All I care about right now to determine how into this i can get (beyond the fact i am already buying it) is the scale. how big are they? I REALLY want to be able to use LOTS of them on a table, but if they are any larger than the WoW planes, my interest goes down sharply.

I saw they will be releasing other fighters later, how about frigates? Do i see the Falcon coming to save Luke from Vader?

I'm the Scale Dog!!

But, we have no idea yet. It'd be easy to straphang ships like the Falcon or Outrider into this game, but no clue as to whether FFG will try to make this an Everything Goes game as WotC tried to do, or will keep it down to basically starfighter scale and thus allow everything to fit together physically.

I would GUESS that the fighters will be roughly a normal minis size, 1.5" to 2" long. When the game actually comes out, if they're smaller that would suggest they plan to branch out into big ships later on; if they're bigger than 2"? Would be an odd choice, and kind of a bad one in my opinion. We'll have to wait and see.

I am thinking we will see something really similar is play style and scale to Wings of War.

Very possible, as it's an established rules system and, so far as I know, reasonably successful.

Don't they sell (air)ships individually as "boosters?" Like, one Fokker DVII in a box?

IG-58 said:

Yes, they do.

I hope capital ships will make an appearance. Not the local bulk cruisers, mind you. I'm talking about the big Corellian ships, now.

Bring on the Star Destroyers!!!

Starfighter combat in SW pretty much needs Capital Ships, as the Empire's many fighters, TIEs, lack hyperdrive so launch from bases or carrier type vessels.

Of course the emphasis maybe on dog-fights to start with, however surely Star Destroyers can't be far behind ... and the Falcon! Surely the Falcon has to be in any starfighter combat game set in the SW universe?

Could do two scales.

One at the Capital Ship level, and one at the Dogfight level.

This would please all involved.

At the Capital Ship level fighters would be represented on a Squadron level, think something like the Demonswarm mini.

That would let you have the massive fleet battles, but also let you focus on individual players in their fighters if you want.

Yeti1775 said:

That'd be cool, yes I can see that working LOL I suppose it's all up in the air until we hear more news

Desperate to hear what their plans are for the RPG

I like Yeti's idea for two different scales. But how will they sell them, in two different sets? What about unique ships like Luke and Wedge's x-wing or Soontir Fel's 181st tie fighter squadron?

Mainly I just want them to stick with 1" squares as a base unit.

That was one thing I disliked about WotC's Ship mat.

Yeti1775 said:

I thought Wizards' mat did use 1" squares. Not true?

Anyway it already sounds like they'll be using a movement system similar to existing miniatures games (i.e. distance-based, not grid-based).

Anyone remember Star Warriors by West End Games?

Back in 87 (or was it 88?), WEG release a starfighter combat game that could be used on its own or in conjunction with the then SW RPG. It was counters on a hex grid map rather than minis (although that didn't stop me trying to use Micro Machines SW ships with the rules in the early 90s).

Now each starfighter was one counter that fit on one hex off the map grid, the same for the Falcon and Slave 1 too, however Star Destroyers covered about 7 or 8 hexes on the map grid (bigger but not so huge to ruin the game).

of course the space represented by one grid hex was much bigger than the area a single TIE or X-Wing took up, but each hex represented the distance a ship could cover relative to other ships of different speeds, it;s only the ISD that actually was as big as the hexes it took up.

Something like Star Warriors only with minis would be excellent.

I would love to see capital ships, but the size difference between them and fighters or smaller ships seems like they might almost serve better as large terrain features.

Oh my God, it's the Starship Battles discussion all over again!! Ah, goodness. Not too many folks were really happy with the way THAT one turned out, so I'm hoping the same general scaling decisions aren't made for X-wing.

MY vote is that they stick with small-scale ship combat. Dunno how much my "vote" counts , of course!

IG-58 said:

I'd say about 6.4 or so.

I gotta have capital ships eventually... someday... somehow... somewhere... (cue West Side Story music).

But yes, the scale issue is a problem. I just wanna duck into an asteroid field, while my opponent tries to decide if pursuing me is worth the bashing his Star Destroyer is taking.

pocoyo_joe said:

Yep, remember it, played it to death, been thinking of trying to recreate it with Micro machines, or Hasbro/WotC ships, but if FF brings something similar out, I'm totally getting it.

Thinking about it, yes, Star Warriors with updated rules and miniatures would be awesome.

Laffe said:

Yes I played Star Warriors over and over especially when I was still in college (89-92), Star Warriors (and the WEG SW RPG) helped cure of my Squad Leader phase LOL

It was amazing how many hours of joy we got out of that Star Warriors box, endless space battle and a brilliant companion to the RPG.

One of my older cousins was into D&D and got me into it somewhat, but my Kenner SW toys still had a stronger lure, but when WEG brought out Star Warriors and SW RPG I was all over them. I could have the fun D&D offer me but better because it was Star Wars.

Also did any of you chaps use your old Kenner figures while gaming the WEG SW RPG? Happy days!

pocoyo_joe said:

We used Kenner Star War figs playing D&D back in the 80s. We needed props and my D&D buddy had the entire collection of SW figs up to that time.

IG-58 said:

This was always my issue with Starship Battles. I think FFG could take it up to Falcon size ships while keeping the scale but after that it seems to get silly when you see an out of scale star destroyer. I actually like the idea of keeping the scale true. If they really wanted to have a SD fielded then maybe it could be the map and you would get plastic components you could place on it that could be destroyed and if critical the SD is ultimately destroyed. Same could go for the Death Star or any other capital ship. Maybe you could field mutliple types of these maps and join them together while the smaller ship buzz around e.g. have the SD map central and then maybe some Frigates around/joined to it attacking it. The Frigates etc could be smaller size maps and have the plastic components etc so the big ships could also fight it out ummm sounds complicated maybe but could work I guess.

Scale isn't important, its not going to kill and ruin the game just because a Star Destroyer is only 4 times bigger than a X-wing.

Eeeenhh... it kind of wrecks it for me .

I'm with Chimaera, I'd rather the scales stay true and we don't see anything much bigger than the Millenium Falcon. Plenty of fun to be had at starfighter scale.

Truthfully I want to get miniatures for playing an actual battle game (rather than a dogfight game). If done as the same scale that dream would just be... impractical. I don't mind fighters and larger ships being out of scale, as long as they are to scale within their type (ie, starfighters are all to scale to each other etc). For larger scale fights each figure just represents a squadron or flight. If they don't produce reasonable miniatures for larger ships I feel they will really be missing out on a potential market (but I don't think they will fit in for X-Wing. Either producing them just for their own sake, or producing another game entirely seems more likely).

I. J. Thompson said:

Asteroids do not concern me, Admiral. I want that ship.