Is this a mistake or an intentional change? It looks like a change, but why would you add a gunner to a ship that does not have a secondary arc, any type of turret and that cannot drop bombs?? I am hoping this is a bug and not an attempt to "balance" the Phantom. The only gunner card you can equip that has any usable feature is the Fifth Brother. All the others involve rotating arcs or dropping bombs none of which the Phantom can do so they are worthless.

Please tell me these kinds of oddball changes is not the future of X-Wing. I was prepared for point changes, but to completely change a ships upgrade capabilities and replace them with upgrades that don't even match what the ship can do? Yeah that doesn't make sense.

18 minutes ago, smauel said:

Is this a mistake or an intentional change? It looks like a change, but why would you add a gunner to a ship that does not have a secondary arc, any type of turret and that cannot drop bombs?? I am hoping this is a bug and not an attempt to "balance" the Phantom. The only gunner card you can equip that has any usable feature is the Fifth Brother. All the others involve rotating arcs or dropping bombs none of which the Phantom can do so they are worthless.

Please tell me these kinds of oddball changes is not the future of X-Wing. I was prepared for point changes, but to completely change a ships upgrade capabilities and replace them with upgrades that don't even match what the ship can do? Yeah that doesn't make sense.

" Finally, the TIE Phantom has had its crew icon swapped for a gunner icon to break up certain very strong ship/crew combinations (here’s looking at you, "Whisper" and Darth Vader)."

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/1/28/balance-in-the-force/

I get balance, but just remove the Co-Pilot then or increase the cost of the Phantom or Dart Vader as a co-pilot. Replacing co-pilot with a gunner slot, is just an odd choice; it makes the slot essentially useless, you literally can't use any of the cards but one. Slapping a slot on a ship that does not even fit the design of that ship is a bad choice and lazy game design at best. There had to be a better way to balance this. Honestly, they need to just remove the gunner slot and leave the co-pilot off if that was their intention.

Appreciate the link to the article. I just think there are better ways to balance the game than making core changes to ship upgrades that could not be done if this was all real. It would be like putting a Co-Pilot seat on an X-wing, it is just odd, so why do it?

8 minutes ago, smauel said:

I get balance, but just remove the Co-Pilot then or increase the cost of the Phantom or Dart Vader as a co-pilot. Replacing co-pilot with a gunner slot, is just an odd choice; it makes the slot essentially useless, you literally can't use any of the cards but one. Slapping a slot on a ship that does not even fit the design of that ship is a bad choice and lazy game design at best. There had to be a better way to balance this. Honestly, they need to just remove the gunner slot and leave the co-pilot off if that was their intention.

Appreciate the link to the article. I just think there are better ways to balance the game than making core changes to ship upgrades that could not be done if this was all real. It would be like putting a Co-Pilot seat on an X-wing, it is just odd, so why do it?

You'd rather them remove a slot completely than have a slot that has a usable upgrade?

It also opens up possibilities in the future, of having more compatible Gunners.

To me, it makes more sense to remove it right now as the gunner is a poor replacement slot and makes little to no sense at all. So yes I am saying it would be better to just drop it than add a slot that does not fit the ship. To think that FFG would create gunner cards specifically for this kind of scenario to "balance" a ship like the Phantom that lost a core slot, one that has been on the ship since it came into the game, well that doesn't make sense and creates a whole new set of issues for game space later where changes are not thought through and the game turns into a glorified v1 again.

It would have been better to increase the cost of the Phantom itself if it was really that powerful of a combination. What I would truly prefer is if they made the squad builders more intelligent so specific ship/co-pilots (or whatever killer combo comes up) cost more or less depending on the ship they are being added to. Coding that wouldn't be that difficult, simple if-then statements. I know they added the gunner so fans wouldn't feel totally cheated because "it had a co-pilot" before so where did that seat go. "Oh that is now a gunner seat," says FFG with a cheery smile. Forget the fact the Phantom only has a front facing arc and no use for a gunner except the one aforementioned Fifth Brother.

It makes more sense than adding slots that don't fit a ship's core design or trying to create new cards to balance the game later. It is like trying to fix your car with duct tape, it will work, but only for so long. This is the kind of thinking that muddied up Version 1 and it is distressing to see it being applied to Version 2. Personally I am hoping they dump the gunner entirely as creating " more compatible Gunners" to solve the game is a poor way to go about the future of X-Wing.

JJ48, sorry you got confused. I program software for a living and the changes I suggested would not only fix the balance issue they tried to address, but it would also keep the game cleaner and make it were "balancing" with cards later would be a thing of the past. This is what they were trying to do with the Squad Builder in the first place, make it where they could balance the game when they saw a powerful combo. That said the way they balanced the Phantom seems counter-intuitive. While technically they achieved the goal in the short run, the idea that they could create new gunners to make this a better change introduces way too many new problems later. It is a duct tape solution at best.

