I was just in a creative sort of mood, and thought about this for Vulture Droids:

2/2/2 Statline

ONLY generics, all PS 2.

"Computerized Swarm" Ship Ability: When a friendly ship at range 0-1 would suffer hit damage from an attack, if you are in the attacker's firing arc, you may prevent one of that hit damage. If you do, suffer one hit damage. You may spend friendly ships' calculate tokens as if they were your own.

I also think it'd be cool if they had a new, "tiny" base size, but that might not work, idk.

I seriously doubt in the tiny base.

Likely scenarios are they upscale the models a bit or they put multiples on a base.

I actually think that the multiples per base could be very interesting, as it could add new gameplay mechanics. Personally I hope that is how they do it if they introduce vulture droids.

Mini bases and cheap points, imo. Like 7 points per with 2/2/2/0 and only the calculate action.

But they take damage from bumps to discourage bumping? Or maybe they just move out of the way when bumped.

Multiples per base is probably whats going to happen.

They arent that big. Question is would they try to keep them in pairs or a full swarm? Pairs would probably be a 3/2/4/0 statline with "reduce attack to 2 if you have 2 or more damage cards" ability, priced at the TIE/ln's value, or they could have like 6 of them on a medium base.

I've had the idea for multiples per base for Epic for a while and it would make perfect sense for Vultures.

Idea: two ships per card/base. Initial stats:3/2/4/0, calculate, barrel roll. Once you suffer 2 hits, remove one ship. New stats: 2/2/2/0. 20 pts.

5 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Multiples per base is probably whats going to happen.

They arent that big. Question is would they try to keep them in pairs or a full swarm? Pairs would probably be a 3/3/4/0 statline with "reduce attack to 2 if you have 2 or more damage cards" ability, priced at a hair higher than TIE/ln's, or they could have like 6 of them on a medium base.

LOL - how did i miss your post? We're on the same page.

8 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Multiples per base is probably whats going to happen.

They arent that big. Question is would they try to keep them in pairs or a full swarm? Pairs would probably be a 3/2/4/0 statline with "reduce attack to 2 if you have 2 or more damage cards" ability, priced at the TIE/ln's value, or they could have like 6 of them on a medium base.

I was going to say the same thing, but have it work with defense as well. 3/2/4/0: If you have 2 or more damage, you roll 1 less die when attacking and 1 additional die when defending.

EDIT:

If you have 2 or more damage, you may remove this ship from the game to repair 2 damage to a friendly Vulture Droid at range 0.

I've got two things in my head for a Vulture Droid swarm, a few Armada-sized squad models on each stand.

[1] 3/2/3/0 statline. All damage is dealt face-down, since each damage represents popping individual droids. However, each damage suffered also reduces the attack value by 1.

[2] 2/2/4/0 statline. Once the ship has 2 damage, reduce the attack value by 1.

//

9 hours ago, Greebwahn said:

I was just in a creative sort of mood, and thought about this for Vulture Droids:

2/2/2 Statline

ONLY generics, all PS 2.

"Computerized Swarm" Ship Ability: When a friendly ship at range 0-1 would suffer hit damage from an attack, if you are in the attacker's firing arc, you may prevent one of that hit damage. If you do, suffer one hit damage. You may spend friendly ships' calculate tokens as if they were your own. 

I also think it'd be cool if they had a new, "tiny" base size, but that might not work, idk.

I'd make them more like Prince Xizor than Biggs Darklighter. A full squad of Biggs would be too hard to kill. A full squad of Xizor could still be targeted down, since the ability could only be used once per defense, rather than on every single hit. *edit* To that end, if there were a swarm of 10, with a Biggs-like ability, it'd take 11 damage dealt to the squad before the first vulture droid died, if each damage could be stolen. With a Xizor, it still could take that many, if you only ever got single-hit attacks through, but getting 2 attacks with two damage after evades through would kill a droid. */e*

"While you defend, after the Neutralize Results step, another friendly Vulture Droid at range 0-1 and in the attack arc may suffer 1[hit] damage. If it does, cancel 1 matching [hit] result. " I'd also leave out the potential to spread critical hits, so that a Direct Hit is actually lethal.

