So, by request, I recently pulled together the difference between a GSP w/ PTL based alpha strike, vs a Z-95 alpha strike. For the purpose of this discussion, concussion missiles were used on both. I figured I'd go ahead and share the results here so anyone who wants to can look through it.

First off, I'm focusing on # of TIEs destroyed as the measure of success for this analysis. The thought process being that 6 TIEs with 1 hull left is much more powerful than 4 TIEs at full health. As such, a missile will be used to kill a TIE that has 1 hull remaining instead of shooting at a fresh TIE. I'm assuming assuming (for the sake of math simplicity) that the TIEs all took evade tokens. The Focus is the more likely action, but makes the math much more complicated. Furthermore, it's also generally agreed to that E is better at stopping damage than F is at 3 agility dice. This was primarily an excercise of 3 GSP vs. 6 Bandits, but since there was such a large point disaprity, I added the results of an additional Bandit into the GSP list, and showed it both ways.

After 3 GSP w/ PTL shoot their missiles, the probability of killing TIES is as follows:

0 TIE .9%

1 TIE 69.8%

2 TIE 27.5%

3 TIE .5%

Giving you an average kill of 1.26 TIEs.

After 3 GSP w/ PTL + 1 Z-95, the probability of killing TIEs is as follows:

0 TIE .2%

1 TIE 31%

2 TIE 58%

3 TIE 1.6%

4 TIE .08%

With an average kill of 1.52 TIEs.

So, lets look at the Z95 now. I'm just assuming anything beyond 4 TIEs is sooo marginally possible that I'm just lumping it into 4+ TIEs.

Then looking at Z-95

0 TIE .3%

1 TIE 20%

2 TIE 62.4%

3 TIE 15.8%

4+ TIE .28%

Average kill of 1.93 TIEs.

It would appear that the 6x Bandit squad will kill more TIEs on average, by a good 27%.

On the return volley, the 5.5 TIEs will shoot back (w/ focus, even though we said they took E to simplify the math) and do .61*5.5 = 3.355 damage to an GSP... or the 5 TIEs will do .85 * 5 = 4.25 damage to the Z-95. While this is just average damage multiplied instead of actual kill % like above, its a safe assumption to say that a GSP or a Bandit will die on the return volley.

All of this math has ignored crits, so that even further aid the alpha strike potential of the Z-95 over the A-wing (since neither has a way to modify dice into crits, it's just going to be based on natural crits rolled, and the Z-95 list rolls more dice, ergo more crits).

I have no comments or inquiries to follow up on this, just thought I'd share it with the community.