So last weekend I finally played a game versus an imperial shuttle, 3 games actually by pure coincidence against two different players.

The first game was definitely a learning experience to see how they move and attack and so forth. I had to keep reminding myself that at anytime (without stress) they could do a 0 maneuver.

The first game ended with the shuttle as the last ship left on my opponent's side, and I had 2 of my 4 ships left I think so it was pretty easy to finish him off.

After seeing how weak a shuttle is on its own I made it my goal the next two games to save the shuttle for last if possible. I was able to do so and won all 3 games thanks to the shuttle being the last enemy ship remaining every time.

I was a bit leery about getting a shuttle already, and these games definitely haven't made me any more eager to get one. I'm more interested in the cards that come with them if anything. I know many people on here swear by them but I feel there's too big a risk involved if it ends up being your last ship remaining. At least with other ships you can k-turn, or have a turret, or both. The shuttle has neither and that's a big liability late in the game.

I'm not saying they are totally worthless, but they are the worst ship in the game IMO.

the shuttle is a pure support ship. iv owned one for months but have never played it due to its liabilities - mainly its clunky dial and lack of k-turn.

iv read about players using engine upgrade with some success and that makes sense to help it turn a bit faster when u get an enemy in behind you.

some other uses for the shuttle ive seen are:

1)giving target locks to friendly ships,

2)using vader crew card as a 'sacrificial lamb' strategy to ensure ur shuttle dies but also dishes out max possible damage with its early attacks,

3)using it as a blocker to do damage using anti-persuit lasers or using a more subtle crew card such as sabotuer or rebel captive.

To be 100% honest the main reason i bought the shuttle was for the upgrades (especially Advanced Sensors - which is a perfect fit for the B-Wing.

I've seen a few people be able to turn it into a fuctioning gunboat. My favorite variation is this:

Omicron Group Pilot

+ Fire-Control Systems

+ Gunner

+ Engine Upgrades

[32]

The Engine Upgrades give you the ability to put folks in your arc more often, but the true glory is in the other two upgrades.

FCS + Gunner works thusly:

Step 1: Attack.
Step 2: Gain a Target Lock on the defender. If Step 1 resulted in no damage, proceed to Step 3.
Step 3: Attack. You may spend the Target Lock gained from Step 2 for this attack.
Step 4: Gain a Target Lock on the defender, replacing the Target Lock gained in Step 2.

That is slightly more consistent than HSF, excepting the limited firing arc and the terrible maneuverability. Still though, very viable in casual games

(This build brought to you by SableGryphon, who will likely comment on this thread himself. Dude's a bit of a Shuttle Champion)

I'm just wating for Sable to swoop in and explain why the shuffle isn't as terrible as people think. I've played his magical space cow list before and it's not joke.

I was a bit leery about getting a shuttle already, and these games definitely haven't made me any more eager to get one. I'm more interested in the cards that come with them if anything.

You get it to own it, not play with it if you don't like the rule. It's an awesome mini makes a fine addition to any collection.

I'm yet to try out the semi decent version with engine upgrade, gunner and fcs, but it does look good in theory.

I've run one with Darth vader a few times and it does what you expect it to do, put crits on ships and die. Once the enemy are behind it, its generally done for, unless you plan for that and out manouver the enemies ships with your own

You will not get your points out of it until you take a few rides on the magic space bus. A well flown Vader's death shuttle or chainsaw shuttle will wreck your day.

Vader's death shuttle rely's on a few academy pilots and the stop maneuver to ensure that no matter if you decide to ignore it or not, it's going to deal at least 5 DMG, mostly crits, even if it never rolls a hit. At 24-27pts, no other ship can do that. I back mine with a mini howlrunner swarm and advanced sensors for TL/Focus. 3-4 dice with a howlrunner reroll and focus + 1 auto crit is no joke. Go ahead, joke about my great white space bison!

Chainsaw shuttle uses the aforementioned trick with FCS and gunner to put out similar damage but you REALLYYY have to know how to fly it and set it up. When done so it's scary good. I'll let Sable expound upon his Albino orbital Manatee of doom.

Weird, my name keeps being brought up in this thread for some reason.

