6 hours ago, Dreadai said:

Weird thing to say. Do you think we haven’t been flying them? I’ve had 4-5 games a week with at least one, usually more N1 on the table.
you seem to be trying to use the N1 as an interceptor when it isn’t one. There’s plenty of value in the ship if you put some thought into the ship as a chassis and not try to jam it into a role better filled by another ship type.

I apologize, I thought you had mentioned something about it still being in your builder, leading me to think you haven't tried it much or at all. My bad.

I've been trying to get the N1 out as something like an interceptor, but only because I have up on it as a swarm jouster. But I think you are close to my problem. We've been collectively putting a lot of thought into the chassis and I had several games before I started this thread so I think we've got a good base of experience to speak from. It's not an interceptor, but it's also not a jouster. It's not a light combat ship like a Z95, it's not a support ship like a small transport obviously. So what the heck is it?

The n1's core strength is full throttle

So it's good at

a.) Going fast

b.) Soaking damage (esp with r2)

Also has passive Torps of questionable worthiness

Ole!, priced the same as a 104th, can easily be taken without upgrades as a super cheap and difficult to ignore i4

Otherwise? Juke + r2? That's basically all I see that banks on the n1's strengths

To go extra on the n1, I believe baby-bananakin is your best bet simply because forcus makes him tougher than the others (also clutch roll to compensate full throttle predictably)

So, what IS the n1? It's a long con

probably

Hope you like long games!

EDIT: heretical thought, but...ion Torps!?!?

(41) Anakin Skywalker [Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter]
(4) R2 Astromech
(3) Passive Sensors
(7) Juke
(6) Ion Torpedoes
Points: 61

6 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

heretical thought, but...ion Torps!?!?

(41) Anakin Skywalker [Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter]
(4) R2 Astromech
(3) Passive Sensors
(7) Juke
(6) Ion Torpedoes
Points: 61

Finally got a chance to fly my N-1 today, via Ric+Daredevil+FCS. Holy crap, Ric is hard to keep on target! It’s just a constant go-speed-racer-go. I would’ve just about killed for an R4 Astro to make stress-clearing actually possible, even though it would’ve meant sacrificing some bonus dice. And I benefited from neither upgrade in the end; I ended up spending the one TL I ever took to reroll two dice, and my one Daredevil attempt didn’t get my opponent into arc—I would’ve been better off breaking away and setting up another pass.

Frankly, I think your Ion Annie build has a ton of potential. I might balk at paying that much for Juke, but I can also see it maybe working. Heck, I could see just doing an R4 or R2-C4 as well.

The N1 kind of sucks I think, but it’s got just enough potential to stay interesting... and Ions have a good combo of cheapness and dice output...

I think Ric Olie and Anakin are pretty solid. They can really punch-up for their price. They're cheap and have either the force or bonus red/green dice.

Ric with R2 and a talent (Daredevil, Predator, Crack Shot seem best) is under 50 points, and a pain to fully kill. I'd go a similar build on Anakin, taking FCS. Having regen and a free Evade really kind of means an opponent mostly wastes their time attacking them. I was trying out an interesting list along those lines.

• Ric (Predator, R2) 48
• Anakin (Crack Shot, FCS, R2) 48
• Gold Trooper V-19 (-) 25
• Gold Trooper V-19 (-) 25
• Wolffe (R5 Astromech) 54

The exact talents and ARC build kinda shift around some, but the premise is mostly that anything your opponent attacks is a waste of their time.

There's also a subtle benefit to Ric: he makes opposing players (well, me at least) want to fly their ships really fast. That can often work out poorly.

//

I had one of my most miserable games in a while trying to fly some R3, FCS, Advanced Proton Torpedo Bravos. I figure, grab a lock once, and you'll never need to refresh it before you die. Meanwhile, APT might provide some solid hitting power.

I came away resolving probably never to fly generic N-1s again. Maybe I'll do it, using just no-upgrades Bravos, or maybe R2. But they fly so odd, and without the white K-Turn of a TIE Defender, they're really hard to keep relevant in a fight over a long period of time.

//

Handmaidens seem OK on paper. It's almost like having 2 Biggs. However, they only have 2 red dice, and while the numbers might look OK, the on-table geometry doesn't always work out easily. I understand why they got a high price and no talent (no Juke), but they do seem a lot weaker than FFG thought they'd be.

