I think that the community can largely agree that Cannons as an upgrade type are generally not seeing much play at the moment. They cost too much, do not do enough damage to justify not taking a standard attack, or in the case of the HLC requires a bullseye arc which you cannot rely upon getting. The question must be asked, what can be done about this?

One possible solution would be to reduce the points cost of the cannons, but this wouldn't solve the issue that in most circumstances pushing more damage (and potentially pushing criticals through) is preferable to taking a cannon shot. As I see it, there are two potential solutions to the problem; allow the cannon-carrier to double-tap, or otherwise increase the reliability of the cannon when used.

The first solution is perhaps the most straight-forwards. Such an upgrade couldn't be a Gunner, as most of the cannon-carrying ships do not have a Gunner slot, so I'd think that the Modification slot would be the best fit for such an upgrade:

Slaved Targeting

"After you perform a primary attack which hits, you may perform a bonus attack with an equipped cannon against the same target.

When performing a bonus cannon attack, the attacker cannot modify their attack dice."

Cost: Some Points (no more than 3)

This upgrade would reflect the ship having the cannons and 'normal' weapons being rigged to the same firing trigger, so when the pilot fires their primary weapon, the cannon fires as well. Also, if their primary weapon misses, the cannon fire would also be off target. They also cannot modify the cannon shot, as they aren't 'aiming' that weapon specifically.

An alternative to 'shoot more' is 'shoot better'; if I'm choosing to take an Ion Cannon, Tractor Beam or Jamming Beam, and am willing to sacrifice my 'normal' shot to fire them, I'd like to have a good chance of actually hitting with the bloody things! So, an alternative Modification upgrade would be as follows:

Redirected Power Couplings

"When you perform a cannon attack, you may gain a strain token to reroll a single dice.

If your primary attack value is '3' or above, you may gain a strain token to change a single dice to a hit instead"

Cost: No more than 2 points (I'd lean towards one).

The idea here is that when the cannon user attacks, they can shunt additional power from their other systems to have their cannon attack be more effective. It also gives ships which have higher attack values more incentive to use a cannon. It also uses strain, which is a mechanic which I really feel is underutilised at the moment, to give a trade-off which has to be considered.

Cannons really should be cheaper, though.

Ion Cannon is so, so much worse than Ion Turret. One can point in any direction! And it's much easier to get a double tapping turret than a double tapping cannon. But the cannon is one point more ?

And when was the last time you saw HLC? Or tractor beam, outside of a gimmick list?

Tractors for 1 point, HLC (and Autoblasters) for 2 points, Ion for 2 or 3 points.

Alternately, there's no reason the cannon slot has to be just attacks, right? I don't want to go the 1.0 route of "just give cannon attacks loads of passive mods" - I'm super out. But there's other design space in there too.

Cannon upgrade that allows you to spend a hit during the neutralize results step while making a primary attack to assign the defender a strain; or a cannon upgrade that makes your cannon attacks increase their range by 1? They can just print cards that go in those slots, there's no law against it.

20 minutes ago, svelok said:

Ion Cannon is so, so much worse than Ion Turret. One can point in any direction! And it's much easier to get a double tapping turret than a double tapping cannon. But the cannon is one point more ?

The Ion Cannon can fire at range 3, to be fair. So it's not quite strictly worse. It's certainly a worthwhile buy for Scyks and Gunboats (and any other putative 2-dice-ship-with-a-cannon-slot) as the best way to get a bonus attack die.

The turret can get double-taps, but that's using Veteran Turret Gunner, which is a whole different kettle of fish as that involves you buying a separate upgrade which is more than the cost of the turret (and, for that matter, the ion cannon).

22 minutes ago, svelok said:

And when was the last time you saw HLC? Or tractor beam, outside of a gimmick list?

I've seen quite a few people slot Heavy Lasers in T-70 hardpoints. That's hardly a tournament-winning decision at the moment, though, I admit.

