An unrestricted cannon? Really? So that little bitty thing looks like a Mangler or HLC? I just don't see it.

Well, turret weaponry scale is apparently unrelated to weapon size (see the YT-2400 2 attack turret vs Decimator 3 attack turret)

As a cannon? How big does the cannon look on the model of the B-Wing, Firespray or Defender?

The Black Series Special Forces TIE is out now and it is huge. I don't have one yet, but look at this video.

It's significantly different looking. It has room for a second person (crew) and might have room for a turret. Also it has what looks like double the gun tubes in the front.

This thing looks wild. From a distance it looks like a regular TIE Fighter but in detail it is so much more.

YES... it is coming to the game!

YES... it is the Imperial B-Wing with Heavy Weapons, Hull & Shield, and a crew slot!

YES... it IS a BAMF!!!

The one thing I'm hoping is that the Special Forces TIE model is noticeably bigger than its standard counterpart. It would make the ship stand out much more on a tabletop level.

I hope so too. Not grossly big, but maybe 10% larger?

10% is probably more than you think. The F/A-18E Super Hornet is comparable in size to an F-14 and it's only 6% bigger than the F/A-18C Hornet.

10% would probably not be overboard, given that the solar panels/radiators/whatever they are now have to cope with two people inside of it. Even if it was the 6% you mentioned, that combined with a different paint job and different cockpit and struts should be enough to distinguish it on the table.

Smaller guns are actually more efficient and a sign of better engineering the outrider isn't a military ship it makes sense that it's modified guns would be bigger than the Decimators quad turret.

An unrestricted cannon? Really? So that little bitty thing looks like a Mangler or HLC? I just don't see it.

Well, turret weaponry scale is apparently unrelated to weapon size (see the YT-2400 2 attack turret vs Decimator 3 attack turret)

As a cannon? How big does the cannon look on the model of the B-Wing, Firespray or Defender?

That thing is modeled to represent Dash and Co with HLC... Brah.

Anything else should be a little snip switch-a-rue conversion by the model owner. Twist off a YT-1300 turret to use as a YT-2400 with two attacks say.

I'm not sure it will have a cannon or turret slot. Now hear me out: the armature on the left (stage right) may very well be a sensor system - while the toy looks like a gun, it is a toy and they often in the past have taken liberties with what things are. There may be a tech slot that is TIE/SF only.

As for the turret, it may be easier to do a mechanic that says you may rotate your ship 180 degrees to attack again (so you use the arc as is) then rotate 180 degrees after the attack. Or the rear shot requires the range template to go in the guides on the base and fires straight. I suspect that the TIE/SF will have a 3 or 4 attack and be able to divide the dice between fore and aft targets. While a turret could work to represent this, having a unique mechanic sets the ship apart.

Heck, it may be best represented by a TIE/SF only crew or tech upgrade that allows or mimics anti-pursuit lasers - that right there, might be the most elegant solution a small ship with anti-pursuit lasers could be fun.

We don't fully know the capabilities of the ship yet, those "cogs" could be fuel cells, a cloaking device, hyperdrives, anime style missile launchers, better shield generators, thruster systems, or even cargo pods. Until we find out, it is hard to guess. The only sure thing is it will have a tech slot.

I would be happy if it had tech and crew upgrades, with 3 attack and a unique crew that was a cross between gunner and anti-pursuit lasers that was TIE/SF only.

As for the turret, it may be easier to do a mechanic that says you may rotate your ship 180 degrees to attack again (so you use the arc as is) then rotate 180 degrees after the attack. Or the rear shot requires the range template to go in the guides on the base and fires straight. I suspect that the TIE/SF will have a 3 or 4 attack and be able to divide the dice between fore and aft targets. While a turret could work to represent this, having a unique mechanic sets the ship apart.

I'd LOVE it if they did something like this - unique and elegant!

I'm not sure it will have a cannon or turret slot. Now hear me out: the armature on the left (stage right) may very well be a sensor system - while the toy looks like a gun, it is a toy and they often in the past have taken liberties with what things are. There may be a tech slot that is TIE/SF only.

As ridiculous as the "antenna gun" looks (as a gun) on the toy, it appears to be eerily accurate compared to the movie appearance...

I would be happy if it had tech and crew upgrades, with 3 attack and a unique crew that was a cross between gunner and anti-pursuit lasers that was TIE/SF only.

That would be awesome!

But the advanced can take a AC k turn and still get two hits where the fo will lack any ability to modify dice.

The tie fighter, interceptors and advanced can fill any roll the fo does, it over laps those ships but doesn't do better than them.

