Cool ideas.. ions need a boost..

Advanced Ionizers - Modification - 2 points

"Once per round, when an enemy ship would receive an Ion token, you may instead place that token on one of that ship's upgrade cards until the end of the next combat step. While an upgrade has an ion token on it, treat that upgrade as though it has been discarded."

It's tricky to write it out in X-Wing parlance for sure, at least without taking the lazy way out and making it a condition.

1 hour ago, Tvboy said:

Advanced Ionizers - Modification - 2 points

"Once per round, when an enemy ship would receive an Ion token, you may instead place that token on one of that ship's upgrade cards until the end of the next combat step. While an upgrade has an ion token on it, treat that upgrade as though it has been discarded."

It's tricky to write it out in X-Wing parlance for sure, at least without taking the lazy way out and making it a condition.

I feel like you need some wording to make it come from the ship that's shooting. Something like "when attacking". That makes it not work with bombs but it also avoids the "Sabine problem" whereby a card on a completely different ship somehow illogically boosts another ship.

And instead of discarding, since that has several interactions with existing mechanics maybe instead "ignore all text on that card"

On the surface I like the idea of simply saying that ionized ships have certain upgrades turned off (system, tech, secondary weapons, etc). Thematic and could curb some of the combo-wing we see. I would be curious to see how this affected a meta.

6 minutes ago, AT Leader said:

On the surface I like the idea of simply saying that ionized ships have certain upgrades turned off (system, tech, secondary weapons, etc). Thematic and could curb some of the combo-wing we see. I would be curious to see how this affected a meta.

One Week Later:

ION affecting UPGRADE CARDS is the ULTIMATE NPE!!! 1 2 3 4 23>

By Hates2Lose, yesterday at 1:03PM

I don't know if its ion, but what about this:

Assign this condition card to target ship. Flip each upgrade card on that ship face down and place a time token on the upgrade card. At the end of the activation phase the ship may remove a time token from an upgrade card. If the ship no longer has any time tokens, discard this condition.

Punishes ships for having too many upgrade cards.

10 hours ago, Boba Rick said:

What if ion tokens could exhaust an opponent's upgrade card for a turn? It would have to be a part of the ship itself, not an EPT. And you can't really ionize a hull upgrade, so I think it couldn't really affect modifications.

But what about system, tech, and secondary weapons? No, you can't fire that TLT this turn because I ionized it. No, your Fire Control System does not trigger to give you a Target Lock.

Too strong? Then make it require two or three ion tokens.

It should be an either/or - you can't make your opponent space drift AND exhaust one of their cards as well.

i love everything about the concept, but its virtually imposible to impliment. video games are for complicated mechanics like that, sadly.

16 minutes ago, Vontoothskie said:

i love everything about the concept, but its virtually imposible to impliment. video games are for complicated mechanics like that, sadly.

Armada uses a similar concept. It's not impossible by any stretch of the imagination. See the link for one example (there are several others within the game): http://starwars-armada.wikia.com/wiki/MS-1_Ion_Cannon

its impossible because after 11 waves of game design, almost every card would need to be rebalanced. having every shot temporarily bobba fett upgrades is either too powerful or would need a list of exceptions.

like what, you ionize my squad of scyks with an ion torpedo and all now 5 cannons dont work? or if we both have ion turret y-wings shooting out of arc, could the one that shoots first disable the others turret and deny it a shot? the ion turret and ion cannon upgrades dont need that big a buff, and while conceptually glitching things out is cool, i would not play a game where control lists got even more powerful

4 minutes ago, Vontoothskie said:

its impossible because after 11 waves of game design, almost every card would need to be rebalanced. having every shot temporarily bobba fett upgrades is either too powerful or would need a list of exceptions.

like what, you ionize my squad of scyks with an ion torpedo and all now 5 cannons dont work?

Heck yeah dude I think that sounds awesome. It sure beats eating some harpoons with that same Scyck squad.

6 hours ago, HammerGibbens said:

One Week Later:

ION affecting UPGRADE CARDS is the ULTIMATE NPE!!! 1 2 3 4 23>

By Hates2Lose, yesterday at 1:03PM

Quite probable.

Part of why to not need field the old damage deck was/is:

"Munitions Failure (Original Damage Deck)

Type: Ship

Immediately choose 1 of your secondary weapon Upgrade cards and discard it.

Then flip this card facedown."