23 minutes ago, svelok said:

Tractors for 1 point, HLC (and Autoblasters) for 2 points, Ion for 2 or 3 points.

Feels a touch too cheap. Heavy Laser cannon is better than predator, so I'd be loath to make it the same price. I could see a point or so cost reduction across the board for cannons, though.

24 minutes ago, svelok said:

Alternately, there's no reason the cannon slot has to be just attacks, right? I don't want to go the 1.0 route of "just give cannon attacks loads of passive mods" - I'm super out. But there's other design space in there too.

It'd be more likely to add benefits to the primary attacks - very few ships will have multiple cannon slots. But I get what you mean.

25 minutes ago, svelok said:

Cannon upgrade that allows you to spend a hit during the neutralize results step while making a primary attack to assign the defender a strain

I think strain is a nice new effect - it's probably not (in practice) quite as bad as stress, so 'forcibly' loading it onto an opponent isn't going to produce a 2.0 version of the infamous stresshog. Strain might be a nice mechanic for a resurrected version of the flechette cannon.

27 minutes ago, svelok said:

a cannon upgrade that makes your cannon attacks increase their range by 1?

Again, that would need you to pack multiple cannons, which would drastically reduce potential carriers to the point it might as well be a platform-specific upgrade, not a cannon upgrade.

Cannons which give you bonuses to primary attacks is a nice idea, though. I can see quite a few options for either spending results or 'if you hit' effects (the latter are good for inaccurate but powerful cannons, so if - for the sake of extreme arguments - you wanted to field the TIE Big-gun's fighter-mounted turbolaser, or the B-wing prototype compound laser - you could have a 2-dice attack which delivers a ridiculous wallop of bonus damage if it hits.

8 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Heavy Laser cannon is better than predator, so I'd be loath to make it the same price.

The more ships an upgrade can go on, the more points it has to cost, because it has to be balanced for the strongest 10% of platforms. Predator is priced for Soontir, not for Bossk.

So comparing the two isn't particularly valuable.

The only double tapping i would want to see with cannons is on cannons with limited or no damage potential.

I would be ok with a modification, linked fire or similar - after you perform a cannon attack which cannot deal more than 1 damage, you may perform a bonus primary weapon attack.

Sorta like the old Tie/D title. In this case, I’d open it up to more ships and give it some nominal cost.

I would also be fine with it being a cannon that cannot deal damage, though that reduces ion cannon usage a bit.

What about increasing the cannon attack based on primary value.

if you primary is 3 dice gain 1 die on cannons. If primary is 4 gain 2 dice on cannons.

this could be in the form of a modification worth 1 or 2 points.

12 minutes ago, Storgar said:

What about increasing the cannon attack based on primary value.

if you primary is 3 dice gain 1 die on cannons. If primary is 4 gain 2 dice on cannons.

this could be in the form of a modification worth 1 or 2 points.

I'd've liked to see this as a standard thing for cannons generally - V+1 or V+2, with the understanding that that means 'whatever this ship's highest primary weapon value us, +1 die' or whatever.

1 hour ago, svelok said:

The more ships an upgrade can go on, the more points it has to cost, because it has to be balanced for the strongest 10% of platforms. Predator is priced for Soontir, not for Bossk.

So comparing the two isn't particularly valuable.

Then HLC has to be priced for Poe.

Is it strange that I don't really want to see cannons get much better? Like, maybe 1 point cheaper, but no more than that in cost.

Mostly, I like that control tools exist. I don't want them to be too powerful or too common. The old canard from the devs that "You don't want a game where Ion is good" really rings true to me. I loved rainbow cannon TIE/D back in 1e, putting stress, Ion, and tractor onto a Miranda or Nym was delicious. It was kind of needed in 1e, because the power level was nutty. In a more modest 2e, I don't think easy control is needed. I want it to generally be costly (not necessarily points, but in terms of trade-offs or opportunity costs).

