I'm facing a situation in our Corellian Conflict campaign where my MSU fleet may be launching a base assault. My fleet is composed of 2 Dodonna MC30 Scouts, 2 TRC Corvettes, a pair of Flotillas and defensive fighter screen. Every time I simulate going up against the Base Defence Ion Cannon mission it seems I'm sure to have a corvette or flotilla crippled / destroyed before I even reveal my first dial.

Spynet tokens don't help because the Ion tokens go down after all ships are deployed, and even if I spend upgrade points on some VCX-100 squadrons they won't help against that first attack, and I'd have to come in at top speed to have a chance of getting out of range of all 3 tokens on the second round.

Am I missing something, or are MSU fleets just that bad an idea for base assault missions?

Doesn't your opponent just get to activate one of them per turn? It's still very strong, but you shouldn't be losing any ships before you get an activation.

*lurks menacingly*

well seeing that :

Setup: After placing obstacles, the second player places 3 objective tokens in the play area beyond distance 5 of both players' edges.

you set up your ships after the tokens are placed. Obstacles, Ion tokens, then ships

16 minutes ago, ouzel said:

well seeing that :

Setup: After placing obstacles, the second player places 3 objective tokens in the play area beyond distance 5 of both players' edges.

you set up your ships after the tokens are placed. Obstacles, Ion tokens, then ships

That's for the regular yellow objective. But for the Green base defense, it's the other way around. Very much a terrible setup for first player, and the tokens stay on the board when you use them

19 minutes ago, ouzel said:

well seeing that :

Setup: After placing obstacles, the second player places 3 objective tokens in the play area beyond distance 5 of both players' edges.

you set up your ships after the tokens are placed. Obstacles, Ion tokens, then ships

This is the green one not yellow.

Ninjaed

Yep, having played against ion cannon with an msu, you are correct... Unless your opponent is a half wit, he will pick ion cannon, and you will lose a corvette every two turns... Seems that this may be a balancing factor to prevent too many msu's on anyone team, as I think they will have a very though time assaulting bases... Makes sense if you think about it though, I would think base assaults would want to include large ships and bombers, rather than small ships and fighter cover...

Easy fix: planning to attack a base? Better make sure you brought at least one Strategic to protect yourself. 15 points is a small price to pay to not get hard countered every single time.

Or: Mothma and just table them fast.

Base Defense: Ion Cannon is extremely over-powered, in my opinion. Any competent opponent will pick it over the Station or the Fighter Wing, there's really no conceivable scenario where the bonus fighters or the station can hope to do anywhere near the damage the ion cannon will do, in no small part because the ion cannon cannot be destroyed and it has a much further threat range and gets to target the weakest hull zone of its target every shot.


In our experience, Base Defense: Ion cannon is terrifying. We never had a base defense ion cannon base lose, and after three rounds of the campaign we al just stopped attacking bases because no one believed they could get through an ion cannon.

3 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Base Defense: Ion Cannon is extremely over-powered, in my opinion. Any competent opponent will pick it over the Station or the Fighter Wing, there's really no conceivable scenario where the bonus fighters or the station can hope to do anywhere near the damage the ion cannon will do, in no small part because the ion cannon cannot be destroyed and it has a much further threat range and gets to target the weakest hull zone of its target every shot.


In our experience, Base Defense: Ion cannon is terrifying. We never had a base defense ion cannon base lose, and after three rounds of the campaign we al just stopped attacking bases because no one believed they could get through an ion cannon.

I can imagine 4 TIE bombers or 4 Y wings doing more damage.

1 same number of dice

2 better average

3 easily rerolled improving the damage.

Ion Canon is great and has the advantage of being useful with almost any list. But I really see the point of the fighters objective. The station for me has the problem that what you gain at the end (an additional shot) is pretty similar to ion canon. There are differences too and probably they will make the choice interesting in some circumstances but as far as I see the station would be my last choice.

You are saying they are comparable in damage. But Ion Cannon lets you setup your fleet last. The others don't.

Also Ion Cannons have unavoidable damage in turn 1, whereas the others can be avoided. Of course that can be used to influence the enemies flying, but still less powerfull than deploying last.

4 hours ago, Xeletor said:

You are saying they are comparable in damage. But Ion Cannon lets you setup your fleet last. The others don't.

Also Ion Cannons have unavoidable damage in turn 1, whereas the others can be avoided. Of course that can be used to influence the enemies flying, but still less powerfull than deploying last.

4 squadrons = +2 deployments

And cannot be moved by strategic.

And I would bet that YOU must deploy your fleet BEFORE the first player what is not an advantage at all.

What I agree is that Ion Canon is great against MSU fleets but in fact this happens with all the base defense objectives.

What are the MSU advantage?

