8 hours ago, xanderf said:

Eh...it's really not, because practically by definition the ships that like to hold onto some specific token do so early on so they can take other actions. And since it's the defender's choice what token they give up...do you really foresee Poe giving up his focus token to keep his blue target lock?

Yeah...no.

See, that's the thing. Poe and OL shoot first, while almost all of the jamming beam carriers would shoot second. So if Poe wants to keep his focus for regen or even defense on a second shot from a /D Defender, he can't spend that target lock during his attack and so has no mods or only light mods on his dice. And having to take a target lock to protect a focus (or the reverse for OL) means no re-positioning. Oh and Poe and OL have to keep it up, because getting caught just once without two strippable tokens means they have to play catch-up for at least a round to rebuild their token stack.

As an added bonus, jamming any ship that is stressed likely means at least two turns where no native focus, evade or target lock tokens will be available to them. Jamming beam might not be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it can be a useful tool that can effect your opponents decisions.

Luckily, the Jam effect can easily be changed into something more potent if needed.

I think the idea of adding a Jam token for each uncancelled hit/critical would be a great way to do that as you would essentially punch through the token stack and then still have them feeling the effects next round.

Or they could just revert to the Epic version and have you apply stress tokens until the defender has two stress tokens if hit. Scrambler Missiles would then become useful as you would essentially hand out two stress to everything within range.

1 hour ago, Viktus106 said:

Luckily, the Jam effect can easily be changed into something more potent if needed.

I think the idea of adding a Jam token for each uncancelled hit/critical would be a great way to do that as you would essentially punch through the token stack and then still have them feeling the effects next round.

Or they could just revert to the Epic version and have you apply stress tokens until the defender has two stress tokens if hit. Scrambler Missiles would then become useful as you would essentially hand out two stress to everything within range.

Another issue is that there is never a reason to spend a defensive token to avoid being hit by Jamming Beam, because the beam has no effect other than causing you to lose a single token, the token that you would have spent. Maybe the beam should discard all of your current tokens and then add the jamming token, that might be worth something. Fel doesn't care one bit about being hit by the former, but he cares a lot about being hit by the later.

i'm fine with jamming beam not doing damage since its literally a scramble signal its not an actual attack.

But personally i find the no damage effect weapons to be far too unreliable. They dont do damage, the effect should be practically guaranteed unless they burn a lot of tokens or get a lucky roll to evade it.

If Jamming Beam was a 4die attack and R1-3, but still did nothing other than mess with tokens, you'd probably see it more. It hits reliably (better than a R3 main gun attack that probably wont hit anyway), and has a persistent effect that can royally screw over someones plan. Except its too short to do that and its unreliable to use.

That and the rule snafoo with jam tokens not stacking (which im 100% sure is a screw up on ffg's side and they do stack) makes them terrible options. I'd rather have a TB on a low PS and just slam you into a rock and mess up your future move.