So, because I was hoping for the Gunboat in Wave VII, I didn't post these earlier. However, since FFG elected to use the incredible-looking TIE Punisher for the next wave, I wanted to share all of this!

The Alpha-class Xg-1 "Starwing" Assault Gunboat is easily my favourite non-TIE Imperial ship, courtesy of many, many hours of TIE Fighter and X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. I've been hoping for its eventual inclusion in the X-Wing minis game. However, I grew impatient, and after >9000 hours in MSPaint and the excellent X-Wing EON module, I would like to present the Xg-1 Assault Gunboat. I would sincerely appreciate feedback of any kind, and I'm especially still picky about point costs, but please have a look and let me know what you think.

(edit: Wall of Text beneath the pictures, sorry about that. Feel free to read on for my design thoughts, or just have a look at the pictures!)

I wanted to give it a unique feel, so I decided to incorporate the standard Ion armament as a Primary weapon in additional to the workaday pewpew lasers. I think Range bonuses on a 2-dice Ion attack is a neat thing, and cane give it some real teeth at Range 1 without just mimicking the BTL-A4 Y-Wing title. I did however blatantly steal the A4 two-attack-per-round schtick, because why reinvent what isn't broken?

Now, that said, while I was thinking this all up and rolling dice, I quickly realized that, outside of Range 1, this thing wouldn't really be throwing a lot of damage. So, I took inspiration from my personal experiences with the space sim games I mentioned up top, and tried to incorporate energy allotment/management and rate-of-fire as personal options. I had friends who would never use the Ion cannons unless the mission in the game required it, so for them I have the Enhanced Laser Matrix. You can make your Gunboat hit a little harder, and more accurately, at the cost of only attacking once per turn. Sometimes you want that Range 1 killshot on Fel or Dash, and that's when you divert all available Ion power to the forward lasers! Or, Whisper is lurking at Range 3, and you're not confident of getting any damage through the Cloak/Focus, so you give up your normal laser attack with a precise Ion shot to try and make the next round swing in your favour. And of course if you enter the scrum and have two separate targets in arc and Range 1, you can still choose to use both weapons separately.

However, that didn't fully capture my favourite way to fly the Gunboat, which was always with the throttle fully open and every gun blazing. I decided we needed Fire-Linked Cannons for that one sweet shot with everything you've got once the poor Rebel dog crossed your sights. Instead of being able to attack twice in a round, you only attack once, and always with four dice (no offensive Range bonus). However, if you get even one hit through, you get both damage and an Ion token delivered through. I feel the Agility value modifying damage was what made this click for me, because that really nailed home the feel of dogfighting more- or less-agile ships. If I got behind a B-Wing, that thing was going home in very small boxes as a given; however, if I was trying to chase down an A-Wing or Interceptor, I might get one good shot as we pass each other and then have to circle around again. So, to mimic that, I decided 4 damage minus the green dice rolled by the defender would represent a full-power blast that strikes home while eliminating criticals as a possibility (similar to the Heavy Laser Cannon). The A-Wing might get clipped by the ionizing effect but skim most of the damage (or all of it at Range 3!), whereas a B-Wing or Falcon wouldn't generally have the capacity to dodge all four blasts as they fired again and again. Now, I was worried that might seem too powerful, but I ask you to consider the effect of a 3-Attack ship at Range 1 against a B-Wing. At best, the B gets to block a single die and maybe only take three damage from a good roll. The B might flub the green die and take four damage instead, too! So, the Fire-Linked Gunboat can only ever deal three or even two damage, whereas an A4 Y-Wing at Range 1 (or a vanilla Gunboat using both R1 attacks!) can absolutely stand to deal four damage and an Ion token. What the Gunboat gets out of the deal is rolling four dice to have a strong chance of delivering that damage, which can still only happen if something is in-arc. On the other side of the coin, even if an Interceptor completely whiffs its defense roll, it's still going so fast and presents such a small profile that it only ever takes one damage and an Ion token.

