I like the idea of representing the really big ships as the playing field. So I started thinking about what all I would need to do this. I came up with a list. Actually, more accurately, I compiled parts of the list from what has already transpired in other topics, and added in my two cents. I pretty much winged the values, they aren't play-tested or anything. You can throw in your opinions and suggestions about that. But what’s really important at this point is identifying the different components of a capital ship and figuring out what their effects might be in the game.

New Actions:

Command - Grant any component on the same ship a free action, remove a stress token from it or raise its pilot rating to that of the commanding component for the rest of the round.

Generate Shields - Roll two defense dice. Each evade result adds a shield token to the generating component. The component may not exceed its starting number of shields.

Land Ship - A component may use this action to land any ship that will fit within the component. Only ships that are overlapping the component at the time of the component’s action may be affected in such a manner. Ships within the component do not move, perform actions or fire. Note that if an enemy ship is landed in this manner, it is effectively captured. Only one ship can be landed within a bay at a time. If a component containing any ships within is destroyed, any ships in it are also destroyed. Landed ships have all stress tokens removed from them.

Launch Ship - One of the ships contained in a component may be placed on the board, overlapping the component that it came from. This launched ship does not get a move or action this turn, but may participate in the combat phase. A ship may not be launched from a component while any other ship is overlapping it.

Reload Missile - Roll one defense die. On a result of evade, select one missile upgrade card with which to equip this component. The component may not gain a new missile while it already has one.

Reload Ship - Add one missile or torpedo upgrade card to a ship in the landing bay. Each must be paid for from the components upgrade point pool, and only ships that can

Carry the upgrades can be outfitted.

Repair Ship - Roll one defense die. On an evade result, repair one hull of a damaged ship within the component.

Replenish Shields - The replenishing component may transfer as many shield tokens as desired from any one shield generator within range 3. A component’s shields may not be raised above the original starting value.

Transfer Lock - Transfer to any other component on the same ship that has the target lock ability this component's target lock.

The Offensive Components:

Turbo Laser Battery

Move Dial: Green 0 move, white 45 degree pivot, red 90 degree pivot.

Firing Arc: Standard 90 degree forward facing firing arc.

Range: 2 - 6. When targeting small ships, those ships gain the range in bonus defensive dice (in place of 1 die at range 3). When targeting large ships, those ships gain the range - 1 in bonus defensive dice (again, in place of normal range modifiers). Capital ships gain a single defensive die when attacked at range 6.

Size: Small Base Miniature. Treat as a ship for collision purposes.

Pilot Skill: Green 1, Regular 3 and Elite 5.

Strength: 4. Each un-cancelled damage or critical that hits a non-capital ship deals one additional damage.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 3.

Shields: 5.

Actions: Focus, Replenish Shields and Target Lock.

Notes: Any components represented by miniatures on this ship will obstruct line of fire to enemy ships, adding a defense die against attacks.

Cost: Green 14, Regular 16 and Elite 18.

Ion Turret

Move Dial: White 0 move.

Firing Arc: 360 degree firing arc.

Range: 1 - 2.

Size: Small Base Miniature. Treat as a ship for collision purposes.

Pilot Skill: Green 1, Regular 3 and Elite 5.

Strength: 3. As ion turret upgrade card.

Agility : 0.

Hull: 2.

Shields: 3.

Actions: Focus, Replenish Shields and Target Lock.

Notes: Any components represented by miniatures on this ship will obstruct line of fire to enemy ships, adding a defense die against attacks.

Cost: Green 7, Regular 9 and Elite 11.

Close Defense Turret

Move Dial: White 0 move.

Firing Arc: 360 degree firing arc.

Range: 1 - 2.

Size: Small Base Miniature. Treat as a ship for collision purposes, except close defense turret may attack the overlapping ship.

Pilot Skill: Green 1, Regular 3 and Elite 5.

Strength: 2.

Agility : 0.

Hull: 2.

Shields: 3.

Actions: Focus, Replenish Shields and Target Lock.

Notes: Any components represented by miniatures on this ship will obstruct line of fire to enemy ships, adding a defense die against attacks.

Cost: Green 7, Regular 9 and Elite 11.

Missile Launcher

Move Dial: Green 0 move, white 45 degree pivot, red 90 degree pivot.

Firing Arc: Standard 90 degree forward facing firing arc.

