Ok, not so much a step-by-step guide of rules as much as general axioms to keep in mind when designing ships.

So, I’m seeing a lot of custom-made ships on Armada… especially with regard to the Venator and Acclamator assault ships from the Clone wars now that *~*~*THE CLONE WARS*~*~*!! are coming back. And there are trends I’m noticing among them and many other customs out there that, well, make me kinda mad, honestly. These designs are presented with some very egregious advantages that have no thought for balance… Especially in the case of how they stack up against some pretty core designs and end up being superior (the last straw was seeing some Venator designs that made one poster ask, “Why would you ever take a Victory star destroyer ever again?”).

So with this all in mind, I’m going to lay down some thoughts I want anyone making customs to think about. Consider it a public service announcement to benefit anyone like me who is tired of seeing overpowered designs and wants some quality in their custom content.

Lesson 1. With Rare exceptions, Every ship has a weakness. Even if that Weakness is cost.

The Arquitens has a very unusual movement profile. The MC80 Home One type has a speed of 2 with a low battery compared to other heavies. The Victory Star Destroyer has no recourse against accuracy with XI7s, and is locked at speed 2. The ISD is the most expensive ship in the game (barring the new SSD). The Nebulon-B has side arcs that result in nearly instant death if fired into.

Almost every ship in this game has one obvious weakness. As you are designing your ship you have to ask yourself; where is an area this ship isn’t good in? What can’t it do well?

If you are trying to make the next Imperial-class star destroyer, the best balanced ship in the game, then there is only one answer: Cost. It needs to be expensive, and typically more expensive than the other contemporary established ships already in the game and produced by FFG. The reason why it should be is because it’s likely your ship hasn’t gone through the battery of play-testing FFG has done for their ships to make sure they aren’t imbalanced. Before you can put your design out there in the world, unless you can show that the ship has had a lot of playtests to guarantee its fairness, over-cost it. Either over cost it, or give it a glaring weakness of some kind.

I mean, consider the TIE Defender. Speed 5, blue/black AA with Bomber. It's the best starfighter in the game for sake of having a lot of advantages... but it's among one of the priceist starfighters at 16 points. It also has debilitating flaws of it's own- it's not great against aces (no swarm, lower chance for generating accuracy) and it's not a fantastic bomber either (not compared to two-dice monsters like the rogue Firespray and B-Wing), in spite of the fact that two dice are better at generating a hit and now you can use all facings on your battery die. Not to mention, you also need to command it in order to get the full use out of it.

Lesson 2. What is your ship’s “Thing”?

A Quasar Fire is a carrier. It is so much a carrier that it pretty much skimps on everything else… all for the sake of being cheap so you can use the extra points to buy some nice fighters. Arguably the Quasar is more weakness than strength (it doesn’t want to stick around when it’s getting shot at), but we know what the Quasar does and it isn't shy to tell you through it's stats.

The Arquitens is an arc-shooter, unquestionably. The firing arcs point to a ship that wants to stay in the approach and struggles when enemy ships pass it. It's the only thing this ship does, you're not pressing it into a fighter role unless you're a veteran player chasing a dare.

ISDs and VSDs are supposed to be kings of the battlefield and hallmarks of the Imperial aesthetic: Massive forward batteries with big hull and brimming with capability. But for their size they are typically expensive and hard to command.

As an example from ships not made yet, let’s look at the Rendeili Dreadnought-class cruiser (Or Imperial Support Ship. Coming to a wave near you?). If you ask me what the thing is? It’s a tanky broadsider. To justify making it not astronomically expensive, I’d gimp it’s mobility and drop the top speed to 2, as compensation for the nice things I’d be giving it.

From there I’d give it two braces and a redirect, healthy hull and shields, a Turbolaser and ion cannon on both variants with a weapons team, and the ever-present officer slot. But i’d lock it at speed 2, give it only one click on each of the speed joints (its smaller than the VSD, so just a bit more maneuverable), and not give it a support team. So it’s a space brick that sits there, turns ok, but won’t go anywhere fast. Maybe I'd make the arcs so restrictive too that you have to be almost parallel to it in order to hit anything with it. Kind of a reverse Nebulon situation.