//

Padme also seems reasonable. Her ability reminds me of Heroic. It isn't a strong effect most of the time, but it's got wicked high uptime. Small effects can really add up over the course of a game. However, Ric and Anakin both have really clear and immediate pilot abilities, and are cheaper, and can be higher initiative. I understand why FFG priced her as the most expensive N-1, but she probably ought to tick down a point or two along with Handmaidens.

Re n1 juke + torp anakin, we need some kinda punch to capitalize off ion and also ferry Annie into the late game

Ergo, Arcs (fgd preferring Arcs? How different!) with Sinker and their swanky aux arcs to most easily get into positions that could punish an ioned ship

The doughnut slayer

(41) Anakin Skywalker [Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter]
(4) R2 Astromech
(3) Passive Sensors
(1) Crack Shot
(13) Proton Torpedoes
Points: 62

(54) "Sinker" [ARC-170 Starfighter]
Points: 54

(42) 104th Battalion Pilot [ARC-170 Starfighter]
Points: 42

(42) 104th Battalion Pilot [ARC-170 Starfighter]
Points: 42

Total: 200

Edit: whoops wrong list

Ion + juke = 13

Sub out protons

I've mentioned it before but seriously, I've had real joy with this build. Though pricey, it's well worth trying, it's where the N-1s punch is, particularly with some good support. If he has to spend force to line up his shot, you have want the option to pass him a focus or possibly equip him with R2-C4.

If you can sit him on your obstacle of choice, you have a reasonable chance of throwing a 4 hit attack into standard AG, with one shield removed on top.

Anakin is very hard to avoid. Built like this, I've had him one shot a couple of enemy ships and cripple others.

With force/focus/evade/obstacle on hand to help defence as well, he's pretty tanky and equally hard to kill/token strip before he fires. That he can roll off the obstacle before he moves next turn is just icing on the cake.

His approach can be so slow and tricksy with his ability, I've not found Passive Sensors at all necessary.

(41) Anakin Skywalker [Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter]
(6) Collision Detector
(4) Trick Shot
(9) Plasma Torpedoes
Points: 60

Basically, if can't get decent time on target, you want to smash that target silly with one punch.

So...

• Ric (Plasma, R2) 58
• N-1 Anakin (Proton, R2) 55
• Obi-Wan (7B, R2) 72

Has 15 points left for bid, talents, and system upgrades... Not a very high initiative Alpha strike squad, but still... Hrm...

I’m having real joy with the following N1 builds

Ric Olie - Daredevil, Adv Sensors, R2 Astromech

and

Anakin - Crackshot, Passive Sensors, Proton Torps and R2.

I maintain 100% that if you are putting a droid other than R2 on a N1 you need a **** good reason. The value to the chassis is enormous.

Anakin is a pocket rocket. He does terrible things to lower initiative ships and his time on target is great with the ability to barrel and 2/3 hard back in. He is also very very sturdy with force evade or focus evade and regen if needed.

Compared to the normal lightweight 42 - 47 point builds, The Ric build is expensive but great value. Being able to dial in a move and then figure out if it’s good or not later is amazing. Premove focus into a bump to shoot something behind the ship. Or the ultimate get out of jail free card with an advanced sensor daredevil boost into the blue 3 bank to clear stress. It switches off your FT ability sure but it’s better than being killboxed.

the other thing it is great for is generating a really fast re-engage. If you need to regen or disengage it gives you real options for where to put the ship to enable only one turn of no shooting.

I don’t think that there is anything to the generics. Or pure N1 squads, but there are a lot of options for pocket aces in the chassis that can do some work.

16 hours ago, Dreadai said:

I maintain 100% that if you are putting a droid other than R2 on a N1 you need a **** good reason. The value to the chassis is enormous.

I suspect R2-A6 would pair well with Dinee - the problem is Dinee herself doesn't strike me as that awesome - whilst R2-C4 might work with Daredevil Captain Obvious (essentially giving him a free Calculate if you don't need your evade), but not if you're taking him with Advanced Sensors, since you'll be losing Full Throttle.

Dinee and Captain Obvious actually feel like not a bad pairing sometimes; if they're flying wing with one another, either they're going faster than you (meaning bonus dice from one ship) or not (which means you can't modify dice when attacked by the other).

Part of me wants to try advanced sensors Anakin for the joy of a speed 3 sideslip before ever revealing his dial. I know it's not great, I just think it'll be funny .

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Part of me wants to try advanced sensors Anakin for the joy of a speed 3 sideslip before ever revealing his dial. I know it's not great, I just think it'll be funny .

