Balance wise, I would say this: Dreadnought Hunter is a waste. If you position a ship so that it is both in the fore and side arc, you have a base 60% chance of causing a precise shot (inflicting a jam token or disabling a hardpoint), so carefully positioning a ship goes a long way to accomplish the same goal. Meanwhile, Dreadnought Hunter needs to be equipped by an initiative 4 or higher, which implies that in order to be useful, you need to have an ally take down the shields first, so that means sinking even more points in other initiative 4 or higher allies.

So far, with a cost of 10 points, I would rather put a lot more initiative 1 units than sinking points in that upgrade. Balance wise, I think this is the clearest one that could use a change.

4 hours ago, dotswarlock said:

Balance wise, I would say this: Dreadnought Hunter is a waste. If you position a ship so that it is both in the fore and side arc, you have a base 60% chance of causing a precise shot (inflicting a jam token or disabling a hardpoint), so carefully positioning a ship goes a long way to accomplish the same goal. Meanwhile, Dreadnought Hunter needs to be equipped by an initiative 4 or higher, which implies that in order to be useful, you need to have an ally take down the shields first, so that means sinking even more points in other initiative 4 or higher allies.

So far, with a cost of 10 points, I would rather put a lot more initiative 1 units than sinking points in that upgrade. Balance wise, I think this is the clearest one that could use a change.

Yeah, Dreadnought hunter doesn't impress me. Especially at 400pt. maybe at 500 pt its a bit less restrictive.

At 5 points, it would be quite tempting.

5 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

At 5 points, it would be quite tempting.

Sure... at +5 points, you can more easily cripple my 200 point ship simply by shooting at it. (this is exaggeration, don't read it like a legitimate argument)

Gotta be careful with Dreadnought Hunter. Those critical damage and precision hits have shocking impact. We don't want to immediately put those expensive game pieces back on the shelf. I'm not saying 5 points is wrong, but I'd like to see a whole lot more testing done before we start demanding point changes.

I have a hard time with Dreadnought Hunter too. I feel like right now it's best position is when you have planned the game with your friends to know that maybe one side may only have a Huge, and the other side will not. Some kind of planned scenario option kinda thing?

Even then. Pricy.

We had few precision shot effects triggered without Dreadnought Hunter in our two games as of yet, but even those that triggered weren't all that strong.

3 minutes ago, Stefan said:

We had few precision shot effects triggered without Dreadnought Hunter in our two games as of yet, but even those that triggered weren't all that strong.

I had precision shots without Dreadnought trigger vs me, received double jam... I'll miss that reinforce token and target lock.

The effects are random and the level of impact will depend on scenarios. Early in combat against a concentrated effort losing the reinforce is a massive strike. If it's the last shot by the same group, it's trivial.

Points are going to change. How much and what changes, don't know. Dreadnought Hunter has potential to make huge ships very unhappy at a significant discount in cost. I'm concerned about making it too cheap. I don't foresee it becoming a hard counter due to the random nature of the damage deck, but it will be very concerning.

23 hours ago, LagJanson said:

I thought the Instigator title would get me enough re-rolls... It helped, but wasn't enough. I had plenty of ion around but still found a shortage of target locks and rerolls on what I needed to fire at.

I don't know if I did this right, but I took Instigator and Sensor Experts. Locked onto 3 targets at the beginning and got rerolls from the title without spending the locks, since locks are red tokens.

Did I play this wrong?

1 hour ago, Azrapse said:

I don't know if I did this right, but I took Instigator and Sensor Experts. Locked onto 3 targets at the beginning and got rerolls from the title without spending the locks, since locks are red tokens.

Did I play this wrong?

You played it just right. The lock token is red, so Instigator works with it. It's a tasty combo if you can tear yourself away from Corvus' double calculates, and works especially nicely with Point Defense Battery and/or Cluster Missiles.

The Instigator is a nasty piece of work. Fortunately, there are a few ways to counter it. Kagi is the most obvious choice: drag all target locks to you and a few of them are removed in the process because of the sensor expert's limitation of being on different ships. Flying in a wide formation also helps, as does dropping jam tokens (Captain Seevor is practically an auto-include in scum epic). If the Raider has a targeting battery, however, it can reacquire a lock, to the poor ship's demise (usually). Freelance slicer could potentially help protect against (multiple) missile attacks against the same target. Even so, the Raider is a dangerous piece of work.

Nice idea with the Instigator and Sensor Experts. Will build accordingly.

8 hours ago, LagJanson said:

Sure... at +5 points, you can more easily cripple my 200 point ship simply by shooting at it. (this is exaggeration, don't read it like a legitimate argument)

Gotta be careful with Dreadnought Hunter. Those critical damage and precision hits have shocking impact. We don't want to immediately put those expensive game pieces back on the shelf. I'm not saying 5 points is wrong, but I'd like to see a whole lot more testing done before we start demanding point changes.

Yeah... I feel like at 500 points you should have enough escort that it becomes actually more interesting of a game: You SHOULD block their hunter from getting free runs on your ship.

Also, considering what someone else said about if you're in two arcs you have like 60% chance of scoring precision shot anyway.. and it only is useful on a critical, frankly i find both of those restrictions to make it not happen often enough (vs just normal happening) to be worth 10 points.

I'd rather see Epic and this game walk away from "Focus fire is the name of the game" also. That there should be more strategy involved than simply, get every gun on the same targets and range control. While both of these are hard lessons for beginners to learn, they drop considerably in strategy level after intermediate. Armada has this problems: its generally just about timing and getting as many guns and shots (in an activation) on a thing. And blobbing up and focusing fire. Its... an absolute waste of interactivity.

