Strategery- Close Range Intel Scan

By Church14, in Star Wars: Armada

Ok. I love the idea of this objective, but proper execution eludes me.

A few options that I've been pondering:

1) MSUs: High number of attacks for high potential number of tokens, but low % on individual shots

2) Middle # of medium ships. Less potential number of tokens, but higher chance on each shot. Ships are now more likely to have docent mods that increase chance of accuracies.

3) Home One, Jonus, H9s, Quad Turbolaser Cannons. Embrace the accuracy generating mechanics to guarantee a lot of them.

Do you run a swarm for the higher # of attacks? Do you run medium/large, knowing that the odds of an accuracy are pretty high in each attack? How do you justify this over most wanted?

Wrong questions.

Try

"How do you make these fleets work for yellow and blue objectives, and which objectives?"

Personally, I dont, hardly relevant though.

I havn't been able to play it yet.

1) I'm the only person who takes it in their list.

2) No-one chooses it.

I tried a Home One - QTC combo with this, and played it once. It was....underwhelming. Fact is, most of the time the accuracy is better spent nullifying a defense token, especially because each VP is only worth 10 points. If it were worth 15 it might be worth trying.

Unlike Fire Lanes or Sensor Net, where you can rack up a ridiculous number of points while your ships are safe and unengaged, Close Range Intel requires your ships to expose themselves to return fire. The implications of this: the first couple of turns you don't get points on the approach. Then when you're engaged it's always better to kill ships faster and ensure your own ships survive.

10 points a token just isn't enough

Had quite a bit a fun with it in an Ackbar fleet. Didn't always trade the accuracy but by the end would rack up 30-70 extra points.

It pays off when you roll an accuracy and nothing else (or nothing that would do lasting damage).

I've used it many times at long range against MC30s/CR90s that have multiple evade tokens: accuracy + double-hit won't do any damage so take the free points.

I don't think there is a good way to design a fleet around this objective yet. The Acc generating upgrades are quite expensive, so they are almost always better off being used to kill a ship instead of scoring points. That said, if you are taking CRIS, you should take GT on a Lib or ISD since they have the highest chance at rolling excessive Accs.

If you're going down that route, Solar Corona would be good for a Lib since they are extra squishy. Keeping the Redirect available helps a bit. And since you can generate your own Accs, if you get turned around and fire into the corona, you don't need to worry about losing an Acc.

Yellow objective could be anything really. GT ISD or Lib works well with Fire Lanes, but you have to be careful of Strategic. VIP could work too. Easy 50 points.

Came here to update due to Sloane fleets.

Now that Sloane squads can pacify defense tokens, acc's now have little to do in these builds. It makes this objective much more tenable. I am currently toying around with Mon Mothma keeping me safe at a range while whittling at the opponent and taking a victory token or two every activation. Also gotta build for those other objectives, too. I'll see if I can incorporate it into a Sloane build.

I managed to squeak out 1st place in a small tourney with a 6 activation Mon Mothma list. I used 3 cr90s w/ h9s, 3 flots, jan, biggs, a ton of x-wings, and some vcxs. My objectives were Fire Lanes, Sensor Net, and Close Range Intel Scan.

The key is to set up 1-2 double arcs each turn, which should be very do-able with the cr90s. I think I managed to generate around 16 tokens in 1 game. But if you want to really win, you need to win the squadron game pretty hard to pad your score further.

This works well against big-ship builds and flot spam because instead of those assets protecting points, they become a source of point farming.

Edited by scipio83
Edit: a word

It's a good objective for MC30 torpedo ships with H9's because your opponent will only pick it if they are foolish. And if they do pick it, you're likely to win. Just make sure your yellow and blue objectives are equally nasty.

Narco for a question.

As 2nd player, can you only spend 1 acc per shot, or can you spend multiples per shot?

its not a good one to add to your list IMO unless you have a lot of ships where you dont need accuracies like Mon Karren.

another good one is if you are planning on going second in every game and a lot of the players in your area are flying Large base ships. often there comes a point in a game where you know that you cant kill the ISD before round 6 rend so why waist those Accuracies locking down tokens when you know it wont kill the ship take the points instead. it can be really good if you have home one in you list.

over all tho I don't like it as its to neutral if Im second player I really want my objectives to give me a big advantage.

35 minutes ago, X Wing Nut said:

over all tho I don't like it as its to neutral if Im second player I really want my objectives to give me a big advantage.

There are certainly problems with CRIS, but I don't see this being among them. If you built for it, this objective gives you a huge advantage. Remember that P1 has to spend two accs for a victory token, compared to P2's one. That's a really substantial difference.

