Firstly let me clarify, I think they are priced OK. I am more meaning to make them support ships for the likes of Obi and Plo they start to head up to the 60-70 point range, which IMO is a lot for a 1 Agi ship.
I want to use one so my Jedi can concentrate on surviving with evades or Focus actions, the LAAT giving the rerolls.

What are your suggestions to kit out a LAAT so it's not too crazy points wise.

I think they are a bit too expensive to serve as strong, pure ace support. Paying for that reroll ability has affected their versatility.

Still, having not seen or tried the archetype, I don't really know if a ~70pt LAAT can be effective enough to play that role. I have suspicions, but the various different things you can do really need to be felt out on the table.

Hawks ability may offer some reactive positioning that could swing a key turn. Warthog may add that extra turn you need to make the upgrades he's carrying pay. Plo crew might ramp up the tankiness to Lambda levels. 7FG is pure gold with CLT lurking.

Personally, I still like the idea of Ghost Co. and Suppressive Gunner for spreading some malign influence around that aces can profit from. Knowing your opponent will either blue move or suffer reduced firepower is strong. But I imagine it will be too variable, and come at the expense of making the LAAT last long enough. Needs to be tried out to properly gauge it, but it's a costly experiment.

Generally, top aces aren't crying out for rerolls, so it's an awkward conundrum.

Cheers Cuz, I am also future planning for the likes of the ETA, without the points though, it makes it silly to even try. ETA is a favourite and I want to try the Imperial Aces plus support archetype. Especially as they dont have linked actions.

I look forward to see what smarter people than me can come up with.

Yes, currently they are. But, they shine as generic support. Republic Aces probably shouldn't try to be Palp Aces. Maybe when the V-Wing and the ETA2 come out, more option might open for it, but I am doubtful that they will be good in the swarm meta.

I don't think so. Running 7th gunner i2 Laat with Obi Lumi Ani N1 is great and works very well in hyperspace. You should absolutely run the LAAT with "Trip Aces". From the couple games I have played so far it is excellent and equivalent to giving 3 ships situational access to Proton Torps. The LAAT shoots the first engage and then mostly is weapons disabled the rest of the way while still being worth its points. Obviously you dont have to blindly chase activating 7th gunner, sometimes the LAAT will be better off shooting, but often its just fueling alpha strikes and occupying space/time. So far my impression has been that the LAAT is more useful with Jedi than it is supporting clones (unless you upgrade to Warthog). Warthog is the way to go if you want a bigger squad, though Obi + Warthog + 2 Arcs fits with room for toys and isnt terrible.

Obi-Wan Kenobi + Calibrated Laser Targeting
Anakin Skywalker
Luminara Unduli + Calibrated Laser Targeting
212th Battalion Pilot + Seventh Fleet Gunner

Above is very good. Arguable that bringing Obi Plo Lumi Ashoka at 194 pts is better in other matchups but that says more about how incredibly cheap CLT Jedi are than it does the benefits of the LAAT rerolls and 7th Gunner. LAAT pilot ability makes Jedi even easier to fly and helps them preserve tokens for defense or maintain even more offensive threat while bumped or stressed which is super relevant despite force already kinda doing that. Also completely transforms Ani N1s role in a list.

The LAATs cost feel spot on to me. It is so good with Jedi that I actually genuinely wish the Ship Ability had been written so that it did not work on Force Users or Limited Pilots so it could be cheaper and encourage Ace + Laat + Clone Squads or just LAAT + Clone Squad. To support the aces you would depend on the LAAT making squads of clones better or add thematic crew like Yoda etc instead of just leaning into 7th + Rerolls.

Above is strictly for hyperspace though. I have no opinion on what to do with the LAAT in extended.

Basically, what they said ^

The Actis and V Wing are unlikely to ace quite so hard as the Delta, so probably not going to offer much in a 3 ship list. Unless some unforeseen synergy opens up that can make I6 Anakin invulnerable to everything that exists.....

4 definitely feels like a natural home and both new interceptors should give some really good options there. Reps are pretty unparalleled in the cheap ace department and 3 of them gives you a good spread of where to spend the LAATs effects, as well as reducing the impact of the points it inevitably gives up.