IMO, the place for Dreadnaut Hunter is PS4 Generic Wingmen.

1 hour ago, Rakaydos said:

IMO, the place for Dreadnaut Hunter is PS4 Generic Wingmen.

All but Republic have a ship that fits that.

3 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Yeah... I feel like at 500 points you should have enough escort that it becomes actually more interesting of a game: You SHOULD block their hunter from getting free runs on your ship.

Yeah, I was thinking about this today. Dreadnought Hunter is a good way to keep your opponent honest - are they really going to focus on the biggest, baddest ship in your squad while there are Dreadnought Hunters running amok? The followup question: if you're fielding Dreadnought Hunter just to draw fire away from, for example, your own huge ship, is 10 points too much to pay? I think it's worth testing out this kind of build.

My other problem, however, is that in many scenarios the name of the game is not "destroy all targets." You may have 10 points of Dreadnought Hunter and realize, "Nope, this ship needs to go claim an objective." It will take careful squad building to use it to the fullest.

4 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

I'd rather see Epic and this game walk away from "Focus fire is the name of the game" also. That there should be more strategy involved than simply, get every gun on the same targets and range control. While both of these are hard lessons for beginners to learn, they drop considerably in strategy level after intermediate. Armada has this problems: its generally just about timing and getting as many guns and shots (in an activation) on a thing. And blobbing up and focusing fire. Its... an absolute waste of interactivity.

Amen! I do think the scenarios do a decent job of shaking things up. Actually, I think they do a really good job of it. Granted, it depends on the squad, but when you have ships splitting off to cover different objectives, it gets interesting.

• How many ships do I commit to defending my shuttles versus attacking their shuttles? (Passing Engagement)
• Do I make my whole squad flee to the same board edge, or do I split them up? (All Wings Report In)
• Do I focus down one shuttle at a time, and risk letting some shuttles jump to hyperspace? (Cover the Evacuation)

Yeah, I think they did a good job on objectives this time around.

49 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

Yeah, I was thinking about this today. Dreadnought Hunter is a good way to keep your opponent honest - are they really going to focus on the biggest, baddest ship in your squad while there are Dreadnought Hunters running amok? The followup question: if you're fielding Dreadnought Hunter just to draw fire away from, for example, your own huge ship, is 10 points too much to pay? I think it's worth testing out this kind of build.

My other problem, however, is that in many scenarios the name of the game is not "destroy all targets." You may have 10 points of Dreadnought Hunter and realize, "Nope, this ship needs to go claim an objective." It will take careful squad building to use it to the fullest.

Amen! I do think the scenarios do a decent job of shaking things up. Actually, I think they do a really good job of it. Granted, it depends on the squad, but when you have ships splitting off to cover different objectives, it gets interesting.

• How many ships do I commit to defending my shuttles versus attacking their shuttles? (Passing Engagement)
• Do I make my whole squad flee to the same board edge, or do I split them up? (All Wings Report In)
• Do I focus down one shuttle at a time, and risk letting some shuttles jump to hyperspace? (Cover the Evacuation)

Yeah, I think they did a good job on objectives this time around.

Yeah I haven't played the objectives yet.

We wanted to avoid complications to the already complicated Epic.

My personal issue is more reading, more rules. I wonder if it will feel like making the strategy more complex though.

8 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

My personal issue is more reading, more rules. I wonder if it will feel like making the strategy more complex though.

I think that's necessary. I've done too many death matches, it just feels rote. Eh, I guess that's too harsh. When I get to play a lot, I really enjoy figuring out how to fly better, but there are times when I just can't make it out to the store as often, and I like playing something different from the usual. And these scenarios really scratch that itch.

10 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Yeah I haven't played the objectives yet.

Understand your personal feelings on adding more rules, but... do it. Intel Pickup is great and really spins the whole engagement. The strategy and tactics become much more interesting. Try it with regular ships if you want to reduce the number of new rules, it's worth it.

And really, the scenarios I've played so far (Fortified position, and Passing Engagement) aren't that complicated. I was kind of expecting a full like 20min task in each round to resolve the extra content, and was very pleased to find out that it was like 3. Not to mention the change it applies to time with limits on rounds, and scoring. Game once set up was like 2 hours. And the scoring had less to do with just super efficient build, and more to do with your decisions.

20 hours ago, Parakitor said:

I think that's necessary. I've done too many death matches, it just feels rote. Eh, I guess that's too harsh. When I get to play a lot, I really enjoy figuring out how to fly better, but there are times when I just can't make it out to the store as often, and I like playing something different from the usual. And these scenarios really scratch that itch.

Aces High shows it's not necessary. I'd take that VP system over squad points any day.

Said it before but from my admittedly limited knowledge, Marvel: Crisis Protocol has a really elegant way of dealing with Victory Conditions, and it has nothing to do with squad points whatsoever.

25 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Aces High shows it's not necessary. I'd take that VP system over squad points any day.

Said it before but from my admittedly limited knowledge, Marvel: Crisis Protocol has a really elegant way of dealing with Victory Conditions, and it has nothing to do with squad points whatsoever.

Hang on, what's not necessary? I was getting at was that making the strategy more complex was a good thing so it wasn't "run up and smash their faces in." I think scenarios really elevate the Epic experience.

I don't think it requires uber-complicated scoring or anything. I do like how some scenarios do not care about points destroyed at all, but for other scenarios it's good that you can shoot down some enemies if you feel like you're falling behind in the points race.