Righto. This lot.

R5 Astromech, R5-D8, R5-P9, and R2-D2.

All effect damage you've taken after the fact. Let's talk about it!

The R5 Astromech requires the least input from the player and is the cheapest, but is also the most restrictive as far as the types of damage you can heal.

It looks like it can effect 25/33 of the damage deck, but 6 of them flip themselves, so truly it's only going to effect 19/33.

• On an E-Wing (which suffers a disproportionately higher amount of Critical Damage than the others, due to having the highest Damage Mitigation), that's actually only 12/33, unless you give the ship a Hull Upgrade.
• On an X or a Y, it's pretty decent for its cost, though both ships tend to take an R2-Astromech to deal with mobility issues instead.

R5-D8 requires the most input from the player, and has the second-largest restriction on the types of damage it can heal, but has found its soulmate in Jek Porkins.

Healing away face-down damage means that you'll never regain your shields, and would eventually die to face-up cards even if it had a guarantee to heal back all of your face-down cards, but it only has a 5/8 chance of clearing a single one. The fact that it costs a full action makes it unplayable to most.

• Y-Wings have a lower chance of suffering Critical Hits due to their abysmal damage mitigation, and so make decent use of the droid
• Porkins is still the best pilot for its use, due to being able to gain benefit from the regeneration prior to losing all of his shields.

R5-P9 is the newest of the lot, and often the most potent. He requires a token to activate, but still regenerates shields, meaning that you don't have to fear Critical Hits while regenerating.

• R5-P9 also solidifies the Focus as the most flexible action in the game, as in any turn you intend to use it defensively, you are either killed, are at full health, or have mitigated a minimum of one damage, as in any scenario where otherwise you would have mitigated no damage due to having rolled no eyes, you can no regenerate back.
• Moreover, shield regeneration as the spending of a token mean that you can use it when flying at full speed, or while stressed if you've received a focus from elsewhere (like Kyle Katarn), making you intensely difficult to pin down while healing.

R2-D2 is the oldest of the bunch, and the most often used as selecting a Green Maneuver is often seen as being less burdensome than selecting an action.

• However, if you are in a scenario in which you are taking damage, the limited Green Maneuvers of X and Y wings mean that you are very likely to stay in the position of taking damage for multiple rounds.
• Alternatively, if you flee the fight to heal, you will be gone for many rounds, as you cannot do so with swift maneuvers.
• Still, if you intend to perform green maneuvers quite often, or have good mobility options tied with your greens (like the E-Wing's Barrel-roll, and 2-bank 3-forward options), it can still work well for you.

So, there you have it. I think that R5-P9 is better than R2-D2 in far more scenarios than it is worse.
It also has better synergy with Luke Skywalker's Pilot Ability, which is just wrong .

Thoughts?
Alternative to thoughts, is there another series of upgrades you'd like me to break down like this?

I think you need to consider R2-D2's strength on ships with more shields, like e-wings, especially when they're tied to more Green Dice, like e-wings. Obviously he fits well with Corran, but R2-D2's strength grows the more shields a ship has. I don't think necessarily that R5-P9, in my experience at least, fires each time you have the focus. Too often I've had to use that focus on defence or offence to make my investment in that particular X-wing worth it, or to keep it from taking more damage than it can sustain. When the difference is mitigating the loss of 2 shields and a crit, or saving your focus to regenerate one of those damages...

R2-D2 can allow you to use that focus to keep damage from happening, or cause damage while STILL allowing you to regenerate. Paired with EI or PTL, it makes sense. I think he's stronger personally.

Jacob

You're making a strong case for Horton, TLT, R5-P9.

I think you need to consider R2-D2's strength on ships with more shields, like e-wings, especially when they're tied to more Green Dice, like e-wings. Obviously he fits well with Corran, but R2-D2's strength grows the more shields a ship has. I don't think necessarily that R5-P9, in my experience at least, fires each time you have the focus. Too often I've had to use that focus on defence or offence to make my investment in that particular X-wing worth it, or to keep it from taking more damage than it can sustain. When the difference is mitigating the loss of 2 shields and a crit, or saving your focus to regenerate one of those damages...