But you wouldn't look at a Dreadnought and think, "I can make a carrier/close range brawler/awesome support ship/ the next demolisher" out of that. If anything I'd want players to think, "Boy, it's almost Admonition levels of resilient except not with a title, at long range, and it's not going anywhere fast."

Lesson 3. How does this compare to current designs?

Pull out every medium Imperial ship card and compare them. What do you notice? You’ll probably see that every ship after the Victory Star Destroyer has some big critical flaw or another in relation to the VSD.

If you need me to spell it out: the Quasar Fire commands fighters better but is weaker in protection. The Interdictor has greater resiliency and access to an experimental retrofit, but suffers in battery armament and commanding fighters. Crossing to the Rebellion the Assault Frigate has a good upgrade suite and is faster, but is under-armed and has less hull for sake of being cheaper.

This is because you don’t want a design coming along that is even better at doing something that a ship in the game (published and tested by FFG) already does, without a trade off. Imperial players were using discounted VSD-Is and kitted ISDs as carriers before the Quasar came along as a cheaper option with better upgrades. The reason the Quasar Fire didn’t replace the VSD and ISD in carrier roles is because of the Quasar’s glaring weakness of not wanting to be shot at. Ah! A weakness! Look at lesson 1.

So you don’t want a design showing up to make something obsolete without a trade off. If you design that Venator, it shouldn’t make someone think, “Well this is so great, why would I ever want to take a Victory?” It should be, "I want the protection of a Victory, but trade out my battery play for squadron support. Hey, a Venator!"

Note that doesn’t mean you have to make a design poorer than a ship already out there- it just needs to stand out. Your Venator can be weaker than an ISD-I because it’s older, but of the same size. But your Venator has fighter 5 instead of fighter 4, and that purchase was made by making it slower and depriving it of some great flexible upgrade slots (like no ion cannons, torpedoes, or defensive retrofits).

Lesson 4: Four Axies.

Let’s see if I can make this chart here work in formatting:

Cost

Firepower – Fighters

Support

Say you have 9 points to allocate anywhere along these axes. The uneven number is intentional because no ship is going to be completely balanced along these lines. The point here is to consider the role of your ship… the more you go in one direction, the less you’ll be in the other directions. Something like the Arquitens is good in firepower and cost, but not fighters and supporting other ships. The Interdictor is a great support ship, but it suffers in cost, firepower, and fighters.

You can consider a chart like this when you want to define the character of your ship and want it to suffer in a particular area. You want your Subjugator-class cruiser to come into the field? It’s got high firepower from the ion gun and fighter commanding, but it’s poor on cost (because it’s expensive) and it’s not a good support ship.

A note here, Support is kind of a weak category on the basis of how decentralized support is. The Rebels get fantastic support out of their officer category (Look at Ashoka!), and the Empire only have something like the Interdictor. That is, only thing beyond Flotillas… which pretty much answer any support demand any fleet might desire.

It’s not the only thing, though. Redemption would be a title that nudges a Nebulon closer to the support role. Fighter Coordination Teams, when they aren’t letting Yavaris circumvent their one restriction, are another support role item. Interdictors are overwhelmingly this from combo cards like Projection Experts and the Experimental upgrade slot cards. Support is often a category that is overlooked, but could be a fun area to explore that FFG’s upgrades so far haven’t yet- content with letting the flotillas do that work.

Lesson 5: Test your designs

This is why I’m not more prolific with my own customs, because I have that itch too. But I stop myself because when I’m about to go down that route I hear myself saying, “Well, I can’t say this design is completely finished, because I haven’t Tested It Yet .” Then I look at all the other designs just pumped out there, over and over, and I see a content creator who isn’t putting the care and love into honing their design into something truly special.

