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Calm down gent's it's not that big of a deal

My personal problem with Anti-Pursuit Lasers is more fundamental:

It's a modification. It therefore prevents me taking Engine Upgrade.

A Shuttle benefits from the Engine Upgrade massively - it becomes one of the fastest ships in the game as long as it can reliably use its action to boost - which you can do by leveraging your crew slots and sensor slots for things like gunner and fire control system.

Ultimately, in my experience, the best use for the shuttle is as the cheapest, toughest imperial crew caddy - it's a great place to put Vader (as a tough 'suicide damage' ship able to put automatic damage across a big arc) or the Emperor (able to provide 'on spec' dice modification anywhere on the table).

Ironically, the former is especially good at killing TIE interceptors, whilst the latter is most often seen supporting TIE interceptors.


Pilot skill isn't that flat a thing. I agree that if 'going first' is important, then the 8/9/10/11 is where it's at.

I tend to divide things up into:

PS1/2 - blockers and cheap generics.

PS3-5 - "my generics shoot before your generics". This band is mostly relevant if you expect to see swarms and especially twin laser turrets. Most people's ace squads shoot before a swarm or TLT pack, but the thing is that with tough generics like a Y-wing, 2-3 aces often won't have the firepower to take one down before it shoots, where 3-4 high PS generics would.

PS6-7 - "better than generics but not good enough" - things like IG-88 and a lot of good unique pilots sit in this bracket, but they're defined by pilot abilities not pilot skill. You'll note that the only really dedicated arc-dodgers which sit in this bracket - the named phantoms - usually have veteran instincts

PS8-11 - "aces" - if you're serious about arc-dodging or shooting first, you need to be in this bracket, and preferably 9+. After several years and more pilots than you can shake a stick at, Fel and Vader still get looked at enviously for their native PS9.

I honestly hadn't thought about using the engine upgrade on the shuttle locarno24. I might have to give it a go tonight.

So, last night I tried out a stripped down Shuttle, Jendon, recon spec, title shuttle and weapons specialist along with 5 tie fighters. we played a modified map, had 12 asteroids within range 2 of the centreline, so it was a cluttered map.

my opponent brought along two A wings and 2 headhunters with various upgrades.

the shuttle preformed well and took down one of the A's and Hunters whilst the ties took care of the rest. I did loose most of the Ties though mostly to the cluttered asteroids (3 ties and 1 to shooting). The shuttle lost all it's shields to the asteroids after having to chase the last A wing through the field several times. it was either take the chance through the field or continue circling the board.

If you scratch the paint will splashing the enemy... they'll just repaint the hull. Good job!