The Target Lock mechanic has always been the constraint among torpedo and missile secondary weapons. Back in 1st edition if your opponent had pilot skill (or initiative if you were tied) your ship might have a powerful attack, but it will never make that attack before it is removed from the table. Sure there was deadeye but at the higher pilot skills the power of it was reduced the higher you go up in pilot skill as it was easier to block you. When contracted scout came, you were finally able to make the powerful attack as you only need to have an opportunity to attack, not an opportunity to attack the ship you had a lock on (and if you didn't then you had a focus token or two for defense).

I know double modding is good, but I think the answer is spam the auto torps for area control for your ace. So instead of 2U Kylo, you can take 3Nu Soontir/Inky. Looking at passive sensors' munitions as a bump to a spammable heavy primary weapon instead of part of an intricate and pricey plan seems the most honest, especially because dedicated Torp launchers want to be expendable to pour all resources into aggro, setting up your ace's preffered endgame. Don't know if that 55some point endgame is preferred to removing a 4 die gun for Point-Fortress Ren's shenanigans, but when Nu's cost less than some TIE fighters, it is tempting.

I think the card can see play on a Lothal Rebel VCX with Saw crew. Allows a double modded initial engagement with a ship that has 14 Hull to chew through. 80 points for that load out leaves room for 2-3 other ships like Luke, Braylen, etc or you can bring a coordinating ship to give the reinforce prior to the passive sensors action.

On 6/28/2019 at 11:08 AM, Marinealver said:

The Target Lock mechanic has always been the constraint among torpedo and missile secondary weapons. Back in 1st edition if your opponent had pilot skill (or initiative if you were tied) your ship might have a powerful attack, but it will never make that attack before it is removed from the table. Sure there was deadeye but at the higher pilot skills the power of it was reduced the higher you go up in pilot skill as it was easier to block you. When contracted scout came, you were finally able to make the powerful attack as you only need to have an opportunity to attack, not an opportunity to attack the ship you had a lock on (and if you didn't then you had a focus token or two for defense).

...In 1.0 ordnance was hot garbage (except for Prockets) up until the JumpMaster fiasco because you had to spend a TL without getting the benefit of a TL's dice mods. It had very little to do with the telegraphing nature of the TL; you were paying a large premium to throw 3-4 unmodded dice and deny the R3 bonus defense die. In most situations, this was equivalent average damage output (on a ship with a 3 dice attack) to just taking a Focus action.

4 hours ago, President Jyrgunkarrd said:

...In 1.0 ordnance was hot garbage (except for Prockets) up until the JumpMaster fiasco because you had to spend a TL without getting the benefit of a TL's dice mods. It had very little to do with the telegraphing nature of the TL; you were paying a large premium to throw 3-4 unmodded dice and deny the R3 bonus defense die. In most situations, this was equivalent average damage output (on a ship with a 3 dice attack) to just taking a Focus action.

People think that spending the TL was the bad thing but that is only in perception, if you plug the odds in those dice prediction calculators, 4 dice with a calculate token (essentially the 1st edition proton torpedoes) you had a better chance of hitting than on a 3 dice primary with rerolls. What made 1st edition torpedoes worthless was arc dodgers. Their whole list was built upon moving last and reposistioning actions. If you had a target lock on a ship, that ship would simply stay out of the fight while the other ships pummel you off the table, then you would have wasted points in an attack you never made and the cherry on top is you increased your opponents MOV more than if you just put on VI.

On 6/27/2019 at 10:06 AM, Biophysical said:

VCX aalready have a 4 dice primary, and are quite expensive, so this combo isn't bringing anything new. These two ships can be largely left absent from discussion. 

One thing worth mentioning is that Kanan can use Passive Sensors Locks + 2 Force Charges, and it pairs really nicely with Saw Crew.

4 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

People think that spending the TL was the bad thing but that is only in perception, if you plug the odds in those dice prediction calculators, 4 dice with a calculate token (essentially the 1st edition proton torpedoes) you had a better chance of hitting than on a 3 dice primary with rerolls. What made 1st edition torpedoes worthless was arc dodgers. Their whole list was built upon moving last and reposistioning actions. If you had a target lock on a ship, that ship would simply stay out of the fight while the other ships pummel you off the table, then you would have wasted points in an attack you never made and the cherry on top is you increased your opponents MOV more than if you just put on VI.

Did you check the odds for when your target was wearing Autothrusters, and therefore neutralized your torpedoes unless you were strictly R2? Because I don't think you did.