It’s easy to make content, but not necessarily GOOD content . FoaS has made this very easy with Kuat Drive Yards… and the result is unchecked bloat. Go look for any popular design there you’ll see almost everyone having an opinion on specific starships (There are fifteen Venator designs of various sub classes on KDY as of this writing, and likely a lot more out there not on the database). If you were to pick up any of those designs and put them on the table, I’d almost wager real money there’s some kind of flaw that makes them not work well… or make you ask yourself, “Why would I ever take anything else?”

I’m looking at one design right now with three Red AA dice. How does it feel to one-shot 13 point X-Wings at long range when it rolls 5-6 hits? Rebel players, does that sound good to you to have lots of hull carved away each time this thing decides to shoot fighters? Whats worse is that’s cleaning up after you’re hit with five fighter squadron activations. All of that is without upgrades of course, for 90 points.

If your starships is doing wonders on the table and easily eliminating mainstay lists, you gotta wonder if people are going to find it fun to play against. In fact, during testing why don’t you give your ship to your opponent and play against it? See how fun it is when your ship is used against you . The best ships are ones that are on the table you don’t mind possibly facing in a tournament.

It bears repeating, test your designs! If you’re not going to test it, at least consider all of the other points I’ve made here before pushing out an overpowered turkey that would make an Imperial player forsake any ISD to take your wunderwaffen.

I think that's it, at least enough to get it out of my system.

Guys, creating content is fun. But please, please put care and consideration into making it. Make good ships, not fanship ones. Nothing is perfect in the universe, and your design shouldn't be either.

But imperfect can also mean interesting . Give me a speed 1 large ship with 5 shields on every facing and carrying 2 braces and 2 contains, hull 7. Add three offensive retrofit slots with an experimental slot, with blue/black batteries and fighter 3, command 2, engineering 1. Tell me That isn't interesting, because what I described could be the start of a hapan battle dragon!

Thanks @Norsehound for this post. Been toying with some ideas and this gives me some ideas on how to get started. Besides, I simply love that it's a helpful post and not another something negative!

37 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Lesson 3. How does this compare to current designs?

Pull out every medium Imperial ship card and compare them. What do you notice? You’ll probably see that every ship after the Victory Star Destroyer has some big critical flaw or another in relation to the VSD.

If you need me to spell it out: the Quasar Fire commands fighters better but is weaker in protection. The Interdictor has greater resiliency and access to an experimental retrofit, but suffers in battery armament and commanding fighters. Crossing to the Rebellion the Assault Frigate has a good upgrade suite and is faster, but is under-armed and has less hull for sake of being cheaper.

This is because you don’t want a design coming along that is even better at doing something that a ship in the game (published and tested by FFG) already does, without a trade off. Imperial players were using discounted VSD-Is and kitted ISDs as carriers before the Quasar came along as a cheaper option with better upgrades. The reason the Quasar Fire didn’t replace the VSD and ISD in carrier roles is because of the Quasar’s glaring weakness of not wanting to be shot at. Ah! A weakness! Look at lesson 1.

So you don’t want a design showing up to make something obsolete without a trade off. If you design that Venator, it shouldn’t make someone think, “Well this is so great, why would I ever want to take a Victory?” It should be, "I want the protection of a Victory, but trade out my battery play for squadron support. Hey, a Venator!"

Note that doesn’t mean you have to make a design poorer than a ship already out there- it just needs to stand out. Your Venator can be weaker than an ISD-I because it’s older, but of the same size. But your Venator has fighter 5 instead of fighter 4, and that purchase was made by making it slower and depriving it of some great flexible upgrade slots (like no ion cannons, torpedoes, or defensive retrofits).

I think is (possibly) the most important thing to consider when looking at customs. not only can this stop you from doing something, but it can also help you price something appropriately (or closer to appropriately) faster. Squadron 4 with 2 engineering but 3 defense token on a medium base? Price it more than a quasar, but less than a victory (Unless it has some other gimmick, but you get the point).