It's too expensive to swarm generics, it lacks the punch of a squint and can't match the advanced generics for survivability and the named advanced are in my opinion superior to the similar priced aces.

That's without even mentioning the largely useless TL action, even the aces that benefit from a TL leave themselves wide open to do so three naked green dice won't keep a four hull ship alive long.

And once the TAP comes along with its ability to mount AT what role will the fo fill?

Oh, you're one of /those/ players that always Focuses no matter what.

On ships that will shoot last yes because anything else is throwing a ship away a dead ship can't fire after all.

Also on 2 attack ships TL and focus give the exact same chance to get a hit so there's zero downside.

TL is for ships with three attacks not tie fo's.

It doesn't matter what attack value a ship has, focus or TL gives an additional 25% number of hits. (On each separate die, unmodified chance to hit is 1/2. Focus increases this to 3/4, but TL does as well, since the chance to *not* hit with a TL is 1/2*1/2 = 1/4, and hence the chance to hit with a TL is 3/4 also. Since focus and TL can be applied separately to each die, it doesn't matter how many attack dice are being rolled, each die's chance to hit increases from 50% to 75% with a focus or target lock.). You may be thinking about the difference between taking focus vs. evade on defense, where the number of dice being rolled does affect how many evades you get.

With all that said, TL is not at all useless on any ship. It has one enormous advantage over focus, namely it can last to later turns. As you say, not taking focus leaves one more defensively open, but this just means you take TL when the enemy won't be shooting at you. This can be achieved primarily in a couple of different ways: you move yourself into a position in which enemy ships will either bump you or go past you, or if you have a bigger threat available for them to shoot at. On such turns the F/O can take a target lock without fear of harm, and use it then or save it for a later turn, perhaps even getting the awesome focus + TL combination, which has a >80% chance of all hits on 2 or 3 dice. None of this can be done with the base Tie fighter.

I'm not sure it will have a cannon or turret slot. Now hear me out: the armature on the left (stage right) may very well be a sensor system - while the toy looks like a gun, it is a toy and they often in the past have taken liberties with what things are. There may be a tech slot that is TIE/SF only.

As for the turret, it may be easier to do a mechanic that says you may rotate your ship 180 degrees to attack again (so you use the arc as is) then rotate 180 degrees after the attack. Or the rear shot requires the range template to go in the guides on the base and fires straight. I suspect that the TIE/SF will have a 3 or 4 attack and be able to divide the dice between fore and aft targets. While a turret could work to represent this, having a unique mechanic sets the ship apart.

Heck, it may be best represented by a TIE/SF only crew or tech upgrade that allows or mimics anti-pursuit lasers - that right there, might be the most elegant solution a small ship with anti-pursuit lasers could be fun.

We don't fully know the capabilities of the ship yet, those "cogs" could be fuel cells, a cloaking device, hyperdrives, anime style missile launchers, better shield generators, thruster systems, or even cargo pods. Until we find out, it is hard to guess. The only sure thing is it will have a tech slot.

I would be happy if it had tech and crew upgrades, with 3 attack and a unique crew that was a cross between gunner and anti-pursuit lasers that was TIE/SF only.

On most other toys, it looks pretty definitely like a sensor array or antenna of some variety. None of them seem to be depicting it in any sort of "firing" position.

But the advanced can take a AC k turn and still get two hits where the fo will lack any ability to modify dice.

The tie fighter, interceptors and advanced can fill any roll the fo does, it over laps those ships but doesn't do better than them.

It's too expensive to swarm generics, it lacks the punch of a squint and can't match the advanced generics for survivability and the named advanced are in my opinion superior to the similar priced aces.

That's without even mentioning the largely useless TL action, even the aces that benefit from a TL leave themselves wide open to do so three naked green dice won't keep a four hull ship alive long.

And once the TAP comes along with its ability to mount AT what role will the fo fill?

Oh, you're one of /those/ players that always Focuses no matter what.

On ships that will shoot last yes because anything else is throwing a ship away a dead ship can't fire after all.

Also on 2 attack ships TL and focus give the exact same chance to get a hit so there's zero downside.

TL is for ships with three attacks not tie fo's.

It doesn't matter what attack value a ship has, focus or TL gives an additional 25% number of hits. (On each separate die, unmodified chance to hit is 1/2. Focus increases this to 3/4, but TL does as well, since the chance to *not* hit with a TL is 1/2*1/2 = 1/4, and hence the chance to hit with a TL is 3/4 also. Since focus and TL can be applied separately to each die, it doesn't matter how many attack dice are being rolled, each die's chance to hit increases from 50% to 75% with a focus or target lock.). You may be thinking about the difference between taking focus vs. evade on defense, where the number of dice being rolled does affect how many evades you get.

