To be fair: there remains the possibility that harpoons can be countered easier in the listbuilding step, by countermeasures, b1 or expert handling, compared to the other dominating builds?

I don‘t dispute that harpoons partially caused a change in the meta. But there was enough elasticity available to adjust.

But by now I have to dispute that harpoons are too good for the game, because lists with harpoons are not better or worse than those without!

Harpoons are certainly good enough to be the de facto ordnance but if anything they seem to be pushing the game in a better direction.

As a single upgrade, it has revitalized the build options of every ship that can carry it. It took fair ship rebels off the top of the meta and helps check the high health, low agility ships that have pervaded the meta. We are seeing list building expand in variance.

As these missiles now threaten spike damage from a wide variety of platforms, the game has turned towards killing or arc-dodging their carriers.... Large ships that want to live the length of the game are pushed towards countermeasures - a defensive measure - rather than some other upgrade to make them more oppressive.

17 minutes ago, Mace Windu said:

While I agree to some extent, the simple reality is that Harpoons are at a power level in the current meta where they are simply viable Tier 1 upgrades.

All of the missiles or Torpedoes you compared them to above (and in fact Every single other missile or torpedo) are either not good enough and have never been good enough for competitive play unless you could fit them the J5K chassis (which has now been proven busted with the torp slots removed). the only exceptions being Proton Rockets on a very small handful of ships in the past intermittently and now cruise missiles on a very few ships as well (somewhat intermittently)

Are Harpoons too powerful? Maybe, but the reality is that with the power creep in this game they are literally "Just Good enough" to be consistently playable at a competitive level, at the moment the gunboats with Harpoons are the new hotness, so there's potentially a disproportionately larger number of 'Poon boats in the meta right now, so I'm not going to worry about them for another months or 2 and check to see if every winning list is rocking Harpoons.

Plasma Torpedos have seen a fair amount of play without Jumpmaster. Last Worlds top 16, they were on Miranda and at least one Fenn Rau. Concussion were on Miranda in the Biggs/Lowhhrick list. PS 11 Cruise Alpha was viable from the instant Cruise was printed, but was supplanted by Harpoon as soon as those were printed. I'm not sure where it puts missiles and torpedos in the overall tier lists, but even if they are typically Tier 2, results and tier rankings don't always match.

I'm also appreciative of the argument that more time should pass before a nerf. I'd agree. However, if we're discussing whether or not a nerf should happen, I think it's also appropriate to consider what possible appropriate nerfs might be. I don't think an extra point of cost would necessarily knock Harpoons from Tier 1 to Tier 2, for example.

Meanwhile, as to general power creep, in my experience alpha strike power creep is one of the least fun kinds. But that's just like, my opinion, man.

13 minutes ago, Ohnoeszz said:

As a single upgrade, it has revitalized the build options of every ship that can carry it. It took fair ship rebels off the top of the meta and helps check the high health, low agility ships that have pervaded the meta. We are seeing list building expand in variance.

Was it Harpoons that killed FSR, or just the Biggs nerf? The two happened at the same time, so it isn't the easiest thing to separate which effects were most important.

I flat out refuse to discuss needing Harpoon Missiles whole TLT is still in its current form.

However

1. condition should be applied at the end of the turn

2. Guidance Chips needs to change or be banned.

3. I do actually like the idea of 1 damage and the condition.

4. None of the weapons that cancel damage and do effects should ever trigger Harpoons. Iniatitive should have nothing to do with it.

This come to mind for anyone else?
No? Just me? Ok...

4 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Worst offender for harpoon is high ps imp alpha tbh

Yeah, let’s wait till they table everyone in their way to Worlds top spot before we make such pronouncements, k?

2 hours ago, Favoritism Flight Games said:

I agree that Harpoons are the strongest missile by a wide margin, and that they're warping the meta- but if they're nerfed, Rebels win everything, hands down. You simply cannot push enough damage off onto these crazy damage mitigation lists without something super-punchy like harpoons. I'd be fine with a harpoon nerf- but only if wookies/reinforce see a serious nerf as well.

Sadly, this. They’re needed due to this nonsense.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Coincidentally I finished the Harpoonstuff from the Vassal league for mu0n today.

It looks like they perform very average, surprisingly!

Maybe our perception is skewed? Maybe we see the one massive hit but somehow don‘t mind much more consistent damage?

Good inquiry...

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

And yet there's no sign at all that it's dominating the metagame as Asajj, Dash, Miranda and Lowhhrick seemingly continue to boss it about.

This.

I began to quote so many posts, it became nuts; so let me digress.....?

55 minutes ago, hothie said:

This come to mind for anyone else?
No? Just me? Ok...