Upgrade slots were hard, because I really didn't want to go overboard or draw too much away from the Primary Ion. I was originally going to give it two Missile slots, but since the announcement of Wave VII and the reveal of the Extra Munitions card (which requires a Torp slot) I decided one Missile and one Torpedo would be a more balanced set of options!

As for the pilots, I'm pretty proud of "Bullrush," who is basically just a reverse Kir Kanos. We've all had that one round where a single Evade result could have changed things, so "Bullrush" has a little flexibility when he's taking fire (to sort of mimic the capacity for the Gunboat to rush headlong into combat).

Dimitrius Zaarin is the Big Bad from TIE Fighter (spoiler alert?) and makes off with a big bunch of TIE Defenders, prompting ace pilots like Maarek Stele (who I absolutely couldn't leave out of this thing!) to resort to older craft like the Assault Gunboat to combat the rogue threat. At least, until the Imperial Missile Boat was crafted to explicitly combat the Defender! Anyway, I wasn't too sure what kind of ability a PS8 pilot might want on something that always has access to an Ion attack, so I sort of borrowed the basic idea of Dace Bonearm.

As for the dial, I wanted something decent but with some pretty significant flaws. I took the HWK and Shuttle dials, made them a bit better, added some green and a 4-K, and called it good. I think aside from those two ships it's the only dial with just one Turn speed. Even if it's red, the Y-Wing can make a 3-Turn if that's really the best move that turn (Unhinged Astro notwithstanding!). To compensate, I gave it greens identical to the E-Wing to represent decent sublight acceleration, although it doesn't want to turn sharply away from its attack run. I debated giving it the 4-Straight at all, but I'm reasonably happy to give it a 4-K for some degree of viability. I feel the dial makes it a little predictable leading up to an engagement, but still reasonably competent and with a decent degree of choice after a K-Turn. In my mind, the dial is begging for an Engine Upgrade, which forces some thought about using the Mod slot for Boost or the other two Xg-1 modifications. Excluding the Engine Upgrade is part of why I think the other two mods are fair at two points apiece.

Anyway, I'm hoping to actually try these out in a match sometime soon! I might actually have to head over to Shapeways to see about that haha. Thanks for looking!

Eh, the glaring thing i saw is the primary fire. I'd rather make it a second attack against the same ship.

Dials not got enough red on it, this is an Assault gunboat, not a TIE Defender.

Other than that, Me rikey!

I wish you good luck with this, but I would prefer a Aces Pack for Tie Fighters and Tie Bomber. I really want more Bomber Pilots. But I just don't think FFG cares about that.

Let me compare this to the good ol' X-Wing:

PS 2 w/ Enhanced Laser Matrix: +1 point over Rookie, - hard 3 turns, Turn one BLANK attack die into a HIT result, +1 shield.

Maybe you think the X-Wing is absolute junk but for the drawback of no hard 3 it's always gets at least one [boom] when attacking and has another point of shield. The "may" in that modification also means your Gunboat can be far more effective against low agility ships; at R1 you're rolling six attack dice even if the target may only suffer four results and take an ion token.

Nice work. Looks like an interesting ship. The twin primary weapons are neat.

My main concern is the dial. It's too good. The HWK and shuttle are good models. I agree this should be a little more nimble but it might be too much so. The green of an E-wing, hmm. And having a k-turn is questionable.

What about:

1: straight & bank (white)

2: straight & bank (green), hard (white)

3: straight (green), bank (red)

4: straight (red)

Same moves as HWK, greens of decimator, one turn and nothe red. Still no k option.

Great pilot ability on Bullrush! Very useful without being OP. Would love to see that one make its way into the game.

Note the lack of hard 3s on the dial: its only turn is the 2. It can maneuver but it's not quick about it. This dial's much more restrictive than it looks: good job there.

The primaries I'd have only be able to target the same ship with both attacks: the XG-1's a one man craft so the pilot can't track and fire at two craft simultaneously in the space of one attack step.

As for the two agility, I agree with that based on its health stats, I'm just wondering if that's thematically appropriate for it. It may be worth dropping it to 1 and upping its health to 7 or 8.

No, dont give it B or Y stats. Those are so boring. Tie Bomber stats better. I like it.

