What came after the Assault Gunboat? The Missile Boat.

It came even after the TIE Defender ... so there are probalby quite a lot waves between now and the possible arrival of the Missile Boat. But, I like the challenge, so here we go.

"…Admiral Thrawn has developed the trump card… the Missile Boat, which you proved in the last battle to be the ultimate starfighter in the galaxy!"
―An Imperial briefing officer to Maarek Stele

Hull and shield rating was just like 1:1 of the B-Wings'

Background says it was faster than the Assault Gunboat, and more agile.

It was equipped with a single medium laser cannon only.

Putting this all together:

1-2-3-5

this was the easy part.

It was also equipped with a Beam Weapon.

The Missile Boat also included an innovative propulsion feature known as the SubLight Acceleration Motor (SLAM). The SLAM increased the max speed of the Missile Boat to 200%,

by draining energy of the laser cannon.

The Missile Boat relied primarily on warheads for dogfighting and assaults, a notable difference from other Imperial starfighters, which relied more heavily on laser cannons.

Advanced concussion missiles offered Missile Boat pilots the ability to suppress more advanced starfighters such as Rebel A-Wings and rogue TIE Defenders.

And this is the challange. The Missile Gunboat could carry up to 80 Advanced Concussion Missiles - or 30 Advanced Proton Torpedos ... or a lot of the other ordnance ...

In fact this was its main weapon ... flying the Missile Boat was like permanent draining the laser power to feed the SLAM and fireing missiles only ...

How can this be transfered into the game? Is this even possible?

Maybe with the deactivate-activate rule for secondary weapons like in Attack Wing.

I had already been thinking about this one for a while. 1/2/3/5 sounds good.

Now I'm going to get everybody all up in arms, because I believe that the Missile Boat, if implemented, should have the following built-in ability:

"When firing a secondary weapon that requires a target lock, you may use one target lock to play two identical secondary weapon cards."

So, you can make two missile / torpedo attacks per round. It would have absolutely devastating firepower, but you would need to pay for each attack in points, the baseline cost would be 8 points in ordinance each round that the Missile Boat is firing. The ship cost would obviously have to be balanced, and it would need to be able to carry a huge amount of Missiles / torpedos, likely 2x the TIE Bomber capacity as a starting point.

The best that I can come up with for the SLAM system is:

"Action: Receive 1 stress token to perform an additional maneuver this round. You may not perform an attack during the next combat round. You cannot perform this ability if you have 1 or more stress tokens."

I would say the SLAM is a System Upgrade card,

which enhances movement, like 'Action: All white manoeuvres are green manoeuvres' ... but you must be able to activate this thing before you move.

I also thought about the skipping the attack for an additional move ... but ... somehow I don't like it.

I fear the ability to fire 2 missiles in a round would be quite overpowered.

And this isn't what the Missile Boat is about ... its more like ... neverending ammo.

The ability to fire more missiles at one, is the job of the TIE Oppressor (3 lauchers instead of the common 2 launchers) ... but even then, ... its a bit overpowered

I would say the SLAM is a System Upgrade card,

which enhances movement, like 'Action: All white manoeuvres are green manoeuvres' ... but you must be able to activate this thing before you move.

I also thought about the skipping the attack for an additional move ... but ... somehow I don't like it.

SLAM was only available on the Missile Boat, it should be built in. It should never, ever, ever, be available for something like the shuttle or the B-wing as a system upgrade!

Edit: SLAM increases movement by 200%, so giving an extra maneuver is perfect, and simple. For balancing, you don't attack.

In-game, when you were using SLAM you were usually running the heck away from something like out flying concussion missiles . You weren't really attacking at the same time, generally.

Also, I would further restrict the SLAM maneuver to only allow straights and banks. No K-turn or turn shenanigans, the ship would become too maneuverable.

It would be great for hit and run missile attacks, in fact it would become the standard tactic for this ship.

1. Get in range, get target lock, fire missiles
2. Activate SLAM and get out of firing arcs for 2nd round
3. Set up for attack

Repeat.

So you mean the SLAM should be a special for this ship only?

I'd give it a k-turn anyway ... it would take too long to turn around.

It would just stretch the game length ... and time is limited on tourneys.

But Hit and Run sounds just like you used to fly with it ... yes.

