Hello all!

Recently I posted one of my many custom ship designs, the CIS Droid Tri-Fighter ( https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/301707-custom-ship-idea-%E2%80%93-cis-droid-tri-fighter/ ). After revising my ideas for probably a hundredth time now, I thought I might share my general concept for my favorite Star Wars ship of all time - the Jedi Actis Interceptor. As is the case with my previous post, please take the design with a grain of salt, since all this theorycrafting was made simply for fun and wasn't tested at all (and I'm sure the result ranges from 'overpowered' to 'insanely overpowered', which would probably need to be taxed by a heavy point cost). Feel free to share your impressions and perhaps your own takes on probably one of the most awaited ships to appear in the game

And yes, I'm well aware we already have plenty of Jedi pilots thanks to the Aethersprite - while I can't wait for Actis to come out soon, it'd be a much better move for FFG to release other ships for the Republic that could fill in roles that aren't present yet (like LAAT gunships or V-Wing interceptors) in order to fill in the gaps before launching another wave of Jedi. But still, why not pass the time until their release with some theorycrafting and predictions? ^^

EDIT : Thank you all for engaging in constructive discussions, I really appreciate the chance to talk some theorycrafting for fun With all the feedback, I decided to come back to the design and give it some extensive redesign (yet again^^), so feel free to take a look and see what you think about the changes (apart from the dial change, any changes will be marked in green so that you will know what was altered in the process Thanks again everyone!

Let's go right into it:

Faction : Galactic Republic

Dial :
Purple Maneuvers : Counts as one difficulty step higher than a red maneuver and is executed with the same rules and effects as a red maneuver, including not being able to execute it when Stressed. Before executing a purple maneuver, if the ship has at least 1 Force and all its Force is active , it may choose to spend 1 Force; if it does, the ship skips its ‘Check Stress’' step for this maneuver. If no Force is spent, the ship is assigned 1 Strain token.

Primary weapon : 3
Agility : 3
Hull : 3
Shields : -

Ship Trait :
- Refined Controls: After you fully execute a maneuver, if all your Force is active, you may perform an Action, treating it as Purple.

Actions :
- Focus
- Target Lock
- Boost
- Barrel Roll
- Evade

Upgrade slots :
- Astromech
- Cannon
- Configuration

Configurations :
- Radiator Panels ( Closed ) : (Dual card - front) +Barrel Roll -> Evade ; +Boost -> Evade ; Before you activate, you may flip this card.
- Radiator Panels ( Open ) : (Dual card - back) +Barrel Roll -> Focus ; +Boost -> Focus ; When defending, the attacker may change one 'Hit' result to 'Critical Hit'; Before you activate, you may flip this card.

Available pilots :
The same as Delta-7 Aethersprite pilots. In addition to these, I got a few ideas for some new ones It's still missing clone pilots, but maybe someday I'll get some ideas on how to implement them here

- Jedi Starfighter Corps Ace : Initiative : 4; Force : 2^; Force slot
- Nahdar Vebb : Initiative : 3; Force : 1^; Force slot; Ability : After you perform a purple action or fully execute a purple maneuver, you may perform a red Focus action.
- Kit Fisto : Initiative : 4; Force : 3^; Force slot; Abilit y: After you roll attack or defense dice, you may spend 1 Force. If you do, you may re-roll a number of dice up to your current Force amount (after spending Force to activate it).
- Adi Gallia : Initiative : 5; Force : 2^; Force slot; Ability : You may perform purple actions when you have no more than 2 Stress tokens.

It's pretty obvious the Actis is an overall improvement over the previous Delta model in terms of sheer mobility - as it was in the fluff - but it's also more fragile - again, as in the fluff. The reworked version focuses on Force management, much like the previous incarnation, although it comes with additional gimmicks. As both purple maneuvers and the trait require having all Force, it's not possible to do them together. Furthermore, while the Refined Controls allows for linking TLs and Focus (or even Target Lock into Barrel Roll into purple Focus, costing 2 Force), this comes at the heavy cost of not being able to do either of the aforementioned options again should you ever spend Force to modify dice (which you would definitely want to on a fragile ship, especially if your S-Foils are open), making the Actis very reliant on precise timing to pull off a devastating shot and not end up exposed afterwards. The configuration is meant to represent Actis' risk-reward S-Foils, where exposing them would afford better heat venting for intense dogfights, while also opening up critical spots that once hit will probably devastate the ship. The access to Cannon slot is meant to reflect Actis' inbuilt ion cannons and might provide some interesting options (HLC bullseye hunt anyone?).

