3 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:2 agility 7 health? that's getting away from the Bwing template...
If you put something in the game that conforms to the B Wing template these days without any means to significantly buff its defence and/or regenerate shields, it will be terrible, just as B Wings and Punishers are.
Just now, thespaceinvader said:If you put something in the game that conforms to the B Wing template these days without any means to significantly buff its defence and/or regenerate shields, it will be terrible, just as B Wings and Punishers are.
In this case, it would be a significant drop in price.
2 points isn't much of a drop TBH. The B Wing probably needs the equivalent of that much to remain competitive, albeit taking it down to 20 points would allow 5 which would probably be too many - so it rather needs to get 2 points better rather than 2 points cheaper.
Similarly though, I suspect 5 lots of 7HP+2AGI is probably too much.
Still not convinced by the Gunboat getting a Cannon slot as standard. Maybe a TIE/D style title which allows it to equip support cannons (Flechette/Ion/Tractor) or a title which allows it to equip an Ion Cannon only (Multi-Role Loadout).
2-2-4-3 is pretty much nail on the head.
Stupid idea: what if the ion attack mod added 2 ion tokens. Unique and useful and would offset its rather poor primary attack capabilities.
2 ion tokens is the same as 1 for half-ish of the ships in the game.
Sure but the other half can be vicious (Dengaroo, 2/3 of Paratinni)
I just want a cheap small base cannon carrier for the Empire...
Gunboat seems to be a significant favorite for the Wave XI speculation thread. And it isn't even all of us Starwingnuts padding the stats.
1 hour ago, flyboymb said:Gunboat seems to be a significant favorite for the Wave XI speculation thread. And it isn't even all of us Starwingnuts padding the stats.
It's because all the obvous choices are "oh joy, ANOTHER shuttle."
I's basically a choice between "it's really a tie, not a shuttle" Tie Reaper, and "It's not a shuttle, it's the old Gunboat"
I'm actually leaning tward Reaper for wave 11, and hoping a "Patrol Boat" shows up in the Young Han movie.
If we get another shuttle I'm going to leave.
Not really, I just won't buy it unless it comes with super awesome crew cards that are useful outside of Fleet Officer, Palpatine and Hux.
(To be fair Hux with Major whats-his-name is amazing)
I just need it to be useful. I'm sure I've never posted the same stats twice...
To me, today, that's 3/2/4/4.. Stays consistent with the Sienar/Cygnus design philosophy
I'd take 3/2/5/3 if that made the difference between fielding 3 or not.
At least when I played the game, the thing had the ions standard. You linked them with the lasers and were pretty fearsome. So give it a title where it has an ion effect on the primaries. Give it another title were it gets extra munitions equivalent but must either give up a bomb, missile, or torpedo slot to do so (and only give it one of each). Give a Y wing dial, and focus, target lock, barrel roll... Toss in some cool XG-1 only other card (I like the reinforcements idea, or let it fire 2 secondary missile or torp shots in a turn then discard... Actually just make that imperial, bombers and punishers could use that) and you're done.
Don't think the Gunboat should have a BR. You weren't weaving through enemy fire, you were jamming Shift F10 after an X-Wing plastered you with a 4 cannons.
That being said (and I realize that this has been mentioned before), but I wonder what kind of meta shattering change would come about from a 'redirect weapons to shields' ept? Something along the lines of:
ACTION: You may recover one shield token. If you do, assign one 'weapons disabled' token to your ship. You may not take this action while cloaked. You may not regain another shield token this turn.
Thoughts on this are about the slowmo non PWT ships of the game. It isn't going to be an auto-include on aces or arc-dodgers as you're losing both your EPT and action economy and the dodgy ships are unlikely to want to give up their boosts, BRs and evades much less PTL.
But a Gunboat or (dare I say it) X-Wing who is pointing away from the fight and KNOWS they're not getting a shot off that round. Sure why not recover some of those tokens for whatever impending stomping that might be coming from behind? ISYTDS would be a bit of a counter for it as Blinded Pilot could last an extra round should you decide to take this action and lose your shot. It won't make Phantoms or cloaked Scum ships invincible as they lose their extra green dice. As for Biggs, if he's facing away from the fight as a whole to regain a shield, he's probably not going to be doing his job for long. Finally, the effect won't stack with pilot abilities or droids so you won't be getting 2-3 shields back every turn.
Heretics... heretics everywhere.
The Gunboat SHOULD NOT have 3 attack dice. It will excel not for its primary attack, but its secondary weapons.
2 hours ago, Odanan said:Heretics... heretics everywhere.
