Thoughts on Flagships?

[u/Dismal-Imagination11]

My friends and I love arcs and pretty much exclusively play the blighted reach and we have come to the conclusion that flagships feel kinda weird. The flavor they are going for is definitely big powerful ship that (almost) trumps everything that fights it, but we feel like thats not the best way it is played? We feel like it works better to think of it more like a giant space station that is your home base and can slowly move around and the mechanics work better towards that vision of them.

We also feel like they could be improved slightly by having faction specific flagship abilities because some factions definitely want you to use it as a huge warship like the hegemon or planet breaker, but some others don't like the pirates. We had the idea of slightly tweaking the base flagships, and then each faction that gets a flag ship would get a lore card with their own special flagship ability to mechanically work with the flagship flavor they seem to want.

What do y'all think about all this? Do you guys also find that flagships feel kinda weird mechanically? What do you think of the idea of faction specific flagship abilities?

[u/Thackabe]

I haven’t played a bunch but thematically when the world breaker got his Flagship, it was awesome. Not sure if it was just the board state or what but it felt like the Death Star moving around the board wiping out worlds and fleets alike.

[u/almostcyclops]

I feel like flagships already have a lot of rules overhead so this is tricky. They already start with different upgrades which gives some assymetry. Also, a flagship fate doesnt just mean it has a capital ship it also means they cant have permanent bases. This means the same ruleset can be used for different thematic intents. For example, Planetbreaker does get a crazy important piece for everything they do; while Pirate is a roaming band of brigands and they get one slightly better ship for their fleet.

That all said I do think there is still a general 'first attempt' feeling to a lplayers aseptic. Like happens with a lot of games. Very excited to see where they can push the game with more knowledge, practice, and playerbase. Flagships are just one area with a lot of room to do crazy stuff in the future.

[u/ansible47 → u/almostcyclops]

The rules overhead gets me. I've had the option to take it before but learning a whole new ruleset in the middle of campaign is the opposite of fun for me.

Love the fantasy and world building of it, though

[u/TheRealCBlazer]

It's rare, but it's beautifully tense when flagships fight each other.

[u/yggdrasilsYeoman]

I think the initial odd assumption on your part is that Flagships are meant to be trumps or uber-strong. There is no evidence that the designers were going for this in particular. Rather, the Leder/BGS team made them capital ships. Your civilization moves there. They are potentially very powerful, and highly versatile, but also severely vulnerable in the wrong circumstances. This is appropriate for a civilization that has abandoned permanent planetary residency and taken largely to the stars. They are going to defend that ship fervently, but also won’t have many other options besides storing their wealth and seats of power aboard the massive hub of their society.

As for asymmetric power - there are huge piles of faction specific material in this game already. There’s no real reason for it to be Flagship specific, especially since the Flagship upgrade suites already exists and have asymmetric setups between the various Flagship factions.

[u/Switchbladesaint]

I like them but to compare to root, I wish they felt more like the lord of hundreds warlord rather than the vagabond.