It should, that how the term started.

Just require the target lock to be spent. Problem solved. And for the record I loathe Poons.

I would rather they change it so the condition doesn't take effect until the next round(give them the option to get rid of it before it takes effect), and FAQ so they can't stack, (I assume making the harpoon condition card limited would do that). It's crazy that not only can you take the damage and the condition, but you could potentially splash multiple friendly ships and add an extra damage to yourself all in one round, multiple times if you are hit by more than one harpoon.

For what is does, it would still be worth it if it didn't dealt the initial damage, just the condition.

3 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

To be fair: there remains the possibility that harpoons can be countered easier in the listbuilding step, by countermeasures, b1 or expert handling, compared to the other dominating builds?

Problem is those counters also counter other ordnance... which Harpoons are flat out better than. So even if you like Harpoons and think they're adding something to the game, they're still removing more than they add by making almost all other ordnance obsolete.

3 hours ago, DodgingArcs said:

3. I do actually like the idea of 1 damage and the condition.

I don't know if it's the right solution, but I like it too. It's a step in the right direction, anyway.

Really? They became available in G4H. You're crying for the Nerf Bat already? I'm beginning to think that all it takes is two or three losses to relatively new technology and everyone rallies around the Nerf flag.

I used to think that harpoons were OP until I played a game against a Z-95 swarm using harpoons. Because you can't control when the splash effect goes off you are likely to hurt yourself as hurt your opponent. There was one turn when my harpooned palp shuttle had 4 Z's facing it. My opponent chose not to take any shots because if the shuttle had died (as it likely would have) 3 of his Z's would have been splashed and died (they were at 1 health).

Cruise missiles and Harpoons can both be counter played. Cruise makes you very predictable when range controlling. Harpoons effectively give you a free Dead Man's Switch. When you start thinking about all the ways you can use the condition against your opponent the cost starts to make sense.

If you are trying to joust triple Scurrgs and triple Gunboat lists and are complaining about being alpha'd by multiple Harpoons at once then you are flying wrong.

Tbh, if you look at the card, it's a missile stuck into a wing...it hasn't blown up yet...How that does 4 dice of damage AND still blows up causing splash damage, etc. I am not sure haha.

They would be more balanced if it was "suffer one damage, assign the condition, and then cancel all dice results." Or cost 5 points.

13 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

Cruise Missiles are the polar opposite of Prockets, so it makes sense.
TL instead of Focus (prockets dont spend it either)
Based on speed instead of Agility
R2-3 (but gotta go fast so R1 problems) instead of only R1

Cruise missiles are fine.

But for a measily 1pt more you get effectively the same max potential strength attack regardless of speed and still keep targetlock. Factor in the splash, its even nastier. For 1pt? Really? Assault missiles were 5pts because splash damage is powerful purely for the "you cant evade me" bit, so for 1pt cheaper it keeps the TL, causes splash, and causes extra damage to the defender? wat?

Harpoons are a problem. I dont know what needs to change about them in the current context (they arent going to flatout erase half a condition card), but something needs to change. When i saw the condition i fully expected the harpoon itself to be another cheap, 1 damage if it hits attack and was flabbergasted when i saw the 4red and no cancel OR no spend TL.

Agreed on cruise missiles. I like them - even when on the receiving end - because they are awkward to use to full effect but reward you massively when you do. Proton Rockets are a very good comparison.

They were a great comparison to Homing Missiles; save 2 points, but lock yourself into speed 3 moves which are very awkward with a minimum range. It rewards you for good planning and flying, and extra-rewards great planning and flying with the speed 4/5 attack dice 'strafing run'. A good friend of mine uses a cruise missile squad, and there have been games where I've out-guessed his attack runs and jumped from >range 3 to <range 2 and murdered him with range 1 shots on ships who've given up lightweight frame for guidance chips, and others where he's guessed it just so and his three 5-dice attacks have one-shotted a striker apiece. And that's all, ultimately, down to flying.

That is a really good thing , to me.

Compare Harpoons to homing missiles and concussion missiles, though, and even if you don't give a drat about the Harpooned condition , they still seem to be just better.

The problem is the number of ways the condition occurs. The fact that it 'splashes' when you die, even if you don't take a critical, means it's never 'wasted', and two missiles in an alpha strike will often get a kill AND do splash damage.

Also - They cancelled the Nerf Harpoon, I'm afraid:

This is for easier comparison, based on data from the Vassal league with 5374 ships from 1910 squads used in 955 games, which means it's a huge number. Of those, 663 ships in 415 squads used Harpoons, so 12% of ships and 22% of squads (which make sense because 1 ship per squad is enough, hence more squads than ships). You can see the win percentages split by faction. The bars are labelled with both the exact number and the amount of squads it's based on.