How about a Ammo Rack to equip using a torp or missile upgrade slot?

For example: You have 2 missile upgrade slots.

You use one for the Missile Upgrade you want to have, like Concussion Missiles, and the second missile upgrade slot for the Missile Ammo Rack, which gives unlimited ammo for your Concussion Missiles, by using an action to load the next missile.

The Ammo Rack would cost the same like the Missiles:

Concussion Missiles 4 + Ammo Rack 4

or

Homing Missiles 5 + Ammo Rack 5

Same goes for torps.

The SLAM would be easy enough to represent by just giving it the boost action. If you insist "THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!" If you must have more then you would have something that is effectively a boost but moves you even further and perhaps gives you some kind of token which prevents using the ship's primary weapon until cleared.

As for your load of "80 concussion missiles" I've consistently held that there should be some kind of "missile magazine" which costs a good bit more than your typical missile but effectively gives you unlimited use of a missile style attack. In many ways it would be like a cannon upgrade except that you're most likely going to require a TL to fire this secondary system. Recently, I've have considered making this take TWO upgrade slots but I remember the A-Wing having plenty of missiles to use a the same with a TIE Bomber.

I may be able to get behind a 1/2/3/5 base stat line (although I don't remember them being so tough IF you could hit them) and for available actions I'd have TL, Focus, and Boost any way although I'm uncertain about Evade or BR. Upgrade slots would be a System Upgrade and various Torpedo and/or Missile slots. The dial should be fast with good straight but maybe not so good on the turns.

hmm ... SLAM: 3' boost in the combat phase in exchance for the attack?

How about a normal Boost action, but it can use the "2" templates instead of the "1" templates?

SLAM doubled your speed, so any straight or bank should be fine. The normal dial obviously should still have a kturn, you just can't take that (or any turn) as your slam action.

Let it carry three missile slot weapons and two torpedoes. Make it the Imperial B-wing. It'd be perfect.

How about a Ammo Rack to equip using a torp or missile upgrade slot?

For example: You have 2 missile upgrade slots.

You use one for the Missile Upgrade you want to have, like Concussion Missiles, and the second missile upgrade slot for the Missile Ammo Rack, which gives unlimited ammo for your Concussion Missiles, by using an action to load the next missile.

The Ammo Rack would cost the same like the Missiles:

Concussion Missiles 4 + Ammo Rack 4

or

Homing Missiles 5 + Ammo Rack 5

Same goes for torps.

Reading through this I may like how the "ammo rack" upgrade could be used to make any missile "unlimited" but I'm thinking the cost is too high. This is even more so if you are going to require an additional action to reload after which you'll probably need another TL before you can fire again. This makes that second attack too slow. I mean how often do you see a ship load up the same ordnance twice, fire them off over multiple rounds, and still beg for more shots? Maybe another way of putting it is how often do you see a TIE Bomber go out with three or more missile/torps and fire them all without needing to spend actions reloading?

The reusable missiles wouldn't be a "cheap" upgrade but if they take a TL to fire then pricing them much higher than the HLC really doesn't make much sense if they are to be keep useful.

My thoughts from my memories flying these. I'm with StevenO in that I don't remember them being that tough shield-wise, so I'd say give it a 3 or 4 shield rating.

I like Gullwind's idea of making the boost action able to use higher speed templates to represent the SLAM system. I'd say make 2 banks and 3 straights available for this.

The ships were pretty nimble, so I'd use a movement dial at least comparable to a Tie Interceptor.

The large ordinance capacity makes me want to pull a page from Star Trek: Attack Wing. For torpedoes in that game, they have a mechanic called disabling that renders the weapon unusable, but can be removed with an action. If they want, a missile boat specific modification or upgrade could be made to make torps and/or missiles disable instead of discarded. This would essentially give the same effect as RealStarkiller's ammo rack, but I would be ok with it being a 2-3 point upgrade given both the missile boat's otherwise lousy offensive capacity, and the fact that it also requires another weapon to be useful.

