5 minutes ago, BiggsIRL said:

Okay. Follow that up with more logic. That one is "good". Out of how many? You also still need usually about 6 very tough squadrons to not get alpha struck.

2nd counterexample: Who was that one guy who was very very good, took it in a Raider, and lost hard around 16th in worlds. JJ?

3rd counter: it STILL wasn't used to any large degree throughout the world even though it was well-known tech.

Let me spell it out for you: Your not funy. Nor is your answer an easy one line refutation. You can qualify your argument far better than unrelevant image.

I don't know. I thought it was pretty funny.

Then again I'm also the guy who wrote a whole slash fiction about Minister Tua and Agent Kallus (another good AA upgrade, pre-Wave 6) because someone searched for that more than any other search that resulted in people finding our blog.

Point being, you gotta laugh at yourself man.

1 minute ago, BiggsIRL said:

I don't know. I thought it was pretty funny.

Then again I'm also the guy who wrote a whole slash fiction about Minister Tua and Agent Kallus (another good AA upgrade, pre-Wave 6) because someone searched for that more than any other search that resulted in people finding our blog.

Point being, you gotta laugh at yourself man.

Would you like to extrapolate on that?

1 minute ago, Blail Blerg said:

Would you like to extrapolate on that?

http://xwingtactics.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-forbidden-love-of-lothal.html#more

Enjoy.

Or... don't. I thought it was funny.

2 hours ago, Sybreed said:

my meta has a lot of APTs, so damage control officer can really come in handy

I love DCO on my flagship ISD/MC80

40 minutes ago, BiggsIRL said:

http://xwingtactics.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-forbidden-love-of-lothal.html#more

Enjoy.

Or... don't. I thought it was funny.

That's pretty funny.

3 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

Oh, ive seen Flechettes enough to not make that face. Fun fact: seeing them on 3 different raiders will almost make you rage quit. Nothing better than not getting to trigger all those squadrons you brought to the game!*

*EVERYTHING. Literally everything is better. Flechettes on raiders ruin lives. "Luckily" for me, @Snipafist only put External Racks on the 4 raiders he fielded last Saturday. ACTUALLY luckily, I didn't have to face him, haha.

The issue with Flechettes is that they only have two viable platforms, and only one of them would i actually consider them great on.

Which one of the Three actual useable Possibilities isn't Viable?

I mean, I'm curious to that end...

Because they're, of course, Godly on a Black-Black Raider...

.. But I found them pretty decent on a Blue-Black Assault Pelta.....

And havn't tried them on a Hammerhead, yet...

... of course, its Probably the Pelta... because me finding something "pretty decent" usually means its balls-up crap, but I managed to roll average for once

Interesting, we've gone from ECM to defensive retrofits to Flechette Torpedoes, which isn't even a Defensive Retrofit, and we're not to the bottom of the second page yet.

In our local meta, we've had people field them, but I've not seen or heard where anyone has gotten spectacular with them. Despite that, I do think they have to be quite a bit better than what I've seen, because plenty of other people have reported success.

Ok, I can get how a Raider setting off one of its shots is good. OE plus 2 black means tons of opportunites for it to trigger. Let's say we've got 4 squadrons in arc. That's 8 black dice. That should be two clear crits, and two dice that can be rerolled, and 4 good old hits. It may swing upwards some of the time, but really bad rolls are probably going to auto-correct through OE into a couple of clear crits.

Now, let's contrast that with the Pelta Assault. You're looking at one clear crit. So that puts the Raider at about twice as effective at delivering a Flechette crit. But we're also only talking about a cheap upgrade. Part of it triggering is the fact that you've got a lot of shots in arc typically with squadrons and some of them are bound to come up crits. I'd rather take External Racks on the Pelta Assault, and then if the best shot is going to be against a squadron, I have the option of firing 3 blacks and a blue at a single (probably generic squadron). I suspect we may be getting that point to the Raider, too.

1 hour ago, geek19 said:

Oh, ive seen Flechettes enough to not make that face. Fun fact: seeing them on 3 different raiders will almost make you rage quit. Nothing better than not getting to trigger all those squadrons you brought to the game!*

*EVERYTHING. Literally everything is better. Flechettes on raiders ruin lives. "Luckily" for me, @Snipafist only put External Racks on the 4 raiders he fielded last Saturday. ACTUALLY luckily, I didn't have to face him, haha.

Oh they're insane on Raiders. Just shutting down large swathes of enemy squadrons when used well. I loves them. The question used to be "should I spend 3 more points to put Flechettes on Raiders?" but now the question is "so for my 51 point Raider do I use Flechettes or External Racks?"

