If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, its going to live its life thinking its a failure.

If you judge the SSD by its ability to defeat A) the starhawk, a ship designed specifically to counter rogue SSDs or B) a entire fleet by itself when the full power Executor was taken down by a equivelant force to most 400pt fleets, then i think your barking up the wrong tree.

As with every quite literally every other ship, fleet, upgrade, etc in armada, there are situations it is great in and situations it is screwed.

For example a bomber list. I would rate the SSD highly here as it can take the gear to punish fighters and wipe out the ships.

Against lots of capital ships? If its by itself its going to have to take all the shots, which unlike the fighters will be boosted by upgrades such as x17s, critical effects, etc.

Theres always going to be the unfavourable matchups, unfortunately armada is in the position where these unfavourable situations for the SSD are commonplace to deal with other high hull, high shield beast ships (ISD, super pickle, mc75, etc)

And i feel like ive rambled without getting to the point sorry lol

My point? The SSD is actually quite well balanced, but the competitive meta is currently at a point where taking down large ships is easy enough if they are the largest point sink/threat. And guess what the SSD currently is.

15 hours ago, LordCola said:

My problem with the SSD is not that it is to strong or to weak but that there seems to be only exactly one single list that works with it.

There is a Romodi SSD / Onager list I build. The SSD is the command version with essential upgrades. Has to be testet though.

5 Activations. Lira as some sort of cheap DCO. You can change Romodi with JJ or Piett if you tweak some upgrades.

SSD Onager (0/399/400)
=======================
Command Prototype (220 + 20: 240)
+ Agent Kallus (3)
+ Lira Wessex (2)
+ Reeva Demesne (4)
+ Leading Shots (4)
+ Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
Onager-class Testbed (96 + 38: 134)
+ General Romodi (20)
+ Strategic Adviser (4)
+ Veteran Gunners (5)
+ Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
+ Rakehell (4)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2: 25)
+ Comms Net (2)
Planetary Ion Cannon
Solar Corona
Advanced Gunnery

1 hour ago, spike2109 said:

5 Activations. Lira as some sort of cheap DCO. You can change Romodi with JJ or Piett if you tweak some upgrades.

SSD Onager (0/399/400)
=======================
Command Prototype (220 + 20: 240)
+ Agent Kallus (3)
+ Lira Wessex (2)
+ Reeva Demesne (4)
+ Leading Shots (4)
+ Linked Turbolaser Towers (7)
Onager-class Testbed (96 + 38: 134)
+ General Romodi (20)
+ Strategic Adviser (4)
+ Veteran Gunners (5)
+ Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
+ Rakehell (4)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2: 25)
+ Comms Net (2)
Planetary Ion Cannon
Solar Corona
Advanced Gunnery

At least have Vader on the Goz. You have a point left.

I've played a few games with this type of 5-activation list. It is not horrible, but I retired it after meeting too many Onagers with Quad Turbos. It also gets eaten by squads.

Main issue with the list above: SSD cannot turn unless you have all Navs. No Piett, no Jerjer, no Take Evasive.

This is the Romodi version, before it got retired. It's a fun build I'll take out again later.

It doesn't have enough dice fixing (only Vader to kill SAdv and/or Romodi) on the Onager, but points are very tight.

If you switch to Jerjer you can drop TEA! and turn Def Liaison to SFO. Then you have 5 points, enough for Vet Gunners or Ord Experts, both good. Or QBT on SSD if you like those. Kallus is hit-or-miss, but can always be food for Vader. Needa can save a lot of damage while you close, then be fed to Vader (always a feel good moment). But it's possible to experiment with other officer combos.

It also lacks the upgraded assault SSD's ability to deal with squads. But not enough points...

Name: Romodi Super Onager Goz
Faction: Imperial
Commander: General Romodi

Assault: Suprise Attack
Defense: Contested Outpost
Navigation: Solar Corona

SSD Command Prototype (220)
• Agent Kallus (3)
• Captain Needa (2)
• Defense Liaison (3)
• Take Evasive Action! (6)
• Gunnery Team (7)
• Leading Shots (4)
• Ravager (4)
= 249 Points

Onager Testbed (96)
• General Romodi (20)
• Strategic Adviser (4)
• Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
= 125 Points

Gozanti Cruisers (23)
• Darth Vader (1)
• Comms Net (2)
= 26 Points

Squadrons:
= 0 Points

Total Points: 400

24 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Main issue with the list above: SSD cannot turn unless you have all Navs. No Piett, no Jerjer, no Take Evasive.

Yeah it's not perfect and can be tweaked for sure. New ships, new opportunities. With SSD / ISD you often have the problem with navigation if you deploy together. The Onager can stay behind the SSD and just shoot, Rakehell is a good choice for that.

8 hours ago, DrakonLord said:

My point? The SSD is actually quite well balanced, but the competitive meta is currently at a point where taking down large ships is easy enough if they are the largest point sink/threat. And guess what the SSD currently is.

And that’s why it seems weak.

20 hours ago, geek19 said:

Try out Executor or a command or Tagge or whatever.

I feel like you're talking about me now... Like, on all three points...

On 1/23/2020 at 11:12 PM, DrakonLord said:

If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, its going to live its life thinking its a failure.

Wait...so fish aren't failures, even though they can't climb trees?

38 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Wait...so fish aren't failures, even though they can't climb trees?

I’m not willing to bet that there isn’t a fish that climbs trees. I AM willing to bet that - if it exists - it lives in Australia.

On 1/23/2020 at 10:12 PM, DrakonLord said:

My point? The SSD is actually quite well balanced, but the competitive meta is currently at a point where taking down large ships is easy enough if they are the largest point sink/threat. And guess what the SSD currently is.

Except that the SSD is over performing in the current Primes season. Specifically JJ commanding the SSD is the best performing ship. So this isn’t true.

What I need to wait and see is if/how the Starhawk and Onager change that.

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

I’m not willing to bet that there isn’t a fish that climbs trees. I AM willing to bet that - if it exists - it lives in Australia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_gourami

It’s the Closest you’ll get.

But it’s in SouthEast Asia, which isn’t quite Australia, abd the majority are Africa which is totally not Australia 😀

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

I’m not willing to bet that there isn’t a fish that climbs trees. I AM willing to bet that - if it exists - it lives in Australia.

If such a fish lived in Australia, it would also be poisonous, venomous, have infrared vision, be able to jump at its target out of some sort of camouflage and be predatory to humans that unsuspectingly walk into its lair.

2 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_gourami

It’s the Closest you’ll get.

But it’s in SouthEast Asia, which isn’t quite Australia, abd the majority are Africa which is totally not Australia 😀

On 1/24/2020 at 11:41 AM, Cpt ObVus said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if a year from now, we don’t see them at all, because the StarHawk has sent them packing...

once again hoping I’m wrong here.

More likely it will force new builds. I think Old Palp commander w IO might have a place to shine in countering salvo tokens

Maaaaybe... I dunno. He’s awfully expensive, and he doesn’t help you turn the bloody thing. Besides, I feel like he’s more suited to a list with multiple attackers, which puts more pressure on defense tokens in general.