1 minute ago, Lyianx said:

i see it clearly due to the X-wing games.

😒 ... Oh, yay... "Muh Lore!!!!" 😒 ... You're comparing persimmons to oranges. The only thing they have in common is their color/veneer and that they're fruit/games...

To get that effect in XWTMG you have to reduce the the Shield charge value by 1 via equipping the upgrade. Are you also sideways arguing that Angled Deflectors should be baseline and not cost a shield?

7 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Having no primary is an interesting design space. Things like Outmaneuver would always be on. Making it a 0 die primary to combat that would have the odd effect of having a range 1 one die primary. I'm not opposed to a no primary ship that is discounted with pricing consideration of adding on secondary weapons, but it would need to be run through the ringer to find out what wacky interactions it would cause.

Do you mean it would always be vulnerable to Outmaneuver or something else?

Just now, Kafitrar said:

Do you mean it would always be vulnerable to Outmaneuver or something else?

Honestly, it's a little fuzzy, as this would be a new scenario. Technically this arc would just be an arc indicator for the cannon, being neither a primary turret arc nor a secondary turret arc. Secondary turret arcs count as firing arcs and shut down Outmaneuver, but secondary cannons do not count as firing arcs. A cannon only arc would sit in a really odd game space.

4 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Honestly, it's a little fuzzy, as this would be a new scenario. Technically this arc would just be an arc indicator for the cannon, being neither a primary turret arc nor a secondary turret arc. Secondary turret arcs count as firing arcs and shut down Outmaneuver, but secondary cannons do not count as firing arcs. A cannon only arc would sit in a really odd game space.

I went to see if the Rebel transport had a firing arc printed on its base. Then I found out the thing is armed now. So that was no help.

11 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

😒 ... Oh, yay... "Muh Lore!!!!" 😒 ... You're comparing persimmons to oranges. The only thing they have in common is their color/veneer and that they're fruit/games...

To get that effect in XWTMG you have to reduce the the Shield charge value by 1 via equipping the upgrade. Are you also sideways arguing that Angled Deflectors should be baseline and not cost a shield?

The X-wing games only help visualize it, but its canon as its mentioned in 'A New Hope'. Several times in fact. Han, Luke, Dutch, & Garven All mention angling deflectors within that movie, but there isnt any Visual indicator of it, which is why i mentioned the games. They also show concern that their rear is vulnerable when their front is no longer under fire and they worry about fighters.

Stabilize your rear deflectors. Watch for enemy fighters.

And yes, in smaller ships, you are sacrificing one half of your shield strength (or a significant portion of it), to reinforce the other. Ships that can do this normally without drawing from the other half have auxiliary power they can boost one half of their shielding, without sacrificing the other half (mentioned in Solo when Han asks Chewie to divert auxpower to the rear shield which itself makes it weird that the Falcon doesnt have reinforce). So even a Small base ship with shields with a natural reinforce action wouldn't make much sense as its likely they just do not have the additional spare power to do so, which is why that upgrade kinda does make sense and why the shield cost makes sense.

All that said, the only reason the Brute has reinforce is obvious.. its for game mechanical balance. Which i get, because the ship sucks and is likely very easy to destroy without it. Alot of ships have things, or are missing things for this very reason. Most of it is just a stretch, this however.. is a bit more of a stretch. But, whatever.. Whats done is done.

I didn't mean it couldn't have a gunner slot lore-wise, just that is is very very rare for FFG to release a ship with a slot but no card in the pack to put in that slot.

Maybe there is a secret gunner card in there, but I doubt it.

Who knows. Maybe they traded out the gunner slot for the reinforce action. Nothing stopping them from adding it later, or to a specific pilot either. Guess we'll have to see, but its a good assumption that it currently doesn't have one.

Yeah I think maybe they played around with it as an idea but thought the droid brain configs already gave enough to the ship without needing other abilities from Gunners.

What about a new cannon?

1 hour ago, "Quickdraw" said:

What about a new cannon?

There's going to be some kind of new cannon (it's half-buried in the preview spreads), but we don't really know anything useful about it. It does roll 3 dice, but we don't know what rules it has other than that, so we don't actually have any idea how strong it is at dealing damage. It'll be fully previewed eventually, then we'll know.

21 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

There's going to be some kind of new cannon (it's half-buried in the preview spreads), but we don't really know anything useful about it. It does roll 3 dice, but we don't know what rules it has other than that, so we don't actually have any idea how strong it is at dealing damage. It'll be fully previewed eventually, then we'll know.

That's true, I imagine maybe a unique tie brute cannon. With the existing cannons I don't really see much use.

1 hour ago, "Quickdraw" said:

That's true, I imagine maybe a unique tie brute cannon. With the existing cannons I don't really see much use.

First off, the half-hidden cannon is also in the HMP, so it's not going to be exclusive to the Brute.

Second, depending on price, Ion Cannon could be solid. 3 dice front-and-back turret with 8 health isn't bad. I've flown enough basic TIE/sf to know that even 2 dice is solid, and an Ion Cannon is stronger than a standard 2-red attack. It'll come down to the ship price, however. We'll see.

The Autoblaster is pretty solid too if you don't mind ignoring the bullseye ability. Turning in weird directions and firing backwards will avoid their arc more often than usual and let the unblockable crits ability kick in.

But yeah, Ion is the way to go so far.

On 8/6/2020 at 10:01 PM, Lyianx said:

No.. the brute sucks lol. There were things written (which I wont pretend is canon) after the movie came out (and this ship was shown off) that imperial commanders didnt want this ship, and pilots didnt want to fly it. But were forced to because "thats what the empire gave them' and was only really used in peace keeping and light patrol, because it wasnt very capable of doing much else.

