown, here’s a great blog:

http://cannotgetyourshipout.blogspot.com/2017/02/imperial-ship-review-gladiator-class.html?m=1

Hope this helps! ?

Gladiators are a lot of fun

Demolishers are still decent. They tend to get edged out by raiders after your first Demolisher since not getting Demolisher on more than one Demolisher makes people feel like the second is too weak

12 minutes ago, Church14 said:

Gladiators are still decent. They tend to get edged out by raiders after your first Demolisher since not getting Demolisher on more than one Gladiator makes people feel like the second is too weak

FTFY

I ran an ISD1 & 3 Glad fleet once. Lost a couple of the Glads but it certainly had some intimidation factor. And a lot of punch.

Ran a 3 Glad 2 Gozanti fleet with 4 Decimators, bloody loved it even though you either tabled the other guy or got tabled yourself, great to fly, not so good for tournaments...

8 hours ago, TallGiraffe said:

FTFY

Nope. I said what I intended.

There was some snark intended