But nevermind that: Naked proton torpedo gets you 2.6 hits against a target with no evasion. 3 dice primary attack against the same target, only using Focus, gets you 2.2 hits.

You paid 4 points (of 100) to get a one time 0.4 damage increase. That's horrible value.

And the value only gets worse as your target gains evasion dice.


Arc dodging is not the reason 1.0 ordnance sucked for such a long time. It just sucked, and would have still been a bad buy even in an environment with no arc dodging to speak of.

On 6/30/2019 at 4:14 PM, President Jyrgunkarrd said:

Did you check the odds for when your target was wearing Autothrusters, and therefore neutralized your torpedoes unless you were strictly R2? Because I don't think you did.


But nevermind that: Naked proton torpedo gets you 2.6 hits against a target with no evasion. 3 dice primary attack against the same target, only using Focus, gets you 2.2 hits.

You paid 4 points (of 100) to get a one time 0.4 damage increase. That's horrible value.

And the value only gets worse as your target gains evasion dice.


Arc dodging is not the reason 1.0 ordnance sucked for such a long time. It just sucked, and would have still been a bad buy even in an environment with no arc dodging to speak of.

Talk about corner case, did you remeber that proton torpedoes convert a focus result to a crit? Because clearly that is not in your equations .

So 4 dice w/calculate (an equivelant to a naked proton torpedo) shot vs 3 dice with target lock (a primary that doesn't have to spend the target lock). Strictly probability of hits because anyone with 2 focuses and an evade is likely going to cancel 3 hits.

Proton Torpedo

Target Lock Primary

Now as you see it is very easy to assume the attack is weaker since the difference is barely there, but the probability is not where it fails at. Where proton torpedoes fail is in the opportunity cost. You have to pay 4 points (a lot for a single upgrade in a list that can't be more than 100 points) and if you don't get a chance to make that attack you were just throwing points at your opponent's MOV. It wasn't worst than just keeping you target lock on your B-wing, it just feels that way especially if you only make one attack that got canceled by 3 evades before it is shot up and that is assuming you got the opportunity to make such an attack. You were better off leaving the proton torpedoes in the binder and just pull a 4th B-wing.

9 hours ago, ryanhpayne1 said:

I think the card can see play on a Lothal Rebel VCX with Saw crew. Allows a double modded initial engagement with a ship that has 14 Hull to chew through. 80 points for that load out leaves room for 2-3 other ships like Luke, Braylen, etc or you can bring a coordinating ship to give the reinforce prior to the passive sensors action.

Lothal Rebel with Saw and Passive Sensors: 80 points.

Hera with Saw: 82 points, and she's Init 5 with a nice pilot ability.

4 hours ago, Marinealver said:

What made 1st edition torpedoes worthless was arc dodgers.

The other weakness in 1e Proton Torpedoes was that they couldn't easily get double-modded. Having access to Lock + some other form of rerolls wasn't easy, and wasn't as easy as having Lock + Focus. Long Range Scanners made Lock + Focus pretty trivial for a lot of ships.

But Lock + Focus did very little for Proton Torpedoes. You already had the sorta-Calculate, so getting a focus action didn't add too much, and it was hard to fix blanks. Contrast Concussion Missiles, which also spent the lock, but turned a blank to a hit instead of a focus to a Crit. On just a Lock, they were the same as a Proton Torpedo. However, with a Focus, they were significantly better than Proton Torpedoes. Proton Torpedoes were essentially always worse than other similar Ordnance in 1e.

4 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Lothal Rebel with Saw and Passive Sensors: 80 points.

Hera with Saw: 82 points, and she's Init 5 with a nice pilot ability.

The other weakness in 1e Proton Torpedoes was that they couldn't easily get double-modded. Having access to Lock + some other form of rerolls wasn't easy, and wasn't as easy as having Lock + Focus. Long Range Scanners made Lock + Focus pretty trivial for a lot of ships.

But Lock + Focus did very little for Proton Torpedoes. You already had the sorta-Calculate, so getting a focus action didn't add too much, and it was hard to fix blanks. Contrast Concussion Missiles, which also spent the lock, but turned a blank to a hit instead of a focus to a Crit. On just a Lock, they were the same as a Proton Torpedo. However, with a Focus, they were significantly better than Proton Torpedoes. Proton Torpedoes were essentially always worse than other similar Ordnance in 1e.