The Gunboat SHOULD NOT have 3 attack dice. It will excel not for its primary attack, but its secondary weapons.
See, I'm stumped by this thought. It's got a twin cannon linked to tie fighter guns... Why do you think that nets tie fighter damage? By game stats it's closer to 3.5 (hits harder than an XWing) than 3. I think it's better to give it a 3 than a cannon slot, which rightfully it should have (that or a locked arc turret).
4 hours ago, Lobokai said:See, I'm stumped by this thought. It's got a twin cannon linked to tie fighter guns... Why do you think that nets tie fighter damage? By game stats it's closer to 3.5 (hits harder than an XWing) than 3. I think it's better to give it a 3 than a cannon slot, which rightfully it should have (that or a locked arc turret).
A lot of people (including me) subscribe to the idea that the Gunboat should have some kind of ion effect after hitting with a primary, signifying firing the ion lasers with the regular lasers.
Problem is if the Gunboat only has 2 dice primary it won't hit anything in this meta, save Rey, Norra Partybus and other low agility ships.
Give it 3 dice and an ion effect and you'll get a fire linked ion cannon thing.
Give it 2 dice and a cannon slot and people will just stick HLC on it and call it a day, even if you give it a TIE/D firelink.
4 minutes ago, Blue Five said:Give it 3 dice and an ion effect and you'll get a fire linked ion cannon thing.
Give it 2 dice and a cannon slot and people will just stick HLC on it and call it a day, even if you give it a TIE/D firelink.
To be fair, the Empire is deserving of a slightly cheap and more-maneuverable-than-a-cow cannon carrier, so I would be fine with 2 dice.
Then I'd just run two with HLC and 2 with Ion Cannon XD
1 minute ago, Warlon said:To be fair, the Empire is deserving of a slightly cheap and more-maneuverable-than-a-cow cannon carrier, so I would be fine with 2 dice.
Then I'd just run two with HLC and 2 with Ion Cannon XD
And everyone else would run four with HLC. There's a reason every ship with a 2 die primary and the ability to take HLC has some sort of tradeoff or tax to get it. Most of the ships with 3 die primaries do too.
Edited by Blue Five5 hours ago, Lobokai said:See, I'm stumped by this thought. It's got a twin cannon linked to tie fighter guns... Why do you think that nets tie fighter damage? By game stats it's closer to 3.5 (hits harder than an XWing) than 3. I think it's better to give it a 3 than a cannon slot, which rightfully it should have (that or a locked arc turret).
The Gunboat has as much as "linked" ion cannons as the B-Wing and TIE Defender (and the Y-Wing - which is the BTL-A4 in all the old sims). All those ships worked exactly the same way: in the early games you needed to choose to fire the lasers OR the ion cannons, but not all of them together. In the later games (like X-Wing Alliance - I just checked), you could select all guns to fire together ("linked").
The Empire needs a cheap cannon carrier that can soak damage, not another TIE Defender.
11 minutes ago, Blue Five said:Give it 3 dice and an ion effect and you'll get a fire linked ion cannon thing.
Give it 2 dice and a cannon slot and people will just stick HLC on it and call it a day, even if you give it a TIE/D firelink.
Well, not everybody is flooding the tables with HLC Scyks, but I think you are right. It would be dangerous to allow for 4 HLC ships with good amount of health and average dial.
I am preparing a collection of cards much in the same way of Odanan's, because in combination they are able to represent much better a cohesive design.
But given the nickname of this ship, and your comment, I think the way to go with this ship is with the control cannons. Also, it is closer to the lore.
The XG-1 should cost about 20 points, let's keep the 2/2/4/3 stat line or similar, cannon, system, missile, torpedo, and come with this title:
Gunboat (Strike)
Title. XG-1 only. Dual card.
Cost 0.
When attacking with a (cannon) or (missile) secondary weapon, if you are instructed to cancel all dice results, you may instead cancel one (hit) or (crit) result.
Gunboat (Disabler)
Title. XG-1 only. Dual card.
Cost 0.
When attacking with a (cannon) or (missile) secondary weapon, if this weapon assigns a token on hit, you must ignore all tokens of that kind during this attack. If this attack hits, the defender is assigned a second token of the same kind.
Design explanation:
The Empire lacks a proper ship to carry control cannons. The Lambda is too clumsy, the Defender too expensive, and the Firespray is both.
Given the lore, we shouldn't encourage HLC as the cannon to go for the XG-1. They used their ion cannons to disable convoys and smugglers, and their tractor beams to catch targets nimbler than them.