I also don't hate essentially Predator, but for Cannons or Special Weapons only (would it work to use "turn one eye to a hit" instead of reroll? It'd at least feel different, but oddly--despite Focus and Lock being mathematically identical--a single focus-turn vs a single reroll do not appear to be mathematically identical... I don't want to delay my post while I think on that for a bit). Primary weapon based ships have cheap and generally useful talents they can use to improve their attacks. I don't think Cannons need *better* tools, but I don't hate the thought of them having essentially the same tools. A Cannon-Predator which didn't work on Primary attacks feels right to me.

45 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

I'd've liked to see this as a standard thing for cannons generally - V+1 or V+2, with the understanding that that means 'whatever this ship's highest primary weapon value us, +1 die' or whatever.

Which I guess is in theory what the Upsilon's Linked Battery ability is intended to achieve. I think the first order shuttle is the only (?) 4-dice-primary ship capable of mounting a cannon upgrade, so the bonus makes sense as it's the outlier.

I guess it's more a case of the cannons being primarily priced and stat-ed for 3-dice ships (B-wing, TIE defender, Lambda Shuttle, Aggressor, YV-666, Firespray, T-70 X-wing) rather than 2-dice ships (Gunboat, M3-A Scyk, and now Resistance Transport), so rather than being a particularly adaptable formula, it's more a case of "is this overpowered as an upgrade to a 2-dice primary ship?".

8 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

It was kind of needed in 1e, because the power level was nutty. In a more modest 2e, I don't think easy control is needed. I want it to generally be costly (not necessarily points, but in terms of trade-offs or opportunity costs).

Agreed. I think that's one reason I like strain; unlike stress or ion tokens, it hurts like heck but being perma-strained is something you can live with a lot more easily than being perma-stressed.

Ion weapons needing that second hit also makes cannons, missiles and turrets not bad as 3-die-primary substitutes, but not massively great for actually ionizing someone - which in turn makes the "and then he was heavily tazed!!!!" ion torpedoes a much more worthwhile investment than they might otherwise have been.

6 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

I  also don't hate essentially Predator, but for Canno  ns o   r           Special Weapons only 

So... HLC? lol

4 dice, earn your shot, make your own mods, no crits; versus 3 dice with passive mods.

9 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Is it strange that I don't really want to see cannons get much better? Like, maybe 1 point cheaper, but no more than that in cost.

Mostly, I like that control tools exist. I don't want them to be too powerful or too common.

As it stands, Ion Cannon is basically a dead upgrade. People have run it on generic gunboats at casual events, but really only on gunboats, and it's basically non-existent at competitive events. And that's in extended, where it's currently stuck, with the larger ship pool that can use it - unless we see gunboats or IG88 added to hyperspace for some reason, it'd be even worse there.

So I'm not really scared of 3 point ICT or 1 point Tractor. Whatever. Nobody uses them now, maybe somebody would use them then.

44 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Then HLC has to be priced for Poe.

Sure, although that's an exaggeration - there's more Soontirs with talents than there are Poes with cannons, if that makes sense.

Poe isn't exactly tearing up the meta right now, and comparatively speaking, 2 point HLC would run the same opportunity cost as Black One. Right now, a little over 1 in 4 Poes runs HLC - you'd see it a more common choice at 2 points. But a Poe that's focus+rolling to line up HLC is much less painful than a Poe focus+boosting for a range 1 primary with predator, and much much less painful than Poe focus+locking a proton torpedo.

1 minute ago, svelok said:

So... HLC? lol

4 dice, earn your shot, make your own mods, no crits; versus 3 dice with passive mods.

Or like, Predator with "special attack" rather than "primary attack." I don't hate an Ion Cannon user getting a reroll at times, same as an X-Wing can get a reroll at times with their primary.

Bah, HLC with "essentially Predator" is more than I really want. But the basic premise of a cannon having access (at fair price) to the same fairly-priced upgrade as someone else just seems OK.