With all that said, TL is not at all useless on any ship. It has one enormous advantage over focus, namely it can last to later turns. As you say, not taking focus leaves one more defensively open, but this just means you take TL when the enemy won't be shooting at you. This can be achieved primarily in a couple of different ways: you move yourself into a position in which enemy ships will either bump you or go past you, or if you have a bigger threat available for them to shoot at. On such turns the F/O can take a target lock without fear of harm, and use it then or save it for a later turn, perhaps even getting the awesome focus + TL combination, which has a >80% chance of all hits on 2 or 3 dice. None of this can be done with the base Tie fighter.

Not to mention situations where you have a lot of ships that could be shot at, but only a handful that actually will be and it's better to just dump target locks than to focus and have have half of your ships end up still having focus tokens at the clean up phase.

Or situations where you have a weakened ship that's likely to get focused fired down where you can safely target lock with other ships.

These types of situations are more apparent with 8 Z's, but they still happen with lesser ship totals.

Not everyship is going to be equally viable for each player.

Edit: In summary, just because you don't like it/know how to fly it does not make a ship a dud.

Not everyship is going to be equally viable for each player.

And that is completely reasonable, not calling that into account though. What I'm saying is a ship should not be proclaimed a dud because you don't understand it, then proclaiming it on every post a ship comes up on. At that point the person moves to incompetency. Rather then learning if they could fly it better, they spend time spreading the word that the ship is crap. It's like when Interceptors came out and everyone called them duds because the YT existed (pre AT). And how wrong they were...

Edit: In summary, just because you don't like it/know how to fly it does not make a ship a dud.

But when you attack a person instead of their argument all that shows is you have no valid counter to what they are saying.

I've laid out very clearly the problems I think the fo has and more than a few people agree, as does the maths done by MJ.

I fly defenders a ship with a high skill requirement to get it to perform as well as more point efficient ships so to say I can fly that but wouldn't know how to fly an fo is honestly laughable.

If you want to be taken seriously argue the merits of the ship, throwing around ad hominem's gets you exactly no where but on ignore lists.

Ok, I attacked both you and your arguement. Glad you only saw one though. The FO gives you amazing maneuvering options. Honestly? I think it's the best dial in the game right now. That alone is worth the 3 points, why? Because your guns have more rounds on their target. Now not only do you get that amazing dial you get a bit more durability and another action for when you don't have a shot and you don't have to worry about retaliation.

There better? I didn't say that because I have told you this in other posts and other people with the same notion. Also, don't get me started on MJs "Mathwing" ing. I honestly think that was the worst thing to happen to this game. While yes math plays an important role in the game, people see that number and judge their lists of that single number. I personally believe it hurts the community as a whole. So what else would you like to talk about?

Edit: Also glad you like defenders, but they are far from hard to fly. I have given dual defenders a lot of play, had a good ratio with it too. They are slightly overcosted on the generic side but still amazing little ships. So, if the best you got is to ignore me, I don't care, please do if I cause you that much of an issue. Most of the time this forum is so backwards or so self serving I find little enjoyment here, and if I end up on someone's ignore list, it wouldn't surprise me.

From the official Star Wars Databank

FIRST ORDER SPECIAL FORCES TIE FIGHTER

The elite of the First Order starfighter pilots have access to specialized craft, such as two-seater TIE craft outfitted with enhanced weapons and sensor systems.

From the official Star Wars Databank

FIRST ORDER SPECIAL FORCES TIE FIGHTER

The elite of the First Order starfighter pilots have access to specialized craft, such as two-seater TIE craft outfitted with enhanced weapons and sensor systems.

Aha. The cogs house a system slot.

So:

Attack:2

Agility: 3

Hull: 3

Shield: 1

System, Crew, Tech ...

Back Arc or Turret Upgrade slot?

I do so wish that TFA hadn't been it's own core set. Because then the T-70 and TIE/fo could have just been Title cards with new models, and things would have been so much better.

An unrestricted cannon? Really? So that little bitty thing looks like a Mangler or HLC?

Neither do the two ion cannons on a Defender. Doesn't stop the Defender from having an unrestricted cannon slot.

It's the way that game chose to handle any and all special gun types. I don't agree with it, but it's already done.