Something else to note that you don't explicitly mention (although you touch on it frequently) is that you probably don't want a hard counter. Yes, it can do something really well, but the best hard counters are often not fun for your opponent (Or for you, depending). Take Flechette torpedoes for example. They can shut down an entire squadron wing, but at the cost of your opponents enjoyment of the game. Consider if what your making a hard counter too needs it badly (1), and if it can be done in a way that creates an interesting decisions (2). Yes, you can make a 6-flak ship with no battery but is it fun? Or is it just a pain for both parties because it either ruins one players day or is a waste of points? Basically, don't try to hard counter something. It will be bad more often than not, by the nature of the hard counter.

8 minutes ago, DarthVerkir said:

Thanks @Norsehound for this post. Been toying with some ideas and this gives me some ideas on how to get started. Besides, I simply love that it's a helpful post and not another something negative!

Thank you!

I could call out specific designs (it won't be hard to find that particular Venator in KDY...) since there's a point of being a critic where you can't pull your punches- you gotta say The Thing. But in doing so, I figure if you're going to be scathing, you need to justify yourself. Hooting and hollering that the design isn't good is just as bad of an offense as the offensive design!

That's why I put this together. I see common mistakes, so rather than blaze about it, I'm offering advice on what I feel needs fixing. I'm glad you find it useful, and I hope others will too.

1 minute ago, Do I need a Username said:

Something else to note that you don't explicitly mention (although you touch on it frequently) is that you probably don't want a hard counter. Yes, it can do something really well, but the best hard counters are often not fun for your opponent (Or for you, depending). Take Flechette torpedoes for example. They can shut down an entire squadron wing, but at the cost of your opponents enjoyment of the game. Consider if what your making a hard counter too needs it badly (1), and if it can be done in a way that creates an interesting decisions (2). Yes, you can make a 6-flak ship with no battery but is it fun? Or is it just a pain for both parties because it either ruins one players day or is a waste of points? Basically, don't try to hard counter something. It will be bad more often than not, by the nature of the hard counter. 

I can say this is a little subjective, but it's mostly because a player's list is more than just this one ship. You can bring that 6-die AA counter mounting flichette torps, but apart from being astronomically expensive (since 5-hull things would be threatened, even 3-dice aces wouldn't feel safe) there would be other things a player could bring to a list to deal with it. Besides, all of those points used in AA won't matter against a twin christmas tree cymoon list.

The current frontrunner of such a setup is the Raider-I with flichettes and ordnance experts. That's great, but as soon as it's in effective range to actually use that upgrade, it's in the danger zone for those rebel fighters to retaliate if they get activation advantage and absolutely pulverize that Raider. So while it's a good platform for AA, that's the crippling weakness that makes it feel more balanced on the field.

1 minute ago, Norsehound said:

I can say this is a little subjective, but it's mostly because a player's list is more than just this one ship. You can bring that 6-die AA counter mounting flichette torps, but apart from being astronomically expensive (since 5-hull things would be threatened, even 3-dice aces wouldn't feel safe) there would be other things a player could bring to a list to deal with it. Besides, all of those points used in AA won't matter against a twin christmas tree cymoon list.

The current frontrunner of such a setup is the Raider-I with flichettes and ordnance experts. That's great, but as soon as it's in effective range to actually use that upgrade, it's in the danger zone for those rebel fighters to retaliate if they get activation advantage and absolutely pulverize that Raider. So while it's a good platform for AA, that's the crippling weakness that makes it feel more balanced on the field.

I guess my point was more that you don't want hard counters to be viable outside of super niche scenarios. Flechette torpedoes are actually mostly fine because they are bad 99% of the time, and 1% of the time horribly oppressive. So before creating a hard counter they should ask themselves if the game really needs it.

Good post by the OP.

