So I love the idea of ion tokens but large ship just shrug them off for the most part. Would an extra effect of an ion token on big ships make ion turrets and cannons viable again? For example what if an ion token on big ships prevents the execution of red maneuvers. Would that help?

I feel that they need to make a cannon that deals damage and gives 2 ion tokens.

If you hit it twice....or use one Ion Pulse Missile...it still gets ioned. What's not to like?

Hitting it twice takes two attacks.

Ion Pulse Missile is one time use.

Agreed, this is how it should be

1. Move the gain energy step before the execute maneuver step
2. remove 1 energy from gain energy step for every ion token present
3. If there are still ion tokens present treat maneuver as a white 1 with no energy pips
4. Discard all remaining ion tokens.

Oh we are talking about large ships not huge ships , lol my bad

But yeah I always find it funny how more ions means a faster maneuver. For the GR-75 one ion token means 1 banks or 2 straight, two ion tokens means 1 straight, and 3 or more means 4 straight or 2 banks. Wait more ion tokens means go faster?

Ion them once then dare them to get near the edge of the board.

I think it would be pretty reasonable to keep the ion rules as-is, except add a piece that says "after each time a large ship receives an ion token, it removes 1 shield token."

This would:

- Increase the damage potential against the tankiest ships (looking at Scouts and Asajj here, mostly) in the game, which a) they need in order to be kept in check, and b) ICT needs in order to keep up with TLT damage output

- Reflect the idea of the improved deflector shields on a large ship mitigating the ion effects, but at cost to the shield generators

-Slightly nerf 4-LOM, which, given the Zuckuss nerf, would make sense to happen

- Encourage use of Electronic Baffle (system slot variety is currently lacking), as its downside now is identical to receiving an ion token in the first place, so might as well keep the ability to remove the ion until shields are down (FAQ: If a large ship receives an ion token and then uses Baffle to discard it, it may resolve the Baffle effect before assigning damage. It therefore does not suffer another damage from the ion token, since this token was discarded before the ship would check for receiving damage).

- Slightly favor large ships that have fewer shields vs hull for the same HP total (currently only plasma torpedoes do that, in all other applications having more shields is superior)

- Encourage ion control. Given the clear dominance of stress control tactics, ion control could use a yelling hand.

Easy: just remove all ion tokens EXCEPT one on any large ship after getting ioned. This way, they only have additional protection against the first ionization.

Make an Ion weapon that gives the defender an ion token for every hit and crit rolled.

No, its good the way it is. There's really not a lot a ship can do to prevent being Ion'd again once its been hit with it once. That's not really okay for something that takes up more than half your list. It's quite possible to spend the same number of points on a pair of Ion ships to lock down a large ship, which is almost certainly the idea behind the resistance.

2 hours ago, ObiWonka said:

Ion them once then dare them to get near the edge of the board.

That's what I used to do.