Interceptor cooked three ways

In response to my most recent post about the Excelsior class, someone commented that the Exclesior was an easy ship to build for and if I wanted a real challenge, I should try to build a Bajoran Interceptor or Eerie-class.

Challenge accepted...

As with the previous challenge I decided to set myself some rules, and some areas of comparison:

1. The Interceptor is likely to be the third ship in a three ship fleet, so I should aim for about 30 points, allowing me the full 50 points for the other two ships (although likely I can come back and tweak later)

2. No resources - they aren't OP legal anymore so I should try to avoid using them, no matter how tempting

3. Penalty Pure - it's tempting to put all kinds of weird stuff on a ship to make it work, but ultimately I'm still sticking to my old ways and only using Federation, Bajoran or Vulcan captains or upgrades.

4. Man the torpedoes - it's likely that I'll be at least somewhat tempted to create a torpedo boat, so if I do go down this route, I need to bear in mind that the Miranda Class is a federation torpedo boat of great repute and I really need to offer something more than just "Torpedoes go boom" from the interceptor when the 12 point generic Miranda offers 270 degrees of coverage and a fairly manoeuvrable space frame, including shields(!) For 4 points cheaper than the interceptor and with the scan action as standard on the action bar. 

So, here goes nothing!

The Ship itself

The generic Bajoran Interceptor is a 16 point ship with a slashline of 2/3/3/0. Oof. That's bad. You are paying a lot of points for a 3 durability ship with essentially no protection from critical hits. The 3 agility is nice, and quite high, but without a cloaking device or the ability to get one (no shields means no cloaking) that isn't ground breaking. 2 PWV also means you are almost certainly going to invest in secondary weapons. Thankfully the generic interceptor does come with a weapon slot and a tech slot. But that's all you get. Which makes building from this spaceframe a little more difficult. Added into the general cocktail of badness is it's only fire arc being a forward 90. This doesn't lend itself spectacularly to a secondary weapons reliant ship, and contrasts poorly with the 22 point generic Miranda class. So is there anything at all good to say about this ship? It's dial is pretty interesting, with white hard turns at 1 and 2 as well as come about 1 and 1 that are white too. But it lacks a 4 or 5 straight ahead. I have some ideas about how to get the most out of this...

Engagement profiles:

This is an idea i have been toying with for a while, and it has to do with how you best engage with an enemy fleet.

Most of the time you (to borrow a phrase from another game) "Joust" with you opponent, that is to say, you line up on opposite sides of the play area, fly towards each other as fast as you can, fire out as strong as an attack as you can, then manoeuvre only to re-engage. Jousting would not favour the interceptor, with only 3 durability and an attack value that caps out at 5 (rule of 3) without the use of secondary weapons (which, as I've said above, aren't best used on this spaceframe).

The Engagement profile that this ship with this dial wants is to be able to come into an engagement at an angle or from behind, where they don't have to weather a lot of enemy fire on the way in. Ideally you want a planet or some kind of obstacle to advance from behind of, as this will help to keep you intact. It's no accident that both named interceptors have an ability that directly benefits from or enables this engagement profile.

Named interceptors:

The two named, or rather numbered, Interceptors, are interceptor 5 and Interceptor 8. Interceptor 5 has the named ability that it does not lose its "Perform Actions" step or take damage when it overlaps a planet, obstacle or ship base. It may also roll defence dice against any minefield. This helps in as much as it allows you to make the most of any planets that may be around, but this does feel a little like it's a salve designed to help bad pilots, rather than an outright benefit. The second sentence, allowing defence dice against minefields, is altogether more useful, as it aids you in approaching through those back channels that might appear, without your opponent just being able to gum them up with a minefield.

