I think Gonk Droids are overpriced.

A shield upgrade costs 3/4/6/8 depending in agility.

This has the benefit of not requiring an action to put the shield back on or costing a more valuable crew slot.

But if you have time to perform 4/6/8 Gonk actions you could recover 2/3/4 sheild over a game...

No one seems to be using Gonk, two actions for a single shield, might as well just focus for two turns and save ten points, buy a sheild upgrade and you get most of the upside at a lower cost.

So, what would a reasonable cost be.

6 points?

If it cost 4, I'd certainly start trying to make it work, but even at 6 points I think it wouldn't be a problem/auto include.

Given the opportunity cost it could easily go down to 1 or 2. As long as you engage fast they probably never recover the shield usefully. And crew slots are very high value.

The ability to regenerate shields is amazing, but the use of two actions is a major downside. I have been experimenting a little, and always using the first turn before engagement to "charge up" Gonk, ready for use, is the best strategy, but I have so far never been able to get more than 1-2 real use out of Gonk. Therefore I thing it makes a lot of sense if cost should be similar to the price of a shield upgrade, and should scale according agility, perhaps a small discount for taking up that important crew-slot.

Agility Cost

0 2-3

1 3-4

2 5-6

3 7-8

I think my main "beef" with Gonk is the non uniqueness and/or no limit on the maximum # of uses, which I am afraid opens up for serious abuse if priced competatively.

Final at 3-5 would be worth taking on Lando with his free action, still wouldn’t see much other play though I think. For 6 Lando can stack focus/evade and free rerolls with the Title

Since the first action of most games is kind of irrelevant, Gonk only really takes 1 "real" action to get back that first shield. So if an upgrade was a single-use, spend an action, gain 1 shield, how much should that cost? No less than 4, IMHO. That's what the regen droids cost, essentially. But Gonk can be used more than twice per game. I kind of think 6 points is the right price, same as R5-P8 and R2-D2 are 6 points. Realistically, Gonk won't be used more often than those, and it'd be nice for such equivalent cards to be close to equivalently priced.

I do think the price on Gonk does highlight how underpriced General Grievous crew is. 3 points for essentially a recharging shield upgrade which cancels crits first? Eek.

Honestly, I think if Gonk was 6-7 points, but had the ability to store 2 charges, that he would then see play.

9 minutes ago, Innese said:

Honestly, I think if Gonk was 6-7 points, but had the ability to store 2 charges, that he would then see play.

If Gonk could store up more than 1 charge it'd be much better!

Might be able to get 2-3 charges before engaging, and then it's better than an evade action.

I used him on Rebel Lando and got about 5 shields out of him. That's probably the only ship possibly worth considering taking him on. However, if you're too busy healing vs dealing damage you're going to end up losing the match. Take more offensive upgrades over defensive ones, in other words. Gonk is a trap at least at the moment.

34 minutes ago, Force Majeure said:

I used him on Rebel Lando and got about 5 shields out of him. That's probably the only ship possibly worth considering taking him on. However, if you're too busy healing vs dealing damage you're going to end up losing the match. Take more offensive upgrades over defensive ones, in other words. Gonk is a trap at least at the moment.

It’s really good if you can run and the Falcon can RUN .

Very rare for a crew carrier though. Maybe the lancer after a points drop?

2 hours ago, Force Majeure said:

I used him on Rebel Lando and got about 5 shields out of him. That's probably the only ship possibly worth considering taking him on. However, if you're too busy healing vs dealing damage you're going to end up losing the match. Take more offensive upgrades over defensive ones, in other words. Gonk is a trap at least at the moment.

Rebel Lando is basically the only decent use case, since you can fit him out with force crew/gunners to get mods, and he gets a free action literally every round.

A super cheap Gonk on Tavson sounds pretty unpleasant.

5 hours ago, apoapsis said:

A super cheap Gonk on Tavson sounds pretty unpleasant.

If it's keeping him from reinforcing, coordinating, jamming, or locking for biohexacrypt, I'd welcome it. Half a shield vs a focused ace on the other end of the board? Half a shield vs reinforce to cancel 2-3 hits? Half a shield vs removing my lock on him?

