44 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

FFG shot themselves in the foot by forcing any cannon shot to compete with a 3 dice primary that comes with no caveats.

Yup. A cannon that competes with 3 dice primary would be OP on 2-dice primary ships for the same price. So the first step to fix cannons should be pricing them differently according to the primary weapon value of the ship.

What about a title that adds a crew slot, and substitutes the target lock requirement for a focus token if the intended target is in your bullseye arc?

I love the new B-wings. I've had great success with them. I've run Ten and Braylen with nothing but Elusive and they just don't die and hit like mad. They feel like Defenders to me, with the free evades at 3 speed or higher, just use stress to gain that advantage.

I would be interested in a dual slot cannon. Something for the bullseye that hits like a mack truck when it goes off. Not sure I'd run crew, outside of maybe Perceptive Co-pilot for that extra focus when gaining the first into the barrel roll.

I mean, there's not too much FFG can do to them, is there? Not without a full wave and new upgrades.

40 points means 5 B-Wings per list, and that'd be really potent. 40 HP and 15 red dice. I feel like having five 3/1/4/4 ships might be scarier than five 3/2/4/2 ships, like with X-Wings, since their higher hit points mean they'll probably take a few more attacks to kill. Less of a chance of an unlucky blank-out or dying to a stray Direct Hit. So you can't realistically bring them down 2 points.

So 1 point for generics is kind of the only option. That'd be generics at 41/43, maybe Ten and Braylen down to 48, that'd be fine. Same price as Thane. A B-Wing and an X-Wing having the same price seems... kinda fair. B-Wings have a much smaller chance to take no damage from an attack, but a better chance to take an extra attack to kill. B-Wings are also going to be a lot slower, with fewer fast white moves, and no access to the Boost action. I feel like it'd still be a choice based on playstyle which is better in a squad.

I guess the other thing you could do is bring down the cost of Advanced Sensors. With the nerf to only being able to do one action for the remainder of the phase, the most extreme shenanigans with it are already gone. Would a 6 or 7 point Advanced Sensors be too much of a problem? It'd be a buff Guri doesn't need, and it'd open up 4x Lambdas or U-Wings with AdvS, which is slightly worrying, but perhaps not too big of an issue with the new fortressing rules.

//

For fully new options:

• Getting more pilots would be amazing, but this is the case with most low-pilot-count ships.
  • Hera's ability would be wicked sweet with all the red on a B-Wing dial.
    • Prototype Blade Wing... Is it odd if I want them to save it for a quickbuild and keep it out of the standard game? Any sort of massive cannon which accurately represents the TV show's effect is going to be far too powerful, and any balanced version will won't feel right. Whenever they come up with Epic 2e, give this some sort of range 3-5 Turbolaser in the quickbuild.
  • 1e Nera Dantels scares me a little. Perhaps she could gain a *-dice mobile arc and a white rotate action, which could only be used for firing torpedoes? I like that. "You must perform [torpedo] attacks from your mobile arc instead. After you perform an action, you may perform a red rotate action."
  • I want to see fully-new pilots more than I want to see updates of 1e.
• I'm not super into S-Foils for B-Wings. The wings folded mainly just for landing. With an X-Wing, there were "actual flight effects" to the S-Foils.
• I'm nervous about any sort of cannon double-tap ideas. I loved TIE/D, but I'm glad it went out with 1e.
• Hrm. What about a new form of Linked Battery? Like Predator, being bullseye only makes sense, probably the same 2 points. Unlike with Predator, it'd work with Cannon attacks, too. That'd be really interesting in my mind, and it'd be an interesting and fun way to fly a B-Wing, and it'd bring back some of the old fun of Sunny Bounder.
  • But the thought of one of these worries me on TIE Defenders. Like, Rexler Brath doesn't need Predator in addition to his Juke.
• B-Wings are also a ship which could really use the 1e Vaksai title. All upgrades reduced in cost by 1 point. There are a lot of ships which work fine without many upgrades, but also those which really feel like they need to fill most of their slots. Stuff like X-Wings and Phantoms feel OK when lean. B-Wings, U-Wings, Kihraxzes, Starwings, these are all ships which can feel really cool when fully loaded. There are so many tricks and combos and nifty things a B-Wing can do, but the cost it takes to get there is prohibitive. Something like a Vaksai keeps the baseline price higher (to prevent massed versions for efficiency), but lowers the cost of a built-up ship.
  • What if this was a list-building keyword? Something like Adaptable 2 or Modular 1 or such. A ship with Modular X reduces the cost of all upgrades by X, to a minimum of 0. This would require a points cost increase for a B-Wing, but it might be a lot of fun. Suppose Modular 2 on a B-Wing, with an increase of 1 point to the base ship.
    • Ten Nunb with Predator and Advanced Sensors would come out to 51 + (8-2) + (2-2) = 57. Only one point cheaper, but with Predator added. Might as well add Jamming Beam (heck, it might come in handy some day) and Electronic Baffle.
    • Blade is 45 baseline, 2 point HLC, 1 point FCS, 1 point Selfless, 1 point Hull Upgrade for 50... Yikes... that can really add up fast. Even a Modular 1 on a 45 point Blade would allow Selfless and Shield Upgrade for 50 points.
    • Yeah... Modular X would probably be a bad idea. It can get out of hand pretty easily.

