1 hour ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Just give them the Vaksai title. (I mean, not literally, but the exact same mechanics.)

One like it, yes, same idea on the ship's design.

1 minute ago, Darth Meanie said:

because these guys want Chips, LWF, and AT, which are all competing for the same slot.

Give them a Vaksai like title where mods are all reduced by (-1) to a minimum of zero, it gets auto extra munitions token on any ordinance mods, give it the ability to take multiple 'general' modifications, and add a crew slot. Done. It'll be flyable.

No EPT though, lets not. Errrr, FFG screwed up with that Nym EPT with turret, pilot ability and all those slots.

2 hours ago, eagletsi111 said:

I always thought they should have something like when mentioned, in what little lore there was. This ships were nearly immune to Ion weapons and tractor beams and other devices, due to emp shielding and their hull.

Title: 0 Pts

Count this ship as large for all game effects. Tractors don't work on it, and it needs two Ion tokens to be ioned, etc.

Here are two others I thought of:

Title: 0 pt

High Explosive Ammunition

Each Torp, Missile and bomb upgrade add 1 crit when attack or detonate.

Title: 0 pts

Ammo Racks:

Count this card as Extra munitions

i like anything that makes the tankier without making alpha strikes even stupider to play against, so your ion/tractor immunity is cool. its also a bulky ship, so assuming it has the mass for large ship only upgrades is cool.

in game terms ion immunity could give the punisher some weird plays like ion bombing your own ships and opponents together on purpose. that might be useless or OP depending on the direction the game goes.

alternatively letting the punisher or a dpecific pilot detonate all its ordinance on death would be hillarious! deathtrain indead

Punishers are not bad now but not quite there. I actually took them to a 132 player regional and went 3-3 with this

https://geordanr.github.io/xwing/?f=Galactic Empire&d=v4!s!146:245,-1,-1,231,-1,237,-1:-1:31:;146:245,126,-1,231,-1,41,24:-1:31:;146:245,126,-1,231,-1,41,24:-1:31:&sn=Punishment&obs=

Round 1 vs qd and 3 harpoon boats. Win 100-35

r2 qd x7 vessery and Ryad win 100-0

r3 nym miranda loss 0-100, I did get nym down to 1 hull and should have killed him but blanked on a few shots. I would say this match up is nearly impossible for the punishers though.

r4 bossk and ketsu loss 72-100, this could have gone either way, ketsu had 2 hull left at the end.

r5 Vader Rac, loss 0-100, Vader had 2 hull and Rac 2 more would have been half points, I played badly here, made tactical and flying errors.

r6 Poe, fenn lowrick. Win 100-35

i think a title like

for each unused ordinance slot you may place an ordinance token on an equipped ordinance card for 0 points would be great. Also when you boost you may perform a free barrel roll would be interesting as well.

30 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

No EPT though, lets not. Errrr, FFG screwed up with that Nym EPT with turret, pilot ability and all those slots.

Yeah, but it's not the EPT that's broken, it's Nym.

TIE Bombers are running around with an EPT and nobody's bent. Gamma Squadron VETS made the Bomber a thing without wrecking anything else. This thing is just a bloated bomber with too many upgrade slots and no way to effectively deliver them.

Oh, we like them.

It's just that competitively they suck.

1 hour ago, clanofwolves said:

One like it, yes, same idea on the ship's design.

Give them a Vaksai like title where mods are all reduced by (-1) to a minimum of zero, it gets auto extra munitions token on any ordinance mods, give it the ability to take multiple 'general' modifications, and add a crew slot. Done. It'll be flyable.

No EPT though, lets not. Errrr, FFG screwed up with that Nym EPT with turret, pilot ability and all those slots.

Exactly. Nym has a unique bombing mechanic and a turret. The punisher has neither.

OMG @Fuzzywookie IS ******* BACK! WE NEED A PARTY! GET THE NOISEMAKERS! GET THE PARTY HATS! YAY!

Hey buddy. Nice seeing you. What's new on Kashyyyk?

Oh. Too soon?

8 minutes ago, Celestial Lizards said:

OMG @Fuzzywookie IS ******* BACK! WE NEED A PARTY! GET THE NOISEMAKERS! GET THE PARTY HATS! YAY!

Hey buddy. Nice seeing you. What's new on Kashyyyk?

Oh. Too soon?

I'd love to see a title that added +1 agility and allowed the Punisher to be treated as a large-based ship for tractor/ion purposes.

15 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Because both those effects are pretty easy to avoid and Punishers are trivial to kill.

Their big issue is that they're just not efficient in points terms - they struggle to remove a number of points from the board equal to or greater than what they cost to bring.

The only point at which they're arguably worth it is as superjousters with LWF and UGR, but even then, they're laughably easy to flank/arc dodge.

I LIKE them. They're just terrible.