Sharing calculate tokens kinda scares me, too. When both damage and tokens can be shared, there isn't really a good way to focus them down. I mean, this swarm kinda reminds me of pre-nerf Biggs FSR, where the damage just gets spread around so much and it takes forever to kill a single ship.

I'm digging the ideas of multiple/base with reducing stats, lots of good ideas there!

Switching it to Xizor could work! And yes, crits should definitely be unavoidable.

The thing about these guys is, they are so tiny, I think they need the swarm mechanics. Damage spreading makes sense, as does sharing calculation, given the linked nature of a droid swarm.

Well if were talking Ep1 droids they are completely linked up so sharing calculations makes sense.

Destroy the CIS trade vessel and suddenly they all lose their link and flop over! (god im glad that was retconned....)

The idea I had for Epic fighter squadrons was a Y shaped stand attachment - a medium base could hold 2 small ships while a large base could have 4 small ships (just stack 2 Y stands on top of each other). This could work for Vultures and provide even more options: base stat line: 1/2/2/0 with each +1 Vulture adding 1 Attack and 2 Hull. Each ship could be just 10 or 12 pts base, but stacking them up could provide a 5 die attack. This could provide up to a 4 die attack at 40-48 pts, but gets cut down quick.

27 minutes ago, Greebwahn said:

I'm digging the ideas of multiple/base with reducing stats, lots of good ideas there!

Switching it to Xizor could work! And yes, crits should definitely be unavoidable.

The thing about these guys is, they are so tiny, I think they need the swarm mechanics. Damage spreading makes sense, as does sharing calculation, given the linked nature of a droid swarm.

Mostly I'm just worried about the power level.

Xizor over Biggs clearly does a lot of work. A Biggs-swarm of N ships each with 2 damage needs to suffer at least N+1 damage in order for one to die. They all start dropping like flies after that, but the initial toughness is wicked high. That's probably a bit too far.

As to sharing tokens, while it does kinda make sense, I think it's just too effective in a mass swarm. A ship with 2-dice on attack probably only spends a token around 44% of the time, so pretty much every attack gets to have a token.

//

Another thought: perhaps they shouldn't all be the same. Similar to how the IG-88s all have an ability and wind up all sharing, perhaps there's something to be done here. Not that they all share the same abilities, but something like there are "command modules" and "support module" and "swarm module."

• Command Module allows close vulture droids to engage at a higher Initiative. Let's say all Vulture Droids are natively Init 1. One command module could increase Init to 2, or three could increase Init to 3. That'd be a lot of PS-Kill potential from a swarm.
• Support Module allows friendly Vulture droids at range 0-1 to spend their calculate tokens.
• Swarm Module allow vulture Droids without Swarm Module to reroll defense dice. The point being that if you attack something other than the cheaper Swarm Module, you run into bonus defenses, but Swarm Modules are the lowest-priority target otherwise.
• Targeting Module could be rerolls attack dice. Perhaps you can only reroll calculate results with 1 targeting module close by, or reroll any dice if there are multiples.

So then it's a question of how you build the swarm. Having enough Targeting might mean that you don't need Support Modules, or vice versa. Run 5x Support, 5x Command, to engage at Init 3 and share tokens, but you won't have access to rerolls. This also makes for interesting choices for the attacker. Do you ignore the Swarm module to just pop the one Targeting module? Maybe it shuts down the offensive power of the enemy squad, but if you fail, you haven't taken any ships off the board. Perhaps it's better to just concentrate on Swarm Modules, to take ships off the board.

Honestly, I think them all being pseudo Biggs is an interesting idea. It means they can't really be alpha'd. I recognize that Xizor is easier to fly against, but these guys seem so fragile, I think Biggs'd be okay. After a round or 2 it'd balance out by how fragile they'd become.

As for the sharing calculate, I think its not op. In a weak *** swarm with no other mods, relying on tokens by virtue of the swarm seems fair.

I do dig the modular idea of them tho! More dynamic play

1 hour ago, Vineheart01 said:

Pairs would probably be a 3/2/4/0 statline with "reduce attack to 2 if you have 2 or more damage cards" ability,

1 hour ago, Bad Idea Comics said:

Once you suffer 2 hits, remove one ship. N  ew stats: 2/2/2/0.