Okay, this might be a really crap idea and I've not done the maths to work out the probabilities and expected results but for a potential Autoblasters cannon, how does this sound:

4 attack dice. Range 1 only. Standard forward arc. While attacking, after the modify attack dice step you must spend two dice results.

So it's a five dice attack thanks to the range bonus, but you're only ever doing a maximum of three damage. It gives you a chance to pick the best three dice results, and you get a good chance of rolling at least three hits. It's not as bad as accuracy corrector, because it doesn't help if you blank out and/or don't have dice mods. It's more reliable than a primary shot on a B-Wing, but can't reach the same max damage (potentially forcing a choice if you're facing a 4HP ship that really needs to die).

My only worry is that it would probably get absolutely stapled to Scyks and maybe Gunboats, depending on cost.

13 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

40 points means 5 B-Wings per list, and that'd be really potent. 40 HP and 15 red dice. I feel like having five 3/1/4/4 ships might be scarier than five 3/2/4/2 ships, like with X-Wings, since their higher hit points mean they'll probably take a few more attacks to kill. Less of a chance of an unlucky blank-out or dying to a stray Direct Hit. So you can't realistically bring them down 2 points. 

Yep. This is absolutely one of the biggest issues facing them.

5 B-Wings would just be too much. This is exactly what people were talking about before release when they said that not everything can be fixed by adjusting points cost - there are thresholds within which you can work.

Again, this wouldn't be an issue if they didn't have a native 3 dice primary. If they had actually been designed as ships you're supposed to build up with upgrades then making 5 naked B-Wings possible wouldn't have been too bad. Assuming that any offensive upgrade like a cannon would immediately take them back over the 41 point mark you don't have a problem. You could then build them to a role and fit them in specific lists more easily.

6 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

Okay, this might be a really crap idea and I've not done the maths to work out the probabilities and expected results but for a potential Autoblasters cannon, how does this sound:

4 attack dice. Range 1 only. Standard forward arc. While attacking, after the modify attack dice step you must spend two dice results.

So it's a five dice attack thanks to the range bonus, but you're only ever doing a maximum of three damage. It gives you a chance to pick the best three dice results, and you get a good chance of rolling at least three hits. It's not as bad as accuracy corrector, because it doesn't help if you blank out and/or don't have dice mods. It's more reliable than a primary shot on a B-Wing, but can't reach the same max damage (potentially forcing a choice if you're facing a 4HP ship that really needs to die).

My only worry is that it would probably get absolutely stapled to Scyks and maybe Gunboats, depending on cost.

It might be a bit much.

Plugging it into a standard probability calculator, you'll have 3 hits 50% of the time with zero dice mods. A bit less than a 19% chance of 0 or 1 hit. The other 31% of the time you'll have 2 hits. It's actually pretty close to 3 dice with a focus or lock (only a ~16% chance of 0-1, but a 42% chance of 3 hits). That kind of makes sense. Rolling an extra die and deleting one doesn't strike me as that different from a reroll.

