Hello there,

I am new on this forum.

I made some custom title cards for large base ships in order to keep these ships a viable alternative to onagers and starhawks.

I tried to give them sinergy with already existing upgrades by creating redundant cumulative effects.

Unfortunately, I have nobody to play the game with at the moment for testing. I need some feedback. What are you thinking about theses ?

Overpowered ? Useless ? Too cheap ? Bad illustrations ?

Also, sorry, for my poor English practice. I am not a native English speaker 🙂 .

https://imgur.com/v3DLqPh

Sublime Extermination is overpowered. The ability will singlehandedly win games against anything bigger than a CR90 without DCO, and can’t be priced accordingly. It could be made a discard like Sunder but I’d sooner see the opponent choose the token, like NK-7s with more colors and less opportunity cost.

Predator : MSU really doesn’t need another kick between the legs, even though the theme is awesome.

Imperial Grin and Stormhawk : TIE Interceptors with 7 dice = no bueno. But if the buff were limited to squads that don’t get played (Cloak/Escort only!) I could see liking this.

Rolling Thunder : At first glance it looks fun and opens up new options.

Silent Water : A little too specific in requirements for my taste (Adar only), and can be used as written during the same attack that token was spent. Not necessarily OP though.

Righteous Wrath : Are those evades? That’s interesting and cool.

Ark : Ten Numb and Norra don’t need 4 dice. Neither does Dutch, and Wedge doesn’t need 7 to clean up after him (and then Adar + Yavaris for 2x6 dice again...)

Very Fortunate Phoenix : Kind of a Mon Karren level of strong. I’d be worried if the Lib had more redirects and could take EST and Derlin, but it should be okay. Agate would sure love it though.

Dismemberer, Obliterator, Death’s Head, Berzerker, ZoT, Sol Invictus, and Talion’s Law : My issue with each of these is how they’re low-opportunity cost stat buffs. Right now, to get a guaranteed double hit on an ISD you need to sacrifice the officer slot, the turbolaser and effectively a defense token. To get a worse version of Obliterator requires the ion slot. ZoT doesn’t even rule out Spinal Armament and can be taken on a Cymoon to 1-shot tons of ships or kill them at range for moving slowly. By not having the opportunity cost, all ISDs effectively just do more damage, which is bad for balance. And it is all ISDs, because there’s no good incentive not to take one of these titles no matter the build or fleet. (Or for LMC80s, Talion’s Law + Local Fire Control + Agate. Get shot, spend everything and salvo attack them, then hit with up to 12 dice, then 7 more if you double-arced.)

I would use the question “is a title-less ship still reasonable?” as a partial test to judge whether a title is well-balanced.

I look forward to seeing how you choose to proceed, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for feedback !

I agree Sublime extermination might be a little too much. Changing it to be like NK-7 could be a solution, but I don't know how to price it. 13 ? 10 ?

Predator : As you already guessed, I hate msu lists that play the activation game too much .

Imperial grin and Stormhawk : originaly I limited the buff to non-uniques, but changed it at the last moment. This limitation could be returning if necessary. The goal was to make basic cheap non-ace squadrons a thing. I don't like the idea of all the all-aces lists I see everywhere.

Silent water : yes, this has to be that specific ; because I made this ship according to old "legend" fluff where Adar Tallon was the captain of this cruiser. And yes making it possible to use the salvo during the same attack the token was spent was done on purpose.

Righteous wrath : after you deploy you must replace 2 redirect tokens by 2 salvos tokens . No evade are involved here. You loose a lot of survivability in exchange for the ability to retaliate hard. This could be a thing with agate adding a brace token or something.

Ark : As for similar imperial tittles, the non-unique limitation might come back.

Other stuff : adjustments have to be made, for sure. If prices are too low they could be made higher. Also keep in mind, some of the titles do have requirements. For exemple, berzerker and dismemberer guaranteed double hits are conditional. A, lot of these titles were designed with the idea of defeating starhawks and onager lists. Sometimes you need something Overpowered to defeat something overpowered.

Anyway, thanks for feedback, again, I will reword things as more players react to these custom titles.

@Duellist12 , welcome to the forums!

Titles updated.

Most overpowered things reworked.

Modification trait for ships that add dices in order to prevent too much abuses.

Squadron buffs limited to non unique.

Cost revised.

Obliteration is a worse version of Ion Cannon Battery. The 5pt upgrade.

