I was wondering if anyone has given any serious thought to ships and their best roles in this game. Things like how the A-wing is a good interceptor because it's the fastest Rebel fighter so far.

I'd say a lot of people do that, at least the ones posting in squad building threads. Look at how much talk there is of support ships, or ships with primary offensive or defensive capabilities.

Yeah, but support is pretty much the only role mentioned on a regular basis. I wanted to collect all ship roles in one thread.

There's pretty much only three real roles, with a possible fourth:

Support - the ships that don't really hit quite as hard as the other two classes, but have some amazing supportive abilities

Primary: HWK, Shuttle

Secondary: Falcon, Y-wing, Bomber

Interceptor - these ships are the fastest of the fast, and are able to get behind and around their opponents. However, they tend to be fragile

Primary: A-wing, TIE Int, TIE Fighter

Secondary: TIE Advanced, X-wing

Assault - These fighters hit the hardest, and have a good bit of defense to allow them to charge straight into the face of the enemy, but may not be the most agile of ships

Primary: X-wing, B-wing, TIE Advanced, Firespray

Secondary: TIE Int, A-Wing

Defender (Kinda...) - These ships have the largest hulls and can take the most beating. Not really a class because most defenders should also be able to draw attention to themselves via abilities, and only two ships in the game can

Primary: Falcon, Y-Wing

Secondary: Shuttle, TIE Bomber, B-Wing, Biggs

Each ship, under this system, can probably be tossed into 2 roles, with a primary and a secondary role.

X-Wing: Assault/Interceptor(+Defender for Biggs)

Y-Wing: Defender/Support

A-Wing: Interceptor/Assault

Falcon: Defender/Support

B-Wing: Assault/Defender

HWK-290: Support/

TIE Fighter: Interceptor/

TIE Advanced: Assault/Interceptor

TIE Interceptor: Interceptor/Assault

Firespray: Assault/Defender

TIE Bomber: Defender/Support

Shuttle: Support/Defender

Obviously, there's room for improvement in this system, as two of the ships don't have a secondary role, and obviously some ships fill more than just those two (Han in a HSF is an assault/defender, Garven can fill the support role for X's, etc.)

Here I'd think about classifying ship use into three categories:

Support: Boost other ships at performing their tasks or hinder your opponent from doing their tasks.

Distractions: Generally things that are harder to kill which your opponent will need to devote resource at to destroy.

Offensive: What you plan to use to destroy your opponent.

Of course most ships will have some distraction and offensive qualities to them

I tend to classify ships the following way:

Backbone fighters: These are the "main ships", they can dogfight, they can move, and they fit into almost any squad without altering the strategic theme significantly, and can fill in for roles that are lacking in the main squad composition. X-wing, Tie fighter, and somewhat the advanced.

Harriers/interceptors: Fast attack craft good for assassinating high priority targets and flanking the enemy. They also make good escorts since they can engage the enemy before they reach their charge then swing around and blast anything that manages to get through. A-wings and Squints.

Brawlers: Ships that are best mixing it up at knife fight ranges, they can turn on a dime and have tricks to get shots and avoid them in range one. B-wings, Squints again.

Fire support: God favors the side with the best artillery, Cannon upgrades and missles or torpedoes to rain death from long range. B-wings, Y-wings, Firesprays, and Bombers.

Support: Buffs and de-buffs. This is mostly on a pilot by pilot basis but anything that can equip ions or crit dealing upgrades like, merc co pilot, saboteur, or proton bombs can fit. HWK and Lambda fit both categories very well though.

I very much classify ships into certain roles but would tend to draw up the roles in terms of the faze of battle I will have them involved in, this way you can also include ordinance, pilots and or small formations into the roles. This seems a more realistic assessment as various ships can do different things depending on which combination of build you go for. Here is a list of the better examples of each roles.

Alpha Strike leaders:

Rebs:

X Swarm, B (Esp HLC), Y(with PTs)

Imps:

Tie Swarms, TieAdv/Bomb with ordinance, Offensive Shuttle (Chainsaw, HLC etc) Firespray with Missiles/HLC

Mid Game, (Close contact phase after Alpha Strike)

Rebs:

Ys/HWKS with Turret Weapons, Falcon, Bs with AS, PTL As, Named Xwings.

Imps:

TieAdv, Firesprays, Named Ties.

Flankers

Rebs:

Awings, EU Xwings, Ibtisan++

ImpsSquints, Fetigator, Backstabber, Vader.