Is there a rough guide somewhere on how to cost a ship? I’m sure I’ve seenone somewhere before but I can’t find it.

Eg: Large base is approx 20 points, 5 points per blue dice, a brace is 2 points, heavy keyword is -5 points etc etc.

You do see far too many Uber ships on KDY.

ISD Avenger actually brings up another part of custom design that has been hanging me up. How to set up ship cost is the most daunting thing for me right now. I have some ideas I will be play testing for a new ship but unfortunately have NO clue where to put its cost (other than somewhere between an ISD and SSD). However this will be especially hard since I am working on a new upgrade slot and mechanic for this as well. But if there IS a formula for the basics right now it would really help figure out even the custom aspect of rules I think.

40 minutes ago, DarthVerkir said:

ISD Avenger actually brings up another part of custom design that has been hanging me up. How to set up ship cost is the most daunting thing for me right now. I have some ideas I will be play testing for a new ship but unfortunately have NO clue where to put its cost (other than somewhere between an ISD and SSD). However this will be especially hard since I am working on a new upgrade slot and mechanic for this as well. But if there IS a formula for the basics right now it would really help figure out even the custom aspect of rules I think.

There were formulas back in the wave 1 days that I haven't seen updated in a while.

My advice? Ball-park figure in relation to a very similar ship. Do I need a Username? has a good way of it in pricing a ship that is slightly better than a Quasar, but worse than a victory. To get a true read on how good a ship is... playtest it. After running a few tests you'll get a feel of whether the ship is rightfully priced or not and go from there.

Of course being custom creators we're in the unique position of changing costs on the fly, since it's not like we have to worry about putting the thing into a manufacturing grinder and spit out thousands of copies to sell to eager fans.

1 hour ago, ISD Avenger said:

Is there a rough guide somewhere on how to cost a ship?

I think there is no formula, that will work. I believe to remember an article where a game designer said that they don't use one at FFG. (And that pricing is vers difficult for them as well.)

But there seems to be a rule of thumb. A ship normally costs about 10x hull points.

1 hour ago, Triangular said:

I think there is no formula, that will work. I believe to remember an article where a game designer said that they don't use one at FFG. (And that pricing is vers difficult for them as well.)

But there seems to be a rule of thumb. A ship normally costs about 10x hull points.

Yeah, the article I recall wasn’t exacting but did give a generic feel for what each component costs.

I'd add that anyone wanting to do custom designs should start by making them underpowered / overcosted. The main reason you should be looking to use custom ships is in order to get new cool-looking ship models on the table. If you want the next uber-ship to smash your opponents then look somewhere else, that's not what makes Armada fun.

Remember, you can only play with custom ships if your opponent agrees. If you start too powerful then your opponent will never agree to play with your shiny custom 3D printed ship ever again - all your time and money is wasted. However if you start with something that is clearly underpowered then your opponent will probably be fine playing against it in your next battle. That makes it clear you're more interested in having fun with a cool model than annihilating your opponent. Doing it enough (i.e. playtesting) and involving your opponent will eventually let you start tweaking the cost and stats, to finally arrive at a reasonable point of balance.

I completely agree with everything you've said. Particularly with the bad design bloat that exists.

Still working on how to solve that...

EDIT: Now that I'm not on my phone, I'm going to expand a bit.

I really like your guide here, and I'm going to re-asses all of my designs with that lens, because it's fantastic advise.

As for the bloat and KDYs contribution - that is a problem - and I say that as it's enabler. When I designed KDY, I did make it with the idea that the community would self-adjust between comments and ratings of various designs, but that hasn't happened. With v2 I'm going to try to make those mechanisms more accessible (sort by ratings or filter by ratings, etc).

Stage 5 of v2 development will be the Tabletop Simulator integration, where people can import their design into TTS using a simple tool - The hope there is that people will be able to access their designs for proper testing. I wish there were a way I could enforce proper testing of content, but alas: I have no mechanism to capture that data :/ - I really wish I did.