I'd do it the opposite way.

Just give them Pure Sabacc's ability as a ship ability, with a slight tweak to the exact value.

2/3/4/0 statline. "While you have 2 or fewer damage cards, you may roll an additional attack die".

That's the simplest way of doing it I can think of.

1 hour ago, nexttwelveexits said:

I was going to say the same thing, but have it work with defense as well. 3/2/4/0: If you have 2 or more damage, you roll 1 less die when attacking and 1 additional die when defending.

If you wanted to further differentiate from Pure Sabacc and add in, as above, a changing agility value as well, you definitely do that

"While you defend or perform a primary attack, if you have two or fewer damage cards you must roll 1 fewer defence die or 1 fewer attack die"

This time, that's just L'ulo L'ampar's ability but with damage as a trigger instead of stress.

Both methods are ways of changing the statline without *actually* changing the statline, which I think would be confusing.

Personally, I don't see a need to change agility, though. Agility is not particularly granular as is, a change in value of agility represents a significant change in the handling of the craft in question. While flying in a formation of two might be a little trickier than flying solo, I don't think it's enough to make up for the basic agility of each fighter, especially when you consider that a pair of Vulture droids likely have linked droid brains. Two vulture droids flying around is still going to be basically as agile as one.

If you were going to change anything to represent the formation flying being slightly trickier, I'd look to the dial before agility.

Maybe have the hard 1 turns red while there's two of them, white when there's only one, for example.

other problem would be unique pilots.

They cant just be flat PS2 generics. But because they arent piloted (the droid IS the ship) theres no "elite pilot" for them. Anything better than a vulture droid would be a vulturedroid variant and possibly not even the same ship technically.

If they did the multi-ship to a base thing then it could be specialized squads as a "pilot" but i dunno if that was even a thing.

13 minutes ago, Greebwahn said:

Honestly, I think them all being pseudo Biggs is an interesting idea. It means they can't really be alpha'd. I recognize that Xizor is easier to fly against, but these guys seem so fragile, I think Biggs'd be okay. After a round or 2 it'd balance out by how fragile they'd become.

As for the sharing calculate, I think its not op. In a weak *** swarm with no other mods, relying on tokens by virtue of the swarm seems fair.

I do dig the modular idea of them tho! More dynamic play

On the attack, it's not necessarily a dinky-little swarm. The power-level of this swarm on offense is about the same as an equivalent number of generic TIEs. 8 TIEs are going to have a decent chance to kill an X-Wing or Khiraxz, and it's essentially impossible for a joust-based list to kill even one of these in a single turn. They'll be hurt hard by launched bombs, but essentially invincible against any frontal joust. Like FSR was, before the Biggs nerf. However, instead of FSR throwing 11 attack dice, this would throw like 16 in an 8-ship swarm. That's certainly a lot more attack power, and probably just about as tough.

I can't use an online dice-sim to do double-Biggs, but Biggs + Selfless + 7 calculate tokens means that one of these guys, on average, takes like 1.247 damage over the course of five 3-dice focused attacks (FIVE. CARTEL. MARAUDERS.). With only 1 hit and 1 crit, or 2x crits being pulled away, that shunts 4 damage off to another ship.

Just Xizor and and shared Calculate tokens yields only a 57% chance to kill a ship against 5 Khiraxz, 45% against 4 such attacks. Hrm. A TIE fighter with Iden Verso backing it up and a focus token has a 52% chance to die against five such attacks, and a 27% to die against 4. Maybe shared Calculate tokens aren't too excessive.

I dunno. I still think being able to shunt away 1 non-critical damage per attack is probably enough. I think the core concept isn't too bad of an idea, I just think you're underestimating it's power.

I'm not liking the multiple ships per list idea. Might could warm up to it for TriFighters, but not for Vultures. The Wookieepedia lists them as about 7 meters, which is 1/4 of a meter shorter than a TIE Fighter and longer than the length of a Fang Fighter. In terms of X-wing Scale, that's almost imperceptible (less than a millimeter shorter than the TIE Fighter miniature).

They have a super slim profile, to be sure, but so does the Fang. I'd seriously doubt they'll be more than one to a base.

