Hello all!

I’ve been an avid casual player of the X-wing game for a few years now and I love to experiment with custom ship ideas, no matter how crazy they might seem. Over time I’ve amassed an extensive collection of custom stuff. With the recent release of Nantex, which is probably the craziest ship to have ever graced the game mats yet, I thought I might finally share my equally crazy idea for a CIS interceptor, the Droid Tri-Fighter .

Please note: As it is untested theorycrafting, I’m not putting point suggestions here, since without extensive playtesting it’s likely to be very different in practice than it is on paper. It is also just an idea for how I think the ship would function and the focus is on making it as unique and creative as possible (while staying true to the lore of course), so don’t be too harsh in terms of actual balancing, since that’s not the primary goal here – rule of fun applies

Anyways, here it goes:

Faction : Separatist Alliance

Dial : attached as image at the bottom of the page

Primary weapon : 3 (Bullseye only)
Agility : 3
Hull : 3
Shields : -

Ship Trait :
- Gyroscopic Core : When you perform a Barrel Roll action, you must perform it using a ‘Turn’ template.

Actions :
- Calculate
- Target Lock
- Boost → Red Calculate
- Barrel Roll → Red Calculate
- Evade

Upgrade slots :
- Cannon
- Missile

Configurations :
- Networked Calculations : Gain the ‘Networked Calculations’ ability.
- Independent Programming : When you engage, if there is an enemy ship inside your ‘Bullseye’ arc, you may choose to replace one of your Calculate tokens with a Focus token.

Available pilots :
- Separatist Drone : Initiative 3
- Disruption Drone ** : Initiative 3; Ability When an enemy ship inside your ‘Bullseye’ arc defends or performs an attack, its dice cannot be modified.
- Hunter Killer ** : Initiative 4; Ability: After performing a Boost or Barrel Roll action, if there is an enemy ship inside your ‘Bullseye’ arc, you may choose to gain 1 Strain token to acquire a lock on one ship inside your ‘Bullseye’ arc.

The overall design is based on the fact that Tri-Fighters were known for being very fast, highly maneuverable and notoriously hard to shake off, to the point of causing trouble to Force-sensitive pilots. Since Tri-Fighters were small but agile and had no shields, the typical 3/3/3/0 statline seems appropriate. While ‘Cannon’ slot might be too much (even though they sported a lot of cannons), ‘Missile’ seems appropriate for their in-universe loadout. Restricting the primary weapon to Bullseye comes in line with the dial and the trait, making these fighters very maneuverable in close range but coming at the price of having to line up a perfect shot in order to successfully hunt their targets.

Roles :
- interceptor
- seek-and-destroy approach, persistently sticking to high-value targets

Strengths :
- Great maneuverability at very short ranges due to white Tallon Rolls and Boosts/Hard Barrel Rolls, giving them plenty of repositioning options to catch someone in Bullseye
- Linked Calculate gives them some survivability and firepower
- Very few options of acquiring Stress, and the Stress they acquire can be ditched at short ranges, making sure they stick to their targets once they get in position

Weaknesses :
- Interceptor statline (high Agility, low Hull, no Shields) makes them very fragile and reliant on good positioning
- Bullseye-only weapon might restrict their mobility and may require sacrificing arc-dodging in order to catch someone in the firing arc
- Initiative 5+ Pilots will likely be very hard to catch (maybe an extra Primary weapon with 2 attack and standard 90 degree arc would make it more even?)
- No hard 3 Turns and no longer-range Reverses restrict their higher-speed chasing and breaking off potential
- Hard Turn Barrel Rolls have much smaller reposition area than Starviper Banks, meaning they won’t be as good at arc-dodging, their purpose being mainly focused on the offensive side

I know, it looks crazy, and I’m sure if this Tri-Fighter was to ever fly in practice, it would require extensive tweaking and balancing. But hey, as I mentioned before, I’m just a casual player with little meta-play knowledge, and the goal here was to make a ship that hopefully brings something fresh to the table and is fun to play. Let me know your thoughts on the design and how you feel about it, and whether you’d like me to post some more crazy customs

Cheers!

@TedW , you're one of many posts on here for the Tri-fighter.

A lot of people are excited to see how the design shakes out.

I like your use-turn-for-B.roll.

But if it's gonna be that crazy I'd just remove the boost action and tallon rolls from the dial entirely.

3 red bullseye with optional ordinance seems fair.

Thanks for sharing!

5 minutes ago, Bucknife said:

@TedW , you're one of many posts on here for the Tri-fighter.

A lot of people are excited to see how the design shakes out.

I like your use-turn-for-B.roll.

But if it's gonna be that crazy I'd just remove the boost action and tallon rolls from the dial entirely.

3 red bullseye with optional ordinance seems fair.

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! I'm new to the forums, so it'll take a while for me to adjust to how things go here

I'm a big fan of how the devs decided to take on the separatists faction, seeing how they do justice to the material while getting very creative on the design. It is a nice shake up of things in the game, and it gives the faction a unique flair and identity. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to see what we get when the official tri-fighters come out

Cheers!

Doesn't seem too powerful or lacking to me, at first blush. Fun stuff.

If it's going to be restricted to only a bullseye it should be able to barrel roll with a straight, a bank or a turn.

