24 minutes ago, SpikeSpiegel said:

But is there?

If they made Harpoons spend a target lock, no one would play them because of the lack of action economy and profiting/netting dice. If they made them 1 point higher, they'd sit around as binder chaff like Homing Missiles. If they took away the potential for splash damage, people would just run Mangler instead or use the points to bid for initiative or cram other ships/upgrades.

While I do believe Harpoons are powerful and effective, I don't think we should nerf them unless we reconsider the importance of ordinance and how much we actually want it in the game. Because once we ban Harpoons, people will still want to fly their Gunboats and make ordnance playable again, thus completing the circle of "muH metA" vs. "We want to play with these things"

I think there's space between.

First off, I think 5 point Harpoons would probably see play, but some folks would fly Concussion or Homing, instead of only ever Harpoons. Some folks would stick with Cruise Missilesm (which leave a lot more to skill, range control, and counterplay than other Missiles), and Plasma wouldn't seem so quaint.

In the post-Extra Munitions, post-Guidance Chips, pre-Cruise, pre-Harpoon world, there were some missiles and torpedos on ships other than Jumpmasters. It wasn't all the time, but it was probably a better middle-ground than things are now, or how they were before EM/GC. I mean, sometimes a thermostatic process will get the temperature about right.

10 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Because it's not a navigational hazard - after all, there's no reason through that part of the star system anymore, is there?

Ultimately, though, yes. You can complain about an imperial officer to his or her superior. Nobles, corporations, and influential crime bosses do do that and it often ends badly for the junior trying to do what he thought was the right thing in various "look, not every imperial officer was a [censored]!" stories.

Unfortunately, if the person you're complaining about is a Grand Moff, this doesn't leave you with many options - and certainly not one whose time you want to waste unless you're reeeaally sure they're going to agree with you that your complaint is justified.

Considering that the Legends Alderaan was on a trade route (Commenor Run), one has to wonder how many larger freighters met their fate in that asteroid belt before things shifted over. Making hyperlanes ain't like dusting crops kid. Without precise calculations you could

or too close to the surface of a former Jedi stronghold planet and that'd end your career in hyperspace topography real quick, wouldn't it?

8 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I think there's space between.

First off, I think 5 point Harpoons would probably see play, but some folks would fly Concussion or Homing, instead of only ever Harpoons. Some folks would stick with Cruise Missilesm (which leave a lot more to skill, range control, and counterplay than other Missiles), and Plasma wouldn't seem so quaint.

In the post-Extra Munitions, post-Guidance Chips, pre-Cruise, pre-Harpoon world, there were some missiles and torpedos on ships other than Jumpmasters. It wasn't all the time, but it was probably a better middle-ground than things are now, or how they were before EM/GC. I mean, sometimes a thermostatic process will get the temperature about right.

I think that's also a good issue to bring up as well. The game developers have tried their best to encourage ordnance usage in lists through regulating and buffing opportunity and consistency, probably starting with Deadeye, followed by FCS, and much later on Guidance Chips. While these fixes were implemented, they either weren't able OR were able to forecast the meta shifting effect of these upgrades through testing to realize that these buffs weren't effective until you broke them with a proper platform (Jumpmasters), through opportunity cost through economy (not spending locks and point reduction from Extra Munitions), and insurance through consistency (Chips).

My bet is that they were able to playtest all three of those things and still found them to be too broken like triple Jumpmasters, or were too ineffective or expensive to justify their use. Now their change in game mechanics (with the reload action) and a cost-effective munition that nets a decent amount of damage-per-point (Harpoons) on the most cost effective ship to carry them (Gunboat) has led to a surge in the use of munitions in many lists. Either they saw this coming and they did it anyway, or they actually couldn't predict it and it's blowing up the meta.

I feel like this is a good example of reactive design rather than fundamental design. We (those vocal against the "munitions-meta") are upset that the reactive build-up of upgrades have amounted to the current state of the effected fundamentals of the game.

And after all that, as such this is my opinion, I welcome it. If their design philosophy is to react to the meta, then we will see a fix soon through an FAQ/errata or another upgrade to counteract the effectiveness of Harpoons. I'm hoping for the latter, because I know people don't like hole-punching their pilot upgrade bar and FFG doesn't like including cards that people can't play right out of the box. Though, it is possible that pressure from Asmodee could see this design philosophy change since (I think) a lot of these printed developments came before FFG was bought out.

Hope this all makes sense and isn't a ranting jumble of words bc I typed this up while walking to my car from class.

On 2018-1-10 at 9:30 PM, Npmartian said:

Ordnance!

O-R-D-N-A-N-C-E!!

Explosives, not legal documents!

Folks still don't get it, but I appreciate the effort

On 2018-1-10 at 9:30 PM, Npmartian said:

On 11.1.2018 at 0:04 AM, clanofwolves said:

the Empire would even suck at doing this....

Funfact: In Legends propaganda leaflets are listed as one of the possible payloads for imperial bombers.