Grrr..... The amount of "hey lets throw in this new mechanic" (tiny base without fully seeing what a tiny base will do maneuver wise) and "hey these things are tiny and fragile, lets cluster them on a single base and nerf the **** out of what they can do" I'm seeing is driving me up the wall. /end vent

My 2 cents coupled with the in universe stats:

Vulture droid in flight mode (they also can walk if you guys recall, it ain't a separate droid model):

Height: 1.86 m (looks to be with the wing/leg pods closed) Length: 6.96 m

Weapons: Pair of dual blaster cannons (okay not full on laser cannons), energy torpedo launcher, missile slot.

Speed: 1,200 in atmosphere (really doesn't mean much more than they have a good power to weight ratio and are streamlined unlike the flying brick that is the TIE/LN, so I'm going to have to guestimate based on what the films show).

Shields: nada

Special: Can transition between attack and mobility modes (they open their 'wings/legs' in attack mode).

Okay now for how I see a good in game rendition:

Pilot card: F:1 A:2 H:2 S:0 Ability: can use calculate tokens generated by squad mates who are within range 1-2 of it. Upgrade slots: Missile, Configuration (flip4free at beginning of activation phase before any maneuvers) and MAYBE Sensor. Actions: white Calculate and white Target Lock

Configuration card side A: Attack mode: roll 2 additional attack die, gain white barrel roll, white barrel roll -> red calculate, and white calculate -> red target lock actions

Configuration card side B: Mobility mode: fastest straight maneuver improves in difficulty by one step, +1 defense die due to narrowed profile, gain boost action, can only use its primary attack

Ship base: SMALL with only a single ship per base. It is barely smaller than a TIE/LN in length (just 28 cm shorter in length. TIE/LN is 7.24m (724 cm for those who don't know metric)) though it is 696 cm (6.96 m, that got me to chuckle) shorter in height.

Dial: 1 banks, 2 turns/blue banks/blue straight, 3 blue banks/blue straight, 4 straight

You know Fig, thats a good point about the sheer attack power. Such a swarm would be very viable, especially when, with my inital ability suggestion, it would be almost impossible to kill early on.

Perhaps the Xizor ability would make more sense!

I still stand by the calculate tokens tho lol. But maybe it gets a range 0-1 restriction as well.

I didn't realize they were comparable in size to a fang! Maybe they do just get their own base lol.

@Hiemfire has some interesting suggestions, but that kinda chassis makes it look like it'd be worth way more than a TIE. But they did have the missiles and config...

4 minutes ago, Greebwahn said:

You know Fig, thats a good point about the sheer attack power. Such a swarm would be very viable, especially when, with my inital ability suggestion, it would be almost impossible to kill early on.

Perhaps the Xizor ability would make more sense!

I still stand by the calculate tokens tho lol. But maybe it gets a range 0-1 restriction as well.

I didn't realize they were comparable in size to a fang! Maybe they do just get their own base lol.

@Hiemfire has some interesting suggestions, but that kinda chassis makes it look like it'd be worth way more than a TIE. But they did have the missiles and config...

Points cost in game or in universe cost? It is slower in space from what I can tell (as the dial shows) and as fragile if not more so.

I once tried to make cards for these in 1.0. I've lost all that work but I took from the old Star Wars LCG for the unique pilots. I believe Drea also originated in this or an earlier LCG, so some precedence I guess?

Could have an ability to boost it's attack for a turn at risk of taking damage - http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/DFS-1VR

For some reason has better stats than other vulture droids http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/DFS-4CT

Can see the cards here - http://www.cambiacartas.com/im/showDeck/deck_id/2156/extended_format/1

considered they are about the size of an A-wing, i don't see why you'd need to do multiples per base.

at most they'll just be cheap enough you can fly a bunch of generics in a single force, similar to a TIE swarm.

49 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Points cost in game or in universe cost? It is slower in space from what I can tell (as the dial shows) and as fragile if not more so.

Points! But maybe the slow/fragile would make it okay.

38 minutes ago, Greebwahn said:

Points! But maybe the slow/fragile would make it okay.

Also my suggested dial only has basic maneuvers. Maybe a red 5k could be added, but it does have a fairly limited dial in my suggestion.