How else do you make a card work 4 times then be discarded without adding complex rules text?

By placing this restriction on it they made a limitation which is a) thematic (always a perk) and b) very familiar and fluid but accomplishes the same thing on average is saying it's discarded after the 4th use.

Sure there are times in which you reload 1x and then lose it but there are times your predator rerolls nothing but blanks or your autothrusters always runs into eyeballs. Very few mechanics are non-rng related and they simply vary in how they utilize their statistics based limitation.

Because if not, that will be another Extra Munitions, that sound simply silly.

The discard mechanic is not the sole thing that distinguishes it from Extra Munitions. It's an illicit, it only triggers on kills, it undiscards cards rather than prevents them from being discarded, it affects only one upgrade but has a far broader range of upgrades it can effect.

Ok, a lot of things for what? For bringing the same effect of an extra munition, but into an illicit.

I partially think that (for thematic reasons) you're using the crane through ship debris, at any moment, a piece of the ship could come flying by and smash your crane and boom, no more scavenging

Which could have been done by having the discard roll proc on damage, which is something the players can control.

Ok, a lot of things for what? For bringing the same effect of an extra munition, but into an illicit.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. If you're saying it plays the same role as Extra Munitions that's true regardless of if it has RNG or not. If you're saying the RNG is what differentiates it from EM then that's not true: I gave you a long list of all the ways it's different.

Oh, you want fully functional Secondary weapon ordnance loadouts that you can shoot twice? Rebels/Resistance is down the hall to the right, Empire/First Order is on the 20th floor (the entire floor. Palpatine is a lot more relaxed than kylo ren or snoke, unless you happen to be a jedi. We'd suggest him.)

Seriously though, It's not a bad mechanic. You get to shoot twice (at least), and then the shenanigans begin. Do you get to shoot 3 missiles? 4 missiles? Does your opponent have a tie swarm so it could go up to 8 times? maybe more? Or is it just 2? You never know with scum!!

WWHSD and I have both tried to make the same point and Blue Five has responded to almost every other point but ours.

I think the developers felt that a simple one-use discard should probably cost 1.5 points or so. What to do? Could make it too cheap or too expensive. Instead they throw in the RNG and raise the cost to two.

Crane is also a great illicit for mindlink lists. Mindlink immediately shuts out several illicits since they cause stress or other complications. The crane has no such issue.

Dengaroo regening Countermeasures pretty consistently is scary enough that I'm glad they put the limit on it. Overall though, I think it's just part of being an illicit, which is fine.

Yeah, this is the one. Scav crane is better than Glitter on Dengar IMO. I know its dumb, but i'm trying to imagine how this would work.

DENGAR: Take that, stupid tie fighter, you're dead.

*Revenge shot kills Tie fighter*

DENGAR: Oh, guess I'll scavenge around through destroyed remains with the ol' crane... hey, I can user your ion drive ... and splice it throug the retroflux capacitor ... and get my Countermeasures mod working again! Yeah!

I partially think that (for thematic reasons) you're using the crane through ship debris, at any moment, a piece of the ship could come flying by and smash your crane and boom, no more scavenging

Which could have been done by having the discard roll proc on damage, which is something the players can control.

Ok, a lot of things for what? For bringing the same effect of an extra munition, but into an illicit.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. If you're saying it plays the same role as Extra Munitions that's true regardless of if it has RNG or not. If you're saying the RNG is what differentiates it from EM then that's not true: I gave you a long list of all the ways it's different.

How else do you make a card work 4 times then be discarded without adding complex rules text?

This doesn't make the card work four times then discard. It makes it work any number of times between 1 and infinity and then discard. If infinite is broken and single use is underpowered then its balance state is completely randomly determined game by game. I can't see how that's a good thing.

but there are times your predator rerolls nothing but blanks or your autothrusters always runs into eyeballs.

Those are modifiers for an existing RNG mechanic which the player has a lot of control over. This is an RNG effect the player cannot influence.

