I find it a little bit disconcerting that you chose to chop up my post in your quoted reply, change the order of the things I said, and then remove all the reasoning I gave that wasn't related to aesthetics. One might wonder if you were busy constructing a straw man (or maybe straw woman in this case). As to the venom you're leveling in my direction, I think that's far more childish than anything I've said. I haven't denigrated you, or your opinions. I've treated you with respect. You might try doing the same. Edit: I'd also like to point out that I never called anybody's decisions retarded. I called the ships themselves retarded. Quite a different thing.

No but the ordnance fix cards are in the new wave. I suspect that may have meta consequences which will prohibit competition without purchasing the new wave. If not prohibit, at least reduce the odds.

Doesn't that Scum fighter look like your Dunelizard? No, the Dunelizard is actually pretty. And the Kirahz or whatever isn't even from the same company as the Scyk. It's not a Hutt fighter, it's one of the game's Black Sun fighters. And it's the ugliest of the bunch too. If they wanted to go with the Black Sun fighters, why not go with the Vaksai? It's way cooler looking and it featured in the card art for one of the other ships in the game already. But logically, with the paint scheme they chose, they should have gone with the Dunelizard, or if they wanted to give another large base to the scum, the Kimogila or M-22 Krayt. This decision, much like the K-wing, is really poorly thought out. Since I'm relatively new to the game, this is the first release I've seen where I've been a part of the game community. I have to say, I am incredibly disappointed in FFG. I certainly won't be buying any of these retarded EU ships, and possibly will be reconsidering my commitment to the game as a whole. You know, you were starting to become one of the members I respected after thevarious N-1 EU threads. But the sheer arrogance of these posts, well, I'm starting to doubt my prior opinion of you. You have no idea what goes on at FFG. You think they don't know these other ships exist? You think they didn't consider these other ships? You think, because you don't understand their decision making process that it doesn't exist? Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, the professional design department of FFG and LFL itself might actually know what they're doing? You think you could do so much better? That your personal aesthetic gut feeling is a better judge than the decision of a whole design department taking into consideration aesthetic, marketing, mechanical role and licensing? Oh, and the things you fan over? The Dunelizard, Juno Eclipse? They're EU too. Some might even, in their opinions, apply the same adjective you used. So you know what? If your pet ship not being released this wave offends you so deeply then by all means "reconsider your commitment to the game," go. But leaving is leaving, not hanging around the forums and bitching that you don't personally like the designs of a few fictional spaceships. Ragequitting because someone flies a K-wing? That's just so... well... childish. First, off, if you have a problem with my ideas, feel free to disagree with the ideas. I'm always open to that. I am, however, getting a little tired of the ad hominem attacks when I offer none to provoke them. As I've explained, I believe to you, before, it's not about a pet ship. It's about the decision-making process and the potential alternatives. You don't work for FFG, why does this so offend you? Also, why do you assume that they somehow "know better." Do you think there is some great plan going on that is logically superior to anything I've stated? If so, maybe give me a hint of it. The fact is, FFG has produced a wave that about half of the forum seems to think is hideous. Maybe that's true of every wave, but like I admitted in my "arrogant" post you quoted, I haven't been around long enough to know that. What I do know, and what I've laid out quite clearly, is that the Kihraxz is a light fighter in the Star Wars Galaxies Jump to Lightspeed game. It's the Black Sun equivalent of the Scyk. Here it has been given medium fighter stats. The Black Sun medium fighter was the Vaksai. The Hutt cartel medium fighter was the Dunelizard. The Vaksai, as I pointed out to you earlier, shows up in the card art already in the game. It's a cool design. I'd have preferred to see it to the Kihraxz. In fact, I like Mel's version of it so much I've been painting one up. It would have been a good fit for scum, with a different aesthetic from the other scum ships. The other alternative, the Dunelizard, would have been a good choice if you wanted to continue the Scyk line, and produce the MandalMotors medium starfighter and give a unifying design aesthetic to the Scum faction. Either way, I think those would have been better decisions on the part of FFG. You're suggesting that there is some very good reason for this decision on the part of the design team. I'd love to know it. As to the K-wing, as I stated in another thread, I understand the decision. It was really the only Rebel heavy bomber design that is there to build. I just think it's hideous and poorly thought-out, and I wish they had chosen something else, or invented their own design for it, or their own design for a different bomber. I suppose though, that would have come with its own risks in regards to fan reaction. As to not wanting to play with K-Wings, sorry, but that's the way I feel. They kind of ruin my suspension of disbelief with the game. If someone at the local game shop wanted to play a game with me, and he had K-Wings, obviously I wouldn't tell him to go screw himself, I'm polite, but I don't want to play in tournaments where I know I'm going to encounter a lot of the things. So, I may curtail my tournament play, which I was considering doing anyway. On the subject of reconsidering my commitment to the game as a whole - I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I've bought what, 600 dollars worth of ships since February? That's nuts. It's not as nuts as some people, but it's pretty crazy by my standards. I've really enjoyed the game. I think it's got so much going for it, and up until now, I've thought the ships were really great, even the EU ones. I kind of didn't like the Starviper aesthetic, but I could tolerate it. But this wave doesn't live up to my expectations. Maybe that's the fault of my expectations, but in the end, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. If I don't like a wave, I'm not going to buy it - that's my right as a consumer. Because of the way the game is set-up, not buying a wave basically ends your chances of playing in tournaments, because you'd have to either borrow cards from others or use proxies. So, just by virtue of not buying this wave, I will be reassessing my commitment to the game. Does that mean rage quitting? No. It means reassessing how much time I want to sink into it, how much work I want to spend on improving my play, and how much of my money I want to spend on the starfighters they're selling.

