magadizer said:

I think people are getting the info from Board Game Geek, I can't find an official source either.

I think that is it then. If it was just said in an interview, then it may have just been the wrong word choice. Official press releases indicate that these are the large ships, as I have said.

Thanks!

I for one like the idea of "BIG" ships. I do agree with some of the arguements that big ships have powerfull lasers but seldom hit fighters. That could be resolved with rolling a dice to see if the attack activates, making an evade token being able to negate the activation roll, then rerolling to see if the attack resolves. I dont know if i explained it well but I think you get the picture.

At any rate I dont think "BIG" ships would take away from the game. For those that just want a skirmish battle system, simply dont play big ships. That is your option. Also you would have to consider the point value system. A big ship would probably be 100-150 points in itself. Even if it was at the low cost of 100 points that would allow you to field 8 tie fighters. 8 rolls vs. 1 roll (ok mabye 2-3 roll depending on the abilities of the ship but still) Compound that with making the "big ships a low inniative value.of 1 or 2. If those safeguards were set I think that you wouldnt see many of those being fielded, unless it was a 1000 point game.

I think there is room for the "BIG" ships. I also think that FF may find that star wars collectors simply buy the ships becasue of how they look. You really have a cross platform here. So I think that you will probably see bigger ships. If you dont like them, dont play them. Just let people know that you only play 100 point games or just squad fighting. Most gamming groups are ok with that anyway. I have never played a minature game that the players werent able to agree to the rules of the fight or the squad limits. Some people actually like the limitations because its different from what they normally play,and its fun. and lets face it, we play games to have fun.

I don't care if they make them. I agree, don't buy them. But in a game where movement is so important, how can you have a truly large ship and incorporate movement, without changing the scale of the big ship down, or making (in my judgment) playing fields that are untenably large for the miniatures?

I wouldn't want to see anything larger than a blockade runner. Maybe some play surfaces that add features from larger ships, like turrets and such, but any ship would need to be maneuverable enough to match the flavor of the game.

I've just picked up the Action Fleet blockade runner, it's a bit smaller scale than the X-wing models being about 7 inches long when it should be about 10 inches to be true to scale, but it looks right which is good enough.

I don't intend using it for anything other than specific scenarios so I don't need to worry about a points value. I was thinking of arming it with two ion cannons with a 180 arc to each side so there would be a channel to the front and rear with no arc of fire.

I was thinking along the lines of giving the ship 2 hit zones, engines and bridge. Engines would slow it down, more hits slower the ship gets, bridge, well system damage, random flight moves, loss of shoting a critical hit table of sorts with the possibility of a big bang, not what you want if your objective is to stop the ship and board it or capture it intact.

There's the escape from hoth scenario where each ship gets an x wing escort and tries to escape the table, how many can you get off the table in x turns then switch sides and do it again.

So I was thinking more about the big ship question, and this might be a viable option. Make it so the big ships only have 1 defense die and something like 20 health (15 shields +5 life) Big ships can't attack small ships; however, each time a small ship gets within 1 attack range of a big ship it automatically suffers 1 damage (nothing could block this damage). Small ships would always get the +1 attack die when attacking from range 1-3.

As for action: Only one action would be availabe; however, that action would be able to used twice. Big ships would have access to decoy drones as an action to block up to 2 damage in one turn (kind of like evade for the tie fighter) Gunner turrets which would allow a 360 arc of fire for up to 2 targets with 2 attack die (moddifiers for attack would apply as normal) and Tractor beam. This would pull a ship within 3 range 2 movement towards the ship. Direction of the ship would not change.

See if FFG was anything like Games Workshop, they would have a specialist store charging even more exorbitant prices for scale model Nebulon-B, Corellian Corvette, Star Destroyer, and other full-scale models to sate the strange desires for people to have capital ships for a dogfighting game no matter the cost.

