Board Thread:Homebrew/@comment-31223609-20170206065314/@comment-454133-20170214160739

The more I think of it, the more I worry the design itself is the problem (see below).

It's really hard to tell whether it's too expensive or too cheap; it depends so much on various ways it could be used. I still think dropping its attack value by 1 is more helpful than raising the price. Playtesting with & against many fleets would be needed to figure out if it's abusable or ultimately underwhelming, or about right. The big problem is if it becomes abusable in a few scenarios, and not worth equipping in all others -- that may negatively shift the meta further away from low-agility ships, which already have it tough.

On that note, consider whether one faction (say, Rebels) is hurt considerably more than others because of more low-agility ships.

Also keep in mind that in theory, it's an easy 6 to 9 dice attack against many inagile or especially huge ships. With the right support to have a focus and even dice reroll, that will frequently one-shot many small ships and cripple many large ships or huge ship sections. That may make it overpowered against those ships, as one of your ships could nova an abnorally high amount of damage to a target in the first pass (negating the health advantage that's all those ships have to stay competitive), and sharply reduce the enemy's damage output early. And it will be a must-have in any Epic match, since it's just free massive damage. That's going to be really tricky to balance right.

But I'd say the largest problem is the faction imbalance; the victim's faction slants how vulnerable they are, and makes some factions very unhappy to see the missile fielded. Rebels will hate it, Empire generaly won't mind (save for Decimators and Upsilons), and Scum won't mind near as much as rebels. Rebels are already struggling in the current meta (x7 Defenders and Jumpmasters, which wouldn't mind this weapon at all). :(

That might mean the missile design is fundamentally flawed for the game as it is today -- introducing it punishes ships and factions that are already struggling, while empowering (or at least not harming) ships and factions that are on top. Agile arc dodgers, TIE Defenders, and Jumpmasters don't care, they face 5 or fewer dice for one attack with no special blank conversion or other tricks. But B-Wings, Y-Wings, Ghosts etc lose their health advantage and become harder to field.

So even though it's a really cool idea, it may not be the right weapon for the current game we're playing (and thus balancing it is the wrong task). It might be better for a future meta where burly ships gain an advantage.

But... maybe I'm spiraling off in a crazy direction. Maybe it's not that big of a deal; someone else could counter-argue.