Hello there,
In the current drought of Armada news and lack of better stuff to do, I've designed a homebrew Venator Star Destroyer expansion, complete with a Commander, upgrade cards, and titles. I tried to keep it as balanced as possible with respect to the ISD and other vessels, such as the MC75. The purpose of this thread is to gather opinions on this before I start to playtest it.
Starting off, the Venator is a large Imperial vessel. Large for two reasons, first it is 8m longer than an Interdictor and the Interdictor is at the top end of what, in my opinion, a medium ship should be, second, Imperials need a large base ship that isn't an ISD and what better candidate than the second most famous Star Destroyer. It is imperial because it was used quite extensively in the early years of the Empire and remained in use up to A New Hope, also because Imperials need some variety in Large ships.
Arc-wise, it's a broadsider with a narrow front-arc and large rear arc. This is done because Imperials have no broadsider ships outside the Arquitens as well as a Venator performing a pretty impressive broadside in Ep.III.
All three variants have a hull of 9, which is reasonable. A Venator(VnSD) should not be able to handle a slugging match against an ISD. It has no contain, only one redirect to represent it's weaker shields, and two braces to compensate for the lack of a Defensive Retrofit on most variants. Asides from that, the speed chart is just a slightly better ISD one, you get two clicks no matter what speed you go. Most variants have squad 5, which is considerable, but reflects the absolute ridiculous (400) amount of snubs a VnSD can throw around in lore.
Venator-I : The "super-carrier" of the three. It sacrifices a ton of firepower in order to have two offensive retrofits and weapon teams. It also loses a point of Engineering to balance out the pretty silly amount of potential squadron ability. This is the variant I'm most conflicted on, sure it loses a lot of firepower and durability, but being able to activate 7 squads at long range with Ruthless Strategists/Flexible Payload Officers/Flight Controllers seems a bit crazy to me.
Venator-II : The "ISDII" of the bunch, well rounded, but still pretty carrier focused. It has a nice spread of upgrades, the standout being a support team slot. I figured this slot would play into the flexibility of this platform, letting you choose between better squadron mobility, better ship mobility, or other nice upgrades. I am a bit worried it's overcosted for the amount of dice you get, but at the same time, it still has squad 5.
Venator Imperial Refit : The required black dice variant, it is considerably more combat focused, gaining a defensive retrofit slot, as well as both a turbolaser and ordnance slot. To my knowledge, there are no other ships that have both turbolaser and ordance slots which gives this ship a niche between the power of the ISD-Kuat and the ISD-I. Again, I think I may have overcosted it a bit, or that it needs one more dice out the sides to bring it into parity with the HMC.
That wraps up the variants. Next there are the titles, most are not squadron focused at all, as any more to boost a VnSD's squadron power would get out of hand real quick.
Majestic : The most vanilla of the bunch, it just gives itself and ships near it a worthwhile concentrate token. Thinking on it, I may need to clear up the wording to show that if you do so, you can't reroll a dice as you normally would be able to with a con token.
Tenacious : The Imperial Adar Tallon, also the only squadron focused title, you get to untap two squadrons you activated, but you have to seriously hurt a squadron that is hanging around near the ship. The damage requirement is to balance out some proper silliness that could be done by quadruple tapping a squad with Jendon, since each time you use that ability you are nearly killing a TIE Fighter. Balance wise, if it's too powerful, it can be reduced to only affecting one squadron.
Vigilance : A combat focused title, this one plays with damage cards that you deal. The title has the benefit of circumventing Contain, but it's effects only apply to the damage cards you deal that attack. Its cost is its primary balancing factor, and could easily be increased if you guys think it's too strong.
Indomitable : This one is an interesting one, in my opinion, the idea is to make it a risky proposition to take a long time to kill a VnSD. Note that it is not triggered by squadrons and it's price is quite high. That being said, I can see this one being too powerful and if you guys think so too, I could add the 'escape route' by letting the attacker spend an engineering token to avoid the effect.
Since this is supposed to be a full expansion, it of course comes with new upgrade cards. Again, not too many squad focused upgrades to prevent VnSDs from getting too silly with squads.
Flexible Payload Officers : It's Sato, but only for squads that don't have swarm, which should keep it from being an auto include in every squad based list. It also helps provide an alternative to Sloane, as Sloane really likes swarm squads. It also provides some competition to Flight Controllers, which again brings an interesting decision to building squadron fleets. Looking on it, I designed this upgrade without remembering that rebels exist, it might be wise to prevent it's ability on squads that also have escort to prevent what amounts to hyper TIE Defender X-wings with 2 blue 2 black and also a black dice bomber.
Hanger Mounted Turbolaser : It's external racks but works at medium range and adds red dice. Not a whole lot needs to be said about this one, it's a bit more expensive then exracks because it works at medium range, but not too much more because it only adds red dice.
Diamond-Boron Missiles : An anti-squad upgrade meant to give flechette's a bit of competition in the flak ship role. Forcing a choice between more damage, and less squads being activated against you.
Now there's only the commander left, and I chose Colonel Yularen, as he is a pretty prominent captain of Venators. That being said, if there's a better character for this card let me know. I built the card's effect before I chose the actual character that would be on it.
Yularen keeps your ships alive at the cost of killing your squads. Since he could be combined with the Seventh-Fleet SD title to reduce incoming damage by three, he costs a lot and hurts your squadrons. I'd reckon he'd be potent early game as his meat point squads are at high health, but as the game goes on he'd lose effectiveness rapidly as his meat points either die or get on too low health for it to be wise to use his ability. If you think he's overpowered, some solutions would be to make it an exhaust effect, or limit his ability to only work against ships.
And that is all that there is. The hope is for these cards to be interesting to play with and play against. Again if you guys think there's something quite broken with a card, let me know. The point of the thread, after all is to do an initial balance pass before I playtest these cards.