I zoomed in to 500% and gave up after "When a friendly ship at range X-Y..."

42 minutes ago, eMeM said:

Kraken goes into the Tactical Relay slot, not Crew. Likely the Bulblbubulbub-22 will have one.

The Belbabub makes the most sense, but as it is a Tactical Relay there is a chance it just might be an upgrade that droid starfighters in the CIS faction can take.

12 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

The Belbabub makes the most sense, but as it is a Tactical Relay there is a chance it just might be an upgrade that droid starfighters in the CIS faction can take.

Doubtful, at least for most of the Vulture Droids. If FFG adheres to what the article outlined as their intended plan for the Seps, it'll be 1+ "organic" command units (Bug-22 being one of the possibilities) with a "swarm" of droids as the guideline. Don't place any money on Vultures or Tris getting the Tac Relay slot.

When a friendly ship at range 0-3 performs a primary attack against a target in it’s Bullseye… That’s all I’m making out on my phone.

Edit: it also has something about that butt arc at the end, but I don’t have any clue what that could be.

1 hour ago, Hiemfire said:

Compare what happens to the wings on an X-Wing when the S-foils are open to what happens to a Vulture Droid's wings when they transition to walk mode. No X-Wings don't gain agility by opening/closing their wings (the T-70 does get more nimble by closing them for some blasted reason) but a Vulture Droid might since it no longer will have them pointing odd directions when closed.

I was told to imagine a world "where generally ships with multiple flight modes like the X-Wing ... had increased agility on one side"

43 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Doubtful, at least for most of the Vulture Droids. If FFG adheres to what the article outlined as their intended plan for the Seps, it'll be 1+ "organic" command units (Bug-22 being one of the possibilities) with a "swarm" of droids as the guideline. Don't place any money on Vultures or Tris getting the Tac Relay slot.

I can place all the money I want on them getting the slot, doesn't mean that I'll be right.

The only thing that even lends credence to it is the 'Solitary' bit on Kraken which is a odd requirement unless we will get new shuttles that will be like the Vulture droid and come with a 2 pip or 3 pip option.

2 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

'Solitary' bit on Kraken

That box is requirement and restrictions, so likely only 1 Tac Relay upgrade per squad. What would you stick it on?

9 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

That box is requirement and restrictions, so likely only 1 Tac Relay upgrade per squad. What would you stick it on?

That makes sense, I would have used Limited like in 1.0 but that means something different in 2.0. You could very much be right, but I can choose to be as deluded as I wish and we will find out come Jan/Feb/March next year when they start dropping articles.

2 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

That makes sense, I would have used Limited like in 1.0 but that means something different in 2.0. You could very much be right, but I can choose to be as deluded as I wish and we will find out come Jan/Feb/March next year when they start dropping articles.

Hopefully they start dropping articles next month. Unless that is when they're planning on Wave 2 hitting stores.

2 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Hopefully they start dropping articles next month. Unless that is when they're planning on Wave 2 hitting stores.

I think/hope we will end up seeing Wave 2 dropping the last week of November or the first week of December, with Wave 3 likely dropping late February or some time in March. I figure the articles will start showing up the month before release since we will easily get 6 or more articles to go along with it to preview the new expansions, not sure how they will handle the Striker and Z-95 considering they have the same contents as in the conversion kit they might be grouped together in an article or for the sake of new players might get their own separate articles.

1 minute ago, Animewarsdude said:

I think/hope we will end up seeing Wave 2 dropping the last week of November or the first week of December, with Wave 3 likely dropping late February or some time in March.

So next Wave 3 data dump second week of Dec possible, barring Organized Play updates before 1-2-19 or them focusing on one of the other games. Bulk of the info in Jan. That works. Now if there just was more info out about the MGT...

3 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

So next Wave 3 data dump second week of Dec possible, barring Organized Play updates before 1-2-19 or them focusing on one of the other games. Bulk of the info in Jan. That works. Now if there just was more info out about the MGT...

I think we will see articles starting to pop up most likely some time in January, but if FFG wants to give us some lovely Wave 3 Christmas gifts I won't complain at all. Of course they could be mean and just spend the first 2 weeks going over the Striker and Z-95.