@ginkapo

It does not require the "no command token" condition, though.

If it's took weak, I will made a stronger version.

4 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

Obliteration is a worse version of HIE. The 9pt upgrade.

Ftfy

What if instead of sapping shields, it did 1 damage to the targeted hull zone? Seems like a minor buff, but it might give it a use case.

Obliterator : I removed the ion slot requirement. For 8 points, still a somewhat worse version of Ion Canon battery , but at least you can use the ion slot for something else.

I also lowered the cost of sublime extermination and changed the blue crit requirement to red. This opens door to a fire control team +NK-7 combo. But wouldn't that be too strong in conjonction with intel officer ? 29 point and 4 slots combo is not cheap, though.

At 9 points, berzerker is still strong, but you can play around his abilities by not firing at him and just targeting other things. This way it can not retaliate. I have seen this tactic used against salvo ships lately.

My biggest concern is talion's law, with 12 points, is it at the same level as devastator or stronger ?

1 hour ago, Duellist12 said:

Obliterator : I removed the ion slot requirement. For 8 points, still a somewhat worse version of Ion Canon battery , but at least you can use the ion slot for something else.

I also lowered the cost of sublime extermination and changed the blue crit requirement to red. This opens door to a fire control team +NK-7 combo. But wouldn't that be too strong in conjonction with intel officer ? 29 point and 4 slots combo is not cheap, though.

At 9 points, berzerker is still strong, but you can play around his abilities by not firing at him and just targeting other things. This way it can not retaliate. I have seen this tactic used against salvo ships lately.

My biggest concern is talion's law, with 12 points, is it at the same level as devastator or stronger ?

I felt Talion's Law was far stronger than Devastator, because Devastator requires discarded defence tokens (and max 2, so roughly 6 pts per extra blue dice) whereas Talion's Law requires only exhausted (spent) tokens. But since nobody uses Devastator (at least nobody I've ever seen) it's OK.

I do love it when people create upgrades like these, as these are the type of positive discussion threads that we need more of on the forums, so thanks @Duellist12 . Personally, I would like to see every ship to get to three titles before we get even more ISD titles. And ships with one title (Interdictor and Pelta) definitely need some love in the title department. Not my idea, but I would love to see a great Interdictor title that states Combat Retrofit Only .

Here's a second wave of custom titles :

And continue to provide me feedback, please. I can't test it, so I need to know what are your ideas.

I think the cards are quite nice, but the names are terrible

I mainly think you need to work on wording stuff to be more clear and in line with the FFG style. Not a fan of the names either. The concepts of Goliath's Demise, Point Blank, Raptor, and Frenzied Retaliation are decent but could use a little points adjustment here or there. Point Blank is probably the best in terms of balance. Most of the Interdictor titles are kinda ridiculous. All the squadron ones are too wordy and trying to do too much for the most part too with the exception of Double Trouble and Ultima Ratio.

Sum of all fears doesn’t sound very Rebel like. Why give squads rogue if they can’t move.

On 4/12/2020 at 8:54 PM, Admiral Calkins said:

I do love it when people create upgrades like these, as these are the type of positive discussion threads that we need more of on the forums, so thanks @Duellist12 . Personally, I would like to see every ship to get to three titles before we get even more ISD titles. And ships with one title (Interdictor and Pelta) definitely need some love in the title department. Not my idea, but I would love to see a great Interdictor title that states Combat Retrofit Only .

Pelta:

[Confire] If you spent a confire dial or token, you may add one black die to your attack pool. If the adefending ship is at close range, you may reroll up to two black die.

7pts.

Gives the Assault Pelta (and Rebels in general) more punch with an offensive title. Can work well with Sato, General D. Reduces the limitation of not being able to take Ordnance Experts. Can limit it to just Assault Pelta.

Interdictor:

You may replace one defense token with a [Salvo] token.

When you spend a salvo token you may move two shields or recover 1 shield instead of performing its normal effect.

7pts

Gives the Interdictor more punch, or a choice to become even more tanky.

@Duellist12 Ask yourself. Would you ever use the Punisher Title? I wouldn't. For one it is over costed and secondly the ship still needs to get dangerously close to bear the full firepower on a target. 3 reds with minimal dice manipulation seems like a poor design when you can just take an Arquitens instead for cheaper platform with more spacious arcs.

Thanks for feedback (when it is constructive) !

