Just now, Undeadguy said:

I take it you moved the Gozantis and then took pictures? Because that MC30 looks like it deployed too close to the side otherwise...

Nice to see dual ISDs working.

Yup lol I moved the Gozantis then remembered to snap pics, I forget all the time to take pictures.... I get so absorbed sometimes lol

16 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Yup lol I moved the Gozantis then remembered to snap pics, I forget all the time to take pictures.... I get so absorbed sometimes lol

Reminds me of when I used my fleet with Sato and Salvation with Turbolaser reroutes and Intel officer.

Use a squadron token to fly Green squadron at a enemy ship, then use concentrate fire from Salvation.
Three black dice, which rolled all crit/hits and then change the red dice to a double hit...
That's 11 damage...Intel the brace. He braced down to six damage.
Next turn I fire again and get the same result...Cue evil laugh as that's straight up 11 damage.
Needless to say, that VSD got smashed pretty quick

Use Vader. Then you can skip both upgrades. #darklordofthesith

Ive seen folks with SW7s on a Lib Star Cruiser, and can understand why - guaranteed damage is a nice "have" in this game. However, for me its all about getting doubles on those reds and ill want as many chances as possible to get them.

A Lib BC with Spinal Armament and XI7s? - gonna want those Leading Shots...

I admit there is a certain charm of possibly rolling double hits on reds, a slightly chaotic style of play. A gambler's choice
Ultimately its whatever gives you the most enjoyment in the game. I still think that they should change the points on the cards

11 minutes ago, GammonLord said:

Ive seen folks with SW7s on a Lib Star Cruiser, and can understand why - guaranteed damage is a nice "have" in this game. However, for me its all about getting doubles on those reds and ill want as many chances as possible to get them.

A Lib BC with Spinal Armament and XI7s? - gonna want those Leading Shots...

I'm not a fan of the liberty, but I can say I'd never run sw-7s on it... it's the one of 3 instances where I'd take leading shots. Simple fact is, anyone who's willing to fly a ship worth around 100 points base without a defensive slot, and only 2 shields on 3 of its sides is already taking a HUGE gamble in my book. It's a "Go big go home" gamble. So yeah, LS makes much more sense there. The only other occasion I think it's okay is akbar on the home one with 4 reds out the sides... take LS that's a risk ship too.

21 minutes ago, Sniperbon said:

Reminds me of when I used my fleet with Sato and Salvation with Turbolaser reroutes and Intel officer.

Use a squadron token to fly Green squadron at a enemy ship, then use concentrate fire from Salvation.
Three black dice, which rolled all crit/hits and then change the red dice to a double hit...
That's 11 damage...Intel the brace. He braced down to six damage.
Next turn I fire again and get the same result...Cue evil laugh as that's straight up 11 damage.
Needless to say, that VSD got smashed pretty quick

Sato is my second favorite commander. the dude just lets you have so much fun. I run him on my foresight and admonition scout frigates to throw 2 black and a red at long range, I use ordinance experts to get my black crits, and TRCs to get 2 extra damage, use my ACMs to make em bleed out the sides, then swarm 'em with relayed bombers...

Cue evil laugh lol

Yeah I would almost say that Sato's ability is "broken". Being able to use Black critical abilities at long range is just devastating.

1 hour ago, Xeletor said:

Leading shots works on anti squadron. If your ship has 2 blue anti sqadron it increases the average damage from 1 to 1.125 for what it's worth. To compare, toryn increases by about 0.25 for 7 points but on several ships.

Leading Shots says discard a die, so you've gone from two blue to one. How is the expected damage then greater than one, given you can't roll more than one?

I wouldn't say broken. The rebels desperately needed a power boost in ship to ship combat. The liberty being too vulnerable defensively and the Home One lacking the ability to gunnery team... it makes sense they'd have an upgrade to make the pools they have more effective.

7 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I wouldn't say broken. The rebels desperately needed a power boost in ship to ship combat. The liberty being too vulnerable defensively and the Home One lacking the ability to gunnery team... it makes sense they'd have an upgrade to make the pools they have more effective.

I'm not sure that is 100% true, but Sato is a cool way for the Rebels to better leverage the squadron superiority they often have to lay even more pain on the Imperials. Regarding the viability of Home One and the Liberty , I have yet to see an Imperial win a slugging match with Mon Karren (though I have yet to be the Imperial side of that equation), and Home One and its sisters find their way to many successful Rebel fleets, at least in my meta. I see Sato as somewhere between an answer to Screed and an answer to Vader, improving firepower with different catches and caveats. Sato is just tuned to the squadron-heavy (relatively speaking) playstyle the Rebels can find an advantage in.

24 minutes ago, GiledPallaeon said:

Leading Shots says discard a die, so you've gone from two blue to one. How is the expected damage then greater than one, given you can't roll more than one?

There's a 25% chance of rolling zero hits. Leading Shots transforms the expected outcome of that situation to 0.5.

20 minutes ago, GiledPallaeon said:

I'm not sure that is 100% true, but Sato is a cool way for the Rebels to better leverage the squadron superiority they often have to lay even more pain on the Imperials. Regarding the viability of Home One and the Liberty , I have yet to see an Imperial win a slugging match with Mon Karren (though I have yet to be the Imperial side of that equation), and Home One and its sisters find their way to many successful Rebel fleets, at least in my meta. I see Sato as somewhere between an answer to Screed and an answer to Vader, improving firepower with different catches and caveats. Sato is just tuned to the squadron-heavy (relatively speaking) playstyle the Rebels can find an advantage in.