Missile Boat

PS 2/4 points TBD

1/2/3/4

Ship Slots

Concussion Missile Slot x5

Proton Torpedo Slot x5

Bomb Slot x2

Actions

Focus, Target Lock, SLAM

1 bank (green)

2 straight (green)

2 bank (white)

2 turn (white)

3 straight (green)

3 bank (white)

3 K-turn (red)

5 straight (green)

5 K-turn (red)

SLAM Action Reference Card

1. Receive 1 stress token to choose a bank or straight maneuver template that this ship can perform as a white or green maneuver.
2. Set the maneuver template between the ship's front guides.
3. Move the ship to the opposite end of the template and slide the rear guides of the ship into the template.
4. This ship may not perform a primary weapon attack during the next combat round.

Performing a SLAM does not count as executing a maneuver. A ship cannot SLAM if this would cause its base to overlap with another ship's base or an obstacle token. You cannot perform this action if you have 1 or more stress tokens.

Advanced Concussion Missiles (6 points), 4 attack dice

Attack (Target Lock):

Spend your target lock and discard this card to perform this attack.

You may change one of your blank results to a [hit] result.

Reduce the Defender's agility value by 2 (to a minimum of 0).

Comments:

1. It had 20 RU hull and 120 SBD shields. Normally we would round to 5 shields (125 SBD), but I actually think that 4 is better given that its hull is comparatively lower than, say, a B-wing which has a significantly better rated hull, but still only has 3 hull in-game. I didn't want to mess with the standard hull value of 3, so removed one shield instead.
2. Auto-reloading missiles / torpedoes could VERY easily break game balance. It is much simpler to give the ship a ton of missile slots, and then have to pay for the missiles. This results in significantly more variation in how to deploy the ship.
3. Payload capabilities: the TIE Bomber could store (Wookiepedia) 16 concussion missiles and 8 Proton Torpedoes. The Missile Boat is listed as 40 Advanced Concussion Missiles, and then another 15 Advanced Proton Torpedoes (or 40 more Advanced Concussion Missiles, or 10 Heavy Rockets, etc). So it can hold about 2.5 times the amount of a TIE Bomber, hence 5 of each, and 2 bombs for good measure.
4. On the dial: It wasn't hyper-maneuverable, but it was quite fast: 125 MGLT (426 with SLAM overdrive!) vs 120 for an A-wing.
5. Dual Warhead Launchers: without this built in ability, it's not a particularly useful ship, since its damage output is only as good as a single bomber. I seem to recall that it could fire its missiles quite fast in the PC game, but my memory is rusty. With this ability, it truly will become a Missile Boat, which is the entire point of making this ship. It'll essentially double its damage output, which has a huge impact, so the point cost should appropriately go up (last point).
6. Point cost: Still TBD, but we know this: if it's 2x as expensive as a TIE Bomber, then nobody will buy it, they'll just buy 2 bombers to get the same number of attacks per round, but with more hull / redundancy / better primary weapons. So you're looking at an absolute cap of 32 points for a PS2 Missile Boat, likely quite a few points less to be balanced.
7. I updated the SLAM system so you can't perform a primary weapon attack, since you drain the cannon to use it. But technically you can still fire missiles. Stress should certainly result from using this ability though.

I loved this ship in the pc game. I'm sure I'm not the only one who used its large ordinance payload to dumb fire missiles into oncoming enemies and would love to see this somehow incorporated into the game.

I could really see the missile bay being essentially a weapon system that is unique to the Missile Boat. Maybe make it a range 1-3 secondary weapon and have it do 1 less damage when fired without a target lock (and you cannot use an unspent target lock to modify the rolls). You don't get the benefits of being able alter dice like the normal missiles/torpedoes, but the addition of having it work at range 1 would be thematically appropriate to the way the ship was used. Gives it the flavor of being able to toss out a ton of missiles at all ranges. Shouldn't be cheap, at least HLC equivalent in cost, but it is also more like the cannon where you aren't discarding it after one use.

If you still want all the different modifications of the existing missile ordinance you can still load up those as well and they are just used (and discarded) as normal.

I also think the ship should be expensive. It was fast and dished out a ton of damage

I like the idea of the slam also being an improved boost with penalties.

The only missile "advantage" I remember the Missile Boat having was simply that it carried so darn many of them you would often use them as the ship's PRIMARY weapon. I don't remember the SLAM drive (maybe that was only in the TIE Fighter video game) but I know when I used the ship I would often turn off the laser recharge (one laser wasn't all that impressive) so I could divert that power to other things; send it to the engines and this could easily outpace any rebel fighter. If I needed to make an attack I had a missile for that. It could firelink missiles like every other ship in the game but I don't remember it being able to engage multiple ships with missiles any easier than anything else.

