As no doubt all of you are aware the (no longer new) Imperial Ship preview lists several upgrades that work off of critical hits. Had I the know how to post the images here I would do that, but since I don't:

Assault Concussion Missiles

Black <Crit> : Each hull zone adjacent to the defending hull zone suffers 1 damage.

Overload Pulse

Blue <Crit> : Exhaust all of the defender's defense tokens.

Ion Cannon Batteries

Blue <Crit> : Choose and discard 1 command token from the defender. If the Defender does not have any command tokens, the defending hull zone loses 1 shield instead.

XX-9 Turbolasers

<Crit> : The first 2 damage cards dealt to the defender by this attack are dealt faceup.

What I am most curious about is how these work?

I gathered that only a single critical effect can be resolved per attack. Meaning with no upgrades if an attack manages to penetrate shields and has one or more <Crit> then the first card is dealt face-up and all others are dealt face-down, even if every single dice had a <crit> showing.

Assuming this information is correct, and not 3rd hand nonsense, this means we are given the choice of dealing a face-up damage card or resolving a special effect (if we have the appropriate upgrade of course).

The next question is when does this occur? After the opponent has a chance to utilize their defenses, or after the initial roll? If it is after and the defender uses a 'brace' (negating half the damage, rounded down) then who selects which dice get negated? Is it always hits first? The 'Evade' allows a single dice to be cancelled (at long range). Can the defender choose which dice gets negated? Overload Pulse especially is concerned with this, since the defender can simply use their tokens during this attack it kind of negates most of the use for Overload Pulse.

When do these take effect, if it is after dice results are finalized? Before all other damage? After all other damage?

This is all key information that I... I mean we need!

Yes it is stated in the Star Destroyers preview that only a single critical effect is allowed per attack.

It would seem that the "default" critical effect is for the first damage card is dealt face up, so this would happen at the time of drawing damage cards. In the case of half damage, this is shown in the attack example pdf

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/star-wars-armada/support/SWM01_diagram_attackexample.pdf

The critical hit is counted as a regular hit for the purposes of calculating the total damage. So no dice are "negated" as such in the way that X-Wing does in that situation. That total damage value is then halved and rounded up. Because one of the dice was a critical hot then the first damage card drawn is face up. If no damage cards were drawn (say it was all on sheilds) then the effect would not trigger. The only time a dice face value would be "negated" would be in the case of an evade token which can cancel or force re-rolls of a selected dice.

The other critical effects from the upgrade cards we don't know when they trigger yet, however if would be reasonable to guess that as many of them mention damage or shields, that they are after the defender has used any evade tokens.

For example, a ship with evade at long range might use its evade token to avoid the blue critical result to stop Overload pulse triggering.

Reply to Mr Kurze:

We get only face-up card per attack. What this means for what you call special effects is not actually known at this time.

It may mean that you have to trade your faceup card for the effect, or it may mean that if you roll two critical results you get both a face-up card *and* a special effect. Or perhaps you get both from a single critical roll result. We do not know yet.

As for defences, I would assume results are only counted after defences have been applied. Negating half the damage does nothing to the critical, since it is not a damage result (alone it will not do any damage). And yes, at long range I would assume that the defender can choose to remove the critical effect die.

But. These are all assumptions. We shall have to see.

-Kristian