I'm planning to house-rule my b-wings to (in my opinion) better suite their primary role as a heavy bomber and getting a better role-distinction between b-wing and x-wing. Looking at the stats in wookieepedia i found the primary weapon for the unmodified b-wing is 3 Ion-cannons.

Here my pretty raw idea: Title-card for b-wing (-x)

B-wing A/SF-01

Use the ion-cannon as primary weapon.

This card would change the ion-cannon from a secondary to a primary weapon (including the correspondent rulings), changing this b-wing variant from a "knife-fighter" to "cannon-focused", perhaps also ordonance-focused support craft.

Here my questions:

1. How many points could I substract from the point cost of the basic b-wing?

2. Would it be better (similar to the new targeting-computer for the Tie-Advanced) to enable point reduction for cannon-upgrades?

Thanks in advance for your ideas and comments! And I hope, I didn't bring up something that has already been discussed a long time ago...

Just scrap the above idea and mount Ion Cannons. Regardless of whether the card(s)/game calls it a "Primary" or "Secondary", the one you use the most (your "go to" weapon) is your primary. I like your creativity but do not see the justification for it nor the "pay-off" in creating a new rule, IMO.

Per Wookieepedia, FFG did a pretty good job translating its armament options into the game. The only thing I can think to make it more dependent on the "secondary" weapons would be to ...

a. reduce the Primary Weapon firepower to '2'

b. reduce range of Primary weapon to "Range 1-2"

Both suggestions above attempt to simulate the original fitting of 2 Blasters (usually replaced by 4 blasters - Auto-Blasters?- or 2 Lasers), then a 2? point cost reduction.

Seriously though, I'd let it be.

If you want to houerule the B-wing to stop it knife fighting just rule that it can't use Advanced Sensors. You'll cut a really fun ship setup out of the game but the B-wing's dial will go back to being a setback.

Thanx for your suggestions! I just tried my old Tie-Fighter PC-Game and saw a b-wing with 3 laser cannons and ion-support - pretty much what we have in the game-stats of x-wing. I also think messing around with the highly complex and astonishingly well balanced rules-system of FFG is not a very good idea. I'll try my ion-cannon + heavy laser-cannon version and both your suggestions just for fun next weekend .

What about a cannon slot upgrade that read something like:

Make a primary attack. If the attack hits you may spend a focus(targetlock?) token to have the defender receive an ion token.

or

Attack(focus) (3 attack 1-3) Spend a focus token to make an attack. If the attack hits the defender receives an ion token.

Make it available to b-wings and Tie Defenders.Represents firing lasers and ion at the same time but required more focus to get them to hit at the same time.