Now this topic has been discussed in other threads before, but to my knowledge* there hasn't been any threads dedicated to the idea. The list of current ships that are used by both factions in Canon are:

1. Nebulon-B Escort Frigates

2. CR90 Corvettes

3. Quasar Fire Cruiser-Carriers

4. Imperial Star Destroyers**

Now assuming that these ships have their stats and cost unchanged, would any of these break game balance? Would a swarm of Vader CR90s or Rieekan using Quasars be too powerful? Do you even want dual faction ships, and how should FFG implement the idea?***

*Roughly equivalent to Jon Snow's.

**Despite the numerous instances in Canon/Legends of Rebel/New Republic ISDs, I think allowing that in-game would steal too much of the Imperial faction's identity.

*** I am not a FFG employee, although I wish I was.

I had a whole thing typed out, but I'm not sure how coherent it was. So I'll summaries:

1. Yes, ships have faction identities. They are iconic to their faction, whatever that one neckbeard will tell you about Neb Bs been imperial ships.
2. People play factions in order to play certain ships. ISDs with cheap GR-75s (dodging the Gozanti tax). Kuats under Sato. Lots of combos that were never meant to be.
3. Ships have been balanced for their faction. The costs, upgrade suite, everything, is considering that the player is restricted to half of the unique upgrades. Gozantis under Ackbar? Yes, I'll take 15 please.

I understand the desire to play odd combos, or with ships you wouldn't be able to normally if you're mono faction, and theirs nothing to stop you doing so in friendly games. I even had this discussion at the UK nationals with someone (what's the most OP combo if you removed faction restrictions?) and it is a lot of fun to think outside that box. But I think what we would lose in identity, faction uniqueness and balance would not be worth it.

That said I would be up for a specific ship made to be dual faction, as long as it was made from the ground up. People often say the ugly dreadnought would work. And, if it were to be a thing, I would prefer new ship cards were made for dual faction ships, to nip balance issues in the bud. I'm sure with the maybe clone wars stuff coming, we'll see a few dual faction ships if they do do a full CIS and GAR faction.

Edit: Admonition Tagge, that would be fun

28 minutes ago, Touston said:

I had a whole thing typed out, but I'm not sure how coherent it was. So I'll summaries:

1. Yes, ships have faction identities. They are iconic to their faction, whatever that one neckbeard will tell you about Neb Bs been imperial ships.
2. People play factions in order to play certain ships. ISDs with cheap GR-75s (dodging the Gozanti tax). Kuats under Sato. Lots of combos that were never meant to be.
3. Ships have been balanced for their faction. The costs, upgrade suite, everything, is considering that the player is restricted to half of the unique upgrades. Gozantis under Ackbar? Yes, I'll take 15 please.

I understand the desire to play odd combos, or with ships you wouldn't be able to normally if you're mono faction, and theirs nothing to stop you doing so in friendly games. I even had this discussion at the UK nationals with someone (what's the most OP combo if you removed faction restrictions?) and it is a lot of fun to think outside that box. But I think what we would lose in identity, faction uniqueness and balance would not be worth it.

That said I would be up for a specific ship made to be dual faction, as long as it was made from the ground up. People often say the ugly dreadnought would work. And, if it were to be a thing, I would prefer new ship cards were made for dual faction ships, to nip balance issues in the bud. I'm sure with the maybe clone wars stuff coming, we'll see a few dual faction ships if they do do a full CIS and GAR faction.

Edit: Admonition Tagge, that would be fun

Titles would not be transferable, new Imperial Nebulon-B titles would have to be made for example. Point costs could be increased/decreased depending on the ship, like Rebel ISDs getting a price hike to represent the difficulty of the Rebels acquiring them. That being said I do agree with you on the risks of diluting the uniqueness of the factions by having some dual faction ships, although only a handful of ships would be dual faction.

Also,

"Those are bold words for someone in turbolaser range."

38 minutes ago, Piratical Moustache said:

Now this topic has been discussed in other threads before, but to my knowledge* there hasn't been any threads dedicated to the idea. The list of current ships that are used by both factions in Canon are:

1. Nebulon-B Escort Frigates

2. CR90 Corvettes

3. Quasar Fire Cruiser-Carriers

4. Imperial Star Destroyers**

Now assuming that these ships have their stats and cost unchanged, would any of these break game balance? Would a swarm of Vader CR90s or Rieekan using Quasars be too powerful? Do you even want dual faction ships, and how should FFG implement the idea?***

*Roughly equivalent to Jon Snow's.