^THIS^

TIE Punishers are designed to be better bombers without really fixing the problem that TIE Bomber had that kept them terrible. Sadly the only thing that fixed torpedo bombers is well stuff that never really transferred over to TIE Bombers and TIE Punishers. Torpedoes sucked until Wave 8 when Jumpmasters came out, unfortunately Jumpmasters were better as torpedo boats than Bombers and Punishers. Likewise Bombs sucked until Wave 10 with the Scurrg came out, but again the Scurrg became a better bomber than TIE Bombers and TIE Punishers.

TIE Punishers were poorly designed, TIE Bombers can be understandably bad because it was still early in the game and all the mechanics of the flight path system and the dice were not as thoroughly analyzed as they are now. But TIE Punishers, the devs should have known better.

22 hours ago, Fuzzywookie said:

(100)

Cutlass Squadron Pilot (33) - TIE Punisher
Trajectory Simulator (1), Extra Munitions (2), Seismic Torpedo (2), Harpoon Missiles (4), •Bomblet Generator (3), Long-Range Scanners (0)

Cutlass Squadron Pilot (33) - TIE Punisher
Trajectory Simulator (1), Extra Munitions (2), Seismic Torpedo (2), Harpoon Missiles (4), •Bomblet Generator (3), Long-Range Scanners (0)

Onyx Squadron Pilot (34) - TIE Defender
Tractor Beam (1), TIE/D (0), Twin Ion Engine Mk. II (1)

punisher moves. Target lock any ship. Next. Launch bomb. Punisher moves action shoot torpedo. 2 damaging effects before shooting. 9 life. Shields and hull. Shoots harpoon. I understand a little pricy. But ???

Just compare a Punisher to a Scurrg or a Kwing and youll pretty much get your answer...

27 minutes ago, Thormind said:

Just compare a Punisher to a Scurrg or a Kwing and youll pretty much get your answer...

It is especially galling when you realize the Punisher was released alongside the K-wing.

1 hour ago, impspy said:

It is especially galling when you realize the Punisher was released alongside the K-wing.

Yea, crazy aint it?

Take Miranda, lose the slam, the turret, the crew slot, the PWT, the regen and you then have a Punisher. Now see how long Miranda survives in the wild without those and you will understand why nobody flies a Punisher, competitively that is.

For fun, everyone should fly adv sensor deathrain. That would even put a smile on Eyor's mug

31 minutes ago, wurms said:

Yea, crazy aint it?

Take Miranda, lose the slam, the turret, the crew slot, the PWT, the regen and you then have a Punisher. Now see how long Miranda survives in the wild without those and you will understand why nobody flies a Punisher, competitively that is.

What if we took off the turret slot from the K-Wing since it has a 360 fireing arc? *ducks for cover*

Punishers have an awesome upgrade bar, because it's designed to work with all the upgrade goodies equipped.

Problem is, that makes it so expensive, that they can't possibly pull their weight in a 100/6 game. It would need a title card or something, that gives it a 3-4 pts cost reduction, allows a 2nd mod upgrade, and decreases the cost of all equipped upgrade cards by 1. THAT would make it pretty cool.

Redline with Bomblet + LRS + EM + Plasma Torps + TS + LWF + UGR right now would be 40 points. He would be much more of a tempting option for 31-32 points.

Unless they have LWF, Punishers are easy to pop (which is funny as **** because people seem to think Nym is hard to pop...literally +1hp guys...its not THAT big a difference). If they have LWF, theyre horrible ordnance users because no EPT to counter lack of LRS/Gchips.

Deathrain with AdvSensor, Bombletts, Unguided, and LWF is pretty freakin' deadly, but not in any other build or any other pilot. Just another example of no matter how terrible the ship is, theres probably 1 pilot that makes it function immensely better than his/her peers (keyan, corran, vader, inquis, or nym to name a few).

The reason theyre so easy to kill is because theyre slow-dial and have...boost for some reason. They HAVE to joust to get their shots off, and are terrible jousters due to their agility and lack of evasive tactics to get out of arcs or escape quickly. This is why Deathrain is actually good, he doesnt need to joust and is shockingly nimble, but the others suck a big fat one.

Most common fix i see suggested is essentially "free EM" or "Add reload to your bar" - this literally would do NOTHING, punishers do not need help getting more available shots it needs help actually getting the shots off to begin with and not dying in the process. Something like ablative platings to prevent Critical Effects or an in-arc defensive boost would help them 100000x more than "free EM"

And you cant really make them cheaper. Make them any cheaper and then they step on Bomber toes, which just flips the argument "why run a punisher when a bomber does it cheaper?" to the punisher's favor.

I've often thought that ace packs would be more interesting if there were several titles that did different things.

For the Punisher, for example, one that gives reload and a discount on all ordanance upgrades, one that gives vaksai-like perks (maybe 'you may equip any number of modification upgrades, up to a total cost of X'), one that gives a discounted EPT slot (probably unique pilots only).

Make it a choice, create variety and different builds.