It's even funnier if you have Saesee in there too

I bought two N-1 fighters but only ever opened one box. I have flown Ric a few times but based on its performance I don't think I will ever open the second box. The ship just doesn't seem all that good as it seems a little bit weak for its cost and the firepower 2 is quite limiting. The GO FAST ability is most often not used too.... I think this ship is only really viable as a pocket ace and the generics are worthless.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

whilst R2-C4 might work with Daredevil Captain Obvious (essentially giving him a free Calculate if you don't need your evade), but not if you're taking him with Advanced Sensors, since you'll be losing Full Throttle.

Dinee and Captain Obvious actually feel like not a bad pairing sometimes; if they're flying wing with one another, either they're going faster than you (meaning bonus dice from one ship) or not (which means you can't modify dice when attacked by the other).

Part of me wants to try advanced sensors Anakin for the joy of a speed 3 sideslip before ever revealing his dial. I know it's not great, I just think it'll be funny .

I tried R2-C4 and I found it good, but just not as good as being able to disengage and regen above half. Ric's firepower is very variable whether you have a calculate or a focus. (Also at i5 I never wanted to burn my evade token on offense)

Adv Sensors anakin does look to be hilarious ... I'm not sure if it's any good though ... see his mighty 2dice unmodified attack

I put an arc on its 1.0 small base. Oh goodness. That feels so much better. =(

Thing is like a fat hog in 2.0 with red BR, no linked actions, medium base and a grandfathered semi-crappy dial. Also no more critical out the back, which helped the damage a lot...

What should be the base cost of each pilot in your opinion?

Spent a week working on this again. Had another game tonight and didn't get a chance to try the 5x Bananas yet. But since I was in a hurry and the squad from last week was still ready I just played it again. I honestly have no idea why in so head stuck on these **** things 😅 But good news, they won again. Barely. So game five with this list and like 3-3 right now. Compared to total experiment of pure N-1 at 5-12?

For the record, list was...

'Lil Ani and the Bravo's (200/200)
=================================
Naboo Royal N-1: Anakin Skywalker (41 + 15)
+ Fire-Control System (2)
+ Plasma Torpedoes (9)
+ R2 Astromech (4)
Naboo Royal N-1: Bravo Flight Officer (34 + 13)
+ Passive Sensors (3)
+ Adv. Proton Torpedoes (6)
+ R2 Astromech (4)
Naboo Royal N-1: Bravo Flight Officer (34 + 13)
+ Passive Sensors (3)
+ Adv. Proton Torpedoes (6)
+ R2 Astromech (4)
Naboo Royal N-1: Bravo Flight Officer (34 + 16)
+ Passive Sensors (3)
+ Plasma Torpedoes (9)
+ R2 Astromech (4)

I won't really argue that an R2 is maybe the best choice for these. But the grain of salt is that it may be the only redemption they have. I do get a lot of Regen out of them, past few games completely drained more than a few. But with the two agility chassis, I also usually lose one or two ships with no opportunity to even try to regen.

I'm now convinced that APTs is the way to do a bravo. Your only really going to be alive long enough to get a one solid shot off if you can't kill their big bad. So you have to make it count. Passive lock on the far end, jam all three into a block, one should get it pinned, two will get to shoot... Hopefully. If it works you have a chance. I almost always get two off. But then either never get the third off or the carrier is killed. So make of that what you will. Tonight for instance second combat round aced a Dengar that was just not cautious enough.

Anakin is a flanker here. And he's not bad at it. But you have to be really squirrelly with him. And if they angle at him, your game is going to fall apart real quick. His i4 is his big limiter really, since for all his reposition he really can't use it against many common opponents. The single Force is also a tricky resource to manage since your constantly having to evaluate it's position gain against it's numeric potential. FCS+plasma works really well. The plasmas help your first two flank shots, then hopefully the lock is on the second thing you plasd, and then your comfortably in end game mode. If there's not a lot left, and Ani has initiative advantage, you should be mostly okay at that point. But it's a ton of ifs.

Your dial is garbage. Forget your 'fast', your not. You will get out turned by Firesprays. You will be out actioned by X-wings boosting. Get over it. You just happen to look cool if your allowed to go fast, that's all.

Juke is a trap. You can't guarantee you'll have a token for it. Period. I highly recommend you stop looking at it as a potential. I was stuck on it for about a dozen games and in hindsight I was being a fool. Get rid of it, and use the full dial. No sense limiting your ship to 8 moves to get full benefits, when the two you could reasonably pull off in any given situation won't clear half the time. I've been much more successful with the dial open and no real guess for my opponent as to what I may be up to. Which brings us to...

