Also lets not forget they wanted Han to escape the death star it's unlikely they sent their best pilots and they were under order as not to destroy the falcon just to make it look convincing.

Heck if they were clone pilots they may of had orders to die.

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?

Yes, really. They imply this in the... Chronicles book, I believe. Or it could have been one of the Cinefex articles. I'm not sure. Anyway, the Interceptor was supposed to be the ultimate TIE Fighter at the time, with ridiculous firepower of ten cannons. I think maybe during filming they decided ten cannons was simply too much and they scaled it back to six (two on the chin, four on the wings, and ignoring the cannons on the wing cutouts). That's still two more than the X-wing, so we're good. Then West End Games nerfed it down to four for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game so they could reasonably compete with Rebel fighters.

But the filming model was never changed, and the wing cutout cannons remain.

Personally, I believe that the Interceptor really did have ten guns, but the reactor was not powerful enough to support them all firing at once, and Imperial pilots would rather spray out shots that were strong enough to take out Rebel ships' shields than spray a bunch of weaker bolts meant to take out civilian fighters, so he disabled four of the guns when dealing with Rebel ships.

By the way, the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels does say that there are still mounts for weapons on the chin of the Interceptor, so yes, even the EU says they have more than four cannons, and if you pause Return of the Jedi during the very first part of the engagement (right after Lando says "Fighters, coming in!") you can see a TIE Interceptor firing from the chin mounts, so at least some of them had six guns:

I just go with that Phantoms are ambush ships: They sneak up behind enemies and blow them to space dust.

I just go with that Phantoms are ambush ships: They sneak up behind enemies and blow them to space dust.

I just go with "it's not real."

I just go with that Phantoms are ambush ships: They sneak up behind enemies and blow them to space dust.

I just go with "it's not real."

But . . . I saw them on TV :'(

Steroids in baseball, turrets and phantoms in x-wing.

WHEN WILL IT END???

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.

The power of the cannons had to be taken into account too. The quad blasters are less powerful individually than say a laser on an Xwing.

You know what? I don't buy that for a second. I don't buy that Han wouldn't be packing as much firepower as possible on his ship.

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?

Don't be so condescending. I said as much as possible. I doubt the Falcon has equal power to ONLY an X-Wing. Really feel like if these ships were sorted canonically, the Falcon WOULD have about 4-5 firepower.

But for the sake of balance it does not. Those quad lasers, by the way, are extremely nasty.

They have 4 attack, because they are the only ship we have to date that has 5 laser cannons. Notably, 3 attack goes to 3/4 laser cannons, and 2 attack goes to ships with 2 laser cannons, with 1 going to weird misfits like the Hawk.

I'm just going to put this right here.

The interceptor arguably has 10 laser cannons.

Now, this is where I'm going to say that neither this nor any other film or game "specification" really has much to do with the mechanics of this game. I say much because FFG has to pay attention at least a little bit, otherwise you'd have torpedo launchers on standard TIE Fighters.

The Phantom has 4 attack because of BALANCE. It is extremely fragile and the cloaking mechanic means that there are times when you simply cannot attack.

Fragile AND can't attack at times. Sounds like it should have some pretty major positives as those two are pretty major negatives. One of the positives is 4 attack, another is the decloak. Also a system upgrade.

"But that's too many positive and my brain is angry!" you might be saying. That's why the cheapest Phantom costs a full quarter of your squad points before any upgrade, and the highest PS is 7 instead of the usual 9.

"PS 7?!"

Yes. Balance. FFG play tested this thing enough to realize how important it is for the Phantom to move last and shoot first, so giving it a PS of 9 would have been wayyy too generous, as a VI-clad Phantom flying around at PS 11 would quite possibly break things.

The key word here is balance, plain and simple.

However the Squint doesn't have 10 lasers. It has 4. Not everything that looks like a gun is a gun.

EDIT: And I never said it wasn't balance. I was just stating from a fluff perspective that it makes sense.

The mounts inside the solar panels are sensors, and the chin guns are there because its the same bubble cockpit as your standard Tie/LN. Makes sense that they manufacture one type of cockpit and use for both models.

Well, we all know they shouldn't have a 4 attack. In game balance no small ship should. If they wanted to represent it sneaking up and firing, they have the cloak ability. It still gets 4 dice at close range and gets incredible movement to get into close range. Hench the sneaking up and firing.

If they really wanted to give it a attack boost at range 1 they could have made a title that states "Tie Phantom", 2 pts. Gain +2 bonus dice when attacking at range 1 instead of +1.

