How about a regeneration droid that only works on really good die roll, say only on a Crit on an Attack Die. Would be much like r5-D8 - which works 5/8ths of the time but would be a generic.

Wheher it is hull or shieldsI dont know, maybe hull again, since that at least makes it less useful, since it is a generic, and isnt as powerful as regenerating shields.

if you tie an effect to a die roll, you're just making binder-filler

R3 Astromech (1pt): When you reveal a [bank] manoeuvre, you may treat it as a [straight] manoeuvre of the same speed.

- Balanced very similar indeed to Manouvering Fins on the YV-666, albeit with 3 speeds available instead of simply 2. Note the wording preserves move colour; this makes it theoretically optimal on the T-65 (Ys end up unable to ever pull a green with this mech at all, T-70s 'white out' their speed 3 green where the T-65 never had one anyway), and means that this upgrade still means you might dial in a straight occasionally - seemed a nice touch.

R6 Astromech (2pts): When you spend a Target Lock, you may immediately aquire a Target Lock on that same ship. You cannot spend additional Target Locks this round.

- The sad thing is, this is actively weaker than FCS (Both let you a target lock for use next round, but this one required you to have a TL in the first place) - and yet, it's still better than Targeting Astromech or R5-K6!

"Can't spend again" prevents you from using it for torpboat-level modified Torpedo shots, super-TLTs (At least the Agromech version requires you to have gained a Focus that turn; TLs are persistent, remember), or Corran shenanigans. It also means that R5-K6 theoretically has a purpose, which fits in with their design methodologies neatly (It's rare to get a card that is strictly and automatically better than a predecessor at doing the same thing in the same slot).

So what do these two mechs give us? The ability to offset positional weakness in our aces with a reactive arc-changing ability (You might not get the full near-180-degree hunting nor the ability to super-zoom if required, but you pay 1pt instead of 4, and you don't spend an action to do it!), and the ability to shoot as hard round-by-round at 23pts as an FCS B-wing does at 24 - with the 1pt difference balanced by the B-wing having more flexibility in target selection in their FCS.

Arc-hunting for your aces, reliable firepower for everyone else if you want it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much what an IA X-wing was begging for.

Oh, and neither helps Biggs much, which is probably a good thing.

Weapons Systems Mech: 1 point you may ignore any [Attack Target Lock] and [Attack Focus] requirements for secondary weapons; when a secondary weapon instructs you to spend a target lock or focus to perform an attack you my ignore it

Will make torpedo and Blaster Turret Ys viable alternatives to TLT carriers and possibly make Ordnance worth considering on Xs and Es

Yup, like this one a lot. Effectively a slightly better 'Deadeye' for generics. 1pt might be a bit cheap though; maybe 2 points? Horton would love this for ordnance.

Yeah, unless the die result is "deal 3 damage to any enemy ship on the board" it probably won't get played. Die rolls are the current problem with the astromech slot. It is so frustrating to invest points in an upgrade that 'might' work.

I like a lot of the ideas on here though! Building ships to be specialists seems like the most exciting role to go for me. Spending a TL to restrict another ship's actions/repositioning sounds like an exciting design space. It rewards lower PS pilots because they activate earlier in the round and get blocked less often.

Jamming Astromech 2 points: At the start of the activation phase you may spend a TL to choose one action on the enemy ship's action bar. That ship may not perform that action during this activation phase.

The ordnance astromechs are also exciting. I would love to see Torpedo boat Ys on the table! If it made torpedoes on X wings a thing too, that would also be cool. I think 1 point to ignore the action header is fine because you still have to pay for the Blaster Turret or torpedo.

Countermeasures Astromech 4pts: you cannot be target locked.

Alternatively 3 pts, at start of combat phase spend a focus token to remove a target lock on your ship

Weapons Systems Mech: 1 point you may ignore any [Attack Target Lock] and [Attack Focus] requirements for secondary weapons; when a secondary weapon instructs you to spend a target lock or focus to perform an attack you my ignore it

Will make torpedo and Blaster Turret Ys viable alternatives to TLT carriers and possibly make Ordnance worth considering on Xs and Es

Yup, like this one a lot. Effectively a slightly better 'Deadeye' for generics. 1pt might be a bit cheap though; maybe 2 points? Horton would love this for ordnance.

