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Dial: Pretty good. Lots of Speed 1 maneuvers make this thing an effective knife-fighter, and mean that adaptive ailerons is not committing you to moving too fast.

Generic: Probably costs a point too much. If it was 16pt, you could run 5+ Howlrunner, for a fairly scary swarm. As is, it costs just enough that I am not sure what it is really good for vs Black Squadron Pilot w. Crack shot.

"Countdown": Normally, not a fan of making myself take damage. However, this ability is more "When defending, receive a stress token to reduce the damage to 1". This actually makes him resonantly tough, with agility 3 (with lightened frame) and 4 hull. I could see myself trying to use this guy in a list that doesn't have the points for Defenders.

"Pure Sabacc": Probably the best pilot in the expansion. Bit of a glass cannon, but should work as a distraction ship- my opponent either ignores a big threat, o reduce this guys firepower, or ignores this guy and leaves me with a pretty cheap 4-dice gun.

Lightweight Frame: A nice ability, which helps the Striker a lot. More important, though, is what it can do for a TIE Shuttle

Swarm Leader: Meh. Another way to use evade tokens, but kind of expensive for a card that requires you to burn actions on other ships to be effective. Could be very powerful under ideal circumstances- Auto generate evade tokens, and have had all your enemy ships already fired, throwing out a 5- or 6-dice attack. Problem is, Push the Limit and Predator are far less circumstantial, and set the standard for what EPT's should do. Running one of these, and freeing up your other ships actions is much more threatening.

This ship is great. I love the Imperial trainee. 17 points for a 3 attack damage ship, yes please. It's manuever dial in combination with the ailerons is just great.

I think it will run great in combination with the academy tie.

I like 3 basic Imperial Trainees and 4 academy Ties.

I am really not too impressed with Lightweight Frame. It would have been much more useful as a 1 point upgrade. I just feel like 2 is just a little much for something that can take away Guidance Chips, Engine Upgrade, Stealth Device or Twin Ion Engines Mk. II.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
I am really not too impressed with Lightweight Frame. It would have been much more useful as a 1 point upgrade. I just feel like 2 is just a little much for something that can take away Guidance Chips, Engine Upgrade, Stealth Device or Twin Ion Engines Mk. II.

its a cheaper conditional SD






Edit: nvm on the other part of the post. pg 8

A card ability cannot be resolved more than
once during the timing specified on the card.
For example, a card with the timing of “when
defending” cannot be resolved twice by the
defender during a single attack.

Everything on this ship feels like it is just one point too expensive, minus the title.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
Everything on this ship feels like it is just one point too expensive, minus the title.

This kinda sums up my feelings exactly.

I've been trying to figure out how Lightweight Frame compares to other defensive upgrades such as Shield/Hull. On low HP stuff like the Striker and Phantom, there isn't much in it (though obviously there are pros and cons), hardly a game changer though. On higher HP stuff like the Bomber, it's significantly better, and on the Punisher it might actually be an auto-include. Yes, you'd have to forgo Guidance Chips, but you're almost doubling the ships durability.

Swarm Leader, I'd quite like to put on Omega Ace, especially if he has a wingman with the new Targeting Synchronizer. That would allow him to roll 4/5 crits every turn almost guaranteed, which is brutal levels of fire power.

I think it's a scary little ship. And a 2 K-turn? yipe!

What I want to see though is the other two generics. I was hoping to be able to field five of the Black Squadron pilots as 100 points with Lightweight Frame. Crack Shot would have been a bonus to be able to run on them if they have an EPT, but really wasn't expecting to be able to fit it in even if they did. Don't see that happening, but would still like to know the cost.

Has anybody seen the cost for the PS 3 generic? Really hoping it is 18.

I'm a little underwhelmed; probably because the ship has hardly any upgrade slots and it's preventing me thinking about weird combos that could be achieved. I'll get one though (in fact I think I put it on 'the list' in case they make it out for Xmas).

Pure Sabacc seems like he'll be decent, if only for messing with the opponent's targeting priority and letting someone like Omega Leader make it to the end game. I've also been looking for solid PS6 pilots to accompany Vessery in a 666 Squadron build, but Pure Sabacc's lack of Target Lock might be a big issue there.

