The Tie-Interceptor, while being one of the most beloved imperial ships in the game, has mostly vanished from tables. So in light of the current Imperial and with the Scum aces on the horizon, discussions about how to "fix" it have been flaring up again. But from what i have seen most of the suggestions can roughly be summed up as "make it gooder". What I haven't seen thou (it this might be the result of my somewhat limited interest in the subject-matter) where suggestions that tried to address, what I think is main issue that it Interceptor is currently facing.

So from what I understand, what killed the Interceptor, aside from the X7's über-efficiency making it obsolete, was the rising popularity of unavoidable auto-damage´, mainly in the form of Sabine bombs. I was thinking, what it need would be something like this:

Emergency Thrusters

1 Point,

modification, small ships only,

only equip if you have the barrel-roll action on your action-bar

When you would receive damage or a stress-token, during the activation phase you can discard this card instead. If you do, you can not receive damage or ion-token for the rest of the phase.

Now, since I don't play much Empire, so I can't really judge this, but I can say I would probably play this on Corren, who is currently suffering from a very similar problem.

1 hour ago, Duskwalker said:

Edit: Sorry I misread your post

I like your idea but would take it a step farther to make it really shine and help the generics out:

Title: The Empire's Finest, 2pt.- you may not be assigned damage outside of the combat phase. You must equip an EPT even if you do not have the {elite} icon and that upgrade costs -2 squad points. You may equip a second title.

Makes you immune to damage from running over bombs, but not effects, and obstacles (in a ship that maneuverable, it's feasible). Gives Aces a discount (insert 1pt PTL here) and gives generics a prayer (free intensity, crackshot, VI etc, discounted PTL).

I don't think it's too much. The game has moved so far past the interceptor, Firespray, tie, and tie Bomber that it's bordering on ridiculous.

Aren't "interceptors" a class of ship designed to be able to quickly respond when an enemy has sent its forces in to attack you? They literally intercept the interlopers before they can get to their intended target. They usually are designed to get there fast. They often do this by having great speed at the cost of armaments or armor. So what if...

"Interceptor"

Title, 0 points. Tie Interceptor or A-Wing Only (maybe even M3-A)

Treat your pilot skill as 12 until you are declared the target of an attack.

You may equip another title.

Well I'm not sure if I buy this, just because bombs work nicely now doesn't mean that they are too strong, maybe with Sabine they might be closer but not OP.

It was hard road out of poopy bombs to be useful again and I think it would be too much to try killing them again. Bombs should be very dangerous because they need skill to be executed so therefore avoiding good bomb placement should demand bit skill to be avoided. I'm thinking that TLT is way bigger problem than bombs, and even stack of tokens with Autothrusters won't save them. I got hunch that you are implying Miranda Doni here, her bombs are vicious, but her regen 4 dice TLT is too much for aces with 3 hull. They made her skill too strong with TLT, she has OP regen with it.

I'm sure that FFG is working on this matter at the moment and this will be nerfed sooner than later, but I doubt that there will be anything for bombs. Even Hull Upgrade and Autothrusters won't save them from TLT. It was my favorite turrets for longest time but I didn't yet understand the effect on X-Wing, it should be nerfed so we could get not only aces back, but ships with less hull than 9.

30 minutes ago, pickirk01 said:

Aren't "interceptors" a class of ship designed to be able to quickly respond when an enemy has sent its forces in to attack you? They literally intercept the interlopers before they can get to their intended target. They usually are designed to get there fast. They often do this by having great speed at the cost of armaments or armor. So what if...

"Interceptor"

Title, 0 points. Tie Interceptor or A-Wing Only (maybe even M3-A)

Treat your pilot skill as 12 until you are declared the target of an attack.

You may equip another title.

TIE Interceptor only Modification. If you are not stress after you reveal a 3 Speed (hard) Turn Maneuver you may treat that as a white Talon Roll maneuver in the same speed and direction instead. Then receive one stress token in the check stress step.

4 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

TIE Interceptor only Modification. If you are not stress after you reveal a 3 Speed (hard) Turn Maneuver you may treat that as a white Talon Roll maneuver in the same speed and direction instead. Then receive one stress token in the check stress step.

Its one of those things where Segnors and Talons were thought of after the first few waves of ships were out and they were too good not to put in the game. But man they really made almost every pre wave 6 dial lackluster by comparison. I mean come on even the Striker has Segnors and that is a pre Ep IV era mostly atmoshperic design. Tee Interceptors and A Wings at the very least should have more than just K-Turns.

Multi-positional thrusters - TIE Interceptor Only: after conducting a maneuver at speed 2 or above, you may turn this ship 90 degrees.

2 hours ago, pickirk01 said:

Its one of those things where Segnors and Talons were thought of after the first few waves of ships were out and they were too good not to put in the game. But man they really made almost every pre wave 6 dial lackluster by comparison. I mean come on even the Striker has Segnors and that is a pre Ep IV era mostly atmoshperic design. Tee Interceptors and A Wings at the very least should have more than just K-Turns.

yup, no doubts about that. It is like the TIE Striker should have been the TIE Interceptor, E-wing, and T-70 should switch dials. Either way what was done is one so unless a 2.0 comes around this is going to be how things are set.

2 hours ago, pickirk01 said:

Its one of those things where Segnors and Talons were thought of after the first few waves of ships were out and they were too good not to put in the game. But man they really made almost every pre wave 6 dial lackluster by comparison. I mean come on even the Striker has Segnors and that is a pre Ep IV era mostly atmoshperic design. Tee Interceptors and A Wings at the very least should have more than just K-Turns.

Except that TIE Interceptors live and die by Push the Limit so they never even use their red maneuvers.

5 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Except that TIE Interceptors live and die by Push the Limit so they never even use their red maneuvers.

Which is a design flaw imho, positional ships should have had the basic action economy to do so, instead of dipping into the realm of normal actions - thus requiring you to staple your PTL card to the Ship card.

7 hours ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

Multi-positional thrusters - TIE Interceptor Only: after conducting a maneuver at speed 2 or above, you may turn this ship 90 degrees.

Forgot to mention, it should be a title that also allows an additional title and cost -3 pts.

Keep it a bouncy glass can, just a more special and viable one.

This game is, for better or worse, Rock-Paper-Scissors. It has been for several years. You can't give Scissors a hard-counter to Rock and expect it to turn out well...

7 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Except that TIE Interceptors live and die by Push the Limit so they never even use their red maneuvers.

That is mostly only true for the high PS ones, Fel and Jax and occasionally Phennir. Anything below PS 7 will almost never be taken as an arc dodger in competitive play because will almost always have to move before other ships making all their reposition actions far less effective. If Interceptors had a few more deceptive ways to turn around then maybe a 22pt Crack Sabre might, might be a decent filler in some lists.

Got someone on your tail? Segnor into position for a range one shot, unmodified sure, but 4 dice with a crack shot can do some damage. And if they guess wrong left when you went right, you might have dodged return fire.

I'm not saying its the best or only anwser but it would certainly make a difference.

But as others have said, doesn't matter unless/until 2.0.