Weill one point seems the standard for upgrades that require you to buy other upgrades to do anything and if you make it pricier it becomes useless on everything but Y wings

Weapons Systems Mech: 1 point you may ignore any [Attack Target Lock] and [Attack Focus] requirements for secondary weapons; when a secondary weapon instructs you to spend a target lock or focus to perform an attack you my ignore it

Will make torpedo and Blaster Turret Ys viable alternatives to TLT carriers and possibly make Ordnance worth considering on Xs and Es

Yup, like this one a lot. Effectively a slightly better 'Deadeye' for generics. 1pt might be a bit cheap though; maybe 2 points? Horton would love this for ordnance.

Weill one point seems the standard for upgrades that require you to buy other upgrades to do anything and if you make it pricier it becomes useless on everything but Y wings

Fair point. I guess you're still buying the Ordnance etc. I would really like to see this Astromech come into the game. I already love running Y-Wings with torps, and anything to make them even more effective would be welcome!

For cheap one point Astros, I'd look to misthunter crew for inspiration (offense gain at significant drawback). With generic ships, you should have enough to be able to use risky Astros with and still come out okay. Meanwhile already viable aces won't touch them for fear of exploding

Or a defensive one. But yes, I think that's a sensible way to go. Zuckuss is amazing but would only be worth it on a ship if either (a) you've built it to not need actions or (b) you've accepted you're never getting actions again.

It's kind of like Rage - in a TIE swarm with Youngster, you don't use Rage on everyone at every opportunity - you use it on one or two guys who've got decent shots, then break off with them and come back when the stress has gone away (or, again, accept that those two guys get no more actions).

Something similar that messes up an X-wing for a turn but gives a significant boost might be nice. Especially, if - as noted - it's "start of combat" for offensive/general boosts, or "when defending" for defensive ones. Glitterstim, and the Overclocked R4 are other very nice cards along similar lines.

Well, Y wings don't need a performance boost, and E wings are ugly and no one cares about them, so the question is really just what can we do to boost the X wing with the astromech slot?

It's a toughie. The real problem with the X Wing is that it's not a turret and it's not an arc-dodging ace. And apart from triple toilet seats, if you're not a turret or an arc-dodging ace then what's the point?

So my solution would be to give the X Wing the toilet seat treatment. Give it one hell of an alpha strike and let it's sub-par movement and average damage carry it through the rest of the match.

How to do that?

More reliable damage. Either an astro that adds a crit when firing torps, or allows eyeballs to be flipped to hits when firing ordnance, or changing blanks to hits, or reducing enemy agility, or something else entirely. And probably discounting the torps as well would be good.

Should the X wing be a torpedo firing missile boat? Probably not. Torps seemed to be reserved for heavier opponents, and firing them seemed to be the jobs of thee Y wings and B wings. But X Wing the game has kind of backed itself into a corner and there's really nowhere else for the X wing ship to go.

How about:

Countermeasure Astromech

1 Point

If an enemy (non-huge) ship attacks you it can not perform another attack this turn.

Basically a counter to all the double-tap/gunner shenanigans going around these days.

Tracking Astromech - 2 points

Enemy ships within your firing arc at range 1-2 cannot perform Boost or Barrel Roll actions.

You wanna joust? LET'S JOUST.

Or just the inverse (and slightly insane):

Whenever a ship inside your firing arc at range 2-3 performs a boost or barrel roll, you may perform a free boost or barrel roll.

Limited to further ranges, as this would still allow well flown arc dodgers to get in close.

Tracking Astromech - 2 points

Enemy ships within your firing arc at range 1-2 cannot perform Boost or Barrel Roll actions.

You wanna joust? LET'S JOUST.

Or just the inverse (and slightly insane):

Whenever a ship inside your firing arc at range 2-3 performs a boost or barrel roll, you may perform a free boost or barrel roll.

Limited to further ranges, as this would still allow well flown arc dodgers to get in close.

It breaks theme and can be used to let you arc dodge with a Y Wing .

So, revisiting one of the earlier ideas I had, I've decided this might work a bit better:

Guidance Astromech

When attacking with your primary weapon, if you have a target lock on the defender, you may change 1 die result into a [hit]. If you do, you cannot spend target locks this round.

1 point.

Slightly changed the wording compared to the original idea. You no longer would have to spend the target lock, so this makes it a bit more similar to Advanced Targeting Computer than to Weapons Guidance, This way, you only have to get a target lock once, instead of having to target lock every turn to use the ability again. It should bring their jousting value up a bit, especially when coupled with Integrated Astromech, but not so much so that they'd outshine a B-Wing. It'd simply give you a somewhat better jouster than the B-Wing, but with less options for upgrades and post-maneuver movement options. Which, to me, seems like a pretty fair trade. So, if you want to go expensive, the B-Wing can easily outshine an X-wing, but at that point, it's cost is taking up 1/3-1/2 your squad. And if you want to go cheap, the X-Wing would be slightly better at 22 points, assuming you don't mind losing out on the barrel roll and 2k.