Your ideas are good, the twin linked something or other might be overpowered. And also INCREDIBLY OBTUSE AND HARD TO UNDERSTAND AND READ. Could you make it simpler?

Note the lack of hard 3s on the dial: its only turn is the 2. It can maneuver but it's not quick about it. This dial's much more restrictive than it looks: good job there.

Restrictive, yes. But too generous. This is the lambda's cousin after all. I just changed the color of the suggested maneuvers and lost the k-turn. Still turns better than a shuttle since 2-hard is white and has faster greens.

It's a combat ship, the Lambda is a shuttle.

I really like your designs. I would totally use them. I might have to go buy one off of Shapeways.

Issue I have with creating your own ships is making sure they aren't more biased than what their point values should be. I would consult whatever charts / mathwing stuff to make it closer to what we can match FFG formulas. I'm new to X-Wing though have been following it for a while plus theory crafting too. It's based of lambda, giving more combat capabilities. Have to remember it's a starfighter and have to think about it would how it would work in gameplay.

For me, you would have to separate the love for this ship from implementing a balanced game concept.

Pilots - Little unbalanced for their costs, one similar and others seem like freebies.

Primary Ion - Your auto giving this ship Ion ability? Plus dual attack?

Enhanced Laser Matrix - Overpowered, not only +1<R> but free hit for 2 pts .. :/

Fire-Linked Cannons - I like the idea of "fire-linked" reminds me of WEG D6 SW RPG, but first you state XG-1 only, then others can use it. But then it's basically ion and 4 dmg to strip shields? unbalanced

Maneuver Dial - should be similar to Y or B as wookia states it's closer to that type of ship but outmatched by inter/A's.

That's my critic about it, again I would find the point formulas to use for a base. Your giving the ship a lot of stuff for little cost. I wouldn't care if the thing only flew 1 red straight with its abilities as is.

Overall, still is very creative and complete idea for an expansions!

I like it. I like the Primary Ion idea, if only because a cannon slot for Ion makes very little sense at all on this ship. Also because a Skipray Blastboat could quite easily benefit from the rule as well.

I always applaud the effort and creativity for something like this. I enjoyed it. I did notice one potential issue with the wording of the Fire Linked Cannons though. If a ship has 4 Agility (through Stealth Device or being Cloaked) then 4-4=0 and you will deal no damage to them. You may want to address that.

This was my take on the XG-1 though after play testing where someone took the cannon to the maximum... it needs limiting.

Dial seems to work just fine

But again the cannon slot is very tuff to control in someone elses hands. Maybe a limiter on it in the card text.

Thank you so much for the input everybody! I do really appreciate it. I definitely think it could stand further tweaking, but I barely get to play enough as it is, never mind playtest something like this to my satisfaction!

Eh, the glaring thing i saw is the primary fire. I'd rather make it a second attack against the same ship.

Dials not got enough red on it, this is an Assault gunboat, not a TIE Defender.

Other than that, Me rikey!

Thanks! After reviewing the thread, I have to agree, the dial is just a bit too speedy compared to the B-Wing and Y-Wing. I therefore would like to use some of the input from Rhoaran and put forth something like:

Let me compare this to the good ol' X-Wing:

PS 2 w/ Enhanced Laser Matrix: +1 point over Rookie, - hard 3 turns, Turn one BLANK attack die into a HIT result, +1 shield.

Maybe you think the X-Wing is absolute junk but for the drawback of no hard 3 it's always gets at least one [boom] when attacking and has another point of shield. The "may" in that modification also means your Gunboat can be far more effective against low agility ships; at R1 you're rolling six attack dice even if the target may only suffer four results and take an ion token.

I'll admit I think the X-Wing is a bit....pricey for what it offers, although I feel the slow green 1 speed moves are worth quite a bit (especially after flying Headhunters, E-Wings, or TIEs for a bit!). But I feel the extra damage potential is about on par for a BTL-A4 Ion Y-Wing, although that third shield on the Gunboat might indeed make it a bit too hardy.

Nice work. Looks like an interesting ship. The twin primary weapons are neat.