Lol i was that last straw.

I think when it comes to customs, some people are just passionate about creating their dream boat.

6 hours ago, Norsehound said:

So, I’m seeing a lot of custom-made ships on Armada  … especially with regard to the Venator and Acclamator assault ships from the Clone wars now that *~*~  *THE CLONE WARS*~*~*!! are coming back. And there are trends I’m noticing among them and many other customs out there that, well, make me kinda mad, honestly. These designs are presented with some very egregious advantages that have no thought for balance… Especially in the case of how they stack up against some pretty core designs and end up being superior (the last straw was seeing some Venator designs that made one poster ask, “Why would  you ever take a Victory star destroyer ever again?”).

Ouch.

I have looked through KDY a number of times when thinking over ideas. The amount of "god ships" was staggering and can make you wonder if there are any good designs to be found. Just takes some digging and patience. A Venator I think should still be a solid enough large ship (given that it's squarely between an Interdictor and MC80) but with limitations and unique design. I think something closer to an Imperial version of the MC75 could work or outright make it along the lines of a large size Arquitens. It does not need to have crazy squadron values or upgrades to make it stand apart while feeling fun and balanced in an Imperial list. And while I may not agree with the approach of starting over costed and under powered with designs to bait other players into letting you use something I would certainly say to keep it reasonable with some kind of Achille's heel. The introduction of the SSD is a good example of that in how high a cost it carries without being so powerful nothing can stand up to it. Most versions I have seen talked about aren't much stronger than an ISD in guns or shields but can boast high health and enough upgrades to make things interesting. So as Norsehound pointed out consider: Cost, Firepower, Fighters, and Support. A ship that is perfect in all fields will not be fun to actually play with or against. Anyone who ever used a "god mode" cheat code growing up should know how boring that becomes fast. Either balanced so the ship is a jack of all trades but excels at none or something specialized that can be countered makes for interesting choices both in designing your list and for your opponent to decide how best to try and pick apart your fleet.

12 hours ago, FoaS said:

I completely agree with everything you've said. Particularly with the bad design bloat that exists.

Still working on how to solve that...

EDIT: Now that I'm not on my phone, I'm going to expand a bit.

I really like your guide here, and I'm going to re-asses all of my designs with that lens, because it's fantastic advise.

As for the bloat and KDYs contribution - that is a problem - and I say that as it's enabler. When I designed KDY, I did make it with the idea that the community would self-adjust between comments and ratings of various designs, but that hasn't happened. With v2 I'm going to try to make those mechanisms more accessible (sort by ratings or filter by ratings, etc).

Stage 5 of v2 development will be the Tabletop Simulator integration, where people can import their design into TTS using a simple tool - The hope there is that people will be able to access their designs for proper testing. I wish there were a way I could enforce proper testing of content, but alas: I have no mechanism to capture that data ? - I really wish I did.

I'm pretty pessimistic of people and fans, so I don't believe the community would self-correct, especially if nobody is out there to do the bad guy thing of saying to you, "Your design sucks." I have to answer to my own internal critic for that, and this guide was basically interviewing that critic

I wouldn't feel responsible for the bloat- KDY is a good tool for people to get their yah-yahs out and easily build and share the design without a graphics editing program. No, I think responsibility is on the content creators to make smarter and more efficient designs- hence this post.

TTS integration would be great, because then online communities can come together to use these customs. I'd expect fans willing to adopt these customs are too far and between to gather in one physical location, and this gives custom content the widest possible exposure.

Can I get an opinion on this design?

2 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I'm pretty pessimistic of people and fans, so I don't believe the community would self-correct, especially if nobody is out there to do the bad guy thing of saying to you, "Your design sucks." I have to answer to my own internal critic for that, and this guide was basically interviewing that critic

I wouldn't feel responsible for the bloat- KDY is a good tool for people to get their yah-yahs out and easily build and share the design without a graphics editing program. No, I think responsibility is on the content creators to make smarter and more efficient designs- hence this post.

