Welcome back to The Files!
We’ve done Objectives, we’ve done Upgrades, we’ve even done Squadrons. Which means it’s finally time for the main event: ships — the glorious, angry space triangles that make Armada what it is.
Why save them for last? Because ships are kind of a big deal. They’re what we actually push around the table, they’re the canvas for every fleet, and they tie together everything else we’ve already discussed. But also… because touching ships is scary. They’re the hardest pieces in the game to tweak. Talking about ships without first understanding the objectives, upgrades, and squadron context would’ve been putting the cart before the horse (or the TIE before the Star Destroyer, if you prefer). Now that we’ve covered all that groundwork, we can finally look at the big toys with some perspective.
For those joining late, the full collection of previous posts lives here:
👉 The A-Files Archive
Scope and Sanity Checks
Before we start dissecting hulls, we need to talk about what’s possible. This series examines ships through the lens of ARC-legal organized play, rather than the "what if" perspective of Special Modifications. That means:
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No ship card or cardboard: The ARC ruleset hasn’t touched a single ship dial, arc, or defense token spread since the project began.
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No new upgrade bars or dice pools: The four “new” ARC ships (Quarren, Venator, Munificent, Arquitens) all use existing cardboard. That’s clever for logistics, but it absolutely throttles design space. They do have unique upgrade bars, though. But we're not making any new ships, so it's kind of irrelevant.
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Points only: ARC has adjusted a few costs — the Pelta Assault and Interdictor Combat — but even those stopped short of tinkering with the actual cards.
So: no giving the Victory extra yaw, no swapping the ISD’s Redirect for a Salvo, no sudden upgrade slot reassignments to make the Gladiator feel fresh. None of that is happening.
That said, points are not nothing. A few points can make or break an entire archetype. And for the sake of entertainment, I’ll also include short “What If” sections — tiny thought experiments about what could help a ship shine if changes beyond points were ever on the table. These are pure speculation, but hey, dreaming is free.
Meta Reality Check
Before pricing triangles, let’s set some assumptions about the world they live in.
Small Ships: The Struggle
In today’s meta, small ships are in a rough spot. The TRC90 still punches, but mostly because of the upgrade, not the hull. Strip TRC away and suddenly 44 points feels expensive. Add TRC back and you’re at 51 — now it feels great. The ship itself is just fine; it’s the upgrade doing the heavy lifting.
It’s the same story across factions. When was the last time you saw a random Hardcell Battle Refit on the table? Even after a discount, the LTT nerf sent it back into obscurity. The platform is fine; the context isn’t.
Defensive Layers Matter
Ships live or die by layered defenses — defensive retrofits, Projection Experts, titles, or token shenanigans — and the bigger and slower they are, the more critical it becomes. Just look at the two Munificent variants: one gets Thermals, one doesn’t. Guess which one’s better. The new ARC variants (Muni Command, Venator Imperator) all have defensive slots for a reason.
Black Dice Brawlers: Endangered Species
Close-range ships have suffered the most from 1.5 changes: pass tokens, Salvo prevalence, and general meta caution. Unless you’re a Demolisher-class doing the move-then-shoot trick or a tanky bruiser like a Kuat, brawling is pain.
Tags and Identity
Tags are currently flavor text for most older ships. Only the Imp Venator and Reb Providence have proper ones. If ARC ever wants tags to matter, every ship will need them — and the mechanics behind them will need to mean something. But that’s a crusade for another day.
So when I suggest point tweaks, keep three things in mind: small ships are fragile, defense slots are gold, and range equals safety.
The Imperial Navy, A to I
The Empire’s roster is vast, with more hulls than any other faction and some of the oldest designs in the game. To keep things digestible, I’m splitting it alphabetically.
This first part covers everything from Arquitens through Imperial-class Star Destroyer.
Next time we’ll tackle the rest — Interdictor through Victory (+ SSD as a bonus).
Arquitens-class Light Cruiser / Command Cruiser
The Arquitens is one of those designs that looks amazing on paper: a cheap broadside ship with three red dice per flank and a generous token suite fit for Vader. On the table, it’s… decent. Flexible, cost-efficient, and surprisingly tanky for its size.
But then there’s that nav chart. Ugh. You can practically hear the designer whisper “this is for Jerjerrod” as you stare at those limited yaw values. The ship isn’t unsteerable, but it takes constant nav commands just to feel okay — and predictable ships are dead ships.
Its flak is nothing special, which makes spamming multiple Arqs risky unless you’ve got a proper anti-squad plan elsewhere. That, plus the navigation issue, keeps it just shy of greatness. The price cuts helped, but only so far; push lower and it becomes too spamable.
What if: Imagine the Arquitens with an extra yaw pip at speed 2 and 3 — suddenly it’s interesting again. Or a title granting Fleet Support, Radiant VII-style, to turn it into a cheap command node. Both would open up neat possibilities without breaking anything.
Verdict: Kind of fine as is. I wouldn’t complain if each variant dropped by a single point, but the bigger problem is baked into the dial, not the cost.