Countdown looks a fun way to frustrate a big hitting opponent but I don't like things that depend on my opponent's list to be effective. Not saying he's bad necessarily, but he doesn't seem for me.

Duchess has the movement options and the PS to make use of them, she could become handy in the 25pt 'pocket ace' slot, if you need another one after Omega Leader that is!

First impressions:

Generic: ugh, this is disappointing. At 17 points you can't fit six in a list, and this presumably means the PS 4 generic will be 21 points with crack shot, ruining the 5-ship crack swarm. It's still the cheapest 3-dice gun, but generic TIE interceptors see no use at 18 points for a roughly equivalent stat line. At 16 points the ability to fit that extra ship into a list could have given it a reason to exist, but at 17 points what exactly are you going to take this for? And how are you going to justify investing a significant amount of points into such a weak stat line? I could maybe see one in a list as a generic filler ship, but that's about it.

Dial: not bad, not great. It looks ok on paper, but remember that mandatory boost move each turn. Clearing stress is going to be a problem and going slow is impossible unless you start the turn stressed. On the other hand, if you effectively add +1 speed to all of your maneuvers it's not the worst dial ever. Call it a basic TIE fighter sloops instead of 1-turns?

"Countdown": bad, bad option. Sure, you get to roll dice and then see if you want to cancel some damage, but the cost is incredibly high. Being stressed takes away your free boost move and locks you into predictable greens if you want to get your ability (or actions) back. It's probably an act of desperation to use it, and then your opponent can still kill you with their other ships just fine. And if you roll well enough to take 0-1 damage you get nothing at all. Is this really worth dumping 3 points into a ship that is already a questionable deal as it is? I doubt it.

"Pure Sabacc": now we're getting somewhere. 23 points for a 4-dice gun with crack shot is not the worst thing ever as a relatively cheap distraction that your opponent almost has to shoot first. It's not quite imperial Biggs, but it could fill a similar role. Sure, higher-PS alpha strikes are going to give you a bad day, but at least you still succeed in drawing that fire away from something more important. I don't know if this is enough to be viable, but IMO it's probably the best option for the ship.

Lightweight Frame: uh, no. A conditional +1 defense die for +2 points would be a good deal if you could put it on ships that are already hard to hit, but the only ships that can take this aren't going to get much additional damage prevention out of it. You need 2-3 activations just to break even against a hull upgrade, and we all know that hull upgrades on low-agility ships are bad. Maybe the TIE/sf can get something out of it, since it's expensive enough to justify a 2-point upgrade? I don't know, I want to like this, but it doesn't seem to be a good return on your investment.

Swarm Leader: oh dear god, this is either broken as hell or a spectacular waste of points. Obviously you have to build your list around making it work, but that is a lot of firepower for 3 points! If you assume that a basic attack from whatever ship you put this on is likely to hit you effectively turn the evade action into "deal +1 damage to your target". Imagine a list built around juke and x7 TIE defenders: the swarm shoots first, wrecking stuff with juke. Then your kill ship fires, spends the now-redundant evade tokens, and drops 5-6 attack dice on a target. On the other hand, if your plan fails you've potentially got a lot of dead weight, so it's probably a high risk, high reward concept.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smacks wrote:
Yes, you'd have to forgo Guidance Chips, but you're almost doubling the ships durability.

No, this is completely wrong. You double the number of green dice you roll, but you don't double your durability. Let's say you're facing 3-hit attacks, with guidance chips or long range scanners you're taking 2.625 damage per shot for 3.42 shots to kill. By adding another 3/8 of an evade per attack (remember, you will never have defensive focus) you drop the average damage per shot to 2.25 and an even 4 shots on average to kill. That's nowhere near double your durability, and it comes at a huge price in firepower. Lightweight frame is going to see zero use on bombers.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
Yes, you'd have to forgo Guidance Chips, but you're almost doubling the ships durability.

