Dace is interesting alongside other ships that, too, can ion. As you increase the chance that at least 1 ion will be dealt per turn, his ability is adding an increasing damage output to your squad. With the ion cannon turret approaching an expected damage output of a tie fighter (depends on target), and effectively doubling the damage of [any] one ion cannon in the squad, you could match dace with a pair of btl y-wings and a pair of z-95s, you then have the damage output that is around a 7-8 tie swarm, but having a ps9 bid with VI mixed in shooting outside his arc, potential 3 ion tokens per turn of control, and fewer ships to get into range. In this sense, dace can be used with ion to add control to a list while sacrificing squad durability instead of typically making a compromise in damage output to fit ion in.
And when compared with Jan, I think dace's ability is a head above her's mostly because of timing and a nuance to the probability. Jan's ability forces her to take the stress before the roll to modify one attack per turn, with the chance of an improved damage result being approximately equal to the chance of a single attack dice having a hit/crit result (less than that if there is a possibility of that dice being canceled). Dace's ability will force him to take on stress ONLY IF he can improve a damage result. Dace's chance of an improved damage result is going to be (100%-(Probability of net 0 damage from an ion cannon)# of ion cannons)
(note: if the ion cannons in the squad fire at different targets or if different tokens are available at the time of one shot to another, the probabilities for each shot may be different; simply take the product of each cannon)
If we take a hypothetical situation to compare the two abilities, a 3-agility ship in range of 3 ion cannon attacks. Let's assume there is a 50% chance of the defender having defensive focus to spend on each attack independently. (this is heuristic, it is the number I have used in my previous calculations on single attacks, and is unclear if it is really favoring the defender or not, perhaps the ion cannons are shooting 3 different 3-agility ships, but I am not going to bother changing it this moment) I will also assume the attackers have a focus available for attack.
For the 3-agility target, the chance of dealing absolutely zero damage is 40.89%. If that is the only ion cannon shot per turn, dace's ability has a 59.11% chance of improving damage per turn.
At 2 ion cannon turrets in the list, the chance of both dealing absolutely zero damage is (40.89%)2 = 16.71%. Dace's ability now has an 83.28% chance of improving damage per turn.
At 3 ion cannon turrets in the list, the chance of all 3 shots missing is (40.89%)3 = 6.83%. Dace's ability now has a 93.17% chance of improving damage per turn.
Jan's chance of improving a result will be assumed to be the change in average hits/crits as attack dice are increased by 1. We will make the same assumption about defensive focus availability. The improvement chance is going to then depend on the strength of the attack and how much you can modify that single attack.
The average hits/crits with just a focus for:
- 2 attack dice are 0.42
- 3 attack dice are 0.93
- 4 attack dice are 1.57
- 5 attack dice are 2.27
Thus, the improvement for any attack is going to be the average of an attack 1 dice higher minus the average of the base attack [divided by 1 attack dice for a probability]:
- 51% of improving a base 2 attack
- 64% of improving a base 3 attack
- 70% of improving a base 4 attack
We see, as said earlier that as we increase the number of base attack dice rolled, Jan Or's probability of improving an attack approaches the probability of a single dice for that attack (the 5th dice added to the base 4 dice attack is not often canceled by defense dice, so the improvement chance is getting close to the 75% base chance of a hit/crit per dice) Without spending points or eating an action for a turn to get a target lock + focus attack into the mix, Jan's chance of improvement is still under dace's chance of improvement with 2 ion cannons in a list firing with focus only even in the 4-base attack case.
What are the average hits/crits with focus + target lock?
Well here they are:
- 2 attack dice are 0.59
- 3 attack dice are 1.34
- 4 attack dice are 2.25
- 5 attack dice are 3.19
This makes improvement chances:
- 75% of improving a base 2 attack
- 91% of improving a base 3 attack
- 94% of improving a base 4 attack
Conclusion:
The 3-agility case is just one of the possible cases, but was meant to be illustrative. If we lower the agility of the target, Jan's improvement chance more quickly approaches that of the outcome of a single attack dice (50% for no focus/tl, 75% for just focus, 93.75% for focus & TL), but Dace's chance of improvement with multiple ion cannons will more quickly approach 100%. For Jan to beat dace's improvement chance with only 2 ion cannon turrets in the 3-agility case, a focus + target lock on an ally is necessary with no fewer than a base 3 attack. If we take a 2-agility target, the ion cannons will miss 23.1% of the time, making dace's improvement chance per turn with 2 ion cannon turrets to be 94.7%. Already that improvement chance is higher than anything Jan can throw out, even a base 4 attack with target lock and focus buffed to 5 attack dice (though that is how much it takes to match).
Another element to consider is that Jan Ors costs 2 additional points, and will get the most out of her ability if she is teamed with at least a 3-attack or HLC ship that can get free TLs/rerolls alongside focus reliably each turn. Dace has a cheaper price tag, and can be economically paired with BTL y-wings to add ion cannons. Maximizing his improvement chance [his synergy] is also coming in at a lower cost than Jan as adding BTL ion y-wings is cheaper than getting a reliable TL+focus enabling upgrade onto any 3-attack ship. With equivalent points investment, I can't think of any corner case where Jan's damage improvement becomes more economical than dace's, and in a matchup against each other, Jan's allies will have to make up their cost with superior positioning. Though this is nebulous whether dace is still "worth having" if Jan Ors is not, but I think he has potential.
Edited by zero9300