Heck! No one would have complained if it had a 3 attack, not one person. So the answer is obvious.

There are other options too. Let's all face it. FFG didn't play test this well enough and they went for the Lazy GW method of lets give it a 4 attack. People will buy it and others will deal with it. We can fix it later if we need too and they never do

That's what worries me most. FFG who prides themselves on not being like GW and other companies used a GW Strategy. Lazy, lazy! What a shame.

Let's hope they don't do that with Wave 6 too, or we will be in big trouble. As the game continues to be unbalanced more and more

However the Squint doesn't have 10 lasers. It has 4. Not everything that looks like a gun is a gun.

EDIT: And I never said it wasn't balance. I was just stating from a fluff perspective that it makes sense.

Indeed, i always see a lot of those extra protusions as things like electronic sensors, air/space speed sensors, countermeasure launchers, rang finders etc.

The B wing is a classic example, if everything that jutted out like a gun on that was a seperate gun it would have about 40

Well all know they shouldn't have a 4 attack. In game balance no small ship should. If they wanted to represent it sneaking up and firing, they have the cloak ability. It still gets 4 dice at close range and gets incredible movement to get into close range. Hench the sneaking up and firing.

If they really wanted to give it a boost at range 1 they could have made a title that states "Tie Phantom", 2 pts. Gain +2 bonus dice when attacking at range 1 instead of +1.

Heck! No one would have complained if it had a 3 attack, not one person. So the answer is obvious.

There are other options too. Let's all face it. FFG didn't play test this well enough and they went for the Lasy GW method of lets give it a 4 attack. People will buy it and others will deal with it. We can fix it later if we need too.

That's what worries me most. FFG who prides themselves on not being like GW and other companies used a GW Strategy. Lazy, lazy! What a shame.

Let's hope they don't do that with Wave 6 too, or we will be in big trouble.

They tried twelve different forms of stealth before they settled on ACD how you can accuse them of no play testing baffles me.

It's a forty plus point ship it needs to have a punch to make it worth that many points, I can have four attacks on a defender for 37 that denies you range three bonus agility and is significantly tougher to kill.

There are plenty of phantom counters that also work against non phantom lists, they are strong but not broken, had ffg given it more hull as a two pilot ship should have then it would be broken.

Sometimes when designing a game you have what I call the 'two column' approach. This seemed to me to be how FFG used to do the Game of Thrones card game.

In column A you have the game mechanic feature you want and in column B you have the characters you think you should include. You then match the game mechanic to the names as best you can, but if the fit isn't perfect, how well the ability matches the fictional description of the character is what is sacrificed.

I've always felt that it would have been better to get the game mechanics up and then search for or create the character that best fit.

I strongly suspect that FFG has a list of ships they eventually want to include in X-wing, and probably have the prioritized. I am sure that weeks after the game was fist being developed, they knew they eventually wanted A, B, Tie Bomber, and Tie Interceptor included, even if it took them 2 years.

But they also monitor how the game itself is progressing. As they see gaps and holes and the need for counters they turn to their limited list of ships and look at the handful that are on the list to go in next. They then trigger production of the model and start testing out the ideas.

Phantom is a glass cannon with stealth because that's the game mechanic they wanted.

Exact ratio of Glass to Cannon was determined by playtesters who may or may not have been instructed to find a ship that can one-shot an X-wing 50% of the time. Exact values of guns, hull, and shield are tweaked based on play not on what a ship actually possesses.

Alternatively:

You can fit stats as best you can to make a ship as close to 'correct-in-universe' as you can, but this sacrifices play balance.

You can fit the stats needed to make the game balance and THEN choose the best ship in universe to match those stats...but time from stat development to final product in stores is going to be long.

FFG's chosen method is not perfect, but IMHO the alternatives are worse.

Well all know they shouldn't have a 4 attack. In game balance no small ship should. If they wanted to represent it sneaking up and firing, they have the cloak ability. It still gets 4 dice at close range and gets incredible movement to get into close range. Hench the sneaking up and firing.

If they really wanted to give it a boost at range 1 they could have made a title that states "Tie Phantom", 2 pts. Gain +2 bonus dice when attacking at range 1 instead of +1.

Heck! No one would have complained if it had a 3 attack, not one person. So the answer is obvious.

There are other options too. Let's all face it. FFG didn't play test this well enough and they went for the Lasy GW method of lets give it a 4 attack. People will buy it and others will deal with it. We can fix it later if we need too.

That's what worries me most. FFG who prides themselves on not being like GW and other companies used a GW Strategy. Lazy, lazy! What a shame.