No, this is completely wrong. You double the number of green dice you roll, but you don't double your durability. Let's say you're facing 3-hit attacks, with guidance chips or long range scanners you're taking 2.625 damage per shot for 3.42 shots to kill. By adding another 3/8 of an evade per attack (remember, you will never have defensive focus) you drop the average damage per shot to 2.25 and an even 4 shots on average to kill. That's nowhere near double your durability, and it comes at a huge price in firepower. Lightweight frame is going to see zero use on bombers.

Firstly, an attack always being 3 hits, is an oversimplification; secondly, it's unfair to assume that you'll never have a defensive Focus, especially when the Punisher has access to things like FCS, and supporting ships can take stuff like General Hux, Targeting Synchroniser, Fleet Officer, Systems Officer, Major Stridan, Squad Leader, Colonel Jendon, etc... Not to mention actionless bomb drops.

If we're going to talk about the durability of a ship, then you must allow it to make its best defensive action, because in a situation where you absolutely must survive the round, that is the action you would take. With that in mind, if we suppose a 3 dice attack against 1 agility (where both ships get to Focus) then the Punisher will survive ~5.5 rounds of shooting, at 1.63 damage per round. If we do the same thing with Lightened Frame equipped, then the Punisher will survive ~8.5 rounds of shooting at 1.07 damage per round, which is a 55% improvement in durability. Admittedly, that's still quite a way off 100%, so perhaps "nearly double" was a bit of an exaggeration on my part. It's a big increase nonetheless, equivalent to 5 hull upgrades on a big ship like the Punisher.

Probably won't be buying five of these like I planned anymore.

Pure Sabaac looks like the stand out pilot here. A ship that cannot be left alone in the mid 20 point range is always appealing.

 Peregrine wrote:

Swarm Leader: oh dear god, this is either broken as hell or a spectacular waste of points. Obviously you have to build your list around making it work, but that is a lot of firepower for 3 points! If you assume that a basic attack from whatever ship you put this on is likely to hit you effectively turn the evade action into "deal +1 damage to your target". Imagine a list built around juke and x7 TIE defenders: the swarm shoots first, wrecking stuff with juke. Then your kill ship fires, spends the now-redundant evade tokens, and drops 5-6 attack dice on a target. On the other hand, if your plan fails you've potentially got a lot of dead weight, so it's probably a high risk, high reward concept.

Yeah a mate and i saw this card and immediately thought of the X7 list.
my initial list thought was

Ryad
D title
Tractor beam
Twin Ion
Swarm Tactics

5x academy pilots
99pts

at Range 1 that's a potential 21 shots... with a tractor beam on the ship

 Smacks wrote:
Firstly, an attack always being 3 hits, is an oversimplification;

It is, but it's a conservative oversimplification in a world of 4+ dice weapons, crack shot, juke, etc.

secondly, it's unfair to assume that you'll never have a defensive Focus, especially when the Punisher has access to things like FCS

No, it's entirely fair. If you're taking a punisher it's because you want to use ordnance that requires actions, and any focus tokens you have are for offense (especially without guidance chips to modify your dice). It's theoretically possible that you could roll well enough on offense to have a leftover token for defense, but that is a rare enough situation that it's not worth considering.

and supporting ships can take stuff like General Hux, Targeting Synchroniser, Fleet Officer, Systems Officer, Major Stridan, Squad Leader, Colonel Jendon, etc... Not to mention actionless bomb drops.

Ok, I will concede this point. If you're taking a list with a TIE punisher, a ship that is terrible already, and a dedicated support ship you're already so far into garbage-tier territory with your list that taking lightweight frame probably can't make your list any worse. However, this doesn't apply to normal games of X-Wing where both players are attempting to build viable lists.

If we're going to talk about the durability of a ship, then you must allow it to make its best defensive action, because in a situation where you absolutely must survive the round, that is the action you would take.

We're talking about this in list building, not what action you take on a particular turn. And in list building a TIE punisher is intended to be an ordnance carrier as its primary role, if you're talking about situations where you go full-defense with your punisher you've already failed at accomplishing the goal you had when you put it into your list. And at that point who cares if your useless paperweight stays alive for another turn or two?