An arc dodger the Quad Jumper is not. Having the RNG mechanic trigger on taking damage would lead to a number of games where you never got a chance to use the Crane because you got unlucky in the opening exchange. I suppose they could have had a token you put on the crane that would start the RNG rolling after you used it once, but.

Ultimately, I think this is the flavor team's work. The designers seem to feel a random failure chance on illicits is thematic for Scum. At least this one lets you get at least one use of the crane. The Cloaking Device can fail before you ever reach the fight if you're unlucky.

Strictly because its an illicit. Illicits are never a flatout bonus, theyre either a discarded bonus or chance to go away or self harm.

Feedback array is probably the closest to strictly bonus, and it causes self-harm.

YUP... JUST LIKE BACK IN THE DAY WHEN AN ORC BOSS COULD GO CRAZY ON HIS OWN BOYZ...

There's another option that no-one has mentioned; something down the road that may make the crane op without some type of failsafe. We don't know what kind of abilities or materials are going to show up in future waves and this might be a teaser of sorts. I mean, did anyone foresee seismic torpedoes in Wave 6?

WWHSD and I have both tried to make the same point and Blue Five has responded to almost every other point but ours.

I think the developers felt that a simple one-use discard should probably cost 1.5 points or so. What to do? Could make it too cheap or too expensive. Instead they throw in the RNG and raise the cost to two.

I thought I did, just not directly.

If infinite is too good and single isn't good enough then yes, you'd need a mechanic that lies somewhere between. This doesn't: it's randomly either too weak or too powerful. It strikes me as similar to having the version of the TIE phantom mechanic you use randomly determined at the start of the round, or TorpScout Deadeye on a random trigger.

How else do you make a card work 4 times then be discarded without adding complex rules text?

This doesn't make the card work four times then discard. It makes it work any number of times between 1 and infinity and then discard. If infinite is broken and single use is underpowered then its balance state is completely randomly determined game by game. I can't see how that's a good thing.

Well I mean you can pretend this is true or you can believe in actual math and statistical averages which (should) dictate design and decision making in this game which revolves in no small part around dice.

I'm bad at statistics and 4 was a very general guess. In reality it's something like every success in a row is multiplicative so .75×.75 etc.

Given that, it actually looks like you'll average 2.5 uses out of the card since that's the point when it flips between >50% and <50%.

I'll pay 2 points for 2.5 bomb reloads a game. Especially on ships which couldn't take extra munitions otherwise.

I'll pay 2 points for 2.5 bomb reloads a game. Especially on ships which couldn't take extra munitions otherwise.

So would I. I'd probably pay 2 points for one, which the crane can give.

What I don't like is paying for a random number of reloads. I can't see how a frustrating coinflip is the best way of handling this mechanic. It's not a design philosophy I agree with and I thought we'd largely seen the end of it after those disasterous Wave 1 astromechs.

Well I mean you can pretend this is true or you can believe in actual math and statistical averages which (should) dictate design and decision making in this game which revolves in no small part around dice.

Attack dice average out. Defence dice average out. How is the crane going to average out during a single game? As soon as it goes wrong it can't roll again. Imagine if you rolled the attack dice on your ships once and then they did that much damage on every attack for the rest of the game. That wouldn't be a fun mechanic.

How is the crane going to average out during a single game? As soon as it goes wrong it can't roll again.

You don't design cards (and shouldn't make decisions) based on a single game outcome.

WWHSD and I have both tried to make the same point and Blue Five has responded to almost every other point but ours.

I think the developers felt that a simple one-use discard should probably cost 1.5 points or so. What to do? Could make it too cheap or too expensive. Instead they throw in the RNG and raise the cost to two.

I thought I did, just not directly.

If infinite is too good and single isn't good enough then yes, you'd need a mechanic that lies somewhere between. This doesn't: it's randomly either too weak or too powerful. It strikes me as similar to having the version of the TIE phantom mechanic you use randomly determined at the start of the round, or TorpScout Deadeye on a random trigger.