It could be good if he's far away from the engagement, but when is an Upsilon ever in that position?

Yeah, GONKing is gonna be pretty low on Tavson's priority list in most cases, if he's not already reinforced, jammed, focused, and locked, then he's likely to do one of those, and half a shield is pretty low return for an action for him.

13 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Yeah, GONKing is gonna be pretty low on Tavson's priority list in most cases, if he's not already reinforced, jammed, focused, and locked, then he's likely to do one of those, and half a shield is pretty low return for an action for him.

If we think about it, 2.0 has, on the whole, much, much worse action economy per ship than 1.0 ever did. And how much was Gonk used in 1.0, at a cost of 2 points? Basically never.

It's useful on ships that can stay out of the engagement and just run and regen for a long time, sort of the way R2 is used and the way R5 isn't used but could be. The problem is that the only intersection between ships that can do that and ships that can take crew are... well pretty much just the three Falcons, and mainly just Lando. Currently the competition for those crew slots is very high and Gonk isn't likely to merit a second look at or above 4 points, even best case scenario.

Kylo Ren (76)
Ship total: 76 Half Points: 38 Threshold: 3

Starkiller Base Pilot (56)
Ship total: 56 Half Points: 28 Threshold: 6

Lieutenant Tavson (62)
Ship total: 62 Half Points: 31 Threshold: 6


Total: 194

Gonk can go as low as 7 points under current pricing. No more.

Count Dooku in his Infiltrator? He can get a bonus action after shooting, so maybe Gonk offers a useful option there.

1 hour ago, viedit said:

Kylo Ren (76)
Ship total: 76 Half Points: 38 Threshold: 3

Starkiller Base Pilot (56)
Ship total: 56 Half Points: 28 Threshold: 6

Lieutenant Tavson (62)
Ship total: 62 Half Points: 31 Threshold: 6


Total: 194

Gonk can go as low as 7 points under current pricing. No more.

How do you figure?

First, you left Biohexacrypt off Tavson, which at 1 point should be autoinclude IMHO.

Second, there's 3 actions per turn that Kylo could use if the shuttles aren't using them to reinforce or else to buff their 4-dice attacks if they have a target.

With two shuttles on the board, their action priority is something like

• Coordinate Kylo

• Reinforce

• Lock to coordinate Kylo or Jam an enemy (or buff attack dice) later.

• Focus for attack buff

• Jam a locked ship

• Regen a shield

• Gonk to maybe regen 1 out of 5 shields at an indeterminate point in the future if you happen to have another action that you couldn't use for any of the above later on.

It would probably be used once per game since you can prep it before you're in range and then it's basically 1 action -> 1 shield.

You definitely won't use it to regen more than one shield more than once out of every 4-5 games.

Shield upgrade is 4 points on an Upsilon. You're giving up 3 actions to get more value out of Gonk than out of a Shield upgrade. This is not worth double the points; it might be worth as much but probably isn't.

You're basically implying that Gonk on Tavson is so broken that flying him with a naked Kylo and a naked Upsilon would somehow just break the game. Even if it were free I doubt it would see much play in this build. For 7 points you could get:

- Sense on Kylo and Biohexacrypt on Tavson (infinitely better use of an extra action)

- Pattern Analyzer on SBP and Biohexacrypt on Tavson

- Pattern Analyzer on KYLO and Biohexacrypt on Tavson

- Advanced Optics and Hate on Kylo.

But no, for the same price, you could get 1-2 more shields on a ship that already has 6 at the cost of 1-3 useful actions!

I think you underestimate how long Tavson may hang on the board and the value that regen gives you in maybe getting back above half health. It may only take one or two shields and he's over half and just got 31+ points back on the board for you.

14 minutes ago, viedit said:

I think you underestimate how long Tavson may hang on the board and the value that regen gives you in maybe getting back above half health. It may only take one or two shields and he's over half and just got 31+ points back on the board for you.

A couple of Scenarios:

1) Tavson is going 1-1 with an X-Wing. He uses his first action to prep Gonk and second to Activate it, thus mitigating 1 damage per turn. It doesn't matter, because the X-Wing is behind him, or else he's stopping and not getting actions anyway.