TTS integration would be great, because then online communities can come together to use these customs. I'd expect fans willing to adopt these customs are too far and between to gather in one physical location, and this gives custom content the widest possible exposure.

Every single design can be commented on, to date, I have no comments on any of my three Venators. Constructive criticism and community involvement are really the key to making quality fan made creations.

2 hours ago, TallGiraffe said:

Can I get an opinion on this design?

If you post it...? I mean, I can weigh in my opinion if you wanted me to see something. I also don't know if you're giving me a sarcastic response to how complete and opinionated my opening post is.

11 minutes ago, cynanbloodbane said:

Every single design can be commented on, to date, I have no comments on any of my three Venators. Constructive criticism and community involvement are really the key to making quality fan made creations.

I've commented on an Acclamator and on a Venator that were posted here recently.

Thing is, something like KDY where you can make/post your own designs... I'd wager there's a lot of people more concerned with posting their own ships there than actually looking at ones posted by anyone else. It's like lists made in the Warlords fleet builder- I'm sure as heck not looking at other lists, I'm there to author/edit my own. That's why there are twenty-two Venators on KDY- someone shows up to make their own regardless of looking at other designs (or perhaps posting in spite of those other designs). They know its theirs, they share the link to their design, and ignore designs made by anyone else. There are three entries at least that say Venator-I Class Star Destroyer, made by different authors. Do you think they considered how many other Venator-Is there were on KDY before posting? And if they did, did this stop them?

Also a small correction- I said fifteen Venators previously because I searched KDY for Republic/Old Republic. Turns out when you include the Empire there are twenty-two Venator-class cruisers on KDY of various makes, chunks of them are identically-named.

Here there's an audience more concerned with discourse and discussion. It's not common to have designs here, so when they show up, we apply our armchair-generalship and theorycrafting tools against something exciting to look at.

@FoaS

just an idea concerning the crowdedness on KDY - might it be a solution to change the default visibility setting to unlisted or private instead of public?

1 hour ago, Captain_Nemo said:

@FoaS

just an idea concerning the crowdedness on KDY - might it be a solution to change the default visibility setting to unlisted or private instead of public?

Well, then either people list it as invisible and we never see it or people don't care and just post stuff anyway.

How about this, list ship entries which have been reviewed . A 5-star rating system that computes the average will help players see at-a-glance which ones have been "touched" the most by critics and which ones are just -there- and aren't looked at. This could encourage users who are serious about putting quality designs to listen to feedback for a better rating... and the rest of us who may wish to use KDY for an established design have a review system to measure which stat block they want. It also lets them decide what designs not to bother on if they haven't been reviewed (or leave a review to say why they won't take it).

Incorporate a system where you can leave a comment and a rating out of 5 stars.

@Norsehound http://kdyards.com/ships.view.php?id=2418

37 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Well, then either people list it as invisible and we never see it or people don't care and just post stuff anyway.

How about this, list ship entries which have been reviewed . A 5-star rating system that computes the average will help players see at-a-glance which ones have been "touched" the most by critics and which ones are just -there- and aren't looked at. This could encourage users who are serious about putting quality designs to listen to feedback for a better rating... and the rest of us who may wish to use KDY for an established design have a review system to measure which stat block they want. It also lets them decide what desi  gns not to bother on if they haven't been reviewed (or leave a review to say why they won't take it).

Incorporate a system where you can leave a comment and a rating out of 5 stars.

Already exists in v1, but I think it may not be prominent enough - also the fact that it's not filterable/sortable is a problem. Alternative, I have a more detailed "Critique" as well as standard comments, kind of like how DeviantArt does it?

Problem: most of the stuff is so far out there's no point commenting. It's either super op or just plain weird.

Then there's a ton of non-sw stuff, some quite nice actually, but what's ww2 stuff doing in there?