And thats putting aside the writers just stuffed it into the movie simply so they could have a new tie variant to have merchandise for. Its one when when time has past in a liner fashion.. you expect a faction to develop/improve vehicle design. The Tie Bomber made (some) sense for the role it was introduced doing in Empire. The Tie Interceptor made sense as a technological progression of the Tie Fighter and given how much time had past since the Tie Fighter was shown.

The Bute however, makes little to no sense given the time line. Putting aside the technical reasons why we 'dont see it in later (timeline wise) movies, if it was so good, you'd think it would be helping to defend BOTH death stars. Or chasing the Falcon though an asteroid field (apparent child's play given it chased it though an asteroid 'field' near a gravity well).

Basically, the ship exists for dumb reasons

It makes total sense (unless the swamp, coast, gravel, beachside, sith-red, blood-red, crimson-red whatever armour colour... storm troppers, these are for toy selling)

Technical development is not linear. It is NOT constant improvement. There have always been tons of failed prototypes, and not so seldom failing military material in serial production (either corruption on the ordering side, misprediction what us going to be needed in the conflict, or desperate need of material and falling for the producer claims what the design can do).

Someone in the Empire thought a BIG Tie with a BIG gun would be cool. Fitting with the design idea behind the Death Star as well. So the thing was built, tested at "Solo" film's time and then discontinued. Obviously it was not good enough, to be there defending the Deathstars. That's why we never see again. Does not need to have corroboration in out of movie/other media material.

It could be one or several of the following leading to it disappearing:

-technical problems/prone to failure

-hard to fly

-bad flying characteristics

-taking too much space on board of a Star Destroyer compared to usage getting out of it (that thing is massive, look at the art on the pilot cards)

-difficult to maintain

-expensive to maintain

-expensive to produce

Probably at least the last 2.

Historically you have e.g. the Bell P39. Advanced design with a BIG gun , producer having high claims.

Pretty big failure. The 37mm cannon jammed often, its fumes could kill(!) the pilot. Too slow, pretty prone to mechanical failures, fast accelerating cost for maintenance on top of it. Needed really acy pilots to reach potential, and then reaching a level just like a good fighter craft with an average pilot, and often only really good for ground attack. The British returned their ordered planes to the US who promptly dumped them to Australia.

So, the Brute makes sense.

21 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

Historically you have e.g. the Bell P39. Advanced design with a BIG gun , producer having high claims.

Pretty big failure. The 37mm cannon jammed often, its fumes could kill(!) the pilot. Too slow, pretty prone to mechanical failures, fast accelerating cost for maintenance on top of it. Needed really acy pilots to reach potential, and then reaching a level just like a good fighter craft with an average pilot, and often only really good for ground attack. The British returned their ordered planes to the US who promptly dumped them to Australia.

The Soviets would disagree. They had a good record with the Airacobra in WW2, though allot of that was because where they were flying it actually played into its strengths at low altitude (Bell got the problem with the gun fixed as well).

On 8/15/2020 at 6:51 PM, "Quickdraw" said:

That's true, I imagine maybe a unique tie brute cannon. With the existing cannons I don't really see much use.

The Ion Cannon seems strong with the Rampage pilot. If Rampage can consistently hand out a strain (or 2) to a target, that ship will have one less die to defend against ionization, making it even easier for Rampage to that strain on again.

11 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

The Soviets would disagree. They had a good record with the Airacobra in WW2, though allot of that was because where they were flying it actually played into its strengths at low altitude (Bell got the problem with the gun fixed as well).

I think Mana's point still stands. If the Bell P39 is a real world analog to the TIE brute, then it's eventual acceptance in a niche role being used by the Soviets --who are known for using equipment that isn't "reliable enough" by US standards-- could be representative of the TIE/Brute design being quickly abandoned by the empire to later be put to good use by one of the Cartels, Syndicates, Guilds, or planetary defense forces.

30 minutes ago, nitrobenz said:

I think Mana's point still stands. If the Bell P39 is a real world analog to the TIE brute, then it's eventual acceptance in a niche role being used by the Soviets --who are known for using equipment that isn't "reliable enough" by US standards-- could be representative of the TIE/Brute design being quickly abandoned by the empire to later be put to good use by one of the Cartels, Syndicates, Guilds, or planetary defense forces.

P39 was plenty reliable. It just wasn't the high altitude interceptor/ASF that the US and Brits wanted and Bell had sold it as being able to be, lacked a turbo charger (**** that sounds familiar to something in game already (scyk) ...). Mana's use of it as an example was inaccurate at best. Otherwise his suppositional points as to why the TIE/Rb probably wasn't common are fine.

18 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

P39 was plenty reliable.

First quite a time after its introduction, and after it was fixed (Jamming and toxic cannon, tumbling when out of ammo, landing gear and other structural failures) and it still was actively modified by the Russians. And finally found a battlefield where it could show its strength. Low altitude, and really slow moving ground targets or air-air mostly against inferior (Ju Bomber) and inferior+outdated (Stuka) planes, on home turf and air superiority for the own side pretty much achieved already, plus squadron tactics developed to compensate the shortcomings.

In the air-combat theaters of Europe and the Pacific it was worthless, as mediocre pilots in the technical just better enemy planes gave even the more acy pilots in the P39 trouble.

So, especially seen for the introduction period, it was a failure, Bell was lucky that the Russians grew fond of it. Without the Russian Front it probably would have been discontinued.