As the device stands currently it is rarely if ever played due to the heavy RNG nature of it.

The current device:

RR pg. 21 Device summary : "At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1
rolls 2 attack dice. Each ship or remote suffers 1 damage for
each / result."

My idea is to reduce the dice rolled to 1 and apply a instead of rolling the second die. IE:

"At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1 receives 1 damage and
rolls 1 attack die . If the result is / , the ship or remote suffers 1 additional damage ."

Hopefully this shouldn't push its power level too high and make it a slightly more tempting proposition for list building and play.

13 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

As the device stands currently it is rarely if ever played due to the heavy RNG nature of it.

The current device:

RR pg. 21 Device summary : "At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1
rolls 2 attack dice. Each ship or remote suffers 1 damage for
each / result."

My idea is to reduce the dice rolled to 1 and apply a instead of rolling the second die. IE:

"At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1 receives 1 damage and
rolls 1 attack die . If the result is / , the ship or remote suffers 1 additional damage ."

Hopefully this shouldn't push its power level too high and make it a slightly more tempting proposition for list building and play.

That'd make it WAY stronger, which probably means it'd need to be more expensive. I don't necessarily hate that, but I'm not sure it's needed.

The reload part of Bomblet Generator isn't for everyone, but there are times when it'll be better to give up a shield, rather than an action and an attack. At very least, there's a sweet niche for Bomblet on Miranda.

Just dropping it to 3 points or 2 points might make it see play. Right now its just better to guarantee to do a crit with a proton bomb.

1 hour ago, Hiemfire said:

As the device stands currently it is rarely if ever played due to the heavy RNG nature of it.

The current device:

RR pg. 21 Device summary : "At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1
rolls 2 attack dice. Each ship or remote suffers 1 damage for
each / result."

My idea is to reduce the dice rolled to 1 and apply a instead of rolling the second die. IE:

"At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1 receives 1 damage and
rolls 1 attack die . If the result is / , the ship or remote suffers 1 additional damage ."

Hopefully this shouldn't push its power level too high and make it a slightly more tempting proposition for list building and play.

I like this idea, even if it does mean Bomblet Generator goes up to 6-8 points.

As it stands BG has a 25% chance of doing nothing, 25% double damage and a 50% chance for a single damage

Crit chance is 25% when rolling town dice but my maths knowledge is strong enough to merge this fact with the previous fact.

I think as on average it deals a single damage crit chance is 12.5%

Compare this to Proton bomb with a 100% crit chance.

I think Bomblet could instead of your suggested buff drop 1 point and would then be a choice on compatible platforms.

As it stands I'd often rather take Proton and seismics for 8 points.

With Heimfire's suggested buff it would make Bomblet very potent so would mean increasing probably 2-3 points.

12 minutes ago, AngryAlbatross said:

Just dropping it to 3 points or 2 points might make it see play. Right now its just better to guarantee to do a crit with a proton bomb.

I doubt that would change if the cost of Bomblet drops. Players tend to migrate to as little RNG as possible. Even with only a 25% chance of the Bomblet not dealing any damage it is mostly ignored.

1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:

That'd make it WAY stronger, which probably means it'd need to be more expensive.

Definitely. Drops the no effect chance to 0 and ups the chance of 2 damage to 50% (if I'm remembering the dice facing counts correctly). A 1-2 point uptick in cost would make sense.

3 minutes ago, Scum4Life said:

Crit chance is 25% when rolling town dice but my maths knowledge is strong enough to merge this fact with the previous fact.

I think as on average it deals a single damage crit chance is 12.5%

Bomblets can't deal crits. The crit result only ends up causing a hit.

9 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Bomblets can't deal crits. The crit result only ends up causing a hit.

Oh, well that's even more reason for them to drop 1 point, or get a a buff and create a stronger from of bomb, even with your revised rules it's less lethal than a proximity mine, though with little bit more range.

3 minutes ago, Scum4Life said:

Oh, well that's even more reason for them to drop 1 point, or get a a buff and create a stronger from of bomb, even with your revised rules it's less lethal than a proximity mine, though with little bit more range.

It can also be reloaded (both through the normal action and the upgrade's ability as theBitterfig points out) unlike the mines. I think it'd be worth 6 -7 points.

12 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

It can also be reloaded (both through the normal action and the upgrade's ability as theBitterfig points out) unlike the mines. I think it'd be worth 6 -7 points.

My problem with the reload for a sheild is that stops working when your lost sheild and costs a shield.

Much like Angled deflectors, why spend 6 points and lose a sheild when I could just buy a Shield upgrade for two points less, and effectivley be two shields better off and able to focus.

I suppose it does add a pseudo reload ability to the Scurrg but currently not worth it.

I would agree to this.

15 hours ago, Scum4Life said:

even with your revised rules it's less lethal than a proximity mine, though with little bit more range.

The bomblet generator is cheaper than a proximity mine, though, and, as you noted, can be launched with a trajectory simulator.

