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....)

I think a total reworking of the Ion system is required, not just a tack-on series of upgrades. Firstly, a remake of the Ion rules reference card to do the heavy work:

Ion Rules Reference Card:

Ion tokens may be assigned to either a ship , a ship's dial , or one of a ship's upgrade cards (excluding [title], [crew], [EPT] and modification cards). When a ship, its dial or one of its upgrades has 1 or more ion tokens, that ship is ionised . When a ship executes a green or white maneuver, it may remove any number of shield tokens to remove that number of ion tokens plus one from it, it's dial and/or its upgrade cards.

When a ship is assigned an ion token through an attacker's ability, the attacker where to assign the ion token. When a ship is assigned an ion token other than through an attacker's ability, the player controlling that ship chooses where to assign the token.

If an ion token is assigned to a ship , that ship cannot perform actions on that ship's action bar except the [focus] and [evade] actions.

If an ion token is assigned to a ship's dial , that ship does not assign a maneuver during the next planning phase. During that activation phase, the ship instead executes a white 1-straight maneuver.

If an ion token is assigned to a ship's upgrade card , that ship cannot use that upgrade card.

Consequences:

Now Ion tokens have 3 uses. The first prevents the use of repositioning actions and target locks (with a side benefit of disabling reinforce), intentionally including both cloak and SLAM actions. The second is the original effect, with a buff to 1-shot ionising large base ships. Both of these are brutal but the third option is where Ion now shines.

The third is the crucial change - ionisation is now an effective counter to alpha strikes (ion the missile and/or Deadeye), TLT turrets (ion the turret), arc-dodgers (ion the ship), bombers (ion the bombs/genius/TS) and so on.

Of course, Ion abilities are already absurdly difficult to trigger. Ion turrets have the range restriction, and are typically on low-PS platforms. Ion Pulse missiles and Ion torpedoes are very hard to hit with (excluding Blount, hmm). EMP device becomes hilariously terrifying on a cloaked Quadjumper. Feedback array, pulsed ray shields and so forth are now much more flexible for the user.

Overall, I think this rendition of Ion weapons won't make them overpowered, or bring them to the fore, but it will make them an enjoyable control element of the game (even to opponents).

I assume you intend that ships with 0 shields can remove one ion token otherwise lol no

4 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

I assume you intend that ships with 0 shields can remove one ion token otherwise lol no

Exactly. That way every ship has an innate defense against Ion tokens. Low agility ships spend shields to remove tokens above one, and high agility ships *should* only take 1 a turn, which they can remove on their standard maneuvers.

On 2/27/2018 at 4:58 PM, Makaze said:

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"

Upgrades affect ships aside from the ship they are equipped to all the time. Kanan crew, Jyn Erso, Jan Ors, Fleet Officer, Operations Specialist, Black One, Palpatine. You are misattributing the problem with Sabine to being a problem with the mechanic. I suppose I would change the first sentence to be "Once per round, when an enemy ship at range 1-2 would become ionized...".

Just now, Tvboy said:

Upgrades affect ships aside from the ship they are equipped to all the time. Kanan crew, Jyn Erso, Jan Ors, Fleet Officer, Operations Specialist, Black One, Palpatine. You are misattributing the problem with Sabine to being a problem with the mechanic. I suppose I would change the first sentence to be "Once per round, when an enemy ship at range 1-2 would become ionized...".

No I'm, somewhat logically, assuming that a card called an Advanced Ionizer is a piece of a equipment installed on a ship that boosts the ion weapon on that ship as opposed to creating a magical field that makes only friendly ions better. I also didn't think you should be able to pay only 2 points and have it effect all ion weapons you bring, that seemed a bit too good. Once per round helps though I still think I prefer it only working for the firing ship, but that's just personal preference

Those other crew represent either the Force or coordination and leadership abilities, but yeah Black One doesn't make much sense either sense. As for Sabine she's got lots of problems but her global nature as a means of side stepping having to remember which ship dropped which bomb is just a pet peeve of mine

18 hours ago, Astech said:

Overall, I think this rendition of Ion weapons won't make them overpowered, or bring them to the fore, but it will make them an enjoyable control element of the game (even to opponents).

Sounds pretty well thought out, and dare I say elegant. Ion pulse rocket GUNBOATS will rule!

18 hours ago, Astech said:

upgrade cards (excluding [title], [crew], [EPT] and modification cards).

That’s ok, as long as Leebo can ionize a discarded ordnance upgrade or something, he’s a super cheap EU! Too bad he doesn’t allow the ship to take AT as well.

4LOM would become pretty OP as well. And once you ionize cloaking device you can stay cloaked forever, and I guess Leebo on a stolen TIE might be the best scenerio there. Of course Dace Bonearm loves to run against self-ionizers. And GONK May have some use, but can’t directly spend his own shield tokens to de-ionize.

if an ionized upgrade is Boba’d is the ion token still there?

4 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

Sounds pretty well thought out, and dare I say elegant. Ion pulse rocket GUNBOATS will rule!

That’s ok, as long as Leebo can ionize a discarded ordnance upgrade or something, he’s a super cheap EU ! Too bad he doesn’t allow the ship to take AT as well.

4LOM would become pretty OP as well. And once you ionize cloaking device you can stay cloaked forever, and I guess Leebo on a stolen TIE might be the best scenerio there. Of course Dace Bonearm loves to run against self-ionizers. And GONK May have some use, but can’t directly spend his own shield tokens to de-ionize.

if an ionized upgrade is Boba ’d is the ion token still there?

Thanks. I put at least an hour's thought into the interactions, but didn't consider a player abusing the mechanic for themselves.

I really thought it would be strange for ion weaponry to affect organic things from a thematic viewpoint, but certain cards could definitely abuse this. You could also add feedback array to the list of abusive upgrades, since it can be used on itself each turn without consequence. The good news is that placing a second ion token on all these cards really breaks them.

Nevertheless I think the "assigning an ion token" text should be revised to:
When a friendly ship is assigned an ion token through a card mechanic other than a bomb, the opposing player chooses where to place the ion token.

This prevents abuse of the mechanic, because your opponent will put the ion token in the worst possible place. Bombs remain unaffected, because bombs are stupid.

Aw man, my Glitterstim is totally ionized! And I really wanted to do that red S-loop and pop that glitter because I’m so wired! Oh well.