2 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Does that "planetary defense forces" imply that it is also used by non-Imperials? Will we see a scum Assault Gunboat before an imperial one?

Nah. "Used primarily by the Imperial Navy". Also, planetary defence forces would likely still relate to Imperial-controlled worlds.

8 hours ago, Odanan said:

While used primarily by the Imperial Navy, Star Wings have begun to be employed by Imperial Customs and some planetary defense forces."

Also, from the Wookiee:

"The Star Wing was equipped with a hyperdrive, which meant that it did not need the support of a Star Destroyer or other starfighter carrier. It proved very useful in conducting hyperspace raids against convoys and space stations, and also served in a reconnaissance capacity.

The fact that it was armed with ion cannons made the Assault Gunboat an ideal choice for capture operations or planetary customs duties. Its high magazine capacity made it a deadly bomber, as a squadron of Star Wings could penetrate most medium-sized capital ships' shields with a single warhead salvo from each fighter."

So basically identify, interdict and disable suspected smugglers/pirates, then patrol while waiting for a cruiser or transport to turn up and board.

4 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Nah. "Used primarily by the Imperial Navy". Also, planetary defence forces would likely still relate to Imperial-controlled worlds.

Also, from the Wookiee:

"The Star Wing was equipped with a hyperdrive, which meant that it did not need the support of a Star Destroyer or other starfighter carrier. It proved very useful in conducting hyperspace raids against convoys and space stations, and also served in a reconnaissance capacity.

The fact that it was armed with ion cannons made the Assault Gunboat an ideal choice for capture operations or planetary customs duties. Its high magazine capacity made it a deadly bomber, as a squadron of Star Wings could penetrate most medium-sized capital ships' shields with a single warhead salvo from each fighter."

So basically identify, interdict and disable suspected smugglers/pirates, then patrol while waiting for a cruiser or transport to turn up and board.

When (not if) the Gunboat arrives it needs to have some kind of title/system upgrade where if it delivers a certain amount of ion tokens to a ship they can't fire until they're removed.

Cause I remember in the space sim when you got ionized you couldn't do anything.

10 minutes ago, Warlon said:

When (not if) the Gunboat arrives it needs to have some kind of title/system upgrade where if it delivers a certain amount of ion tokens to a ship they can't fire until they're removed.

Cause I remember in the space sim when you got ionized you couldn't do anything.

The problem with that is that in the X-Wing PC games it was fine, because when you had potentially dozens of fighters plus corvettes and capital ships shooting at you, shutting a couple down from attacking was OK.

In the player vs player Miniatures game though - and especially in 100/6 - it's going to easily lead to NPE scenarios. Just look at the continuing discussion around Kylo Ren's ability, for example.

Controlling an enemy ship's movement via stress tokens, ion tokens or tractor beam tokens can be frustrating enough, but stopping them from defending themselves as well? Ouch.

We've had a similar discussion before in this topic with regards to Jamming Beam weapons in X-Wing - you could use them in the TIE Fighter game to stop a ship from firing. It's something which would need to be handled really carefully.

10 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

The problem with that is that in the X-Wing PC games it was fine, because when you had potentially dozens of fighters plus corvettes and capital ships shooting at you, shutting a couple down from attacking was OK.

In the player vs player Miniatures game though - and especially in 100/6 - it's going to easily lead to NPE scenarios. Just look at the continuing discussion around Kylo Ren's ability, for example.

Controlling an enemy ship's movement via stress tokens, ion tokens or tractor beam tokens can be frustrating enough, but stopping them from defending themselves as well? Ouch.

We've had a similar discussion before in this topic with regards to Jamming Beam weapons in X-Wing - you could use them in the TIE Fighter game to stop a ship from firing. It's something which would need to be handled really carefully.

That's true, did the ion shots in the game happen to do extra damage to shields? It's been a while since I played but it seems like I remember always using Ion shots before switching to cannons/missiles.

7 minutes ago, Warlon said:

That's true, did the ion shots in the game happen to do extra damage to shields? It's been a while since I played but it seems like I remember always using Ion shots before switching to cannons/missiles.

Nope. They just do 1 regular damage and control the enemy's next movement.

2 minutes ago, Odanan said:

Nope. They just do 1 regular damage and control the enemy's next movement.

I'm pretty sure Warlon means in the PC games.

I did the same Warlon - mainly because the energy used to fire your ion weapons was seperate to your primary lasers. You could punch through shields with ion shots, then use your lasers to finish the job.

Maybe that would have worked well in the Miniatures Game - ion attacks do whatever damage hits against shields, but following that any hit results are converted into ion tokens.

47 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Controlling an enemy ship's movement via stress tokens, ion tokens or tractor beam tokens can be frustrating enough, but stopping them from defending themselves as well?

I wish there was, like, a rule where if a ship gets more Ion Tokens than it has max Hull points, it counts as destroyed. To represent a ship being completely ionized. Maybe it stays on the table as an obstacle, but it can't do anything anymore, and it counts as destroyed for scoring.

22 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Maybe that would have worked well in the Miniatures Game - ion attacks do whatever damage hits against shields, but following that any hit results are converted into ion tokens.

I also wish this was the case.

6 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

I'm pretty sure Warlon means in the PC games.

I did the same Warlon - mainly because the energy used to fire your ion weapons was seperate to your primary lasers. You could punch through shields with ion shots, then use your lasers to finish the job.

Maybe that would have worked well in the Miniatures Game - ion attacks do whatever damage hits against shields, but following that any hit results are converted into ion tokens.

That would definitely make TIE/D Defenders and taking ion cannons in general more appealing.