I eat Mon Karrens for breakfast, lol, The PT fleet I posted pictures of earlier has great success with the Liberty and Home One MC80s. ECMs mixed with the solid shield rating on an ISD basically means the Liberty may, under the best circumstances, land 3 or 4 damage (with Mon Karren, without they don't touch hull), but being able to deal a minimum of 7 to maximum of 14 with Avenger, and having screed to give me the crit I need for the other ISD to OP, mixed with XI7s and 4 blue 4 red dice heavily outweighs it. At least in my experience. Typically I roll 9-12 damage twice out the front of my Avenger. Really in most cases, if my OP ISD does at least 3 damage, I can sink any Rebel ship in the next shot with Avenger.

Now, that said, you're not wrong, the rebels are by no means not viable, they just use different methods. I think with the level of fighter support the empire got this last wave, Sato adds a unique curve to ship to ship combat making them far more effective, which is something the rebels needed.

30 minutes ago, GiledPallaeon said:

Leading Shots says discard a die, so you've gone from two blue to one. How is the expected damage then greater than one, given you can't roll more than one?

Standard calculation without LS: 1/4*2 damage (2 hits) + 2/4*1 damage (1hit 1crit or acc) + 1/4*0 damage (2crits or acc). LS gives you 1/2 damage instead of 0 in the last summand, total is 1.125

7 minutes ago, DiabloAzul said:

There's a 25% chance of rolling zero hits. Leading Shots transforms the expected outcome of that situation to 0.5.

2 minutes ago, Xeletor said:

Standard calculation without LS: 1/4*2 damage (2 hits) + 2/4*1 damage (1hit 1crit or acc) + 1/4*0 damage (2crits or acc). LS gives you 1/2 damage instead of 0 in the last summand, total is 1.125

I understand that Leading Shots could plausibly use a blank or crit otherwise left unused, but the maximum damage from one blue die is still one. Changing the last summand ignores that the first case of double damage is no longer possible, elevating you to around .75 overall.

4 minutes ago, GiledPallaeon said:

I understand that Leading Shots could plausibly use a blank or crit otherwise left unused, but the maximum damage from one blue die is still one. Changing the last summand ignores that the first case of double damage is no longer possible, elevating you to around .75 overall.

I see what you mean. I was talking about the avg damage of 2 blue dice. Without LS it is 1, with LS it is 1.25. Maximum is 2 damage. The average includes all cases, keeping both dice (if you do 1 or 2 damage) as well as using LS to improve the 0 damage outcome.

Both can increase damage, in different circumstances. I would use SW-7s when I don't need all the accuracies I expect to roll, and Leading Shots when there is high variance in my dice pool.

LS versus SW-7. I'm not sure those have ever come up before as costed incorrectly relative to each other. It is one thing if a player develops a playstyle preference for blue dice that benefit one upgrade or the other, but quite a bit otherwise to consider one overcosted relative to the other.

Generally speaking, if you've got a large blue pool and not much of a red dice pool, SW-7 is a good bet. If you have no great way to correct for blank reds/blacks, then LS is the far better choice. Mathematically speaking, you get .25 extra damage per die with SW-7, so it is really only a matter of looking at what dice numbers you have on blues and calculating from there. LS is more difficult to calculate out. Your best bet is a Monte Carlo sim and just see what happens to the damage values over time. Here is one of the key factors in the game: it isn't merely what your average damage is, but often the fact that you did the kind of damage that you needed right now. SW-7 can work with that if you're building where you don't need accuracies and can just pump damage considerably. LS can do that by ensuring that you don't end up with an absolutely flakely red dice roll and that you can improve basically any roll in which you have more than one die that you would want to reroll. For that matter, LS offers an enormous amount of flexibility in fishing for accuracies or damage as desired. Sometimes you just pick up the whole pool of accuracies and fish for damage. Sometimes you pick up some damage to fish for the critical accuracy--your choice based on advantage in the situation.

I've used both, but mathematically speaking, they are both fair for the points and have some very important places where they fit.

This argument can be done with the following question:

How good are your average dice rolls???

I.e. are you Like Dras who cannot roll a single damage with 50 blue die or are you someone who rolls amazing double damage with every red die? Lol

Seriously though i think each upgrade suits different fleets

LS when using ackbar.

Note that since you sacrifice a blue to reroll any others, it is generally not worth rerolling for one other blank die in your attack pool. You would preferably want dice pools with high chances of getting 2 or more blanks:

3 red/black : 15.6% for 2+ blanks

4 red/black : 26.17% ""

5 red/black : 36.7% ""

6 red/black : 46.6% ""

7 red/black : 55.5% ""

8 red/black : 63.2% ""

Hence it is also important to concentrate fire dial to make the most of your LS. Note these numbers ignore the minor situation where you happen to roll too many red acc and want to reroll them.

(on a side note, these numbers mean vet gunners are a legit option for smaller red pools as there is a lower chance to reroll poorly all dice)