Hi all,

So I haven't seen any evidence that Lightweight frame exists anymore. I know it was brought in because the Tie s/f was found to be a bit too squishy without it. Then it turned out to be useful way of adding a bit more agility to ships that fit inbetween 2 and 3 green dice.

I suppose in 2.0 there is less need for green dice due to less instances of silly spike damage with poons and extremely accurate shots, so perhaps it has been removed due to this?

Either way, im not sure how well the strikers will fair now. :/

There's certainly no sign of it.

• Yes, that makes strikers much more fragile (essentially a Z-95 with more teeth and better manoeuvrability)
• You do find yourself not benefitting...maybe a third of the time?
  • I dunno. It's not something I've kept explicit track of, but you don't get your lightweight frame green die whenever you're at range 3, or obstructed, or being shot at by 2-dice attacks or an accuracy corrector TLT. It comes up more often than you'd think.
  • With range 3 bonuses applying to turrets and cannons, you're no worse off against (for example) Dash Rendar.
• Strikers have always melted fairly quickly when shot at. Not having to face 360' turrets is a big deal when you can pull unpredictable rubbish the way a TIE/sk can.
  • Seriously. Put a Black Squadron Striker in front of a Gold Squadron Y-wing at medium range. It's going to do a Koiogran turn or a Segnor's Loop to still have a shot. But whilst that may be obvious, depending on what aileron move and what red move it picks, it can be in any of three arcs of fire of the Y-wing after moving and still realistically have the Y-wing boresighted. You can laugh that off with a 360' turret. Much more of an issue if you have to pre-commit to pointing your turret in a single direction...
• On the plus side, whilst it may have been a bit of a 'fix card' it's not like TIE/x1 or TIE/x7 - it's not free.
  • Meaning whilst not being able to buy it is a bummer, that gives my TIE striker swarm 10 points (well, 20 in new money, I guess) to spend on something else. Better pilots, maybe, or bombs (they're supposed to have bomb slots now) or even a whole extra striker (if there's a points cut for the cheaper generics)
• You do still have that fourth hit point
  • Whilst the 'average durability' may be poorer, a TIE/sk has never been 'tough'. Heavy Swarmers only care about being 'tough enough' to avoid being one-shotted - if you can force an expensive ace, or even better a very expensive large ship, to waste a second attack to get a kill, you've used up a lot of your opponent's attack potential for the turn.
  • Barring a lucky critical, you cannot one-shot a hull 4 ship with a 3 dice attack. Blank dice (or wedge, crack shot, outmanoeuvre, or similar) can kill a TIE interceptor, but should leave the striker on one hull left.
  • Even with 4 hits, with 2 focused green dice, the odds are in your favour of getting 1 evade on 2 focused green dice, meaning you survive.

Did you copy/paste this from another conversation?

It's possible that LWF isn't really needed as much any more. With attack dice generally being less good in 2nd edition, having Agility 1 or 2 might not be such a hindrance.

Not word for word. But I have made similar comments in the striker threads when wondering myself if Lightweight Frame was still going to be a thing.

It might be worth pointing out that LWF was Imperial only in 1e, and so if it is in 2e would only appear in the Imperial conversion kit, which we've not seen the full contents of yet.

Beyond that, they might be holding off on reintroducing it until the First Order faction is also in the game. So I'd wait until we've seen their conversion pack before assuming it's gone for good.

Given the TIE Phantom is a 2 dice defence and now has a free mod slot, I'm pretty certain LWF is gone. Otherwise, things will get a bit weird there.

15 minutes ago, Cuz05 said:

Given the TIE Phantom is a 2 dice defence and now has a free mod slot, I'm pretty certain LWF is gone. Otherwise, things will get a bit weird there.

Eh, not so much. Cloaking is at odds with LWF anyways, and people have already played around with LWF phantoms as heavy fighters (A 4/3/2/2 stat line is a scary glass cannon still).

Well, it's not the strikers I worry about, given they are beastly arcdodgers.

But Aggressors, Bombers, Punishers... I always used LWF for them. Aggressors I think will really miss them if they are gone. It does not even have to add a dice, a simple defensive re-roll would be enough for me. Just something to make these craft stand out. They are TIEs after all.