12 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

The Actis and V Wing are unlikely to ace quite so hard as the Delta, so probably not going to offer much in a 3 ship list.

So I didn't get into possible ETA or V-Wing builds for a reason, to many unknowns. I have tested a couple LAAT + ETA/V builds with guessed points and they end up being very different style lists than the Athersprite 7th gunner options we have now (I personally want them to be more about ace + squad gangs than ultra offensive/defensive aces Trip Ace + Laat lists). No way of knowing if those will be better or worse than what we get now with the N1 + Ather + 7th stuff. Super likely if the Ather stays hyper legal we will see Obi + i5 Eta + N1/Eta + 7th Laat which feels like a cursed timeline.

V-Wings are neat and with Besh + Warthog will likely be semi effective offensive full mod yolo builds. The ETA itself will probably open up a bunch of 5+ ship options with the LAAT which I am frankly looking forward to more than the current ace centric ather lists in Hyper (ignoring Warthog Clone gang builds). Hopefully all the Athersprites get banned from hyper besides maybe Plo Koon once the ETA drops since the ETA is a dramatically more interesting ship in just about every way.

2 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

So I didn't get into possible ETA or V-Wing builds for a reason, too many unknowns.

Fair.

2 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Super likely if the Ather stays hyper legal we will see Obi + i5 Eta + N1/Eta + 7th Laat which feels like a cursed timeline.

Indeed, but given the thing can SNR and then evade, I'd be looking at Plo for the focus throw/disarm catch, easing up a few points in the process. My hopes for keeping him in HS now seem remote

¿ǝʌᴉsuǝdxǝ ooʇ s┴∀∀˥ ǝɹ∀

I've been trying the laat a lot lately. My perception is that it's too expensive and too frail to have it as a support piece for Jedi Fighters. It's also too expensive to bother putting Jedi crew aboard, as then it costs even more points and still gets burned down just as fast, then you're out 65 (or more) points almost immediately.

The best success I've had with laats so far is to just run them close to naked (maybe Barrage Rockets) and pair them with as many clone fighters (ARCs, Torrents, Ys) as you can. I still haven't won a game with this approach, but I've gotten much closer than in games where I've tried to pair with Jedi Fighters or use the laat a Jedi crew ferry. The trouble is, Republic without Jedi feel a lot like Rebels... and we all know how they've been faring for most of Second Edition...

I mean, part of the issue is that all of the Jedi Crew are both very expensive and pretty objectively terrible. Aayla is the only possible exception, and I think she's too pricey to stick on something as poorly survivable as an ARC, laat, or Y-Wing.

1 hour ago, Blail Blerg said:

¿ǝʌᴉsuǝdxǝ ooʇ s┴∀∀˥ ǝɹ∀

I mean, a pair of Torrents are too expensive to fly with named 7B Jedi.

That is to say, it's good that Jedi are expensive.

//

Anyhow, LAAT + 3 Buddies seems pretty reasonable. The Buddies might be a Pocket Ace like a CLT Jedi or N-1, might be an ARC, might even be Broadside (could be a shock when you actually Range 1 primary someone for 4 dice with 7FG and focus/reroll). I'm sure there's a fair number of good buds to get to fill out your bud hole.

LAAT + 2 Pals might not really work. Pals in this case being loaded Jedi, with 7B or expensive droids like Chopper, or lots of toys like Sense + R2-A6. Maybe one Pal and one Buddy would work.

Answer to op: Yes and at the same time no. What the LAAT will eternally suffer from is that it's ship ability belongs in a different spot. Everything I say here comes with the understanding that some very minor tweaks might be necessary to the ability if it had been done with any of the following suggested ways.

Statement: The LAAT ship ability Fire Convergence is more fitting to a number of different mechanical layers, but not fitting to a ship ability. In detail it would have been good as...

A Pilot ability: similar to the functionality of ARCs pilots abilities but tailored to the LAAT turrets. In keeping with the Brotherhood theme. And reasonably a improvement over what ability or type of ability the LAAT should have had. Like for instance, if "Sinker" had been printed as a pilot for a LAAT, since they now rightly change pilot abilities thanks to their 'sub-title', this would have been a good ability for him.

