Continuing my train of thought recently, I'm now focusing on secondary weapons. We all remember the days when all torpedoes were equally awful, but now some are more equal than others:
Torpedoes:
Advanced Proton Torpedoes: Admittedly, these are fantastic when they trigger. They have 2 problems though: their excessive price (as much as a TLT!) and the very, very hard trigger. Here's the fix.
Advanced proton torpedoes (Torpedo, 6 points, 5 dice, Range 1)
"Attack: Target lock. Spend your target lock and discard this card to perform this attack, even on a target outside your firing arc. You may change up to 3 of your blank results to [focus] results"
As-is, an Autoblaster Cannon is a better use of points than these torpedoes, but allowing a mini-turret of death gives them much-needed flexibility, and a unique torpedo mechanic.
Flechette Torpedoes: Again, these are fine, but the fact that you have to acquire and spend a target lock means that they're quite hard to proc, and that when they do they rarely do damage. Here's the fix.
Change the header to Attack: [Focus]. That's all that's required to bring them up to scratch. It lets them actually work against their targets - high agility, low hull aces.
Seismic Torpedoes: Potentially the least used of the torpedoes, especially in this 2-3 ship meta. Their main problem is that they very rarely do more for you than a focus action, and normally do less. Here's the fix.
Seismic Torpedoes (Torpedo, 2 points)
Action: Discard this card to choose an obstacle at Range 1-2 and inside your primary firing arc. Each ship at Range 1 of the obstacle rolls 2 attack dice and suffers any damage [hits] or critical damage [crit] rolled. Then remove the obstacle.
It's a fairly small buff, but gives you an average of 1 damage for an action that is quite hard to trigger.
Missiles:
Advanced Homing Missiles: They're a cool concept, but when Cruise missiles often wipe out shields and do a crit with duidance chips anyway, and are equally hard to proc, there's no reason to take Adv. Homing missiles. Here's the fix.
Just make them range 1-2. It means that aces have a lot harder time dodging the shot, and you can actually get them off in a game.
Assault Missiles: Soon to be completely obsolete due to Harpoon Missiles, Assault missiles have rarely seen use outside epic play since their conception. Here's the fix.
Assault Missiles (Missile, 4 points, 4 dice, Range 2-3)
"Attack: [target lock] | Discard this card and spend your target lock to perform this attack. If this attack hits, each ship at range 1 of the defender suffers one critical damage"
Now assault missiles are as cheap as Harpoons (which is fair since Harpoons don't require spending the TL), and can do some serious damage to nearby ships. A good FSR2 counter.
Cluster Missiles: Again, a good missile that is just eclipsed by a TLT. I'd fix it just by changing to Attack: [focus], just to give the low-PS ships that want it an easier time of it.
Concussion Missiles: They're basically proton torpedoes, but in missile form. I think they need their own mechanic, so here's the fix.
Concussion Missiles (Missile, 4 points, 4 dice, Range 2-3)
"Attack: [target lock] Discard this card and spend your target lock to perform this attack. After this attack resolved, if the defender does not have any shields, you may draw damage cards until you draw a "pilot" critical hit. Assign that card to the defender."
Now concussion missiles concuss opponents, which I think is thematic. You lose the super-reliable shot, but gain a very strong disruptive ability against a good deal of ships (sorry Imperials).
Ion Pulse Missiles: They have a niche against low agility large base ships, walking them off the board, but they really can't hit their most desired target - High PS, high maneuverability ships. This can be fixed by changing the target lock requirement for a focus requirement.
Cannons:
ARC Caster: Aside from faction bias, the massive potential to damage yourself just as much as the enemy makes them pretty worthless. Here's the fix.
Remove the "not Imperial" restriction. X7s are still going to be better than /Ds. Then modify it to "choose 1 other ship at range 1 of the defender (other than yourself)" to give you a chance.
Autoblaster: The turret does everything better, for 3 points less. This cannon can be fixed by lowering its point cost to 3.
Flechette Cannon: It's bad in a lot of ways, but chief among them is an inability to stack more than one stress on a target. This cannon can be fixed by removing the "if they are not stressed" requirement.
Turrets:
Blaster Turret: It was bad at release and has got steadily worse over time, culminating with the TLT's release. Here's the fix.
Blaster Turret (Turret, 4 points, Range 1-2)
"Attack: [focus] | Perform this attack against 1 ship (even a ship outside your firing arc)."
Spending the focus was absurd when the slightly more expensive TLT doesn't require it.
Dorsal Turret: It's simply meh, and I've never seen a build where an autoblaster or TLT wouldn't be better. It can be fixed (as much as it can be) by reducing the squad cost to 2 points.
Ion Cannon Turret: The third best turret, currently. It suffers from TLT envy. The fix is to make it a range 1-3 turret (or at the very least 2-3) in order to keep it in line with the TLT.
Synced Turret: It's on-par with blaster turret, and doesn't give you much more than a Dorsal turret. I'd say taking it down to 3 points would fix it.
And bombs, of course, are fine as they are.
Have I missed any of the weaker secondary weapons? Or maybe my fixes are a bit too strong?
however, this is a false comparison. The HLC on the Outrider is significantly better than a TLT too. A mangler cannon turret would also be better, unless it were a lot weaker.