@TallGiraffe : it also opens things for building, you can put a heavy fire zone on this to make gladiator-II a nice flak platform or something...

It's not easy to make a title that has to compete with demolisher . In my opinion, you have to think "different role" not "firepower challenge", otherwise it will be too op. May be I can lower the cost a little if it's too high though.

Also, tell me exactly which costs you think are too high or too low, so I can tweak things here and there.

The too first interdictor titles ( pandemonium and crescendo of doom) may look a little OP. But They have to be in order to change the useless combat refit in something you want to bring to the table. I also tried to enhanced things that are usually avoided by players like cloack squadrons so they become something viable. that's the same idea with ultima ratio and confusion's reign. A t least those ships give you a reason to bring poor z-95s out of their box.

The last two interdictor titles which are suppression refit only, I am very open to change the effects, but are they really that strong ?

Grav Shift token or grav well token can not be replaced or moved after you put them on the table, so the interdicted zone might be easy to avoid. Also : both friendly and enemy ships.

@XR8rGREAT : The idea of giving them rogue until the end of the round was to stop them from moving when they are dropped, but allow them to do things during the subsequent squadron phase. I wanted it to be a little better than rapid launch bay while keeping this upgrade's spirit.

When it comes to names being bad, well that's very subjective, folks ...

Thanks for adding some for the Interdictor and Pelta (really like Crescendo of Doom , btw). I think that some of them are trying to do too much though. For instance, I like the first two parts of Pandemonium , but not the third line, as it is only applicable if you plan on running Phantoms. By trying to get more play for the Combat Retrofit AND Phantoms, I wouldn't want to use this title useless I wanted to try that specific combo. Same can be same with Ultima Ratio . Love the addition of the Fleet Support icon in your upgrade bar, but doesn't make me want to bring Z-95s any more than I did before. Ditto on Confusion's Reign , Double Trouble , and Diabolical Nimbleness (the last one seems OP though, with five Phantoms with a Scatter token activating from a Quasar). I would use Harrow and Vanguard as examples of fixing a ship's weakness without "forcing" them to use of ships/squadrons to get the most out of the upgrade.

If I were to add in a title for the combat Retrofit it would be something like this.

Wyvern

Interdictor Combat Refit only

After you Deploy, you must replace 1 of your defense tokens with a [Salvo] Token.

You Gain 1 Additional [Turbolaser] icon to your upgrade bar.

6 Points

What do you get out of this? The option for an Interdictor to both utilize an experimental retrofit (Like Scramblers) and pack the firepower to put the hurt on a target. You could slap LTT for a good mix of rerolls and antisquadron boosts to your attack. Or maybe apply HFZ like you said. It is a relatively simple fix without too much wording to bog down the title.

Let's look at Punisher. For 9 points, you lose an upgrade slot and gain another along with a single red dice. For 9 points. I would put that cheaper in the 4-5 point range. Would I use this for HFZ? Probably not. Is it Demo? No. But I would probably love to use it because I like the Gladiator platform enough to give it some experimentation despite the fact that many of the options are sub-optimal baring one or two upgrades. *Edit. Okay Heavy Turbolaser Turrets could be pretty mean on a Gladiator*

Crescendo of Doom? Drop the cost to about 4-5 points. It is one additional die out the nose and a weapons team upgrade.

Pandemonium? Lose the cloak nonsense and drop the price to 4 points. Fleet support alone on the Interdictor is a big game changer. Slicer tools? Bomber Command Center? Good on a defensible platform.

Breaking Point? The wording is kinda bad and honestly I would not want to be ramming my 6 hull assault frigate into stuff much. The Redirect token is fine. The wording for the second ability should be "When you overlap an enemy ship, deal 1 additional facedown damage card." Make it a bit cheaper to 5 points.

Frenzied Retaliation? Make it just flat out give a salvo token or make it cheaper to about 7 points or so.

Diabolical nimbleness? I don't think non-uniques should have defense tokens especially scatters. Maybe make it a one use token and it might be more doable.

Raptor is probably one of my favorite ideas. The evade token is costly so 8 points sounds about right. Maybe reword the critical to something similar to APTs or just make it do 1 additional damage and allow it to deal some more Anti-squadron damage. But then again that can get outta hand fast. Maybe make it do 2 damage and make it an exhaust effect.

@Duellist12 I would love to see some concepts on some other ships like the Arquitens and Raider too if you got em.