Yup and that was another reason while the target lock mechanic was so restrictive. The focus tokens could stack where as target lock didn't the persistence was considered a compensation but if you weren't spending that target lock token then it was pretty much useless, especially if you use a later action to transfer the token to a different target. But again the perception that 4 dice without rerolls is weaker than 3 dice with a reroll is an understandable misconception. Rolling blanks and focus results produces sort of reinforces that gamblers fallacy into on believing that if they would have been better off with 1 less die if only they had that reroll.

As for similar weapons the only thing that was similar was plasma torpedoes however it worked in a different function. Instead of modification it had a bonus damage considering that the ship you hit had shields. Now with the meta often being large based ships and that the best use of these munitions was to use them as quick as possible that was likely the case so plasma torpedoes often did their bonus damage where the proton torpedoes extra crit didn't provide much of a benefit. Given deadeye plasma torpedo with 2 focus tokens considerably better than target lock proton torpedoes.

Speaking of stacking there was also the unusable advanced proton torpedoes. Now granted a 5 dice attack is powerful but again we are talking about an unmodified 5 dice attack which was weaker than a proton torpedo attack, add the fact that you had to be range 1 in which you could have just make a 4 dice primary with target lock and get better results. IF by some chance you had a focus token then you were guaranteed 3 hits, but the requirements of target lock, focus, and range 1 being extremely prohibitive. You saw that about as much as you would find yourself with a hand of 29 in cribbage.

Plus as I mentioned using APT without a focus is worse than a 3 firepower primary attack, nice to see that FFG had noticed this in 2nd edition and just made it a range 1 proton torpedo with an extra die.

I was being sarcastic on that last sentence.

25 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

IF by some chance you had a focus token then you were guaranteed 3 hits, but the requirements of target lock, focus, and range 1 being extremely prohibitive. You saw that about as much as you would find yourself with a hand of 29 in cribbage.

Yes and no. My one observation is that I'm sure I recall FFG saying the "advanced" weapons were deliberately designed to be more powerful but more fiddly to use .

Advanced Homing Missiles (range 2 only but ignores shields) were much the same.

And, more importantly, in 1st edition, the requirements were much less important. Advanced Proton Torpedoes came out with the TIE bomber in wave 3 - 6 months after the A-wing, and Push The Limit . At that point, any ship with a torpedo slot and an elite talent upgrade could get focus/lock for the cost of a stress token. Not to mention that the expansion pack included Major Rhymer, who could also fire the things at range 2.

In 2nd edition, with bonus actions (especially non-repositioning actions - one action of the two from every linked action on an action bar I can think of is either boost, barrel roll, or rotate) so much rarer, it didn't make sense to keep the focus-and-lock requirement to use them effectively. Which is why, as you say, they just made them 'sawn-off' proton torpedoes, trading range and charge for a bonus attack die.

On ‎6‎/‎28‎/‎2019 at 5:26 PM, PhantomFO said:

I still think that Vulture swarms with energy charges are going to eat these things for lunch.

Depends. With the price going up, if you want (for the sake of simplicity) 8 vultures with energy shells, you're going to be alternating I1 and I3, meaning half your shells fire first, and half after, the torpedo volley.

4 Energy Shell Charges is probably not enough - it's very close but probably not enough - to kill an N-1 before the torpedoes fire (they average about four-and-a-half damage against an N-1 with an evade token and no other green token).

4 torpedoes are likely to get a couple of kills on the drones who haven't fired yet. That leaves two drones, who can probably finish off whichever N-1 the higher initiative drones were whomping on.

Basically, as far as the ordnance fight is concerned, they pretty much trade damage as far as the ordnance goes.

What'll settle it is the subsequent turns. The N-1s have a second torpedo charge, but positioning to use it, especially whilst maintaining full throttle, is basically going to need you to disengage and come back in. On the other hand the Vultures need to disarm to reload their charges, and aren't exactly fast enough to chase them, so I can see them managing it.

Frankly a better plan would be for the vultures to try and skip to range 1 and avoid the ordnance fight; if the N-1s have triggered passive sensors then the vultures are still throwing 3 dice attacks but are only eating 3 dice attacks in return, not 4 dice.

I'm not sure how it'll go once it comes down to primary weapons versus primary weapons (or reloading charges). Even at 'only' agility 2, focus-and-evade is going to be a real challenge for a primary-weapon-2 fighter to hurt.