AFAIK 1. Activations; 2. Deployments; 3. Maneuverability; 4. First shots

What those objectives give to the second player?

The station: give you an extra activation an a 360 firing arc what is great against activations and maneuverability.

The fighters: give you extra deployment and the best tool against maneuverability as the squadrons have the best movement in the game. This means more bombers making a harder work for the MSU's screen OR a better screen to decimate the enemy one and go to the bombing run.

Ion Canon: give you the first shot. A powerful one against little ships (as the station is) and targeting any hull what mitigate the maneuverability.

11 hours ago, SkyCake said:

Yep, having played against ion cannon with an msu, you are correct... Unless your opponent is a half wit, he will pick ion cannon, and you will lose a corvette every two turns... Seems that this may be a balancing factor to prevent too many msu's on anyone team, as I think they will have a very though time assaulting bases... Makes sense if you think about it though, I would think base assaults would want to include large ships and bombers, rather than small ships and fighter cover...

After playing the campaign I think you have the right of it - wasn't until we'd had it used against one of our Base assaults that we realised just how horrific it is against small ships.

For the next campaign we will need to have a list specifically built to be able to survive and win against the various Base Defense missions; forwarned is forearmed as they say!

4 hours ago, Xeletor said:

You are saying they are comparable in damage. But Ion Cannon lets you setup your fleet last. The others don't.

This is incorrect. The Base Defense Ion Cannon objetive has the second player (i.e. the defender) deploy all of his ships/squadrons first

Base Def: Extra squads can boost an already potent Rhymerball to obscene proportions.

Base Def: Extra activation is both a damage soak AND the ability to pass. Also useful.

That said, Ion Cannon IS quite scary. If you don't bring strategic and your opponent does, it can really wreck house.

But its not the silver buttet some seem to think it is (anecdotally I've yet to fail a Base assault against the ion Cannon).

4 hours ago, Xeletor said:

You are saying they are comparable in damage. But Ion Cannon lets you setup your fleet last. The others don't.

Also Ion Cannons have unavoidable damage in turn 1, whereas the others can be avoided. Of course that can be used to influence the enemies flying, but still less powerfull than deploying last.

The base defender sets up his fleet first. Which is a huge drawback for some fleets, is the major balancing factor for PIC, and is the reason I use the station instead when defending with my MC30 swarm.

Thanks for correcting me! Just in time before this comes up in our campaign! Now it feels way more balanced, I might go for another Bwing and two xwings to join yavaris.

Bigger ships suffer greatly against the Ion Cannon too. The ion cannon is roughly 15 free damage against ships of your choice during the course of the game (and always in the weakest hull). That basically means you can pretty much kill an Assault Frigate or a VSD with just the ion cannon, and you can do a significant chunk of work against an ISD or MC80, and against larger targets the crit effect to exhaust defense tokens is helpful. Also, the ion cannon shoots before things like Blast Doors trigger, so you can finish off wounded ships hoping to Blast Door or Repair in the ship phase.

Against a DeMSU style list, the Ion Cannon is looking at killing ```````about 2 ships, but potentially more if they gamble on shooting flotillas.

Against a large-ship style list, the Ion Cannon is looking at killing about 1 Medium ship or 0.5 Large ships.

Either way, that's a huge boon to the Defender. Unless you have some Strategic squadrons and enough of a squadron advantage to protect them, or a big points-favor (e.g. 500-400), I don't see how an attacker wins that game if the base defender is competent (ie, assume the Defender deploys defensively in a corner and screens off with a triangular deployment of all three tokens so that it is easy to have a shot Rounds 1-6. The Defender wins in a 6/5 tie, so there's no reason the Defender should not turtle hard in a Base Defense if they want, of course some defending lists may want to press an advantage.

8 minutes ago, Xeletor said:

Thanks for correcting me! Just in time before this comes up in our campaign! Now it feels way more balanced, I might go for another Bwing and two xwings to join yavaris.

lol, you deserve to lose your base if you don't take the Ion Cannon.

8 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Bigger ships suffer greatly against the Ion Cannon too. The ion cannon is roughly 15 free damage against ships of your choice during the course of the game (and always in the weakest hull). That basically means you can pretty much kill an Assault Frigate or a VSD with just the ion cannon, and you can do a significant chunk of work against an ISD or MC80, and against larger targets the crit effect to exhaust defense tokens is helpful. Also, the ion cannon shoots before things like Blast Doors trigger, so you can finish off wounded ships hoping to Blast Door or Repair in the ship phase.

Against a DeMSU style list, the Ion Cannon is looking at killing ```````about 2 ships, but potentially more if they gamble on shooting flotillas.

Against a large-ship style list, the Ion Cannon is looking at killing about 1 Medium ship or 0.5 Large ships.

