Can someone give me a bit of an overview as to why/how you use these things and what they are mainly used for.

I have only played a few games so far so not had a great deal of experience but for example one game i had my hwk with a blaster turret dealing a fair old amount of damage, the next i tried a build with an ion cannon and was quite underwhelmed by it.

I could maybe see the point more if the ship that was hit couldnt fire, but they can.

It just seems like such a paltry amount of damage and the effect seems limited by just delaying whatever they were going to do by 1 turn, meanwhile all the other ships are blasting away at you while youre dealing 1 damage.

I'm pretty sure i'm just looking at these the wrong way as theres plenty popular builds using them so just wondering what I'm missing.

Depends on how you use it, I don't advocate only Ion weapons, though it can be very funny. But they can be great for isolating important parts of the enemy list.. A Wedge list, Jan, Biggs, Wedge for example, is much less annoying if wedge can't ever get a shot as he is spending ever turn unable to turn to engage your ships. They are also amazing against PtL A-Wings and Interceptors, if you can get a shot through they can't shed stress next turn so can't put up defensive focus or evades, and can't boost out of arcs.

Ion cannon/turrets are great fun. As you rightly said, you are not looking at much damage from such an attack, but the ability to essentially put an enemy ship out of the fight for one turn, whilst niggling away at it's health is a wonderful boon - especially if the ship in question is a key piece of a strategy/formation.

Some cool combos also exist - as Rodent mentioned above, a stressed fighter cannot lose it's token as it performs a white forward-1 maneovre. Somebody on here before used Kath Scarlet with an Ion Cannon in the attempt to really ruin somebodies day!

I like to put an ion cannon turret on a Gold Squad Y-wing. I have him drift through the middle of the battle taking pot shots at anyone who's stressed.

Your TIE fighter just did a k-turn? He's going to get ioned.

Soontir Fel just pushed the limit? He's going to get ioned.

Like the others said, a stressed and ioned ship can't perform actions and may spend a turn without any targets.

After a couple turns my opponents realize that the Y-wing is messing up their whole plan of attack so they focus on the Y-wing. The Y-wing can take a lot of damage and this takes pressure off my X-wings and A-wings.

My last game saw my Y-wing flying parallel to a stressed Ibitsam for 2 or 3 turns ioning him all the way.

I managed to ion a Bomber through 2 asteroids last game, and as it skips it's reveal maneuver step, it couldn't drop it's Proton bomb for half the game.

Yeah, the trick is to use them on the right ship at the right moment, meaning it effectively loses a turn as it can't fire or turn around. If it's stressed when you hit it then even better (I've kept my opponents Vader ioned for several turns while stressed, he was not a happy bunny).

And of course there's flying them off the edge, or into other ships or obstacles.

Ion cannon turrets should be used against whatever enemy ship you want to remove from the fight. The following turn, you can get out of it's arcs and hopefully keep hitting it with Ion. The Ion cannon is also a good option for taking out ships with a single hull point left that your other ships don't have shots at.

The blaster turret is best fielded on a HWK with recon specialist and should be used to soften up a target that your other fighters are going to hit, or to finish off a target that is limping along on one to two hit points.

Cheers for the input.

I'll need to give it another run out and see how i fare.

I'm not a big advocate of the ion cannon as I am the ion turret, mainly I find it harder to line up "quality" shots at R3, and would rather have the primary weapons at R2 or R1 on the ships capable of carrying it, since they all have 3 attack power. The turret on the other hand, goes on the Y or the HWK, which have 2 and 1 attack power respectively. As such, at R2 the turret is the better option, and more often than not, the turret is the better option at R1 (though that could be debated on the Y).

That said, the beauty of the ICT is in disrupting the opponent. That can be done against a swarm by ionizing just a single tie, one in the front is typically better, since now the ones behind it either bump it, or overshoot it, and likely bump into you. Or they break off, and don't line up good shots in general. Just having it on the board is a huge threat to any PTL folk, most of which don't like turrets to begin with. If we take the example of Fel, and say that he maneuvers and evades every turn (getting a focus as well) the first attack on him each turn (from a 3 strength attack) only does .18 average damage, assuming the attacker has a F. If Fel spreads his tokens out over two attacks, he's looking at .49 and .64 damage over two attacks, 1.13 total. Now - if you can get an ion shot through (best if a regular attack strips his tokens first) he is now stressed. Not only can he not maneuver away next turn, but he doesn't get his F+E. Now a ship can navigate into R1 of where he'll be, and do 1.91 damage. So, the great and mighty Fel dies to 3 attacks, all because of that puny little gold squadron pilot ionizing him.

Now lets take a look at what you can do when you consider placement, edges of the board, asteroids, and other ships. First off, depending on the squad, I like to get a single ion token on a large base ship and just leave it there for opportune moments. Seeing that the large bases aren't too maneuverable, it's likely that there will be a turn when they'll be R4 or closer to the edge, pointing at it. While that's too far away to force it to fly off the table (without further ions), it's plenty far to take it out of the game for SEVERAL turns (if it is farther than 14.4 inches away, it can do a 4K turn, so you want to ion them when they're a foot away from the edge). The first turn it goes 1 forward (which is the distance of a 3 forward template). It is now too close to the edge to do a 4K (which is a 6 forward distance... 5 forward is R2, which is 8 inches btw... so he needs at least 9.6 inches to make the K turn.) Now it's far from dead but in order to keep from flying off the board, it has to pull a hard 2 turn (or 1 for the YT). And then to point back towards the battle, it has to make another turn (or bank + boost for the shuttle). So, after 3 turns, he'll be facing back at the battle, but if you moved the fight just slightly away from that edge, he's going to be out of range. So those 2 ion attacks can take a big ship out of the fight for 4 turns. Little ships need to be much closer to the edge in order to execute that maneuver, especially the B wings, who have a 2K, so it's typically not a viable strategy for them.

But you can park them on asteroids. If the opponent lines up such that he is facing an asteroid (which has become more common due to AdvS) you can ionize him to make him hit the asteroid, lose his action, and his attack. The next turn he will hit the asteroid again, and lose his action. If you ionize him again, it makes it "easy" to park a ship in front of him such that he's stuck on the asteroid for a second turn, losing his attack again. Even if you don't ionize him again, if you park a ship in front of him, its likely that he has very few options as to where to go. He can't do a 1 or 2 forward, or 1 banks as he would hit your ship and stay on the asteroid. So depending on the ship and the open space, he'll be rather predictable. Often the opponent will choose to fly away from the engagement so that he'll have somewhere safe to end the maneuver and not be stuck on the 'roid again. This takes him out of the engagement for another turn anyways.

And then there's the entire "I know where you are, so I'm not going to be there" approach. If you can navigate your entire squad behind the guy you ionized, then he has no shot that turn. Ionize him again, and he's out for 2 turns, plus needs to do a K (or two turns) to get back in it, really removing him for 3 turns.

Finally, if it came down to 1v1, the ion turret ship should have the upper hand. Often these are lower PS pilots, so against interceptors/ A wings, that might not be the case, but against other ships, the Y wing can just keep going 1 forward and ionizing the opponent. Meanwhile the opponent doesn't have a shot, and will keep drifting 1 forward until he can evade the shot. Given it doesn't always work that way, but it's a good idea on paper at least.