My main concern is the dial. It's too good. The HWK and shuttle are good models. I agree this should be a little more nimble but it might be too much so. The green of an E-wing, hmm. And having a k-turn is questionable.

What about:

1: straight & bank (white)
2: straight & bank (green), hard (white)
3: straight (green), bank (red)
4: straight (red)

Same moves as HWK, greens of decimator, one turn and nothe red. Still no k option.

Thank you so much! I really do like the idea of the 4-Straight and 3-Banks as red just to even out the dial a bit, otherwise it has a few too many speedy options in the face of a Koiogran or stress-shot. I do feel that if the B-Wing and Y-Wing can K-Turn, the Gunboat deserves the same option, although the 5-K of the Bomber felt like a little too much. I do want to playtest though!

Note the lack of hard 3s on the dial: its only turn is the 2. It can maneuver but it's not quick about it. This dial's much more restrictive than it looks: good job there.

The primaries I'd have only be able to target the same ship with both attacks: the XG-1's a one man craft so the pilot can't track and fire at two craft simultaneously in the space of one attack step.

As for the two agility, I agree with that based on its health stats, I'm just wondering if that's thematically appropriate for it. It may be worth dropping it to 1 and upping its health to 7 or 8.

That's something I was struggling with, because I feel two attacks on the same target are a better representation of the gameplay from TIE Fighter, but since the BTL-A4 Y-Wing can make two separate attacks, I felt it was probably better to extend the Gunboat the same option. However, you might be right in the face of the Ion having access to Range 3!

Also, yes, that second agility meant I agonized a bit over how healthy it should be. The wiki article stresses its resilience, especially in the face of oncoming fire, so I felt 6 health at two agility (roughly 9 adjusted HP, at the rate of 1 AGI = 1x health, 2 AGI = 1.5x health, and 3 AGI = 2x health) would be about appropriate, but I might have to bump up costs as a result.

No, dont give it B or Y stats. Those are so boring. Tie Bomber stats better. I like it.

Your ideas are good, the twin linked something or other might be overpowered. And also INCREDIBLY OBTUSE AND HARD TO UNDERSTAND AND READ. Could you make it simpler?

Thanks!

And, yes, sorry about that, I was trying to make it fit on the card! Basically, using Fire-Link shots, you have to use it every turn, and ALWAYS roll four dice (regardless of Range). Like an Ion attack, you aren't counting hits made and hits cancelled, you are looking if you hit at all. Then, you deal one ion token. Also, you deal 4 damage minus the green dice the defender rolled, to a minimum of 0: a B-Wing at Range 1-2 would roll 1 green die, and so take 3 damage, whereas an A-Wing at Range 1-2 would roll 3 dice and therefore take 1 damage, regardless of how many hits "got through." This provides damage consistency against targets, regardless of roll quality on either end. It makes it hard to really damage High-AGI ships, and you have to rely on the Ion effect more if you can, but it is relatively easy to rack up damage on Low-AGI targets (who cannot cancel many dice anyways, and are very easily ionized).

Issue I have with creating your own ships is making sure they aren't more biased than what their point values should be. I would consult whatever charts / mathwing stuff to make it closer to what we can match FFG formulas. I'm new to X-Wing though have been following it for a while plus theory crafting too. It's based of lambda, giving more combat capabilities. Have to remember it's a starfighter and have to think about it would how it would work in gameplay.

For me, you would have to separate the love for this ship from implementing a balanced game concept.

Pilots - Little unbalanced for their costs, one similar and others seem like freebies.

Primary Ion - Your auto giving this ship Ion ability? Plus dual attack?

Enhanced Laser Matrix - Overpowered, not only +1<R> but free hit for 2 pts .. :/

Fire-Linked Cannons - I like the idea of "fire-linked" reminds me of WEG D6 SW RPG, but first you state XG-1 only, then others can use it. But then it's basically ion and 4 dmg to strip shields? unbalanced

Maneuver Dial - should be similar to Y or B as wookia states it's closer to that type of ship but outmatched by inter/A's.

That's my critic about it, again I would find the point formulas to use for a base. Your giving the ship a lot of stuff for little cost. I wouldn't care if the thing only flew 1 red straight with its abilities as is.