24 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Yes and no. My one observation is that I'm sure I recall FFG saying the "advanced" weapons were deliberately designed to be more powerful but more fiddly to use .

Advanced Homing Missiles (range 2 only but ignores shields) were much the same.

And, more importantly, in 1st edition, the requirements were much less important. Advanced Proton Torpedoes came out with the TIE bomber in wave 3 - 6 months after the A-wing, and Push The Limit . At that point, any ship with a torpedo slot and an elite talent upgrade could get focus/lock for the cost of a stress token. Not to mention that the expansion pack included Major Rhymer, who could also fire the things at range 2.

In 2nd edition, with bonus actions (especially non-repositioning actions - one action of the two from every linked action on an action bar I can think of is either boost, barrel roll, or rotate) so much rarer, it didn't make sense to keep the focus-and-lock requirement to use them effectively. Which is why, as you say, they just made them 'sawn-off' proton torpedoes, trading range and charge for a bonus attack die.

That might be the theme but advanced after it was all said and done was just a way to give something a different name. Homing missiles were an attempt to go though shield regen but a single crit couldn't' take out an X-wing and rarely took out an E-wing. As for the requirements they still were key, but as you pointed out they had to be worked around. PTL allowed for token stacking and deadeye allowed pilots with low PS but the EPT slot to be able to make secondary weapon attacks against anything inside front arc without having to specify a target in the activation phase. Sure there were more ways around the standard rules but the biggest restraints were the points. Homing missiles (not AdvHM) was one of those rare missile secondary weapon that had a good attack profile but 6 points for a single attack was just asking for too much.

Now in second edition the points are no longer a problem as they can be adjusted as such but the effects that FFG has put on these weapons are almost as bad. I get it that many players won't find an alpha strike meta any more enjoyable than a fortress meta since it cuts games real quick and no one wants to be tabled after turn 2 or 3. Still it is like FFG wants to make doubily sure that they don't bring back harpoon missiles from first edition. 2nd edition homing missiles are so laughable I would rather take 1st edition homing missiles at 12 points with single charge (watch that become the advanced homing missiles for 2nd edition).

9 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

2nd edition homing missiles are so laughable I would rather take 1st edition homing missiles at 12 points with single charge (watch that become the advanced homing missiles for 2nd edition).

Honestly, I think they're currently overpriced but at their first draft (3 points each) I found them awesome. Homing Missiles were a very affordable alternative to the gunner for generic TIE/sf - you can basically ignore a 1-damage hit, but a shedload of them is a whole 'nother issue. With Zetas getting so much cheaper I'll be intrigued to give Homing Missile/Passive Sensor TIE/sf a try en masse.

(I realise that TIE/sf do get more mileage out of missiles than most. The platform is cheap if you don't want named pilots or SpecFor Gunner, it's tough enough to survive being shot without focus tokens, it has a system slot for fire control/passive sensor shenanigans, and it can bung missiles backwards with Heavy Weapons Turret if it needs to).

3 hours ago, Marinealver said:

But again the perception that 4 dice without rerolls is weaker than 3 dice with a reroll is an understandable misconception. Rolling blanks and focus results produces sort of reinforces that gamblers fallacy into on believing that if they would have been better off with 1 less die if only they had that reroll.

One tiny nitpick, that's mostly in case someone other than you isn't paying attention to context: a no-modification 4 dice attack is worse than a single-mods 3 dice attack. But of course, Proton Torpedoes *aren't* a no-mods attack. That one focus-turn adds like 0.68 expected hits to the attack. That's nearly as much as a focus token or lock adds to a 3-dice attack (0.75).

4 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Speaking of stacking there was also the unusable advanced proton torpedoes. Now granted a 5 dice attack is powerful but again we are talking about an unmodified 5 dice attack which was weaker than a proton torpedo attack, add the fact that you had to be range 1 in which you could have just make a 4 dice primary with target lock and get better results. IF by some chance you had a focus token then you were guaranteed 3 hits, but the requirements of target lock, focus, and range 1 being extremely prohibitive. You saw that about as much as you would find yourself with a hand of 29 in cribbage.

I actually started to try them out a bit towards the end of 1e on Push the Limit Guri. She could use lock and use those sweet bendy rolls to into R1, get the Focus, blaze away for 5 hits, and use Scavenger Crane to essentially reload the Torpedo. Not very high PS/Initiative, but absolutely deadly.