Sorry MJ but I really don't see that version working. As I mention in the previous paragraph that "dual warhead launcher" ability just doesn't work on many levels. I'm guessing the insane number of ordnance slots is also tied directly to that because the possibility of getting off that many shots and the added cost of all that ordnance makes it extremely impractical. I have wondered if we couldn't add a SLAM action to the game which would effectively be a supersized BOOST option but if used it would give out its own token preventing some kind of attack and which clears at the end of each turn. The idea of an Advanced Concussion Missile is good but why not just simplify things and say dice can't be used to negate hits like Autoblaster already uses?

Kitsune23, you may say the game already does have a few ways to "dumb fire" missiles. In some ways that is what the Deadeye EP upgrade does where you spend a Focus instead of TL to fire TL requiring ordnance.

Sorry MJ but I really don't see that version working. As I mention in the previous paragraph that "dual warhead launcher" ability just doesn't work on many levels.

A dual launcher system certainly could work from a balance perspective, but it is a question of if it should work from a background perspective, which I think is your point. If you have balance reasons why it wouldn't work, then please share, I might have missed something.

It's an interesting dilemma, because the TIE Bomber can already hold far more ordinance than you can possibly hope to deliver from a single ship: 4 missiles / torpedoes. Adding more payload to a single ship, while only adding 1-2 more hit points, provides no benefit whatsoever aside from merely having an additional 1-2 hit points to soak damage. The likelihood of a ship firing secondary weapons for 5 or more turns is astronomically low in this game. If you load it up with 5+ warheads, then it's going to die with stuff in the launchers, and you might as well have bought a bomber. If you buy 4 or less warheads, then you could have fit that all on a Bomber, so you might as well have saved the points and gotten a Bomber instead. Either way, the Missile Boat is essentially pointless.

So we have (at least) 3 options:

1. Do nothing special with its warhead launcher. If it costs more than a couple points more than a TIE Bomber, then it will never get used, because you would be better off just getting the cheaper ship, and, ironically getting more warheads (or a higher PS for better shots) on the TIE Bomber.
2. Give the Missile Boat the capability to fire its warheads twice as fast (dual launcher system). Technically all ships did have this, so thematically it's a question of if this fits with the Missile Boat, and then balancing it.
3. Give the Missile Boat unlimited secondary ammunition. This makes even less sense from a thematic perspective than the dual warhead launcher, since it would be synthesizing new warheads out of nothing on the fly. The ship can carry a lot, but it's not a replicator like in Star Trek. It would also be VERY easy for this option to become game-breaking from a balance perspective, especially potentially with the upcoming Epic Mode that we still don't know all the rules for, and how large engagements will play out. This sort of mechanic really needs to be used either by all of the ships in the game, or by none of the ships in the game, which, if I understand correctly, is why it works in Attack Wing, because it's standard for all ships. In this game, if you suddenly give that ability to one ship, you could end up with all sorts of balance shenanigans. If someone comes up with a specific set of rules on how it could work, and we all agree that its the best we can do, then I would be happy to "power game" and find how to break it on paper. I can calculate all the probabilities for any scenario, I'm sure I'll find at least one or two corner cases that are very favorable.

There's no need to guess about the capability, I explained in my post exactly why the ship should have 5 missile slots and 5 torpedo slots, because that's how much it could carry relative to all the other fighters in this game so far. Not much to explain or debate there, did you read my post?

However, you incidentally are making the same point that I am: if you don't increase its rate of warhead delivery, then having extra slots is pointless. Heck, most bombers use at most half of their capability, what does it matter if you multiply that by 2.5?

Is this a general comment, or are you commenting on my proposal? Because that's what I proposed with very specific FFG-style wording.

The Advanced Concussion Missile was intended to hunt down far more agile craft such as TIE Defenders. It was possible to evade an Advanced Concussion Missile, but it was very difficult, so I think it makes more sense to allow a sliding scale rather than absolutely negating defense dice. A TIE with stealth Device behind an asteroid should have a better chance of evading the missile than an X-wing with a direct line of sight.