Interceptor 8 is the more offensive version, as when attacking, if the ship is not in the target ship's forward firing arc, it adds +1 attack die. This is a benefit that leans into the engagement profile of the ship, as ideally you do want to be coming at the target ship from the side or the back, as that will stop you from necessarily worrying about return fire (not always, but most of the time)

So my first build was designed to make a ship that was a little more srivivable, whilst taking advantage of the ability of Bajoran ships to take federation upgrades without penalty:

Interceptor 5 [16]

- Rudolph Ransom 4 (Captain) [2]

- Reinforced Shielding [4]

- Experimental Torpedo Bay [2]

- - Photon Torpedoes [0]

- Commander [5]

Ship Total: 29 SP

I chose interceptor 5 rather than 8 because this is a mainly defensive build.

Ransom is a medium cost captain who adds 2 defence dice as long as the ship has an evade token beside it, but seeing as I want survivability, i'd like a BS token to spend when defending too, so a Commander from the Alliance expansion came on board. To add some more survivability I added the Reinforced Shielding tech upgrade, also from Alliance, leaving me 3 points left and a weapons slot. Whilst I know I wanted to avoid just building a torpedo boat, having the option of 5 point photon torpedoes for only 2 points, thanks to experimental torpedo bay, seems like a good offer, hence that's what I went with. If I'm out of an opponents fire arc, and won't need either the evade or BS token, then I can safely take the target lock the torpedoes would need. 

I wasn't entirely happy with this as the best 30 point Interceptor build I could make, so I had another go, this time with Interceptor 8:

Interceptor 8 [16]

- Shakaar Edon 6 (Captain) (Interceptor 8) [4]

- - Red Alert (Red Alert Talent) [2]

- Metaphasic Sweep (Federation 'Boldly Go') [1]

- Experimental Torpedo Bay (Federation 'Boldly Go') [2]

- - Photon Torpedoes (Time tokens and single BS Conversion) [0]

- Hikaru Sulu (U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)) [3]

Ship Total: 28 SP

This ship is an out and out torpedo boat that is designed to lean on positioning and its ability to sensor echo in order to make the most out of the named ability. Shakaar Edon's ability to re-roll all blank attack dice, and the ability to get a target lock as a free action, means that this ship can save it's torpedo barrage for the right moment and use the ship's action to take a BS, that it then doesn't have to remove thanks to the Red Alert talent. At it's core though, this is just a torpedo boat, and that doesn't feel quite right, nor does it feel right to use Federation Upgrades to make the Interceptor function. So I had another try, with a higher standard of purity.

Interceptor 8 [16]
- Shakaar Edon 6 (Captain) (Interceptor 8) [4]
- - Militia (Interceptor 5) [3]
- Phaser Strike (Interceptor 8) [5]
- Day Kannu (Akorem) [2]
Ship Total: 30 SP

This ship leans into the fact that it's a Bajoran ship and tries to take the most from that. Militia allows a free BS token, and (since it's a Bajoran ship) +2 red dice. Phaser strike has an action allowing you to attack at an effective CS 10, which with either Militia or Day Kannu and Shakaar's ability means you can ensure re-rolls and BS conversions with the benefit of range bonuses and the ship's named ability driving your attacks (with all of these triggers) up to a mighty power 8 for one round but consistently 6, which is nothing to be sniffed at (4 for Phaser Strike, 2 for Militia, 1 for the ship's named ability and 1 for range)!

I actually really like this build and whilst it is expensive seeing as the ship dies to a stiff breeze, it isn't a torpedo boat, and attempts to make the most of abilities and card text specifically designed for it. I would still have reservations about spending 30 points on this ship, and can see it being frequently the first target of any engagement, but if you can manage to keep it out of sight and trigger all of it's benefits at the right time, it is something that packs a nasty surprise! Added to that it's ship pure in the most strict sense, with only Bajoran upgrades on a Bajoran ship.

This was certainly a challenge, and I don't necessarily thing that this is the "Best" Bajoran Interceptor you can make for 30 points, but it is something that can be somewhat useful on the table and offers something in CS10 Phaser Strike that isn't always easy to find elsewhere, so I'm quite happy with the final results. 

Let me know what you think, maybe have a go yourself?

Either way, I'm not Picard.