Range: As missile type.

Size: Small Base Miniature. Treat as a ship for collision purposes.

Pilot Skill: Green 1, Regular 3 and Elite 5.

Strength: As missile type. This is considered a secondary weapon attack.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 3.

Shields: 5.

Actions: Focus, Reload Missile, Replenish Shields and Target Lock.

Notes: Any components represented by miniatures on this ship will obstruct line of fire to enemy ships, adding a defense die against attacks.

Cost: Green 14, Regular 16 and Elite 18.

Tractor Beam

Move Dial: White zero move.

Firing Arc: 360 degree firing arc.

Range: 1 - 3.

Size: Small Base Token. Ignore for collision purposes.

Pilot Skill: 0.

Strength: 3. The number of un-cancelled hits or criticals determines the maximum range (in move template dimensions) that the tractored ship can be moved from its current location, up to a max of three. The facing of tractored small ships may also be changed. Larger ships can only be moved half the un-cancelled hits rounded down and their facing is not changed. If the target ship is hit, it receives a stress token. If more than one tractor beam can hit a particular ship, their strengths can be combined to perform a single attack against that ship.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 2.

Shields: 3.

Actions: Focus, Replenish Shields and Target Lock.

Notes: Any components represented by miniatures on this ship will obstruct line of fire to enemy ships, adding a defense die against attacks.

Cost: 10.

Support Components:

Launch Tube

Move Dial: White zero move.

Firing Arc: None.

Range: 0.

Size: Small Base Token. Ignore for collision purposes, but overlapping ships prevent launches.

Pilot Skill: 0.

Strength: 0.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 3.

Shields: 3.

Actions: Launch Ship and Replenish Shields.

Notes: Launch Tubes may only contain small ships. When a launch tube is destroyed, all ships contained by it are also destroyed.

Cost: Launch tubes don’t cost anything. But they do provide a 2 pt discount for each ship they contain. A launch tube must start the game with at least three ships in it.

Landing Bay

Move Dial: White zero move.

Firing Arc: None.

Range: 0.

Size: Varied Token. Ignore for collision purposes, but overlapping ships prevent launches. Only ships of the landing bay size or smaller may land and take advantage of the actions it has to offer.

Pilot Skill: 0.

Strength: 0.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 3.

Shields: 3.

Actions: Land Ship, Launch Ship, Reload Ship, Repair Ship and Replenish Shields.

Notes: Launch Tubes may only contain small ships. When a launch tube is destroyed, all ships contained by it are also destroyed.

Cost: Small Ship Size 8, Large Ship Size 12, Capital Ship Size 16 plus 1 additional point per 2 upgrade points placed in the reload ship point pool (use focus tokens or other markers to represent this pool on the Landing Bay card)

Shield Generator

Move Dial: White zero move.

Firing Arc: None.

Range: 0.

Size: Large Base Token. Ignore for collision purposes.

Pilot Skill: 0.

Strength: 0.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 5.

Shields: 5.

Actions: Generate Shields and Replenish Shields.

Cost: 15

Sensor Array

Move Dial: Green 0 move, white 45 degree pivot, red 90 degree pivot.

Firing Arc: Standard 90 degree forward facing firing arc.

Range: Unlimited.

Size: Small Base Miniature. Treat as an obstacle for collision purposes, but the sensor array receives the same damage as the colliding ship. A sensor array cannot take actions while a ship is touching it.

Pilot Skill: 0.

Strength: 0.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 5.

Shields: 5.

Actions: Target Lock, Transfer Lock, Replenish Shields.

Notes: A sensor array may target lock a ship at any range as long as it is within its firing arc.

Cost: 10

Bridge

Move Dial: White 0 move.

Firing Arc: None.

Range: Entire Ship.

Size: Large Base Miniature. Treat as an obstacle for collision purposes, but the bridge receives the same damage as the colliding ship. A bridge cannot take actions while a ship is touching it.

Pilot Skill: 8.

Strength: 0.

Agility: 0.

Hull: 5.

Shields: 5.

Actions: Command and Replenish Shields.

Cost: 10

The tractor beams and landing bay give a means to capture ships.

Replenish shields allows for some flexibility in how the shields work for the entire ship.

The individual components still need dials, to show when the moved (and more importantly when the performed their action).