2 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

Of course they could be mean and just spend the first 2 weeks going over the Striker and Z-95.

Doubtful. They're pretty clear about there being nothing new in the expansions that isn't in the Wave 1 Conversion Kits (other than Connor Nets template).

Just now, Hiemfire said:

Doubtful. They're pretty clear about there being nothing new in the expansions that isn't in the Wave 1 Conversion Kits (other than Connor Nets template).

Which is why I originally mentioned the 6 article number going over the other releases but I could see them going over those two expansions for the sake of people starting out with 2.0, even if the info is all out there due to the conversion kits. If they do that I could see rerelease articles, unless they add pilots, will be a bit frustrating for some people.

15 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

If they do that I could see rerelease articles, unless they add pilots, will be a bit frustrating for some people.

If they do a re-release article and another Wave info article simultaneously it should mitigate most of that. Though there are plenty that will just whine to whine.

7 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

If they do a re-release article and another Wave info article simultaneously it should mitigate most of that. Though there are plenty that will just whine to whine.

Well Mickey has to have something to go with his fine cheese.

10 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

? You must be fun at parties. And like, I get it's fun to crap on everything. But sometimes it's more fun to just like stuff.


But even if you need to find an in-world explanation for centralized droid command, it took me about thirty seconds to think one up: When your entire army is droid fighters, you have to make sure they are 100% loyal and that they can't or won't be turned against you. Remember that in Star Wars droids are far, far more like autonomous individuals than Roomba vacuums. Starting in ANH and all the way through the franchise, if you want a droid's loyalty you've got to treat it really well and trust it and/or slap a restraining bolt on it. Even the Lars family used restraining bolts on their droids. So if the opposition can bust restraining bolts off of your fighters, suddenly you've got an uprising on your hands (e.g. see: Solo). Even if you trust your droids to stay loyal, they can still have emotions like fear or doubt or defiance that might prevent them from performing as you need to them to (see Threepio's incessant worry or K-2SO's disobeying Cassian's orders to stay with the ship).

So if you want an entire army of droids that you want to have total faith and control over, well then you need to have centralized command that activates, deactivates, and directly feeds commands into the units. Because otherwise you're risking dealing with troops that are unreliable or potentially even mutinous, especially if the enemy can try to turn them.

Hey, good stuff dude.

11 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

? You must be fun at parties. And like, I get it's fun to crap on everything. But sometimes it's more fun to just like stuff.

Wow. Some people just can't take a joke. Do you honestly think it's impossible to like something and recognize some of its absurdity at the same time? But, if you insist on trying to defend such silliness...

11 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

But even if you need to find an in-world explanation for centralized droid command, it took me about thirty seconds to think one up: When your entire army is droid fighters, you have to make sure they are 100% loyal and that they can't or won't be turned against you. Remember that in Star Wars droids are far, far more like autonomous individuals than Roomba vacuums. Starting in ANH and all the way through the franchise, if you want a droid's loyalty you've got to treat it really well and trust it and/or slap a restraining bolt on it. Even the Lars family used restraining bolts on their droids. So if the opposition can bust restraining bolts off of your fighters, suddenly you've got an uprising on your hands (e.g. see: Solo). Even if you trust your droids to stay loyal, they can still have emotions like fear or doubt or defiance that might prevent them from performing as you need to them to (see Threepio's incessant worry or K-2SO's disobeying Cassian's orders to stay with the ship).

So if you want an entire army of droids that you want to have total faith and control over, well then you need to have centralized command that activates, deactivates, and directly feeds commands into the units. Because otherwise you're risking dealing with troops that are unreliable or potentially even mutinous, especially if the enemy can try to turn them.

Except that the droids in the droid army are completely different from the independent droids. The droids' brains are all on the control ship. In essence, they're not even separate beings but one, huge hive-mind (which does cause one to wonder why they need to speak audibly to each other). This, in itself, isn't necessarily a problem. A single, commanding intelligence, capable of moving everything in perfect coordination, is a terrifying foe. The problem isn't the control ship, but rather the lack of any redundancy whatsoever. A single control ship means a single point of failure. If that goes down, your entire army collapses into uselessness. Having multiple control ships forming a control network (with each ship being able to take a little extra load, in case one or two nodes go down) or even just having a backup in place ready to take over if something goes wrong should have been pretty high priority for the Trade Federation, and the fact that they didn't even seem to have considered it shows a remarkable lack of military planning or analysis on their part.

