Even if someone totally hates this list, this doesn’t change the Imperial fleet rules. DON’T USE THE LIST IF YOU HATE IT!
The issue is when this becomes official and up on GW, anyone can use it and the ships without the opponents permission. True, we can just not play at all, but it's better to have something that we can all use than have something people dislike or can't avoid if someone else takes it.
Anyway, thoughts from the previous thread before they got buried in ham sandwiches:
On the various ships currently in the list:
Victory: 325-335. I still think this ship is going to be OP. It's functionally the equivalent of the Apocalypse BB but trades two lances and the special critical rule for four lances that are always capable of firing 60cm with no penalty and it's as fast as a retribution. It seems extremely attractive at 335 or the more likely 325 points with torpedoes.
Vanquisher: there just isn't any reason to ever take this over a Victory class outside of a special story driven scenario. Character ship or no, it's just too close to the Victory's profile and cost.
Mercury: Still messed up. this thing really needs a reason to exist as it does. Compare it to an overlord which has equivalent firepower but none of the drawbacks this ship has. If you are going to make it blow up spectacularly because of it's battleship power systems, it needs a bit more than an extra 5cm speed to make the need for those systems believable. Give this thing battleship grade weapons and it'll be more reasonable. It really does not have any reason to blow up like it does right now. Really, look at the stats. It gains +2 batteries over an overlord battelcruiser which amounts to a single dice gained for all its battleship power generation capability. That one dice is completely negated by the Overlord's targeting array. All this ship gains for the spectacular explosive ability is +5cm speed. Congratulations, it is now a 250 point fireship.
Jovian: I'm not fond of how if breaks the IN rules, but it's effectively limited so it's not problematic. I'm sure the IN did some experimentation along the way to the modern fleet. The ignored prow critical fixes any problem the ship itself has.
On the new parameters:
In order for a low AC IN fleet to work we need to boost the inbuilt ship defenses to counter the low AC. This can be either using a mechanic like giving turrets a better rate of fire, better hitting capablities, or in the ill fated FDT's. After having thought through it a bit, I think that it could work well to just let bakka turrets hit ordnance on a 3+ rather than a 4+ to show their increased capabilities. Cost could be built into the profiles if needed but it should be standard rather than an added upgrade if you want it to be taken often.
I think moving rath to the emperor was a good idea and it should make any emperor pretty rare in the lists.
Carriers will pose pretty difficult thing to affect. Most people want at least 8LB and will be willing to do quite a bit to get it. Reserve rules ensure that at least one carrier can easily be pulled into the list and quite possibly two with minimal effect. If the Jovian remains, it will be taken unless it's made less attractive, say by limiting it to launching only fighters or AB. If the Jovian is removed, you will probably see a dictator in every list plus a mars. Either way there's just too many options to easily pull in a good deal of AC with minimal effect on your list choices.
To fix that, I'd say remove the mars entirely, remove the jovian entirely, and bring in the defiant with the limit of 1 per 500 points since it has low AC numbers and inbuilt weakness. This leaves you with the Mars, Dictator, and Exorcist as your carrier choices for reserve. With the mars having the NC and the Exorcist unable to squadron with regular cruisers it probably means you would see a dictator pulled in via reserve and squadroned with two defiants to hit 8LB since it comes in substantially under the cost of the empy and you'd be sacrificing either line cruisers or your BB to pull in a second dictator. That leaves you stuck with no change to the LB taken in the fleet so you probably need a means to limit reserve carriers a bit more by disallowing them entirely since the big gun lobby hates carriers and won't be asking for any reserves.
so, in summery:
FDT: Turrets hit ordnance on a 3+ rather than 4+ and this is inbuilt to the list rather than an upgrade.
Fleet list: Remove mars and Jovian, add defiant. Prevent Bakka from taking ships with LB as reserve options.
Ships: see previous comments.