Roles :
- interceptor
- arc dodger
- flanker (with the potential to fire a devastating shot at the cost of exposure)

Strengths :
- Decent mobility and the potential to avoid Stress from purple maneuvers (still shuts down the trait)
- Purple TRolls, while short-range, can be pulled off without Stress, adding some unpredictability to the ship, but must be used with care to not overspend your Force pool.
- You may use Refined Controls to not pay extra for Battle Meditation... if you're willing to pay its huge cost and build your squad around it.
- If you're willing to risk exposure, opening Radiator Panels allows linking TL into Focus or TL into BR into Focus, which may cut down the ship's mobility and trait in return for further engagements
- You get to put Anakin there... nuff said

Weaknesses :
- Interceptor statline (high Agility, low Hull, no Shields) makes them very fragile and reliant on good positioning
- Huge reliance on pinpoint Force management
- No Modification slot means no Shield Upgrade (and no R2 shield recovery) and no Afterburners - I'd say it's fitting given that Actis' was the second smallest ship of its era (beaten slightly by the Tri-Fighter) and I imagine it'd be hard to fit in a Modification there
- Being caught with Radiator Panels open is likely to destroy or at least severely cripple the ship
- May be forced to spend additional Force for attack/defense mods or abilities, which will shut down purple maneuvers and Refined Controls

So there you go, I tried staying as close to the lore while trying to expand upon some previous concepts (I would really love to see Purple maneuvers in practice). It took me a lot of willpower to subdue my inner fanboyism of the ship and it still turned out pretty powerful, but hey, those are just ideas for fun^^. Feel free to share how you feel about it and what you think would need to be changed there to make it more in line with current game standards

And once again - thanks all for the suggestions!

I'm not sure you can even fit that many maneuvers on a dial, and it's overkill anyway. The current record for most maneuvers on a dial is a 3 way tie at 19 maneuvers, and you're proposing a 21 maneuver dial. Pick something to remove, probably the 1 banks or the sloops.

Most of this looks fine, but I'd definitely move away from Fine-Tuned Controls and just leave the linked purple actions. FTC is too abusable, but also should just be left to the Delta7 to distinguish the Eta from the Delta.

The idea of purple maneuvers is interesting, and wouldn't be surprised if we eventually saw them, but it effectively makes a maneuver white which seems problematic. It's essentially, "spend a force to turn around stress free" which is too good on reposition aces with more than 1 force.

I'd like to see Clone trooper pilots for the ship as they used them, but their linked actions would be red. Also, as Jedi stripped the ships of their systems, the trooper version could have a sensor slot while the Jedi one does not.

57 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

I'm not sure you can even fit that many maneuvers on a dial, and it's overkill anyway. The current record for most maneuvers on a dial is a 3 way tie at 19 maneuvers, and you're proposing a 21 maneuver dial. Pick something to remove, probably the 1 banks or the sloops.

That's a fair point, I honestly didn't count the amount of moves, so thank you for pointing this out. I was a bit uneasy about so many options myself, but since it's a custom, I thought I might as well try to push the boundary to distinguish it from others Then again, for an actual gameplay (let alone the competitive type) it might be a nightmare to try to outrun it, so appreciate your insight

35 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

Most of this looks fine, but I'd definitely move away from Fine-Tuned Controls and just leave the linked purple actions. FTC is too abusable, but also should just be left to the Delta7 to distinguish the Eta from the Delta.

The idea of purple maneuvers is interesting, and wouldn't be surprised if we eventually saw them, but it effectively makes a maneuver white which seems problematic. It's essentially, "spend a force to turn around stress free" which is too good on reposition aces with more than 1 force.

I'd like to see Clone trooper pilots for the ship as they used them, but their linked actions would be red. Also, as Jedi stripped the ships of their systems, the trooper version could have a sensor slot while the Jedi one does not.

I agree with you on FTC being very strong and that eta could use something else. I was just playing with the idea of FTC together with a purple maneuver and linked purples in order to have a very Force-dependent ship, one that might sink in a lot of points to pull off something crazy, but be starved later. I do agree that it's a very strong combination though, and stress-free turns might be very risky and abusable, so I guess this design would require extensive rework (again! ) and balancing.

Off the top of my head, I think it would make some sense to swap purple TRolls for purple 3 Turns, reducing its reach a bit. I already found deltas without hard 3s incredibly mobile, so this thing could kick in the extra speed for a rapid disengage/closing the gap at the cost of Force.

About clone trooper pilots, to be perfectly frank I didn't even consider them 😮 I mean, I heard of etas being used by clones, but never thought of putting them into the game like that and to be honest, now I'd love to see your idea come true, nice one

3 hours ago, TedW said:

(The same as Delta-7 Aethersprite pilots)

How dare you insinuate that we won’t be getting Kit Fisto and probably some others who are more notable as pilots but not the Best Aquatic Species in Star Wars.