In fairness, as someone pointed out earlier, later versions were self-contained and could be more individual. So at least they learned their lesson after the fact. Still, it was such a gaping flaw with the system that someone really should have seen it coming.

49 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Wow. Some people just can't take a joke. Do you honestly think it's impossible to like something and recognize some of its absurdity at the same time? But, if you insist on trying to defend such silliness...

Except that the droids in the droid army are completely different from the independent droids. The droids' brains are all on the control ship. In essence, they're not even separate beings but one, huge hive-mind (which does cause one to wonder why they need to speak audibly to each other). This, in itself, isn't necessarily a problem. A single, commanding intelligence, capable of moving everything in perfect coordination, is a terrifying foe. The problem isn't the control ship, but rather the lack of any redundancy whatsoever. A single control ship means a single point of failure. If that goes down, your entire army collapses into uselessness. Having multiple control ships forming a control network (with each ship being able to take a little extra load, in case one or two nodes go down) or even just having a backup in place ready to take over if something goes wrong should have been pretty high priority for the Trade Federation, and the fact that they didn't even seem to have considered it shows a remarkable lack of military planning or analysis on their part.

In fairness, as someone pointed out earlier, later versions were self-contained and could be more individual. So at least they learned their lesson after the fact. Still, it was such a gaping flaw with the system that someone really should have seen it coming.

You are talking about the Trade Federation, an organization obsessed with making money. It's all too common for companies in real life to cut redundancies and safeties in the name of greater profit until it bites them in the rear, and some still keep doing it.

5 minutes ago, GeneralVryth said:

You are talking about the Trade Federation, and organization obsessed with making money. It's all too common for companies in real life to cut redundancies and safeties in the name of greater profit until it bites them in the rear, and some still keep doing it.

Except the Trade Federation did exactly that by linking every single one of their fighters to central vessels.

1 minute ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Except the Trade Federation did exactly that by linking every single one of their fighters to central vessels.

That was my point. The Trade Federation in name of saving money didn't set up proper redundancies for their droid control systems, leading to several costly losses.

It happens all the time. Corporations and people alike being obsessed with short term gain setting themselves up for long term problems.

23 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Wow. Some people just can't take a joke. Do you honestly think it's impossible to like something and recognize some of its absurdity at the same time? But, if you insist on trying to defend such silliness...

Except that the droids in the droid army are completely different from the independent droids. The droids' brains are all on the control ship. In essence, they're not even separate beings but one, huge hive-mind (which does cause one to wonder why they need to speak audibly to each other). This, in itself, isn't necessarily a problem. A single, commanding intelligence, capable of moving everything in perfect coordination, is a terrifying foe. The problem isn't the control ship, but rather the lack of any redundancy whatsoever. A single control ship means a single point of failure. If that goes down, your entire army collapses into uselessness. Having multiple control ships forming a control network (with each ship being able to take a little extra load, in case one or two nodes go down) or even just having a backup in place ready to take over if something goes wrong should have been pretty high priority for the Trade Federation, and the fact that they didn't even seem to have considered it shows a remarkable lack of military planning or analysis on their part.

In fairness, as someone pointed out earlier, later versions were self-contained and could be more individual. So at least they learned their lesson after the fact. Still, it was such a gaping flaw with the system that someone really should have seen it coming.

20 minutes ago, GeneralVryth said:

You are talking about the Trade Federation, and organization obsessed with making money. It's all too common for companies in real life to cut redundancies and safeties in the name of greater profit until it bites them in the rear, and some still keep doing it.

14 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Except the Trade Federation did exactly that by linking every single one of their fighters to central vessels.

11 minutes ago, GeneralVryth said:

That was my point. The Trade Federation in name of saving money didn't set up proper redundancies for their droid control systems, leading to several costly losses.

