Here's an idea, Action card- Freighter escort. The card is actually a freighter ship card when revealed. You assign it to one ship which will escort it. It has one Ph-3 and two free hit buttons, but has a high Victory Point score (12 or so) to represent the valuable cargo. If you get it through to the end of the game it counts as one of your ships, but is a valuable and easy target for others. The escort can use its own weapons to assist in defence if the freighter is attacked. There are two of these cards per deck. However, there is also a Q-ship card. If the freighter is attacked the defending player can choose to play this if he has it. It's like the freighter card but with 1 Ph-1, 1 WPN and 2 Ph-2 plus 2 free hit buttons. If played the freighter card is discarded and this takes its place. Once exposed the Q-ship acts like any other ship in the player's fleet (can't be escorted), it's got decent weapons but is only worth 4 victory points (as it's not a true combat vessel). A player can have more than one freighter, but they have to be escorted by the same ship. If one of these then becomes a Q-ship then it can stay in the convoy and add to the escort. An existing Q-ship not in a convoy can join one if the player gets another freighter. Probably restrict escorts to the main body of the fleet (and thus trapping them there so long as they are on escort duty). If the escort is destroyed the attacker gets the freighter as well (got to work out what happens if there's a Q-ship there as well), a player can re-assign escorts during his turn.

Anyone else tried using freighters and Q-ships in SFBF?

By Andy Tucker (Stibbons) on Monday, April 19, 2010 - 09:38 am: Edit

Hang on, the freighter there is too fragile, got give it at least half a dozen free hit boxes or phaser fire will just wipe it out in one volley. Was considering making each free hit a "cargo" box and each worth 1 VP. Will have to refine it a bit further.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 19, 2010 - 11:13 am: Edit

I don't think that works, but there may be a way to do a workable convoy. I'll consider it six months from now in CL42.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, April 19, 2010 - 02:12 pm: Edit

Andy,
Maybe freighters could be ship cards (you could have large and small and only have one... maybe you hand each player a freighter card from a freighter deck? So, you would play with frieghters or not.).
Freighters could then be escorted and to attack them you have to kill the escort first (limited to a CL or your smallest ship whichever is smaller). Escorting is done during formation changes and you place the escort on top of the frieghter.
Ships on escort duty cannot attack. Escorted freighters cannot be attacked directly. If an attacker killed the escort he/she may make a second attack against the freighter on the same turn (provided he/she has the cards).
Frieghters do not need weapons cards to fire weapons (which would usually be used for drone and plasma defense).
VP value of freighters, like you said, would be high.

By Troy Latta (Saaur) on Monday, April 19, 2010 - 05:08 pm: Edit

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Quote:

(limited to a CL or your smallest ship whichever is smaller)

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By Dale Lloyd Fields (Dylkha) on Monday, April 19, 2010 - 06:58 pm: Edit

Here is a different game mechanic inspired by Andy Tucker's concept to consider for a freighter. Just make it a cumulative VP generator. Freighter starts with X tokens. Each point of damage removes a token. Each repair phase, add a token. At the end of the game, each token is 1 VP. If freighter is destroyed (all tokens + 1 damage) then it is removed and generates small (Y) VP for destroyer. X and Y are whatever is needed for balance. [Edit: Could put a cap on tokens for balance too. For example, a large freighter could have more spots for tokens compared to a small freighter. This would also allow better ship art than a simple box.]

Can't pull the freighter out at the last turn in order to score big points. But, it would make a handy sniping target.