With this scale it would just be silly to go to Star Destroyers or other capitol ships.  I think small Frigates and Corvette's are more likely.  Something with a set rate of fire , where one would have to choose whether to fire the formation on the right or left, or hit them both slightly.

i am already considering a strategy where a medium base shields your weak TIE's until they are closer to the battle.

I just hope this game stays around awhile.

 We're all assuming a lot of things in this thread. One is that the devs are dedicated to maintaining the scale of ALL ships. The design docs could say small and medium ships will be in scale and a medium ship is a certain max size. The scale for the larger ships could be different. Yes, I understand this is a dogfighting game and there are people passionate about maintaining scale but scale is already "broken" in the core set with the shuttle marker. 

I think the reason large ships are a hot topic is that most people can only name or recognize ships for the original trilogy or are not that interested in the prequels and can only see 6-8 ships in small and medium scale left to release as expansions. The game has a lot of buzz and potential but where do you go after you release the next 2 waves of ships? You think about the next most-recognizable ships from the films - capital ships and transports. 

I'm a big supporter of the game, wish I would have gone to GenCon, and am looking forward to getting my preorder. Good to see the boards coming to life and the great ideas and info being shared.  

VaultDweller said:

I think large ships are still something we can see, but not ISD or Mon Cal Cruisers.  Even a Corellian Corvette, who people have already said would have to be 15" or so to stay in scale was able to be detained in the hangar bay of an ISD.

Large ships are coming, but ISDs and the like are better suited for fleet-based games.

I know this is going out on a limb, but one thing that no one has discussed is the possibility of the Snow/Land/Sand Speeders. Since they had a Death Star Trench gauntlet at GenCon, why not a battle of Hoth game with speeders and walkers? This would certainly be possible if they aren't only locked into space-based combat. It's just a thought. Kind of out there, but a thought.

herozeromes said:

I've been wondering about this too, but with all the rampant speculation going on, I didn't want to fan the flames further.  Atmospheric combat would be neat, but really the only aircraft that we can't use in space is the snowspeeder (off the top of my head).  And then you need AT-ATs, AT-ST's, tanks, turrets, shield generators…  An AT-AT is about 20 meters long, so a little shorter than 2 X-Wings (but much taller).

tiepilot1138 said:

My biggest problem with making anything land based isn't so much the what and size, but the scale of movement.

Let's take that AT-AT for example.  The base of it would probably be 2x1 bases (where the Falcon seems to be 2x2).  Because of the nature of movement in the game that would make a 1 move for an AT-AT equal to a 3 move for a X-Wing.  

I can see two options for it.  Place a 1 template in front of the AT-AT, place any other template in front of that, remove the 1 template, now move the front of the AT-AT to the end of the other template.  Or AT-ATs could only move every 4-5 turns.  

Also just a note, their head is on a swivel so maybe their arc is wider than 90deg in front.

Aahzmandius_Karrde said:

Suffice it to say the Battle of Hoth would make an incredibly good board game that could, a la DUST Tactics, eventually transition into a miniatures game.  As far as AT-AT movement goes, they're tremendous fire power and armor renders their slow speed unproblematic if uninteresting over short distances.  The movement of an AT-AT would, I suppose, really be a kind of counter tracking how long the Rebels have until they lose the game.  Of course, pulling off the tow cable trip maneuver might be extremely difficult with the AT-AT covered by AT-ST.  The AT-ST in turn would need to worry about the turrets and possibly the air speeders should the Rebel player spare their attention away from the AT-AT "count down" factor.  It would be an expensive board game but an awesome one.

So I'm not actually trying to drag this off-topic entirely.  I just got hung up thinking about the point of large scale ship movement in a game about dog fighting.  It seems to me that large ships, just like the AT-ATs in the above example, function mostly as game timers:  they take or inflict so much damage or move a certain distance or get tagged with beacons/are scanned, etc, etc, etc.  I'd think that large ships would basically be "interactive terrain."

Manchu said:

I think you make excellent points.

KristoffStark said:

Seconded.

This is a REALLY tough issue to weigh in on. let's consider:

1. A big part of me wants to say it's just semantics; "large" just meant "bigger." These are human people, after all. But then… there's the inevitable question of why the MF & Slave would be classified as "medium." That does imply that there's something more in the pipes.

2. Game use/finanancial viability. I actually misspoke about the 1/350 Blockade Runner; it's not 15", it's 18". That would make a 1/200 miniature well over 22". Guys, I just don't see it happening! Can you imagine the cost, first off? Me, I have fairly deep pockets; I'd buy one just to put on the shelf as a collectible. But considering the game limitations of such a piece, combined with the cost, I just see… no. Not happening. And other options are even less likely: Jedi consular cruiser? No weapons, almost as big as the corvette, and more obscure. Wild Karrde? How many of you even know what that IS much less would be willing to cough up $50 for one? Rebel transport - expect about $30 for a ship with no combat capability. A prop. Ehhh… no?

3. Scale. When we first actually started to get real friggin' information, the designers talked about how important it was to make everything accurate in terms of scale. They used the best information available, and developed multiple prototypes to make everything Right. If they went "relative scale" with capitol ships, it'd be like peeing all over their own mandate. I suppose it could happen, to make the corporate goons happy, but I'd love to be a fly on the wall of the techs' workspace to hear about how the Putties wrecked the vision of the game over money. I mean, they worked HARD. Just flush that down the toilet? For some shrimpy, off-scale Corellian Corvette? Frankly, I wouldn't want one.

4. So, all that doesn't give any real answers - but it raises a whole lotta questions. GOOD questions. Guess we'll just wait! There's some good ground to cover before all that becomes a real stress point.

 I do not have this game yet. But I wouldn't mind a big starship just to hang from the ceiling in the gameroom with the playing table underneath it. Just for atmosphere.

Maybe we're thinking about this wrong.  What if the bigger things meant custom maps, like Death Star trench runs and a Death Star II maze?

IG-58 said:

Ya, I can't think of a single person who would be interested in a ship named the Wild Karrde.  Not me certainly. </sarcasm>

Aahzmandius_Karrde said:

Of course not you!  ha!

"large" things may not be ships at all, as Stunami mentioned.  They could be space stations (NOT the Death Star), gun platforms, turrets (hopefully), who knows?  I think we've pretty much established there isn't much that's recognizable to the masses between the size of the Falcon and the next closest, which is probably the Gallofree Transport, which is too big to be sold as a regular expansion ship (at least as currently packaged).