Ultimately, with both the token's effect and the cost flexible, it boils down to: should the bomblet be made better by being cheaper, or by being more powerful.

At the moment, it's outclassed by proton bombs.

The latter has the same number of charges, the same options for deployment, the same amount of damage caused (on average) and the same price, but it causes criticals not regular damage. The only thing it has in its favour is the 'free' reload, but burning a shield token is, I would argue, not exactly 'free'. It's a nice option to have - especially on a scurrg with no reload action - but it's not enough to balance out the greater potency of the two charges you start with.

Burning shields for charges means, in theory, that you die faster and means you're less likely to live long enough to use up your increased amount of ammo, so you get extremely diminishing returns.

I don't think bomblets should be more powerful than proton bombs, though. Proton Bombs are the big boys designed to wreck hardened targets, so making bomblets into proximity mines lite feels wrong. I think I'd rather see them drop in cost, or give them more shots.

Now we can't change the text of the card, but we can change the effect of the detonation. Giving the bomblet detonation the potential to restore the charge used in generating the bomblet might work (when it detonates, if [???], recover a charge*)

* roll a die on detonation and recover on a hit or crit?

17 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

As the device stands currently it is rarely if ever played due to the heavy RNG nature of it.

The current device:

RR pg. 21 Device summary : "At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1
rolls 2 attack dice. Each ship or remote suffers 1 damage for
each / result."

My idea is to reduce the dice rolled to 1 and apply a instead of rolling the second die. IE:

"At the end of the Activation Phase, this device detonates.
When this device detonates, each ship and remote at range 0–1 receives 1 damage and
rolls 1 attack die . If the result is / , the ship or remote suffers 1 additional damage ."

Hopefully this shouldn't push its power level too high and make it a slightly more tempting proposition for list building and play.

Honestly the Bomblets are just so overshadowed by Seismic Charges because of their threat range and utility in terms of taking away terrain, and this is probably why other bombs don't see a lot of play. If there weren't Seismics, folks would probably be split between Bomblets & Proton Bombs.

They should just drop it to 3, but honestly this card has too much 1.0 stigma and not enough Fandom love to ever get pushed by FFG. They will marginalize this card forever just like they have with Dash.

8 hours ago, Scum4Life said:

My problem with the reload for a sheild is that stops working when your lost sheild and costs a shield.

Much like Angled deflectors, why spend 6 points and lose a sheild when I could just buy a Shield upgrade for two points less, and effectivley be two shields better off and able to focus.

I suppose it does add a pseudo reload ability to the Scurrg but currently not worth it.

I ment that unlike Proximity Mines the Reload action works on Bomblet Generator. I don't consider the spend a shield recharge to be worth wile, more along the lines of cutting one's own wrists while in a pool of hungry sharks.

21 hours ago, Scum4Life said:

As it stands BG has a 25% chance of doing nothing,

Just 25%? I've used it a couple times and each time I dropped a bomb on my target through a number of games I only got double blanks normally. Even when I had gotten my opponent to into a nice spot to be hit by 2 I did a grand total of 1 damage to 1 of his ships out of the two that were in popping range of them.

15 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

Just 25%? I've used it a couple times and each time I dropped a bomb on my target through a number of games I only got double blanks normally. Even when I had gotten my opponent to into a nice spot to be hit by 2 I did a grand total of 1 damage to 1 of his ships out of the two that were in popping range of them.

Yep, each Bomblet roll has the same odds set as flipping a coin twice.

Rather than using shields to recharge the generator, I would have preferred something like recovering a charge on a blue maneuver (you have extra power from the engines to shunt into recharging the generator) or if that is too easy, taking a disarm/strain/stress token or something like that.

Edit: Ooh, maybe an ion token? So you can recharge once for free but the next one will force you into a 1-straight?

1 hour ago, Hiemfire said:

Yep, each Bomblet roll has the same odds set as flipping a coin twice.

With it being the same cost as the Proton Bombs I just can't really justify using Bomblet, it might occasionally spike more damage but the guaranteed Crit is worth far more than maybe doing 2 damage or 2 crit or in my case wasting a charge and doing nothing to my opponent's ships.

10 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

With it being the same cost as the Proton Bombs I just can't really justify using Bomblet, it might occasionally spike more damage but the guaranteed Crit is worth far more than maybe doing 2 damage or 2 crit or in my case wasting a charge and doing nothing to my opponent's ships.

A: Bomblets cannot crit. / results = 1 damage (barring a Hull Breach crit already on the affected ship).

B: How you perceive the upgrade meshes with what I've run into with people I play with and why my suggestion would change the effect of the Bomblet itself (which is only written in the Rules Ref iirc) while accepting that the cost of the Bomblet Generator upgrade would likely have to go up if the change were applied. Even at 3 points, as was pointed out earlier by another poster, Bomblet Generator would be passed up for Seismic's guaranteed damage and larger area control on those platforms that can take Bomblet Generator.