2 hours ago, smauel said:

To think that FFG would create gunner cards specifically for this kind of scenario to "balance" a ship like the Phantom that lost a core slot,

You completely misunderstand my point. I'm not saying FFG should make Gunners specifically to improve the Phantom. Rather, I'm saying that there is the possibility that more Gunners in the future may not care about mobile arcs or rear arcs, and the Phantom will be able to take advantage of these.

2 hours ago, smauel said:

It would have been better to increase the cost of the Phantom itself if it was really that powerful of a combination.

Except that the Phantom, without a passenger, was pretty well priced already. The trouble came from letting a hyper-maneuverable ship carry crew that was clearly balanced to ride on heavier, slower ships.

2 hours ago, smauel said:

What I would truly prefer is if they made the squad builders more intelligent so specific ship/co-pilots (or whatever killer combo comes up) cost more or less depending on the ship they are being added to. Coding that wouldn't be that difficult, simple if-then statements.

The app can totally handle that, sure. However, this sort of targeted fix (pricing just a specific combo up) should be an absolute last resort. Some people build based on the PDFs, and even those who use the app want to be able to understand how much stuff costs and why. Having stuff scale up with Initiative is a bit more complex, but still easy enough to understand once you learn about it. Having upgrades that cost X, unless they're on ship A alongside upgrade Y, or if Z, B, and C are all in your squad; just gets to be too much.

2 hours ago, smauel said:

Forget the fact the Phantom only has a front facing arc and no use for a gunner except the one aforementioned Fifth Brother.

You seem awfully determined to ignore the fact that the Phantom can take Fifth Brother and get full use out of him, thus proving that the Gunner slot is not useless on it. You may as well say the Gunner slot on the Arc is useless just because it can't make use of mobile-arc Gunners.

2 hours ago, smauel said:

It makes more sense than adding slots that don't fit a ship's core design or trying to create new cards to balance the game later.

In my opinion, the TIE Phantom's design always screamed "very squirrely dog-fighter" and it never should have had a passenger slot to begin with. And again, the possibility of new cards isn't to bring the ship into balance (it's already pretty much there), it's just to say that you can't assume that the current Gunners are the only Gunners that will ever be produced in Second Edition.

What they should have done IMO is to put a point cap of about 6-8 points in the crew cost the Phantom can equip (like the TIE shuttle title used to have) rather than swapping the crew slot with a gunner slot. There were so many good crew options that were not broken that got burned by a silly combo AKA Vader crew on Whisper. I really miss my Director Krennic on Echo or Whisper more than I miss Vader, which I flew on Vermeil most of the time anyway.

2 hours ago, tsondaboy said:

What they should have done IMO is to put a point cap of about 6-8 points in the crew cost the Phantom can equip (like the TIE shuttle title used to have) rather than swapping the crew slot with a gunner slot. There were so many good crew options that were not broken that got burned by a silly combo AKA Vader crew on Whisper. I really miss my Director Krennic on Echo or Whisper more than I miss Vader, which I flew on Vermeil most of the time anyway.

This was exactly my argument

Easiest ever fix for Vader/Whisper was to make Vader dual crew slots.

That left the Phantom with the crew slot but removed Vader from the equation.

For those claiming that Fifth Brother is a perfectly suitable replacement, well, what about if you are flying Whisper AND Echo? Or running multiple phantoms for fun?

3 hours ago, Damo1701 said:

For those claiming that Fifth Brother is a perfectly suitable replacement, well, what about if you are flying Whisper AND Echo? Or running multiple phantoms for fun?

Then you decide for yourself which one gets Fifth Brother? I'm not sure I understand the argument.

10 hours ago, Damo1701 said:

Easiest ever fix for Vader/Whisper was to make Vader dual crew slots.

That does sound like an easy fix, except that the actual Vader card only shows 1 crew.

13 minutes ago, papy72 said:

That does sound like an easy fix, except that the actual Vader card only shows 1 crew.

Vader wasn't the only problem, either. You'd have to change all of them.

Not to mention, you then shut down being able to have multiple crew on shuttles, even though multiple shuttle crew aren't a problem.

24 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Vader wasn't the only problem, either. You'd have to change all of them.

Sloan on Echo or Whisper was pretty NPE as well.

JJ48, thanks for the input and your thoughts. I agree you can take full use of Fifth Brother and I said as much. But taking a slot away that gives a lot of expansion to a ship and replacing with a slot that doesn't fit the ship and has only one usable card is complete crap.

I will say that I completely disagree with your thought that it is "too much" to have specific ships and upgrade combos cost more or less depending on the combinations you put together. That type of variable approach fixes not only this combo but any future issues down the pipe. The reality is there should not be that many combos that cause an issue like this, so having a PDF that shows the normal price and then one or two "premium" costs for being in a better combo isn't too much to contemplate or understand. Hitting the issue with a sledgehammer like they did is the old V1 methodology for fixing things. So instead of getting crazy power creep with cards to fix an issue they just dumb down a ship and remove much of the design space for it. I certainly appreciate your perspective but disagree this would cause problems. I think it would fix all the issues and be a reasonable solution, certainly better than what they just did.

