So with the new online point system we can make some upgrades have different costs depending on the ship's stats. For example Shield Upgrades cost more on ships with high agility.

This mechanic would be very well applied to Missiles, Cannons and to a lesser degree Torpedoes. Most missiles only roll three dice so all you are paying for is the special effect and the (lack of) long range bonus when on a 3 attack ship, meanwhile taking a missile on a 2 dice ship like the Syke, Tie Bomber or Headhunter is totally viable (depending on the missile). The same holds true for cannons and to a lesser degree torpedoes (4 dice is plenty worthwhile).

So I really feel that the cost of these weapons should change depending on the amount of primary attack dice the ship has (taking the highest in the case of multiple values). Now should we make missiles cheaper on 3 dice ships (a buff), or more expensive one 2 dice ships (a nerf)? I don't know, it probably varies missile to missile.

Nope.

Their quality doesn't vary based on primary weapon value.

Their price shouldn't either.

I think this falls under the things that FFG needs to appropriately bake into the cost of the ship itself. All else equal, a 2 ATT ship w/ and w/o access to secondary weapons should be costed slightly differently.

The trickier thing is getting the cost right for potential munition carriers in relation to initiative values. It's a precarious balance, correctly costing the increasingly higher initiative pilot's naturally increasing effectiveness with munitions, and doing this without forcing them to bring munitions to be remotely efficient. I don't think we want to force Wedge, Fenn and other 'aces' into Alpha-strike only lists when it comes to competitive play.

If anything, their price really should only scale with initiative, since it's VASTLY more easy to fire a TL-required (or bullseye only) weapon on higher initiative than lower

I believe that variable point costs should be limited to only a few upgrades and that is if a single trait (agility or base size) has a dramatic impact on the upgrade.

Now for weapons primary weapons could have an impact as a 3 attack secondary weapon doesn't have that much of a difference over a 3 attack primary weapon. But that isn't a bad thing as 2 attack primary develops a need for secondary weapons.

To be truly fair, any upgrade that is stronger one some ships than on others should have a variable cost. And that's basically all of them. However, giving things static point costs is orders of magnitude simpler and more approachable for everyone making and playing the game, and it's the only logistically supportable plan if you just want to print cards with numbers on them.

while any upgrade is stronger on some ships than on others, some have a ridiculously game-warping effect in certain contexts (ala large base boost) that they deserve a scaling cost

I believe ordnance, particularly proton torpedoes, is deserving. You could make it easy with base cost + I of pilot

Any TL ordnance could stand to scale with init to be honest, but most of them simply don't cost enough or aren't useful enough to make it worthwhile.

So when Variable Pricing was first announced, I kind of hoped there would be something like this. One worry in some parts of 1e is that a TIE Bomber or a TIE Punisher might just be a more cost effective jouster than other ships at that price range. In the early days, some folks would run a bunch of TIE Bombers without ordnance and also Howlrunner, since you'd just have more hit points than a standard TIE swarm.

So in order to keep ordnance ships from being priced as cheap as they need to be, while making them still viable, they could have introduced an "ordnance rating" which would reduce the cost of all missiles and torpedoes on the ship.

However, FFG didn't go in that direction. The TIE Bomber costs 28 points, down 4 from their 1e cost. Redline costs 44, which is down 10 from the 54 his 1e cost essentially was. Instead of making ordnance cheaper on ships which can't function without ordnance, they just made the ships themselves cheaper. That's probably an easier solution to pricing.

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A lot of missiles are probably a little overpriced, though. Everything but Barrage and Homing ought to go down 1 point.

Likewise, a lot of ships are overpriced. I think probably the A-Wing, Scyk, TIE v1 (TAP), and TIE Aggressor are all probably 2 points too expensive across the board. The non-Vader TIE Advanced x1, too. That's essentially a 2-attack ship which needs a missile to do damage, with a special missile which doesn't run out of charges.

Torpedo pricing may also be wrong. Maybe Proton should cost 10 points, and Ion 5.

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An interesting experiment for some sort of league would be to scale ordnance a little in pricing. I think the easy thing would be -1 point for Init 1 and 2, and +1 point on 5 and 6, for all missiles and torpedoes. Maybe that's not dramatic enough of a test.

