10 minutes ago, Talamare said:

Blaster Turret is perfect! Push them all towards it.

Autoblaster (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, You may perform your primary weapon attack after this attack, Attack 1, Range 1
Dorsal Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Roll +1 attack if target is not in your primary firing arc, Attack 2, Range 1-2
Blaster Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Attack 3, Range 1-2
Ion Cannon Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, Attack 3 Range 1-2
TLT Attack (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack twice, blah blah, Attack 3, Range 2-3

Using Turrets generally don't require that much skill. Give using Turrets a true penalty. Make them ALL require spending a Focus to use.

Blaster Turret starts looking a lot better with the rest brought down.

Also, I decided to try something with Autoblaster Turret. Give meaning to the word 'Auto' by allowing you to use your Primary Weapon after it, but nerfing it down to only 1 Attack Die. I think another more expensive/powerful auto turret could then be released without the ignoring defense dice effect.

Or Autoblaster Turret: any time a ship ends its manoeuvre in your Range 1 (or you end yours in theirs?), 1 die attack it (but no more than once on the same ship in a round).

1 hour ago, Talamare said:

Blaster Turret is perfect! Push them all towards it.

Autoblaster (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, You may perform your primary weapon attack after this attack, Attack 1, Range 1
Dorsal Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Roll +1 attack if target is not in your primary firing arc, Attack 2, Range 1-2
Blaster Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Attack 3, Range 1-2
Ion Cannon Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, Attack 3 Range 1-2
TLT Attack (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack twice, blah blah, Attack 3, Range 2-3

Using Turrets generally don't require that much skill. Give using Turrets a true penalty. Make them ALL require spending a Focus to use.

Blaster Turret starts looking a lot better with the rest brought down.

Also, I decided to try something with Autoblaster Turret. Give meaning to the word 'Auto' by allowing you to use your Primary Weapon after it, but nerfing it down to only 1 Attack Die. I think another more expensive/powerful auto turret could then be released without the ignoring defense dice effect.

What makes you think this will simply not make people abandon secondary turrets altogether ?

13 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

I can agree. Card combos are toxic. We want to fly star fighters, not play Magic the Gathering in space. (Though I do hear Magic is pretty fun for those who like it).

I also lament that the swarm is no longer considered the top of the meta. I do think that is telling that the game was going in a power creep direction.

By the way what happened to the Crack Swarm. Sort of a middle ground between card-laden ships and a true puristic Howlrunner Swarm.

They worked quite well for some time even in a Meta dominated by PalpAces with Soontir/Vader. I don't recall when exactly we stopped seeing these builds but today they seem to be extinct.

2 hours ago, Talamare said:

Blaster Turret is perfect! Push them all towards it.

Autoblaster (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, You may perform your primary weapon attack after this attack, Attack 1, Range 1
Dorsal Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Roll +1 attack if target is not in your primary firing arc, Attack 2, Range 1-2
Blaster Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Attack 3, Range 1-2
Ion Cannon Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, Attack 3 Range 1-2
TLT Attack (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack twice, blah blah, Attack 3, Range 2-3

Using Turrets generally don't require that much skill. Give using Turrets a true penalty. Make them ALL require spending a Focus to use.

Blaster Turret starts looking a lot better with the rest brought down.

Also, I decided to try something with Autoblaster Turret. Give meaning to the word 'Auto' by allowing you to use your Primary Weapon after it, but nerfing it down to only 1 Attack Die. I think another more expensive/powerful auto turret could then be released without the ignoring defense dice effect.

I am glad that forum posters are not the designers of this game. How often do you see blaster turret? Never, due to the spend focus token requirement. Then are in the older ships already point costs for just having the turret slot in the base cost, plus the cost for the turret, plus short range of most of the turrets.

With your turrets they would - apart from being too expensive - unable to push any damage through on anything other then the most vulnerable 0-1 agi ships.

Oh, and you kill the Hwk.

Btw judging from your posts so far you seem to lean towards Empire, might that play in here?

2 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

I am glad that forum posters are not the designers of this game. How often do you see blaster turret? Never, due to the spend focus token requirement. Then are in the older ships already point costs for just having the turret slot in the base cost, plus the cost for the turret, plus short range of most of the turrets.

With your turrets they would - apart from being too expensive - unable to push any damage through on anything other then the most vulnerable 0-1 agi ships.

Oh, and you kill the Hwk.

Btw judging from your posts so far you seem to lean towards Empire, might that play in here?

There are more ways than ever to stack Focus these days. In the past it was little difficult. Which made the Blaster turret essentially garbage. These days its not difficult for a ship to get 2 or 3 Focus Tokens. If the TLT didn't exist, people would probably be using the Blaster Turret instead. HWK especially is the least affected by the Focus Token requirement. Since it was designed with the Blaster Turret in mind. It has a Crew Slot and Moldy Crow title. Hell, it's own expansion has the Recon Specialist card. So no, the HWK wouldn't be killed by it. If anything, the YWing would be the one that was hit harder.

Blaster Turret would have been a viable choice today if new options weren't released that were strictly better.