Support

Named HWKS, Lando, Dutch, Garvin

Named Shuttles, Howl, Jonus,

Different players will put more focus on each section of the game to build their squads around. Seems most tournament builds focus on the balance of Mid Game ships as this is a safer way to build. This explains the preponderance of certain types of ship, especially on Rebel side. I would argue the Tie Swarm is an exception to this, as a Tightly flown Howl Swarm is very much an example of an alpha strike build. The flanker role is the exciting one to plan for, but if its a point sink it can distract from other parts of the build, especially the alpha strike, and needs good restrained flying if you dont want Turr getting wasted early on by straying too close to the heavy weaponry of the the first clash.

Anyway, my 2 Euro Cents.

Cringe...

faze =/= phase

faze:

Cringe...

faze =/= phase

faze:

to cause to be disturbed or disconcerted; daunt: The worst insults cannot faze him.

phase:

a stage in a process of change or development: Each phase of life brings its own joys.

Cheers for the correction.

My roles go as follows

Hitters: They hit hard. Many people have called them offensive. Ships like Wedge, TIE Interceptors, Han Solo. If these ships stay alive long enough they will kill everything else. They tend to be high priority targets and die quickly

Defenders: These ships are there so take hits in the place of other ships. Examples like Biggs, Chewbacca, Y-wings sometimes fill this role. These ships work best when they have some sort of rule that forces enemies to shoot at them. They also work well when they can also do some damage themselves.

Flankers: The purpose of these ships is to try to split the enemy formation. These ship need to be fast, as work best if you can combine a boost with a barrel roll. Soonter Fell w/PtL or Darth Vader w/EU. These ships need to seem more dangerous than they really are. They are essentually a mind game.

Suport Ships: These ships boost the ships arround them, some pass out tokens, attack dice or even re-rolls. A savy player will recognize these ships as a greater threat than even the Hitters. Keep these ships back just a bit to get some range defense so that your other ships look like better targets.

Bulk Ships: My favorite role. These ships you take simply becasue they are cheap. These don't have to be TIE Fighters or even all your force. Any time you tack on rookie pilot x2 at the end of your list you are using Bulk ships. If you make your entire (or most of) list from bulk ships that is what I call a Swarm. The goal of these ships is simply to increase the number of ships under your control. If they are not TIEs then they probably only have a PS of 1 or 2.

This talk Wave 7 talk got me thinking about the roles of different ships in X-Wing. Since I’m sick of all these duplicate threads, I did a little search, and lo and behold. Rise dead thread, rise.

So what are the different ship roles in X-Wing? Even though it’s a space battle game, it’s a 2-d environment. Which really makes it a land battle, which means we should be able to apply military ground unit classifications. So I’m no military expert, and hopefully some one else can add to this.

But it seems that there are 9 types of ships (based on ground unit classifications):

Classification		Rebel	Imperial	Scum
	
Light Fighter		Z-95	TIE Fighter	M3-A Scyk	
Multi-role Fighter	X-Wing	TIE Defender	Heavy Scyk	
Heavy Fighter		B-Wing	TIE Phantom	IT-2000	
Light Interceptor	A-Wing	TIE Interceptor	StarViper	
Heavy Interceptor	E-Wing	TIE Advanced	   ???	
Grenadier		Y-Wing	TIE Bomber	Y-Wing	
Light Cavalry		YT-2400	Firespray-31	Firespray-31	
Heavy Cavalry		YT-1300	VT-49 Decimator	   ???	
Support			HWK-290	Lambda-class	HWK-290

I should also point out that:

Fighter=Infantry

Interceptor=Recon

And TIE Phantom in the Heavy slot is a bit of a stretch, but it seems survivability could be a factor in categorizing ships as light, medium, heavy.

Also an interceptor/recon/flanker unit is probably defined as something highly maneuverable also with actions like engine boost and/or barrel roll.

Interceptor does not = recce (recon)

A recce unit doesn not engage with the enemy, its not a fighting unit. It job is to gather intelligence and avoid contact.

In the real world recce units have historically ignored each other in order to get a better view of the enemy main force *unless* they had the surprise and superiority to utterly wipe out the enemy recce and not do it so loudly to draw attention to themselves.

I trained for recce in the 90s and we trained against what was called 'genfor' or 'generic soviet trained/equipped force' (even though the soviet union had been 'dead' for years).

We were to allow soviet recce elements to pass over us in order to get a bigger picture of the main divisional strength etc.

There recce was tasked to do the same to a degree but their recce would have been *huge*, like hundreds of men and vehicles and they would have engaged us as long as it didnt slow them down.

Their *real* behind the lines recce like GRU spetsnaz troops.. well we'd only know they were there when we woke up dead.

Dont confuse interceptor/interdiction roles with recce.

Totally different role.

In xwing their is no tactical recce role as everything you can see on board you have full disclosure on.