2 minutes ago, svelok said:

As it stands, Ion Cannon is basically a dead upgrade. People have run it on generic gunboats at casual events, but really only on gunboats, and it's basically non-existent at competitive events. And that's in extended, where it's currently stuck, with the larger ship pool that can use it - unless we see gunboats or IG88 added to hyperspace for some reason, it'd be even worse there.

So I'm not really scared of 3 point ICT or 1 point Tractor. Whatever. Nobody uses them now, maybe somebody would use them then.

A dagger to my Ion Scyk loving heart. A dagger.

(I love how this gif starts one way, but gets so extra by the end)

I think Ion Scyks at least are a perfect example of a fair ship. A good, old-fashioned fair ship. Not tearing up the tournament scene, but closer to the ideal of what a ship should be. I don't think it needs to get power crept. I'd rather smooth off the peaks.

I don't think every upgrade in the game needs to get balanced so that it sees tournament play. Control can often be wicked obnoxious, and I'm glad it isn't the heart of the meta. Granted, 3 points rather than 4 or 5 probably doesn't realign the meta too much. But that's still in the realm of slight tweaks, rather than major buffs like the cannon double taps some folks suggest.

However, I'm not sure "reduce the cost of Ion Cannon to the price where Braylen and Ten take it in Rebel Beef" is a great plan, either.

//

On the other hand, If I got a few more points to play with in 4x Ion Scyks + Fenn Rau... I'm probably not losing sleep over it.

3 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Bah, HLC with "essentially Predator" is more than I really want.

Sorry, that's not what I meant-

HLC is *itself* basically what you want out of "3-dice cannon plus a passive reroll in bullseye", it just gets there by a different route and has a lower overall power level.

1 minute ago, svelok said:

Sorry, that's not what I meant-

HLC is *itself* basically what you want out of "3-dice cannon plus a passive reroll in bullseye", it just gets there by a different route and has a lower overall power level.

But like, you can't use HLC when you're making an Ion Cannon attack. Or Tractor Beam, or any other control -weapon rather than damage -weapon (for context, I don't really like plain damage cannons... Mangler is a 1e upgrade I really hope NEVER comes back). Maybe even at a fair price, Cannon + 'Predator' would be too easy and efficient control to be fun to play against. But a bullseye reroll seems... modest enough? Maybe.

Also, I knew you weren't talking Predator HLC, but it was occurring to me that I'd left that possibility out of my first thoughts.

19 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

I  don't think every upgrade in the game needs to  get balanced so that it sees tournament p  lay  . 

WHY THE FLIP NOT?!

Haha, seriously I’d love to live in a world where every card in the game was useful at a comparatively similar level.

Wanting them all balanced means they’re also not pushing any other cards out so it wouldn’t be abusive in that sense.

This is all strictly hypothetical though

On 6/17/2019 at 10:12 AM, ClassicalMoser said:

WHY THE FLIP NOT?!

Haha, seriously I’d love to live in a world where every card in the game was useful at a comparatively similar level.

Wanting them all balanced means they’re also not pushing any other cards out so it wouldn’t be abusive in that sense.

This is all strictly hypothetical though

I just don't think buffs and power creep ever gets to that world of balance.

I think they need to make cannon specific upgrades.

A powerful cannon can be abused by brobots, gunboats, etc. So, having cannon specific mods, talents, could help keep the abuse down. We dont want adv slamming gunboats with 4 dice cannons. But make a mod, that gives a reroll on a cannon if you stressed. Or a talent slot that to turns an eyeball to a hit if there are 1 or fewer hit results showing, for cannon attacks only.

Let people build for cannons. Not just "Oh hey, 5pts for this badass cannon, let me spam 5 of them!"