30 minutes ago, ForceM said:

By the way what happened to the Crack Swarm. Sort of a middle ground between card-laden ships and a true puristic Howlrunner Swarm.

They worked quite well for some time even in a Meta dominated by PalpAces with Soontir/Vader. I don't recall when exactly we stopped seeing these builds but today they seem to be extinct.

They're boring. Crackshot is boring, and then running naked PS4 ties after is boring.

Also, dying in one hit to paratanni and fenn rau isn't that fun.

They were outjousted by defenders

They suffer from not that strong of an alpha, being good vs aces, not mass hp. still only 2 attack dice.

And really honestly, I think people think theyre boring. Who in your metas wants to play them?

3 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

They're boring. Crackshot is boring, and then running naked PS4 ties after is boring.

Also, dying in one hit to paratanni and fenn rau isn't that fun.

They were outjousted by defenders

They suffer from not that strong of an alpha, being good vs aces, not mass hp. still only 2 attack dice.

And really honestly, I think people think theyre boring. Who in your metas wants to play them?

I, well, I just don't get this Blail. Swarms are anything but boring. Mentally exhausting? yes. Boring? No. A TIE swarm can be great fun, but never boring. I wish I were a good enough pilot and mentally capable to fly such boring ships with precision to the point it was boring.

6 hours ago, Talamare said:

Blaster Turret is perfect! Push them all towards it.

Autoblaster (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, You may perform your primary weapon attack after this attack, Attack 1, Range 1
Dorsal Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Roll +1 attack if target is not in your primary firing arc, Attack 2, Range 1-2
Blaster Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, Attack 3, Range 1-2
Ion Cannon Turret (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack, blah blah, Attack 3 Range 1-2
TLT Attack (Focus), Spend 1 Focus Token to perform this attack twice, blah blah, Attack 3, Range 2-3

Using Turrets generally don't require that much skill. Give using Turrets a true penalty. Make them ALL require spending a Focus to use.

Blaster Turret starts looking a lot better with the rest brought down.

Also, I decided to try something with Autoblaster Turret. Give meaning to the word 'Auto' by allowing you to use your Primary Weapon after it, but nerfing it down to only 1 Attack Die. I think another more expensive/powerful auto turret could then be released without the ignoring defense dice effect.

3 hours ago, Managarmr said:

I am glad that forum posters are not the designers of this game. How often do you see blaster turret? Never, due to the spend focus token requirement. Then are in the older ships already point costs for just having the turret slot in the base cost, plus the cost for the turret, plus short range of most of the turrets.

With your turrets they would - apart from being too expensive - unable to push any damage through on anything other then the most vulnerable 0-1 agi ships.

Oh, and you kill the Hwk.

Btw judging from your posts so far you seem to lean towards Empire, might that play in here?

I think Turrets can lead to a crappy playing experience too, but I don't know about all that focus or cost changes....I'd just make them all Unique.

Swarms were very weak to Dengaroo and Defenders. Not sure how much we will see them in the near future but they are certainly stronger after the nerf.

Here's another example of a non-decision that I think should be looked at: Latts Razi. I'm not going to discuss whether Latts is too strong. But I will point out that she is pretty Zuckuss-like in another important way. Deciding when/if to use Latts was intended to be a interesting choice. Do you avoid damage or leave a ship "crippled" with a stress token. In both cases, the designers over-estimated the penalty introduced by stress.

In practice, it is basically always worth using Latts. Unless a ship is double-stressed or in desperate need of a K-turn (and sometimes even then) you will use Latts on every single attack. The effect is both incredibly strong and incredibly boring. It is the defensive equivalent of Zuckuss; powerful, brain-dead, and frustrating to play against.

Two possible solutions depending on whether you think Latts is too good for two points:

1. If Latts is too strong, simply add the words "Once per round," to the top of her card.
2. If you just want to introduce choice without severely limiting her power, change the timing. Something like "When you are declared the target of an attack, you may remove one stress token from the attacker. If you do, you must add one evade result to your roll." You have to decide before dice are rolled and might remove a stress when you didn't need to. Also might allow the attacker to use Zuckuss or Expertise. Choices.
3. Do both!

Blaster Turret is fine if you allow them to use the Focus for the attack. They should make that change.

1 hour ago, clanofwolves said:

I think Turrets can lead to a crappy playing experience too, but I don't know about all that focus or cost changes....I'd just make them all Unique.

Making PWTs even more powerful.

1 minute ago, heychadwick said:

Blaster Turret is fine if you allow them to use the Focus for the attack. They should make that change.

This.

Making Blaster turret just attack: focus without the spend requirement probably be fine - you have to take the action each round, but not spend the token unless you want to, and it combos better into moldy crow and offers a combo with Rey as well.

Making TLT attack: focus would be a neat solution to K wings being horrible by making them unable to action bomb AND TLT in the same round.

2 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Making Blaster turret just attack: focus without the spend requirement probably be fine - you have to take the action each round, but not spend the token unless you want to, and it combos better into moldy crow and offers a combo with Rey as well.

