Fanstorm Aramada - The Privateer Gunship

Hello people!

Well, Adepticon came and went and proved to be a bit of a damp squib as far as SG and Firestorm goes - they showed some stuff, but not everything that was planned or promised (nothing for you poor Planetfall gamers out there, for instance). The FA tournament had 17 players from a planned cap of 32, which also seems low, and one of our intrepid Brit gamers was pretty disappointed in the experience - which doesn't bode well after travelling thousands of miles for the event.

One of the highlights were the STL (which look great) but also the Corsairs, Pathogen and the first Leviathan. This should have been a bit of a coup for SG, but somehow it felt lacklustre and poorly executed. From all the ships that already have stats and no models, we also got a new ship - something SG often do - in this case a Gunship for the Corsairs. Now apart from the fact that the Corsairs don't really need a Gunship (the cruisers are flexible enough to take that kind of role if needed), myself and the TheoryMachine group (our independent name for members of the old FFG) thought it would be fun to stat this for v2.0 as we would have done previously.

So here's what we did;

Corsairs Privateer Gunship

Now this is the ship we would have created having been landed with the model shown - which is what happened with some ships, but in general we came up with ships factions needed, and then they'd be sculpted. So in the case of the Marauders, if we were looking for any gap to fill, it would probably have come in the form of a destroyer - something sneaky and able to infiltrate, allowing ambushes and traps to be set. We may well stat one up in the near future - who knows?

Anyway, the Privateer is limited in having a squadron size of 1-2. We generally tried to stay away from this, since the power fall-off and general vulnerability of such a squadron is higher than 3-4 ship squadrons. Needs must sometimes, however, and it was the case that production costs forced the hand or we were just presented with that as a non-negotiable. As such, we're used to working that way too.

So the Privateer is a beefed-up cruiser, trading some flexibility for greater weapon potency and longer-ranged strikes. Torpedoes take a hit but have the option for Torpedo Spook to make then more effective - either late game or against smalls (especially in reduced squadron sizes). You can build quite a bruiser of a ship - up to DR6/CR9 on the approach - but it gets slow and turns like a shopping cart. Still, seems appropriate for its designation and the other ships in the Corsairs arsenal - you can imagine this as the slow meat-shield bruiser at the back of the thug pack!

Anyway, enjoy the ship and we'll be in touch again soon :-)