I believe that it did have a higher warhead yield as well, so perhaps it should have 5 attack dice instead of 4. 5 dice would probably require reducing the defender's agility by 1 to be balanced (5 vs. x-1 is till better than 4 vs. x-2), but I would have to run the numbers.

The general idea is that the Advanced Proton Torpedo would do more damage against lower agility targets and capital ships, whereas the Advanced Concussion Missile would be better at hunting starfighters. Either way, the stats would have to be run to determine average damage output vs a variety of target scenarios, and compare that with the Advanced Proton Torpedo, regular Concussion Missile, and regular Proton Torpedo.

How about something like:

SubLight Acceleration Motor

Missile Boat Only

Whenever this ship executes a green maneuver, you may immediately perform that maneuver again. If you do, neither maneuver removes a stress token and you cannot make attacks with this ship's primary weapon this turn.

(System Upgrade - 0)

My line of thinking was that I wanted something that represented moving twice as fast and was unique to this ship, but wasn't limited to a single pilot.

I have it trigger on green maneuvers because they generally represent maneuvers that are easy to make, and I figured that choosing to go at double speed would make it difficult to do complex maneuvers. The primary attack drawback came from the power drain that had been mentioned, but I added the stress clause so it's not something you'll always want to use, and because if the ship specializes in missiles, the primary attack may not be much of a drawback on its own. I chose to make it cost zero because it's supposed to be an innate component of the ship. However, it still takes the System Upgrade slot, so there is an opportunity cost.

I'm not a number cruncher though and have a very limited experience with this game, however, so all that could be horribly broken. I considered at least having the second maneuver taking place later in the Activation Phase as another semi-drawback, but it would take a lot more words, and I have no idea how many can fit.

As for the ships missile salvo capability, I think I'll be less balanced. I've barely touched Secondary Weapons so far because of the ships I have, so I don't really know what their strengths and weaknesses are or what might break them open.

Some things to consider:

The launchers were used to suppress. Maybe extra damage is too literal for balance, and there should just be an upgrade that makes it where your Secondary Weapon attacks cause Stress in an area.

Missile Salvo

When you spend a Target Lock to perform a Secondary Weapon attack, your target, and any enemy ships within Range 1 of it, gain a stress token.

Allowing any kind of double attack makes adding any Secondary Weapons in the future touchy, depending on how they could combo with this ship. Perhaps it could just offer a free attack with its own stats, separate from the Secondary Weapon you fired.

Heavy Launcher

Missile Boat Only

After you perform a Secondary Weapon attack, make another attack against the same target with two attack die.

Perhaps to represent how easy it is for this ship to fire lots of ordnance, it doesn't need Target Locks for Secondary Weapons (at a cost of not being able to use them to reroll the attack either). This is one where I know my ignorance of the balance of Secondary Weapons could be crucial, but I'm just brainstorming here.

Heavy Launcher

Missile Boat Only

You do not have to spend a Target Lock to make an attack with a Secondary Weapon. If you do not, you may not spend a Target Lock to reroll that attack.

Give the Missile Boat unlimited secondary ammunition. This makes even less sense from a thematic perspective than the dual warhead launcher, since it would be synthesizing new warheads out of nothing on the fly. The ship can carry a lot, but it's not a replicator like in Star Trek. It would also be VERY easy for this option to become game-breaking from a balance perspective, especially potentially with the upcoming Epic Mode that we still don't know all the rules for, and how large engagements will play out. This sort of mechanic really needs to be used either by all of the ships in the game, or by none of the ships in the game, which, if I understand correctly, is why it works in Attack Wing, because it's standard for all ships. In this game, if you suddenly give that ability to one ship, you could end up with all sorts of balance shenanigans. If someone comes up with a specific set of rules on how it could work, and we all agree that its the best we can do, then I would be happy to "power game" and find how to break it on paper. I can calculate all the probabilities for any scenario, I'm sure I'll find at least one or two corner cases that are very favorable.

This would be the big issue. It's why I think that making it something specific to the missile boat that is essentially a reskinned and modified HLC would work. Emulates the large payload capacity of the ship without breaking things.

