After seeing the excellent Naboo N-1 starfighter post ( http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/92707-my-n-1-starfighter-cards-i-made/ ) this got me over thinknig about their opponent the Vulture Droid.

First, here are some of my ideas for representing droid-controlled ships:

• Pilot Skill should be low, possibly even 0.
• No Focus or Evade actions as these mainly represent reflexes and skill.
• Stress inducing maneuvers have less affect on a droid. This could be represented by them ignoring stress from red maneuvers or their maneuver dial could have modified maneuvers (ie: white K-turn).
• Certain critical hits should have no effect on them, basically the ones with the Pilot trait. This would mean that all droid-controlled ships effectively have the skill " Determination ".
• Another way of showing that they are capable of radical maneuvers would also be to give them the " Advanced Sensors " rule to allow them to perform their action before their move.
• Ion weapons should have a greater affect on them. Possibly rewording the effects of the ion rules to read "If this attack hits, the droid defender suffers 1 critical hit and receives 1 ion token and 1 stress token. This sort of represents damage to their electronic "brain". If a critical with the Pilot trait is picked then it would be placed face down due to their artificial " Determination ". The stress token acts as an action denial feature and reflects the damage to their system slowly recovering.
• Their primary weapons could be limited to range 1-2 to reflect some of their limited awareness compared with living pilots.
• If a missile system was available then perhaps a Target Lock action is acceptable but maybe the droid can only use Target Locks for "secondary weapons".

Looking specifically at the Vulture Droid for possible stats (based on Wookiepedia entry):

PS 0

Attack 3 (has 4 blaster cannons)

Defense 3 (highly maneuverable)

Hull 2 (it is small)

Shields 0

Actions: Barrel Roll

Upgrades: Missile?

How does this compare with a TIE Fighter? Initially the Vulture Droid looks like it could prove to be more powerful than the TIE. At range 1 it has an attack of 4... but lacking Focus this produces only an average of 2 hits. The TIE Fighter at range 1 would roll 2.25 hits with Focus. Likewise the high defense score of the droid only reliable should stop 1 hit against it. The TIE wins here with either Focus and/or Evade action. The key advantage for living opponents however is that they all should be able to shoot it first.

The missile option is a bit of a "blank" space. There are possible "droid only" options for "energy torpedoes" or "buzz droid discord missiles". These could have novel effects.

What sort of points value should it have? Do we want to have a swarm of 10 or 11 of these for 100 points? I think around 9 to 11 points would be a good target.

I also appreciate that there is another topic on Droid Fighters that has some excellent points as well.

This is actually really interesting. With such a low hull, the inability to focus, it's interesting to imagine how a swarm may work.

Range 1-3 on weapons still. These things fought a war for a reason- they were no slouches in combat. However, there should only be one instance in which they receive a stress token, and that'd be an ion cannon, because the droid brain would effectively, be stressed. Unable to function properly.

Perhaps Buzz Droids (and I really hated those in the movie... just too **** silly for my likes...) could work a little like Ion Cannons. Something like...

"If the weapon hits, target draws 1 Critical and a Stress token". Cost = 4-6 points

This would be simple, work within the rules (or reasonably so) and would not be over powering.

Thoughts?

Chris Maes

I've written up a bunch of prequel ships with my friends. We tried to avoid any special rules or circumstances and represent everything through stock cards and upgrades. Essentially, all droid ships have a System Upgrade slot and Target Lock, but never have Focus. For the Vulture Droid, we used:

Firepower: 3

Agility: 3

Hull: 2

Shields: 0

The pilots we made are:

Mk. I Droid Brain (Battle of Naboo)

PS 1

Action Bar: Target Lock, Barrel Roll

Upgrade Bar: System Upgrade, Torpedo

11 Points

Mk. II Droid Brain (Early Clone Wars)

PS 3

Action Bar: Target Lock, Barrel Roll, Evade

Upgrade Bar: System Upgrade, Missile

14 Points

Separatist Pilot (Post-War Holdouts jury-rigged for biological pilots)

PS 4

Action Bar: Target Lock, Focus, Evade

Upgrade Bar: Elite Pilot Talent, Missile

15 Points

Mk. III Droid Brain (Late Clone Wars)

PS 5

Action Bar: Target Lock, Barrel Roll, Evade

Upgrade Bar: Elite Pilot Talent, System Upgrade, Missile

16 Points

Joker Two: Those stats show good progression throught the period, I am not familiar with all the Clone War stuff but they all make sense.