The correct way to analyze the ship is to assume that you are using it effectively to accomplish its primary goal. That means no defensive focus because your actions are committed to offense, and an improvement in durability that is marginal at best. And in exchange for this marginal improvement you pay 2 points and give up the ability to take powerful alternative modifications that help the TIE punisher significantly in its primary role of delivering ordnance. IOW, it's a really bad idea.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 captain bloody fists wrote:
5x academy pilots

IMO swarm leader is going to be best with x7 defenders, since you can get the evade token without giving up offensive focus. With something like an academy pilot swarm you're significantly reducing the effectiveness of the meatshields' own guns, negating some of the firepower gained from swarm leader. And the additional ships of a 5-ship swarm are wasted since swarm leader is capped at two additional dice, you might as well make sure those two support ships are as effective as possible.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
Firstly, an attack always being 3 hits, is an oversimplification;

It is, but it's a conservative oversimplification in a world of 4+ dice weapons, crack shot, juke, etc.

It's not conservative at all! To average 3 hits would require at least 4 dice and a Focus token, so you're not exactly giving anything away there. Few ships can exceed that kind of firepower, even with optimal conditions.

Against weaker two and three dice attacks, you still get a pretty big boost to durability out of LWF, even without a Focus: +40% and +31% respectively. That isn't just a "marginal" improvement. Every turn you can keep your ship alive is another turn you get to unload with Extra Munitions, ultimately, more shots means more offence.

 Smacks wrote:
It's not conservative at all! To average 3 hits would require at least 4 dice and a Focus token, so you're not exactly giving anything away there. Few ships can exceed that kind of firepower, even with optimal conditions.

4 dice with focus, 3 dice with crack shot/juke, even 3 dice with focus + target lock averages 2.8 hits. So that's all action-stacking ships with 3-dice guns, 3-dice ships at range 1, anything with a 4-dice primary weapon, anything (ATC Vader/Nora/etc) that adds extra hit results, and anything with 4+ dice ordnance. And TLTs don't technically average 3 hits, but their near-automatic 2 damage per turn against low agility ships effectively puts them into the same category. Same thing with Dengaroo, where crippling your evade dice acts like having 4+ red dice. So that's a pretty big part of the metagame delivering 3+ hits per shot.

Against weaker two and three dice attacks, you still get a pretty big boost to durability out of LWF, even without a Focus: +40% and +31% respectively. That isn't just a "marginal" improvement. Every turn you can keep your ship alive is another turn you get to unload with Extra Munitions, ultimately, more shots means more offence.

Two-dice attacks are virtually nonexistent right now, and plain 3-dice + focus attacks are increasingly marginalized. You're planning against the least-relevant threat, and you're doing it at the cost of making your primary role (delivering ordnance) much less effective. Buying an extra turn of life to fire another homing missile is of very little value if the only reason you still have that homing missile is because you didn't have long range scanners to get a target lock + focus stack and fire it on the opening pass. And past a certain point you aren't surviving to fire more ordnance shots because you aren't going to spend 10+ points on it, so all you're protecting with that extra green die is a 2-dice primary gun.

 Peregrine wrote:

IMO swarm leader is going to be best with x7 defenders, since you can get the evade token without giving up offensive focus. With something like an academy pilot swarm you're significantly reducing the effectiveness of the meatshields' own guns, negating some of the firepower gained from swarm leader. And the additional ships of a 5-ship swarm are wasted since swarm leader is capped at two additional dice, you might as well make sure those two support ships are as effective as possible.

fair and valid point. i was more looking at the total of DPR than survivability of the meat shields.

i do suppose that a X7 defender with the free evade and a focus action might be getting better economy from the swarm of academy pilots. so with that maybe this then:

Ryad
Twin Ions
D title
Tractor beam
Swram tac

2 x Deltas
twin ions
X7 title

97 points.

with the spare points you could upgrade one of the deltas to an Onyx or even go with Vessery and forego a round with the other two and get TL's on your priority target.

this presumably means the PS 4 generic will be 21 points with crack shot, ruining the 5-ship crack swarm

I might have agreed, but countdown being 20 points gives me more confidence it won't be. Countdown doesnt have an elite upgrade, but he has PS5 and a very situational but potentially useful ability (the ability to take a range one shot off fen rau, for example) - I can't see the lower PS black squadron scout not being cheaper. If ther were a ps6 generic, maybe, but they're only PS4. I suspect it'll be tie fighter fashion of 17, 18, 19 for the generics, so 5 with crack shot still works as long as you're happy sticking at z95 levels of durability.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
What I want to see though is the other two generics. I was hoping to be able to field five of the Black Squadron pilots as 100 points with Lightweight Frame. Crack Shot would have been a bonus to be able to run on them if they have an EPT, but really wasn't expecting to be able to fit it in even if they did. Don't see that happening, but would still like to know the cost.