Either way, that's a huge boon to the Defender. Unless you have some Strategic squadrons and enough of a squadron advantage to protect them, or a big points-favor (e.g. 500-400), I don't see how an attacker wins that game if the base defender is competent (ie, assume the Defender deploys defensively in a corner and screens off with a triangular deployment of all three tokens so that it is easy to have a shot Rounds 1-6. The Defender wins in a 6/5 tie, so there's no reason the Defender should not turtle hard in a Base Defense if they want, of course some defending lists may want to press an advantage.

The timing can work against the cannon. Most medium-large ships will have little trouble repairing the relatively insignificant damage the cannon inflicts after defense tokens.

So if you want those early shots, better go for the small fry.

Agreed, strategic is what you really want against the ion cannon. it shouldn't be able to 1 shot any ship. Then if you have 2 strategic squadrons you can begin to move the objective tokens out of the way. I took corellia that way. Ion cannon didn't play a huge part in the game after turn 1.

Saying they're 15 damage to a ship is pretty much you either moving directly into the tokens every turn and having no way to move them out of the way if you can't avoid them.

30 minutes ago, Lukiki said:

Saying they're 15 damage to a ship is pretty much you either moving directly into the tokens every turn and having no way to move them out of the way if you can't avoid them.

Yes, there should be no way to avoid them unless you have brought ample Strategic squadrons, which I'm not disagreeing with. Since the Defender can force the attacker to come through an Ion Field to engage at all (and the Defender wins if there is no engagement), the attacking player should always face all six rounds of Ion Cannon (unless the defender deploys his fleet or tokens like a fool). So unless an attacking fleet has Strategic, they will be eating that cannon all 6 Rounds, since each token has a Range of 1-3 there's no way to avoid them if your opponent forces you to fight in their defensive corridor.

But if the attacking fleet brings a bunch of strategic, the Defender can in those cases pick the Station or Fighter Wing. Still, I'd rather have a bunch of useless Strategic and face off against a Station/Wing than not have any strategic and eat an ion cannon the entire game. This just means, though, that in the CC you should never attack bases with a fleet that isn't sporting at least two-three Strategic Squadrons. Which is a pretty big restriction.

I don't think the defender can guarantee 6 rounds of ion attacks against a fast MSU fleet (no strategic on either side). If the defender places one token to target the attacking fleet, that leaves only two tokens to cover the rest of the play area where the attacker must maneuver to engage the defender. If he places a token in front of the slow rolling defenders, the attacker should be able to go around the remaining ion token area, maybe taking as few as two ion attacks.

Rogue fighters ranging ahead of the fleet could do enough damage to win a match if fleets refuse to engage.

@AllWingsStandyingBy I disagree with your assertion that Ion Cannon is the best base defense and you should never lose with it.

First off, you lose all deployment advantage. Going against a DeMSU or activation padded MC80 or ISD list is going to hurt since you will be out of position. Fighter Wing gives you 2 more deployments, or at least another if you have an even amount of squads and take 3. Armed Station gives you another activation and another attack, which can be equivalent to Ion Cannon. 2 reds 2 blues vs 4 blues. You can sit near the base, it can attack in any direction, and it can attack every squad at medium range.

Second, to be able to get 6 rounds of Ion Cannon attacks, you need to move the tokens. To get a 1st round attack, you need to place 1 near your opponent, which is easy. You might get a 2nd round shot with the same token if your opponent can't get out of range. But then you need to predict where your opponent will be for round 3+4 so the 2nd token can attack. Round 5+6 are fairly easy as well if you take Strategic and place the token near your side, since you can carry the token and place it where ever you need to. But this means you are working with 1, maybe 2 tokens to try and get attacks off. And if your opponent has Strategic, they can simply move the tokens out of the way.

Third, the reason base assaults are so hard is because the defender gets to see their opponents fleet and choose what objective to play. You can't create a blanket statement "there's really no conceivable scenario where the bonus fighters or the station can hope to do anywhere near the damage the ion cannon will do" because you may not have a fleet built to utilize Strategic, or you may already have 2 BCC and Norra/Toryn/Yavaris, or you have an Interdictor and want to move the station. There are so many things that go into picking a base defense that you shouldn't just shotgun for the Ion Cannon because it's "so crazy OP good, I always win and you should always take it and if you lose then you are a bad player who doesn't know how to capitalize on objective".

Maybe you have a fleet that plays defense for your team and you have Strategic and can move the tokens around. Good for you. But not everyone plays that way. I've seen Fighter Wing win twice in my campaign. 4 Y-Wings+Norra+2 BCC is a huge threat, more so than Ion Cannon because it's a dedicated bomber fleet.