9 minutes ago, SpiderMana said:

How dare you insinuate that we won’t be getting Kit Fisto and probably some others who are more notable as pilots but not the Best Aquatic Species in Star Wars.

Frankly? I don't, or rather didn't mean to I just didn't have any other ideas for them, maybe apart some PS4 generic with 2 Force, the Jedi had their Starfighter Corps at all. And in all fairness, I am looking forward to getting more variety of Jedi pilots as well

Just now, TedW said:

Frankly? I don't, or rather didn't mean to I just didn't have any other ideas for them, maybe apart some PS4 generic with 2 Force, the Jedi had their Starfighter Corps at all. And in all fairness, I am looking forward to getting more variety of Jedi pilots as well

You are forgiven, this time

Purple maneuvers are a weird design space. At first glance it's an obvious extension of purple actions, but the more I think about it the less purple maneuvers actually sound good to me. Starting with the increase/decrease difficulty abilities, if purple maneuvers were in the game then any ship with a red hard turn would effectively lose that maneuver when it gets a Damaged Engine critical unless they happen to have force (from crew or pilot) in which case that maneuver becomes somewhat more flexible since there's no limitation on the following maneuver. With actions I don't really like that the purple actions are "more difficult" than red and yet have less consequence, and with maneuvers, which are really the soul of this game, it feels even worse. Personally I would like purple to be in the between red & white for ships that have a force pool and skip purple for those without a force pool.

To further muddy the comparison is that there is no obvious way to make "blue actions" work. Just because some of the same colors are used with similar effects doesn't mean it makes sense to apply the same spectrum of color adjustments to both mechanics.

With that criticism of purple maneuvers as a hypothetical mechanic out of the way, here's my suggestion of a mechanic that could be used instead. How about if the ship ability allowed you to spend a force instead of receiving a stress from red maneuvers? That might be too good, so maybe spend a force and get a strain instead of stress? Or maybe make it dial wide like after a maneuver you may gain one strain to remove one stress? Those are some ideas anyways...

This gives a "purple maneuver" type mechanic without bringing that complication to the game at large. If you were to implement that though I would suggest making some of the basic maneuvers red, probably the hard 3 turns and soft 1 Banks.

3 ship abilities that play off the "purple maneuver" idea. Placeholder names of course:

Force control: when you execute a red maneuver you may spend one [force] instead of gaining a stress token. (This is very powerful as it allows you to reactively decide which is more advantageous after the fact)

Force brace: when you execute a red maneuver you may spend one [force] to gain a strain token instead of a stress token. (A little less powerful since you'll be more vulnerable if you can't fully arc dodge, and you'll still need a blue maneuver to clear the strain, but you might just try to fly perfect and keep getting strain and action!)

Advanced Dampeners: when you execute a red maneuver you may gain a strain token instead of a stress token. (Alternate idea in case strain is stronger than I think it is)

And one more idea that's on a different track, this would be a reactive ability that allows you to "bail out" of a bad red move:

Force guided controls: after revealing a red advanced maneuver you may spend [force charge] to perform a white basic maneuver using the same template and direction instead.

15 hours ago, SpiderMana said:

You are forgiven, this time

Phew, dodged a bullet there

I've browsed my customs for Jedi starfighters (they are dating back to the first edition actually^^) and the only two I found that weren't released yet were Kit Fisto and Adi Gallia. Apart from these two (and maybe Fisto's Mon Calamari padawan, I don't remember the name), who do you think should be included in the game?

8 hours ago, nitrobenz said:

Purple maneuvers are a weird design space. At first glance it's an obvious extension of purple actions, but the more I think about it the less purple maneuvers actually sound good to me. Starting with the increase/decrease difficulty abilities, if purple maneuvers were in the game then any ship with a red hard turn would effectively lose that maneuver when it gets a Damaged Engine critical unless they happen to have force (from crew or pilot) in which case that maneuver becomes somewhat more flexible since there's no limitation on the following maneuver. With actions I don't really like that the purple actions are "more difficult" than red and yet have less consequence, and with maneuvers, which are really the soul of this game, it feels even worse. Personally I would like purple to be in the between red & white for ships that have a force pool and skip purple for those without a force pool.

To further muddy the comparison is that there is no obvious way to make "blue actions" work. Just because some of the same colors are used with similar effects doesn't mean it makes sense to apply the same spectrum of color adjustments to both mechanics.