You shouldn't be evaluating the value of a card in the course of a single match. A lot of upgrades are either too strong or too weak for their points in a single match (and that's frequently because of the outcome of a dice roll). Over the course of many matches you should find that the matches where it didn't give you a third shot evened out with the times that it gave you four or five and the times that you died getting off one shot or none.

I'd be much less down on the Scum cloaking device if you rolled for failure when decloaking instead of at the end of a round or if rolling a focus result at the end of the round forced you to either immediately decloak or discard the cloaking device. As it is, you are potentially spending two points on an upgrade that will fail before you really even get to use it.

If it was just a straight up Extra Munitions token that you could choose to spend off of the Crane when you had to discard once of the appropriate types of cards it would probably be worth two points. They gave it a condition for triggering that made it worth a bit less so they offset it with a benefit that would push its value back up over the course of a tournament..

theres also a lot of cards (or ships for that matter) that for a long time are considered trash and suddenly become crazy.

Or sounded insane, but didnt do anything.

Example for the former: Rage. Except on Tycho, complete garbage and since hes not that amazing either its largely ignored. Enter Quickdraw....she says hi

Example for the latter: Tractor beams. Meta breaking, game defining weapon that would destroy aces....didnt phase anything that basically didnt have agility to begin with.

The crane could easily be bad luck for you and not really be worth it for 2-3 games, but 10 or so games down the road and you'll notice you had more positive than negative with it.

Crane is fine. It always duplicate the thing, once. For 2 points, that's enough.

Neat mechanic but I doubt you would be using it as a torpedo battery for Jumpmasters especially after the beating with the nerf bat they have taken.

Neat mechanic but I doubt you would be using it as a torpedo battery for Jumpmasters especially after the beating with the nerf bat they have taken.

It does open up some options for ships like the Jumpmaster that had a torpedo slot for Extra Muntions and a second slot for ordnance. You can take something utility focused in one slot (Seismic or Flechette) and something for damage in the other slot and still get two shots with your damage dealing ordnance during the game.

Why does this card have a random discard clause?

Can anyone explain to me why this couldn't be either flat out discard or simply not discard at all? It seems so unnecessary to me.

So, the scavenger crane mechanic is very interesting in gameplay terms, but the card hits my realism funnybone in a bad way. Consider me triggered, if you will.

SlaveofChrist, on 22 Nov 2016, said:

Hmm...a valid point.

Does this help at all?

Think of it as coming from the same family of "stocking up on munitions" - munitions failsafe makes it so that you could miss three times and then finally get a hit, when originally you only had one missile or torpedo. Extra munitions just spells it out more, maybe this is a way to do the same but now in the Illicit upgrade slot as opposed to a Modification or Torpedo slot. Anyways, does that help at all ?

The above was a response that I made in a different thread to Babaganoosh.

While you are asking a different question, I think my attempt at a plausible explanation may work for you as well (hopefully )

If you think of it in terms on munitions, maybe they wanted to add a clause that would make it more realistic of "spending" or "using up" the munitions as opposed to having unlimited munition re-fills.

Anyways, that's my attempt, hope that helps! God bless .

My issue was the fact that it randomly discarded, not that it discarded.

If you can't handle a bit of RNG flavor, I'm not sure that a game that uses dice is really what you need to be playing...

though to be nicer, the RNG "might not discard it" makes it different than extra munitions, in that you effectively get to discard the munitions card twice.

"Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a proton torpedo, the most powerful torpedo in the sector and would blow your cockpit clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

*Rolls a blank*

Karabast....

If you can't handle a bit of RNG flavor, I'm not sure that a game that uses dice is really what you need to be playing...

The attack mechanic is used constantly, causing it to average out over the course of the game. This card dies from one bad roll which lends itself to much higher variance. I don't see how the RNG is necessary or even beneficial.