I'm considering a ground-up kit bash. Not sure if I want to go by the EU text or just do something of my own. I could definitely see potential in a ship that shows its Koensayr Y-wing roots, but which is designed as an ordnance platform.

I'm very excited for this. I love taking a hard core military approach to the universe.

So I guess all those planes with fixed forward cannons are just useless, then. Ok. That makes sense since, as we all know, strike missions are always flown with a single ship... Yes. The K is ugly as butts. Move on, people. How is this worth your time?? If you knew anything about strike missions, you'd know that aircraft with fixed forward-firing guns are using maneuvering to defend themselves, something the K-wing is not very good at (otherwise, why would it have turrets?). Even planes which are attack dedicated like the A-10 are trained to use not only the gun in an air to air role, but also have sidewinder missiles as part of standard strike packages for self-defense. You don't send planes into a fight without self-defense capabilities. Planes like tankers and AWACS are always kept well back from the action, sometimes in the airspace of another country. Every plane that is sent forward into "Indian country" is equipped in a way that enables it to defend itself. It may not always be successful in defending itself, and the odds may be against it, but you don't send pilots into harm's way reliant solely on escorts. And before somebody mentions recon planes, their speed and altitude capabilities were considered to be their defensive armament.

Yeah. I totally agree.

Really nice!

Why didn't they just give us the ARC-170 again? Way, way, way better design. I think I'm going to go watch Revenge of the Sith to get the K-Wing filth out of my eyes.

Except you're including the K-Wing in Star Wars. The K-Wing isn't canon. Most of the ships that appear in Star Wars are way, way, more polished in their design aesthetic and functionality than that monstrosity.

I get the disappointment of seeing the design space for a favourite ship vanish (I'd rather S&V had Uglys as their 12 pointer and I really don't buy Z95s as Rebel ships either), but... You can accept a game in which eight scrubs fresh out of the academy are not smoked in less time than it takes to tell by Han, Luke, Wedge or any other hero/elite pilot yet the K-Wing kills your suspension of disbelief? Not liking it I get, everyone's taste is different after all. To me it looks like the successor to the Y-Wing in the same way that the E-Wing follows the X-Wing. In regards to the first point, it's not so much that I love the Dunelizard, though I do, it's that they are taking a light fighter that was the Black Sun equivalent to the Scyk, and they're throwing a Scyk paint job on it and putting it in the slot of the Dunelizard. Why the hell would you do that when you could just build a Dunelizard? If you're going to borrow from Galaxies, why not do it right? As to the eight "scrubs" from the academy, I actually don't have a problem with that, because someone at the Imperial academy isn't a scrub. Luke Skywalker is a bush-pilot. Han Solo is a freighter pilot. Wedge is the only real fighter pilot amongst them, and even he probably had Imperial training at some point. Tycho certainly did. Having studied in the Imperial Academy is a benefit, in my opinion. Plus, look how long it took Luke and Han to kill those TIEs in the first movie in their Falcon turret spots - quite a while, and there weren't eight of them. Look how close Luke came to being killed by Black Squadron. The Rebel assault was almost completely wiped out by enemy fighters, not so much by the AAA. So, yeah, I guess it doesn't kill my suspension of disbelief the way the K-wing does.