On 6/27/2019 at 11:56 AM, Transmogrifier said:

My issue is that you are paying a 3 point premium for Passive Sensors to make already expensive ordnance work on a sub-optimal platform. That 3 points only helps you when you fire ordnance (likely only once per game, possibly twice). That same 3 points could have instead been put towards upgrading to a more expensive pilot where you would be gaining a higher initiative value (which will be relevant every time you Activate & Engage) as well as potentially a valuable pilot ability. So it becomes a question of whether the generics are cheap enough to be run in high enough numbers to make up for the lost value over simply just running higher initiative pilots with ordnance.

Passive sensors does a bit more for a missile equiped TIE/SF. The ability to lock (and it has to be the lock and NOT the calculate) allows you to rotate your arc forward or back at I ∞.

This can even be useful even if you are OUT of missiles.

On 6/27/2019 at 11:56 AM, Transmogrifier said:

My issue is that you are paying a 3 point premium for Passive Sensors to make already expensive ordnance work on a sub-optimal platform. That 3 points only helps you when you fire ordnance (likely only once per game, possibly twice). That same 3 points could have instead been put towards upgrading to a more expensive pilot where you would be gaining a higher initiative value (which will be relevant every time you Activate & Engage) as well as potentially a valuable pilot ability. So it becomes a question of whether the generics are cheap enough to be run in high enough numbers to make up for the lost value over simply just running higher initiative pilots with ordnance.

However, initiative is also something in the control of your opponents, so you might say upgrade to a ps5 (usually cost more than 3 points) and still lose the bid and you'll move first, meaning that even at I5, against other I5 you might as well be a I1.
Passive sensor let's you disregard all that and make sure that if combat is happening, you'll get a TL, no need for bidding, premium PS, etc.

11 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Honestly, I think they're currently overpriced but at their first draft (3 points each) I found them awesome.

Agreed. I was very disappointed when they upped them all instead of reducing the others to match. Definitely the wrong knee-jerk IMO. Reduce them all by one and they'll see a little play. Reduce them all by two and that's the sweet spot between trash and OP NPE.

4 hours ago, DarthSempai said:

Passive sensor let's you disregard all that and make sure that if combat is happening, you'll get a TL, no need for bidding, premium PS, etc.

Unless you get initiative-killed. 😛

Seriously though, I like that they're adding a lot more engagement-phase shenanigans (Roark and Torkil are actually really interesting) as it makes Initiative more flexible without changing positioning for the most part.

10 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

One tiny nitpick, that's mostly in case someone other than you isn't paying attention to context: a no-modification 4 dice attack is worse than a single-mods 3 dice attack. But of course, Proton Torpedoes *aren't* a no-mods attack. That one focus-turn adds like 0.68 expected hits to the attack. That's nearly as much as a focus token or lock adds to a 3-dice attack (0.75).

I actually started to try them out a bit towards the end of 1e on Push the Limit Guri. She could use lock and use those sweet bendy rolls to into R1, get the Focus, blaze away for 5 hits, and use Scavenger Crane to essentially reload the Torpedo. Not very high PS/Initiative, but absolutely deadly.

Well it is the gambler fallacy in full effect. If you roll all blanks, the idea that you could have had a TL and just rolled 3 blanks then reroll 3 more dice people thing that is the same as rolling 6 dice which it is not.

As for my APT experiment I tried Nera Dantels with Push the limit. You learn that B-wing are the worst when it comes to chasing other ships.

7 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

You learn that B-wing are the worst when it comes to chasing other ships.

Or staying alive in 1.0. 1-agility means you die to basically 2 attacks (especially with quadruple-tapping Ghosts running around).

One of the problems with LoW PS missiles/torps isn't just that you have to get a lock, it's that you also have to survive long enough to use it with (generally) no defense mods. It's what makes a missile like ESCs that should be monumentally underwhelming actually quite good. It's not just that you don't have to plan ahead to figure out what you're shooting at, it's also that if you need a token on defense, you have 1, and if you nattie your missile, your token is still available for your buddies. In that respect, Protorps going up to 13 and Plasma torps starting at 9 baffles me. Protorps barely existed in the meta (Vynder, sometimes on Sith Infiltrators/Kylo, rarely mixed in somewhere in Rebel beef) at 12, but apparently that was enough to kick them all the way up to 13 and use of barrage rockets in a quad K-Wing build and occasionally on a TIE Bomber was enough to kick them up to 8. Even ESCs got bumped up to 5, but all the droids went down by at least one, so was the softest of the nerfs to ordinance. Every piece of ordinance that saw play in at least 1 list got a point bump (except for the APT on Vynder). Paying more points for ordinance that's only been earning it's keep with a handful of pilots through Passive Sensors, is...just kind of crap.

