2 hours ago, geek19 said:

I think if you're going to do it, you make a ship without a turbolaser slot for the empire. Specifically because as i realize Vader and con fires means 4 rerollable red and ewwww. Romodi its potentially 5, just need an officer to shove on these things for vader to kill. Anything cheap enough for SFO and Slaved is potentially terrifying even if you add no other upgrades. Heck, even then without the turbolaser slot Romodi makes it 4 dice, and ick. Especially if you throw in any blue dice and DCaps. There's just a lot of minefields for potential negative player experiences in there.

So something like 2R / 1R1U / 2R with no Turbolaser slot, but Evade/Evade/Salvo?

3 hours ago, geek19 said:

Sure, so, if we pretend we just port a Scout Hammerhead over to the Empire we get something like the below.

[ flagship ] Imperial Star Destroyer Cymoon 1 Refit (112 points)
- Darth Vader (com) ( 36 points)
- Avenger ( 5 points)
- Strategic Adviser ( 4 points)
- Gunnery Team ( 7 points)
- XI7 Turbolasers ( 6 points)
- Spinal Armament ( 9 points)
- Entrapment Formation! ( 5 points)
= 184 total ship cost

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 points)
- Slaved Turrets ( 6 points)
= 47 total ship cost

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 points)
- Slaved Turrets ( 6 points)
= 47 total ship cost

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 points)
- Slaved Turrets ( 6 points)
= 47 total ship cost

Hammerhead Scout Corvette (41 points)
- Slaved Turrets ( 6 points)
= 47 total ship cost

Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 points)
- Suppressor ( 4 points)
- Comms Net ( 2 points)
= 29 total ship cost

So it's 7 activations and each of those hammers throws 3 red (if its NOT con firing, and with EF and a solid nav chart, they are). So it's 4 red and a free reroll every time because they're 47 points, who cares. You can lose 2 and table someone and still get a 306 point win (and that assumes no points from your objectives, either!) Mind you, i just threw this together quickly, and you could optimize it even more if you wanted to, but it's an example. You can achieve similarly with Palpatine and Officer Vader on the Gozanti choking out whatever Skilled First Officer you throw on the ship just to ensure you're getting damage out. Palps has such an oppressive ability that he's costed as expensively as he is, and if you had a way of doing multiple sources of damage repeatedly in one turn.... that's why the most successful Palp builds (IMO) have been things with a bunch of squads just to repeatedly hammer you and your tokens all on one turn.

Vader its a different but similar boat in that if you have a "disposable" defense token for the reroll, (points at Arquitens and contains for example), your damage floor is a bit higher than expected from the ship normally. If you look at your standard Vader admiral ships they have a token they don't mind spending once or twice for that damage.

THEORETICALLY you could port it over and upcharge it I guess, but how much do you upcharge it, AND how much do you then run the risk of the Empire bleeding into the Rebellion as a playstyle/faction? Arqs are upcosted sideways Nebs, but they live a bit better (running away you say?) and are trying to do different things enough (Arqs seem more harassers and just constant damage over time IMO, Nebs decided they want to be David and go fight Goliath). How do you port a CR90/HH over and get it in a similar role (Harasser that runs and harasser that takes 2 shots to die from an ISD, so go down swinging) for the Empire AND keep them unique as a faction? Not sure, really.

If you want to get use out of Palpatine (not that you were asking, but I talk to them enough about these commanders that they're worth mentioning) I'd hit up @rasproteus or @duck_bird.

Thanks, that's very helpful. I can see the problem. You end up with a Command-1 Arquitens for half the point cost.

I was faffing around a few months ago with some ideas for new ships and was working on the Imperial Customs Corvette with a red/blue out the front, speed 4, 4 hull, 2 shields all around and an ion slot, offensive retrofit slot and gunnery team slot. The thought was that you'd put boarding engineers in there (because customs corvettes stop and search and disable). Maybe that would work better.

As for Palpatine, I've never really 'got' him. Maybe he doesn't fit my playstyle. I wonder if he's also been obsoletified by the ubiquitous Krysta Agate and the Starhawk anyway.

5 hours ago, geek19 said:

I think if you're going to do it, you make a ship without a turbolaser slot for the empire. Specifically because as i realize Vader and con fires means 4 rerollable red and ewwww. Romodi its potentially 5, just need an officer to shove on these things for vader to kill. Anything cheap enough for SFO and Slaved is potentially terrifying even if you add no other upgrades. Heck, even then without the turbolaser slot Romodi makes it 4 dice, and ick. Especially if you throw in any blue dice and DCaps. There's just a lot of minefields for potential negative player experiences in there.

It has no offensive retrofit.

