So I asked in another thread.... then begain overthinking and over analysing, so decided to give it a dedicated thread instead to avoid cluttering the other one.

As reference:

So some analysis on the cannons, because I can't figure out what justified their points update.

I did a quick check (might have missed some) but I didn't realise how few ships actually have cannon slots.
As a Scum player we have quite a few: IG88, Firespray, M3A, YV-666 and now J5K, so 5 in total.
Rest of the universe: TIE/D, Lambda, Upsilon, B-Wing, Resistance Transport, T-70 X-Wing, Sith Infiltrator, so 7 in total.
Hehe, so tongue-in-cheek I would say this was another one of those secret Scum nerfs.

To attempt to make a long story short, the whole reason I started thinking about this is that someone once pointed out to me that using my Autoblasters is hardly ever worth it on IG88 because the primary will be just about the same
SO....

There are currently 5 cannons.
2 are pure damage (Heavy and Auto)
2 are pure game effect (Tractor and Jamming)
1 does a bit of both (Ion)

For the pure damage ones its fairly easy to compare them to the main gun. For the rest its harder to say exactly what they are worth.
From the 12 ships that can have cannons 9 have a primary wpn of 3+ (upsilon being the +), and only 3 have a primary of 2. (M3A, Resistance transport, and J5K)

So just as a quick thought experiment comparing the primary attacks of the ships with the dmg cannons.

So on the 4 die attack ship - Upsilon, who also has a built in +1 attack die on the cannon.

• So R1 it shoots 5 dice normally, R2 and R3 you shoot 4.
• Heavy Laser shoots 5 at range 2-3 also, but requires getting the enemy in bullseye with a bus. So good luck with that.
• Autoblaster is not going to be better in any condition. 4 dice on R1, 5 if bullseye.... so same as primary only if bullseye. R2 it's better to shoot the Primary unless you have bullseye, in which case its the same..

On the vast majority of cannon ships. 3 primary.

• So R1 it shoots 4 dice normally, R2 and R3 you shoot 3.
• Heavy Laser shoots 4 at range 2-3 also, but requires getting the enemy in bullseye. So better but very conditional.
• Autoblaster is not going to be better in any condition. 3 dice on R1, 4 if bullseye.... so same as primary only if bullseye. R2 it's better to shoot the Primary unless you have bullseye, in which case its the same..

Which leaves the last 3. 2 Primary

• So R1 it shoots 3 dice normally, R2 and R3 you shoot 2.
• Heavy Laser shoots 4 at range 2-3, but requires getting the enemy in bullseye. So quite a bit better but very conditional.
• Autoblaster is going to be better. 3 dice on R1, 4 if bullseye.... so cannon on R1 or R2 is the same as the primary, and better if in bullseye.

So in conclusion, for pure damage output, cannons are really never much better. For utility some are interesting (sorry jamming beam, you still suck, except on the C-ROC shooting at Raiders!!).

And damage cannons are only better if you have bullseye (both the Heavy Laser and Autocannon). Not that this is a bad design or anything. Just a statement. (OFC i'm excluding the unavoidable cirts with the autoblaster if not in the enemies arc. Which I guess should count for something)

BUT I don't get why they got a points increased.

TL;DR

Heavy Cannon now costs 5 points to add 1 attack die only, and can't crit.

Autocannon costs 3 points to for the crit avoid ability. It is only more dice than primary wpn if your primary is 2 to start with AND you have the enemy in bullseye.

Utility cannons should be considered on their own merits, and its much harder to tell how valuable they are.

Probably a concern over the interaction with the new B-wing configuration, which allows double-tapping with cannons in the right conditions.

I still don't get why cannon costs aren't dependent from the primary weapon value.
That's basically been the problem with cannons since v1. And that's also the reason why they had to add special rules (double-taping defenders, now B-wings, Aggressors..) to make them interesting for 3 red-dice ships.

You missed one ship, Alpha-class Star wing with Xg-1 Assault Configuration.

Missing also G1A with Misthunter.

50 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

Missing also G1A with Misthunter.

52 minutes ago, mcgreag said:

You missed one ship, Alpha-class Star wing with Xg-1 Assault Configuration.

Cool.

So totals: 14 ships. (6 scum, 8 other)

4 red die primary (1), 3 red die primary (9), 2 red die primary (4)

1 hour ago, mcgreag said:

You missed one ship, Alpha-class Star wing with Xg-1 Assault Configuration.

59 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

Missing also G1A with Misthunter.

True, but they're a bit of an oddity. Since the cannon slot is granted by an upgrade card which can (in the case of Mist Hunter does) have its own points cost, then you can account for any matching of 'generic' cannon cost to the cost on that ship in the cost of the upgrade card.

It's much like the Upsilon; yes it has a primary-4, but it also has linked batteries which significantly changes the value of a cannon on that ship.

1 minute ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It's much like the Upsilon; yes it has a primary-4, but it also has linked batteries which significantly changes the value of a cannon on that ship.