Overall, still is very creative and complete idea for an expansions!

Thank you, I completely agree. I'm only obliquely familiar with the processes of MathWing, and while I love MajorJuggler's work I am myself no statistician. So the points are probably way off! I would love to playtest however, and try and feel if it's fair or not. I agree with everything you said however, and a separate major concern of mine was trying not to favour this ship too much! Let me know what you think of the adjusted dial above!

I always applaud the effort and creativity for something like this. I enjoyed it. I did notice one potential issue with the wording of the Fire Linked Cannons though. If a ship has 4 Agility (through Stealth Device or being Cloaked) then 4-4=0 and you will deal no damage to them. You may want to address that.

Ah, that was intentional! For the benefit of always rolling four attack dice, you would not actually damage a cloaked Phantom or 3 AGI ship at Range 3 or obstructed. This was to partially balance out the extra-powerful Ion roll, and to make up for the fact that the Gunboat, as an Assault vessel, was much more suited to attacking larger/slower targets than dogfighting. Imagine the Fire-Link shot against a Decimator or CR-90! Very potent, even if you only roll one hit on the attack. However, as you pointed out, you cannot damage 4 AGI targets and would need assistance! Or, ionize them off the board if you can get follow-up shots.

This was my take on the XG-1 though after play testing where someone took the cannon to the maximum... it needs limiting.

Dial seems to work just fine

But again the cannon slot is very tuff to control in someone elses hands. Maybe a limiter on it in the card text.

Very nice! I concur, the Cannon upgrade slot felt like it would make it too powerful; the first thing everyone wanted to do with the Heavy Scyk was staple on the HLC after all! I felt a default Ion weapon would provide a degree of versatility without providing complete Cannon choice. I like the dial! I may have stolen the idea of the red 3 speed turns in my adjusted dial, above, by making the 3-Banks red now. I feel like the 1- and 2-Straight greens are very limiting without a way to help them (R2 Astro and Unhinged Astro for the Y-Wing), and nothing else in the game has a dial that limiting, so I felt a little more green was appropriate, but definitely needed more red on there to balance it out. Thanks!

See heres the thing: 4 hits is INCREDIBLE. Do not do that as a free give-me.

Second, your agility reduction is misleading: I thought you first subtract the 4 - agi, THEN roll for agility as normal. Removing rolling dice is NOT a good idea to do as a fan designer. It is a sparingly used thing allowed for real designers. The die rolls are really required to make it feel like a game. otherwise everything is just an expected number.

Honestly, why can;t you simply do the BTL-A4 with both guns? It makes more sense.

And I haven't even figured out why you wouldn't want to do this everyturn, whats the other option???

Oh, I haveto applaud you again on the double primaries. Ion Primary. Its so cool. Better than Cannon slot. =)

I like the "bad" dial better. Makes for slow rolling and more R1 shots. Knife fighting distance like B. What about a 3 K instead of a 4 K?

And 1 slight greens instead? Slower ship. Small? I think itll be cool!

Ugh. Make sure your factories in China do a good job on the model though. Either like the sickest red model or the white albino Shuttle-esque one. Otherwise its just... boxy and ugly. Also, I love the wings rotated down beyond 90 degrees, but I didn't play the game. sooo...

For Enhanced Laser Matrix: Simply adding 1 hit would be easier wordage. "You may only attack once per round, and only using one primary weapon per turn. Add a hit result to your attack."

Twin Linked Cannons: "IMPERIAL small ship only. Equip only if you have a cannon upgrade equipped. After performing your primary attack, you may perform an attack with your cannon. You may not attack again after this."

Dont forget for the fire linked cannons to include "cancel all dice results" or something

I like your idea for the ship overall, esspecially with the modified dial suggested in this threat (personally I would not have used an Ion Primary but a Title that would drop the points cost of all cannons with a cost of less than 4 by 2 - making the Flechette free and the Ion 1 point, without discouting the HLC - but your solution seems for elegant)

However I have some issue with your pilot abilites... they are fine but they feel recycled from other craft.