Another option is a recurring charge cannon. Like a mangler cannon, but has three charges: "Spend 3 charges to perform this attack. You may chabge 1 hit result to a crit result". Now, a 2 dice ship, can be a 3 attack ship, but only every third round. Similar to reload on ordnance.

26 minutes ago, wurms said:

Another option is a recurring charge cannon. Like a mangler cannon, but has three charges: "Spend 3 charges to perform this attack. You may chabge 1 hit result to a crit result". Now, a 2 dice ship, can be a 3 attack ship, but only every third round. Similar to reload on ordnance.

Unfortunately, I actually don't hate this idea though I think 1e Mangler was super dumb. Huh, kind of makes it like an ordnance cannon.

Kind of gives me a similar idea for the B-Wing prototype cannon:

Composite laser cannon:

(2 cannon slots)

5 dice || attack.

SETUP: You may lose any number of charges

Reduce your primary attack value by one.

Attack: Spend 4 charges to perform this attack. You may turn all (hit) results to (crit) results. If this attack hits, gain one ion token.

In the end phase, if all of your charges are active, lose all of your charges.

4 charges, recurring.

So you've got a HUGE mega-cannon attack, but only once every 4 rounds, and if you miss it, you don't get it at all. Not only that, but your opponent knows when it's coming and will have all kinds of ways of dodging the B-Wing's bullseye before it hits. If they fail to dodge it, they'll get badly punished. Also great for tearing up capital ships, but only works once every 4 turns and makes your attacks kinda wimpy in between.

Also, if you do manage to strike for all you're worth, you'll probably be a sitting duck.

Maybe it's too restrictive. Only 3 charges, or making it target lock requirement instead of bullseye might make it more playable. As is, it's definitely thematic for a "This ship is here to make one devastating attack. Let's make sure it's set up right and doesn't get nuked first."

27 minutes ago, wurms said:

Another option is a recurring charge cannon. Like a mangler cannon, but has three charges: "Spend 3 charges to perform this attack. You may chabge 1 hit result to a crit result". Now, a 2 dice ship, can be a 3 attack ship, but only every third round. Similar to reload on ordnance.

I like this. I'm emphatically against cannons which are just primary weapons. My least favorite missile is the Barrage Rockets. They're boring and, in my mind, shut down design space. If folks wanted Gunboats or Scyks to be 3-red ships, they should have had 3-red dice, rather than an aftermarket cannon which might cause any sorts of balance issues, since the upgrade has to be fairly priced across everything.

With Cannons vs Missiles/Torpedoes, Cannons should have a very "this thing just works" feel to them. But a recharging cannon both provides a means of limiting how often an otherwise boring plain-damage cannon be used, as well as keeping the feel of a weapon which isn't limited by how much physical ordnance is carried by the ship, but charged (if slowly) by the ship's standard reactor, like any other laser or blaster weapons.

More things should have this sort of Leia-like recharge mechanic.

11 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Kind of gives me a similar idea for the B-Wing prototype cannon:

Not too bad. We all have our own ideas.

Personally, I think however a Composite Beam Laser works out, it ought to be--in effect if not rules--essentially epic-only. Too costly and restrictive for standard play, but a potent tool for putting a giant hole in an Epic ship.

5 hours ago, svelok said:

The more ships an upgrade can go on, the more points it has to cost, because it has to be balanced for the strongest 10% of platforms. Predator is priced for Soontir, not for Bossk.

So comparing the two isn't particularly valuable.

You put the finger on exactly the thing that bugs me the most about a lot of upgrade! :0
I guess it make a lot of sense from a balancing point of view, like saying that not every upgrade is always efficient for every ship (and trying to make it efficient for every ship would be en exercise in futility of the biggest order!)

But I still feel bad that some upgrade are basically ''locked out'' of 90% percents of ships because of one or two offenders.
For example, juke is probably going to go up again in the next point update, because anything that touched from close or far to quad phantom is going to die. But the upgrade, at 4 points, was already not that good of a pick on anything but a phantom or defender because of free evade.
Same for Hyperspace tracking data. 10 points to place your ship at any initiative level, and a secondary clause that nevers happen outside of one single ship, yet priced as to be unplayable because one list made too good a use of it.

