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So, I get bored easily, especially when I have played a game for over a year (coming up on the 2 and a half year mark now)... Which leads me to start designing my own stuff for play within the universe. I am Strongly considering creating a new Faction with a few different Hull designs, and I was wondering how you guys would feel playing a home brewed fleet in a friendly home game? What should I avoid, What should I do for certain?

I am planning 4-6 Hull types, not to include a fighter or Shuttle craft. I intend on keeping the current maximums (FP 6 or less, Agility 3 or less, Hull 7 or less for small base, max of 10 otherwise, shields maxed at 8), and I am aiming to avoid introducing new abilities.

Sample Ship Idea

AWS Farstrike-Hermes-Class Cruiser
Fire Power: 4
Agility: 2
Hull: 6
Shields: 5
Upgrade Slots: [C] [C] [C] [W] [T] [T]
Ability: When attacking with a Photon or Quantum torpedo upgrade, you may choose to not disable the Upgrade. if you do, place an Auxilary Power Token beside your ship. (Alright, so I created a new ability... but it is more balanced than the Yeager's!)

It would have a Forward and rear firing Arc, with a maneuver dial similar to the Sovereign-Class

Looks fine to me, what with everything else, borg, fighters etc, as long as this is fairly costed, it's unlikely to break the game.
Tell us about the faction?

Its based on an alien Race I developed a few years back for my sci-fi writing.

Hailing from the Andromeda galaxy, the Androneans are a hyper advanced race, evolved from the Super Soldier programs of their home worlds. After several centuries fo war, they came to a peaceful resolution and fortified their own boarders from exterior threats while advancing medicine and space travel technology. They have advanced world-cleaning abilities, using their technology to create artificial suns and planets, as well as reversing the environmental damage caused by centuries of war. Those that have reached the Alpha quadrant are from several different exploration fleets sent out to discover new life and civilizations, boldly going where no Andronean has gone before...

Its a borderline Utopian society that has primarily run into the issue of being attacked from outside forces. The appear essentially human, save their size: they stand over 9 feet tall.

Any questions I can answer... these guys have over a decade of my life poured into them... lol

I wanted your guys opinion on a Tech upgrade:

"At the start of the game, place 5 shield tokens on this card. During the end phase, remove a token from this card and place it on the ship card. If the shield token is destroyed, return it to this card. If all of the ships shields are destroyed, place all of the remaining shield tokens from this card onto your ship and discard this card. No ship may have more than one secondary Shield array."

It costs 12 SP.

I am thinking of maybe adjusting it so that instead of replacing the tokens, you can CHOOSE to move the token from the upgrade to the ship, but when the shield is destroyed, its gone.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I wanted your guys opinion on a Tech upgrade:

"At the start of the game, place 5 shield tokens on this card. During the end phase, remove a token from this card and place it on the ship card. If the shield token is destroyed, return it to this card. If all of the ships shields are destroyed, place all of the remaining shield tokens from this card onto your ship and discard this card. No ship may have more than one secondary Shield array."

It costs 12 SP.

I am thinking of maybe adjusting it so that instead of replacing the tokens, you can CHOOSE to move the token from the upgrade to the ship, but when the shield is destroyed, its gone.

That tech upgrade may make a ship too difficult to destroy, especially considering that if someone can't deal 5 damage in a single turn they're just going to be playing round-robin with the shield tokens. With agility dice and other tricks, you could effectively make the ship immortal.

I'd suggest that at best, rather than return the shield tokens automatically to the card, it "generates" one shield token a turn, with a maximum of 5 tokens on the card, and a notation you can't increase the shield's ship value above its starting shield value.

Has any upgrade ever cost more than 10sp? The most expensive single upgrade I've seen (albeit in my limited experience with this game) is the 10pt flagship upgrade resource card. Are there more expensive single upgrades? In not, I'd say try and trim down the rules until you get an upgrade that fits more in line with existing ones both in cost and ability. If you're trying to get folks to accept a new faction, it might make the job easier if you limit your custom work to within the existing framework and to avoid accusations of mary sue fan creation. I'm not saying your stuff is that but rather that folks may get sticker shock when seeing stuff like that and automatically pigeon hole everything you did into that category.

So something like:

"At the start of the game, place 1 shield token on this card. After you perform a green maneuver, place an additional shield token on this card, up to the starting shield value of your ship. During the end phase, you may discard one shield token from this ship to repair a destroyed shield token from your ship card.
If your shields are completely destroyed, you may discard this card to move all shields tokens on this card to your ship card."

OR

"After performing a green maneuver, place a shield token on this card, up to your starting shield value. If your shields are completely destroyed, move all of the shield tokens from this card to your ship card."

The second one allows the ship to only regenerate its shields once ALL the shields are down, but repeatedly. The first one allows you to regenerate slowly or discard for a full regen.