"Bullrush" only sounds fine because you used a different phrasing than Kir Kanos. To keep the theme though I would go with this:

"When defending,if you have a focus token assigned to your ship, you may spend this token to turn all [focus] results of the attacker to [blank] results"

Reasoning:

Zaarin (which I wouldn't put in an Xg-1 unless it was heavily modifiable - the guy was the head of the research division and first ot install new tech in his ships) I would make differntly - but my ideas is actually keeping with the theme you have set:

"After you performed an attack which ionized the defender, you may assign a Weapons Disabled token to the defender as well."

Reasoning:

Oh, I haveto applaud you again on the double primaries. Ion Primary. Its so cool. Better than Cannon slot. =)

I like the "bad" dial better. Makes for slow rolling and more R1 shots. Knife fighting distance like B. What about a 3 K instead of a 4 K?

And 1 slight greens instead? Slower ship. Small? I think itll be cool!

Ugh. Make sure your factories in China do a good job on the model though. Either like the sickest red model or the white albino Shuttle-esque one. Otherwise its just... boxy and ugly. Also, I love the wings rotated down beyond 90 degrees, but I didn't play the game. sooo...

For Enhanced Laser Matrix: Simply adding 1 hit would be easier wordage. "You may only attack once per round, and only using one primary weapon per turn. Add a hit result to your attack."

Twin Linked Cannons: "IMPERIAL small ship only. Equip only if you have a cannon upgrade equipped. After performing your primary attack, you may perform an attack with your cannon. You may not attack again after this."

Thanks again! I really do appreciate the feedback.

I have to agree, the 3-K definitely feels more limiting (thank you Headhunters), so that might work. But for the 1-Bank greens I feel not only are they very common, but they're also convenient; again looking to the Headhunter, being forced to use a 2-Speed Bank if I want to adjust angle makes it feel like I'm pulling hard to bring it around at all, and I might not get a shot next turn as a result.

As for the free hit with the Matrix, I did consider that, but decided to borrow the condition from Autothrusters because an eyeball without a Focus is still a miss! Instead of a 50% chance to hit, it goes to 75% without tokens (instead of the ATC free hit, for example).

And I thought long and hard about giving it a cannon slot to make things simpler, but was worried the distinctive ion/laser combo would be pushed aside by HLC and Mangler. I like that Twin Cannon idea though!

Dont forget for the fire linked cannons to include "cancel all dice results" or something

Thank you, yes! I think it's tucked in the middle there, but definitely an important point!

I like your idea for the ship overall, esspecially with the modified dial suggested in this threat (personally I would not have used an Ion Primary but a Title that would drop the points cost of all cannons with a cost of less than 4 by 2 - making the Flechette free and the Ion 1 point, without discouting the HLC - but your solution seems for elegant)

However I have some issue with your pilot abilites... they are fine but they feel recycled from other craft.

"Bullrush" only sounds fine because you used a different phrasing than Kir Kanos. To keep the theme though I would go with this:

"When defending,if you have a focus token assigned to your ship, you may spend this token to turn all [focus] results of the attacker to [blank] results"

Reasoning:

This is a mechanic that is very close to the Sensor Jammer-system, Dark Curse and R7-Astromech. If you have a focus token while defending you may negate the enemies use of the same token instead on spending it on your roll. Since as defender you modify the attack dice before that attacker, the Target Lock will be unaffected can still be used to get a better result (or just the focus results back). Because you spend your focus token, before you roll you own defense die, it is not a no brainer as you still don't know if you are going to need to the token to modify your own defense roll - but you can also skip it with your enemy rolls like crap or roll unmodified dice.

Zaarin (which I wouldn't put in an Xg-1 unless it was heavily modifiable - the guy was the head of the research division and first ot install new tech in his ships) I would make differntly - but my ideas is actually keeping with the theme you have set:

"After you performed an attack which ionized the defender, you may assign a Weapons Disabled token to the defender as well."