3 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

Protorps barely existed in the meta (Vynder, sometimes on Sith Infiltrators/Kylo, rarely mixed in somewhere in Rebel beef) at 12, but apparently that was enough to kick them all the way up to 13 and use of barrage rockets in a quad K-Wing build and occasionally on a TIE Bomber was enough to kick them up to 8. Even ESCs got bumped up to 5, but all the droids went down by at least one, so was the softest of the nerfs to ordinance.

If you look at the ListFortress data, every one of the upgrades you named was performing substantially above average when it was played (which is still far more often than any of the lock-missiles). My statistical model bumped them all by as much or more (mostly exactly on par). Especially when you consider what Passive Sensors will do, I think this was a very solid call.

Still all the lock-based missiles and Ion Torpedoes need a 2-point drop each. They're trash. The existing nerfs could have made them playable options if they had gotten buffed. But they got nothing.

13 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

One of the problems with LoW PS missiles/torps isn't just that you have to get a lock, it's that you also have to survive long enough to use it with (generally) no defense mods. It's what makes a missile like ESCs that should be monumentally underwhelming actually quite good. It's not just that you don't have to plan ahead to figure out what you're shooting at, it's also that if you need a token on defense, you have 1, and if you nattie your missile, your token is still available for your buddies. In that respect, Protorps going up to 13 and Plasma torps starting at 9 baffles me. Protorps barely existed in the meta (Vynder, sometimes on Sith Infiltrators/Kylo, rarely mixed in somewhere in Rebel beef) at 12, but apparently that was enough to kick them all the way up to 13 and use of barrage rockets in a quad K-Wing build and occasionally on a TIE Bomber was enough to kick them up to 8. Even ESCs got bumped up to 5, but all the droids went down by at least one, so was the softest of the nerfs to ordinance. Every piece of ordinance that saw play in at least 1 list got a point bump (except for the APT on Vynder). Paying more points for ordinance that's only been earning it's keep with a handful of pilots through Passive Sensors, is...just kind of crap.

If all ordnance sucks, then none of them do! Maybe FFG wanted people to care more about the primary weapon of a ship than what it can bring in it's slot?
Personally, I've started playing more 2 attack ships with good mods lately, instead of going through hoops to bring more 3 dice attack full mods, and I've had surprising success. Bringing more ships usually offset the lack of 3 dice, and the mega defense that characterized 1.0 is gone meaning that even 2 dice attack can often do damage.

While sensors eliminate the low targetlock issue, we're still quite justified in being worried about getting initiative killed

There aren't terribly many steps we can take to avoid this--I is as I does, after all. But there are two interesting ones

Rebels: Selfless & Biggs (basically the same, so shush)

CiS: Landing Struts! (No sensors with Torps, but shush!)

Landing struts are fascinating because they'll give you a positioning advantage that non-droid ships won't have unless they use whacky **** like dash or the resistance dash-bot or Cool Detectors 😎

Considering these options are a fair bit more than one point I don't mind too much.

It'll be interesting to match initiative against struts and see if they'll allow the poor bakroid to do anything before popping

There are other interesting indirect defensive mechanics, such as Deathrain doing the Zoidberg with his ability and SFs threatening fanaticism...still no Torps, though!

18 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

While sensors eliminate the low targetlock issue, we're still quite justified in being worried about getting initiative killed

There aren't terribly many steps we can take to avoid this--I is as I does, after all. But there are two interesting ones

Rebels: Selfless & Biggs (basically the same, so shush)

CiS: Landing Struts! (No sensors with Torps, but shush!)

Landing struts are fascinating because they'll give you a positioning advantage that non-droid ships won't have unless they use whacky **** like dash or the resistance dash-bot or Cool Detectors 😎

Considering these options are a fair bit more than one point I don't mind too much.

It'll be interesting to match initiative against struts and see if they'll allow the poor bakroid to do anything before popping

There are other interesting indirect defensive mechanics, such as Deathrain doing the Zoidberg with his ability and SFs threatening fanaticism...still no Torps, though!

You actually get a 26pt ship that can carry both torps and probe droids to give you early locks. Hyena's are actually the winner in the cheap ordinance category on a few levels.