After seeing the awesome things Vader is now capable of, it's more than a little disappointing to me that his chassis now has even less synergy with his ability than it did before. I am happy to see the upgrade to the dial, but why did they have to take away his evade?

It already didn't make much sense to me that the predecessor of the TIE Advanced was superior in almost every way (all but ATC), and I always chalked it up to power creep and expected that they would fix that with second edition. But instead of giving the TIE Advanced boost, they took away its evade! And while they did give it a linked action, the TAP now has two instead of one, making it once again clearly superior to the ship that was said to improve upon it.

I understand that there are ways to give Vader boost (AB, Supernatural Reflexes) but they both come at a heavy cost and are quite situational, and furthermore, there is now no way for Vader to mitigate blank green dice. No evade action, no token, change to palp, etc. (I guess maybe there would be other crew that could do it, but again, high cost to the limited benefit).

Especially after seeing Vader's attack on Phoenix Squadron and on Blue Squadron at Vrogas Vos (though that was a stretch, I'll admit), it just doesn't sit well with me.

How do you justify this? Is it necessary from a balance perspective? This and the B-Wing are my two major letdowns for 2nd edition. I'm otherwise quite psyched up for it.

They took away the evade, but he has 3 force tokens. After playing a few 2.0 games on table top simulator, it's really easy to see why they took away the evade because force tokens are really strong. You'll find 2.0 Vader quite operational when your rebel friends arrive.

Just because a prototype has a certain feature, this does not mean that the final product has to incorporate said feature (cost, complexity, use case, whatever)

Sry for some RL perspective

It's the Empire, the prototypes are usually gonna be superior to the final mass-produced product. See: Defenders.

The same could be said of the Rebels too, I guess. See also: B-Wings.

While it does annoy me to no end that the TAP seems so much better than the Advanced, the chassis really has to be balanced around Vader and his incredible ability.

1 hour ago, impspy said:

While it does annoy me to no end that the TAP seems so much better than the Advanced, the chassis really has to be balanced around Vader and his incredible ability.

But why can't the tap be "better" it's a prototype so may have many costly things that were removed to make production easier and cheaper.

It actually makes a fair bit of sense for it to be "better" in some areas. Prototypes are often designers wishlists put into action, then the accountants get ahold of the project.

1 minute ago, Icelom said:

But why can't the tap be "better" it's a prototype so may have many costly things that were removed to make production easier and cheaper.

It actually makes a fair bit of sense for it to be "better" in some areas. Prototypes are often designers wishlists put into action, then the accountants get ahold of the project.

Except the Advanced wasn't really a production model, either. It was a cadillac designed for Darth Vader, leader of the Inquisitarious, and the Dark Lord who spoke for Emperor Palpatine himself.

1 minute ago, PhantomFO said:

Except the Advanced wasn't really a production model, either. It was a cadillac designed for Darth Vader, leader of the Inquisitarious, and the Dark Lord who spoke for Emperor Palpatine himself.

Yep and the prototype was his ship as well.

I rationalize it with the Advanced looks significantly heavier than the Prototype.

Simple - it doesn't need to evade - that's for cowards - VADER CRUSHES HIS ENEMIES.

I think it makes more sense if you take a step back and remember that originally they were "Vader's TIE" not "TIE Advanced" and "The Inquisiotor's TIE" not "TIE Advanced Prototype".

Then the fact that inquisitors spend more time in the field relying on their fighter could explain why they have better ones than Vader who mainly travels by Star Destroyer and probably only has a fighter because it's his personal project ship.

that big ol' hyperdrive butt makes it harder to dodge, but gives you an out when your whole space station gets blown up by your kid.