Has anybody seen the cost for the PS 3 generic? Really hoping it is 18.

Since the PS1 generic is 17 and Countdown PS5 is 20, I would expect the PS 3 and PS4 to be 18 and 19 points. The 19 point ship being your Black Squad with the elite ability. So a Black squad with Crack shot shot would be 20 and you'd be able to fit in 5, but you never know what FF is thinking when they make some of these things. You wouldn't get the lightweight frame though.

There's generally 4 pilot cards per pack, so there's someone here we're not seeing I think (my guess is a Pilot 3).

I'd really like to take Swarm Leader out for a spin - two groups of 3 ties with a Swarm Leader each or perhaps a Interceptor swarm (5 attack dice at range 1 seems pretty good).

 Stormonu wrote:
two groups of 3 ties with a Swarm Leader each

Swarm leader is unique.

 Stormonu wrote:
There's generally 4 pilot cards per pack, so there's someone here we're not seeing I think (my guess is a Pilot 3).

I'd really like to take Swarm Leader out for a spin - two groups of 3 ties with a Swarm Leader each or perhaps a Interceptor swarm (5 attack dice at range 1 seems pretty good).

We know that there are 6 pilot cards in the TIE striker pack. We know 4 of them and the only 2 left are going to be generic - a PS3 and PS4 pilot.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
It's not conservative at all! To average 3 hits would require at least 4 dice and a Focus token, so you're not exactly giving anything away there. Few ships can exceed that kind of firepower, even with optimal conditions.

4 dice with focus, 3 dice with crack shot/juke, even 3 dice with focus + target lock averages 2.8 hits. So that's all action-stacking ships with 3-dice guns, 3-dice ships at range 1, anything with a 4-dice primary weapon, anything (ATC Vader/Nora/etc) that adds extra hit results, and anything with 4+ dice ordnance. And TLTs don't technically average 3 hits, but their near-automatic 2 damage per turn against low agility ships effectively puts them into the same category. Same thing with Dengaroo, where crippling your evade dice acts like having 4+ red dice. So that's a pretty big part of the metagame delivering 3+ hits per shot.

You've listed many of the most powerful things in the game, and almost all of them fall short of your 3 hit average.

•3 dice with crackshot/juke is not equivalent to 4 dice until you get above agility three. And even then, you would need a Focus to average 3 hits (or 3 hits equivalent of damage).
•3 dice + Focus + Target lock, is (as you said) 2.8 on average. It's hardly "conservative" if you're rounding up to 3 (also action heavy).
•3 dice ships at range one, with a Focus, can average 3 hits, but you are then omitting R2 and R3 shots from your estimate, which will bring the average down.
•Vader/Nora don't average 3 hits, not unless they're at R1 with a Focus.
•4 dice primaries, is just the Phantom and Ghost at the moment.
•TLTs are again short of your 3 hit average (3 hits would be 2.25 damage against agility 2), so again you're rounding up.
•4+ dice Ordinance, yeah, but still likely needs a Focus on top of any other conditions (range/TL)

So while 3 hits might be a "rough" estimate of what the most powerful ships can do, it's certainly not a "conservative" estimate. When you factor in lower power stuff, such as R3 shots, Tie Fighters, Omega Leader, z95s, Scouts etc... it's not even a good estimate of the average attack.

You're essentially arguing that there is only "marginal" difference, between Agility 1 and Agility 2, which is, of course, nonsense: the extra dice is a significant boost to durability. However, that difference gets smaller as you increase the number of attack dice, which is exactly what you have done. You chose a very high range which only the most powerful ships can hit, and only with a Focus, and then you still had to round up in many cases. That is not a conservative estimate by which to measure the average durability, it's a distortion of the facts.