A Gunner card: The ability reflects something of the crews ability to coordinate itself with others, as opposed to being a true *ship* ability that is unique to the chassis in the lore or game mechanic. As a good test, ask of every ship ability what would happen if that ship changed faction? For example the Fang fighter also has this oddity, as it's 'ship' ability is actually a Elite skill card stapled to it. If you stick a imperial pilot in that Fang, it shouldn't have the Concordia @#$&-off ability realistically. So if it's a ability reflective of the crew, and in this case Gunner(s), then it should have been on a Gunner card. Or like some of the other new ones on a Gunner/crew multi slot card. Like, the LAAT ship ability would make sense if it was say "212th Gunners Team". This would have also made or more interesting as some other chassis could pay to get the support of the Gunner card enhancing what say a Republic Y-wing or CR-90 could bring to the table.

A crew card: basically the same arguments already above but fused together at the hip. For example if there was a "Sinker" crew card, this would have been a good ability to put on him to help to a ship in some way. As a bonus it could be then reined in by a limited dot.

A Systems or modification slot card: after a fashion, Fire Convergence is a synced console. It works between friendlies to give rerolls, just not ordnance fire ability. The ability if given to one of these type cards would then get a name like "fire control network" or something and not seem out of place in the slightest.

There's even an argument I think I could make for Fire Convergence to be a Elite Skill, but hopefully by now I've made my point. Because FC is now baked on to every LAAT, they will all have to pay for this specific question, and others in the future, that the OP has posed. The chassis is now so deeply linked to every other ship in it's faction it creates a veritable design minefield for the future. There were ways they could have done it instead but chose not to. In conclusion: yes the ship may be too expensive for that setup right now, I could see that. But thanks to the placement of it's ability, there's only so low they can take it to keep it in check at the same time.

The ability would have been nice if it was a configuration for the LAAT. Then its basic ship could have been a cheap double crew/gunner carrier for Republic in that low 40s cost similar to Scum Yt1300. Then for like 8-10pts add the config to give it reroll ability. Would have made it more versatile and could lower/raise price on either ship or config if one seems stronger.

51+pt support ships dont have a history of getting much play.

Warthog is definitely the standout and if anyone makes this ship happen it will probably be him. And 1 out of 4 pilots being "playable" in the competitive sense, is probably a win.

4 minutes ago, wurms said:

Then its basic ship could have been a cheap double crew/gunner carrier for Republic

To what end? Most crew are pretty "meh" at best, and most gunners are outright terrible cards. What double crew + double gunner options would be worth putting onto one Republic ship with no linked actions, no flip-around maneuver, and a 2-Die primary?

When I fly most Rebel and Republic ships with crew + gunner slots, I find myself leaving the slots empty most of the time because the options are either trash, over-costed, or both.

28 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

To what end? Most crew are pretty "meh" at best, and most gunners are outright terrible cards. What double crew + double gunner options would be worth putting onto one Republic ship with no linked actions, no flip-around maneuver, and a 2-Die primary?

When I fly most Rebel and Republic ships with crew + gunner slots, I find myself leaving the slots empty most of the time because the options are either trash, over-costed, or both.

Republic has great crew right now with wolfpack, fives, cody, rex, suppressive gunner and kit fisto.

Wolfpack gives your friendlies locks everytime they are attacked pretty much. Cody hands out strain for your 2 dice gun that probably gets blocked, combine that with ghost company and its two strained ships, any range attack through obstacles, etc. This locks that ship into blue maneuvers next round or else, -1 green die.

Fives puts focus and evades in your pocket. Combo Fives and ghost company for multiple focus shots and get focus back for any missed shots.

Kit Fisto is fantastic because you dont ever have to decide on flipping force to evade until engagement phase, and it doesnt take your action. So you can be focus and evaded. You get to see the entire board state, then decide if you need an evade or not. Oh, an ace just happened to land range 1 of me, I want to use force as an offensive mod (combo with wolfpack and you get a lock too after defending). Or, oh, I dont have a great shot, lemme take an evade. I tossed Kit Fisto on Sinker and sinker was focused + evaded for multiple rounds. Not fun firing at sinker range 3 when he has focus and evade.