R2-D2 can allow you to use that focus to keep damage from happening, or cause damage while STILL allowing you to regenerate. Paired with EI or PTL, it makes sense. I think he's stronger personally.

Jacob

R2-D2 is stronger on Corran Horn, i'll grant you. However, I think R5-P9 is stronger on the rest of them.

The reason that R2-D2 takes it is that Corran's double-tap occurs after R5-P9's window, so there's a small amount of antisynergy.

Still, I did mention that R2-D2 is at its strongest with the E-Wing's Dial and Barrel-Roll.

R5-P9 lets you regenerate on the "get-out-of-here" maneuvers (the 5 forward, the 3 turns), so I find that it lends more survivability most of the time.

Dang I thought this was gonna be a thread about how regen is getting too good in this game.

Even though I've beaten him many times, I always get a knot in my stomach when I see I'm going up against corran with r2d2

For a fun regen-double-X list...

Luke w/ R5-P9

Garven w/ R2-D2

Garven regens on green maneuvers and takes 'focus' as his action. He uses it during the turn, one way or the other, and passes it to Luke. No matter what Luke did as an action, or spent during combat, he then ends the turn with a focus token for R5-P9 to work his magic.

Alternatively, Garven also helps deal with the worst of the synergy issues with FCS-Corran's double-tap and R5-P9...helping Corran get an extra focus token to feed his droid.

R5-P9 is definitely not better in most situations. If I am trying not to die I am spending my focus.

R5-p9 also has fun synergy with garven dries, able to pass a focus token in the end phase, while currently not crazy useful, this allows for some unexpected tech...

Garven to moldy crow

Garven to a double tapping corran horn.

R5-p9 also has fun synergy with garven dries, able to pass a focus token in the end phase, while currently not crazy useful, this allows for some unexpected tech...

Garven to moldy crow

Garven to a double tapping corran horn.

Don't quite see the point of movement in the end phase, but it's possible.

R5-p9 also has fun synergy with garven dries, able to pass a focus token in the end phase, while currently not crazy useful, this allows for some unexpected tech...

Garven to moldy crow

Garven to a double tapping corran horn.

...Garven to Jake....

Don't quite see the point of movement in the end phase, but it's possible.

Kyle to Garven at the beginning of combat phase, then Garven spend his focus and passes it to someone else (including giving it back to Kyle).

Kyle to Jake, boost/roll then activate Ptl, attack.

Garven passes his one back to Kyle.

Anyway, no mechs here so widely off topic

Damage recovery is essentially retro active damage mitigation. It works as long as you still have a ship. The problem is that X-wing uses a dual hitpoint system. One for shields the outer layer aka armor of the ships adding hardness to the since it is immune to crits while shields are up and the hull as the more chewey but still tough inner meat. Right now regeneration only focuses on one of these aspects. Shield regeneration might be the best as it get that shell back up. As for hull it really only works on ships that have lots of hull and right now there really isn't much advantage to hull tanks other than stopping flechete torpedo effects and some protection from proton bombs. So still high hull ships seem more like big but squishy targets.

Another note that damage recovery is exclusively to the Rebel faction. The rebel has 4 astromech and 2 crew upgrades that recovers damage. Chewbacca adds a shield so that card counts as damage recover while other upgrades such as determination or moff jerrod only discard damage cards thus preventing damage. That being said it makes ships like A-wings and Z-95 having no damage recovery ability, so you don't see it that much. Also as I mention unlike damage prevention it only works if you still have your ship left. Unlike damage mitigation through prevention it can keep a ship from being removed form the table at the last hit. However damage recovery cannot put a ship back on the table once it is remove thus making it weaker than prevention.

Dang I thought this was gonna be a thread about how regen is getting too good in this game.

Likewise,

And strangely enough, when I first saw R2-D2's effect I thought that more variants would come (they did) and that they would break the game (they didn't).