PTL is weak when you can only use it to focus and TL. You generally need repositioning to get much out of it.

6 hours ago, Astech said:

It's better that adding the Limited keyword...

Seriously though, Tansari Vets can get by on crack shot or juke.

So can Scouts ... increasing it's point value only hurts the rest of the faction not the JM5K. This thread isn't about Attanni Mindlink it's about everybodies hate for the Jumpmaster. I hate Biggs let's nerf him into oblivion also (and I fly Rebels!)

6 hours ago, Astech said:

It's better that adding the Limited keyword...

Seriously though, Tansari Vets can get by on crack shot or juke.

The lack of successful showings of TPVs would indicate otherwise. Even with AM TPVs struggle, like most scum small bases not named "Protectorate Starfighter", to be anything resembling decent.

Interesting question. If FFG had a do over on the Jumpmaster expansion would anything stay the same? Maybe Chimps but that's about it. They really screwed the pooch on that one lol

2 hours ago, MenaceNsobriety said:

Interesting question. If FFG had a do over on the Jumpmaster expansion would anything stay the same? Maybe Chimps but that's about it. They really screwed the pooch on that one lol

Yeah I think we can all agree that the JM5K was the worst designed ship in the game. I love FFG and the X-wing design team in general and on the whole they do a really good job with this game. Nobody's perfect though. I couldn't do any better myself.

In handsight, all that needed to change was dropping the EPT on the generic (which didn't make sense on a PS3 anyway) and make the dial worse (make it more asymmetrical by adding some red on one side) to justify its cost.

22 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Yeah I think we can all agree that the JM5K was the worst designed ship in the game. I love FFG and the X-wing design team in general and on the whole they do a really good job with this game. Nobody's perfect though. I couldn't do any better myself.

In handsight, all that needed to change was dropping the EPT on the generic (which didn't make sense on a PS3 anyway) and make the dial worse (make it more asymmetrical by adding some red on one side) to justify its cost.

Yeah that is the thing that has always bugged me about the JM5K. I like the asymmetric dial but right turns should have been red and left turns white. It also should only have a red sloop left and no right sloop. As it is the weird dial hardly changes impacts how the ship is flown.

5 hours ago, Panzeh said:

PTL is weak when you can only use it to focus and TL. You generally need repositioning to get much out of it.

Which is why we don't see it on T-65s with R2.

2 hours ago, MenaceNsobriety said:

Yeah that is the thing that has always bugged me about the JM5K. I like the asymmetric dial but right turns should have been red and left turns white. It also should only have a red sloop left and no right sloop. As it is the weird dial hardly changes impacts how the ship is flown.

Exactly. As Nova Squadron Radio pointed out: It's not an asymmetric dial, its an outstanding dial with some extra greens on one side.

In the past FFG has been overly conservative when pricing ships with unconventional maneuvers (see the White k-turn on the Defender and the S-loop on the StarViper). After seeing how overpriced those ships were out of the gate I think they tried to be a little more realistic about it in Wave 8 (Both the TIE/fo and the T-70 X-wing are not paying crazy premiums for their unusual turn around maneuvers) but they were a little TOO generous with the JumpMaster's 2 speed white sloop. Since it can turn around without being stressed most of the time, the asymmetric green moves don't even really affect how it flies unless you throw stress on it. Even then, it has straight greens just like any other ship.

19 hours ago, MenaceNsobriety said:

Interesting question. If FFG had a do over on the Jumpmaster expansion would anything stay the same? Maybe Chimps but that's about it. They really screwed the pooch on that one lol

Personally I think Dengar and Tel are both fine. And if the Scout and Manaroo weren't what they are, we'd see both a lot more.

Zuckuss, let's not forget, was in the G1A, not the JM5k, s the Jump isn't solely to blame for Dengaroo.

I think Guidance Chips would stay, and Dengar and Tel's base costs and abilities would stay.

Rage is fine.

GONK is fine.

Boba crew is fine.

OCR4 is fine in isolation, especially now that Zuckuss has been fixed.

R5-P8 is fine.

Dengar crew is maybe a point undercosted, but is mostly OK AFAICT; it's better because generics are so rare in the meta, so that aspect of it will vary with meta shift. As it is it's basically a unique Predator, which is fine.

Mindlink, personally I think is a small amount too strong, but not a huge amount, and needs a very light-touch errata if any. My personal preference would be to limit ships with mindlink to having only one focus token at any given time. Keeps it useful for swarms whilst stopping aces token stacking, and keeps manaroo's ability more useful outside of Mindlink synergies, but still allows her to use it within Mindlink (to pass locks and other tokens she might pick up somehow).

The title is fine, though in a redesign it could probably have included the Trashmech slot on the title rather than on the base ship (both from a balance perspective and from a fluff perspective - the mech-operated boost to the turret was Dengar's personal modification rather than a standard feature. It's clearly costed for Dengar to use, so it's possibly a little too much for the others, but... it was Dengar's ship...