LWF was a clever way to add an extra die under limited circumstances where an extra agility would have added too much to the cost outright. I think both the /sf and striker were designed with it in mind (it was too soon after the /sf release for it to be a fix). I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t in 2.0 because of the depressed offensive environment or if we see a point adjustment for those ships (or access to an upgrade of some other kind like it) that makes up for its lack of inclusion, thought it could still be in the imperial conversion kit. We’ll see, though.

Edit: One reason I didn't like LWF was the opportunity cost and it's a reason I'm hopeful they'll use other things to balance those ships because a ship like the punisher could really have used LWF but as an ordnance carrier, it took up a key mod slot. I also used to put missiles on QD, but after LWF came out, I was less likely to do so because it made them less reliable, or I had to choose between the two.

I wouldn't mind if LWF made a return either in a conversion kit or in a future re-released expansion. Since the strikers get a bomb slot in 2E and the other TIEs that desire LWF also have munitions, maybe a part to have LWF will require to lose some amount of munitions to have it equipped.

2 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

Given the TIE Phantom is a 2 dice defence and now has a free mod slot, I'm pretty certain LWF is gone. Otherwise, things will get a bit weird there.

Do we know that the phantom has a mod slot? I assume so but that’s not a guarantee anymore.

Man, Luke gunner is going to HATE striker swarms. Mitigate 1 damage at best from 5 3-die attacks, and only shoot back once with almost zero chance to one-shot? Yes PLEASE!

23 minutes ago, tortugatron said:

Do we know that the phantom has a mod slot? I assume so but that’s not a guarantee anymore.

Everything has a mod slot.

3 minutes ago, HolySorcerer said:

Everything has a mod slot.

Not true anymore. Some will have 2 or 3. Some will have none.

7 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Not true anymore. Some will have 2 or 3. Some will have none.

Correct. We know for sure that the TIE Interceptor has 2 mods and the K-Fighter has 3. I assume the Phantom is advanced enough to have one....

i often left it off anyway because really the only major benefit is vs ordnance/cannons since you both normally dont get hit with a 4die attack otherwise or already get 3green via obstructed/R3

Also yes they have stated that not everything will have a mod slot. I dont think we know of any examples though.

1 hour ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Not true anymore. Some will have 2 or 3. Some will have none.

I wonder: given that the upgrades are in the app, could we get individual pilots with different numbers of mods within the same ship type?

Considering upgrade slots already vary by pilot (Talent, Force), I wouldn't be surprised.

But this removes my favorite interaction from the game:

"Is it range 2 or 3? Doesn't matter."

"Is it obstructed? Doesn't matter."

Modification slots are no longer a given, some ships may have more than one, some may have none.

AS for LWF, I belive they would return in the imperial conversion kit. Strikers are quite fragile with 2 green dice. Even with generaly lower attack power, it's still pósible to get a modded 4 dice attack and obliterate them in one shot!.

I will miss LWF, but I'm sure Stealth Device will have to take its place in my lists. I just hope its 5 points or less to take it.

4 hours ago, HolySorcerer said:

Everything has a mod slot.

That's 1.0 talk.

Don't assume anything based on 1.0, 2.0 has an actual mod slot on ships so it's very possible to have no mod slot on a ship.

3 minutes ago, Icelom said:

That's 1.0 talk.

Don't assume anything based on 1.0, 2.0 has an actual mod slot on ships so it's very possible to have no mod slot on a ship.

The devs have stated that mod is now a slot like any other, and that some ships have two or even three slots. They also said that hypothetically, a ship might have no mod slots at all if it was too powerful or if it was thematically an unmodifiable ship. The way they were talking about it made it obvious that such a modless ship does not currently exist.

1 hour ago, HolySorcerer said:

The devs have stated that mod is now a slot like any other, and that some ships have two or even three slots. They also said that hypothetically, a ship might have no mod slots at all if it was too powerful or if it was thematically an unmodifiable ship. The way they were talking about it made it obvious that such a modless ship does not currently exist.

Of course, since slots are determined by the app, that's something that could actually change before release hits. Or even shortly after...