Landing bays and missile launchers offer the potential to re-arm consumable secondary weapons at a discounted cost, but at a very real cost of turns and / or positioning in the game. They can also be targeted so that the capital ship player may never see these discounts.

Components such as bridges and Turbo Laser Batteries lend themselves easily to scenario objectives.

Allowing different levels of pilot skill for offensive components helps to defend against swarms a little better, while rarely impacting unique pilots.

How these are laid out on the map matters, and either could be done strategically for the scenario or predetermined to best represent the layout of a given ship.

Points, which will need a lot of work to get balanced, can be used to determine what a fair opposing force should be. This is probably the hardest part of the whole thing.

Very interesting work up here.

Have you tested it for balance?

Very interesting work up here.

Have you tested it for balance?

Not at all. That's the hard part. I'd say the biggest problem is trying to come up with reasonable point costs for everything. It's hard enough to get someone to play a regular game, let alone test something like this.

I'd love to hear other's opinions on the points here.

Otherwise it look fairly clean and fun.

Lots of potential here. I really like what you've done to bring it together. I can't comment as to the balance or points, but thematically it sounds incredible.

Agreed. Really good stuff. The one thing I see that seems questionable is the combining of attacks for tractor beams. Granted, this may not happen all the time, but if I've got 2 tractor beams in range of a ship, that's 6 dice, practically guarantee I can drag that ship all over the place. And then do it again the next turn. And the next turn... unless you roll VERY poorly or the enemy ship is very fast, it could easily be trapped forever. I realize this happened in the movies, but it does not seem fun if it keeps happening!

Maybe instead, two or more tractor beams firing at the same time simply bring the total attack value up to 4?

I've used something similar with my smaller game group. The biggest difference is that the maps are mission based. We have a Death Star surface and a star destroyer bridge. The star destroyer is the better of the two missions.

Something I am learning from mission play is that swarms are dominant. However, rebels have an advantage in mission play.

Agreed. Really good stuff. The one thing I see that seems questionable is the combining of attacks for tractor beams. Granted, this may not happen all the time, but if I've got 2 tractor beams in range of a ship, that's 6 dice, practically guarantee I can drag that ship all over the place. And then do it again the next turn. And the next turn... unless you roll VERY poorly or the enemy ship is very fast, it could easily be trapped forever. I realize this happened in the movies, but it does not seem fun if it keeps happening!

Maybe instead, two or more tractor beams firing at the same time simply bring the total attack value up to 4?

OK, rethink time.

I kind of like the trapping idea, but I have to agree that moving a ship 5 might be a bit much.

But there is another issue here I'd also like to address. The intent was for the tractor beams to impeded movement and slowly drag a ship to a landing bay for capture or a highly disadvantageous location for combat. The way things are now, the next time the ship gets to activate, it's right back out of there. And, because the tractor beam has a PS 0, it won't be moving the ship until just about all other combat has already been resolved, so putting it the middle of a ring of ships isn't going to matter for this round. The only caveat to this is that at the end of the combat phase, the tractor beams could have placed a ship on a landing bay. That landing bay will be moving close to first the next activation phase, where it can perform its action of land ship, which will capture it.

How about this:

If a ship that has been target locked by a tractor beam is in range of it, when it reveals its move dial an attack roll is performed. The tractor beam gets its attack dice and the ship gets a number of defense dice equal to the move speed on it's planned maneuver. If the ship is not hit, the target lock is removed and it moves as normal. If the ship is hit by the tractor beam attack, it gets displaced one move distance for each hit the tractor beam landed. If multiple tractor beams have a lock on a single ship, they all resolve their attacks independently, and the ship must break free of all of them in order to be able to perform its move

Also, whenever a target lock is acquired by a tractor beam on a ship that is within its range, that ship receives a stress token. This is nasty, because in some cases that will eliminate the possibility for higher numbered moves.

I like this better, as it allows tractor beams a chance to eliminate movement of the ship that can't break free. It also allows a ship to fight the tractor beam by gunning the engines.

I think i'd also reduce the range of a tractor beam to 1 - 2, and say that it can only move the ship within its radius of influence regardless of the distance dictated by the dice results.

Lastly, one more thing a ship can do to escape a tractor beam is to target it and destroy it in combat.

Thoughts?

One idea I would like to float out there is the use of protons/missiles and how they would interact with a capital ship.