Let's hope they don't do that with Wave 6 too, or we will be in big trouble.

They tried twelve different forms of stealth before they settled on ACD how you can accuse them of no play testing baffles me.

It's a forty plus point ship it needs to have a punch to make it worth that many points, I can have four attacks on a defender for 37 that denies you range three bonus agility and is significantly tougher to kill.

There are plenty of phantom counters that also work against non phantom lists, they are strong but not broken, had ffg given it more hull as a two pilot ship should have then it would be broken.

It is important to remember that FFG needed to create a ship that was extremely slippery and hard to kill. This meant it was necessary to give it a high points cost. This in turn meant it needed to have enough punch to eat through a roughly equivalent points-cost of enemy ships. To do otherwise would be to create a ship that itself couldn't be killed but which couldn't do enough damage itself to ever win a game

And if they'd gone true to fluff you'd not be able to shoot it when cloaked in rebel assault II you could not see the phantom at all until it attacked.

That's what worries me most. FFG who prides themselves on not being like GW and other companies used a GW Strategy. Lazy, lazy! What a shame.

Let's hope they don't do that with Wave 6 too, or we will be in big trouble. As the game continues to be unbalanced more and more

If FFG went the GW route, why did they make it all but useless to include more than one in a list? Wouldn't they want to price it points wise so you would have to purchase 2, or 3 or 4 expansion packs? That sounds more like Games Workshop.

Xwing has an 'entry price' of about £50 in the uk (if you're playing rebels, maybe a little more as imperial)

Warhammer or 40k on the other hand you're looking at about £300

With the assurance that half of that will be useless or unusable when its 'revamped' a year or two later.

That sounds more like Games Workshop.

Yeah, they would of made it closer to 25 points for Whisper/Echo and ACD, so you could put 4 in a list. That or the other way they could of been more like GW, would be by charging $30 for a Phantom, that way the cost matches the power of the ship.

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.

The power of the cannons had to be taken into account too. The quad blasters are less powerful individually than say a laser on an Xwing.

You know what? I don't buy that for a second. I don't buy that Han wouldn't be packing as much firepower as possible on his ship.

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?

Don't be so condescending. I said as much as possible. I doubt the Falcon has equal power to ONLY an X-Wing. Really feel like if these ships were sorted canonically, the Falcon WOULD have about 4-5 firepower.But for the sake of balance it does not. Those quad lasers, by the way, are extremely nasty.

I never said the Falcon should have equal firepower to an X-Wing. The Falcon itself probably has the equivalent of maybe 5 or 6 x-wing laser cannons across both guns. But that's only the Falcon. In game, the Falcon upgrade card should have given the extra stats, not the han/chewie/lando pilot cards.

However the Squint doesn't have 10 lasers. It has 4. Not everything that looks like a gun is a gun.

It's possible to put two more guns in the ball cockpit's mounts, giving it six.

Heck! No one would have complained if it had a 3 attack, not one person.

Nobody would have suggested it would have had 4 because it wouldn't have occured to them, but to say nobody would have complained? It would have sat in the TIE advanced box of sadness forever. Why take a phantom when you could take one of the Empire's other myriad of 3 attack, more reliable and less expensive hyperagile ships?

Let's all face it. FFG didn't play test this well enough and they went for the Lazy GW method of lets give it a 4 attack.

I trust FFG's playtesting way more than your backseat designing. They put far more effort into designing that ship than you put into deciding "omg op" and belittling their efforts. Twelve different cloaking mechanics.

However the Squint doesn't have 10 lasers. It has 4. Not everything that looks like a gun is a gun.

It's possible to put two more guns in the ball cockpit's mounts, giving it six.

Yep but it would be an upgrade given to an ace rather than a standard mod after all fighters are expendable in the empires view and more lasers means more money.

I don't think the Empire slouched on how many guns they stuck on their ships or on their military budget in general.

If money was an object they'd have made fighters that were more likely to last too. The actual reason is that the power generator in the squint doesn't have the oomph to run six at once and if you aren't running them all at once you might as well just have the four. As you said, they modified a few to let them fire all six but the factory standard was four.

I never said the Falcon should have equal firepower to an X-Wing. The Falcon itself probably has the equivalent of maybe 5 or 6 x-wing laser cannons across both guns. But that's only the Falcon. In game, the Falcon upgrade card should have given the extra stats, not the han/chewie/lando pilot cards.

The Falcon's bigger with more space for generators. The only reason those quad guns would be worse than the X-wing would be the X-wing guns being higher tech.