8 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Torpedo pricing may also be wrong. Maybe Proton should cost 10 points, and Ion 5.

/cringe That would be a 4 red Ion attack at range 2-3 with the same price as a Ion cannon which ignores the range modifier for range 3...

23 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

/cringe That would be a 4 red Ion attack at range 2-3 with the same price as a Ion cannon which ignores the range modifier for range 3...

The weapons just work so differently, though. Ion Cannons have no requirements, work at all ranges, and with all initiatives. Ion Torpedoes will be pretty ineffective on a lot of ships, simply because of low-init ordnance issues. Even at the same cost, I probably never take an Ion Torpedo on a Scyk over an Ion Cannon.

It gets a little scarier with Wedge or Fenn Rau, but if I were experimenting with points costs, I think make the change. I mean, they could just have a normal torpedo and do a bunch of damage, and 2e Ion seems a lot more fair and sane to deal with. The price could always get changed back.

Also Ion Torp cant fire at Range 1 so wouldnt get benefit of range 1 bonus.

While I like the idea of increasing ordnance cost for higher-init pilots, I really feel like the underlying problem with is with how initiative interacts with target locks. If I designed 2.0, I would have changed how target locks are acquired slightly.

I would have it such that you could acquire a lock on ships at any range. However, there would be a step between activation and engagement where you would check all locks. Any lock on a ship that was further than range 3 from the ship that placed it would be discarded. This would allow low-initiative ships to lock onto higher-init ships... as long as they correctly predict that the target ship will end up within range after moving. There's skill involved in taking a lock action when you're lower initiative than your target, and there is also counterplay (you can flee beyond or avoid range 3 to break enemy locks). As a side note, I would have the E-Wing ship ability be "you can maintain locks beyond Range 3." Having an extra step like this would only take a little extra time per round and would be no harder to remember than stuff like exploding bombs.

7 hours ago, Kanawolf said:

Also Ion Torp cant fire at Range 1 so wouldnt get benefit of range 1 bonus.

It's ordinance, it wouldn't get that even if it could shoot at range 1. Ion Cannon has to be at range 1 to get 4 dice, Ion Torp has it a range 2-3. I believe theBitterFig was referring to the Lock requirement on Ion Torps due to it being problematic to get a lock then use the Torp in the same round for a low Init.

14 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

It's ordinance, it wouldn't get that even if it could shoot at range 1. Ion Cannon has to be at range 1 to get 4 dice, Ion Torp has it a range 2-3. I believe theBitterFig was referring to the Lock requirement on Ion Torps due to it being problematic to get a lock then use the Torp in the same round for a low Init.

I was just trying to contrast between the two. One normally gets a bonus/penalty on either end while the other wouldnt so giving it the extra die makes up for the lock requirement and lack of range one. Probably a fair trade.

One point no one has answered is how do you stop missile slots on Primary 3 ships from being dead upgrade slots that reduce the overall variability in the game?

I do agree that Init is super important with missiles and I hope they change how locks work or add more workaround upgrades. I'm not sure if the cost of missiles should be int based because that is not a static advantage. The value of Init is entirely based on the enemies int, where as the value of attack only changes slightly based on the enemy.

Sadly you don't. Unless they're 3 primary turrets where the missiles can give you front arc coverage with your turrets sideways, missiles on 3 primary are a bit pants.

Missiles in general are a bit pants.

59 minutes ago, CMDR Kastor said:

One point no one has answered is how do you stop missile slots on Primary 3 ships from being dead upgrade slots that reduce the overall variability in the game?

You can still add Cluster Missiles to do 2 attacks/round on swarms when point blank. It's basically a two-use shotgun for 5 points.

Granted, it's even crazier on 2-atk ships. But those don't have a primary of 3 to fallback on after they expanded everything, right? Which is still better, but not because of the ordnance. It's because of the ship.

(I recently discovered that Clusters on Rhymer basically transformed him into an hybrid of Arvel Crynyd and long-range frag launcher for less than 40 points!)