Both weapons have different uses, comparing them .. to me.. isn't a valid reason to choose one over the other. The tactics for them are completely differwnt, say I want to slow someone down.. obvious Ion cannon.. but if I want a 360 degree firing area, regardless of range.. take that blaster turret..

Tactics, it's what you make your decisions on.

To me it's comparing apples to oranges...

The blaster turret is ALSO Range 1-2. Same 360 arc, same range.

I would have 2 for use in bigger games and so you can play rebel vs. rebel

Well shiver me timbers, I hardly ever use the Blaster, and now it really does look like a poor weapon :-(

The blaster turret really isn't a bad weapon, especially on the Y-Wing where you have a good chance of outflying opponents and keeping out of their arc without worrying about getting them into arc.. The problem is, for one more point, you can get the ion cannon which is awesome.

Ion cannon is a really good support weapon, but the end goal is to do damage, the ion turret does that directly. Give the HWKs a recon spec and they have plenty of focus icons for their blaster turret.

While the average damage might be 1 from the blaster turret, the thing that it provides that the ion doesn't is the potential to one shot a tie. There's a 25% chance that the TIE rolls zero evades (assuming no focus because this is a rebel operative with PS2 and as such other ships have ripped the token off). So if you roll two hits (25%) or 3 hits (12.5%) you're going to be doing more damage.

Furthermore, the blaster turret does have better synergy options available. Such as if it is flown with Garvin, you can use your focus for your blaster and your dice, giving you a 360 3 dice turret averaging 2.25 hits instead of 1.5 naked. That raises you average damage to almost two. Or squad leader / lando / dutch giving you a TL to raise it to two as well. But the flip side is that if you're denied an action, which seems to happen several times a game for most people for one reason or another, the blaster is now useless, and the entire ship is therefore useless. At least the Ion cannon can get a naked shot off.

Personally, I prefer the ion, but that's because I live off of the law of averages and know that in the end they're going to be doing similar damage. But with that said, people that like to "live on the edge" (the same people who love flying interceptors) would probably love the blaster turret due to its ability to wreck havoc, even if it's not that often.

How bout a build that utilizes both effectively?

Dutch w/ Ion + R2

Garvin w/ R2

Rebel Op w/ Blaster + Chewy

Rebel Op w/ Blaster