Been a long time since I've seen either of those deployed regularly to ships - sort of have the feeling that, while their price seemed reasonable when the number of options for that slot were few...now there is an additional "opportunity cost" to taking them (vs the diverse 'modification' options available, now) which is not factored into their pricing.

But the meta has also changed a lot, too, and I sort of wonder how they evaluate at the moment from a mathwing perspective.

Gut feeling is that - given current meta and current 'opportunity cost' for taking them - they are both overcosted by about 1 point.

Thoughts?

Completely depends on the ship. Way over cost for a ship with a bunch of shields and hull and evade 0. For a ship with no shields, only 3-4 hold and 3 evade, maybe not so bad. Though given the choice between more health or Autothrusters, people will choose the extra evade. Autothrusters can trigger multiple times, the extra health works just the once. So even a one point reduction wouldn't make it worthwhile compared to something like autothrusters and on a ship that couldn't make good use of autothrusters, those ships have other mods which would do more. Fewer points make hull/shield upgrades more usable for sure, but the fact there are simply more interesting mods, maybe not better, but more interesting makes them forgotten. One more hull may make a huge difference, coughScykcough, but it is rather boring.

One thing to note, that 4pt cost on the shield makes it unusable with some of the other mods, probably intentionally. So I don't think the shield upgrade is weak, just uninteresting.

Well, it gets complicated due to the fact that many mods were created as 'fixes' and so those particular mods are intentionally under-costed (i.e. guidance chips, LRS, integrated astro and autothrusters). So you can't really compare hull + shield values to those.

However, its probably true that hull and shield upgrades (and perhaps stealth and targeting computer) were costed as they are to avoid making them auto-include on certain ships.

Does that mean they are over-costed now? Personally, I don't think so, but even if they were, there is no benefit to reducing their value. Doing so does not meaningfully help lower tier ships become stronger relatively speaking.

the price was never reasonable

they were intentionally, drastically overpriced so that they would not become auto-include upgrades

Hull Upgrade actually does have a use now: slap it on Tel Trevura so you can double-dip on the extra hull point.

With the soon rise of BMST I'd take hull upgrade over shield every day.

With the soon rise of BMST I'd take hull upgrade over shield every day.

I wouldn't go that far, but I've always liked Hull on my Corran Horn for protection against Proton Bombs, Advanced Homing Missiles, Wampa, BMST, and Direct Hits in general.

For me it feels like there are so many ships that if you are thinking of dropping 3-4 points to add a hitpoint it's probably best to start looking at a ship with 1 or more hitpoint more.

Hull Upgrade and Shield Upgrade are case in point that upgrades don't actually have absolute costs.

The value of a Hull Upgrade depends entirely on the ship it's on. Carnor Jax is (with PTL) is 29 points. He's only got 3 hull but it's behind three agility: each of his hit points is, from a certain point of view worth about 9.7 points to the opponent. Give him a Hull Upgrade and he becomes 32 points. Split across his four hit points that's 8.5 points in each hit.

A Blue Squadron B-wing at 22 points is about 2.75 points per hit point: its hit points simply aren't valuable as it has so many. Giving it a Hull Upgrade makes it 2.78 points per hit: it actually makes each hit more valuable to the opponent.

Thinking of it another way, Hull Upgrade increases Carnor's health by 33%. It increases a B-wing's health by 12.5%.

Hull Upgrade is only really worth it to high agility ships with low health: you want the maximum percentage increase to durability with the minimum increase to cost.

Hull Upgrade and Shield Upgrade are case in point that upgrades don't actually have absolute costs.

The value of a Hull Upgrade depends entirely on the ship it's on. Carnor Jax is (with PTL) is 29 points. He's only got 3 hull but it's behind three agility: each of his hit points is, from a certain point of view worth about 9.7 points to the opponent. Give him a Hull Upgrade and he becomes 32 points. Split across his four hit points that's 8.5 points in each hit.

A Blue Squadron B-wing at 22 points is about 2.75 points per hit point: its hit points simply aren't valuable as it has so many. Giving it a Hull Upgrade makes it 2.78 points per hit: it actually makes each hit more valuable to the opponent.