Trajectory Sims and unguided are massive boosts to the generic punisher's effectiveness

Problem is they're made of ******* paper. They ought to have an upsilon's defensive profile for their cost or AT LEAST reinforce

Awaiting Imperial Bastards ace expac (punisher and phantom)

Because folks really want Reload:

"Repurposed Bomb Bays. 1 point Bomb upgrade. Imperial Only. If you have no other Bomb upgrades equipped, you may perform the Reload action." So it works on Bombers, Punishers, Decimators, and Firesprays. I don't like it as a modification, since I don't think quite every ship should have access to reload. On the other hand, I don't think a title alone is enough. It'd be nice to get Reload on Y-Wings, but I think Imperial Only would be wise, considering Miranda's pilot ability and how she can regenerate at very low opportunity cost with TLT.

//

As to the question of the OP, I don't think it's that people don't like TIE Punishers. I love TIE Punishers, and I'm sure a lot of other people do too. But I also like winning. Right now, those two things just don't go together that well.

12 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Because folks really want Reload:

"Repurposed Bomb Bays. 1 point Bomb upgrade. Imperial Only. If you have no other Bomb upgrades equipped, you may perform the Reload action." So it works on Bombers, Punishers, Decimators, and Firesprays. I don't like it as a modification, since I don't think quite every ship should have access to reload. On the other hand, I don't think a title alone is enough. It'd be nice to get Reload on Y-Wings, but I think Imperial Only would be wise, considering Miranda's pilot ability and how she can regenerate at very low opportunity cost with TLT.

//

As to the question of the OP, I don't think it's that people don't like TIE Punishers. I love TIE Punishers, and I'm sure a lot of other people do too. But I also like winning. Right now, those two things just don't go together that well.

Well it really isn't reload, although that was first a pilot ability for the dinky little scyk and then it became an action and these quad bomb pod fighters have less ammo than these smaller...

Well enough of that, you would be correct to say that wouldn't make the TIE Punisher any better. What would make them better is an EPT and trashmech slot and give them the unnerfed R3-agromech and deadeye combo. At least it wouldn't be on a turret if it was.

6 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Well it really isn't reload, although that was first a pilot ability for the dinky little scyk and then it became an action and these quad bomb pod fighters have less ammo than these smaller...

I hear you. I kinda think that such a "Repurposed Bomb Bays" upgrade would do more for the TIE Bomber than the Punisher. With it, a TIE Bomber would become a cheaper reload platform. Only 1 point cheaper than the Starwing, but it's got one fewer HP and no shields. I don't think they'd be too popular, but it'd be an interesting list-building option (more so if equipped with Cruise for 20 points...).

6 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Well enough of that, you would be correct to say that wouldn't make the TIE Punisher any better. What would make them better is an EPT and trashmech slot and give them the unnerfed R3-agromech and deadeye combo. At least it wouldn't be on a turret if it was.

As I think about it, these would make Punishers stronger, but I don't want any of them. Kimogilas and Gunboats and Scurrgs can all play the Deadeye game, (Kimo with Overclocked R4, for that old goodness); Gunboats have the reload/SLAM game. I'd like for Punishers to have a different flavor, but still be able to mostly do their role. What I want for a Punisher is probably that it's f'ing hard to kill. As much fun as it would be to slap Accuracy Corrector on there, and boost about with LWF, I think they need tankiness. Maybe reinforce or even regen! That'd make a Punisher feel different. Maybe allow them to equip two Sensor upgrades, and give them a discount, so it'd be easy to have AccC/AdvS for a nimble, accurate Deathrain, or add Sensor Jammer or some new sort of Interdictor ECM Suite that can be paired with FCS on a Redline.

I want punishers to be super shooty:

TIE/it

Title, TIE Punisher only. 0 points. Dual card.

TIE/it: Targetting Laser Pods: Once per round, after attacking, you may make an attack with an equipped secondary weapon.

When equipped secondary weapons require you to discard them, do not do so.

TIE/it: Expanded Mine Pods: When you would discard a [bomb] upgrade to drop a bomb, you may either drop two identical tokens, one using the [1 bank right] template and 1 using the [1 bank left] template or you may choose not to do discard the upgrade.

Loaded for Anything: Missile Missile Torp Torp. 6 points. Imperial only. Action: assign a focus token to your ship or acquire a target lock. Increase your primary weapon value by two until the end of the round.

Am I the only person that doesn't like to use Tie Punisher's b/c they're sooo ugly? I won't play with anything that's ugly, no matter how good it is. I shouldn't be excited to see my own ship obliterated so that I don't have to look at it anymore.

TIE Interdictor - Title - Punisher Only - May equip two additional mods. All equipped upgrades have their cost reduced by 1 to a min of 0.

Hardened Shields - Punisher Only - Mod - After you are dealt damage, reduce that damage by 1 to a min of 1.

28 minutes ago, Thrawn86 said:

Am I the only person that doesn't like to use Tie Punisher's b/c they're sooo ugly? I won't play with anything that's ugly, no matter how good it is. I shouldn't be excited to see my own ship obliterated so that I don't have to look at it anymore.