If a ship with IA has 1 hull left and gets hit with an attack that does 3 damage, does IA cancel all of the potential damage, keeping the ship from receiving any damage? Or does IA cancel out the first damage, leaving you ready to accept the "next" damage?

Thanks!

You are dealt one damage card at a time.

And not being dealt one, doesn't stop you being dealt the rest. If you're on 1hp with IA and you're dealt 3 damage of any sort, you're dead.

With IA, you can choose to cancel any one point of damage that you are receiving as the cards are being dealt one at a time.

If you have 3 hull left and get hit with 'hit, crit, crit' you can decide to use IA when you draw a Direct Hit! from the first crit.

And not being dealt one, doesn't stop you being dealt the rest. If you're on 1hp with IA and you're dealt 3 damage of any sort, you're dead.

Unless you happen to also have Determination and the two card you don't get to cancel happen to be face-up pilot cards

That's not very likely to happen however but fortunately IA does let you see the incoming card before determining whether to us it or not.

The only possible way for IA to stop 3 damage is if you were dealt the crit that makes you roll for another crit, which was double damage, but you would never actually witness because you had already thrown the poor mech out the chute to save your neck to begin with.

IA only discards 1 card you just drew, faceup or facedown doesnt matter. Once you are dealt the card you immediately decide if you want to trigger IA and discard it. If you discarded a faceup, you dont resolve the effect. Dunno how many times ive had to do that on the first dang card i drew because it was a double damage lol