Thank you for the detailed analysis, I really appreciate it While I personally like the idea of purple actions and maneuvers, from a gameplay standpoint I do actually agree they might conflict with the game's main idea of action economy and pushing limits without long-term cost, hence why I feel your suggestions are very reasonable

7 hours ago, nitrobenz said:

With that criticism of purple maneuvers as a hypothetical mechanic out of the way, here's my suggestion of a mechanic that could be used instead. How about if the ship ability allowed you to spend a force instead of receiving a stress from red maneuvers? That might be too good, so maybe spend a force and get a strain instead of stress? Or maybe make it dial wide like after a maneuver you may gain one strain to remove one stress? Those are some ideas anyways...

This gives a "purple maneuver" type mechanic without bringing that complication to the game at large. If you were to implement that though I would suggest making some of the basic maneuvers red, probably the hard 3 turns and soft 1 Banks.

3 ship abilities that play off the "purple maneuver" idea. Placeholder names of course:

Force control: when you execute a red maneuver you may spend one [force] instead of gaining a stress token. (This is very powerful as it allows you to reactively decide which is more advantageous after the fact)

Force brace: when you execute a red maneuver you may spend one [force] to gain a strain token instead of a stress token. (A little less powerful since you'll be more vulnerable if you can't fully arc dodge, and you'll still need a blue maneuver to clear the strain, but you might just try to fly perfect and keep getting strain and action!)

Advanced Dampeners: when you execute a red maneuver you may gain a strain token instead of a stress token. (Alternate idea in case strain is stronger than I think it is)

And one more idea that's on a different track, this would be a reactive ability that allows you to "bail out" of a bad red move:

Force guided controls: after revealing a red advanced maneuver you may spend [force charge] to perform a white basic maneuver using the same template and direction instead.

I did feel that purple maneuvers as I presented them might be overpowered, but I didn't really have an idea to solve the issue. I do feel that they have potential though, so if the devs feel like introducing it in the game, I really hope they do it in a much smarter way than what I presented

If i were to choose from these, I'd go with the Force brace thing as a baseline for all purple maneuvers - spending Force and gaining a Strain token seems like a fair thing. Even though most aces are likely to dodge most threats, it does paint a death mark on them if they slip (especially with Radiator Panels open), and they still need a blue move to clear it. I also like how it mitigates the issue you mentioned before (Damaged Engine and similar effects locking out maneuvers for non-Force-user ships) just by adding an extra option for Force pilots, with drawbacks on its own.

Alternately, if a purple maneuver is to stay with the 'pay Force and not be stressed to bypass stress', there could be an underlying limitation that no dial would have advanced maneuvers as purple (like, in the case of Actis, make Hard 3 Turn purple and remove TRolls). I feel it might be a fair trade-off, but then again, would leave Damaged Engine one of the most dangerous critical hits as a result.

20 hours ago, nitrobenz said:

Force control: when you execute a red maneuver you may spend one [force] instead of gaining a stress token. (This is very powerful as it allows you to reactively decide which is more advantageous after the fact)

Force brace: when you execute a red maneuver you may spend one [force] to gain a strain token instead of a stress token. (A little less powerful since you'll be more vulnerable if you can't fully arc dodge, and you'll still need a blue maneuver to clear the strain, but you might just try to fly perfect and keep getting strain and action!)

Advanced Dampeners: when you execute a red maneuver you may gain a strain token instead of a stress token. (Alternate idea in case strain is stronger than I think it is)

Until you change these to "fully execute" I'm not signing off on any off these.

4 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Until you change these to "fully execute" I'm not signing off on any off these.

I thought post wave 5 no longer required full maneuvers 😜

Seriously though, its a valid suggestion that merits examination. However, I intentionally worded these to allow partial maneuvers to make it more like a "natural purple" and since an incomplete red maneuver is still a red maneuver I wanted these to still be "purple" if they're incomplete.

Another suggestion is that the abilities could be triggered on reveal, instead of during/after, to take away some of the reactiveness of it without shutting it off by blocking.

Major update! Huge thanks to everyone providing feedback in this discussion, greatly appreciated If you're interested, feel free to take a look at the newly revamped version, hopefully it's more balanced than the previous incarnation

Nice revisions, I like the update!

12 hours ago, nitrobenz said:

Nice revisions, I like the update!

Thanks! And thank you for contributing, the discussion is what made this rework possible

I just hope the Eta- 2 get microthrusters like the Starviper.

On 11/4/2019 at 4:16 PM, Cerebrawl said:

I'm not sure you can even fit that many maneuvers on a dial, and it's overkill anyway. The current record for most maneuvers on a dial is a 3 way tie at 19 maneuvers, and you're proposing a 21 maneuver dial. Pick something to remove, probably the 1 banks or the sloops.

A minor correction, which I accidentally found out about while browsing a squad builder app - it seems the record is not at 19 but 20, that being E-Wing. And no, it's not to prove any point in regards to the custom (which was reworked anyway), I just thought I might share the accidental discovery as a fun fact