Chris: Yes buzz droids are weird, your idea is cool and represents the droids tearing off bits of the target ship nicely. Possibly only an attack strength of 2, and maybe converting "focus" results to hits to represent the buzz droids "seeking" their target once deployed.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/92400-new-custom-pilot-crew-cards/

We talked about Tie/Droids on this thread. It was a good talk.

Yeah. Can we get a droid card post stickied and compiled... there have been a lot of conversations!

A nice addition from this one that I hadn't seen before was the idea that an Ion token = a stress token on a droid. I like that. Means you can't have them just discard stress tokens and would have to do something special with the maneuver dials. Of course we could also just add gold maneuvers (no...just no). They could treat all red as white maneuvers and still gain stress other ways and shed stress.

I really like the droid ship being immune to regular stress but having no option for focus due to it's program. Inversely, I wonder if a Jedi starfighter would have an auto focus similar to Luke and Poe but one step further. Be interesting to see how Players still around a high PS with one shield and two hull with Astromech ship.

Just a thought.

I'm just listening to Lords of the Sith and this is kind of cool. The Twi'lek Rebels re-purposed a bunch of these to fight in that book, so I think it can be used for both Rebel and Scum factions in current timeline.

I do like the idea of different PS to represent different modes. I'm not sure about the upgrade ideas, but then again, I'm not against it.

I like the idea of sticking as close to the standard game as possible for variants. For example, I think there can be a crit to a droid system that glitches it that can explain any of the pilot criticals. Also, with only 2 hull, will it last that long?

I think Stress can just be that it's difficult to do some maneuvers and still get to have your targeting system get a lock on someone. I mean, IG-88 gets stressed just like normal. It can just be too much input for the system to take.

I do wonder about 2 hull, though.

For relatively small, swarmy ships like this I often feel like they'd be better represented by a large base with 3 ships on the stand, like an Armada squadron.

I'd therefore look at making their stats variable depending on the amount of damage cards taken, e.g.:

Vulture Droid Squadron:

Attack 4
Agility 1
Hull 3
Shield 0

For each damage card on this ship, reduce its attack by one, and increase its agility by one.

Maybe give it a special shield upgrade that says 'add one shield. Each time you take a damage card, regain one shield up to your maximum shield value (i.e. alternate shields and hull for damage).

I'd like to see that schema for things like vulture droids, Aethersprites, N1s, Actis, etc etc.

Unique characters would be the dude leading the little squad, and would obviously be the last one to die so they'd retain their pilot ability until the ship exploded.

The design space for droid fighters has to be examined: are these for a Clone Wars era Seperatist faction or a Scum based civil war repurposing?

Personally, I think the latter is a better choice for inclusion and designing.

I think a small based ship is fine, maybe 2 attack, 3 agility, 2 hull and no shields.

Target Lock, Barrel Roll, and Evade actions.

Missile slot, System slot.

This expansion should also include at least TWO models. Perhaps a third different droid fighter.

There is a distinct lack of Elite talents, except on maybe an high pilot skill ace - a droid whose brain was never wiped.

The expansion needs to include a number of unique upgrades. Perhaps an illicit slot "Droid Control Brain" And corresponding "Remotely Controlled" title.

the remotely controlled card cannot be equipped on unique pilots. The functionality of these cards is that while the ship with the Droid Control Brain remains, all equipped ships can aid each other, by sharing target locks or not having to spend them if another ship is with a target lock is within range 1-2 of the brain - it makes them cheap missile ordnance carriers. Perhaps the Remotely Controlled should lower the pilot skill of the equipped ship.

Another upgrade included in the expansion should be swarm leader.