Edit: change graph to squads without harpoons vs squads with harpoons. Previous graph had everything vs a subset of itself, which is not quite correct. That means I also correct the exact percentages, but the result is pretty much the same.

You can see that all three, imperials (+2.29), rebels (+5.45%) and scum (+7.59) got a small (e: or not so small for rebel and scum) increase in wins percentage.

Interestingly, 77 of these 113 rebel lists with harpoons had it on Miranda. The 157 rebel ships using Harpoons were almost half Miranda, and 33 more were Nym. So two already problematic ships are 70% of all rebel Harpoon carriers.

Scum had 265 ships using Harpoons, and 142 of them were on Scurrgs (54%), with Khiraxz having 68 and Z95s 33. That sums up to 243 and is 92% of all scum harpoons. The Khiraxz had 20 losses and 17 wins, so clearly they are not responsible for the +7.5% improvement.

Which means the problem is, once again, Scurrg and Miranda.

Edit: I think it's fascinating that Scum gets the strongest boost out of Harpoons. +7.5% is a good increase for an upgrade... But it's again Rebels where the improvement has more impact I think. Increasing wins from 40% to 50% is good, but I'd expect it to get harder the higher the number is. Getting up to 60% is more important than getting up to 50%. But most interestingly, Imperials don't benefit as much. Which is puzzling to me as I thought imperial highPS is the carrier for Harpoons? But clearly that is not the case.

5 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Agreed on cruise missiles. I like them - even when on the receiving end - because they are awkward to use to full effect but reward you massively when you do. Proton Rockets are a very good comparison.

They were a great comparison to Homing Missiles; save 2 points, but lock yourself into speed 3 moves which are very awkward with a minimum range. It rewards you for good planning and flying, and extra-rewards great planning and flying with the speed 4/5 attack dice 'strafing run'. A good friend of mine uses a cruise missile squad, and there have been games where I've out-guessed his attack runs and jumped from >range 3 to <range 2 and murdered him with range 1 shots on ships who've given up lightweight frame for guidance chips, and others where he's guessed it just so and his three 5-dice attacks have one-shotted a striker apiece. And that's all, ultimately, down to flying.

That is a really good thing , to me.

Same, i do like them. Theyre deadly as **** but are often difficult to pull off. I've gone games with my Intensity Vader where he never used it due to my opponent managing to be too far for a roll to get him in arc or poking juuuust into R1 knowing i was going 4fwd to get cruises off. Not exactly upset since i take the cruise missiles to give him punch at a distance, not to compensate for lack of R1 damage (which he definitely doesnt have).

Theyre an ordnance you can fly against and prevent from ever being shot at full strength if youre smart enough. And especially on non-EM or reload users, they want that max damage before they bother with it. Its probably the only missile that normal ordnance boats actually DONT want so it really feels like that ordnance designed for the random missile user i've always wanted.

Then harpoons came up. Ugh. I mean, people are putting it on Miranda now....since when did she EVER take non-bomb ordnance?!

2 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

Then harpoons came up. Ugh. I mean, people are putting it on Miranda now....since when did she EVER take non-bomb ordnance?!

Homing missiles were a thing on her for quite some time, I think?

Metawing has 282 Homing missiles on 830 Mirandas from Wave 9 to Wave 11, so over a third took non-bomb ordnance.

3 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

You can see that all three, imperials (+2.29), rebels (+5.45%) and scum (+7.59) got a small (e: or not so small for rebel and scum) increase in wins percentage.

I have to wonder if this is due to the fact that Rebels and Scum have easy access to Harpoon ordnance carriers with 3-attack primary (i.e. can setup guaranteed Guidance-Harpoon chain) and Imperials don't.

16 minutes ago, PT106 said:

I have to wonder if this is due to the fact that Rebels and Scum have easy access to Harpoon ordnance carriers with 3-attack primary (i.e. can setup guaranteed Guidance-Harpoon chain) and Imperials don't.

I really love that even on upgrades that Imps can use, they still get crapped on by getting worse versions of said cards. Add this on top of all the Scum and Rebels Only cards and you can see why I named my account the way I did. Pulsed Ray Shields and Arc Caster still make me mad.

What about some anti-ordinance tech instead of straight-up nerfing Harpoons?

Designing a card to specifically neuter other cards is never the answer.

Autos at least works in all cases R3, so its not specifically anti-turret.

Also, Countermeasures and Black One are available.

16 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Also, Countermeasures and Black One are available.

Wow. Sooo many options...

theres also *gasp* JAM TOKENS!!!

*runs away from the shower of rocks*