You run into all sorts of problems when you expand the scale beyond what it was originally designed to handle.  Take for example Turbo Lasers.  They are the standard heavy armament in Star Wars.  Fighters are effective (mentioned specifically at the battle of Yavin) because Turbo Lasers have difficulty hitting fighters.  But if by some chance they did, there vast firepower would pulverize a fighter.  But in the game mechanics of X-Wing, firepower and accuracy are basically the same thing.

So how many dice do you give a turbo laser 1 - because they almost never can hit a fighter, or lots because they are very powerful weapons.

Just about ever aspect of the game from movement, to actions to shooting is based around the way fighters interact.  And the game is great.  It is also very simple and smooth. 

Larger ships don't fight like fighters so the rules we have already aren't going to work, and adding new rules to acomidate larger ships would detract from what is a very cool and streamlined.

I love the larger ships from the star wars universe.  And it is fun to think about what a scale star destroyer would be like.  I think the Nebula B that was posted here was awesome.  But that does not mean that these larger ships belong in the game.

So Final Answer to the question, for me at least, is No, (or at least I hope not)

 I agree that truly big ships do not fit this game model.

Now, does anyone have a source from FFG where they describe the Falcon and Slave 1 models as "medium" ships?

I repeat that I have seen this claim on forum posts, but not on anything from an official source.

 I think it was said in an interview:

http://teamcovenant.com/blog/2012/08/17/gencon-2012-x-wing-interview/

I'm pretty sure it was in the preview earlier as well, but it seems to have been edited out.

Maybe they meant medium ships in-universe, but large in-game, and they corrected it because of the resulting confusion.

magadizer said:

I think people are getting the info from Board Game Geek, I can't find an official source either.

 I think that is it then. If it was just said in an interview, then it may have just been the wrong word choice. Official press releases indicate that these are the large ships, as I have said.

Thanks!

I for one like the idea of "BIG" ships.  I do agree with some of the arguements that big ships have powerfull lasers but seldom hit fighters.  That could be resolved with rolling a dice to see if the attack activates, making an evade token being able to negate the activation roll, then rerolling to see if the attack resolves.  I dont know if i explained it well but I think you get the picture. 

At any rate I dont think "BIG" ships would take away from the game.  For those that just want a skirmish battle system, simply dont play big ships.  That is your option.  Also you would have to consider the point value system.  A big ship would probably be 100-150 points in itself.  Even if it was at the low cost of 100 points that would allow you to field 8 tie fighters.   8 rolls vs. 1 roll (ok mabye 2-3 roll depending on the abilities of the ship but still)  Compound that with making the "big ships a low inniative value.of 1 or 2.  If those safeguards were set I think that you wouldnt see many of those being fielded, unless it was a 1000 point game. 

I think there is room for the "BIG" ships.  I also think that FF may find that star wars collectors simply buy the ships becasue of how they look.  You really have a cross platform here. So I think that you will probably see bigger ships.  If you dont like them, dont play them.  Just let people know that you only play 100 point games or just squad fighting.  Most gamming groups are ok with that anyway.  I have never played a minature game that the players werent able to agree to the rules of the fight or the squad limits.   Some people actually like the limitations because its different from what they normally play,and its fun.  and lets face it,  we play games to have fun.

 I don't care if they make them. I agree, don't buy them. But in a game where movement is so important, how can you have a truly large ship and incorporate movement, without changing the scale of the big ship down, or making (in my judgment) playing fields that are untenably large for the miniatures? 

I wouldn't want to see anything larger than a blockade runner.  Maybe some play surfaces that add features from larger ships, like turrets and such, but any ship would need to be maneuverable enough to match the flavor of the game.

I've just picked up the Action Fleet blockade runner,  it's a bit smaller scale than the X-wing models being about 7 inches long when it should be about 10 inches to be true to scale, but it looks right which is good enough.