Remember when comparing the royal guard intercepter and interceptor to the TIE/FO to the special forces in regards to models, the Royal guard interceptor was never seen on screen, whereas the special forces TIE will be. I honestly suspect that every ship in the movie will end up in the game as an expansion, with new sculpts if needed, because it is far more recognizable to a larger group of people than a red interceptor with extra parts that showed up in, what was it, one comic book a decade ago?

it is far more recognizable to a larger group of people than a red interceptor with extra parts that showed up in, what was it, one comic book a decade ago?

It's from Star Wars Galaxies.

Remember when comparing the royal guard intercepter and interceptor to the TIE/FO to the special forces in regards to models, the Royal guard interceptor was never seen on screen, whereas the special forces TIE will be. I honestly suspect that every ship in the movie will end up in the game as an expansion, with new sculpts if needed, because it is far more recognizable to a larger group of people than a red interceptor with extra parts that showed up in, what was it, one comic book a decade ago?

Uh no you couldn't be more wrong.

"Star Wars Galaxies: Rage of the Wookiees (First appearance)"

The RGI was THE goal for MOST Imperial Pilots- and I don't need to tell you that a LOT of people played SWG.

The RGI was THE goal for MOST Imperial Pilots

Only because they didn't have Defenders.

I'm assuming they would have eventually, but they shut down first.

As for the turret, it may be easier to do a mechanic that says you may rotate your ship 180 degrees to attack again (so you use the arc as is) then rotate 180 degrees after the attack. Or the rear shot requires the range template to go in the guides on the base and fires straight. I suspect that the TIE/SF will have a 3 or 4 attack and be able to divide the dice between fore and aft targets. While a turret could work to represent this, having a unique mechanic sets the ship apart.

I'd LOVE it if they did something like this - unique and elegant!

I'm not sure it will have a cannon or turret slot. Now hear me out: the armature on the left (stage right) may very well be a sensor system - while the toy looks like a gun, it is a toy and they often in the past have taken liberties with what things are. There may be a tech slot that is TIE/SF only.

As ridiculous as the "antenna gun" looks (as a gun) on the toy, it appears to be eerily accurate compared to the movie appearance...

I would be happy if it had tech and crew upgrades, with 3 attack and a unique crew that was a cross between gunner and anti-pursuit lasers that was TIE/SF only.

That would be awesome!

I think that thing looks a lot like the icon for the Tech slot upgrade slot. The vanes that stick up are much shorter on the icon but the basic shape seems to be the same.

This is the TFA fighter i'm really looking forward to i hope it's not a dud like the fo.

I think the Com Relay might change that a bit. It'll almost be like spending 3 points to buy a rechargeable shield upgrade.

Epsilon Leader seems like a great way to spend 19 points. He's a point less expensive than a Black Squad with Wingman and a Shield Upgrade but has a better dial, 2 additional PS, and a Wingman ability that affects himself and all friendlies in range in one.

The RGI was THE goal for MOST Imperial Pilots

Only because they didn't have Defenders.

I'm assuming they would have eventually, but they shut down first.

Actually they did later, and it was basically just a Heavy X-Wing with a different model.

People still generally preferred the RGI. But don't downplay its status because, "They didn't have The Defender". People still love that thing.

Remember when comparing the royal guard intercepter and interceptor to the TIE/FO to the special forces in regards to models, the Royal guard interceptor was never seen on screen, whereas the special forces TIE will be. I honestly suspect that every ship in the movie will end up in the game as an expansion, with new sculpts if needed, because it is far more recognizable to a larger group of people than a red interceptor with extra parts that showed up in, what was it, one comic book a decade ago?

Uh no you couldn't be more wrong.

"Star Wars Galaxies: Rage of the Wookiees (First appearance)"

The RGI was THE goal for MOST Imperial Pilots- and I don't need to tell you that a LOT of people played SWG.

Absolutely nothing compared to the number of people that will see these movies. Like literally less than 1%.

Remember when comparing the royal guard intercepter and interceptor to the TIE/FO to the special forces in regards to models, the Royal guard interceptor was never seen on screen, whereas the special forces TIE will be. I honestly suspect that every ship in the movie will end up in the game as an expansion, with new sculpts if needed, because it is far more recognizable to a larger group of people than a red interceptor with extra parts that showed up in, what was it, one comic book a decade ago?

Uh no you couldn't be more wrong.

"Star Wars Galaxies: Rage of the Wookiees (First appearance)"

The RGI was THE goal for MOST Imperial Pilots- and I don't need to tell you that a LOT of people played SWG.

Absolutely nothing compared to the number of people that will see these movies. Like literally less than 1%.

E-eh uh... Um...

...So?