This title is dual to allow for last minute customization before the match starts, giving the XG-1 the ability to tune their weapons more towards damage or towards control for a particular rival squadron. Gunboats worked in pairs or trios, so it is not bad tactic to bring a couple of gunboats, each with a different version of the title.
The Strike version of the title tunes the gunboat into the damage dealer role. And it does so by making its equipped control cannon actually deal damage equivalent to a 3 dice primary weapon, with the added advantage of the control token assigned. This also affects equipped missiles for the same reason. Many missiles that are rarely used today become more useful in the strike-role gunboat. Advanced Homing Missiles are the biggest winners here, but the Tracers and the Ion Missile become also much more attractive. All these missiles have in common that they not only will have their original effects, they will be also able to deal some noticeable damage. That would make the gunboat really unique and special. To compensate, the gunboat doesn't have an attack score of 3, so Guidance Chips doesn't give it a free crit result.
However the main point comes with the Tractor Beam, Flechette and Ion cannons. The flechette and ion cannons usually deal one single damage to the target, because all dice are cancelled. This title replaces that and allow the dice to deal up to 2 damage in addition to the 1 that is dealt by the card text. That puts these cannons in line with a 3 dice primary weapon that assigns tokens. This could be a way to represent the linked fire mode, without suffering the problem of the TIE/D title that makes the second shot harder to modify than the first one. For the case of the tractor beam, you would be dealing up to 2 damage, that is not bad considering that you are also assigning a tractor beam token.
The Disabler role version of the title empowers the effects of the control cannons and missiles, by making them assign two tokens instead of one. Now you will think that most of the time assigning two tokens is not much better than assigning one.
This makes more sense in combination with another card that I will post later (a system). But even without that, this becomes useful in these situations:
Now, why 20 points?
A 2 dice Attack ship is way overcosted at 20 points, but by equipping a cheap control cannon like the Tractor, Flechette, or Ion, the damage output becomes similar to 3 attack dice (save for some details like range 1, range 3) with the Strike role title for 21-23 points. That is about at the same level as the B-Wing. And with the Disabler role title, it doesn't deal as much damage, but it becomes much more disruptive. It doesn't become a Stresshog (because the Stresshog can stress and deal good damage at the same time), but it is also just below its price tag.
If equipped with missiles or extra munitions, with the strike title, you could bring a 22 points gunboat with 2 tracers that could be great as an alpha strike enabler for TIE Bombers or other, non-ordnance based ships like Defenders, Advanced, or really any that can make use of the target lock, at the same time that you are hitting with a 3 dice weapon. Or for 25 points, one with Adv Homing Missiles and munitions for a early strike that can deal up to 2 damage plus a face up damage card, twice.
Increase these examples' costs by 1-3 and add a Tractor Beam, Flechette cannon or a Ion cannon and you'll have a ship that can consistently attack with 3 dice during the whole match, and deal control tokens. Even when the tractor beam could only deal up to 2 damage, you would still be rolling 3 dice, so you still have higher chance to hit.
Also, the gunboat could equip Long Range Scanners for a stronger alpha strike.
I like the above idea, since it is a gunboat, its its guns that should be most focused on, though gunboats have missiles or rockets, we need to take into consideration what the Missileboat should do, giving the Gunboat to many missile or torpedo abilities would make it hard to justify the Missileboat.
Ether we use the above ability or a new special one that is excursive to Gunboats. Give it a special ability called "Alpha Strike" Starwings / Gunboats have strength 3 attacks, but it will only cause 1 damage, and 1 ion token or 1 tractor beam token on the target. If a torpedo card is sacrificed during the attack role phase, keep two damage rolls out of three, and give the hit target both an Ion token and tractor beam token.
I stand by my "Multi-Role Loadout" and "Linked Firing Array" cards from page one. 2 dice primary with a potential secondary weapon double tap... but you need to hit with the primary to get it.
Excellent against low agility ships like YT's, B-Wings and Shuttles, not so great against high agility ships like A-Wings and Interceptors. Just like the PC Games.
On 08/02/2017 at 0:47 AM, Warlon said:If we get another shuttle I'm going to leave.
Not really, I just won't buy it unless it comes with super awesome crew cards that are useful outside of Fleet Officer, Palpatine and Hux.
(To be fair Hux with Major whats-his-name is amazing)
Even if they put an I-win-now-Paul-Heavy-buys-your-rounds card into a TIE Reaper, I still wouldn't buy that crap.
And I bought Palpatine the hard way...
I would quite like Krennic's Shuttle though.
And the Imperial Cargo Shuttle (provided it came with Rebel K2-S0 pilot and crew cards).