54 minutes ago, wurms said:

Republic has great crew right now with wolfpack, fives, cody, rex, suppressive gunner and kit fisto.

We have pretty differing opinions about what makes a crew card great. For instance, Sloane is a great crew card. She's one of the few crew cards that shows up in top-placing squads because she is trivial to trigger while offering an advantageous effect in any match-up.

Cards that require your 50+ point ship to miss it's attacks in order to pass out some marginal benefit (Cody, Fives)...? That's not a recipe for wins. Fisto is 9 points and has to spend his Force point to give a friendly ship an Evade and a stress...lol. Rex is probably the worst card I've seen in ages, and I'm not exaggerating: four incredibly restrictive requirements for an absolutely "meh" ability: (1) you have to roll a Focus result, (2) you have to spend the Focus result, making it unlikely your attack hits anything, (3) allies have to have the target in their bullseye, (4) those allies can strain themselves for a Focus action if they're not stressed and have not already focused. What the heck...? That's an incredibly hard to trigger ability that doses two negative things to you in exchange for access to the most basic action in the game.

And that's my overall take on a lot of the Republic crew/gunner options: expensive hard to trigger crap that tends to do more harm than good when it does trigger.

Republic personnel be like "Spend 5-10 points to miss your attacks or lose attack opportunities in a game where the only way to win is deal damage by hitting attacks. lolz"

My personal opinion is that the ships were intentionally priced as they are to encourage use with non-Jedi pilots and generics. While you can fly Anakin with two Blue Squadron Troopers, it is a calibrated Anakin so not as deadly as he usually is.

I also think people are downers on the ability. After playing the LAAT, I personally think it is a curtail aspect to the ship itself. Load it with missiles and the ability works on itself to devastating effect. Most abilities in X-Wing that give you rerolls are often 1-for-1; Spent 1 charge for 1 reroll. The LAAT allows you to reroll 2 dice for one charge, and it has two charges so that's at least 4 dice rerolls per turn. That's quite good for a faction who's ships are primarily 2 attack dice, that's a full reroll.

I also disagree with AllWingsStandyingBy about the definition of 'Good' crew. While I agree that Rex is highly situational, in my opinion Fives is one of the best gunners you can take because there is never a 'bad' situation. If you hit, cograts you just hit your opponent and are working towards winning the game. If you didn't hit? Here's something to make sure you hit next time which will help you towards winning the game. It's mitgation against failure and sometimes....we've all been there...dice can sometimes go that way. Sometimes your opponents dice go 'lol, nope, evade.' I was skeptical of Fives until I played him and I actually expect his points to go up because he can be so useful in not just giving you a free focus at times, but a free evade to ships that can't take evade as an action and even if they could, wouldn't because there are better actions available.

I don't think ever crew/gunner or even upgrade card in the game needs to be "Take a target lock, get a free reroll, roll an extra dice and win the game."

7 hours ago, wurms said:

The ability would have been nice if it was a configuration for the LAAT. Then its basic ship could have been a cheap double crew/gunner carrier for Republic in that low 40s cost similar to Scum Yt1300. Then for like 8-10pts add the config to give it reroll ability. Would have made it more versatile and could lower/raise price on either ship or config if one seems stronger.

51+pt support ships dont have a history of getting much play.

Warthog is definitely the standout and if anyone makes this ship happen it will probably be him. And 1 out of 4 pilots being "playable" in the competitive sense, is probably a win.

One wonders if there is a point cost where an expensive support ship is eminently effective.

The crazy part that I don't see how people reconcile is that the LAAT without its ability is basically an Arc. (You can basically pretend that rotating the turret is usually expensive opportunity cost (no focus)). If you say that the ability to rotate the turret to sides is worth... 1-2 points at best, if not 0. (See KCdodgers 5Ywings that never turn their turret and other 3Arc lists for the math on how not rotating basically equates a set forward back arc in math) That's nowhere close to what the values seem to add up to.

42 pts for arc with 3 die forward gun.

Vs 51-10= 41 for 1 extra 10th hull (value diminishes at 10), ability to rotate, no k-turn so minus 3-4 points . A LAAT without Fire convergence should be nearly 36-38 points. And this assumes that Fire Convergence is actually with 10 points, which I suspect it's not.