Receiving this crit is pretty much game-over for a number of ships (and quite a NPE). The here proposed ion-variant does the same, while being only one turn, it is still a game-changer.

Not entirely impossible that it would warp the meta heavily towards the faction with few upgrade cards and ships like x7 Defenders.

7 hours ago, HammerGibbens said:

One Week Later:

ION affecting UPGRADE CARDS is the ULTIMATE NPE!!! 1 2 3 4 23>

By Hates2Lose, yesterday at 1:03PM

This is probably the biggest issue I have with the concept, on reflection.

It's not that it's awkward to implement, though i think it would be, it's that if implemented successfully, it makes ions even more likely to completely invalidate major parts of an opponent's list and that's SO anti-fun.

It's powerful against broken stuff, but the answer to that is to fix the broken stuff, not bring in a new element that's powerful against everything.

17 hours ago, Boba Rick said:

What if ion tokens could exhaust an opponent's upgrade card for a turn?

Interesting idea, I like it. And I like the idea of a rules change.

15 hours ago, Scum4Life said:

A lso a single 19 point ion Cannon Scyk should not be able to deactivate palatine or a TLT.

I don't see why it should not be able to do that. What's the difference towards other upgrades, the points cost? So where do you draw the line? I say don't draw a line, disable anything. It's easier that way.

The biggest question for me is timing. Out-ps-ing the opponents ion cannon is not healthy, so maybe delay the effect for one round? Therefore any ionization takes effect in the round after the token/condition/whatever has been received, which is consistent to movement.

Another question for me is if the token should be removed in any case or after one denied usage. I tend to removal after one turn. Makes the concept of token stacking obsolete.

15 hours ago, Boba Rick said:

That being said, I don't know if I like the change you've suggested here. It looks like the ion tokens go from the upgrade card, then to the ship, then removes. That seems too powerful for me.

I agree it's too powerful to be implemented in the rules change. But that concept could be explored by implementing a modification which improvises ionization effects to trickle down from upgrades to the ship.

If people are so concerned about the ion token on an upgrade being too powerful or a negative play experience, what if the affected player assigned where the ion token goes?

32 minutes ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

If people are so concerned about the ion token on an upgrade being too powerful or a negative play experience, what if the affected player assigned where the ion token goes?

Well I would then spam 0pt upgrades which I don't need just to make sure I can dump the ion somewhere safe - making ion basically worse than it is now

2 hours ago, flooze said:

Interesting idea, I like it. And I like the idea of a rules change.

I don't see why it should not be able to do that. What's the difference towards other upgrades, the points cost? So where do you draw the line? I say don't draw a line, disable anything. It's easier that way.

The biggest question for me is timing. Out-ps-ing the opponents ion cannon is not healthy, so maybe delay the effect for one round? Therefore any ionization takes effect in the round after the token/condition/whatever has been received, which is consistent to movement.

Another question for me is if the token should be removed in any case or after one denied usage. I tend to removal after one turn. Makes the concept of token stacking obsolete.

I agree it's too powerful to be implemented in the rules change. But that concept could be explored by implementing a modification which improvises ionization effects to trickle down from upgrades to the ship.

I agree, this should be a mod (so it's accessible to all ion secondary capable ships.

Perhaps rather than placing an ion token on an upgrade we could simply flip an equipped upgrade facedown.

After the affected ship has activated in combat and movement phases. The upgrade is flipped back up.

With regards to ion Torpedo, you would have to give up a mod slot so no guidance chips, means it is less likely to happen. But it let's reword the mod so only the defender can have this done to them. Especially as it doesn't make sense to have targeted a while group of ships subsystems, while targeting nth a subsystem of a single ship is plausible.

I think allowing the defender to choose which upgrade is disabled might work but will most likely lead to people doing exactly what Flooze has said. Equip pointless upgrades to dump ions too. So attacker gets to choose.

Therefore I suggest if an upgrade is worth 4/5 or more then to flip it you must cancel all damage.

Also I think all upgrades excluding titles should be flipable.

45 minutes ago, flooze said:

Well I would then spam 0pt upgrades which I don't need just to make sure I can dump the ion somewhere safe - making ion basically worse than it is now

Action to remove an ion then.

The obvious way would be 'next time it's used, remove the ion token(s) instead', but that makes ionising secondaries essentially the same as removing them.