I dunno. What you point was one of my concerns but the best thing to avoid that is probably to make this ship a flotilla.

Reducing too much the dice pool or removing the turbo slot make it viable only with the said combos but would be really useless for everything else. And if you let the turbo or the dice pool then those combos get worse.

With no turbo the only true option is SFO and Vader.

Making them flotilla at least there's not gonna be more than two at the price of loosing the activation advantage of gozantis and they wouldn't count for tabling purposes. It's not a small price.

So in order to move on, if not long range what? Cause the raider is quite a versatile ship within its niche. It can brawl, it can flak, it can deliver boarding stuff, it may even command squadrons (but in this case you would go just with a gozanti). And you also have the "tech" version on the Raider II with the ion slot.

Small base. 5 hull. Command 1, Squadron 1, Engineering 4. Batteries 2B 1B 2R / 2U 1U 2R. Flak 2U / 1R. Shields 2 2 2. Defense tokens 1 evade, 1 redirect, 1 salvo. Slots: officer, offensive retrofit. Maybe one or both versions could have fleet support and/or two officer slot.

That's definitely a support ship. You may use it to move, toss proximity mines, provide some flak or build a buff bubble for your ships (transponder net) or squadrons (Woldar).

Here again you may spam those things for a really big mine field but that's gonna be fun.

I made it with a support team slot cause I wanted to have something moving around shields but that may be nasty if spammed. The fleet command may bring repair crews with wasn't a thing before the flotillas were nerfed but who knows. The second officer slot could be a nice thing.

Or maybe something more out of the box. Every ship comes with a primary arc and the non primary arc tend to first loose dice (obvious), second reduce threat range. In fact the former usually produces the latter. At the best they keep the longest range dice pool the same. Only “exception” is the Onager and only if you don’t count the ignition pool. Let’s play with this and keeping some things I like most of the very first concept.

Small ship. 4 hull. Shields: 3 3 1. Defense tokens: 2 evades, 1 salvo. Speed 4. Nav chart: II, II-II, II-_-II, II-_-_-II. Batteries 3B, 1R, 2R1B (both versions). Flak 1U. Command 1, Squadron 1, Engineering 2. Slots: officer, weapon team/support team, ordnance/turbo. Rider firing arcs.

Defensively it still sucks (it requires one damage less than a cr90) but it has something the raider hasn’t. The side red die. It may be not too much but raiders want to have activation advantage (what they usually don’t have) and they are useless if you chose a less straightforward approach. This combine the arquitens nav chart that allows them to circle around the target with two clicks on the first joint to close distance when needed. The red die let you get something while fooling around. You may get something out of it with IF or the expensive version which brings turbos and, maybe take advantage of the combo we discussed about but the base pool is one die and raider arcs expose your rear arc if you try to exploit you side batteries, what makes you really easy to destroy. Also, there is the fact that you’re wasting your front battery. The expensive version could be used to flak at long range at the cost of HFZ, but nothin impressive so the raider should be safe here. I choose to keep weapons team for ordnance experts and remove them for the expensive version to avoid gunnery teams. Support team in the expensive let you play with some interesting tools. Choose not to add offensive retrofit to forbid boarding stuff. Ordnance is not a big deal as, with those side arcs, double arcing is not your thing to exploit APT or ACM. ER is probably the way to go but you cannot use them during salvo and here we come to the fun thing. Unless accuracies (which can be bypassed if you want to invest on Tua) this little thing is gonna fire you back two red dice. I was tempted to give it 2R2B in the rear but that would be too much after it loads on you its front arc. When this is at close range it’s gonna go for sure without a brace (the only thing that, sometimes, saves a raider). But it could be fun to fire back 2R1B after it already fired 3+2B or TRC the salvo if you chose the expensive version. If for whatever reason it survives, and to avoid being destroyed by the salvo could be a reason, it may run away while shooting 2 red dice from the rear. It has tough shields but without redirects or brace it is gonna run out of them quickly and the rear arc of a raider let you even bypass those three on the sides with not much effort.

This thing is definitely a brawler but different enough to not displace a raider or a GSD. It doesn’t depend on activation advantage as keeping it circle around until getting the good engagement route doesn’t hurt that much. And it cannot pull of nasty black crits that easily. I guess you could still use ST and Romodi on these things and Vader but you have to fly them like you already fly arquitens with worse side arcs and, while cheaper, you should get better odds from arquitens cause the price isn’t gonna be 1/3 of an arquitens. However it may work as a good option to add to an arquitens fleet if you have some spare points you can’t fit another arquitens in.

