In another thread I made a proposal, and since I don't think many of you will have followed this discussion, I wanted to open a seperate thread.

Many of you will be aware that Imperials tend to have relatively little customization options - many of their ships tend to have none or only one upgrade slot. So why not give them a little more? How about a change to the modification reference card:

"Ships with TIE in their ship name may equip an additional modification with the Tie only requirement."

Sooo... what do you think? And can you come up with any imbalanced combos?

So far there are only 2 TIE mods, namely TIE Mk. II and Lightweight Frame (LWF). However, this would add some design space, essentially giving one more upgrade slot to all TIEs. Let's see a couple of things that this would do. I am arguing here from the point of view that Imperials are currently not dominating the meta, so slight buffs here and there may be acceptable or even needed on some lesser seen vessels such as the TIE Adv.

TIE Fighter - doesn't use many modifications anyway

TIE Int - Carnor and Soont could equip Mk II to become a bit more unpredictable after PTLing

TIE Adv. - Vader could equip Mk II for more options to shed stress while keeping engine upgrade. Alternatively, we could see Guidance Chips + Mk. II on Procket carriers

TIE Adv. Prototype - Mk II for more options to shed stress on Inqui?

TIE Def. - Mk II on all of them?

Bombers and Punishers - Here is where the fun starts. Lightweight frame and Guidance Chips/LRS? Yes please!

TIE Shuttles - Mk II to shed stress of Fleet officer, frees up mod slot

Strikers - LWF and still have another Mod... gives WAY more options, e.g. LWF+Hull upgrade.

Phantoms - I love the idea of combining LWF with Stygium on generics

Disagree a little. There are no "Upgrade Slots". And Imp Aces gives you the option to include Royal Guard Title to equip 2 upgrades. Tie Interceptor only.

No problem giving 2 upgrades to any ship while writing cinematic scenarios. Defenders X7 with 2 upgrades during 100/6...no thanks

Bombers/Punishers get the most utility out of this change by far. Everything else will either slap on MkIIs if they have a stress mechanic (PTL) or won't take the extra mod.

Strikers can always use LWF + MkII for fun, but it's not super necessary.

Tomax Bren (34) This is a solid build with huge increase in durability vie LWF. This is the best use of the change in rules, I believe.
Homing Missiles
Extra Munitions
Lightweight Frame
Crack Shot
Guidance Chips

Nope.

I'm game. What about a crew card that gives all of your TIEs a small buff? Or a combined card with TIE Mark II Engines + Lightweight frame (3 pts) so you don't need two mod slots?

i'd rather see a modification card that can be applied to the basic TIE fighter to give them a small buff. like say, give them a free evade action if they barrel roll (or focus.. whatever is least liekly to be unbalanced). so that the cheaper versions without Elite skill slots can still do a bit extra.

TIE fighters are good, thank you for your concern.

BUT if you want to be able to mod TIEs more easily then how about a TIE only title like:

Modular Design (1 pt) (or 0 pt, whatevah)

you may equip two different Modification upgrades. The squad point cost of each upgrade cannot be more that 3.

a less effective Royal Guard Pilot for any TIE. Chimps and LRS? Sure!

Alternately it can be a title that that allows any number of TIE only mods.

Firstly: this is not the Fel's Wrath fix of Story and Legend!

Currently, the TIE s/f has to think had between Lightweight Frame and Mark 2 engines. Being able to equip both would make the unit rather powerful, possibly even a tick too powerful.

Come to think of it: a Zeta Specialist with FCS, Targeting Synchronizer, Guidance Chimps, Lightweight Frame, Special Ops Training, and Concussion Missiles would be a nice alpha strike, and also a fair support ship throughout the game. Not to mention that it's own durability and offensive output would be fairly strong. Worth 34 points? Quite possibly!

Oh gods, the Inquisitor with Autothrusters and Mark 2. You can do the same thing with Soontir, and also add Stealth Device.

Vader with Mark 2 Engine Upgrade. Combine with Predator and you'll have more fun than you can possibly imagine.

