Board Thread:Homebrew/@comment-31223609-20170206062029/@comment-454133-20170208182023

I haven't been playing the game as long as some of the excellent vets here, but I'm telling you, from the moment I read that post, I knew your weapon was broken. Once you have a lot of experience playing the game and building fleets, you develop a strong sense for what a card can do. You're acting like I'm just being hard on you, but  I don't think you're really understanding my intent. I'm trying to explain that the effect itself is too much, and price or PS are the wrong way to balance it. There's no way to take a card like that seriously.

Again, please look at how deliberately limited other Bypass Shields effects are. Black Market Slicer Tools, for example, requires that the target be stressed, has a 50% chance of failing, and can only deal 1 damage (and it frees them of the stress in return). Advanced Homing Missile is one-use, one face-up damage. Proton Bombs have to be deployed skillfully, and cost 5 squad points for a single use that might grab a few ships if you're lucky. Even "Wampa" and "I'll Show You The Dark Side" are carefully limited and require the right support to be a real threat, and both are Unique.

In contrast, a slugthrower cannon could be used by an ace with PTL to roll 3 attack dice (or 4 with the right support), reroll and focus, for a fairly consistent 3 hits/crits that ignore shielding. And it can be used every round. And there's no shortage of aces, decent pilot skill is not that rare (and there's always Adaptability and VI).

Even average PS is rolling 2 attack dice at medium range, and any hit ignores half the target's health. That's scary for most ships, especially low-agility ones that rely on shielding to survive (and they're already under pressure). B-Wings and other heavy-shield ships are no longer realistically fieldable. Z-95s and other small ships that are only 2 hull are basically fodder. Shield rechargers would never be fielded again -- their counter-build is so common they'll never have a chance.

Essentially by ignoring shields on a repeatable & powerful weapon, you can behave as though you already did the 2 to 5 damage needed to remove their shields, for free. Now you just need to tap them a couple more times, and the opponent's (potentially expensive) ship is now scrap.

Bypass Shields is one of the more powerful effects in the game, and FFG has been very careful about the cards they let do it. This is what I'm trying to explain to you -- this is a crazy-effective weapon that every fleet will want to use, and trying to balance it purely by setting a high cost won't really work. Either it's high cost but someone will find a way to field it effectively and dominates the meta (and no other fleet can afford to use it, so the game devolves to that fleet vs itself), or it will be a unaffordable for all and just a curiosity, or it will be too cheap and no one would ever not field it in every fleet they ever build.

You can't balance by cost alone.  Some effects swing too wildly to put an effective price on them.

I think I'm kinda done trying to reply to your homebrew posts, probably much to your delight since you don't sound happy to hear from me this time. It's just too tiring trying to take your cards seriously and help you out. You need to spend more time playing the original game and getting a feel for why things are designed and balanced the way they are, before you go radically altering them.