**Despite the numerous instances in Canon/Legends of Rebel/New Republic ISDs, I think allowing that in-game would steal too much of the Imperial faction's identity.

*** I am not a FFG employee, although I wish I was.

OK, let's go with the obvious first question, when you say "canon" what do you mean? If you are referring to, for good or for ill (ill in my opinion, for what it's worth), the Disney canon then you have MUCH less of a leg to stand on if you are trying to justify dual faction ships with said canon. Though, I will admit, I have not finished all of the new novels yet.

@Touston Maybe try and put forth a little effort before immediately resorting to namecalling anyone who doesn't share your opinion. Or keep in in your first point and cheapen what you're trying to say by immediately resorting to demeaning others.

1 minute ago, kenngp said:

OK  ,  let's go with the obvious first question, when you say "canon" what do you mean? If you are referring to, for good or for ill (ill in my opinion, for what it's worth), the Disney canon then you have MUCH less of a leg to stand on if you are trying to justify dual faction ships with said canon. Though, I will admit, I have    not finished all of the new novels yet. 

I am a Legends fan, but I did check out Canon Wookieepedia before posting this list, all these ships are still used by both factions in the new fiction.

9 minutes ago, Piratical Moustache said:

Titles would not be transferable, new Imperial Nebulon-B titles would have to be made for example. Point costs could be increased/decreased depending on the ship, like Rebel ISDs getting a price hike to represent the difficulty of the Rebels acquiring them. That being said I do agree with you on the risks of diluting the uniqueness of the factions by having some dual faction ships, although only a handful of ships would be dual faction.

 Also,

   

 "Those are bold words for someone in turbolaser range."

Yeah none transfer titles make sense. I do think it would need new ship cards though, but it's a tricky situation making ships more expensive merely because of fluff reasons. How many cards are "good but too expensive" in the game right now? If they're taxed they would never see gameplay outside of friendly games, and in friendly games you can run "looted" ships anyway

11 minutes ago, kenngp said:

OK, let's go with the obvious first question, when you say "canon" what do you mean? If you are referring to, for good or for ill (ill in my opinion, for what it's worth), the Disney canon then you have MUCH less of a leg to stand on if you are trying to justify dual faction ships with said canon. Though, I will admit, I have not finished all of the new novels yet.

@Touston Maybe try and put forth a little effort before immediately resorting to namecalling anyone who doesn't share your opinion. Or keep in in your first point and cheapen what you're trying to say by immediately resorting to demeaning others.

We already have none nuCannon ships in the game (MC30, Victories, Gladiators, Assault Frigate, a boat lode of squads...) so I doubt justifying it in new or old cannon would matter too much.

And neckbeard is something of a term of affection in some groups for me, and I would mostly consider myself one for Star Wars.

12 minutes ago, Piratical Moustache said:

I am a Legends fan, but I did check out Canon Wookieepedia before posting this list, all these ships are still used by both factions in the new fiction.

You can also add the "looted" Raider to the list too.

Maybe a way to do it is require the other faction to have a title for said ship?

Two things that I see if this was how it was implemented, one it can limit the number of ships that a faction has, for example lets say that the Errant Venture is going to be a Rebel Imperial Star Destroyer, and for sake of argument it is the only one that they get this limits them to just the one, as they can not just take it due to them being now allowed for the Rebels. On the other side I could see for other ships that are not as iconic to a faction but used by both having a generic title lets say the Nebulon-B the Empire might get some unique titles, but I could also see them getting a generic title like the 7th fleet so that they could have as many as they wanted.

Second is the price, by adjusting the price of the title you do not need to adjust the ship cost (unless stats are also changed but different idea) as it is all included in the title. Again using the above examples Errant Venture title could cost X points for the ability to be used by the Rebels and if the title also does anything else add Y points for that giving it a total point cost of X+Y=Z. On the other hand the Nebulon-B generic title I would see being cheap as they were produced for the empire and I would expect that the generic title would not do much if anything.

Some other things that I could see if this happens, it could be a lead in 3rd faction by releasing ships that are both faction. Also for cost and availability could be interesting if the ship titles were limited to a specific sub-ship, by this I mean the Errant Venture was a ISD II so if its title was only usable on ISD II?

There's also the CR-92a Assassin-Class Corvette, used by both Imperial and Rebel forces in X-WIng.