Gladiator-class Star Destroyer
Ah, the Gladiator. The ship that launched a thousand black dice — and also a thousand balance debates.
Let’s be honest: everything about this chassis feels slightly off. It’s a chunky brawler that somehow ended up on a small base. You can see why (GSD → VSD → ISD progression; MC30 is small, so parity, etc.), but that doesn’t make it right. A medium base would’ve fit its role far better — but that’s obviously outside ARC scope.
Then there’s the dice spread. The GSD-II “upgrade” costs six points more and somehow makes the ship worse unless you’re doing a Kallus + Demo flak meme. That’s a rough look.
And yes, Demolisher itself remains absurdly good — even after every nerf imaginable — but that’s the title carrying the chassis, not the hull proving its worth. The base Gladiator is fragile, short-ranged, and often dead before it gets to brawl.
What if: In a perfect world we’d redesign both variants completely — one pure brawler, one skirmisher — and maybe even promote the ship to a medium base. In our world, we sigh and move on.
Verdict: The GSD-II could easily drop to 60 points instead of 62, just to make the choice less painful. But honestly, the entire ship revolves around Demolisher. Without that title, nobody’s showing up to the fight.
Gozanti-class Assault Carrier / Cruiser
Flotillas: love them or hate them, they’re the necessary glue of modern Armada. The Gozanti still fills its niche beautifully — cheap activation padding, token relays, disposable carriers — and the two-flotilla cap plus tabling rules keep them honest.
It is odd that GAR and CIS never got direct equivalents, and equally odd that Rebs/Imps have no non-flotilla support hulls, but that’s a problem for another committee.
What if: Nothing dramatic. We could argue forever about whether scatter-based flotillas should’ve existed, but the ship itself is fine.
Verdict: 23 points for the Transport is spot-on. The Assault at 26 feels fair for its red battery and improved flak, but you could drop it to 25 without shaking the galaxy. Tiny change, tiny impact.
Imperial-class Star Destroyer (I, II, Cymoon, Kuat)
Behold, the gold standard. The ISD chassis is everything a large ship should be: fast (ish), surprisingly maneuverable, disgustingly tanky, and capable of turning anything smaller into cosmic dust.
It does feel a little dated next to Clone Wars designs — no Salvo, no fancy tags, no built-in gimmicks — but it’s still the beating heart of the Imperial Navy.
ISD-I: The “carrier” variant in a world that punishes carriers without defensive retros. Lots of black dice but no Ordnance slot. It can take PDIC (we don't like that caround around these parts), or waste its officer slot on Minister Tua just to get a defensive option. It’s a points piñata screaming, “shoot me.” That said, it's not a horrible ship. If the price was right, it could be made to work.
ISD-II: Perfection. Elegant, deadly, balanced. Still my favorite ship in the game. The cost is high but fair; the design timeless.
Cymoon: The weird cousin. Without a Fleet Command or double Turbolasers, why bring it? And if you are bringing Fleet Commands, why not go Chimaera for flexibility? Double Turbolaser builds are fun but extremely expensive and rely on Tua to survive. The double-black flak is cute but limited.
Kuat: Knows exactly what it wants to be — a tanky knife-fighter — and is priced appropriately. This is what the ISD-I probably should have looked like.
What if: Swap a Redirect for a Salvo on the base chassis. Not going to happen, but it would help modernize the design a touch.
Verdict: ISD-II and Kuat are fine. ISD-I should come down to 104 tops — it’s under-defended, under-ranged, and over-costed. It's still 50 points more than a Quasar-I (which can do the carrier duties just as well AND have room for actual squadrons). Cymoon down to 108 would make sense; it’s powerful up front but brittle everywhere else.
Next Time: The Rest of the Fleet
That wraps up the A-to-I segment of the Imperial roster. Next time we’ll cover the rest: Interdictors, Onagers, Victories, and yes, the infamous Super Star Destroyer. Spoiler: some of them are better than you remember — and some are still bricks no amount of Jerjerrod can fix.
But before signing off, let’s talk about tags.
The Tag Problem
When I started drafting this post, I thought it would be fun to assign “tags” to each ship — you know, those new keywords that were introduced with the Clone Wars factions: Bombard, Comms,Transport, and so on. It seemed like a neat way to give older ships some identity and link them to future upgrade design.
That lasted about fifteen minutes.
Because right now, there’s exactly one upgrade in the game that cares about tags — Linked Turbolaser Towers — and that’s it. Everything else is either Clone or Droid, which hardly applies to Empire or Rebels. So what began as a grand taxonomy project quickly became an exercise in futility.
Still… it’s a shame. Tags could have been an elegant way to refresh older ships without touching the cardboard. ARC definitely should take a long, hard look at tags and how to integrate them properly into the game, and how to retroactively add them to older ships.
So I’ll toss this one to you, dear readers:
👉 What tags would you give these ships?
👉 Are tags even a good idea, or are they unnecessary clutter?
👉 Should ARC lean into the system, or quietly let it fade?
Drop your thoughts in the comments — I’m genuinely curious what the community thinks.
Until next time: keep your arcs wide, your nav dials close, and your triangles angry.
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