Tomax in a shuttle, with Fleet and Systems officers. Mark 2 Engines + lightweight frame. Add crackshot for extra offensive punch. That's a solid 34 point support ship.

@MaxPower mentioned low PS Phantoms with LWF and Stygium Particle Accelerator. I'd recommend Echo and Advanced Cloaking Device. LWF gives her that extra survivability at PS8, and ACD let's her fire every round. Huh! Come to think of it: a cloaked Phantom could get use out of LWF as long as the attack was more than 4 dice- for instance, a range 1 Fen Rau.

TIE Punishers would enjoy a whole lot of options. Maybe all the options.

Weirdly, the TIE Fighter, TIE Defender, and TIE f/o don't seem at all impacted by this. I think that's because they all would like Mark 2 engines, but don't _require_ them. And there's not a second mod that they would take that is worth the points. Possibly, _maybe_ Countess Ryad would take a hull upgrade to go along with her Mark 2 engines. But 39 points at PS5 needs to do a lot of work, so I don't think it's OP.

So: I don't see anything that gets silly strong. At least, nothing at first blush. Unfortunately, I don't see much that is weak right _now_ that gets stronger enough as a result of this change. I do think the TIE s/f is currently in a very good spot, and so I'm hesitant to add things to it's toolkit that doesn't close out other options. I don't see any direct synergies between 2 different mods, given the limitations you have placed, just that the hard decisions for a couple ships become much easier.

Now, if Imperials could take Pulse Ray Shields, this conversation might be a tiny bit different...

32 minutes ago, Punning Pundit said:

Firstly: this is not the Fel's Wrath fix of Story and Legend!

Currently, the TIE s/f has to think had between Lightweight Frame and Mark 2 engines. Being able to equip both would make the unit rather powerful, possibly even a tick too powerful.

Come to think of it: a Zeta Specialist with FCS, Targeting Synchronizer, Guidance Chimps, Lightweight Frame, Special Ops Training, and Concussion Missiles would be a nice alpha strike, and also a fair support ship throughout the game. Not to mention that it's own durability and offensive output would be fairly strong. Worth 34 points? Quite possibly!

Oh gods, the Inquisitor with Autothrusters and Mark 2. You can do the same thing with Soontir, and also add Stealth Device.

Vader with Mark 2 Engine Upgrade. Combine with Predator and you'll have more fun than you can possibly imagine.

Tomax in a shuttle, with Fleet and Systems officers. Mark 2 Engines + lightweight frame. Add crackshot for extra offensive punch. That's a solid 34 point support ship.

@MaxPower mentioned low PS Phantoms with LWF and Stygium Particle Accelerator. I'd recommend Echo and Advanced Cloaking Device. LWF gives her that extra survivability at PS8, and ACD let's her fire every round. Huh! Come to think of it: a cloaked Phantom could get use out of LWF as long as the attack was more than 4 dice- for instance, a range 1 Fen Rau.

TIE Punishers would enjoy a whole lot of options. Maybe all the options.

Weirdly, the TIE Fighter, TIE Defender, and TIE f/o don't seem at all impacted by this. I think that's because they all would like Mark 2 engines, but don't _require_ them. And there's not a second mod that they would take that is worth the points. Possibly, _maybe_ Countess Ryad would take a hull upgrade to go along with her Mark 2 engines. But 39 points at PS5 needs to do a lot of work, so I don't think it's OP.

So: I don't see anything that gets silly strong. At least, nothing at first blush. Unfortunately, I don't see much that is weak right _now_ that gets stronger enough as a result of this change. I do think the TIE s/f is currently in a very good spot, and so I'm hesitant to add things to it's toolkit that doesn't close out other options. I don't see any direct synergies between 2 different mods, given the limitations you have placed, just that the hard decisions for a couple ships become much easier.

Now, if Imperials could take Pulse Ray Shields, this conversation might be a tiny bit different...