And even with the linked batteries i have never seen anyone play an Upsilon with an actual cannon, because the 4 primary is simply better/equal in most situations. (Ok, I live far off, and don't have the exposure some have, so maybe there are people playing cannons on ups, i'm just not seeing it happen)

I thought it was strange too. Mostly because the new B-wing config.

Then again now knowing the points cost for the config, the cannons, and the pilots... Nothing makes sense about about any of it.

To me, in testing, you should have set the config to 0pts, then upped the pilots as warranted, and then the cannons as needed likely to fit this one ship in variable cost with like some said it based on primary, or even based on something different.

It makes no sense to me to have B-wing config be a costed upgrade. Because now every B-wing pilot card has to be treated as basically two ships: the base version, and the base+2+(X) version. I'd have rather just seen it go that all the pilots went up 1-3 depending on how they will now function, and the cannons adjusted to that.

Oh well.

2 minutes ago, Bort said:

And even with the linked batteries i have never seen anyone play an Upsilon with an actual cannon, because the 4 primary is simply better/equal in most situations. (Ok, I live far off, and don't have the exposure some have, so maybe there are people playing cannons on ups, i'm just not seeing it happen)

I've seen it used with a Tractor Beam before. It's surprisingly good.

I don't think it's at all strange.

Status quo had been for the cannon slot to have a tax with it, but for the cannon to have a price lower because of the tax. Most ships which could take them cost a bit more than they should. Scyk really did, +2 points over the TIE/fo. There's no way that price is justified, unless cannons were deliberately cheap, so that something like a B-Wing or TIE Defender might sometimes consider taking one. Likewise, comparing the price of an Ion Cannon to Ion Missiles shows that the prices are unnecessarily close.

However, with the B-Wing S-Foils, I think FFG decided to remove the slot tax, and price cannons based on what they thought was fair. Access to double-taps kind of demands that the relevant upgrades are fairly priced. It's perfectly fine to think that FFG has the wrong notion of how much cannons should cost (same as how most folks think most missiles are overpriced), but their decision making process here really makes sense to me.

End result: Scyks are absolutely correctly priced right now, both with and without Cannons. This is a good result. 25 without guns, 31 with an Ion Cannon. That checks out, compared to the TIE Interceptors and TIE Strikers of the world, or the 31 point TIE Aggressor with an Ion Cannon Turret. I think the price equality between all those really makes sense.

Unfortunate side effect: XG-1 Assault Gunboats got a nerf they didn't need.

//

Upsilon is a side case. As I see it, all Linked Battery does is mean that a cannon--relative to the primary weapon--is exactly the same on an Upsilon as any other ship. 3-dice plain damage vs 3-dice tractor effect on a normal ship. To even consider a cannon, the 4-dice Upsilon needs to have a 4-dice tractor cannon or whatever. Linked Battery just means the Upsilon doesn't have "nerfed" cannons. Now, same as most folks didn't run Tractor Beam or Ion Cannon or HLC on B-Wings, most folks didn't run them on Upsilons, but the same value-for-points was there.

I actually have half a plan to bust out some HLC Upsilons in the the not-too-distant future... in Epic. My plan is to take the old and despised Dormitz list, slap on HLC, deploy in the middle of the field with a massive token stack, and start throwing 5-dice HLC attacks against Huge Ships. Maybe also include some missile-based TIE/sf, too. I'm sure it'll be terrible, but I want to do it anyhow.

2 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

To me, in testing, you should have set the config to 0pts, then upped the pilots as warranted, and then the cannons as needed likely to fit this one ship in variable cost with like some said it based on primary, or even based on something different.

It makes no sense to me to have B-wing config be a costed upgrade. Because now every B-wing pilot card has to be treated as basically two ships: the base version, and the base+2+(X) version. I'd have rather just seen it go that all the pilots went up 1-3 depending on how they will now function, and the cannons adjusted to that.

I think a cheap non-0 config is fine, since it means that folks without the squadron pack can still play their B-Wings and not have them radically nerfed. 40 point X-Wings probably work out a hair better in many lists, but B-Wings didn't become unplayable. 43 or more point B-Wings, given the changes to other generics, kinda would be unplayable. It kinda sucked in 1e to have to keep buying the aces packs, so that ships you already had didn't become useless, and I'm glad that the new S-Foils are designed in such a way that they aren't absolutely mandatory.

If you look at the whole thing--{1} you want scyks priced right {2} you want double-tap B-Wings priced right {3} you want non-double-tap B-Wings priced right {4} you want cannons priced right--I think the non-0 config and the overall prices are fairly good. That mostly threads the eye on a lot of needles.

15 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Probably a concern over the interaction with the new B-wing configuration, which allows double-tapping with cannons in the right conditions.

If it was just one ship that caused concern, then you would raise the price of that ship, right?

Linking the Jan 2020 points stream thread here since allot of people need to actually watch the recording it seems. Max and Matt actually go into the reasons for allot of the changes during the stream.

I agree with OP: Cannons were trash before and useless now, except in very specific cases that should be paying the price instead of the cannon.

Same goes for missiles vs Jendon/PS. Nerf the problem, not the generic tool.

The B-Wing argument makes no sense because the B-Wing config can just be adjusted up or down in points as needed

Cannon have gone from bad to worse