You're talking about the fluff. In the movies, the TIE Interceptor shot from at least six cannon locations. And on the filming miniatures, there were ten cannon barrels visible, as seen in the post above yours. The intention was obviously to give it extreme firepower, but it was nerfed in the EU.

They gain their attack dice form mistaken designers, who have broken the game and are too arrogant to admit that there is no logical reason it should have the most powerful guns in the galaxy.

I believe that we've overheard in an interview somewhere about the core game, that they wanted to design the game so that x-wings could not rarely one shot tie fighters at range 1. There was talk about watching the movies several times for designing power, flavor, maneuverability etc. Unfortunately I have no proof of that, but I'm sure some web searching could verify (or crush) this claim.

So - I'm inclined to believe that the developers went to the source of the phantom (rebel assault II) and watched the video clips, and game play clips of the thing in action. If there's one thing they've done out of the fluff - it's accurately capture the "blink" effect of decloak and appear somewhere, fire, recloak, decloak somewhere else.... repeat steps 2-4. When watching rebel assault 2 clips, we see phantoms very quickly take out x-wings, y-wings and even b-wings. I think they wanted it to be able to one shot an x-wing, and severly damage y-wing/b-wings. In choosing 4 dice, they made that possible, and they balanced it with low health and fairly high cost.

Phantoms have four attack dice because FFG wanted to make a ship with four attack dice.

Basically. Sadly everyone thinks it's 100% due to five laser cannons and that's firmly cemented in people's minds now. Which is extremely silly.

Considering the Falcon effectively has EIGHT 360 facing and since it can only attack one target at once (oddly) then one can only assume by laser cannon count = firepower that the Falcon should have about six.

Against Fat-Han it feels like it has six...

Is it that they actually have 4 dice worth of attack or that they're ability to cloak makes an already respectable attack that much better? If it's the latter, does that set a precedent of attack values being set based on two criteria: native weaponry and the host platform's ability to make the best use of said native weaponry?

That's not a precedent, it's always been like that. Look at the insane number of guns on the Falcon or Lambda: the Falcon can only realistically shoot one quad at its target at once unless that TIE is a moron and the Lambda maneuvers like the average oil tanker.

As for the interceptor question, the interceptor has mountings for six, four of which are usually filled (the wingtip ones). The other two mountings are the standard TIE ones below the cockpit. The centre-wing things aren't gun mounts.

But yeah, FFG overrides background data for gameplay: the phantom doesn't have more firepower than other ships, its just that other ships rarely see it before it shoots (thematically every Cloak/Decloak is vanishing and reappearing elsewhere) whereas against even a TIE interceptor you're actively dogfighting it. If you want a killer example, look at the HWK. Those grey prongs on the wings are guns. There are eight.

It has one attack die.

While the reason is clearly as others have said 'the designers need it to fit that niche in the attack/defence/armour triangle its also a bit iffy to start comparing *number* of guns with *firepower*.

You're assuming that in the lore/backstory (i hate the word fluff) that every laser cannon has the same strength and effect.

While xwing is abstract and its a fair 'game' assumption to make, lore wise you need to think that cannons would be made by hundreds of races and factories and would vary widely.

Put it this way in WWII main battle tanks had main armanent from 20mm (and less) up to 128mm, all 'main gun' but very different in power, i guess HLC factors in the 'top end' but its still lots of variance.. an german 75mm was much better than an American 75mm gun due to differing designs.

On a micro scale the same holds true with machine guns. You can say 'both vehicles are armed with four machine guns' but if one of them has 5.56 machine guns and the other have .50 cal then they are not even.

Your argument makes no sense. There's a limit on how much firepower he can physically fit. It's the nature of the cannons. Otherwise, why isn't he running 8 superlasers on his ship?

He can sure fit more (and does) than the diddy little lasers on the TIE phantom.

Tie phantoms a military grade ship state of the art, the falcon is a merchant ship that's been converted and Han isn't exactly the richest guy out there it might cost more than a year's smuggling for him to illegally buy military grade cannons and the generators needed to power them.

It might also have cost him 30 seconds smuggling. It might have cost him nothing if he stole them. What an irrelevant point to make....

It might also have cost him 30 seconds smuggling. It might have cost him nothing if he stole them. What an irrelevant point to make....

So he dumps his cargo and runs when imperials get close but he'll go into a military installation to steal laser canons...

And if he made that much smuggling he'd have no issue paying jabba back would he? Fact is he jumped at the chance to make a few thousand creds transporting people.

He's not rich and isn't a bounty hunter the cannons are for defence so they won't have the same fire power as a purpose built military weapon would.

Except of course they do destroy tie fighters in a single shot....

Standard interceptor armament was four canons, some were upgraded to six but that was the exception not the norm.

You're talking about the fluff. In the movies, the TIE Interceptor shot from at least six cannon locations. And on the filming miniatures, there were ten cannon barrels visible, as seen in the post above yours. The intention was obviously to give it extreme firepower, but it was nerfed in the EU.

Really?

FFG did take the fluff and the lore into consideration when designing this game. To say they just designed ships just to make the game balanced is rather silly. If they just watched the movies, the Tie Advanced should have 5 attack dice. Vader had no problem blasting X-wings and Y-wings in a burst of fire in the Death Star trench.

Except of course they do destroy tie fighters in a single shot....

Tie's that are lightly armoured and unshielded whats more its multiple bolts and you don't know if that's the tie that gets tagged earlier on in that scene.