The real issue for my money is the cost/slots on the Scout and Manaroo, and the dial. The Scout shouldn't have had an EPT and should have cost at least 1 point more, or shoudl have had an EPT and cost at least 2 points more. Manaroo should have cost at least one point more and had the change she's had now. And the trashmech slot could probably have been on the title rather than on the base ship. The right turns should have been red, and possibly the left sloop as well, though I suspect making the right turns red would have been enough of a fix to the dial. Making the right side INconvenient instead of just neutral would have been a really big penalty to it and really affected how it flies when unstressed as well as when stressed. Maybe give it a white 3 turn left (and no 3 turn right) to compensate to make the dial even more unusual.

Just compare the Contracted Scout with the Wildspace Fringer:

Stat Scout Fringer

price 25 30
attack 2 2
agility 2 2
hull 5 5
shield 4 5
ept yes no
w. sloop yes no
crew 1 1
droid 1 0
torpedo 2 0
missile 0 1
cannon 0 1

2 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

Just compare the Scout with the Wildspace Fringer:

Scout

Comparing the scout to hot garbage is always going to make the scout look good- i do think the scout is a touch undercosted, but I don't think i'd want to remove its capabilities or make it have a much worse dial.

12 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

Comparing the scout to hot garbage is always going to make the scout look good- i do think the scout is a touch undercosted, but I don't think i'd want to remove its capabilities or make it have a much worse dial.

..yet it illustrates perfectly the problem. The generic "spammable" Fringer is overcosted and is hardly ever fielded, the Scout is undercosted and is spammed.

You could make similar comparisons with other large and small base ships and the Scout comes out on top.

Just now, Sciencius said:

..yet it illustrates perfectly the problem. The generic "spammable" Fringer is overcosted and is never fielded, the Scout is undercosted and is spammed.

You could make similar comparisons with other large and small base ships and the Scout comes out on top.

The trouble is there isn't really a well-priced generic large based turret at the moment. The scout is too cheap, the Sympathiser, Fringer, Smuggler, and Patrol Leader are too expensive. It makes it very tough to do any kind of price comparison, because comparing overpriced to underpriced doesn't help you find out what correct price is.

3 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

The trouble is there isn't really a well-priced generic large based turret at the moment. The scout is too cheap, the Sympathiser, Fringer, Smuggler, and Patrol Leader are too expensive. It makes it very tough to do any kind of price comparison, because comparing overpriced to underpriced doesn't help you find out what correct price is.

I tend to think that these generics, to be useful at their low PS, need a series of upgrades that allow them fairly easy access to the action economy to be useful. I would be inclined to give out EPTs to these kinds of ships and make the jumpmaster a bit more expensive, probably 2 points on all the pilot cards, and then dropping the punishing one title to 10.

Sympathizer and Patrol leader could be more viable if they had an EPT slot and the cost could be unchanged. The Smuggler and Fringer need more than that, though. They need something to do well with their 2-die pwt.

Just now, thespaceinvader said:

The trouble is there isn't really a well-priced generic large based turret at the moment. The scout is too cheap, the Sympathiser, Fringer, Smuggler, and Patrol Leader are too expensive. It makes it very tough to do any kind of price comparison, because comparing overpriced to underpriced doesn't help you find out what correct price is.

Well, I never said anything about correct price, my point was only to illustrate that the Contrated Scout is undercosted for its abilities compared to others - which I think we agree on.

2 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

I tend to think that these generics, to be useful at their low PS, need a series of upgrades that allow them fairly easy access to the action economy to be useful. I would be inclined to give out EPTs to these kinds of ships and make the jumpmaster a bit more expensive, probably 2 points on all the pilot cards, and then dropping the punishing one title to 10.

Sympathizer and Patrol leader could be more viable if they had an EPT slot and the cost could be unchanged. The Smuggler and Fringer need more than that, though. They need something to do well with their 2-die pwt.

I agree.

This is how mindlink should have been.

On 09 April 2017 at 5:39 AM, KommanderKeldoth said:

lol

I can see where people are coming from. Maybe it is a balanced card but it gets to be a bit much on ships like the JumpMaster with a white sloop.

On 09 April 2017 at 7:10 AM, Astech said:

Increase Attanni's cost to 2 points. The prevalent list on everyone's mind is Paratanni, and it doesn't have the points to spare for a cost increase.

Stop skirting around the issue.

Mindlink isn't the problem.

The Jumpmaster 5000 is the problem.

Treat the problem, not the symptoms.

46 minutes ago, Smutpedler said:

This is how mindlink should have been.

How is this different from the current one?

13 minutes ago, costi said:

How is this different from the current one?

I think that's the point...

