If the cardboard bases don't have a rear dotted line then how can you give the ship a rear arc??

it wouldn't work. Why? Because you wouldn't have arc guides to see if you can shoot a ship or not, or are you gonna guess? To me that would seem like arguments galore.

you can add 360 because there's no guides to follow, but I don't see how you can add rear arcs.

ForceM said:

Well said! Even if people only run 1 Lambda with Kagi and the hypotherical 5 point blaster turret you could still make a decent squad. First one I will play test once the dial movements are released would be simple and look something like

Lambda + Kagi + 5 point hypothetical blaster turret = 32

Howlrunner = 18

4x Tie Academy Pilots = 48

still gives you 2 points to give a couple of veteren instincts out or possibly another upgrade to the Lambda. I might switch a couple of academy pilots out for an Tie Advanced or Interceptor, but that is what maximising is all about.

This may or may not be a great build, but maximising a list is important for competition or non competition (I am assuming you mean tournament play). I play amongst friends and try to skip the tournament scene (to each their own). Since I've known most of these people for years, the last thing I want to do is come to play with a crappy squad and never hear the end of it. 27 points for The Kagi Lambda is very useful, adding a blaster turret almost makes it lethal. Hopefully their are no green movements outside of 1 or 2 forward and everything 3 and above is red otherwise this ship is possibly broken (my opinion).

The Lambda cards shown in the photos do not appear to have a Turret Upgrade icon option. So no Blaster Turrets for them.

Jim

The "blaster turret" value of 5 points is pure guess work on my part so don't read too much into that. The shuttle does not have a turret on the model.

The shuttle does not have the rear arc lines drawn in so I agree that the likelihood of an option card to represent a rear firing weapon is a non event.

The Slave 1 (if I am correct) can use their 3 Attack dice fore and aft, does this also mean it can fire it's HLC in both of these arcs? Regardless it is still a powerful attacking option on a mobile (albeit large) platform. Does a Shuttle with theoretical 1 rear defence die really compare?

The problem I am seeing people say is the cost of the shuttle, because people will be cramming in as many as they can or maxing out one. Do we really want to see 2 or 3 shuttles dogfighting each other? Yes it could look cool but should they really be considered the best "fighters", kind of goes against the support option if they are in a 1:1 ratio with their escorts.

I was just hoping that the stats for the ship would actually and accurately represent the shuttle's weapon systems which appear on the model. All it would have taken is a small card like an Ion Cannon or Mine Card to explain that the ship has 3 Attack dice in its forward primary arc and 1 Attack die in it's rear secondary arc. You use one or the other like any other ship.

I am just curious why everybody considers a 27 point shuttle WAY undercosted because it has 10 health, when the ORS is considered WAY overcosted at 27 points and has the same health…

The shuttle has 3 forward firepower, the ORS has 2 firepower for 360 degrees. The Lambda has PS 8, the ORS has 2 crew. I don't know, it doesn't really seem all that much different to me. Not enough to justify the wailing about how "undercosted" and "OP" the shuttle will be…

I would expect the Lambda shuttle to have a very restricted maneuver dial compared to the ships we have so far. I'd be surprised if the Lambda has anything over speed two, and only being capable of banking 1 or straight 1 wouldn't surprise me. It isn't supposed to handle like a fighter, after all. That could explain the apparent cost discrepancy.

Tp DBdraft and esmolinski, just to clarify and explain a few things:

Draft, auxiliary fire arcs are only for primary weapons, for example the Falcon can not shoot its missiles in 360 degrees either, it has to be in the front firing arc. So the Slave can fire the HLC only forward.

Also i didn't say the turret costed 5 points, i just thought someone had confirmed that (which was wrong) we know there is a blaster turret in the HWK booster pack, but we have no idea what it does or what it costs…

We also know that the shuttle seems pretty low costed for a ship of its size and its stats (goodfirepower and huge hitpoints). therefore people assume it must have a very bad manoeuver template, perhaps without a K-turn option. But again, this is speculation, everyone is trying to put the little info we have into context and make sense XD.

What we know is that the shuttle has no rear firing arc (because we would have seen it on the model), which is not really what fluff would make us believe. But for the low point cost teh shuttle has, it seems to make some sense that it has no rear arc, at least to me.