3 hours ago, TallGiraffe said:

@Norsehound http://kdyards.com/ships.view.php?id=2418

A Vindicator! I'll give it a look.

First observation is that it's throwing three dice out the front, which in the Empire right now is the VSD and ARQ in terms of firepower. Your Vindicator clocks out at 67 points, which is less than a VSD and more than a GSD (what I'd expect for a light cruiser). Since your firepower spread out the flanks is identical to a VSD, but the craft is cheaper, that's a minor flag. Let's look at the rest of the ship.

Your defense is weaker than the VSD's, with only a single brace and single redirect. The contain isn't going to help you in most situations, so expect your defensive choices to be about as good as the Quasar's (which is not good). Contain is a bit of an oddball token because you really need Damage Control officer in order to make it work well. Fortunately I don't think the officer slot is contested and you already have a defensive retrofit, so it'll be a good fit. 6 hull and the 3/2/2 spread on shields is comperable to the Gladiator, but the defensive token suite and hull is different enough to be distinct.

In terms of command stats I think Command 2 is reasonable for a small heavy cruiser like this. Fighter 1 makes this a very distinct entity from the VSD. Much like the Kuat/Cymoon are different from the other ISDs, you're making a design more efficient by sacrificing something else on a larger, more well-rounded design. Engineering 3 is serviceable on most ships of this caliber (GSD has 3 also). In terms of inflating things the offensive slot CAN let you be a Fighter 2 carrier, but it's not efficient. The Offensive retro then is likely going to be Dcaps or Quad lasers, if anything... there's no ion and not enough blues for the Dcaps to really be worth it. Still, it can be cut from efficiency but there are plenty of designs with slots that are under-utilized, or not utilized at all (until Dcaps existed, was there anything for Raiders?).

The AA rating is not overwhelming, but slightly better than a blue. There's no torpedo slot for it to abuse Flichette torpedoes out of. I can get behind this ship having slightly better AA in exchange for the range reduction. Besides, most of the time it wants to shoot stuff with the guns.

The Maneuver chart looks ok. There are no obvious 2 clicks out there, and speed 3 makes things a little complicated, but not enough to be a serious problem. If you wanted to make this interesting, start taking out clicks on speed 2 and 3 to make it harder to steer this ship. If you find it's too good for what it does, I'd start there.

In all I get the sense that this is a good generalist gunship that sacrifices a lot to offer up some, not complete, options for being a gunship. I think it's ready for stress testing to put it on the table and see how it performs. Pay attention to how this ship could possibly be abused - I'd want to give it XI7s, an Intel Officer, and ECMs for 87 points each. With a gunnery team is 94 points. You can take four of them with 376 points. I expect they're probably too weak be spammed, with only an ECM and one defense token of each class, which is a good sign.

Now, if she turns out to be a good gunship could she replace other ships out there now? Your VIN's movement chart is more sane than the ARQ and there are more gun upgrade options, but the craft is more expensive and has fewer defensive options. Players may choose this VIN over the ARQ for the sake of having an easier to use small gun craft, but those who want something made for standoff engagements are going to go back to the ARQ. Vader I think is friendlier for the ARQ than this VIN, because as a closer, the VIN is probably going to need the contain token much sooner than the ARQ ever would.

Against the VSD you lose resiliency and second-tier gun options (no torpedoes or ion cannons), but the craft is cheaper and has no option for being a carrier. Much like how you can pump a VSD up to ISD levels of attack power, your VIN already has pre D-cap opening shot potential out of the VSD with some, but not all, options a VSD carries for the price of being a more fragile craft.

All in all I think this is in the clear. Go test it. In fact if this were a cannon FFG product, I'd probably want to buy two of them since I like gun Star destroyers and I like the upgrade spread here. I'd probably take a couple of these with a carrier- unless they died too quickly to be worth it. I'd be lacking the fantastic D-Cap six die opening shot, or the one-two punch out of a VSD-I, but that's not the point of these gunships.