I could even see them saying you had to spend the Focus, but could use it in the attack. That's at least an improvement and still keeps the cost of it.

2 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Making Blaster turret just attack: focus without the spend requirement probably be fine - you have to take the action each round, but not spend the token unless you want to, and it combos better into moldy crow and offers a combo with Rey as well.

Making TLT attack: focus would be a neat solution to K wings being horrible by making them unable to action bomb AND TLT in the same round.

And then someone sticks Experimental Interface on them.

Don't forget that TLT is what makes some marginal ships (Y-Wing, HWK-290) viable again.

If every other turret was brought down to Blaster Turret's level, I could get behind that!

Would you make the Y-Wing title allow you to ignore the focus token requirement, or would you leave it as-is?

I find that the only one turret who seems nearly to be broken (not broken in my opinion but that's the topic so..) is the TLT. And there's 1 little change that will fix it, without touching other turrets.

Get the R3 bonus against turrets.

TLT is the only one R2-3. And if you get a +1 agi when defending against it, that will be enough to consider the TLT as a fine turret.

When the HWK was released in Wave 3, and for some time after, I used it constantly. I also used it with the Blaster Turret and the Crow title. In the earlier days of the game, when the only turret ships were the YT-1300 with it's crazy PWT (for the time), Y-Wing and HWK, (and the new arc for the Firespray too) it was a different time. With just Ion Turrets or Blaster Turrets to pick from for the Y-Wing or HWK, it was fairly self-limiting. The advent of the Auto-Blaster Turret and the R1 limit didn't really have any impact that I recall. That all changed in late 2015 with the release of the TLT in the K-Wing pack. I find the TLT is one upgrade that I love to hate, but still use even if I feel dirty when I do. The Dorsal Turret in the VCX-100 always felt like an attempt at a "fixed" Blaster Turret to me, with the focus requirement dropped along with the attack dice. I do like the Dorsal, and it's become more of a go-to turret for me both for the cost and the relative effectiveness of it.

The TLT strongly encourages you to burn a Focus token when attacking, and you can only ever get 1 Damage from a successful Target Lock reroll so it does have its limitations. The abuse lies in spamming it unmodified or piling on the tokens. Heaven forbid Empire gets it because then it can reroll two attack dice and then splash 1 Damage with Ruthlessness.

Personally, I think a 1 point increase in the cost is perfectly acceptable: it's on par with Heavy Laser Cannon in terms of damage output vs. high AGI. As it is, red dice creep has left it in the dirt. EPT Phantom with Swarm Leader, for a start.

30 minutes ago, Cerve said:

I find that the only one turret who seems nearly to be broken (not broken in my opinion but that's the topic so..) is the TLT. And there's 1 little change that will fix it, without touching other turrets.

Get the R3 bonus against turrets.

TLT is the only one R2-3. And if you get a +1 agi when defending against it, that will be enough to consider the TLT as a fine turret.

In my group we did this after some maths. It works.

1 hour ago, Lampyridae said:

And then someone sticks Experimental Interface on them.

Don't forget that TLT is what makes some marginal ships (Y-Wing, HWK-290) viable again.

And they get stressed, and they lose a LOT of bombing options. a k wing that can only do anything other than PWT if it does a 1 bank, 1 straight or 2 straight is a neutered K wing.

Would it be terrible if the Y Wing and HWK had to take a focus action each round to use their TLT? It wouldn't stop them spending the focus on the attack.

*wondering how a thread about player choices and nerfs became a debate about how to "fix" turrets*

Blaster turret has a home on Palob, it's fine. TLTs have AT to contend with and get expensive quick with Expertise. Spamming anything is boring, not just TLTs. Ion turrets with (or without) Y-wing title can still be great little control ships, and dace likes em. Auto turrets can be great on torp boat/bomber Ys after shooting their loads.

5 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

I, well, I just don't get this Blail. Swarms are anything but boring. Mentally exhausting? yes. Boring? No. A TIE swarm can be great fun, but never boring. I wish I were a good enough pilot and mentally capable to fly such boring ships with precision to the point it was boring.

I never got what Blail even likes anyway. Generics but now no swarms? No aces iirc.

But he is probably right with x7 defenders. They should outjoust Crackswarms easily.

9 minutes ago, ForceM said:

I never got what Blail even likes anyway. Generics but now no swarms? No aces iirc.

But he is probably right with x7 defenders. They should outjoust Crackswarms easily.

If your not blocking a Defender with a crack swarm, you shouldn't expect to win. Pre-nerf X7 and Dengaroo meant that blocking just didn't help so the swarms just got picked apart. I don't think swarms are set for a massive come-back but they are certainly more viable than they were a month ago.

6 minutes ago, gamblertuba said:

If your not blocking a Defender with a crack swarm, you shouldn't expect to win. Pre-nerf X7 and Dengaroo meant that blocking just didn't help so the swarms just got picked apart. I don't think swarms are set for a massive come-back but they are certainly more viable than they were a month ago.

Between the X7 Nerf and Swarm Leader....