Like @Touston said, I feel you would need a whole new ship and titles to make it viable, and also balance it for the faction. A Rebel ISD shouldn't be the ISD-I or ISD-II (or the other two new ones), it should be a "Captured ISD" and control differently, probably being the weakest overall version of the ISD with a few different upgrade slots, etc. Give it the identify of a ship that the Rebels captured, retrofit to their needs, and redeployed. The rebels would run it with a smaller crew, so it should just systematically be worse across the board, but maybe they figured out how to make it turn faster... I dunno. I think all the ships would need to be taken from a point of view like that - bring it into the faction identity while capturing a small portion of what made it special for the original faction. This way you have flavor but also game balance and can design it to prevent some ridiculous combos that could come up.

I feel any new ships that come out that would inherently be dual faction (like Scum and Villainy style stuff) should be like that as well, let there be a Rebel version and an Imperial version, and never the two should meet.

29 minutes ago, SuperMarino said:

Like @Touston said, I feel you would need a whole new ship and titles to make it viable, and also balance it for the faction. A Rebel ISD shouldn't be the ISD-I or ISD-II (or the other two new ones), it should be a "Captured ISD" and control differently, probably being the weakest overall version of the ISD with a few different upgrade slots, etc. Give it the identify of a ship that the Rebels captured, retrofit to their needs, and redeployed. The rebels would run it with a smaller crew, so it should just systematically be worse across the board, but maybe they figured out how to make it turn faster... I dunno. I think all the ships would need to be taken from a point of view like that - bring it into the faction identity while capturing a small portion of what made it special for the original faction. This way you have flavor but also game balance and can design it to prevent some ridiculous combos that could come up.

I feel any new ships that come out that would inherently be dual faction (like Scum and Villainy style stuff) should be like that as well, let there be a Rebel version and an Imperial version, and never the two should meet.

The ISD-I and ISD-II could be used by the Rebels, but keep the Refits exclusive to the Empire perhaps? I mentioned in the OP that the ISD is the unlikeliest dual faction ship for thematic reasons, and as a Rebel player myself I probably wouldn't take a Liberty again with ISDs available. The other ships probably would be fine to transfer without altering stats, with new titles changing the way you play them, like the Phoenix Nest.

59 minutes ago, SuperMarino said:

Like @Touston said, I feel you would need a whole new ship and titles to make it viable, and also balance it for the faction. A Rebel ISD shouldn't be the ISD-I or ISD-II (or the other two new ones), it should be a "Captured ISD" and control differently, probably being the weakest overall version of the ISD with a few different upgrade slots, etc. Give it the identify of a ship that the Rebels captured, retrofit to their needs, and redeployed. The rebels would run it with a smaller crew, so it should just systematically be worse across the board, but maybe they figured out how to make it turn faster... I dunno. I think all the ships would need to be taken from a point of view like that - bring it into the faction identity while capturing a small portion of what made it special for the original faction. This way you have flavor but also game balance and can design it to prevent some ridiculous combos that could come up.

I feel any new ships that come out that would inherently be dual faction (like Scum and Villainy style stuff) should be like that as well, let there be a Rebel version and an Imperial version, and never the two should meet.

So what would you do with things like the Nebulon-B that was factory built for the Empire, but then the Captain (and/or crew?) joined the Rebelion, most of the ships I would guess are unmodified (the modified ones are the titles?) so would you expect the Empire to have a different ship than the one that they built for them self? Now having said that I do like the idea of the larger and/or more specialized ships having different stats.

14 minutes ago, Piratical Moustache said:

The ISD-I and ISD-II could be used by the Rebels, but keep the Refits exclusive to the Empire perhaps? I mentioned in the OP that the ISD is the unlikeliest dual faction ship for thematic reasons, and as a Rebel player myself I probably wouldn't take a Liberty again with ISDs available. The other ships probably would be fine to transfer without altering stats, with new titles changing the way you play them, like the Phoenix Nest.

That is why I think that cross faction ships need to have a title, to keep a Rebel player from showing up with a CR-90 and two ISD's. If there is only one ISD title for the rebels (I have no idea how many they actually captured) then even in things like the Campaign you will still need the Liberty if you want a forward firing warship.

1 hour ago, CDAT said:

So what would you do with things like the Nebulon-B that was factory built for the Empire, but then the Captain (and/or crew?) joined the Rebelion, most of the ships I would guess are unmodified (the modified ones are the titles?) so would you expect the Empire to have a different ship than the one that they built for them self? Now having said that I do like the idea of the larger and/or more specialized ships having different stats.