To provide an alternative perspective, against a Tie Swarm, all with Focus and Howlrunner. The naked Punisher would be 31% more durable. Meaning it would significantly outlast a Punisher with a Hull and a Shield upgrade, for only 2 points.

past a certain point you aren't surviving to fire more ordnance shots because you aren't going to spend 10+ points on it, so all you're protecting with that extra green die is a 2-dice primary gun.

If you are consistently able to survive longer, then there is no reason not to take enough ordinance to last, especially given how cheap Extra Munitions is.

 Smacks wrote:
So while 3 hits might be a "rough" estimate of what the most powerful ships can do, it's certainly not a "conservative" estimate.

It's conservative because the stuff that averages just under 3 hits is balanced out by the stuff averaging over 3 hits. A Ghost or Whisper with FCS averages 3.75 hits per shot. Nora averages 3.25. Anything with ordnance is consistently delivering 4-5 hits. TLTs and Dengaroo effectively deliver 3+ hits because they cancel your evade results and deal additional damage. Etc. You might get lucky and occasionally only face two hits, but you should assume that you're going to get a lot of 3-hit rolls and often more than 3 hits.

When you factor in lower power stuff, such as R3 shots, Tie Fighters, Omega Leader, z95s, Scouts etc... it's not even a good estimate of the average attack.

Other than OLeader (who isn't really a 2-dice gun) none of those things are really relevant. The meta right now is pretty thoroughly on the side of quality over quantity. Things like basic TIE fighters are marginal at best because they have zero chance of damaging high-agility threats like Palp aces. You either take powerful attacks that can average 3+ hits, or you get wiped off the table by ships you can't even attempt to hurt.

You're essentially arguing that there is only "marginal" difference, between Agility 1 and Agility 2, which is, of course, nonsense: the extra dice is a significant boost to durability.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm arguing, and the AGI 1 vs. AGI 2 problem is a well known issue in X-Wing. The extra green die is of marginal value, and mid-agility ships like the T-65 x-wing are generally very weak. The game overwhelmingly favors ships with 3+ agility and defensive token stacking that are virtually immune to conventional attacks, or giant bricks of HP that don't pay for marginally-relevant green dice or care about things like juke/Zuckuss/etc. There's a reason why generic b-wings are almost always considered better than generic x-wings, the extra HP on the b-wing is worth far more than the extra green die on the x-wing.

To provide an alternative perspective, against a Tie Swarm, all with Focus and Howlrunner.

Not relevant in the current metagame. TIE swarms are dead.

If you are consistently able to survive longer, then there is no reason not to take enough ordinance to last, especially given how cheap Extra Munitions is.

Except you aren't surviving longer. Even a 33% increase in durability in your best-case scenario adds nothing in terms of surviving to get more ordnance shots off. A crack swarm will kill a TIE punisher in a single turn of shooting, maybe two turns at most if you can force a range-3 exchange, get some dice luck, and took ordnance that can be fired at range 1. You aren't going to live long enough to get 3+ shots off unless your opponent is completely ignoring your expensive ordnance platform, so taking more than a single weapon (plus extra munitions, of course) means paying 4-5 points for a weapon you will rarely get to fire.

And, again, taking anything besides long range scanners or guidance chips cripples your firepower. You have to live long enough to fire additional ordnance shots to make up for your much weaker damage per-shot, if you don't then all you've accomplished is making a bad ship worse. Don't get tunnel vision on your 33% additional HP and forget that the TIE punisher has a purpose besides surviving.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
So while 3 hits might be a "rough" estimate of what the most powerful ships can do, it's certainly not a "conservative" estimate.

It's conservative because the stuff that averages just under 3 hits is balanced out by the stuff averaging over 3 hits. A Ghost or Whisper with FCS averages 3.75 hits per shot.

No they don't. Ghost and Whisper range from 4.68 (Token stacked at R1), to 1.64 (Tokenless at R3). Which gives them a median damage output of 3.16 (against 0 AG). If all ships were that powerful then I would accept 3 hits as a conservative estimate (3.16 conservatively rounded down to 3), but that is not the case.