2 hours ago, impspy said:

Sloan on Echo or Whisper was pretty NPE as well.

Thats why I was asking for a hard point cap on the Phantom crews to 6-8 points. Commander type crew like Sloan would be on shuttles were they belong leaving the slot empty for less potent crew suited for a heavy fighter. Echo with Informant was awesome and not NPE. By definition from a Gunner slot, you would only expect crews that only buff the attacking capability of a ship.

4 hours ago, tsondaboy said:

Thats why I was asking for a hard point cap on the Phantom crews to 6-8 points. Commander type crew like Sloan would be on shuttles were they belong leaving the slot empty for less potent crew suited for a heavy fighter. Echo with Informant was awesome and not NPE. By definition from a Gunner slot, you would only expect crews that only buff the attacking capability of a ship.

Cumbersome and dirty; I'm with @JJ48 that it shouldn't have either slot (the "crew" is what allows it to operate the Stygium Array) but a Gunner slot is a fair compromise.

11 hours ago, impspy said:

Sloan on Echo or Whisper was pretty NPE as well.

There are plenty of other ways to use Phantoms and a huge array of options just by changing Vader.

As suggested earlier, a points ceiling would have done that as well, without bumping the slots Vader would take.

But, just totally removing the slot for a gunner makes zero sense when there is a single card that can fill the slot.

I don't think it would have been half as bad if there were more Imperial Gunners available that didn't require devices or mobile arcs.

If Vader is in your list somewhere you can take BT1, so two possible useful Gunners. Which is double the number an Arc 170 can take.

As for 'slot that doesn't fit the ship' Gunner makes way more sense than crew ever did. Almost all the Imperial Crew and a fair chunk of the Generics are 'fleet officer' types. Admirals, Grand Moffs and Darth Vader have no business in a small fighter's co-pilot seat. A point limit wouldn't help there either as some are cheap (or could be made so during any future points adjust).

The only real problem is that we need more Gunners - for the Phantom or otherwise - but that will come with time.

47 minutes ago, rawbean said:

If Vader is in your list somewhere you can take BT1  , so two possible useful Gunners. Which is double the number either an Arc 170 or TIE Bomber  can take.

🤨 I think you missed a few things… BT-1 + Adv. Prot on Rhymer for example. TIE/Sa has the same gunner options as the Phantom + Skilled Bombardier. The Punisher as well.

Also many ships have Title or Config slots that can only be filled by one card. Maul Crew grants a ship access to Dark Side Force Talents, of which there is one.

Having the slot still gives you more options than not having it at all, even if only by one (two with Vader).

In the lore the second seat in the Phantom cockpit was for a gunner/co-pilot, so this change accurately reflects the abilities of the ship.

Gunner is new to 2.0. There were too many NPE options as crew. So instead of limiting crew or even the development of future crew, they made it a gunner. I think i have said this in multiple threads now... It's only wave fricken 3, give them a chance to develop some upgrades.

To put it into perspective, Wave 3, released 2nd quarter for 2013 was this - The HWK-290, Lambda -class Shuttle, B-Wing, and TIE Bomber .
Yes Imperial gunners are mostly useless right now, but they wont be forever.

I loved Whisper/Vader, but being an avid user of it, I understand why they changed it. They are moving away from auto damage as much as possible.

On ‎2‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 7:43 AM, Damo1701 said:

I don't think it would have been half as bad if there were more Imperial Gunners available that didn't require devices or mobile arcs.

On ‎2‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 9:48 PM, rawbean said:

The only real problem is that we need more Gunners - for the Phantom or otherwise - but that will come with time.

This.

The repackaged Decimator is apparently coming with BT-1 (who does need Vader in your squad but is a nice cheap gunner with no weapon prerequisite), but beyond that, we should hopefully get some more 'proper' primary-only gunners soon - the named TIE strikers can also make decent use of an imperial equivalent to Dengar or Bossk .

Sorry, but, updating Vader to take 2 crew slots is by far the best change they could have made, while at the same time allowing phantoms to remain somewhat relevant in extended.

I mean, gunner/copilot is right there, I now can't take a perceptive Copilot on a pair of Phantoms now.

However, until there is actually a reason to get the Phantoms out, they will remain away.

I don't actually care what the future intent is, at all. I care about what I can choose from for my extended format games right now. Sure, we are on Wave 3, they had been planning this change, listening to you guys, well before they had decided what Wave 3 was going to be. Why are there no new Imperial gunner cards with the Decimator? It's not like I wouldn't have actually bought it if it had, despite already having a decimator.

This really just smacks of overreaction and poor implementation than actually addressing anything useful.

I used to put Kallus and Krennic on my Whisper. Now I am left with nothing. I guess thats what you get when you play Empire.

Now the Empire has finally some slots (Strikers, Phantom, Punisher, Reaper) but can hardly fill them with stuff that makes sense