Edit: I made this with the X-Wing in mind, not thinking how it might affect the E-Wing. The Y-Wing, of course, would not want it, since the Y-Wing never wants to use its primary. An E-Wing might take it as a cheap way to bump up their offense rather than going with FCS. Corran would still much rather have FCS and R2-D2. When paired with FCS on a generic E-Wing, this puts them at the same number of points as a generic Defender, but with slightly better action economy and jousting ability (Not sure which dial I prefer between the E-Wing and Defender. The white k is awesome, but predictable, while E-Wings just have a solid, all-purpose dial). Think it could possibly make the generic E-Wing competitive? I dunno, too tired to put much more thought into it. But on the X-Wing, at the very least, I feel this could be a solid 1 point astromech for them.

This :

https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/10/bd/10bd9ac4-ae37-4e28-83cb-38b6cf20e508/swx52-systems-officer.png

As an astromech for Y-wing.

Mr. Coffee Astromech... 1 point

If you have an ion token at the beginning of the planning phase you may exchange it for a stress token and an evade token. This cannot be triggered on consecutive rounds (it takes a while to make coffee)

If you take a focus action and have an enemy inside your firing arc, assign an evade token as well.

How about: Action: Assign your ship a focus token. You may also acquire a target lock on a ship in your firing arc.

Rebels have 15 Astromechs for 4 ships, Scum get 6 Illicit for 9 ships, i say no more Astro's for you Rebel players until the gap in Illicits is addressed.

Rebels have 15 Astromechs for 4 ships, Scum get 6 Illicit for 9 ships, i say no more Astro's for you Rebel players until the gap in Illicits is addressed.

I certainly agree that Scum needs new Illicit slots. They're seriously lacking. However, it's worth noting that almost all of the Illicit upgrades see use, and have powerful abilities that can easily sway the game. Meanwhile, Astromechs for Rebel players tend to be quite overlooked unless they're R2-D2 or Targeting Astromech. Sure, there may be 15 of them, however, all but 2-3 of them never see use. Therefore, I'd say it's definitely important to design some new Astromechs that actually will see play.

Oh, and for the record, I'm an Imp. player. Never once played a Rebel squad. I simply started this thread because I've heard a lot about what the X-Wing needs, and was curious if people had any actual ideas on what to give it, or just kept spouting the same things that they had heard other people saying.

Meanwhile, Astromechs for Rebel players tend to be quite overlooked unless they're R2-D2 or Targeting Astromech.

I don't think that's quite accurate. You see a lot of R3-A2, particularly as a Stresshog build; R5-P9 has a natural home on Poe; and R4-D6 is starting to show up on Biggs when running alongside a Ghost. And of course, don't forget the good old generic R2 unit. Having all of your speed 1 and 2 moves as green can be incredibly useful, particularly on Y-Wings with all the stress being handed out at the moment.

This may be crazy, but how about an Astromech that works like PTL?

XX Astromech

Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.

3 points

Would this make the EPT-less X-wing pilots and sad X-Wing players happy?

Not exactly what OP was proposing but:

Networked Astromech 1 point: discard this card to use the ability of any other Astromech within range 1-3

I like this, but how about 2 points, shorten the range to 1-2, and don't discard? That way it's in effect the whole game, pinballing back and forth between R2-D2 and R7-T1 (just to pick two).

I think it would be too good at 2 points. It would give you a second R2D2 for the whole game.

Maybe restrict it to mimicking other non-unique astromechs instead of any for the permanent version. The discard version is fine without the extra restriction.

This may be crazy, but how about an Astromech that works like PTL?

XX Astromech

Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.

3 points

Would this make the EPT-less X-wing pilots and sad X-Wing players happy?

Not a bad idea but on generic X-Wings and Y-Wings, the lack of action choices combined with few green maneuvers would mean it would not be that helpful at 3 points. The E-Wing, however, might find this very helpful. With a slightly better dial, barrel roll and evade options and Fire Control System, the generics could get really good action economy.

Where this would be great is on EPT X's that could take this and use a different EPT - Wedge with Wired and Engine upgrade would synergize nicely for example.

Not sure if something like this has been mentioned already.

Cost ?? 1-2 points (leaning towards one point)

Laser Guidance Astromech

When attacking a ship, if you are in that ship's firing arc, you may convert one dice into a hit.

Something to give jousters a slightly better edge in the initial engagement. It encourages head on fights.