The official faq indicates that when the corp scores Project Ares, forcing the runner to trash installed cards, the runner can choose Sacrificial Construct as the target for the first trashed card, then use its paid ability to prevent a second card from being trashed by Project Ares. So I'm thinking the exact same logic applies to Restoring Face used on Thomas Haas. Rez Thomas, then play Restoring Face on him, and then trigger his paid ability, and you get rid of two tags and cash out Thomas Haas.

As I understand it, no.

Once Restoring Face starts resolving there are no paid ability or rez windows so you cannot in response attempt to rez and/or trash cost activate Thomas.

Furthermore, if the trashing of effect Restoring Face is prevented or otherwise avoided you will not get the 2 bad publicity removed.

Sacrificial Construct is a special case because it is a prevent effect (and so can be used outside the normal timing windows "in response").

As I understand it, no.

Once Restoring Face starts resolving there are no paid ability or rez windows so you cannot in response attempt to rez and/or trash cost activate Thomas.

Furthermore, if the trashing of effect Restoring Face is prevented or otherwise avoided you will not get the 2 bad publicity removed.

Sacrificial Construct is a special case because it is a prevent effect (and so can be used outside the normal timing windows "in response").

I actually agree with the fact that the effect of Restoring Face (or any action) resolves outside of any opportunity to use a paid ability, but I don't think Sacrificial Construct is a special case. Agendas are scored during the same timing phase that paid abilities are allowed, so when the runner chooses to trash sacrificial construct to meet Project Ares' requirement, the paid ability is triggered. If the runner chose to trash Clone Chip I think the paid ability would also be triggered and the runner would get to install a program from the heap.

That is true, but I believe Netrunner tends to resolve all effects one at a time before moving on.

So while scoring an agenda is in the same window as rez and paid abilities, unless it is a prevent ability you can't respond to the Project Ares being scored by trashing your Clone Chip as priority for activating paid abilities won't be passed until after the Project Ares has finished resolving.

No you wouldn't be able to double use clone chip (or to use clone chip to install anything before you have to trash). Every ability has to resolve completely before you can activate any other abilities. The exception is any prevent or avoid abilities. Those trigger right after whatever it is they are preventing or avoiding tirggers. This is why Sac Construct is a special case.

If that's the case, then you would have to choose to either directly trash Construct, or use Construct's prevent ability, but you couldn't do exactly what the faq says that you can do, which is to choose to trash Construct and then prevent Ares from forcing you to trash another installed card. Also, if Construct functioned like you think it does, its ability would be a triggered ability rather than a paid ability. To illustrate the difference, if the runner's only resources are two Fall Guys, and the corp plays Freelancer, would trashing the first Fall Guy prevent trashing the second Fall Guy?

As the FAQ states, all the programs trashed by Project Ares are chosen at the same time. These trash effects are all stacked up and will be resolved one at a time (but still as one simultaneous transaction of game state). At this point you can choose to use the Sacrificial Construct to prevent a trash from occurring (and as all of the targets for Project Ares have already been selected, this can;t then be altered after the fact).

Prevent and avoid effects really are their own small category. By their nature they tend to be both triggered (an effect they interact with must be taking place) and paid (there is usually a cost in order to activate the prevention, such as trashing or paying credits).

For the second example, this operates just like Project Ares. The Corp plays Freelancer and selects the two Fall Guys. As a prevent effect the Runner can choose to trash one of the Fall Guys to stop the other from being trashed (the trash on the Fall Guy is a cost and must be paid, but is allowed under the special rules for prevention effects, see page 21 of the rulebook for the relevant rules text).

Thanks. I expected this result, I just couldn't find the flaw in my logic.

Extending the Project Aries resolution. The last sentence of Project Aries is "If the runner trashes at least 1 card, take 1 bad publicity." Using the earlier example. Does the corp take any bad pub? I would think no, because Aries didn't trash anything. But on the other hand, with the way caissa / Scheherazade panned out, I wouldn't be suprised that even if you only had 1 aries counter, that was prevented with construct, you'd still get the bad pub.

This is a good question but techcnically the runner did trash a card (the sac construct was trashed) so I would imagine that the corp would still have to take a bad pub.

Pretty sure this was ruled on, but I forget the outcome. I'll poke around on BGG and try to find it.

if you only had 1 aries counter, that was prevented with construct, you'd still get the bad pub.

The runner would simply select the sacrificial construct as the card to trash with Ares and not use the prevention effect, avoiding the paradox entirely.

I think if you prevent the trash from Ares there will be no bad pub for the Corp.

Just as preventing the trash on restoring face prevents its benefit from resolving.