So for secondary weapons, maybe you have each ion token lower its red dice by 1, meaning you can ion them out of use entirely with enough time, or you can reduce their effectiveness for a shot, and it means the enemy has to clear them to get their shooting back to par. But you'd have to incude a new-blinded-pilot clause for clearing them even if you don't have a shot and you see why I'm concerned about complexity maybe

5 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

The obvious way would be 'next time it's used, remove the ion token(s) instead', but that makes ionising secondaries essentially the same as removing them.

So for secondary weapons, maybe you have each ion token lower its red dice by 1, meaning you can ion them out of use entirely with enough time, or you can reduce their effectiveness for a shot, and it means the enemy has to clear them to get their shooting back to par. But you'd have to incude a new-blinded-pilot clause for clearing them even if you don't have a shot and you see why I'm concerned about complexity maybe

This is an interesting idea, we can avoid the blinded pilot stuff by having the ion token removed after the affected ship has activated in both combat and movement phases.

6 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

This is probably the biggest issue I have with the concept, on reflection.

It's not that it's awkward to implement, though i think it would be, it's that if implemented successfully, it makes ions even more likely to completely invalidate major parts of an opponent's list and that's SO anti-fun.

It's powerful against broken stuff, but the answer to that is to fix the broken stuff, not bring in a new element that's powerful against everything.

I agree that if something like this was possible it must be designed with great care. A heavy ion meta is a world that I do not want to live in!

Extra complication, but what about being able to spend a focus to 'de-ionize' your self?

13 hours ago, HammerGibbens said:

Heck yeah dude I think that sounds awesome. It sure beats eating some harpoons with that same Scyck squad.

what?! so break every card because a card is broken?

i hate harpoons too, but if ion did whats proposed here, it would nullify all secondary weapons and combat phase upgrades on non-aces while leaving high ps pilots alone. Nym and miranda etc. get buffed, all generics and mid ps ships get nerfed, and on top of that whole archetypes which rely on upgrades are removed from the game. ironically many of the most powerful upgrades like r2d2, advanced sensors, ptl etc are unaffected because they trigger before ion could be applied, so it skews the whole balance even further towards pilot skill and action economy being the only things that matter. like if you dont hit first, you dont hit at all.

like i said the concept is excellent, but mechanically it would turn most upgrades into handicaps.

7 minutes ago, Vontoothskie said:

what?! so break every card because a card is broken?

I hear ya and the last thing I would want to do is make Miranda Nym stronger.

Make it de-ionize at the start of the next combat phase for non-weapon upgrades and for weapons, you remove the ions after you use that weapon to roll 0 dice or skip an attack, however you would word it. That could be this turn or next turn depending on PS. Maybe some types of upgrades require 2 ion tokens to deactivate? I think there's a way to word it that keeps it concise, fair, and fun and we just need imagination to find that balance.

Although I still never see the point of these threads. No one ever comes in and is like "yep I work at FFG and we'll go ahead and feed this on up the ladder to the guys, thanks for doing our job for us"

3 hours ago, HammerGibbens said:

I hear ya and the last thing I would want to do is make Miranda Nym stronger.

Make it de-ionize at the start of the next combat phase for non-weapon upgrades and for weapons, you remove the ions after you use that weapon to roll 0 dice or skip an attack, however you would word it. That could be this turn or next turn depending on PS. Maybe some types of upgrades require 2 ion tokens to deactivate? I think there's a way to word it that keeps it concise, fair, and fun and we just need imagination to find that balance.

Although I still never see the point of these threads. No one ever comes in and is like "yep I work at FFG and we'll go ahead and feed this on up the ladder to the guys, thanks for doing our job for us"

very true. i figure these threads are for X-wing 2.0 or house rules.

i play house rules all the time so i figured that was the aim here

I would say a mod upgrade, 1 pt

Ionizing damage

you May equip another modification upgrade. (Maybe)

when a ship is hit by your attack place an ion token on one of the target’s Turret or Cannon secondary weapon, System or Tech upgrade. That upgrade is ‘ionized’ and is considered to be discarded.

Ion tokens placed on upgrades can be removed by spending a focus token,

Ion tokens placed by your secondary weapons or pilot or upgrade abilities may also be placed on upgrades instead of on a ship.

(this way self inflicted ion tokens can be moved around a bit as well or removed with an existing focus. Probably a boon to Rebel Scum tho....)