Thinking of it another way, Hull Upgrade increases Carnor's health by 33%. It increases a B-wing's health by 12.5%.

Hull Upgrade is only really worth it to high agility ships with low health: you want the maximum percentage increase to durability with the minimum increase to cost.

I like Hull Upgrade on the Fang over Autothrusters. If you're playing the Fang you are trying to be close all the time.

x7s with Hull Upgrade is just mean...

For me it feels like there are so many ships that if you are thinking of dropping 3-4 points to add a hitpoint it's probably best to start looking at a ship with 1 or more hitpoint more.

This seem like it would work as a general rule. Most of the ships seen to play differently enough that you couldn't just upgrade to a ship with an additional hit point and have that be a preferable, or comparable, option.

PTL Baffles QuickDraw gets one extra 3-4 (or even up to 2x 3) dice attack in the activation phase for 4 points spent on a shield upgrade. For the chance to kill a tokenless Soontir or Vader or one-shot a TIE or get an extra whack at dealing the killing blow to anybody else, suddenly 4 points seems a good value.

It's more about finding the right build where an extra health makes a real difference, than just slapping hull/shield upgrades on things when you have points to blow. Then you would probably be better off finding a home for a Procket or two.

I've seen Quickdraw with SU a bit now to make use of his ability.

That said, it doesn't always work. I caught a stressed Quickdraw with Wedge at R1 (w/ TL + Focus) the other night.... Blew all 4 shields away in a single volley; and he couldn't respond because I'd caught him out of both arcs. Bwahahaha!

I've seen Hull Upgrades keep TIE/Ds on the field pretty handily.

x7s with Hull Upgrade is just mean...

I actually prefer SD on x7's the token stack helps negate its tendency to blank out.

SU can even work on Miranda, but..they still 4 points. Maybe any fat Miranda build

How can you put a price on life?

Seriously though, they are priced right. More cheap health mods for agile ships are not needed.

Hull ain't so bad on the M3-A anymore.

Since I don't own Palp and don't really have a desire to acquire him in the near future, I know that whenever I run TIE Interceptors, mostly Carnor Jax, I equip him with Hull or Shield if I have the extra 1 pt. Without Palp, I don't want to run anything with Stealth Device since I see him as the fall safe for it.

Tel truva likes hull upgrade.

I guess they made those upgrades, as with the engine upgrade, before they really figured out the 'large ship only', 'small ship only' restriction clause.

Therefore the strategy was to price it conservatively and figure that either people would just use it in a non-optimal way or that it would be useful on those high-agi, tokened up ships (think they had the interceptor in mind with hull upgrade).

The main problem now is that autothrusters is such an auto-include on those high agi ships, or stealth device in palp-type builds, that it's almost always a sub-par choice.

When the comparison is made against Auto-thrusters then the hull/shield upgrade don't look good at all assuming AT gets used once. Perhaps you should look at that as AT being under priced instead of thinking that HU is overpriced.

Between SU and HU I believe the concensus has been that HU is generally the better value unless you have some specific ability where the shield token is more useful than being able to handle an extra damage card with fewer points spent on the upgrade.

I use Shield Upgrade often on the Firespray (Imperial).

Last weekend I won a 3-round tournament (16 people) and came top 4 in a 5-round tournament (48 people) with two hull upgrades equipped. Carnor Jax was carrying one and Omega Leader the other, and they were accompanied by a Juke/X7 Rexler Brath.

The number of games where my opponent has to spend that extra 1-2 shots to bring down Jax/OL was amazing and often allowed for very clear victories. It's true that in the game I lost a focused Jax got one-shot thanks to a direct hit, but fortunately that sort of thing doesn't happen too often.

So in my opinion, hull upgrades are great on the right ship, you just need to figure out when it's worth while. Omega Leader doesn't like being shot at by lots of ships, so I think that the hull beats the stealth device in his case. Carnor wants to get in close and *will* get hit, so he's another good candidate IMO.