I can't say much more that hasn't already been said. I regularly run a list of three shuttles with upgrades and nothing else. The list struggles against B-Wings, but against other lists, I've had more wins than losses. Its biggest asset is surprise, quite frankly. The first time you face off against my alabaster void cattle list, it's almost always a bad day. They'll catch you before you realize it, and they'll start chewing apart your ships. They're incredibly fast and they can soak a huge amount of damage. Extra evade dice tend to work against you during the first attack on a ship, since you'll more likely dodge than take one hit, then you've got 2-3 hits to evade instead of 1-2, which is not a trade you want to make. In arc, they are actually better than Han because they can choose to reroll only what they feel like instead of everything.

They work better in swarms, interestingly. One shuttle is alright, but three makes it incredibly hard to focus on one mystical interstellar minotaur as it zooms passed you, only to return just as you lose track of the next one. They work very well at blocking your craft to allow their herdmates to get brutal shots against you. Boost makes it easy to navigate asteroids because you get to premeasure that action. If you fit, great, if you don't fit, you can choose another action and know what not to do next round.

The shuttle, out of the box, isn't great. You put the right upgrades on it, it becomes the terror that moos in the night.

Buy it for the upgrades. If you ever run a Firespray recon specialist is godly, if you ever run Bwings, you need advanced sensors both of which im pretty sure only come with the shuttle. You could do like I am and use the model to practice painting

I'm not saying they are totally worthless, but they are the worst ship in the game IMO.

That seems to be the general consensus, there was a poll on boardgamegeek that showed that people generally considered the shuttle to be the worst ship. However, that consensus is wrong: the worst ship in the game by points (which is the only thing that matters) is absolutely the TIE Advanced, which is over costed by 2 points and, to the best of my knowledge, has never done consistently well in a high level competitive environment, anywhere.

The shuttle, by comparison, has at least two ways to utilize the Shuttle that work very well: Suicide Vader, and Doom Shuttle. Suicide Vader did very well on a Vassal tournament. Bottom line: the shuttle requires more advanced play and flying to use. A naked shuttle also isn't very good, although you can still use bumping shenanigans with Academy TIEs to keep it stationary for quite a while.

I agree totally there is a big differrence between the Advanced which is just overcosted and the Shuttle which has uses but is not a traditional fighther, so has to be used differently.

I personally have had decent success with Jendon backing up bombers with the ST-321 title. As long as the alpha strike hits hard enough, the enemy has enough issues that Jendon can slowly wheel around leasurely taking shots and handing out target locks and will largely be ignored. As long as you can hold onto your advantage you shouldn't really have to worry about the Shuttle being the last thing.

I like using Captain Yorr alongside 3 Interceptors with Elusiveness. That practically makes him the only ship they can hit!

I have 7 points left over: enough to turn Yorr into a Buzzsaw, but I think I prefer giving him a Rebel Captive and either a Flight Instructor or a Shield Upgrade, depending on which of the latter two give him the best survivability. (Has anyone crunched those numbers yet?)

I have 7 points left over: enough to turn Yorr into a Buzzsaw, but I think I prefer giving him a Rebel Captive and either a Flight Instructor or a Shield Upgrade, depending on which of the latter two give him the best survivability. (Has anyone crunched those numbers yet?)

Its not really a problem that lends itself to direct computation, since you don't know how many times you'll be able to use Flight Instructor. If you use Flight Instructor successfully once, then its obviously on par with the Shield Upgrade. That's a tough call with only one defense dice, although against PS2 ships you can reroll a blank or a focus, which increases your chances. I'm guessing that Flight Instructor will be better, since you do have 10 hull / shields to eat through. There is already precedence for crew slots to be much better than ship modifications on a point cost basis, i.e. Chewie is worth 8 points if you compare it to the shield upgrade, but he only costs 4.

I have 7 points left over: enough to turn Yorr into a Buzzsaw, but I think I prefer giving him a Rebel Captive and either a Flight Instructor or a Shield Upgrade, depending on which of the latter two give him the best survivability. (Has anyone crunched those numbers yet?)

Its not really a problem that lends itself to direct computation, since you don't know how many times you'll be able to use Flight Instructor. If you use Flight Instructor successfully once, then its obviously on par with the Shield Upgrade. That's a tough call with only one defense dice, although against PS2 ships you can reroll a blank or a focus, which increases your chances. I'm guessing that Flight Instructor will be better, since you do have 10 hull / shields to eat through. There is already precedence for crew slots to be much better than ship modifications on a point cost basis, i.e. Chewie is worth 8 points if you compare it to the shield upgrade, but he only costs 4.

The question, to me, is twofold, as Flight Instructor behaves in two different ways.