I'm not very good at seeing all possible ship/upgrade combos, (I rely on Armada blogs made by people here for help) but it seems to me the flotilla rule could be leveraged to limit a possible Imperial small red ship from displacing the Arquitens. If for example FFG made a Chimera like expansion where Gozantis got a gunship variant that strips out the carrier capabilities for combat slots like a turbolaser slot that would be theoretically fine because you couldn't take more than 2. Take out the Evade and give it maybe a Brace or Salvo and it would require more skill to avoid a quick death, although it would be funny to see a Gozanti spewing out dice with Tua onboard to ECM the Evade.

On 6/20/2020 at 4:15 PM, shmitty said:

I did like the plot thread with the other FO defectors. I’d like to see Finn go on a mission to help free/deprogram more of them.

Agreed. The through-line of "saving what you love" should have been extended to his fellow stormtroopers, who were victims of the First Order just as he was. A missed opportunity, I thought. Could make for a good jump-off point for a third season of Resistance (and finally provide that show with some real weight); I think Episode IX left room for a First Order remnant. Why not give Finn a chance to free his former colleagues?

8 hours ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

Agreed. The through-line of "saving what you love" should have been extended to his fellow stormtroopers, who were victims of the First Order just as he was. A missed opportunity, I thought. Could make for a good jump-off point for a third season of Resistance (and finally provide that show with some real weight); I think Episode IX left room for a First Order remnant. Why not give Finn a chance to free his former colleagues?

Please, please, please give me Finn, Rose, Jannah, and Lando off on an adventure to rescue as many Stormtroopers as possible.

Rebel medium, Imperial small, and Separatist small are the top of my wish list followed by Republic smalls and mediums

I wouldn't mind seeing new combat oriented flotilla. Sonething halfway between a squadron and a real ship.

I have been chewing over ideas for the Imperial Support Vessel (aka Dreadnought). I read the bumph on the wiki relating to it, which styled it as a very different ship to the 'elderly dreadnought' vessel I remember using as a 2nd line ship in Star Wars Supremacy/Rebellion all those decades ago. I know TallGiraffe did a version recently which I quite liked, but some things really stuck out when I was reading the info - 'minimal shields' and 'extremely tough'. I thought that would make for a very interesting ship, so here's my take:

Imperial Support Vessel - Support Retrofit (60pts)

Medium base ship

Command: 4 Squadrons: 2 Engineering: 4

Defence tokens: 2 x Brace, 2 x Contain

Shields: Front - 1, Sides - 1, Rear - 1

Hull: 7

Attack Dice:

Front - 3 Red, 1 black

Sides - 1 Red, 1 black

Rear - 3 Red, 1 black.

Support team, Defensive Retrofit, Turbolaser.

Speed Chart - Speed 1 -1 yaw. Speed 2, 0 then 1. Speed 3, 0 then 1 then 0.

Imperial Support Vessel - Combat Retrofit (67pts)

Medium base ship.

Defence tokens: 2 x Brace, 2 x Contain

Shields:

Front - 1

Sides - 1

Rear - 1

Hull: 7

Attack Dice:

Front - 3 Red, 1 blue

Sides - 1 Red, 1 blue

Rear - 3 Red, 1 blue

Weapons Team, Defensive Retrofit, Ion Cannon, Turbolaser.

Speed Chart - Speed 1 -1 yaw. Speed 2, 0 then 1. Speed 3, 0 then 1 then 0.

I picked Medium rather than small base because a cheap medium base ship might mean that Konstantine might be more viable.

I don't see this ship working at all. With no redirect and a single shield it can be one-shot by an ISD and it will be down in 2 turns against basically anything.

A good comparison would be the Nebulon-B, but the Escort variant is 10 points cheaper and although its forward and rear arc has one less die and it has only 5 hull, it has an Evade with the chance of getting a Redirect (Vanguard) and 3 more shields, and a much better movement chart. And that was the better variant of the two Dreadnoughts, the Support variant seems to be useless.

49 minutes ago, Norell said:

I don't see this ship working at all. With no redirect and a single shield it can be one-shot by an ISD and it will be down in 2 turns against basically anything.

A good comparison would be the Nebulon-B, but the Escort variant is 10 points cheaper and although its forward and rear arc has one less die and it has only 5 hull, it has an Evade with the chance of getting a Redirect (Vanguard) and 3 more shields, and a much better movement chart. And that was the better variant of the two Dreadnoughts, the Support variant seems to be useless.

With double brace, 7 hull and a defensive retrofit? It's tankier than you realise. It would be good with Damage Control Officer and Reinforced Blast doors.

It's not intended as a front-line ship, much like the Nebulon B. Support version can use its 4 engineering and Projection Experts to support the main fighting ships (for example). I think most people would take the combat variant and stick Local Fire Control on it with a Salvo token. Suddenly it's a very different ship.