This would be the big issue. It's why I think that making it something specific to the missile boat that is essentially a reskinned and modified HLC would work. Emulates the large payload capacity of the ship without breaking things.

Could you flesh out your earlier suggestion (quoted below) so we can balance test it? There's no way you can be sure that this approach won't "break things" until it's defined and tested.

I could really see the missile bay being essentially a weapon system that is unique to the Missile Boat. Maybe make it a range 1-3 secondary weapon and have it do 1 less damage when fired without a target lock (and you cannot use an unspent target lock to modify the rolls). You don't get the benefits of being able alter dice like the normal missiles/torpedoes, but the addition of having it work at range 1 would be thematically appropriate to the way the ship was used. Gives it the flavor of being able to toss out a ton of missiles at all ranges. Shouldn't be cheap, at least HLC equivalent in cost, but it is also more like the cannon where you aren't discarding it after one use.

If you still want all the different modifications of the existing missile ordinance you can still load up those as well and they are just used (and discarded) as normal.

A general comment: if you make each attack not as good as a "regular" warhead (as you discussed above), then it has less of an alpha strike capability than a single TIE Bomber, let alone for the same point cost. But if you give it the same alpha strike as a TIE Bomber but recurring every round for free, then it's probably extremely overpowered. It's kind of a catch-22.

Perhaps to represent how easy it is for this ship to fire lots of ordnance, it doesn't need Target Locks for Secondary Weapons (at a cost of not being able to use them to reroll the attack either). This is one where I know my ignorance of the balance of Secondary Weapons could be crucial, but I'm just brainstorming here.

Heavy Launcher

Missile Boat Only

You do not have to spend a Target Lock to make an attack with a Secondary Weapon. If you do not, you may not spend a Target Lock to reroll that attack.

That would be interesting. Probably fairly overpowered, but interesting. For 6 points you would essentially get a guaranteed 5 hits against anyone in range 1, with APT.

No one has said it yet... jokingly or not... so here goes:

Give it 4 red attack dice. Most missiles/torps are of this strength anyway.

What would I do differently: not give it the TL action. Systems upgrade that does not give +1 at range 1 but also does not allow +1 agility to dodge at range 3.

Terrible flavor but it does create what we're looking for.

I'm not saying this is a good idea... I'm just saying we're working around this and no one has suggested it yet.

No one has said it yet... jokingly or not... so here goes:

Give it 4 red attack dice. Most missiles/torps are of this strength anyway.

What would I do differently: not give it the TL action. Systems upgrade that does not give +1 at range 1 but also does not allow +1 agility to dodge at range 3.

Terrible flavor but it does create what we're looking for.

I'm not saying this is a good idea... I'm just saying we're working around this and no one has suggested it yet.

+1 for another crazy idea!

We're clearly in the brainstorming stage. Anything goes.

No one has said it yet... jokingly or not... so here goes:

Give it 4 red attack dice. Most missiles/torps are of this strength anyway.

What would I do differently: not give it the TL action. Systems upgrade that does not give +1 at range 1 but also does not allow +1 agility to dodge at range 3.

Terrible flavor but it does create what we're looking for.

I'm not saying this is a good idea... I'm just saying we're working around this and no one has suggested it yet.

The only reason it is "crazy" is because the Primary Weapon on a Missile Boat is its missile launchers and it "secondary" weapon is the punny laser cannon added for those rare times it has run out of missiles or has all the time in the world to destroy the target. I'd say the bigger "problem" with doing this that way is you are mostly excluding other ordnance when the missile boat could carry two different types at a time even in the video games. Leaving the TL off the card also wouldn't prevent the ship from getting them either via the upcoming upgrade card or using a Fire-Control system in that system upgrade slot.

What is so wrong with something "simple" aside from it possibly going on a TIE Advanced/Bomber or A-Wing?

Missile Launcher (7)

Attack (target lock): Spend your TL to perform this attack. You may change one blank result to a [focus] result. Attack Value: 4. Range: 2-3

It's not quite "infinite" concussion missiles but it may be close. Getting the third shot with this isn't as likely as getting three shots with a HLC due to the TL restrictions but the two would certainly be similar. If you alter the range to 1-3 drop any dice manipulation but I'd keep the minimum range of this at 2 which makes some room for range 1 ordnance to be carried on certain ships.