I know that you know what "conservative" and "average" mean, yet you're deliberately misrepresenting them: 2.8 is not a conservative 3!

Anything with ordnance is consistently delivering 4-5 hits.

No they aren't. 4 dice ordinance is only 2 hits. Even with Focus and Guidance Chips it's 3.7 hits which is way below your 4 or 5 hits. You're talking "best case" for best ship here, not "conservative average". The median value there for ordinance would be ~2.8

TLTs and Dengaroo effectively deliver 3+ hits because they cancel your evade results and deal additional damage. Etc.

No they don't effectively deliver 3+. To average exactly 3 hits would require 6 attack dice, or 4 attack + Focus. Against AG2 that would correspond to 2.25 hits. TLTs do a maximum of 2 hits, so they are clearly less powerful than 6 attack dice, which would be exactly 3 hits (not 3+). So TLTs are effectively doing about 2.8 hits (not 3 and certainly not 3+). Rounding 2.8 up to 3 is not conservative, you are exaggerating again.

Don't get tunnel vision on your 33% additional HP and forget that the TIE punisher has a purpose besides surviving.

Very well, I will concede that you are right, and there are more important things to worry about on the punisher. I was wrong about LWF.

However, I still maintain that 3+ hits is not a conservative damage range. Soontir Fel at R2 with a Focus is only averaging 2.25 hits. Even if you take his best case (R1+Focus+Palpatine), and divide it by his worst case (R3 & saves Focus to defend), you're only upping the average to ~2.45 hits. 3+ is a massive exaggeration.

 Smacks wrote:
Ghost and Whisper range from 4.68 (Token stacked at R1), to 1.64 (Tokenless at R3). Which gives them a median damage output of 3.16 (against 0 AG).

That's not how it works at all! You can't simply average the best-case situation and worst-case situation like that because they aren't equal in frequency. Range 1 shots with tokens are far more common than range 3 shots with no tokens, and there's also range 2 shots with tokens, range 3 shots with tokens, etc, to consider.

I know that you know what "conservative" and "average" mean, yet you're deliberately misrepresenting them: 2.8 is not a conservative 3!

I've already explained this. The conservative estimate of 3 hits is for incoming damage as a whole. Those 2.8 hit rolls are offset by the 3+ damage rolls (and 3-dice guns with defense-reducing effects that act as extra hits). You will face a lot of shots that average a little under 3 hits, a lot of shots that average significantly over 3 hits, and very few shots that average significantly less than 3 hits. Assuming 3 hits per shot is a conservative estimate in a world where a 3 dice gun with focus + target lock is the bare minimum for a viable weapon on anything but the cheapest of meatshields.

No they aren't. 4 dice ordinance is only 2 hits. Even with Focus and Guidance Chips it's 3.7 hits which is way below your 4 or 5 hits. You're talking "best case" for best ship here, not "conservative average". The median value there for ordinance would be ~2.8

This is bad math again. There is no 4-dice ordnance that averages 2 hits per shot because ordnance is always fired with dice modification (both focus + TL stacks and dice modification inherent to the weapon). A concussion missile with focus + chips is 3.94 hits (with a 94% chance of 4 hits). A homing missile from Miranda with focus + target lock is 4.68 (with a 72% chance of 5 hits). Etc. If you are facing ordnance the minimum roll you can expect is 3 hits, and you're probably going to get 4-5.

No they don't effectively deliver 3+. To average exactly 3 hits would require 6 attack dice, or 4 attack + Focus. Against AG2 that would correspond to 2.25 hits. TLTs do a maximum of 2 hits, so they are clearly less powerful than 6 attack dice, which would be exactly 3 hits (not 3+). So TLTs are effectively doing about 2.8 hits (not 3 and certainly not 3+). Rounding 2.8 up to 3 is not conservative, you are exaggerating again.