23 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

I like this. I'm emphatically against cannons which are just primary weapons. My least favorite missile is the Barrage Rockets. They're boring and, in my mind, shut down design space. If folks wanted Gunboats or Scyks to be 3-red ships, they should have had 3-red dice, rather than an aftermarket cannon which might cause any sorts of balance issues, since the upgrade has to be fairly priced across everything.

With Cannons vs Missiles/Torpedoes, Cannons should have a very "this thing just works" feel to them. But a recharging cannon both provides a means of limiting how often an otherwise boring plain-damage cannon be used, as well as keeping the feel of a weapon which isn't limited by how much physical ordnance is carried by the ship, but charged (if slowly) by the ship's standard reactor, like any other laser or blaster weapons.

More things should have this sort of Leia-like recharge mechanic.

Not too bad. We all have our own ideas.

Personally, I think however a Composite Beam Laser works out, it ought to be--in effect if not rules--essentially epic-only. Too costly and restrictive for standard play, but a potent tool for putting a giant hole in an Epic ship.

Man, what I love about the forums here is sometimes someone just speaks my own mind better than I ever could. I almost always agree with you, haha.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of ideas for a composite beam that make it a 2 attack with a huge extra-helping of bonus damage, but IMO, that's basically just a punishment to large/huge/low-agility ships that makes for a bit of an NPE. I much prefer attacks that are hard to set up and do a ton of damage (1e APTs anyone?) to attacks that have low odds but do a ton of damage.

Chance is a good thing for the game, but skill is so much more important. This composite cannon idea would require a lot of planning to use well, and naturally wouldn't be that good in a dogfight but would SING in epic, especially against large/huge ships

2 minutes ago, DarthSempai said:

But I still feel bad that some upgrade are basically ''locked out'' of 90% percents of ships because of one or two offenders.
For example, juke is probably going to go up again in the next point update, because anything that touched from close or far to quad phantom is going to die. But the upgrade, at 4 points, was already not that good of a pick on anything but a phantom or defender because of free evade.
Same for Hyperspace tracking data. 10 points to place your ship at any initiative level, and a secondary clause that nevers happen outside of one single ship, yet priced as to be unplayable because one list made too good a use of it.

Honestly, I think Juke is the best case for being errataed to limited (1 or 2). It's really not abusive or even that strong unless it's spammed because after the first attack it's basically an always-on crack shot. Limited 1 it would be worth 2-3 points. Limited 2 maybe worth 4, but probably not more.

It's fun to use on a Wulf/PerCop Jyn, but it's overpriced for that combo and doesn't synergize well with other Rebels. Same for Leevan Tenza, Hera, Sabine, etc.

Literally all you need is cheaper cannons

Let's not get 1st Ed up in here

While it's true Bwings will almost always default to primaries...well, **** em

Ships like the gunboat, scyk, resistance transport etc will serve as fine homes while a 3-die primary ship would probably really appreciate a 2 point HLC (it's a more difficult to trigger predator, two points is fine)

3 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

While it's true Bwings will almost always default to primaries...well, **** em

Like the comment but dislike this particular sentiment. Hate current B-Wings (stupid brain-dead efficiency jousters) but love B-Wings thematically as cannon-carriers.

I want to see them WAY more expensive than an X-Wing, but for an actual freaking good reason that's related to cannons.

Though I will definitely concede that's a problem with the chassis and not with cannons in general.

Agreed! They should rip that bandaid off sooner rather than later, and just say '' Sorry guys we f- up, limited dots are now in the app.'' The more they wait, the harder the change is going to be to justify. And honestly, a lot of things that are ''broken'' in V2 are because of spam. (VTG, juke, certain generic pilot).