A

If you are flying against a fleet of ships whose pilots tend to have 2 or lower pilot skill, there will tend to be more ships shooting at you. In such an instance, you have a 3/8 chance of dodging 1 damage from each attack, with an additional re-roll 3/8s of the time, giving you 3/8+(3/8)^2 of dodging individual damage, per attack.

Can you expect the 9/64 odds of dodging from Flight Instructor to come up favorably at least once over the life of your 10 hull?

B

If you are flying against a fleet of ships whose pilots tend to have 3 or higher pilot skill, there will tend to be fewer ships shooting at you, which will tend to have increased damage. In such an instance, you have a 3/8 chance of dodging 1 damage from each attack, with an additional re-roll 2/8s of the time, giving you 3/8+3/8(2/8) of dodging individual damage per attack.

Can you expect the 3/32 odds of dodging from Flight Instructor to come up favorably at least once over the life of your 10 hull?

TL:DR

With a Flight Instructor, you will expect to roll an Evade result after everything's said and done 51.56% of the time against low leveled pilots, and 46.88% of the time against higher leveled pilots, versus the native 37.5% from having no upgrades. These are the numbers, though I haven't crunched them against expected damage dealt by theoretical attackers, which is the last step needed to find out.

Last time I brought it up we decided it wasn't worthwhile on a 1 agility ship.

Last time I brought it up we decided it wasn't worthwhile on a 1 agility ship.

That sounds familiar, as Flight Instructor is much better when multiple dice are in play. That being said, I wanna actually get the math in play

Your math is off for the first case, the pertinent number is 15/64, not 9/64.

Each die has 3 evades, 2 focus, and 3 blanks.

So you have a 3/8 chance of outright evading. Flight Instructor vs PS2 or lower lets you reroll blanks or focus. So you have a 3/8 + (5/8)*(3/8) = 3/8 + 15/64 = 39/64 = 60.94% chance of evading.

Flight Instructor is contributing 15/64 = 23.44% of a chance to evade just by itself, vs PS2.

So, the number to look at here is not 9/64, it's 15/64.

So, the question is: can you expect the 15/64 odds of Flight Instructor triggering and rerolling an evade at least once over the life of your 10 hull? It depends on the situation. The average number of evades that Flight Instructor will get you, is, on average, 15/64 times the number of times that you are being attacked (and at least 1 hit comes up). If you assume that 2 hits get through each time, on average, even after Flight Instructor, then you're dead in 5 attacks, and Flight Instructor gets you, on average, 5*15/64 = 1.17 evades.

B

If you are flying against a fleet of ships whose pilots tend to have 3 or higher pilot skill, there will tend to be fewer ships shooting at you, which will tend to have increased damage. In such an instance, you have a 3/8 chance of dodging 1 damage from each attack, with an additional re-roll 2/8s of the time, giving you 3/8+3/8(2/8) of dodging individual damage per attack.

Can you expect the 3/32 odds of dodging from Flight Instructor to come up favorably at least once over the life of your 10 hull?

Corrected summary or probabilities:

37.5% basic evade

46.88% evade with Flight Instructor vs PS3+ pilot

60.94 % evade with Flight Instructor vs PS2 pilot

Benefit specifically from Flight Instructor:

23.44% (additional % chance of Flight Instructor working vs PS2 ship)

9.38% (additional % chance of Flight Instructor working vs PS3+ ship)

If your opponent has all PS2 or lower, then Flight Instructor can be good. Against a mixed PS squad, you want to avoid his higher PS ships from being able to get shots on your shuttle. Against all higher PS ships, Flight Instructor isn't very good. It would be better on a Firespray, but I would generally favor Recon Specialist instead.

Last time I brought it up we decided it wasn't worthwhile on a 1 agility ship.

That sounds familiar, as Flight Instructor is much better when multiple dice are in play. That being said, I wanna actually get the math in play

That's a very open-ended problem, because it depends on how many attacks and of what types will the shuttle be subjected to.

Your math is off for the first case, the pertinent number is 15/64, not 9/64.

Flight Instructor vs PS2 or lower lets you reroll blanks or focus. So you have a 3/8 + (5/8)*(3/8) = 3/8 + 15/64 = 39/64 = 60.94% chance of evading.

Sorry mate. Flight Instructor says "...you may re-roll 1 of your blank results INSTEAD", so my math was the one that was right, there.

