Hi all,

I am pretty new to the game (3 games under my belt) and i wanted some input from more experienced players on the whole ion shot and its effects. Mind you i have only ever used the ion turret (i think) for the Y-wing. It seems to me that the effects of an ion hit are't quite right. In the star wars universe i am only aware of ion blasts crippling all electrical systems on a ship and not causing any sort of mechanical damage. It seems odd to me that a ship hit by an ion shot gets 1 damage and then after making the standard 1 move can fire and perform actions freely. I would think that the ship should receive no damage but have a turn where its basically floating dead in space and cant do anything. Now being a noob to the game your experiences can hopefully shed some light on this choice for the game. thanks everybody! (forgive me if this has been discussed before)

What you are finding is a matter of the fluff vs in game mechanics. Ion cannons SHOULD go through shields, disable a craft without any damage, and then they should just float while they spend actions trying to get the thing cold started. To think of it in a game perspective it would probably make the Ion cannon too powerful. Imagine just Ion-ing a ship and its basically useless. The turn limit you kind of propose is already a game mechanic change from the fluff. FFG just took it a bit farther and I think made it a tougher choice whether you want an Ion Cannon or not. It does do damage (but only 1), and it can stop an action but only if your opponent is already stressed. In order to shoot the Ion you limit your firepower and you don't necessarily limit your opponents actions. They didn't make it a no brainer weapon but still allowed it in a game that is fairly fast paced.

It has been discussed before. You are correct in everything you said.

In the star wars universe, an Ion blast typically bypasses shields and disables a ship so it can't do jack.

In this game, it does NOT by pass shields, but it does do 1 damage. Furthermore, it doesn't "disable" this ship, in the sense that it still gets to attack and choose an action.

A successful ion attack will do 1 damage and cause the ship to do a 1 straight white maneuver. That is all. Unless it is a big ship, in which case, it takes 2 ion attacks to cause the ship to do a 1 straight white maneuver.

It may not sound that good, but it really controls the board. A good player will react to the fact that you will have an ion shot on him, and therefore will adjust his maneuvering such that he's not going to land parked on an asteroid or fly off the edge. The threat of the ion token is sometimes its biggest power. It's also a great anti-PTL weapon as if a ship is stressed (*cough* interceptor) they maintain the stress and therefore do not get an action. Which means they don't stack Focus + Evade, or boost/barrel roll out of arcs. It should get dead the next turn.

One of my favorite things to do is ionize ships that are lined up to do a K turn. That way they're facing the wrong way for the next engagement, keeping them from shooting, and then they have to do a K turn, which puts them farther out than they want, potentially out of range, or at least at R3. Then it's a turn before they can get back into it. So a single well placed ion attack can take a ship out of it for 3 turns.

Discussed before, ad nauseum

General consensus is that the ion effect is not completely faithful to the lore, but functions in a far more balanced manner. Taking a ship out of play for a turn completely - denying both action and attack - would be incredibly powerful.

Although even a turn floating wouldn't be accurate. Ships that are ioned are generally fried until they're repaired in a hangar or by another ship. Taking a hit to one-shot a ship for the entire game would be VERY overpowered.

It's not accurate, but it plays very well. So we deal with it

As far as the thematic aspect of Ion blasts i can tell you that (at least in the books/Extended Universe) ion shots fry the electrical systems. Think of it this way: cars today have advanced electrical systems. If the computer in your car gets fried, your car won't be running until that computer gets fixed, no matter how mechanically sound it is. Hence when you get hit with an ion blast in x-wing your ship shuts down and you drift 1 forward while you reinitialize systems. As far as damage goes maybe the electical damage causes a little explosion on your ship.Yes in a real dogfight i don't think you'd be able to cold start your ship in the space of roughly 1 ship length, but if you want to be that picky it is unrealistic that this whole space battle takes place in the 3x3 space it does and yet takes an hour to complete. And god forbid you fly your ship 1 fraction of an inch out of that 3x3 space. Everyone knows that space is full of invisible boundaries like that, right? Some elements of the game have to be there simply because its a game

For gameplay, i personally feel that Ion Turrets are great, ion cannons are... meh. They aren't bad for 3 points but the fact that you have to line up shots for the net result of 1 damage when i could be inflicting 3 damage with my primary weapon just isn't worth it IMO. But i think it is really about personal play style

And god forbid you fly your ship 1 fraction of an inch out of that 3x3 space. Everyone knows that space is full of invisible boundaries like that, right?

You fool, if you fly too far you'll fall off the edge of space!

When they're escaping Hoth the Ion Cannon just seems to disable the blockade ship/s temporarily, giving the rebels just enough time to get one squad through before having to fire again, doesn't it?

mazz0,

Those were star destroyers with gobs of systems redundancy and lots of peons to run around fixing things. If an Ion shot could cripple a cap ship for more than a few seconds, there wouldn't be any other weapons used.

It was a massive ground based cannon though, presumably you would have them on ships if you could.

So in essence if the ion shot worked as it should it would become too powerful of a tool and possibly unbalance the game? I can live with that. As i gain more play experience i am sure i will come to that conclusion as well. thanks for responding even though it seems i have dredged up some "old news". I must say though ion shooting someone into an asteroid is fun! My ultimate goal is to ion someone off of the board! Happy gaming.

It was a massive ground based cannon though, presumably you would have them on ships if you could.

Remember a mountain is poor scale because the SD is also massive. Star Wars has massive, absurdly big, space ships in abundance. They could easily put the ion cannon on Hoth into a spinal mount. Also SD are built to siege planets.

I agree with Jedi Moose's rationalization. The effect of 1 damage is taken from the ionization 'shorting out' a craft's various systems that either leaves it vulnerable to subsequent damage or completely shuts down the craft and eliminates it from combat (if the ion damage reduces the target's Hull from 1 to zero).

The option to take an action is still available because the pilot can still concentrate on doing additional tasks besides steering the craft during or once the effect wears off during his turn. He can try to focus or evade while ionized, fit in a last-moment barrel roll, obtain a target lock once the computer responds, etc. Maneuverability is locked into a straight 1-distance drift during the moment that's defined by the movement phase but I would say actions are a bit more abstract.

But anyway, the important thing is it's reasonably balanced and the rules are easy to remember and perform. The real question is how they'll ever represent tractor beam effects...