I recently gave a big spiel about the pros and cons of Passive Sensors on the wiki in answer to someone's question. There's some important drawbacks (e.g. stress vulnerability) that are important to keep in mind. It's a useful summary (perhaps incomplete though); to save folks here a trip, I'll quote it here:
QuoteThere are several advantages:
1) It solves the initiative-range issue for locks. Normally low-init ships struggle to get a lock for long-range munitions (such as Proton Torpedoes). They move first, and enemy is out of range to lock. Then enemy moves and gets in range for combat. Next round after everyone moves, they're too close to use the munition (or they k-turned and missed out on their action). With this card, you delay your lock until after everyone's position is set, making sure you get that lock and get to unload your munition, get your TIE/x1 ship ability, etc.
2) It solves the problem of your locked target dying. If your alpha-strike munitions ships all target the same ship, and it dies before all of them shoot, then the rest can't unload their munitions that round on some other target. But this card lets you delay your lock until you engage, meaning if the target you were going to shoot dies, you can just lock something else (or calculate, if you prefer). It causes your lock munition to behave like a focus/calculate munition, e.g. Barrage Rockets and Energy-Shell Charges.
3) It's dynamic -- you can always calculate if that turns out to be better when you engage. If the enemy arc-dodges you or dies, and you have no foe in arc but some scrubs will shoot you soon, you can calculate for at least a bit of extra defense.
It has these disadvantages:
1) If you get stressed before you engage, you've lost your action. So being tractored onto debris, getting Panicked Pilot, being stressed by cards like Asajj, etc all will shut it down. Such effects are uncommon, but it will put more power in those ships/abilities that can stress you before you engage. (also anything that prevents actions, such as Damaged Sensor Array. Wounded pilot makes the initial action a gamble.)
2) If you ultimately decide to calculate, that might be useless if no enemies are shooting you and you don't have a shot. Not a big deal, but it's important to remember you don't get that calculate until you engage, not at the start of the engagement phase.
3) Cost. You're paying 3 points, so they'd better matter.
IMO, passive sensors are going to be pretty strong in some contexts and I'm glad the stress and Wounded Pilot etc counters exist. Perhaps Kylo crew and Asajj will benefit a lot from this!
I'm interested in seeing the Kanan/Hera ghosts abuse this. I.... have not seen ghosts on the table much in 2.0, so I'm wondering if this will give it some more play time.
I think the TIE/x1 will like this a lot, even without munitions. Many of its non-vader pilots struggle to get -- but intensely need -- that lock for their basic primary. If homing missiles were 3 points they'd like that too.
I want to see a 4x (torp) or 5x (missile) alphas list played, even if I have to do it. I'm wondering how it will do. IMO this is the most likely candidate to relive the glory days of U-Boat abuse.
You can even upgrade one to Vynder using Plasma Torps if needed (with the rest using Proton).
Double-mod torps from Ten Numb will probably be good too. We'll have to see though -- he's a lot of investment, and he just got more expensive in the points update for being part of Rebel Beef, and as such I have no pity for him. I wish rebel beef only suffering and loss. [ evil laughter ]
When the card was teased we were discussing lots of curious possibilities, like putting it on Darth Vader. No wait don't leave, hear me out. Vader uses PS to push his action allllll the way to engagement. He can chain actions off of both or either the PS action and the lock/calc (usually the lock/calc, but he can chain in activation if needed to avoid blocking an allied ace etc). This means he does not give a crap if other init-6 ships won the initiative bid, he's still acting last. He guarantees he acts last unless they bring PS too, and most other init6 aces can't.
If lock missiles weren't largely junk, it'd be neat to see if the TIE/x1s would want those too. I was expecting a 1-point or 2-point drop to Homing & Cluster, but no luck. I wonder what FFG is hedging against.