Pulse shielding f/os. The horror

I really like this idea, and with the "upgrade bar" creep that has slowly occurred over time, alot of TIEs can use a small boost. I think this would bring Bombers from fringe competitive to competitive, and would maybe give Punishers a shot. TIE SFs with the ability to take LWF and Chimps or MK II would be amazing, and would definitely catapult them up to the top of the heap, which I don't think is unfair (They are slight above the middle of the heap right now). With that said, Soontir, Carnor, and Quiz all would love MK II, but maybe that's not too bad, since A) They cost 1 more point, and B) would become a little more competitive once again. Give them some new life. The main ship that doesn't care about this is the Defender, since they need to take MK II anyways, and the whole point of X7s is that they are cheap and efficient, and taking something like EU or HU or SU kills that efficiency with little reward, so overall I really like this idea. Here's hoping FFG is listening!

TIE only is not exactly an upgrade type but more of an extra restriction which is not limited to a single ship. Much like X-wing only which covers 2 ships, TIE only covers 11 (12 after wave 12) ships.

Now so far the only upgrade slots that has this restriction is modifications (same for X-wing only as there is only one upgrade card with the X-wing only restriction).

Now the question is what else besides modification can be TIE only ?

2 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Now the question is what else besides modification can be TIE only ?

Potentially any card but a title card could apply to all TIEs (although I don't know of a title card that applies to different ship types - let's not mention the Aggressor conundrum ).

On the broader subject while I'd love a TIE only upgrade slot I couldn't see this working in a balanced way with the vast variety of TIEs. Certainly for the Defender putting TIE MkII on them and still having the mod slot free could make them too much. Interceptor with title could take three mods (TIE MkII, Stealth Device, Autothrusters ouch!). And at the other end of the spectrum I would not want put a single mod on an Academy TIE Fighter let alone two - their utility is cheapness.

6 minutes ago, Sasajak said:

Potentially any card but a title card could apply to all TIEs (although I don't know of a title card that applies to different ship types - let's not mention the Aggressor conundrum ).

On the broader subject while I'd love a TIE only upgrade slot I couldn't see this working in a balanced way with the vast variety of TIEs. Certainly for the Defender putting TIE MkII on them and still having the mod slot free could make them too much. Interceptor with title could take three mods (TIE MkII, Stealth Device, Autothrusters ouch!). And at the other end of the spectrum I would not want put a single mod on an Academy TIE Fighter let alone two - their utility is cheapness.

Well it wouldn't be a mod slot and likely not a copy of said Mk2 engines. Could be something like an EPT TIE Ace, whenever you make a red maneuver gain one focus token or something along those lines. Now again as mentioned how would the restriction help the TIEs that need it (like Bombers, and Phantoms) and not the TIEs that already have too much (Defenders, Interceptors) is a good question.

As for TIE Fighters I would like to see unique titles but as you mentioned the TIE Fighter is best as a non-unique mass produced ship and the unique TIE pilots are not exactly the best value for the extra point cost. So unique TIE squadron titles will have to be both good and cheap. However, that comes close to the same predicament x7 was found in.

5 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Well it wouldn't be a mod slot and likely not a copy of said Mk2 engines. Could be something like an EPT TIE Ace, whenever you make a red maneuver gain one focus token or something along those lines. Now again as mentioned how would the restriction help the TIEs that need it (like Bombers, and Phantoms) and not the TIEs that already have too much (Defenders, Interceptors) is a good question.

As for TIE Fighters I would like to see unique titles but as you mentioned the TIE Fighter is best as a non-unique mass produced ship and the unique TIE pilots are not exactly the best value for the extra point cost. So unique TIE squadron titles will have to be both good and cheap. However, that comes close to the same predicament x7 was found in.

Ahhh get you now. In that case I've always thought that TIE Fighter should have some sort of swarm bonus. Also TIE Interceptors a counter attack a bit like Snap Shot but triggers after an attack. Wish I was more original but these are in Armada! Maybe they could be EPTs or a squadron title (so the EPTless get a go).