That's totally fine, but it still is leaving a huge blindspot that isn't covered by a weapons system. I'm not saying the gunner is going to shoot his own engine. What I'm saying is that the enemy fighter pilot is going to line herself up on the K-wing's six o'clock low position, and there won't be a damned thing the K-wing gunner can do about it. A medium bomber like the K-Wing cannot be expected to deal with fighters. If a fighter is firing at a bomber, that means that the escort is gone or insufficient both of which are not issues a slightly better field of fire on the tail gun will solve. Those turrets are there to keep the fighters honest and shoot them down if they get too cocky, which is why bombers phased them out. They were never very effective except for a brief period of time in between bi-planes and mono-planes when planes were slow enough to hit with a tail gun. B-17 through up a wall of lead in hopes of hitting anything. They soon realized a capable escort is far better. Now as for Star Wars and X-Wing minis combat, whole 'nother story(as ones such as ficklegreendice constantly remind us...). See: Y-Wings vs TIE Fighters. Even if you expect the K-wing to have an escort, you don't give it guns that don't do a good job of protecting it, that doesn't make sense.

Here is a reference for that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-82_Twin_Mustang And I think the extra winglets of the K-Wing are needed for landing. Although of course it's not the best solution (funtional and aesthetic), but at least they could make sense. Edit: And an example for a front turret under the nose: Chin turrets exist in a lot of places. I defy you, however, to find me a chin turret that is also a ball turret. Go for it. Knock yourself out. You won't find it. The weight of that would be ungodly, and would make the plane ludicrously nose heavy. The B-17G chin turret was added because the B-17F only had a single forward-firing machine gun in the nose for use against head-on attacks. The Luftwaffe figured that out, and started attacking the bomber-stream head-on. This allowed them to face fewer guns, and for the closure speed to be such that it made it much harder for the bombers to hit them. So, the B-17G addressed that fact by adding a chin turret which was controlled by the bombardier and which could deliver forward firepower without disturbing the bombardier's forward view for his Norden bombsight. The F-82 Twin Mustang's cockpits were retained so that you could have two pilots, alternating control on long flights. The whole design of the plane was long-range escort missions. However, the plane itself is something of a stop-gap design. It's a sandwiching of two Mustang fuselages to achieve the necessary speed and range for the fighter's design. That's not what's going on with the K-wing. The K-wing has two cockpits within a single fuselage, which, again, makes no sense.

Because their source material isn't "ships Nightshrike is obsessed with only". Besides, the Kihraxz ...is already in the game's card art, which indicates it's a ship they've wanted to make for a while. ...fills the role they wanted the ship to fill of a 20ptish Scum X-wing. ...looks better than what's essentially a real world fighter jet with an extractor fan strapped to the bottom. It's cute cutting and pasting while removing all the logic behind the points I was making, but I'll reiterate them here. The Vaksai is the ship that's on their card art. The Vaksai is a medium fighter, which is what this ship seems to be from its statlines, whereas the Kihraxz is a light fighter. The Vaksai would have fit the role of 20 point scum X-wing. The Vaksai is much better looking, and clearly they were thinking of it, because it's on their card art. However, my obsession with the Dunelizard aside, the Dunelizard is also a medium fighter. The Dunelizard is the direct upgrade of the Scyk in Star Wars Galaxies Jump to Lightspeed. The Dunelizard is made by MandalMotors, like the Scyk. The Dunelizard is a Hutt Cartel fighter (which is the paint scheme they used on their Kihraxz). So, the Dunelizard would have filled the role of scum X-wing much better than the Kihraxz because, unlike the Kihraxz, it's actually a medium fighter, and unlike the Kihraxz it is also the logical next step from the Scyk. That has nothing to do with my "obsession" and everything to do with the Dunelizard being the actual, in-game upgrade for the Scyk. So, the decision to use a Black Sun light fighter in Hutt Cartel livery for their Scum medium fighter makes no sense, no matter how much you cut and paste and how many snide remarks you care to make.

