I think the OP worried about turrets attacking after being ioned and Aces slipping away. A lot of the suggestions on here to fix the turret would ruin low PS pilots outright and I could see it being very frustrating. So? Attack the ace. Make it, when ioned "Ignore your EPT and pilot talent for this turn"

Though I do admit, I'd enjoy a more thematic approach of Ions doing full damage against shields and only 1 net damage to hull.

I think the biggest issue is the range of the turret, especially with the ywing title. I dont use the ion cannon but was impressed with it on the scyk. It was a 19 point investment that effectively corraled my 35 point punisher.

I always thought ion cannons and turrets should work something like this:

They do full damage to shields with no ion token given.

They do no damage to hull but deals an ion token.

So in essense it does damage until it reaches hull at which point it dishes out the ion token.

Any way thats just my opinion.

Ion plasma cannon

Damage suffered from this attack deals ion tokens instead of damage cards.

Attack 3. Range 1-3.

That would deal full damage to shields, and no damage to hull. But potentially more ion tokens than one once the shields are deleted.

There's a lot of neat ideas in this thread but I think the underlying problem remains: ions have become less popular because so many people field things with turrets, high HP/low AGI, or both. The Y-Wing, Decimator, and Falcon all fit that bill. Ionising those ships isn't a major detriment because they can either EU Boost after the fact, or still have a shot anyway. And on top of that, a 2ATK ship is still going to be more useful than an Ion attack because it offers a faster rate of damage to the Ion attacks.

Even doing full dice damage to shields only works for, what, three to five tokens? Not a pursuasive investment to me.

At the moment it seems to me the biggest limiting factor to Ion control is the pervasiveness of Large ships, and how that requires you to bring two Ion attacks to be able to expect actual board control on your own terms. I would be curious what the outcome would be if Large ships were adjusted to only require one Ion token for effect, if that might balance things out a bit.

Well I was hoping no one would start talking about Ion fun cos alot of the lists I thinking of have all sorts of Ion fun

Your TLT is useless if I'm behind you at range 1 walking you off the board

I'm liking the idea of removing 1 Ion token when you move, allowing you to stack Ion in the same way you can with stress. I'd even consider keeping it as 1 token removed per turn even from large ships, although I'd also allow them to remove a token even if they were't suffering ionisation effects.

Suggestion: ion effect remains the same with the following addition... ion attacks temporarily disable sheilds on the affected ship until the ion token is cleared. For large based ships two ion tokens are required for this secondary effect of disabling sheilds until the next round.

Should open up nice opportunities for sneaking crits through to heavily sheilded targets and bringing those same ships down in one turn with well planned concentrated fire.

Too much? Or just enough to make ion attacks interesting and relivant again?

Seems like the quest here is just to make Ion weapons more attractive options in a meta with new options that have eclipsed them.

So what about this, for maybe an elegant solution:

Small base ships receiving two ion tokens must move a white 2 straight.

You've just bumped up the control effects, and increased the attractiveness of fielding multiple ion weapons.

Spamming a list with 3 or 4 ion weapons would be brutal if the effects continued linearly...say, four successful ion hits sent a small base ship careening 4 straight. Probably overpowered, so maybe it's capped at 2.

But why would extra ionization cause my ship to move faster? The 1 straight is because you're drifting. Now I'm drifting faster?

Suggestion: ion effect remains the same with the following addition... ion attacks temporarily disable sheilds on the affected ship until the ion token is cleared. For large based ships two ion tokens are required for this secondary effect of disabling sheilds until the next round.

Should open up nice opportunities for sneaking crits through to heavily sheilded targets and bringing those same ships down in one turn with well planned concentrated fire.

Too much? Or just enough to make ion attacks interesting and relivant again?

It's a bit too much, and it'll involve a lot of bookkeeping, how many shields did that ship have before it got ionized?

But why would extra ionization cause my ship to move faster? The 1 straight is because you're drifting. Now I'm drifting faster?

I considered that for a flicker, but made my suggestion anyway.

Physics wise, what ion should really do is make you drift straight forward the same speed as your last maneuver, only in a straight line. So gameplay already breaks that literal law. Instead it simulates drag in road racing, as in your engine sputters out and so you suddenly decelerate.

My thought in my suggestion is that ion drift within the game more realistically simulates the time it takes a ship's systems to reboot, not the speed of drift. Thus if you get double ioned, your systems are more pervasively affected, thus it takes longer to spin engines back up. But to effect that in gameplay you'd have to suffer ion effect for two activation rounds. That seems excessive. So increasing the distance covered as a result of double ion in a single activation more judiciously penalizes a ship within the game. iMHO.

Maybe a simple rules change, that keeps the idea of ionization intact, is to simply say that an ioned ship performs an action as normal EXCEPT for boost or barrel roll. No actions that require the use of engine thrust. This slightly increases the attractiveness of ion weapons against certain ship types and builds, but does not provide a blanket buff to ions. Thus you still have to balance your squad building choices.