It also runs into pricing issues. I guess a B-Wing has a lot of slow, nimble red moves to try to stay at range 1 where you won't have dice mods, but I think any price which seems fair on a B-Wing will be too cheap on a Scyk, and a fair price on a Scyk will be too much on a B-Wing.

7 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

Again, this wouldn't be an issue if they didn't have a native 3 dice primary. If they had actually been designed as ships you're supposed to build up with upgrades then making 5 naked B-Wings possible wouldn't have been too bad. Assuming that any offensive upgrade like a cannon would immediately take them back over the 41 point mark you don't have a problem. You could then build them to a role and fit them in specific lists more easily.

This would have been really interesting. B-Wing as a 2/1/4/4 with better cannon options (three cannon slots??!?!?!), coming in around... 30-34 points? But even that might be an issue. At 35 points before upgrades, an Ion Cannon B-Wing would still come in at 40, and that's still pretty scary to me.

Here's another Linked Battery thought: it'd be a Cannon-slot upgrade which provides the ship ability of the Upsilon Shuttle: roll an extra die with your cannon attacks. As of now, it'd only work on B-Wings and IG-2000 Aggressors. That'd give them really potent cannons as a niche, but couldn't be abused by Scyks or Defenders.

Would unlimited non-Lock Ion Torpedoes be too much? A range 2-3 unlimited shot Proton Rocket be busted?

Probably.

they are in a better place than I thought after flying a pair this past week. Took a bit for me to adapt my style to them as I normally fly A-Wings balls to the wall...but once I figured it out, they are a lot of fun.

I love the B. Just got 2nd in a tourney with a list using Ten.

I'm hoping the new model has moving s-foils and a pivot peg mount.

And I'm guessing the double Canon slot is for the prototype laser. Just a guess.

Autoblaster: Cannon slot, 3 points

Range: 0-2
2 dice, no specials (other than being a 3 die attack at range 0 and 1)

Big fan of the B. Ten is just a smidge behind Rebel Tier 1. Getting Hera would be great, her ability would sync with HLC fairly well and combined with PS5 could push Bs into the limelight.

There seems to be a decent chance for a offensive boost in the form of double cannon, perhaps packaged with the upsilon, but I'm also hoping for a title/config to up the weird/unique factor.

Something like: "When checking for bullseye, you may place the range indicator at the left or right edge of your base instead". Doesn't seem likely, but would be cool.

The only B-Wings I've flown so far are 4x Blue Squad Pilots w/ Adv. Sensors. It was one of my favorite lists from 1.0 and it is even more fun to fly now in 2.0 while still being moderately relevant.

I'd love to see something to take better advantage of the 2 cannon slots since currently the only option is a rarely used HLC or sacrificing the 3 dice primary for a status effect attack.

It would also be good to see the crew slot or a gunner slot with a new gunner upgrade that works with cannon attacks.

Overall the ship is a really fun and moderately powerful ship currently and I am pretty OK with that.

Really I want an S-foil option on the B.

Maybe an upgrade in agility at the cost of fire power?

Or

additional linked actions like the X?

or even a reload option.

B-Wings need more things that work off being stressed...

Maybe a cannon slot upgrade that gives them an extra attack die while stressed? Possibly at the cost of not being able to mod with locks or focus tokens (making it powerful on named pilots, with their stress based abilities, but less so on generics)

Or a sensor upgrade with a mini-Leia effect; 2 recurring charges, while stressed you may spend 2 charges to reduce the difficulty of your 1-2 speed manoeuvres for the remainder of the turn?

Or a mod that gives an additional agility after fully executing a red manoeuvre?

5 hours ago, Giledhil said:

Yup. A cannon that competes with 3 dice primary would be OP on 2-dice primary ships for the same price. So the first step to fix cannons should be pricing them differently according to the primary weapon value of the ship.

Dammit, that is an excellent idea.

Imo, should be cheaper than the X for its SHARPLY inferior mobility

Not sure how we'd feel about five in a list, but hey khirax already do that

Also, hlc is a 2 point upgrade at best

I have a simple solution, bring back the mangler cannon, maybe call it the Tri-Beam ( like on the show) and have it take up 2 cannon slots and maybe cost 4-6 points. Getting 4 dice at range 1 with a auto-crit would be very very good and only the Bwing and the aggressor would be able to take advantage of it.