2) Tavson is going 1-1 with an X-Wing. He uses his first action to reinforce and his second action to prep or use Gonk, whichever it's ready for. He's mitigating half a damage per turn with Gonk and usually a whole one per turn with reinforce. It still doesn't matter because the X-Wing has gotten behind him.

3) Tavson is going 1-1 with a YV-666 (the only thing he can reasonably dogfight). On the turns he lands an arc, he reinforces and then TL's for next turn's shot (or focuses if he still has the lock). On turns he doesn't, he reinforces and Gonks. If he isn't getting shot at anyway, he can Gonk once and that's it because he only gets the extra action when he takes damage. Either way, Gonk isn't helping him much at all.

The only thing Gonk will ever do for him is possibly save you some MOV by delaying the game; a mechanic nobody really enjoys anyway. GNK is a losing proposition on Tavson as it can only possibly give back half the health you're losing ( and only if you're managing to lose health at a rate of 1 per ROUND!) . TL, Reinforce, Coordinate, Jam, Focus are always a better choice for winning the damage race unless you're both the only thing on the board (in which case you're losing anyway) and neither getting a shot nor getting shot at, which is unthinkable.

In pretty much every game I've played with Tavson there is a turn or two where he has no worthwhile action, particularly from the last shot he's taking - focus, reinforce and jam all go away at the end of the turn anyway.

Yeah and there is usually a setup turn or two where he can either get a coordinate from SBK to gonk up or just do it on his turn to get a shield on the card. So he's rolling in with a shield ready to go. I'm not saying it's a meta defining upgrade on him, but for a list that's already pretty good at conserving MOV, and a ship that already encourages you *NOT* to shoot it, he can possibly conserve MOV even better than he already does. It's one of those upgrades where a single pilot can make or break pricing on it.

14 minutes ago, apoapsis said:

In pretty much every game I've played with Tavson there is a turn or two where he has no worthwhile action, particularly from the last shot he's taking - focus, reinforce and jam all go away at the end of the turn anyway.

Lock or Coordinate, whichever you haven't done yet. Both stick around. But yes, I can see that.

6 minutes ago, viedit said:

Yeah and there is usually a setup turn or two where he can either get a coordinate from SBK to gonk up or just do it on his turn to get a shield on the card. So he's rolling in with a shield ready to go. I'm not saying it's a meta defining upgrade on him, but for a list that's already pretty good at conserving MOV, and a ship that already encourages you *NOT* to shoot it, he can possibly conserve MOV even better than he already does. It's one of those upgrades where a single pilot can make or break pricing on it.

That's fair. Still, the ROI is so small and the few fringe cases like him that can make use of it still get so little mileage out of it (only slowing the inevitable) I can't see it being worth more than 4. Tavson being one of the most efficient uses (I'm not arguing he isn't, just that it's an awful upgrade – I'd always take Novice Technician over it) allows it to be better than that on him to make it remotely usable on others.

1 hour ago, Rossetti1828 said:

Count Dooku in his Infiltrator? He can get a bonus action after shooting, so maybe Gonk offers a useful option there.

At potentially three agility while cloaked Dooku might get some use.

Two things about Tavson/Gonk:

1) Gonk is irrelevant in Hyperspace (not HS legal), so there's that to consider when building for a HS event.

2) A shield upgrade gives me an odd number for health which is as good as two more health to get to half-points and is 6 points cheaper than Gonk.
Or save one more point and get a Hull upgrade.

Again, Gonk isn't a great upgrade right now. Maybe we'll see his points addressed in the next update and we can re-assess him then.

19 hours ago, Force Majeure said:

I used him on Rebel Lando and got about 5 shields out of him. That's probably the only ship possibly worth considering taking him on. However, if you're too busy healing vs dealing damage you're going to end up losing the match. Take more offensive upgrades over defensive ones, in other words. Gonk is a trap at least at the moment.

Don't forget that Gonk's ability to recharge shields can also change Lando's win condition. You can take up to six hull damage and still end a match with full points if you can regenerate your shields to full.