A TLT is almost a guaranteed 2 damage per turn against low-agility ships (84% chance of 2 damage against 2 agility, 99.8% chance of at least 1 damage). So, while you're technically correct that the equivalent roll on normal weapons is ~2.8 hits against 2 agility, the conservative estimate part is that TLTs make LWF almost irrelevant. You have a 93% chance of taking 2 damage without LWF, so you're only adding ~9% chance of preventing a point of damage per round of TLT fire. By approximating the average attack as simply 3 hits and allowing the extra green die from LWF to have a 37.5% chance of preventing a point of damage on each attack I'm significantly favoring LWF over the more accurate approximation of a slightly lower value for the average primary weapon result and calculating TLTs separately.

However, I still maintain that 3+ hits is not a conservative damage range. Soontir Fel at R2 with a Focus is only averaging 2.25 hits. Even if you take his best case (R1+Focus+Palpatine), and divide it by his worst case (R3 & saves Focus to defend), you're only upping the average to ~2.45 hits. 3+ is a massive exaggeration.

But remember, Soontir Fel with Palpatine is a best-case scenario for incoming fire. Fel is an incredibly defense-focused ship with the weakest viable gun in X-Wing, and you're still not reducing that 3-hit assumption by very much. And talking about Fel in this context is completely irrelevant, since you have no realistic chance of hurting Fel no matter how long your TIE punisher lasts. A homing missile shot (without token stacking, since you don't have chips/LRS) has less than an 8% chance of inflicting even a single point of damage against Fel at range 2, dropping to less than 2% at range 3. Your only prayer of accomplishing anything against Fel is to take LRS/chips, homing missiles, and desperately hope that you make the one shot where you catch Fel in range and in arc count.

 Peregrine wrote:
I've already explained this. The conservative estimate of 3 hits is for incoming damage as a whole. Those 2.8 hit rolls are offset by the 3+ damage rolls.

And again, I disagree. The vast majority of attacks (even the powerful attacks that you listed) are averaging less than 3 hits. Even powerful stuff like a Focused Phantom is only averaging exactly 3 hits (not 3+). There are a few ships which are able to get above 3 hits under the right conditions, but they are not common enough to offset the rest, and those conditions are not guaranteed every shot.

Most viable ships are 3 attack, and it would be fair to expect them to have a Focus, which gives them an average damage output of 2.25. If they are able to stack Focus and Target Lock (or Juke, Predator etc...) then that goes up to ~2.8. R1 and R3 tend to cancel each other out (on average), so you're left with most ships rolling between 2.25 and 2.8 hits per shot. So I'd say a conservative estimate would be 2.5 hits per shot. A reasonable estimate in a powerful meta would be 2.8 hits per shot. 3 hits is an exaggeration, and 3+ is nonsense, given that most ships can't even hit 3 when stacked.

 Peregrine wrote:
There is no 4-dice ordnance that averages 2 hits per shot because ordnance is always fired with dice modification (both focus + TL stacks and dice modification inherent to the weapon). A concussion missile with focus + chips is 3.94 hits (with a 94% chance of 4 hits). A homing missile from Miranda with focus + target lock is 4.68 (with a 72% chance of 5 hits). Etc. If you are facing ordnance the minimum roll you can expect is 3 hits, and you're probably going to get 4-5.

You can't always expect to have Focus and TL, that's not a conservative assumption, especially when a lot of ordinance requires a TL to even fire. Ordinance is certainly powerful, but it's also uncommon and a 1 shot deal. That's not going to offset the other 90% of shots from ships with 3 attack primaries, which average significantly below 3 hits per shot.


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 Peregrine wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
Ghost and Whisper range from 4.68 (Token stacked at R1), to 1.64 (Tokenless at R3). Which gives them a median damage output of 3.16 (against 0 AG).

That's not how it works at all! You can't simply average the best-case situation and worst-case situation like that because they aren't equal in frequency. Range 1 shots with tokens are far more common than range 3 shots with no tokens, and there's also range 2 shots with tokens, range 3 shots with tokens, etc, to consider.

Even if I weight it in your favour, and say that Focus+TL is more common than just Focus, and twice as common as tokenless, and then we also say that R1 is more common than R2 and twice as common as R3 (which there is no basis for). That still only gives Whisper an average of 3.37, which is way below your 3.75.

That might still be enough to offset the averages if Whisper were as common as 3 attack ships, but he's not, so it isn't.