I don't intend using it for anything other than specific scenarios so I don't need to worry about a points value. I was thinking of arming it with two ion cannons with a 180 arc to each side so there would be a channel to the front and rear with no arc of fire. 

I was thinking along the lines of giving the ship 2 hit zones, engines and bridge.  Engines would slow it down, more hits slower the ship gets, bridge, well system damage, random flight moves, loss of shoting a critical hit table of sorts with the possibility of a big bang, not what you want if your objective is to stop the ship and board it or capture it intact. 

There's the escape from hoth scenario where each ship gets an x wing escort and tries to escape the table, how many can you get off the table in x turns then switch sides and do it again.

So I was thinking more about the big ship question, and this might be a viable option.  Make it so the big ships only have 1 defense die and something like 20 health (15 shields +5 life)  Big ships can't attack small ships; however, each time a small ship gets within 1 attack range of a big ship it automatically suffers 1 damage (nothing could block this damage).  Small ships would always get the +1 attack die when attacking from range 1-3. 

As for action:  Only one action would be availabe; however, that action would be able to used twice.  Big ships would have access to decoy drones as an action to block up to 2 damage in one turn (kind of like evade for the tie fighter)  Gunner turrets which would allow a 360 arc of fire for up to 2 targets with 2 attack die (moddifiers for attack would apply as normal) and Tractor beam.  This would pull a ship within 3 range 2 movement towards the ship.  Direction of the ship would not change.

See if FFG was anything like Games Workshop, they would have a specialist store charging even more exorbitant prices for scale model Nebulon-B, Corellian Corvette, Star Destroyer, and other full-scale models to sate the strange desires for people to have capital ships for a dogfighting game no matter the cost.

While it would be neat to have full-scale ships so I can recreate my dreams of accurate TIE-Fighter/X-Wing mission recreations, I don't think they have a place in the game outside of very special occasions (convention scenarios for example). The most I'd expect out of FFG regarding capital ships is a PDF with suggested rules on how to run one of them. Someone made a Nebulon-B model on the Geek and instantly I started to think of how I could use that in a special scenario. On the other hand tracking all those turbolasers is going to be too much of a chore to enjoy it being in the game.

We could play with corvettes and dreadnauts.. if we placed them diagonally on the playspace!

Creating a separation between accuracy and damage could be handled by introducing a damage factor. For example, double or tripple all net hits. In return, since it's pretty hard to miss such a huge target, when shooting at a capital ship, all blanks might be considered hits (with the side effect that when using focus, you always score maximum hits, with only critical hits adding a bit of randomness). One might argue that not getting to roll any die in defense (and having no evade action) is already enough, though.

Still, it seems impossible to handle them as actual models. What I'd imagine is more of a longish cardboard token, showing a _part_ of the _edge_ of a SD or MonCal, maybe with some turbo laser tokens on top of it. Though with a SD you might want to go with the bridge and shield generators.

Optional game variants or rules could be about destroying the enemy capital ship, taking out turbo laser batteries or being able to return a damaged ship and after x turns start with a fresh ship (however with the same pilot). The trade off obviously being that while the pilot changes ships, he can't help defend his base ship.

It's a game that can be extended in a lot of ways, keeping the players happy with a constant supply of new material and the publisher with a constant stream of stuff to make money with.

It does bring up the question of how to do this without making them over powering.

Treating them like oversized fighters is one way (have it be just a number)

Another would to go with the idea that specific locations (weapons, engines, shield generators, power plants, and etc.) would each have their own hull rating, indicating a vulnerable spot, with the whole ship having a shield rating with a recharge rate (meaning that a ship could start off with 3 or 4, maybe 5 shields and can regenerate 1 or 2 per turn up to max).  If you go for a nonvulnerable spot, then it'll just be hull rating of the ship in general (representing areas being more armored or not being very necessary for the ship to continue fighting).

This way it can be an interesting scenario.

Also, it would probably increase the chances of using the stands as a representation of how high or low a fighter is when compared to the larger ships.

What do you think?