I'm sure most would agree that getting a proton/missile shot off against a target yields little to no damage. Its usually the first volley and so hits shields, which have yet to be taken down by primary weapon fire, but this is mainly due to range and not wanting to have a ship destroyed while still holding onto its payload.

The roll dice to hit is countered by rolls for defence based on agility/maneuverability, which makes sense in a weaving and dodging small fighter dogfight. But against a ship that moves relatively slow to a fighter, and would fill up the entire field of view, I think missiles/protons would and should do more damage against capital targets.

How it would work is that when a missile/proton is fired against a capital ship, the attacker rolls no damage but instead would assign hits equal to the number of dice rolled. So, a proton, with four dice to roll for an attack, would yield four hits. the capital ship would then use its defence dice to reduce the hits (or armour as this would be the logical defence for a capital ship)

Making missiles/protons assign rather than roll makes capital ship runs more reliant on bombers and those ships that could carry the heavy ordinance. Y-wings, Tie Advanced, Tie Bombers would suddenly shoot up in value as their role becomes more appropriate to their function. Missiles and protons would then be worth it to outfit when you could be dealing with a target that has 10-20 shields, 20-30 hull and possibly armour or maybe even more.

Just picture how long it would take to reduce 20 shields if you had to roll on every shot, taking one or two hits off per ship firing. Now picture taking 4-5 hits off per hit and suddenly those bombers become a threat to that capital ship, like they should be.

I'd like a play area to be the hull of a Super Star Destroyer. It's cavernous in its own right.

One idea I would like to float out there is the use of protons/missiles and how they would interact with a capital ship.

I'm sure most would agree that getting a proton/missile shot off against a target yields little to no damage. Its usually the first volley and so hits shields, which have yet to be taken down by primary weapon fire, but this is mainly due to range and not wanting to have a ship destroyed while still holding onto its payload.

The roll dice to hit is countered by rolls for defence based on agility/maneuverability, which makes sense in a weaving and dodging small fighter dogfight. But against a ship that moves relatively slow to a fighter, and would fill up the entire field of view, I think missiles/protons would and should do more damage against capital targets.

How it would work is that when a missile/proton is fired against a capital ship, the attacker rolls no damage but instead would assign hits equal to the number of dice rolled. So, a proton, with four dice to roll for an attack, would yield four hits. the capital ship would then use its defence dice to reduce the hits (or armour as this would be the logical defence for a capital ship)

Making missiles/protons assign rather than roll makes capital ship runs more reliant on bombers and those ships that could carry the heavy ordinance. Y-wings, Tie Advanced, Tie Bombers would suddenly shoot up in value as their role becomes more appropriate to their function. Missiles and protons would then be worth it to outfit when you could be dealing with a target that has 10-20 shields, 20-30 hull and possibly armour or maybe even more.

Just picture how long it would take to reduce 20 shields if you had to roll on every shot, taking one or two hits off per ship firing. Now picture taking 4-5 hits off per hit and suddenly those bombers become a threat to that capital ship, like they should be.

I agree.

I gave all the components an Agility of zero, along the same lines. But letting PT's do max would be good too. Of even dealing doj le damage. It gives the attack force reason to carry these things and really supports some cool scenarios.

We're getting closer to the intent I was after, having squads really have to concentrate fire-power to bleed off excess sheilding before the components start getting destroyed. But the values I assigned for shields an hull might be to low considerig the total lack of defensive dice. I'm guessing shield generators need a few more dice for replenishing the shield pool as well.

are you going to put your finished you can put then on a shared Google Doc's document or something like that?

Not until I've got something worth sharing. There are some good ideas here, but I'm not sure this is quite playable yet.

I gave all the components an Agility of zero, along the same lines. But letting PT's do max would be good too. Of even dealing doj le damage. It gives the attack force reason to carry these things and really supports some cool scenarios.

We're getting closer to the intent I was after, having squads really have to concentrate fire-power to bleed off excess sheilding before the components start getting destroyed. But the values I assigned for shields an hull might be to low considerig the total lack of defensive dice. I'm guessing shield generators need a few more dice for replenishing the shield pool as well.

It's similar to how the ST game deals with Capital ships, low agility, shields that regen. So it seems a good way to go.

How about a D6 for damage, for torpedos with a concurrent re-roll on 6's (role a 6 re-roll and add to score) to simulate hitting a critcal system and forming a cascade reaction, ala Death Star?