That is why I think that cross faction ships need to have a title, to keep a Rebel player from showing up with a CR-90 and two ISD's. If there is only one ISD title for the rebels (I have no idea how many they actually captured) then even in things like the Campaign you will still need the Liberty if you want a forward firing warship.

At least in Legends the New Republic captured more than a few ISDs, and KDY actually produced more for the new government.

I'm interested in your idea, but that would be essentially a new sub-class of ship; Small, Medium, Large, and then "Unique" rules tacked on. A Unique ship would be the basic ship with a permanently attached title, but FFG probably wouldn't like that idea. Would you buy more than one Phoenix Nest if only one could be used in a game for example?

1 hour ago, Piratical Moustache said:

At least in Legends the New Republic captured more than a few ISDs, and KDY actually produced more for the new government.

I'm interested in your idea, but that would be essentially a new sub-class of ship; Small, Medium, Large, and then "Unique" rules tacked on. A Unique ship would be the basic ship with a permanently attached title, but FFG probably wouldn't like that idea. Would you buy more than one Phoenix Nest if only one could be used in a game for example?

I guess you could look at it this way, I was looking at it more like the Chimaera ISD, they repaint some ships and put a card or two into it that are cross faction. So the Rebel player buys a new Nebulon-B pack that has the I do not know Medical Frigate and an Mon Cal modified Frigate, in addition it has two generic Empire titles that let them run the ship for a couple points but maybe limited to the support and/or escort. Also maybe one of the ship tiles would be set up for the second faction mainly (or only?). Now for the truly unique ones like Errant Venture unless there are more (and there maybe I do not know) than a handful put it in a second campaign like the unique pilots we got with the first campaign.

Based on the ships that we have right now, with no research done, just my gut on which ones would or would not be usable by the other faction.

Rebel ship used by Empire
Unlimited (a generic title)
CR-90
Nebulon-B
Pelta
GR-75
Maybe the Hammerhead (it is supposed to be an older ship right?)
Limited (maybe as little as one title to a max of a few)
Assault Frigate
The Hammerhead may also fit here?
Not likely
Any Mon Cal ship

Empire Ships used by Rebels
Gozanti
Raider
Arquitens
Limited numbers
Any Star Destroyer (the more powerful the fewer of them and/or adjusted states would be my guess)
Quasar Fire
Not Likely
Interdictor (just does not fell like a ship that the rebels would use, but I am not versed in the fluff as I have not read a single new cannon book).

No iconic ships as dual faction please for a standard game, especially ISDs. From a game mechanics perspective as much as anything else.

At most a campaign specific one-off might be ok.

Smaller ships such as the Neb B I would have no particular problem with, although I don’t really think it does much for diversity in the game. I’d much prefer differing ships on each side.

I wouldnt mind dual faction ships for the future like the dreadnought, but dont touch the rest. Some ships might have been stolen during the gcv, but please... Also, from game balance point, dont touch whats not broken. I might cause imbalace if certain combos appear from nowhere. Thats just too dodgy, dont enter that swamp.

I like this idea for a campaign box. Like a Lothal story where the team works together to get through the missions and opportunities to capture other ships occurs and "unlocks" the faction card for the Rebels to have a Quasar. But I love story games so Gloomhaven, and Pathfinder are big draws for me. I guess I just want a HotAC for Armada.

Naaaaah... Just give me a Dreadnought Class. At least thst really was used on both sides

To be honest I would be happy if the empire aquired:

Cr90 ( perhaps as CR92)
Neb-B ( + Neb-B2)

and the Rebels gained acess to the

Quasar fire (in a perfect world taking it completly from the empire to replace it with the To-Falk)

and both get

Dread noughts

And I would be happy.

Perhaps make a New Repulic Star destroyer some far in the distance, that not just an imperial ISD clone and has some restricition (FFG likes repainted ISDs after all), but I dont need it.

3 hours ago, Norell said:

Naaaaah... Just give me a Dreadnought Class. At least thst really was used on both sides

I'd prefer a Wave of the Assault Frigate Mark I and Dreadnaught, the Rebels converted most of the Dreadnaughts they acquired into Mk1s and Mk2s to decrease crew requirements. I really want the Mk1 alongside the Mk2, as well as the Dreadnaught for the Empire.

Am I the only one annoyed that we only have the final film of the trilogy, and not the origin story? We are also potentially missing out on a Dark Knight middle act with the Mk1.