I came up with working stats and upgrades for 3-faction-generics for the vulture, hyena bomber and trifighter for my hotac campaign. Going to be an attack of the droids sort of scenario that has IG-88 taking over an abandoned trade federation droid foundry and producing a galaxy conquering army and starfleet In terms of statlines for the vultures, it changes from faction to faction, as I see the people that used these fighters probably willing to make some changes to the droids to better suit their specific uses. All droid fighters have a pilot skill of zero, but are generally cheaper than their living counterparts and have the ability to perform moves with the title no living pilot that no living pilot could ever hope to pull off. They also all have the ability to modify their pilot skill depending on certain criteria being met. With the vultures, it varies by the number of other vultures within range 1, encouraging the fielding of large swarms of fighters... But watch out for proton bombs!

If the vulture is designed to be swarmed out in vast numbers, then the tri-fighter is made to be deployed in (waddaya know) groups of 3. The interesting thing about these is that the respective factions that operated them after the clone wars customized them beyond their initial specs to be used for more specific purposes. The pyke syndicate used them as drug-runners, the alliance used them as unmanned escorts and the empire used them as discreet listening ships. They also carry over the adaptable pilot skill from the vultures, with them being able to boost up to 9 if flown in lockstep and hunter-killer tri-swarm presents an interesting alternative to No living pilot.

The Hyena is the only droid of the triad that doesn't alter its stats or cost or loadout from ship to ship and instead has the ability to modify its shield and pilot skill by the number of munition slots it has filled. The only one of the three that doesnt need other hyenas to make itself better.

I'm just going to put this out there, but droid ships don't have to follow the same action rules as other ships .

In a hypothetical world where the CIS and Republic are introduced as a fourth and fifth faction, imagine the separatist fleet being mostly arranged to two classes - you get standard pilots who would often be named characters, bounty hunters etc. (Assajj Ventress in her Ginivex, Cad Bane in the Xanadu Blood , General Grievous and his Magnaguards in Belbullab-22s, Geonosians in Nantex -classes, and so on), then you have your droid ships (Vultures, Hyenas, Tri-Fighters, etc.)

The standard pilots would have action bars as normal, but your droid ships would just have a 'Droid Control' symbol in place of any actions. Instead of taking actions as normal, you would have a special 'Droid Control' dial that you set at the start of your turn. The different symbols on the control dial would offer different benefits to your droid ships - this could be as simple as offering them a certain action that turn, or it could be more complicated.

• Synchonized Targeting Matrix - Until the end of the round, as long as you are at range 1 of another droid ship you may treat the "Attack (Target Lock):" header as "Attack". If an attack instructs you to spend a target lock, you may ignore that text.
• Defensive Subroutines - Until the end of the round, when defending you may change 1 of your opponents hit results to a blank result.

Or whatever. These are off the cuff and I haven't really considered the implications, but the point is that droid ships needn't be shackled to the same action system that our current pilots are, and it would be an interesting way to make the faction feel unique. You could even go right into Armada territory and require you to set the control dial for the next turn, and plan one step ahead with your droid ships.

Never mind. Post was made before screen refreshed.

This is a great idea!

It can take a page out of the U-Wing's book and have a dual-card title that represents it's two forms: starfighter and walking.

The Fighter Form can give it agility or barrel roll or something.

The Walking Form could allow it to overlap obstacles without penalty, since they'd be able to land on and walk across or swat away asteroids/debris pieces.

Also, it absolutely needs the EPT "Roger Roger!" that is Droid-Fighter Only .

I actually made some custom cards for droid fighters myself. You can check them out here if you want.

I really wish FFG would make some droid ships...

Cheap 3 atk swarm fighters who cant focus? Sounds like a great fit for Operation Specialist!

The Vulture Droid fighter as the next release a Dead horse ?

Then pray tell what is the XG-1 Assault Gunboat ?

On 31/10/2013 at 6:27 AM, DB Draft said:

After seeing the excellent Naboo N-1 starfighter post ( http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/92707-my-n-1-starfighter-cards-i-made/ ) this got me over thinknig about their opponent the Vulture Droid.

Hello!

Here is the Vulture I was working on. I hadn't release it complete yet because I'm struggling to find unique images for all upgrades.

I like the dual card like the U-Wing. If it is possible maybe they could do "walking" as an action when going in for a block. Low PS should allow that set up as a form of interception. "Landing" on another ship could allow for an attack while touching. The target ship couldn't return fire at that range but a friendly ship could pick off the droid fighter. Landing would reduce its agility BUT it would also treat the touching ship as an obstruction based on the location of the bases.