It happens all the time. Corporations and people alike being obsessed with short term gain setting themselves up for long term problems.

/sigh After the Trade Federation became part of the CIS they reverted to using the older, fully autonomous, OOM Series droids instead of the brain dead B1 variant they had been using, supplemented by better programmed and autonomous B1s (and later the B2 Super Battle Droids, the big steel colored ones with the wrist cannons in Attack of the Clones). This also applied to the Vulture droids. While still coordinated centrally (mainly by Tactical Droids) the CIS versions were able to function without a central control ship. There were fail safes in place (Palp made use of one at the end of his "war", the master shutdown command) that helped prevent the worst case of what AllWingsStandingBy outlined. They (Post-Naboo Vultures and B1s) were at worst dumb astromechs (think Legends R1s) in cognitive capability and ability to adapt to situations. The BXs and Magna Guards were even better. Please stop applying what the paranoid fool Nute Gunrey had done with the ones he had deployed on Naboo in Episode 1 across the board, it doesn't even come close to being what battle droids and droid starfighters were on average, much less at their best.

13 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

/sigh After the Trade Federation became part of the CIS they reverted to using the older, fully autonomous, OOM Series droids instead of the brain dead B1 variant they had been using, supplemented by better programmed and autonomous B1s (and later the B2 Super Battle Droids, the big steel colored ones with the wrist cannons in Attack of the Clones). This also applied to the Vulture droids. While still coordinated centrally (mainly by Tactical Droids) the CIS versions were able to function without a central control ship. There were fail safes in place (Palp made use of one at the end of his "war", the master shutdown command) that helped prevent the worst case of what AllWingsStandingBy outlined. They (Post-Naboo Vultures and B1s) were at worst dumb astromechs (think Legends R1s) in cognitive capability and ability to adapt to situations. The BXs and Magna Guards were even better. Please stop applying what the paranoid fool Nute Gunrey had done with the ones he had deployed on Naboo in Episode 1 across the board, it doesn't even come close to being what battle droids and droid starfighters were on average, much less at their best.

dude we know all this.

I especially, know all of that. Also come on, do you really think you have to describe to us what a B2 is? Come on dude.

We were literally just talking about the Trade Federation era Vultures, ****.

10 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

/sigh After the Trade Federation became part of the CIS they reverted to using the older, fully autonomous, OOM Series droids instead of the brain dead B1 variant they had been using, supplemented by better programmed and autonomous B1s (and later the B2 Super Battle Droids, the big steel colored ones with the wrist cannons in Attack of the Clones). This also applied to the Vulture droids. While still coordinated centrally (mainly by Tactical Droids) the CIS versions were able to function without a central control ship. There were fail safes in place (Palp made use of one at the end of his "war", the master shutdown command) that helped prevent the worst case of what AllWingsStandingBy outlined. They (Post-Naboo Vultures and B1s) were at worst dumb astromechs (think Legends R1s) in cognitive capability and ability to adapt to situations. The BXs and Magna Guards were even better. Please stop applying what the paranoid fool Nute Gunrey had done with the ones he had deployed on Naboo in Episode 1 across the board, it doesn't even come close to being what battle droids and droid starfighters were on average, much less at their best.

I wasn't trying to imply that was the Confederacy's philosophy. I was just trying the answer the question of how could they have been so stupid at Naboo, despite presumably paying smart engineers to build their army etc... The answer of course being the same as when that kind of situation comes up in real life. Usually being too focused on profit at the expense of long term potential and safety.

1 minute ago, Captain Lackwit said:

dude we know all this.

I especially, know all of that. Also come on, do you really think you have to describe to us what a B2 is? Come on dude.

We were literally just talking about the Trade Federation era Vultures, ****.

1 minute ago, GeneralVryth said:

I wasn't trying to imply that was the Confederacy's philosophy. I was just trying the answer the question of how could they have been so stupid at Naboo, despite presumably paying smart engineers to build their army etc... The answer of course being the same as when that kind of situation comes up in real life. Usually being too focused on profit at the expense of long term potential and safety.

My apologies to you both then, I read something into what you'd written that wasn't there.