With that kind of rule you could possibly get rid of the two token rule for large ships, since they usually have more shields and it would take longer to punch through.

Maybe have the Ion Cannon/turret only roll 2 dice but it deals full damage and gets the plasma torpedo effect? (Deal another damage to shields) after shields are gone it starts dealing ion tokens.

20 hours ago, Odanan said:

Here, here:

"Designed by Cygnus Spaceworks, the Alpha-class Xg-1 Assault Gunboat is a multipurpose starfighter, excelling at space and planetary attack, interdiction and long-range reconnaissance and patrol. Unlike the more common TIE series, the Alpha-class is equipped with heavy armour, deflector shields and hyperdrives, though these come at the cost of speed and maneuverabilit, making it a less than stellar dogfighter. Heavily armed, the Star Wing is more than a match for most threats, disabling them with it's ion cannons to allow for boarding actions or blasting them out of space with it's lasers and concussion missiles. While used primarily by the Imperial Navy, Star Wings have begun to be employed by Imperial Customs and some planetary defense forces."

Huh. Go figure.

I still think it's somewhat silly though, to be honest.

14 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Huh. Go figure.

I still think it's somewhat silly though, to be honest.

Just wondering why you feel that way, Captain?

Customs/Border patrol, anti-piracy and anti-smuggling operations are literally a HUGE part of a modern navy's day-to-day operations.

Scum & Villany is, after all, a faction pretty much comprised of pirates, smugglers, slavers and other undesirable elements. As the Wookiee and the official FFG fluff says, with a flexible payload including Ion Cannons to disable targets and hyperspace capability for capital ship independent long-range patrols and pursuit, the Gunboat was ideally suited for these roles.

On 7/3/2017 at 6:52 AM, FTS Gecko said:

I'm pretty sure Warlon means in the PC games.

I did the same Warlon - mainly because the energy used to fire your ion weapons was seperate to your primary lasers. You could punch through shields with ion shots, then use your lasers to finish the job.

Maybe that would have worked well in the Miniatures Game - ion attacks do whatever damage hits against shields, but following that any hit results are converted into ion tokens.

There is canonical support for this idea. The Ion Cannon in ESB clearly makes short work of the ISD's shields, but does not damage the hull. The Ion Torpedoes in Rogue One disable an ISD, again with no apparent hull damage. In Rebels Dutch Vander tells Ezra the Y-wing's Ion Cannons excel at taking down shields, and they do exactly that twice in the episode: once against an Arquitens and a second time against the TIE Defender prototype.

To be fair though, Ion weapons in canon are just basically just EMPs.

It seems less that Ion Cannons excel at taking down shields, and more a matter of they seem to ignore them. They just get shut down along with everything else because they're electronic, whereas the ship's hull armor isn't.

I really like the idea of full damage ion canons on shields. I always thought the ion mechanic is weak, a forced 1 move but clears after one go. What exactly is a ship doing to fix an emp burst, it either works or not and if it does it doesn't fix ever. Ions shouldn't do any physical damage but hammer shields. I think a neat idea would be to have them flip upgrades if they hit an unshielded ship. At very least system and tech maybe astromechs too but never cause damage to a hull. You could keep the ion tokens too so torps are still useful. Get 2 ions you flip one of the affected upgrades if you have one defenders choice then drop the ions. They would always be useful as shield killers and in some cases have an added benefit.

Unrelated to the prior activity in the Gunboat subforum, but I just got X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (it's on sale on Steam right now) and I finally see what everybody's been talking about! Just wanted to let everyone know that I've officially become a Gunboat zealot, so your movement continues to grow!

5 hours ago, Kieransi said:

Unrelated to the prior activity in the Gunboat subforum, but I just got X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (it's on sale on Steam right now) and I finally see what everybody's been talking about! Just wanted to let everyone know that I've officially become a Gunboat zealot, so your movement continues to grow!

Welcome aboard! Every Star Wars fan should try the X-Wing PC games at least once. They're still some of the best Star Wars games ever made.

5 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Welcome aboard! Every Star Wars fan should try the X-Wing PC games at least once. They're still some of the best Star Wars games ever made.

Dark Forces/Jedi Knight Series, X-Wing Series, Rebellion, Battlefront I, Racer and Rebel Assault, KotoR.

Best SW Games

My favourites are Dark Forces II and X-Wing Alliance.

You can add the Star Wars Trilogy arcade game to that list too.

I had The Empire Strikes Back on the Game Boy too. That was pretty awesome.

In short, Star Wars games are awesome.

Let's not forget the SNES classics:

We haven't had a picture of this beautiful ship for a while on here, let me fix that...

Very good point @MrMaggles - here, have a YouTube video!

13 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Very good point @MrMaggles - here, have a YouTube video!

Very nice.

Should've been Steele flying it though.

I just found it on a YouTube search - looks like it was only published a couple of days ago.

There's a lot of Gunboat fans out there, and not just on this forum either!

1 hour ago, Stevey86 said:

I had The Empire Strikes Back on the Game Boy too. That was pretty awesome.

In short, Star Wars games are awesome.

I've got that one too! That's a great game. Although the old Gameboy cartridges' lack of ability to save progress means I keep playing for 45 minutes only to die in Cloud City every time!

2 hours ago, Stevey86 said:

In short, Star Wars games are awesome.

But that would include the Ep I and III games as well as TFU I + II, Force Commander, Clone Wars, Stardighter, Empite at War and Star Wars: Battlefront D:

2 minutes ago, RogueLeader42 said:

But that would include the Ep I and III games as well as TFU I + II, Force Commander, Clone Wars, Stardighter, Empite at War and Star Wars: Battlefront D:

I liked The Force Unleashed...