I love the new expansion, it utilizes every role and every viper on the board. the only problem i have is not giving the raptors a more prominent use, even in the show they are given rocket launchers for combat.

I'm thinking about making a house rule for the raptors; the engineer repair card can not only be used to build mark VII's, but can also build combat ready raptors. Since, in the show, they were capable of shooting nothing but rocket (or nukes) i would like to emulate that by giving the raptors the ability to damage basestars ( and possibly two raiders at once, but that's still a maybe)

if anyone has any ideas they'd like to contribute to this idea (sorry for being reptetive), I'm all ears.

The raptors didn't fire rockets until the last mission of the show before that, they fired ECM's and drones.

With that being said, the raptors are essentially a "Resource" in the board game. Just like Nuke tokens, only sculpted. Why are they sculpted? Because it looks awesome.

They may introduce combat raptors in the next (final?) expansion, but that isn't a given, and I think it would be better handled by a crisis card that says "risk 1 raptor to X; if successful, damage Colony Ship." Or something to that effect.

I agree that they're not especially prominent in the game but, as stated previously, I think that that is to stay in line with the show where they really were used for scouting, etc, and so they attempted to give them that role in the game. Using them for more ability to scout before jumps might be nice, though. Letting you look at and remove (if desired) the top jump location or something like that.

I have to admit, I thought that it would be interesting to have the Raptors go into the space areas and be able to perform actions. If only being used for sensor jamming or what-not, they could slow the progress of oncoming raiders or heavy raiders (or disrupt attacks from a basestar). However, most of the time they would just be defenseless targets - and I'm not sure if the benefits would outweigh the risks.

At some point I decided that its just better to use them as 'ship-shaped' tokens, instead of having a use in combat. As was already discussed, maybe it would be better to expand on the already existing mechanic of risking the raptor to have an effect instead of having wave after wave of raiders able to shoot them out of the sky.

I've had two thoughts on the issue. My first thought was that raptors originally had an "on-game-board" use in some earlier drafting of the game, which eventually got nixed, but not before the go ahead to sculpt raptor pieces was laid down. Or, they were put in as sculpted pieces solely to give the community something to grate their collective teeth over trying to homebrew appropriately.

I will admit with the exodus expansion dramatically reducing the need to scout the crisis deck (Because there are no Cylon attack cards) I was hoping that they would add a use for them via another common card. Although there are some out there, none as common as Launch Scout.

Shrug. Good call on the crisis card that has raptors attack.

Wait.. you don't use scouts to check for what activation and jump prep is coming up? We held off a Centurion killing us using scouts! Mostly because the people using them couldn't get to the armory, but still.

We used to send raptors on "recon missions". With same activation rules as unmanned vipers, it was assigned to launch from Galactica, go full circle of space areas and return. Then, the current player is "scrying" 3 cards from crisis or destination decks. The raptor in space becomes top-priority target of raiders. Isn't that more interesting than yet another "roll a die" effect?

Turning Raptors into "bombers" does sound somewhat appealing. Damaging a base star is kinda weak though. That's what Weapons Control and Main Batteries are for. And nukes. Making a Raptor on-board airborne and giving it an ability that is already covered by several other means is somewhat redundant.

I do like the overall idea of giving Raptors an on-board purpose though. Here are a some ideas I just came up with:

• Make Raptors pilotable and change the text in Command to include unmanned Raptors. If at least one Raptor is present in any space area, all Vipers in that same area gain +1 to their attack rolls. (Yes, against Raiders that doesn't change all that much. But against a base star it doubles the chance of doing damage and it makes blasting Heavy Raiders in space slightly easier.
• For every Raider icon on cirisis cards, Raiders will attack Raptors if no manned or unmanned Vipers are present. And they will attack manned Raptors before engaging unmanned Raptors, of course. Make Raptors "hittable" at 4-7 (damaged) and 8 (destroyed). With a Repair card you can repair 1 Raptor or 2 Vipers.
• Maximum Firepower does not do anything for Raptors. But Evasive Maneuvers work on Raptors the same way they work on Vipers.

Especially with the Exodus expansion this may work fairly well.

The downside is, of course, that there are only 4 Raptors. So if you lose too many, you're out of luck for crisis cards, Scouting skill cards and destination cards that call for a Raptor being risked. Tough luck!

Raptors should be out scanning the next jumps and effecting the jump effect cards. Looks like an area for expansion.

Madboyo said:

You mean like when you play Launch Scout?

Yes, I think that's what he means.

I don't know why but in my group we rarely use "Launch scout" skill cards. Maybe because we have our hands full doing other stuff. But even when we're idle after a jump and the game seems to slow down considerably, I rather throw 3 "Launch scout" into a skill check than 1 "Strategic planning". And the rest of the group treats this similarly. Maybe the human's haven't lost often enough to see "Launch scout" as such an important part of the game. I really can't tell.

I had a thought about launching raptors aswell. What if raptors were pilotable and moved the same as vipers. They would be targetable after vipers but before civilian ships.

If a raptor is in a sector when raiders are attacking, they aďd a +1 difficulty for raiders to hit. The effect also would not stack with multiple raptors. Maximum difficulty would also be 8. They would have to use an action to activate their sensor scramblung aswell to make this difficult.

Makes launching raptors fun and makes sense fluff wise. Is this unbalanced?