Lining up bullseyes can be quite difficult at any small base beyond range 1.

Otherwise the ship needs to be dirt cheap to warrant taking it in a list

At least the nantex has a rotatable arc and a way to move ships into its bullseye

7 minutes ago, executor said:

If it's going to be restricted to only a bullseye it should be able to barrel roll with a straight, a bank or a turn.

Lining up bullseyes can be quite difficult at any small base beyond range 1.

Otherwise the ship needs to be dirt cheap to warrant taking it in a list

At least the nantex has a rotatable arc and a way to move ships into its bullseye

Thank you, those are very fair points.

I tried to make the tri-fighter excel in short-range combat, hence the quite good 1-2 Speed moves along with white Tallon rolls and adjusted Barrel Roll., so Range 1 is where this guy would want to be most of the time. I think if it were to help, adding a second primary weapon of Attack 2 and standard firing arc could mitigate the issue while still rewarding Bullseye lineup.

And about them being dirt-cheap, that was also the point there, since CIS ships were known for flying in large swarms of cheap drones, so I feel this would align quite well with the overall theme of the faction. Not to mention the very necessity of being in Range 1 is quite dangerous for an interceptor that lacks high-speed maneuverability, so I feel a relatively low cost would be appropriate

Thanks for the feedback!

Hey this is really neat! I've done a couple homebrews myself, including the the tri-fighter. I like how you managed to work the whole gyroscopic core thing into the design, I couldn't figure out how to do that in my own version.

Also, what did you use to make the maneuvers? I've always preferred that format over the circular dial.

I have no idea how it would play out either, but I like your design.

17 hours ago, Prosk_019 said:

Hey this is really neat! I've done a couple homebrews myself, including the the tri-fighter. I like how you managed to work the whole gyroscopic core thing into the design, I couldn't figure out how to do that in my own version.

Also, what did you use to make the maneuvers? I've always preferred that format over the circular dial.

Thanks I'm curious how the gyroscopic core will turn out in the official version, since it's too big of a ship gimmick to omit, and judging from how they exaggerated Nantex' tractor ability, I'm looking forward to ffg releasing something creative^^

And about the maneuvers, it's the simple good ol' microsoft paint (sophisticated, I know ). The dials were taken from xwing 1st edition wiki, and then parts of them just moved around and copypasted to get the intended result

On 10/30/2019 at 5:16 PM, executor said:

If it's going to be restricted to only a bullseye it should be able to barrel roll with a straight, a bank or a turn.

Lining up bullseyes can be quite difficult at any small base beyond range 1.

Otherwise the ship needs to be dirt cheap to warrant taking it in a list

At least the nantex has a rotatable arc and a way to move ships into its bullseye

With cannon and missile slots it's not that reliant on bullseyes. Toss an ion cannon on the squirrely little thing and it can be a threat anywhere in its front arc.

Sidenote: white barrel roll plus turn boost gives it silly mobility, combine the two and you can basically go "I turn 90° on the spot" or "two k-turn left". Thought vipers and "echo" were unpredictable? These things would be unpredictability itself.

On 10/31/2019 at 6:41 PM, Cerebrawl said:

With cannon and missile slots it's not that reliant on bullseyes. Toss an ion cannon on the squirrely little thing and it can be a threat anywhere in its front arc.

Sidenote: white barrel roll plus turn boost gives it silly mobility, combine the two and you can basically go "I turn 90° on the spot" or "two k-turn left". Thought vipers and "echo" were unpredictable? These things would be unpredictability itself.

As crazy as it may sound, that unpredictability was kinda the goal here. While I kept using hard turns on barrel rolls only and not boosts, I do think that this mobility would effectively be limited to pretty short ranges (TRoll having Speed 1 and the fastest turn being Speed 2) Both the hard turn barrel roll and a Speed 1 TRoll, while offering great room for adjusting your arc, they also do not move the ship as far as a bank 1 or SLoop 3 would for starvipers. As a result, I imagine these things would excel at staying in a relatively small area and navigating around it quite easily, while anything beyond Range 1 (especially ordnance or just well thought-out arc focusing) would be a big threat for them.

Then again, this is just an untested concept, so in reality they would likely turn out much differently than in theory, so I do understand your worries about that Let's hope ffg releases the official version properly tested

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but this ship can 0k every turn, the maneuverability's too good

23 minutes ago, Nyxen said:

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but this ship can 0k every turn, the maneuverability's too good

Sooooo... Kind of like the U-wing?

3 hours ago, executor said:

Sooooo... Kind of like the U-wing?

Last time I checked, you paid a few points and took a stress to do it twice in a row on a uwing. This 1 hard+barrel roll puts it back where it started rotated 180 stress free.

24 minutes ago, Nyxen said:

Last time I checked, you paid a few points and took a stress to do it twice in a row on a uwing. This 1 hard+barrel roll puts it back where it started rotated 180 stress free.

3 front arc, 2 agility, 8 hp, never changes its physical location during the park and rotate so cannot be blocked from doing so and can be done while on asteroids or gas clouds (U-Wing) vs 3 bullseye, 3 agility, 3hp, needs to make sure it has room to perform the maneuver + action combo so can be blocked and is susceptible to obstacles (this concept of the Tri-fighter). I think you're simplifying things a little too much. Especially with the slot limitations on this concept.