See my post in your other thread. Everything after "you may" is not applicable if you choose not to utilize it.

I don't know whose bright idea it was to give the shuttle 3 attack, putting it on par with all the heaviest hitters in the game. It's just a VIP transport ship! Meanwhile the HWK-90 gets 1 attack.

And the lambda seems undercosted as well, especially when you compare it to the Smuggler YT-1300, which is an utter waste of 27 points (and quite possibly the worst ship in the game).

I don't know whose bright idea it was to give the shuttle 3 attack, putting it on par with all the heaviest hitters in the game. It's just a VIP transport ship! Meanwhile the HWK-90 gets 1 attack.

And the lambda seems undercosted as well, especially when you compare it to the Smuggler YT-1300, which is an utter waste of 27 points (and quite possibly the worst ship in the game).

I'll take this point by point.

The VIP: Depending on the configuration, it might be considered that the game version is actually under-armed http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lambda-class_T-4a_shuttle

The HWK: It has the opportunity to buy a turret, which is the intent of the design. I think it is relatively well-balance for the points. Try it with an Ion turret for a cheap build.

Your last paragraph: Game balance isn't just about the number of attack dice (though they do play a role). T

his is a dogfighting game and maneuver matters greatly. The reason the Outer Rim Smuggler is good is that it has both a good dial and a 360 degree turret.

The Lambda is very hard to fly well. Against an agile opponent, it is difficult to get shots on target. Try making a U-turn with one after the first pass without hitting a rock.

Exactly this, the Lambda may have a good attack, but unless you are very lucky you are unlikely to get a decent shot off every couple of turns due to its dial (even if you give it engine upgrades, if you boost you can't focus or TL). Whereas it is very easy for a outer rim to fly in circles getting a shot every turn with TL or focus, and due to the dial it is very possible to get these shots at range 1.

Weird, my name keeps being brought up in this thread for some reason.

I can't say much more that hasn't already been said. I regularly run a list of three shuttles with upgrades and nothing else. The list struggles against B-Wings, but against other lists, I've had more wins than losses. Its biggest asset is surprise, quite frankly. The first time you face off against my alabaster void cattle list, it's almost always a bad day. They'll catch you before you realize it, and they'll start chewing apart your ships. They're incredibly fast and they can soak a huge amount of damage. Extra evade dice tend to work against you during the first attack on a ship, since you'll more likely dodge than take one hit, then you've got 2-3 hits to evade instead of 1-2, which is not a trade you want to make. In arc, they are actually better than Han because they can choose to reroll only what they feel like instead of everything.

They work better in swarms, interestingly. One shuttle is alright, but three makes it incredibly hard to focus on one mystical interstellar minotaur as it zooms passed you, only to return just as you lose track of the next one. They work very well at blocking your craft to allow their herdmates to get brutal shots against you. Boost makes it easy to navigate asteroids because you get to premeasure that action. If you fit, great, if you don't fit, you can choose another action and know what not to do next round.

The shuttle, out of the box, isn't great. You put the right upgrades on it, it becomes the terror that moos in the night.

What upgrades do you use?

Weird, my name keeps being brought up in this thread for some reason.

I can't say much more that hasn't already been said. I regularly run a list of three shuttles with upgrades and nothing else. The list struggles against B-Wings, but against other lists, I've had more wins than losses. Its biggest asset is surprise, quite frankly. The first time you face off against my alabaster void cattle list, it's almost always a bad day. They'll catch you before you realize it, and they'll start chewing apart your ships. They're incredibly fast and they can soak a huge amount of damage. Extra evade dice tend to work against you during the first attack on a ship, since you'll more likely dodge than take one hit, then you've got 2-3 hits to evade instead of 1-2, which is not a trade you want to make. In arc, they are actually better than Han because they can choose to reroll only what they feel like instead of everything.

They work better in swarms, interestingly. One shuttle is alright, but three makes it incredibly hard to focus on one mystical interstellar minotaur as it zooms passed you, only to return just as you lose track of the next one. They work very well at blocking your craft to allow their herdmates to get brutal shots against you. Boost makes it easy to navigate asteroids because you get to premeasure that action. If you fit, great, if you don't fit, you can choose another action and know what not to do next round.

The shuttle, out of the box, isn't great. You put the right upgrades on it, it becomes the terror that moos in the night.

What upgrades do you use?

He tends to use Fire Control Systems + Gunner + Engine Upgrade, and it is glorious.