Maybe a simple rules change, that keeps the idea of ionization intact, is to simply say that an ioned ship performs an action as normal EXCEPT for boost or barrel roll. No actions that require the use of engine thrust. This slightly increases the attractiveness of ion weapons against certain ship types and builds, but does not provide a blanket buff to ions. Thus you still have to balance your squad building choices.

How about just allowing it the Focus action or actions on damage cards? No target locking (requires computers) or things like that, no expose, no increasing the agility through r2-f2.

Anyone else feel like ion control has been pushed out of the meta a fair bit?

TLT pretty much supplanted ICT, and due to its effect on B-Wings we're seeing less of those, with or without Ion Cannon. We've never really seen Defenders with it either, the shuttle generally doesn't bother (and with Palpatine almost ANY other shuttle upgrade is out due to expense).

Now, this is essentially all backtracking from a card idea that popped into my head as an elegant way to add damage into ion:

"Your attack results can only be cancelled by the defender's <evade> results. You cannot equip this card if your primary weapon value is "2" or lower."

Modification, not sure on points.

I /think/ it has to be cut away from K-Wing/Y-Wing/HWK due to TLT (and BTL in the Y's case), but otherwise it could work on the B-Wing, Defender, Lambda, etc

Maybe you can shed some light because as far as I know an ion cannon turret can only be taken by a hwk (primary of 1), ywing (primary of 2) and the kwing (primary of 2). So which ships will actually be able to take the new ion cannon turret your proposing?

Maybe I read it wrong too I'm not sure but I'm kinda confused here. Are you talking about an ICT or just a straight up IC or both? It also sounds like your saying that ICT needs to just be eliminated from those ships all together which if that's the case, why the need for the primary weapon value requirement when those are the only ships that can take it? Might as well just ban the card at that point. Which means only the IC remains with the proposed rule update.

There's got to be a better version of that clause, the point was to prevent the card from being used with TLT, because it would be utterly broken with TLT.

The first time you attack this round, your attack results can only be cancelled by <evade> results.

You cannot perform another attack this round.

BTL-A4: covered

TLT: covered

IG88-B: covered

Corran: covered

Gunner/Luke: covered

Dengar: covered

Interacts favourably with: Etahn, Greedo, everything else.

I wouldn't write off B-wings because of TLT. 4 B's are still pretty nasty to a ship with only 1 agility dial.

Ion cannon's main problem is damage, especially with the large ship meta. Now that large ships have been set back a bit, Ion cannon may be able to make a small comeback. Having 1 or 2 ion cannons in a list would actually be a decent counter to the TLT swarm, if you could limit the TLT's from moving, you can keep them in range 1.

Although in the defenders case, It really need's a title that reduces it's cost by about 5 points.

A mix of 2 TLT and 2 Ion could even serve to keep people out of the TLT range 1.

The first time you attack this round, your attack results can only be cancelled by <evade> results.

You cannot perform another attack this round.

BTL-A4: covered

TLT: covered

IG88-B: covered

Corran: covered

Gunner/Luke: covered

Dengar: covered

Interacts favourably with: Etahn, Greedo, everything else.

Technically pointless on Corran/Gunner/Luke/Dengar because in 99% of all cases, attacks /will/ only be cancelled by <evade> results, but that wording's perfect!

The first time you attack this round, your attack results can only be cancelled by <evade> results.

You cannot perform another attack this round.

BTL-A4: covered

TLT: covered

IG88-B: covered

Corran: covered

Gunner/Luke: covered

Dengar: covered

Interacts favourably with: Etahn, Greedo, everything else.

Technically pointless on Corran/Gunner/Luke/Dengar because in 99% of all cases, attacks /will/ only be cancelled by <evade> results, but that wording's perfect!

I thought Evade tokens count as evade results too. So what kind of cancelling are you ignoring?

In general, I'm quite sbocked at tgis thread. I never thought ion effects were weak. They don't belong in every list, but they can be quite powerful. For example, if you can ionize an ace and set up a block, that will ruin his day. Sure, they sometimes get away. Also, turrets and large bases don't care as much about ion tokens. But to me, that's part of the game. Not every effect or every strategy will be good against every oher list. There are counters out there And I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

IF ions get bumped up (and that's a big 'if' in my book) the amendment I like the best is one of Dagonet's earlier ones: that you can only focus or take actions on damage cards. But even that one isn't perfect. It's not general enough and I feel like it does make sense thematically that you can boost away after recovering your systems during the 1-speed movement.

ICT/IC cancel all hits after rolling dice. What this does is keep those results (or at least the ones that got past defense dice).

Why not just move white one and perform no actions? It would remove the boost and barrel roll "moves" from an ioned ship while not rendering the target utterly useless.