On 5/21/2020 at 9:44 PM, Crabbok said:

They've been on the pioneering fore-front before - working with Lucasfilm to create the Raider for X-Wing to fill the role of an Imperial Corvette that also looked like a "Triangle".

They've designed the Starhawk when it was unknown to the world (Appearance-wise).

Suppose they had another shot at making a completely new ship from scratch for Armada - what would you wanna see? (Physical design, or mechanical concepts either or both are fine)

BTW- And yes I know there's PLENTY of stuff from legends and canon both that aren't in game yet - just play along - perhaps there's a tie-in to a new story about a brand new ship design or something.

They didn't create the start hawk

2 hours ago, Tirion said:

They didn't create the start hawk

Nope.

6 hours ago, Tirion said:

They didn't create the start hawk

He didn't say they created it. He said they designed it. Meaning that FFG took the base file Lucasfilm had on it (as FFG said last year) and put in the finer details.

I would like to see a medium Rebel ship designed like some of the German cruisers of WW2. By that, I mean some quickish but with the primary armament mounted to the aft rather than the fore. Make it lightly "armored" or heavier on AA, whatever to keep it balanced and all. I am just thinking a ship that has a stinger in the tail rather than broadside or nose would make for a different kind of challenge. Oh you want to chase my fleet, here's 3 red from the aft of my whatsit light cruiser as a surprise. Just something different.

29 minutes ago, Grand Admiral Buford said:

I would like to see a medium Rebel ship designed like some of the German cruisers of WW2. By that, I mean some quickish but with the primary armament mounted to the aft rather than the fore. Make it lightly "armored" or heavier on AA, whatever to keep it balanced and all. I am just thinking a ship that has a stinger in the tail rather than broadside or nose would make for a different kind of challenge. Oh you want to chase my fleet, here's 3 red from the aft of my whatsit light cruiser as a surprise. Just something different.

Fleet 1560 (0/60/400)
=======================

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 + 9: 60)
· Spinal Armament (9)

9 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

Fleet 1560 (0/60/400)
=======================

Nebulon-B Support Refit (51 + 9: 60)
· Spinal Armament (9)

Not quite what I was thinking of. Still nice though. If you look at, I think it was the Hipper but could be wrong. The main gun turret layout was A/Y/Z. A single triple turret fore and two triples aft. Broadside was 9 guns but to the aft it was 6. This was unlike most naval ships of the time that were either balanced fore and aft or heavier on the fore. By the same token, the French and Brits both had battleships that placed the entire main battery to the fore and all the secondaries aft. This design could also make for something different to play with. Consider an all red front arc but side and aft arcs nothing but blue/black. This is kind of what I am looking for in my thoughts. Something different from the norm but certainly still viable in every day use.

On 7/4/2020 at 4:52 AM, Rune Taq said:

He didn't say they created it. He said they designed it. Meaning that FFG took the base file Lucasfilm had on it (as FFG said last year) and put in the finer details.

He said they designed it... They didn't. They had some input on the final design, but they aren't the primary designers.

9 hours ago, Tirion said:

He said they designed it... They didn't. They had some input on the final design, but they aren't the primary designers.

I think you're splitting hairs.

The point is that FFG helped create/design the Starhawk and Onager, and they came out really well. I'd be happy if FFG created new ships for Armada, regardless if they drew inspiration from existing canon or Legends/EU sources, and created something entirely new and fun!

36 minutes ago, Revan Reborn said:

I think you're splitting hairs.

The point is that FFG helped create/design the Starhawk and Onager, and they came out really well. I'd be happy if FFG created new ships for Armada, regardless if they drew inspiration from existing canon or Legends/EU sources, and created something entirely new and fun!

Imo it is very different to help with the finishing touches of something as opposed to creating it. To me it's the difference of working the book and thanking everyone that helped on the first page

12 hours ago, Tirion said:

Imo it is very different to help with the finishing touches of something as opposed to creating it. To me it's the difference of working the book and thanking everyone that helped on the first page

We can debate what the original post ment all day. Not trying to start a confrontation and I apologize if it came across that way earlier. After rereading my comment on your comment I think I could have worded it better. You are correct that both ships had concept work done that was not release other than one piece of art for the onager. FFG helped finalize a detailed finished design. The bones were already created by LFL.

15 minutes ago, Rune Taq said:

We can debate what the original post ment all day. Not trying to start a confrontation and I apologize if it came across that way earlier. After rereading my comment on your comment I think I could have worded it better. You are correct that both ships had concept work done that was not release other than one piece of art for the onager. FFG helped finalize a detailed finished design. The bones were already created by LFL.

All good