While it would be neat to have full-scale ships so I can recreate my dreams of accurate TIE-Fighter/X-Wing mission recreations, I don't think they have a place in the game outside of very special occasions (convention scenarios for example). The most I'd expect out of FFG regarding capital ships is a PDF with suggested rules on how to run one of them. Someone made a Nebulon-B model on the Geek and instantly I started to think of how I could use that in a special scenario. On the other hand tracking all those turbolasers is going to be too much of a chore to enjoy it being in the game.

We could play with corvettes and dreadnauts.. if we placed them diagonally on the playspace!

Creating a separation between accuracy and damage could be handled by introducing a damage factor. For example, double or tripple all net hits. In return, since it's pretty hard to miss such a huge target, when shooting at a capital ship, all blanks might be considered hits (with the side effect that when using focus, you always score maximum hits, with only critical hits adding a bit of randomness). One might argue that not getting to roll any die in defense (and having no evade action) is already enough, though.

Still, it seems impossible to handle them as actual models. What I'd imagine is more of a longish cardboard token, showing a _part_ of the _edge_ of a SD or MonCal, maybe with some turbo laser tokens on top of it. Though with a SD you might want to go with the bridge and shield generators.

Optional game variants or rules could be about destroying the enemy capital ship, taking out turbo laser batteries or being able to return a damaged ship and after x turns start with a fresh ship (however with the same pilot). The trade off obviously being that while the pilot changes ships, he can't help defend his base ship.

It's a game that can be extended in a lot of ways, keeping the players happy with a constant supply of new material and the publisher with a constant stream of stuff to make money with.

It does bring up the question of how to do this without making them over powering.

Treating them like oversized fighters is one way (have it be just a number)

Another would to go with the idea that specific locations (weapons, engines, shield generators, power plants, and etc.) would each have their own hull rating, indicating a vulnerable spot, with the whole ship having a shield rating with a recharge rate (meaning that a ship could start off with 3 or 4, maybe 5 shields and can regenerate 1 or 2 per turn up to max). If you go for a nonvulnerable spot, then it'll just be hull rating of the ship in general (representing areas being more armored or not being very necessary for the ship to continue fighting).

This way it can be an interesting scenario.

Also, it would probably increase the chances of using the stands as a representation of how high or low a fighter is when compared to the larger ships.

What do you think?

I drafted up some "capital ship" rules. Really this is to handle in scale ships like the Corvette and my own home brew "Imperial Pursuant Class Corvette" (which is really just a Venator Star Destroyer model I am pretending is in scale with the fighters

Here's the document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TYr0R06MjOr-9CXVAdXyK97exi3dbBb9QgYdrNvfHJo/edit Hyper link: javascript:void(0);/*1351271594800*/ Feel free to test it out! If you have any feedback either post here or on the forum linked in the doc (I rarely check these forums so it might take me a while!)

WWPDSteven said:

Looks like you made a few changes after your first play test (I loved reading that AAR by the way).

My only concern would be the inclusion of Turbo Lasers and their ability to hit snub fighters. Turbo Lasers were typically used to engage other capital ships correct? And that they had issues hitting the smaller and more maneuverable fighters. With this in mind, wouldn't turbo lasers be near useless against anything smaller than a freighter?

It would be akin to trying to hit fighter planes with a battleships main guns i.e. too slow and not able to track targets fast enough. As far as I know most capital scale warships in star wars are equipped with laser cannons for AA duty so just finding the number of cannons on a venator or acclamator would probably work fine.

They can't reasonably make an Imperial Star Destroyer at this scale, and frankly, if they can't do that then other capitol ships just don't strike me as iconic enough to worry about. This *is* a dogfighting game and should remain that. It would be like asking them to make Aircraft Carriers for WoW when that was still in production. It's a whole seperate mechanic that would draw away from the entire point of the game. That being said, I hope we do see a Capitol ship game that takes into account how those vessels work, and perhaps we'll have little squadron minis of X-Wings and TIE Fighters.