The only way you could do it would be by having 'secret' lists and ships cards and upgrades face down.... if you got a ship withing range 3 you perhaps saw the type of squadron, a ship with a sensor upgrade might be able to tell the loadout etc.

Interceptors are the real world equivalent of light mechanised AFVS like bradleys and warriors.

Fast (ish) , armoured, able to fight a MBT (with their missiles) but not able to take a hit off a missile or MBT cannon.

B wings, X wings, etc would be like a more traditional MBT if we're talking ground roles.

edit: historical footnote. At stalingrad german and soviet recce units would walk within spitting distance of each other and ignore each other *militarily* as they didnt want to get killed over a patrol firefight when their job was to locate the enemies HQ.

Thanks for the info on recon vs. interceptor.

Looking it over again, I think that the TIE Phantom is probably more in the category of a Heavy Interceptor. And the TIE Advanced would be the Empire's answer to a Heavy Fighter.

And with the rumors of the YV-666 and the JumpMaster 5000, I think these would fit into the two missing Scum ships in the ship classifications.

I don't know where the G-1A would fit in though.

Classification		Rebel	Imperial	Scum
	
Light Fighter		Z-95	TIE Fighter	M3-A Scyk	
Multi-role Fighter	X-Wing	TIE Advanced	Heavy Scyk	
Heavy Fighter		B-Wing	TIE Phantom	IG-2000	
Light Interceptor	A-Wing	TIE Interceptor	StarViper	
Heavy Interceptor	E-Wing	TIE Phantom	(JumpMaster 5000) ???	
Grenadier		Y-Wing	TIE Bomber	Y-Wing	
Light Cavalry		YT-2400	Firespray-31	Firespray-31	
Heavy Cavalry		YT-1300	VT-49 Decimator	(YV-666)???
Support			HWK-290	Lambda-class	HWK-290

So with standard military units in mind, what are we missing in X-Wing?

I think Artillery and Sniper-type units might be next.

Wave 7 or 8 might have gunships to fill the Artillery role. X4 or K-Wing for Rebels. Alpha-class Xg-1 for Imperials.

Artillery		K-Wing	Alpha-class Xg-1	???

I will give this a try.

Flanker: Interceptors, Phantoms, Vader, Celchu, Backstabber

Blocker: Tie Fighter, Z-95, à la rigeur Prototype A-Wings

Support: Shuttle and HWK

Control: anything capable to deal stress or ion.

Ships of the line: meet the jousters.

Game mechanically, I suppose while brain storming I break down roles as follows:

Blockers/Defense/Control - Shuttle, TIE Fighter, Z-95, A-wing, B-wing

Distraction/Tank - Firespray, Decimator, Falcon

Attack!/Murder Bees!/Cat Fiasco! - Interceptor, Phantom, B-wing

It is very loose but when I tend to want to build off some blockers, a scapegoat, and some knife babies. I say control in the first category because I'm attempting to either outright block you for action denial or shape the way you plan on flying and which actions you'll take with 'in your face' ships. I've resorted to using Echo as an unpredictable blocker often if she has no shot.

If I throw something down on the board with enough points in it or make it seem intimidating, opponents will try to focus it down. Ideally they ought to have been firing at something behind them. Baron Fel will fall into the Distraction category once the sky is falling about auto thrusters.

The last category is self explanatory. Put the glowing plasma in the bleeding heart rebels.

Being an Air Force brat, I think that air superiority roles are appropriate in X-Wing. They are:

Interceptors - Fast, short range defense craft specializing in alpha strikes against invading aircraft

Strike Fighters - Long range dog-fighters designed to escorts slower bombers as well as independent raids - often equipped with long range weaponry and electronic countermeasures to increase survival and allow theatre control

Bombers - Long range heavy ordinance carriers designed to take out hardened targets and carpet bombing

Command and Control - Serving as a network of battlefield intelligence, they direct and coordinate forces, extending the range of the carrier or base CnC

Multirole Aircraft - As technology has improved, the line between durable strike fighter and fast interceptor has blurred, allowing a new breed of fighter capable of filling either role (though not being at the top of the class in either)

When we compare this to X-Wing we see some easy role correlations;

Interceptors - A-Wings, TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors, M3-A Scyx Fighter

Strike Fighters - B-Wing, TIE Advanced, Z-95 Headhunter

Bombers - Y-Wing, TIE Bomber, Firespray

CnC Craft - HWK-290, Imperial Shuttle

Multirole Aircraft - X-Wing, YT-1300, YT-2400, Decimator, TIE Defender, TIE Phantom, Aggressor, Starviper

When we look at the above, we can see that the Z-95 is the "odd man out" - definitely a sub-par Strike Fighter, as it has been outpaced in it's former class as a Multirole fighter.