And by the way i would not like to see 4 shuttles slug it out with 4 other shuttles (rear arc or not), that would be awful… I think there should be no reward taking multiple shuttles, they should be support ships much like the HWK seems to be, that can not work on their own or in a spam list if you ask me.

I was the one who speculated that the cost of the blaster turret could be 5 points and I bet I am 100% correct plus or minus 3 points!

Thanks for clarifying the auxillary fire arc, I thought I was wrong about 2 minutes after writing it.

I kind of hope the shuttle doesn't have a K turn (but suspect it could…) but that again brings me to the point of it needing a rear defence to compensate for this. A slow turning ship without a rear defence seems to be the only "logical" conclusion to draw from the information we have to go on. This would mean you would need to keep it somewhere safe on the battlefield and have a dedicated escort portecting its rear, not a bad idea.

KineticOperator said:

first of all 2 and 3 firepower are way apart in this game, it is the difference between doing consistent damage and often doing no damage at all. Also much less options for the smuggler, no cannon, no support and both have 2 crew.

The most important thing might be that if Captain Kagi who seems to be the mid-tier pilot is 27, there will most certainly be an option below 25 points. This means 4 shuttles with 3 firepower and 10 hitpoints each on the table. Just saying, 4 X-Wings have the same firepower, one more agility but HALF the hitpoints. And whatever you do, you can only have 3 outer rim smugglers, not 4.

So what people are thinking is, where is the counterbalancing for 10 hitpoints and 3 attacks, there must be a catch to this. The Slave has the same, but it is a lot more expensive, and again you can only have 3 of them. If those shuttles have the same manoeuver templates as a fighter, they will have some serious advantage going for them.

And that is why people think that either their stats for the lower skill Pilots must be lower, or either they must manoeuver like a truck to compensate for the good stats.

Having no other arc to fire through except the front one is why the ship cost is low, that and the fact that the ship is a support ship.

try flying the firespray without using the rear arc and you'll see that it gets out matched quick, it becomes a big target to hit that can't fire back once you sneak up behind it or on the sides

if was more expensive then how would you be able to use it along with decked out ships?

Think about it, if the ship was at 30 then you only have 70 points to mess with. Adding the full support upgrades it need to make it viable and it can easily go for 40-50 PTS, that's half of the max slotted point.

i think the ship is balanced as is. I can deck the ship out and still have ebough points to be able to run a viable squadron along with it.

RAGE1073 said:

If i understand this correctly, all ships that have no additional fire arc is a support ship. Also a lot of ships have no rear arc and are still expensive…

The Firespray has a decent manoeuver dial, and it can fight very well even without a rear arc, it would just have to rely more on K-Turns. Also, of course it would be cheaper if it did'nt have the rear arc and if you could take more of them because they costed less they would be viable options too.

Fact is, you can take 4 X-Wings at 100 points. You can probably take 4 shuttles at 100 points. They have the same firepower, X-wings dodge slightly better, but at half the hitpoints i would bet my money on the shuttles, IF they don't have a much worse movement dial. This could not be what is intended. The X-Wing is a fighter and should win an outhright fight. Against a sluggish shuttle it has to have much better movement options if it has not much else going for it. The Shuttles are bigger, and this is at the same time an advantage and a disadvantage. They can block movement effectively and set up kill shots but of course they need to dodge asteroids more than smaller ships.

Conclusion is that a shuttle on its own must not be able to shake a fighter if it gets behind it. Ideally it would support the other ships defending it, make the fighter focus them and perhaps sometimes exploit mistakes or get a good kill shot through very good manoeuvering. It should not be easy to manoeuver with such firepower and hitpoints, or a shuttle spam list becomes really really powerful.

ForceM said:

Im talking about the ship according to its size

play a full game with a Firespray without using the rear arc and youll see how hard it is to keep it alive, regardless of maneuvers. its because of its size that its easier to hit.

i think people are overreacting a little to the cost. no complaining is going to change the cost, especially since weve yet to use them in battle. the people at FFG have given it that cost for a reason, well know if its ok as more info is released

ForceM said:

Whoops, my bad. I should have read that more carefully. I still think you can make a great squad using 1 Lambda and a bunch of swarming ties.