As others said already: Mindlink is a well balanced talent. It's low cost and great efficiency is limited by:

• the number of ships with EPT slot that you can fit in your list, especially if the ships in question are supposed to be actually useful in today's meta,
• the limitation on possible maneuvers that you can perform with a mindlink list while keeping the enemy in your sights,
• the fact that Mindlink becomes steadily less useful with each ship lost and downright useless when you only have one ship left.

The problem of course is the JM5K, which appears to be an infinite problem generator. I swear balancing scum right now is like playing whack-a-mole. Whenever FFG nerf something JM5K finds yet another way to be unbalanced. At least Manaroo nerf was limited to, well, Manaroo. Nerfs to agromech and Deadeye were completely uncalled for as neither of those cards was problematic on anything but JM5K.

Since FFG are obviously reluctant to mess with a ship's basic stats, cost or slots, I think it's high time to implement the radical solution and errata the Contracted Scout to be unique. That would effectively mean that JM5K would no longer have any generics and no CS spam would be possible. Hopefully that would be enough to finally deal with the JM5K problem once and for all. Between this and the Manny nerf the ship would still end up in many squads but would (hopefully) cease to produce one unbalanced list after another.

On 4/9/2017 at 0:16 AM, KommanderKeldoth said:

I'll start out by saying that I'm not a mind-link hater. I think its a cool ability with a built in downside and it fits the EU lore surrounding manaroo and her race. I think the problem is that you can link an unlimited number of ships so the action economy to cost ratio goes up exponentially.

With the benefit of hindsight we can say that maybe it should have looked more like this:

Manaroo (1pt) Unique Crew

Whenever a friendly ship equipped with the "Attani Mindlink" upgrade performs a focus action, you may perform a free focus action. If a friendly ship with the "Attani Mindlink" upgrade receives a stress token, you also receive a stress token if you do not have one.

Attani Mindlink (1pt) Unique EPT

Whenever a friendly ship equipped with the "Manaroo" upgrade performs a focus action, you may perform a free focus action. If a friendly ship with the "Manaroo" upgrade receives a stress token, you also receive a stress token if you do not have one.

This inherently limits the number of ships that can mindlink to two, thus limiting exponential action economy. It also requires one of the ships to have and use a crew slot. Secondly, it also changes the 'assign a focus token' text to 'perform a free focus action' which allows Attanni builds to become more vulnerable to stress.

Why do you even think Attani Mindlink needs nerf in the first place? anaroo nerf already toned it down to a reasonable level.

I did some legwork and analysed all the winning lists since the FAQ, in tournaments with 20+ people (just a random number, nothing special to back it up).

19: Number of tournaments
Victorious scums list:
6: Non-mindlinked Scums
3: Triple- and Double-mindlinked jumps
2: Other mindlinked scums (including parattani), with 0 or 1 jumpmaster.

I will put it in capitals, to break a common myth and misconception:

THERE IS MORE NON-MINDLINKED SCUM LISTS WINNING TOURNAMENTS THAN MINDLINKED.

On top of that: 3/5 of the mindlink lists are containing two or three jumpmasters, and would be OP even without the mindlinks.

35 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

Since FFG are obviously reluctant to mess with a ship's basic stats, cost or slots, I think it's high time to implement the radical solution and errata the Contracted Scout to be unique . That would effectively mean that JM5K would no longer have any generics and no CS spam would be possible. Hopefully that would be enough to finally deal with the JM5K problem once and for all. Between this and the Manny nerf the ship would still end up in many squads but would (hopefully) cease to produce one unbalanced list after another.

How is Parattanni unbalanced, how is Fennactic Scouts unbalanced, Parattanni, Dengaroo (post nerf) how? just because they're used a lot? Just because a little is readily played doesn't make it abused (notice how I left off 3 JM5K builds) and if they made it so as you say an make it "unique" then the same thought process needs to be used with Defenders, TIE fighters, K-Wings, X Wings, Y-Wings and any other ship we see more than 1 spam the board because an errata like this is not game changing but game breaking and effectively NPE for the entire X-Wing community

If you think Mindlink is too strong then you haven't used Mindlink in lists with out a JM5K.

It's a balanced card, try it with G1-As, Z95s, Protectorates, M3As, any ship but the JM5K. It's strong early in a match, less so if your opponent has stress control, and it's power falls off dramatically as ships come off the board.

I was tinkering with Mindlink when wave 8 was released; it's always been good but there were better options.

Make the Contracted Scout unique and call it a day already. I am currently running Fenn+2 Uboats and I don't even care, just leave Mindlink alone; it is an innocent bystander in the JM5K issue and should be left alone.

3 hours ago, Smutpedler said:

This is how mindlink should have been.

I ran out of likes for this one very quickly.

This has come up in conversations between me and my friends on occasion, but does anyone else think that Mindlink should have been an Illicit upgrade instead of a Scum-only Elite Talent?