This is a good objective with a fleet tailored to it, and you can rack up a ton of points if your opponent is fool enough to take it. The problem I run into with it is that I don't like the kinds of fleets that maximize it. You want long-range MSU with accuracy guarantees--that means TRC90's with Home One or Arquitens with Jonus (yes, I know there are other ways to do it, just the two most obvious). The problem is, those kinds of fleets usually don't particularly care to invest in accuracy guarantees since they're death-by-a-thousand-cuts attrition fleets, so you're pigeonholing your fleet to one of your three objectives in a way that doesn't necessarily synergize with the other two. On the other hand, if you didn't build like that, then yeah, this objective doesn't do much for you and you should swap it for MW, which is almost definitely better for you anyway. >.>

I see the main advantage of close range being the generation of dust field obstacles which can be leveraged to protect ships from long range gunboats. The objective farm tends to be something offbeat your fleet takes advanage of when it has no good shots or results. With this idea your generally going to pair it with Jamming barrier and Salage run. Though there are still alot other objectives that make good pairings for it.

If you distill the idea a bit more you come to a frame wanting to leverage any obstacle against the openent. This makes almost all the blue objectives a good choice with it. Yellow has a nice handful to be used alongside.

9 hours ago, Karneck said:

Narco for a question.

As 2nd player, can you only spend 1 acc per shot, or can you spend multiples per shot?

“While” restricts it to a single use - a single die spend - per attack ?

Edited by Drasnighta
1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:

“While” restricts it to a single use - a single die spend - per attack ?

THANK you Dras hahaha.
I played it yesterday with my double ISD list and it earned me a cool 70 points because I was blowing up a ton of small ships and didn't need all the acc's. My opponent felt that I could spend more than one acc per shot, but I looked at the wording and compared it to "Leading Shots" and realized it was the same so I felt that I couldn't. Just wanted to be sure.

Otherwise, for the objective, it all depends on what you are running and won't backfire on you, for a red objective, if you're only running two ships lots of those can backfire on you or not be as helpful, at least with this. It ONLY helps you and not 1st player at all. If you're running double ISD with gunnery teams (I was) I was able to farm tokens pretty effectively due to XI7 and only needing to lock down braces or evades.

Went up against @RikkiP 's version of this yesterday - Akbar, tooled up Home One, 4 CR90s, GR-75 with Toryn and two VCXs. Objectives were this topic, Fire Lanes and Sensor Net. No good options. It was horrible. He won the bid (399 vs my 400) picked 2nd player and I chose Sensor Net and managed to lock down his VCXs but in an attempt to take out H1 with Devastator I flew off the map unnecessarily! Despite the lockdown of the VCXs he still got 10 tokens to my 3. CRIS would have been worse, two tokens per ship activation per turn...

Am I the only person who has ever actually been 1st player vs. Close-Range Intel Scan? ;)

1 hour ago, Green Knight said:

Am I the only person who has ever actually been 1st player vs. Close-Range Intel Scan? ;)

Look, if I could have turned all 5 accuracies on that one shot into points, things would have gone quite differently.

I got to test it against @bedgar in the match before @Kendraam it did seem extremely frustrating for first player knowing just being too close was giving points away. :P

Got a few ideas to improve it now though but i think you would have smashed it without the ISD flying off the board :)

Never pick Sensor Net!!!

22 hours ago, RikkiP said:

Never pick Sensor Net!!!

It's a trap!

What about double arcing with Gozanti Cruisers? They’ll probably all die horribly, but it sounds fun, they only cost 1.5 tokens, and it makes your opponent spend those accuracies. :P

Edited by The Jabbawookie
9 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

What about double arcing with Gozanti Cruisers? They’ll probably all die horribly, but it sounds fun, they only cost 1.5 tokens, and it makes your opponent spend those accuracies. :P

@RikkiP how about this instead of your Combat GR-75 idea?

10 Gozantis and a couple of Raider 2s, Strategic and Intel...

@Kendraam only a 25% chance of an accuracy but i guess you get two shots

home one and 8 transports gets you it 100% of the time but then i thought it works better with the coverts because they are long range on two arcs, speed 4 and make good use of ackbar :)

I tried flying it also with 9 ships and it is very difficult trying to get them all in a good arc and not bump. It didnt lose as bad as i thought it would though and that was against a double isd gunnery team list that really could kill them quick

Rikki

6 hours ago, Kendraam said:

@RikkiP how about this instead of your Combat GR-75 idea?

10 Gozantis and a couple of Raider 2s, Strategic and Intel...

If you go this route, I think this is one of the rare cases where Chiraneau could work better than intel. You can stick him on a remote flotilla and mercilessly abuse fire lanes/sensor net from the the other side of the map.