I agree it was a poor design. FFG figured since it cannot shoot when it's cloaked that giving it a 4 would counter balance this. The problem is the Advance Cloaking Device. Because it can shoot every turn and cloak for free. I think they also gave it a 4 to make it different than other ships, but that was not needed because the Cloaking device already did that. Either way the 4 is too much. I have abused this several times with my 3 phantom list that stays and a range 3 and keeps firing 4 dice. People hate my list and rightly so. Never in any books does it state phantoms fire from far away. They always say stuff like ' they pop up next to the enemy"

If they wanted to give it a 5 attack at Range 1, they could have easily created a Phantom title that add +1 attack at range 1 for 1 pts.

I can see where FFG thought it would sell the ship by giving it a 4 and it sure did. But now you've got all the unbalanced Meta again. I think they should have play tested better, then they did. It should really have a 3 or even a 2 with some bonus for range 1. I understand it has lots of lasers, but for game balance they could have made it better. Since there is not much fluff people would not have complained and it stil would have been purchased because of the cloaking rules.

Except the Phantom is not unbalancing the meta, it is the players that refuse to adapt (and fly Fat-Han to counter it) which are.

Rock mentality, meet scissor mentality.

The whole idea that Number of Guns = Attack Dice fails completely flat as of Wave 1.

If Y-Wings have an attack of 2 because they have 2 guns, then X-Wings should have an attack of 4 for their four guns. The E-Wing being the only ship with 3 guns on it. The YT's have more then 4 guns, yet 3 attack, the Phantom should have an attack of 5 if this were true.

So either # of Guns = Attack or it doesn't, and there's next to no case where this is true.

Even if you accept the "you need a gunner for the other turret" idea. Then why does the Gunner card, only give you an extra 3 dice attack if you miss, and why wouldn't 2 gunners give you 2 more attacks?

FFG does however seem to base their attack values on the Lore, just not in a 1:1 ratio, they look at how much damage a ship seems to do and give it the appropriate number of dice.

Your argument makes no sense. There's a limit on how much firepower he can physically fit. It's the nature of the cannons. Otherwise, why isn't he running 8 superlasers on his ship?

He can sure fit more (and does) than the diddy little lasers on the TIE phantom.

He's a smuggler, as in illegal cargo delivery. He isn't flying a warship. That the Falcon even has that much firepower is impressive.

Your argument makes no sense. There's a limit on how much firepower he can physically fit. It's the nature of the cannons. Otherwise, why isn't he running 8 superlasers on his ship?

He can sure fit more (and does) than the diddy little lasers on the TIE phantom.

He's a smuggler, as in illegal cargo delivery. He isn't flying a warship. That the Falcon even has that much firepower is impressive.

He's a hero, flying a plot device. He isn't flying a stock enemy who exists to prove his own heroism. That the Falcon has that much fire power is necessary.

He's a smuggler, as in illegal cargo delivery. He isn't flying a warship. That the Falcon even has that much firepower is impressive.

The most common target of a pirate are other pirates and smugglers. Raid a pirate ship or steal from a smuggler, and the authorities won't be looking for you.

He's a smuggler, as in illegal cargo delivery. He isn't flying a warship. That the Falcon even has that much firepower is impressive.

The most common target of a pirate are other pirates and smugglers. Raid a pirate ship or steal from a smuggler, and the authorities won't be looking for you.

With big engines, pirates can't catch you. Plus, no matter how big your guns are on a smuggling ship, you're not going to compete with dedicated military forces.

So engines and maneuverability are much more important than guns.

You know what han would be fighting off z-95's rustbucket Y-wings and uglies, he would be suicidal to take on heavily armed imperial forces and he **** well knows that thats why he dumps his cargo and gets into hot water with jabba.

He's heavily armed for a smuggler but his falcon isn't a dedicated warmachine like the phantom.

With big engines, pirates can't catch you.

No matter how big you make your engines, the other guy can have the same size. Plus big engines don't help when you're out numbered and they can box you in.

you're not going to compete with dedicated military forces.

Of course not, but smugglers are not ever going to fight a dedicated military force, because they'll lose. That's why Han dropped his cargo. But that doesn't mean they won't or cant put up a fight against a small group of pirates.

So engines and maneuverability are much more important than guns.

By that logic, if your engines are big enough, you don't need guns. Yet clearly the YT's all come armed.

Of course not, but smugglers are not ever going to fight a dedicated military force, because they'll lose. That's why Han dropped his cargo. But that doesn't mean they won't or cant put up a fight against a small group of pirates.

Does this mean we can convince FFG to not release Scum and Villainy? I really hope it does.

Firepower of course is decided by how fast you can "pew, pew, pew!"

No matter how big you make your engines, the other guy can have the same size. Plus big engines don't help when you're out numbered and they can box you in.

Exactly, so against a military force, the cost, energy requirements, less cargo capacity, and extra mass of significantly increasing firepower is pointless. Against pirates, it's marginally effective.

Better engines are always more effective.

If you're a smuggler, pretty much. Look at ESB - even with all of Han's modifications on making the Falcon faster, he barely outran an ISD. If he sunk more money into firepower instead of engines, he would've been run down and destroyed.

YTs come armed for deterrence, not to actually get in the middle of a fight. It just so happens that their turrets do well against the unshielded and unarmored TIE/LN.

To be honest, the Falcon does have upgraded guns. It uses 2 quad laser cannons of the same type used by the Lancer frigate, a dedicated anti-starfighter capital ship. And YTs only come with a top canon mount, Han added the bottom. The Falcon is impressively armed and has impressive engines. Just because it doesn't mount turbolasers doesn't change that fact. It also doesn't change the fact that Han correctly prioritized escaping over additional firepower.