Think about it this way: if this wave combines the worst possible choices you feel they could have made, then logically the next couple of waves have to be substantially better. That's only true to a point. Seeing their decision-making process here, I'm not optimistic about future waves at all. How they could have missed the Dunelizard is really crazy for me. It's the next logical ship in the sequence with the Scyk, they gave it a stat-line that would work for the Dunelizard, I don't get the choice. Much as I hate the K-wing, the logic of that is slightly easier to stomach. I still hate it, but I get that they wanted to release a new rebel bomber. What else did they have available? The Havoc? That's not really rebel. The ARC-170? As others have pointed out, that almost fits better as an Imperial ship. The H-wing? That's pretty much just as bad as the K-wing. Personally, I think they should have made one up, but I guess that wasn't an option for them. Anyway, for me, I guess the game just isn't Star Wars anymore with the K-Wing in it. My suspension of disbelief bubble was popped in a bad way. I just can't picture myself playing across the table from somebody with a K-Wing and feeling like I'm playing a Star Wars game. So, I guess I'm kind of done with the game, at least in a competitive setting where they might show up.

That's totally fine, but it still is leaving a huge blindspot that isn't covered by a weapons system. I'm not saying the gunner is going to shoot his own engine. What I'm saying is that the enemy fighter pilot is going to line herself up on the K-wing's six o'clock low position, and there won't be a damned thing the K-wing gunner can do about it.

Most of my objections have already been raised. I will say to the point of the practicality standpoint that all of the Star Wars ships have some issues with practicality. The B-wing rotating cockpit makes no sense. The TIE fighter panels are poorly designed for visibility, as is the cockpit itself. The X-wing's S-foils only make sense if you consider additional surface area for cooling the heat from the guns, but even that is a stretch. That being said, none of the original trilogy (or prequel) ships, have so MANY horrible practicality issues in one package like the K-wing does (and many of those have been listed here). Moreover, while the X-Wing's S-foils may not make the most sense, they at least look cool. While the TIE fighter solar panels are in the way of visibility, they give a unique, iconic look to the ship, and they make sense as a sort of homage to satellites and all of our early spacefaring attempts utilizing craft with solar panels. While the B-wing cockpit rotation idea is ridiculous, the placement of the weapons is not, nor is the cockpit visibility poor, and the result is a visually-interesting craft. Some ships in Star Wars are downright well-designed, in my opinion. The N-1 is a favorite of mine (and mine alone it seems like). The A-wing is very well-designed. The Lambda Shuttle looks quite practical. We could go on and on, but the point is, all of the existing Star Wars ships have a look to them that seems unified and purposeful, even if maybe we have to make allowances for style. The issue with the K-wing is that nearly every part of it is not just poorly-designed, but goes against the Star Wars universe. Hardpoints for munitions? Every other Star Wars ship has internal munitions bays. No fixed heavy laser cannons firing forward? A ball turret that is located in one of the worst possible places for defending the ship, and for attacking other ships, and for the handling characteristics of the ship, and for aesthetics? A dorsal turret that is blocked by an engine which is off-centerline which messes with the ability to deliver even thrust to the ship? A set of useless extra winglets adding additional hard points that aren't necessary? Side by side cockpits which are totally separate? Really, the mind boggles.

If you're going to call me stupid, you should at least spell it right.

so the turrets on the stuka, B-25, B-17, B-29, A-20, TBF, SBD, B5N2, which all had turrets that had the tail within their firing arc, were all impractical yet they were used Responsibly and effectively. Couple of problems with this. Firstly, the planes which needed rear gunners had dedicated rear gunners not blocked by the tail - like the B-17, for example. Secondly, the vertical stabilizer on an airplane is a much smaller target than the K-wing's engine. It really blocks a huge portion of the only rear-firing arc on the ship, especially with anything dead astern. It's a silly position for it, and a silly position for an engine. I'll never understand why people lampoon horrible designs in real life, but defend them in science fiction and fantasy.

I'm just grumpy about the K-wing. Worst ship ever...

Sorry, guys, but space is no defense for a turret aimed at your own engine.

Like I said - no prequels by wave 9 or 10, then no prequels. I may be amending that at this point to just no prequels. To choose the K-wing over real Star Wars ships is very indicative of their chosen direction. It will also factor heavily into whether or not I continue to buy FFG products or play the game in a competitive atmosphere.

This thread is fantastic. Nice photoshop work everyone.

GBG?

The A-10 isn't ugly. People keep saying that, but its design is logical, and is reflective of its capabilities. The K-wing is just dumb. And, in reference to babies and bathwater, I'd rather keep the dirty bathwater than the baby in this case. I think the Spartans had a pretty sound policy when it came to babies like the K-wing.