Isn't that the same ship the Wild Karrde is? I think a lot of people who saw that in the store would think they were buying Talon Karrde's ship. Of course, you could easily put his crew on one of the cards and have a few other generic pilot cards as well. But from that point of view, you could do the same with the Falcon. 

Parakitor said:

Great point, but I see the shuttle almost as a game objective: either destroy it or protect it.

Parakitor said:

I was thinking the same thing.  You just beat me to it.  

I didn't know that an Action VI transport appeared in "Attack of the Clones"! Although that sort of canonizes the model, that ship is perhaps too big (125 meters long according to wookiepedia), its size being closer to a corellian corvette than a shuttle.

Another candidate would be the rebel medium transport used during the evacuation of Hoth (GR-75 medium transport). With 90 meters long, its size is a bit more manageable, and suposedly there exists a smaller variant (GR-45) that appears in the CGI-enhanced Mos Eisley spaceport sequence of "A New Hope", which being 60 meters long she is about two times the size of the Millenium Falcon. Although I suspect that this "smaller variant" was supposed to be the original model, but the CGI modellers didn't get the size right.

DaveNYC said:

This brings up a question: will tournaments be strictly dogfights, or will they be scenario-based. If the shuttle is only for objectives and tournaments are only dogfights, I have trouble imagining they'll sell a lot of shuttles. I have a hunch that either such a ship would have a substantial attack upgrade, or they'll surprise me by having scenario competitions.

  I have a question about future expansions. Let's assume that they're going to do repeats of X-wings and TIE Fighters in the future and release them with new pilots and equipment. If we see new X-wing and new TIE Fighter pilots, will they be able to fly the old X-wings and TIE Fighters, or will they only be able to fly the new expansion packs that may have some alternate paint schemes or different mounting positions so the ships look different?

From a marketing perspective, if they release new TIE and X-wing packs that have the exact same ship but new pilots, somebody with a good collection can buy one of each and start incorporating all the new pilots into their squads. That's not very many sales for the new expansion.

If they decide to make the models different, however, they're likely to sell 2 or 3 of each new expansion (depending on how good the pilots are), but they'll have the increased production cost of designing a new model.

I really can't figure out which would be more economical, but as a player, I would prefer repeat packs to use the same model so pilots are completely interchangeable with the older ships.

Budgernaut said:

Mechanically the model is gravy.  All the bases for all ships will probably be the same base (though bigger ships may need bigger ones) and since I expect the base toppers with initiative/skill of the pilots will come with each pilot card…  

Aahzmandius_Karrde said:

I totally agree: there is no reason to assume that future expansions will be incompatible with current fighters of the same type. I will say this, Budgernaut: if they come out with alternate paint schemes it would be fun to get the different colors so you could visually designate your flightgroups e.g. 3 red X-wings in Red Flight and 3 green X-wings in Green Flight. Probably won't work so well with the Empire ships, but that's alright. If you play with teams it would be a great way to differentiate players' ships as well.

I would like to see more variation of card? Maybe a boost pack just contain more pilot / ship options.

For example, in the expanded universe, they mentioned that eventual Imperial started to fit TIE series of fighter with shield as pilot was not as expendable as in previous era.

Just imagine an X-wing Pilot who shot at Tie Fighter and noticed it actually have shields.