Flew the LAAT again last night, and I am becoming a bit disappointed about it. To expensive, does not really feel like a gunship, if it did not have the rotating arcs, it would almost have been a perfect fit for the republic NU Class attack shuttle, as it almost feels more like a lambda than a gunship to me.

4 hours ago, Dwing said:

Flew the LAAT again last night, and I am becoming a bit disappointed about it. To expensive, does not really feel like a gunship...

Yea, it's curious that for a ship which has 7 canon cannons (2 nose-mounted forward cannons, 1 rear-mounted cannon, and 4 bubble turrets) we end up with only a bow-tie arc 2-die support ship. In-game, it's definitely not a gunship.

While you can give the laat missiles, it ups the cost even more and it's hard to get those missiles on target without any way to flip around on the laat's dial. It's also very easy to block the laat's medium base (especially if it's flying with a bunch of medium-based ARCs, too), which can deny it's opportunity to use ordnance. So you'll pretty much only shoot the missiles if your opponent has decided to grant you that opportunity and joust you... and if they're doing that, odds are that they think they have the jousting advantage and don't mind the missiles.

9 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Vs 51-10= 41 for 1 extra 10th hull (value diminishes at 10), ability to rotate, no k-turn so minus 3-4 points . A LAAT without Fire convergence should be nearly 36-38 points. And this assumes that Fire Convergence is actually with 10 points, which I suspect it's not.

Without Fire Convergence, this is basically a K-Wing. Extra health and reinforce, but fewer tools for dealing damage (bombs are a big one!), and worse mobility overall (no SLAM, extra weak blues, hard to use reds).

1 hour ago, EBerling said:

Yea, it's curious that for a ship which has 7 canon cannons (2 nose-mounted forward cannons, 1 rear-mounted cannon, and 4 bubble turrets) we end up with only a bow-tie arc 2-die support ship. In-game, it's definitely not a gunship.

I wonder: what if LAAT had a config that removed Fire Convergence, but gave them 3 red dice, no other changes.

Would this be appealing to the "I want my gunship" folks?

What price would it have--positive or negative?

//

Alternative: what if you could use Fire Convergence on turret attacks? Is that enough?

//

Not saying those are good ideas, just curious about exploring the thought experiment.

8 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Without Fire Convergence, this is basically a K-Wing. Extra health and reinforce, but fewer tools for dealing damage (bombs are a big one!), and worse mobility overall (no SLAM, extra weak blues, hard to use reds).

I wonder: what if LAAT had a config that removed Fire Convergence, but gave them 3 red dice, no other changes.

Would this be appealing to the "I want my gunship" folks?

What price would it have--positive or negative?

//

Alternative: what if you could use Fire Convergence on turret attacks? Is that enough?

//

Not saying those are good ideas, just curious about exploring the thought experiment.

In a wave where two gunships came out simultainiously, its wierd that one got loads of new tricks and synergy, the other feels frankly boring and bland to fly, and not like a gunship. Even if they lower the price, it wont fix the boring part. But a config with a sideslip like ability would go a long way for me.

The droid gunship get super easy acces to calculates, tl which frees it up to reload. This makes it a good carrier for ordnance and the new crazy cheap and good concussion bombs. They have loads of blue which mean they can afford to make the red 0. The laat has to take a focus or tl and hope the enemy will grant it permission to use it. Exept for Hawk, there is no reposh options. Its dial has so few blues that the red 0 is punished hard if you use it. It's own ship ability don't even synergize with all types of attacks, including its own main one. Sadly it feels like a slow troop transport more than a gunship.

4 minutes ago, Dwing said:

In a wave where two gunships came out simultaneously, its weird that one got loads of new tricks and synergy, the other feels frankly boring and bland to fly, and not like a gunship. Even if they lower the price, it wont fix the boring part. But a config with a sideslip like ability would go a long way for me.

I'll give you the boring and bland, but the LAAT has plenty of tricks and synergy. Cody, Wolfpack, Synchronized Console, Fire Convergence, and Warthog's ability really enable the generics in what has largely been an Ace faction.

But yes, boring to fly. It's basically an Auzituck on the scale of exciting maneuvers.