The designers of Attack Wing have a design pattern when making ships for the game.

If a ship is named, it;

• is 2 points dearer, which is a diminishing penalty for higher value ships,

• has a special trait (ship talent?)

• has an extra shield, unless it starts with none (in which case a shieldless ship is further penalised for having none to begin with).

• has one or more extra upgrade slots.

The first one is logical, better = dearer but could be graded for ship strength, the second is odd (why would a ship have a personal trait or special ability not imparted by it’s crew or Captain?) and the third is just a game play leveller.

The last makes some sense on it’s own, but less sense when the previous are considered.

Why are the Enterprise or Venture 1 shield point better than any other ship of the same class? Is this a “luck” point, a legacy point, or simply a game balancing consideration?

If it is a game balancer, then the ship has, I feel, already earned it’s two points in it’s special ability and/or extra upgrades. Some of these are very strong, arguably better than a 2 point bonus would warrant, others are just a slight benefit, often nicely themed, but still, 2 Points doesn’t usually get you that much anywhere else.

The Enterprise D (the later 26 pt version) gets a -1 mod to all attackers weapon values and a + 1 extra shield benefit and an extra upgrade that could conceivably give something similar all for 2 points.

If the Captain (card or player) are actually crap enough to need all that, then why is it special?

Wizkids have baked into the ships likely effects to mimic the TV or movie outcomes. This is similar to the Pilot skills in X Wing, except that each Captain comes with their own and many have an Elite Talent slot also (EPT equivalent), so in some cases, there are three “special” talents available to a Captain and his hunk of metal.

The question to be asked, if purely game requirements are shelved for the moment, is why would a ship have a talent. Is it a representation of the ship’s very Legend, The Captains skill (already accounted for in CS and ability and sometimes Elite slot), of the Crew’s ability (also recognised with crew slots of their own) or simply a vibe the designers wanted to add?

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One way of reducing this effect is to drop the generic ships, making all ships themed, but none stand out as “plain label”. It still defies some logic, but the ships get the full swathe of benefits.

As another alternative is to use the base class type only and let the Captain, Crew and other upgrades determine, along with the player, how well it performs.

Make sense?

This is similar to the no EPT slot in Bare Bones X Wing, avoiding double dipping, but even more logical.

The net effect is, fewer upgrades, cheaper ships and less upgrade synergy/complication/unbalancing, much as with BB X Wing.