Full Throttle. Is. A. Trap. You should have it active on one of your two initial engagement rounds and then on the flee moves. Rarely are you going to get it on an attack run after that unless it's way into endgame and the opponent had left you alone with room by virtue of not having much left.

And if your not in position don't Force it. FT on a N-1 is what evade had only every been: a nice extra. You have a lot of other things you need to do to win and scoring a evade token is not that high on the list. Like, for range control on your loop around a far obstacle, 2-hard is still your friend, anything to buy you distance. If your away, you don't need to double down on safety. Just get turned around. Don't try to force a 3+ to get through the scrum stage if you don't have to. Matter of fact, never force one. Go back to grapple blocking and try to just get through it in one piece if you can. On two agility a focus is just about as good if you need it anyway. If you can Regen on your long haul back, maybe you'll do okay if you can keep their fire split. But the work you did over three turns of running will likely get removed the first time you show back up. And there's a good chance you die right after that.

Which brings me to what for now, is my working conclusion as to what this ship is:

It's a 'non-engager'. It's good at running away. It's good when it's holding it's points out of the fight.

@Dreadai and @Magnus Grendel I highly recommend you treat yourself to a game with AdvSen Ani. If you don't start screaming 'now THIS is Podracing' after a few turns, your doing it wrong lol. I swear when you first pull a Barrel roll>boost>T-roll,... these planets sing 😂

@Blail Blerg cost wise? That's a great question. I've obviously had time to think about it, and of course with my particular objectives in mind I'm biased. But for curiosity sake, I'll give it a jab.

Ric: actually probably stays the same. He's seeing strong play so I don't really know what to do with him but leave him. Even if it's not strong in what I'm trying to do.

Padme: In a world of Force users, she's just not that great. Far too many times I'm like HA! Only ONE for you! And they all like k, coo, one then is all I needed, thx by. And if the force users go up and are less ubiquitous, her value increases. So, I don't know. -2? Try her at 43? Honestly no clue here other than down.

Dinee: -2. Sure. She sucks, but at least she's i3, so she has to be more than the basic bravo. If she's supposed to be a parallel to Ric, she needs to be valuable enough to take. So I'll try that.

Anakin: again, still sees occasional use. Leave the same maybe? Really it would depend on what changes happen to the upgrades he wants to take. Whatever combos people are playing at whatever price total, may well determine what I'd price the chassis at. If his usual gear goes up net 2, he should come down that 2.

Handmaid's: this is the interesting one isn't it? First I think you give them the elite slot, then drop them 5 points. 38 knowing you'll equip them with a few things? Sure. Maybe just -4

Bravo's: well... How much are you bumping passive sensors, r2, and APT by? Whatever that is, add 2, and subtract that number from these guys. Floor cost for this model should be 33. I see nothing threatening about 6 of these on a table with no upgrades past 2pts at this time. Obviously I've never tried it though, not even five so far. But small decision I'd drop them like 3 and not blink right now.

2 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Floor cost for this model should be 33. I see nothing threatening about 6 of these on a table with no upgrades past 2pts at this time. Obviously I've never tried it though, not even five so far. But small decision I'd drop them like 3 and not blink right now.

I'm trying to think what equivalent 'sixers' are. But whilst they're very tough they don't jump out as overwhelming without upgrades.

2 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

I highly recommend you treat yourself to a game with AdvSen Ani. If you don't start screaming 'now THIS is Podracing' after a few turns, your doing it wrong lol. I swear when you first pull a Barrel roll>boost>T-roll,... these planets sing

Indeed. Boost/Talon Roll/Look Ma I Still Have The Force is potentially even better, since you can actually hope to achieve something with the banana's popguns after doing it.

8 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

@Dreadai and @Magnus Grendel I highly recommend you treat yourself to a game with AdvSen Ani. If you don't start screaming 'now THIS is Podracing' after a few turns, your doing it wrong lol. I swear when you first pull a Barrel roll>boost>T-roll,... these planets sing 😂

I have to admit that it is on my list of things to do ... I'm more intrigued by BR>BR>Move but both, or either are good!

Or BR>move>BR, then at the start of the next round you BR again before moving. Oh man is there a ton of opportunities to do some crazy stuff.

Anakin must listen to Limp Bizkit. He just keeps rollin', rollin',rollin',rollin',rollin'COME ON! 😆