Reasoning:

The new Weapons Disabled token is a new mechanic comming with the K-Wing and its funktionality had been missing from the Ion Weapon IMO (still Ion Weapons are good). This is also a specifically anti-turret ability, because a normal "arc-primary" ship will suffer no additional ill effects, as it already out of position through the forced movement but a turreted ship could still fire back if ionized making it nearly pointless to do so. This also may help with slower, less dodgy ships or ships with a limited action economy which have to decide between an offenisve boost and getting out of the arc (it is only fitting to the fluff that Zaarin has a ship helping out the Defender, no?). Using just the ionized status instead of the Ion Token will keep this ability from being all-powerful against larger ships

Yes, I actually prefer the modified dial better too; more red makes it feel more accurate, and 3-Straight green was far too generous of me. However again, my major concern with a proper Cannon upgrade was that, without a point-adjustment system like you suggested (or they provided for the TIE/ad x1), I would be concerned everyone would just opt for the HLC.

I completely agree that the pilot abilities are recycled! I was looking more for abilities that felt true to the game, rather than anything particularly ingenious (Dash and Echo spring to mind!). I like the idea of the modified sensor jammer effect on a PS6 pilot without an EPT, but I am completely in favour of the Weapons Disabled ability for Zaarin. I also agree he wouldn't necessarily be a pilot choice, but I wanted a name directly connected to the Gunboat haha. I'm sure there's someone more appropriate, a lá Rexler Breath.

You know, for the gunboat I'd consider a pilot that actually increases it's agi. Say Maarek Stele gives his T/D Agi 4 native, or a gunboat Agi3.

I think you would be better with the following.

2/2/4/2 for the atk/def/hull/shd

drop the weird upgrades and dual attack value for a cannon upgrade slot and a mirror to the Y-wing upgrade card for dual fire but allowing a cannon fire after a primary shot. This would really make it a gunboat and could field the Ion, Mangler, etc.

One: Needs a Nu squadron pilot. (Just as any missile boat would need mu squadron)

Two: Zaarin is an admiral, you wouldn't catch him on a fighter!

Those are my fluff complaints.

Mechanically, your fire linked canons: Are they useless if I shoot at a cloaked phantom?

I like the stat line except the weird hybrid attack. If it has a primary ion, it shouldn't get a canon slot. Maybe instead a custom ion canon?

You know, for the gunboat I'd consider a pilot that actually increases it's agi. Say Maarek Stele gives his T/D Agi 4 native, or a gunboat Agi3.

I like that, that would be pretty great. Might have to restrict it a bit? Such as, it only works after performing a green maneuver? Otherwise is makes it entirely too healthy, on average.

I think you would be better with the following.

2/2/4/2 for the atk/def/hull/shd

drop the weird upgrades and dual attack value for a cannon upgrade slot and a mirror to the Y-wing upgrade card for dual fire but allowing a cannon fire after a primary shot. This would really make it a gunboat and could field the Ion, Mangler, etc.

Unfortunately I feel access to a cannon slot would simply be used (abused, arguably) for access to just red dice with the HLC and Mangler, and that doesn't sit well with my take on the ship from the space sim games. I was definitely trying to mimic the BTL-A4 Y-Wing though! And that's the default method of attack. I wanted to give it some versatility with unique mods (sort of like the Phantom) but at the cost of no Cannon modularity.

One: Needs a Nu squadron pilot. (Just as any missile boat would need mu squadron)

Two: Zaarin is an admiral, you wouldn't catch him on a fighter!

Those are my fluff complaints.

Mechanically, your fire linked canons: Are they useless if I shoot at a cloaked phantom?

I like the stat line except the weird hybrid attack. If it has a primary ion, it shouldn't get a canon slot. Maybe instead a custom ion canon?

But yes, you nailed it, even if you hit a cloaked Phantom, you deal an ion token, but no damage. Same for a 3 AGI ship at Range 3 or obstructed. I tried to make that the case for that one upgrade because it is so effective against 0-1 AGI targets, and without capitalizing on the ion effect, the Gunboat really doesn't belong dogfighting something like a Phantom or Interceptor (although you can wing it with the ion effect, essentially).

And, for your last point, I went with a Missile Slot and a Torpedo Slot. I agree a Cannon would make it too powerful (especially with access to the HLC).