I have to agree with others that they're much iffier on not-Raiders overall. I could see the use on a Torp Hammerhead but giving up the External Racks there is a much bigger deal than it is on the Raider, and it's already a big deal on the Raider.

7 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Oh they're insane on Raiders. Just shutting down large swathes of enemy squadrons when used well. I loves them. The question used to be "should I spend 3 more points to put Flechettes on Raiders?" but now the question is "so for my 51 point Raider do I use Flechettes or External Racks?"

I have to agree with others that they're much iffier on not-Raiders overall. I could see the use on a Torp Hammerhead but giving up the External Racks there is a much bigger deal than it is on the Raider, and it's already a big deal on the Raider.

Yeah, i think having seen them for so long across the table has disinclined me to bringing Rebel squadron balls. Thank goodness you're using External Racks now so I can just fire a bunch of squadrons at problems and they'll never die! NEVER DIE! Wait, what do you mean flak exists?

I never put serious stock in FTorp Raiders because 1, I was often outbid and out-activated, meaning the Raider would end up in the face of Yavaris' fighter range whenever I tried it and 2, The Raider can't take a hit well at the range it wants to use Ftorps and the rest of its battery.

Getting back to defensive upgrades though... at least as I see it, our universe is full of MSUs and fighters which deal many low-damage attacks. Advanced Projectors would be my go-to option in that state because fighter bombing on the front arc doesn't have XI7s (which pushed AdvProjectors to the bottom of the pile in the days of massive batteries). AdvProjectors might still disappoint whenever an ISD happens to come around packing XI7s (or the new VSD-IIs with DCaps).

Blast Doors is a simple option that ignores getting shot at by XI7s and all the other effect weapons that make defensive upgrades tricky to choose from. It's also cheap. The trick is the ship has to live long enough for the upgrade to trigger at the start of the turn.

ECM still has it's uses, it's just not always highly taken for protecting the brace. Evade is a token that would like to be protected for instance, especally on ships that need it (Nebulons, Assault Frigates).

Thing is though, the Rebels have a couple of great defensive officers that do things beyond defense tokens to stack on top of those abilities (so ECMs can be stacked with Lando for instance if you wanted). Empire doesn't have that, relying on Needa to swap something out for an evade, or Tua to do whatever with the tokens you already have.

Cluster Bombs is still in that unusual state of not wanting to be taken. Do you hold Cluster bombs to wait for that ace to show up and kill it, or do you blow it early on a generic and let the ace come in? It's a problematic card to use, even though it can do a lot of damage. It would have been better to dish damage out in a cone of fire but... alas...

13 hours ago, IronNerd said:

There was a time where I felt one of the most important upgrades you could put on a ship of any size was Electronic Countermeasures. Huge attacks were being worked out where a single accuracy could completely ruin your day. The huge attacks haven't necessarily gone anywhere, but the current hotness (or so it seems) is all about stripping away your opponent's defense tokens, not using accuracy to lock them down. With that in mind, I just wanted to hear some opinions on the use of this (in my opinion) once ubiquitous upgrade. Are you still finding it worth 7 points and that Defensive Retrofit slot? I know they do drastically different things, but does the reduced cost and non-reliance on defense tokens lead to Reinforced Blast Doors making a move on the most popular Defensive Retrofit? I don't necessarily have an opinion yet, I'm still only 4 games into Wave 6, but it's something I'm starting to lean toward in my head.

For rebels yes, not so in the MC30 though, but rebel ships in general are weak enough to not bring ECM, a must take for whales indeed. Now with AvengerBT seems kind of uselees but we all know thats a "press-this-button" build that requires no choices and there is nothing to be done on the opponets side to prevent or avoid it, so will be nerfed eventually. Tua + ECM is atm one of the most powerfull combos in my opinion. I wish we had something similar in the rebel side to fix Neb's for instance, an officer that provides a redirect token, or maybe a title.

Hmm. There might be some thought to now using Wave6 AA like this: 2 Raiders with FT. 2 raiders with ER. Gladiator. Foltilla. Defensive squadrons for taste or a 7th flot.

Qualifications, which you won't see out of many people here already: one Raider with FT is easy to burst down, since squadrons tend to get the first say. Esp in Wave5 pre-nerf. Laughably bad. You simply have to ask Worlds/Nats players who DID bring them.

But with wave6 ER and TWO raiders with FT? I could see it.

With FT's if you roll hit/crit do you lose the hit by spending the crit die? I don't know why I'm reading it that way, it's late so maybe my brain just isn't working.

5 minutes ago, dominosfleet said:

With FT's if you roll hit/crit do you lose the hit by spending the crit die? I don't know why I'm reading it that way, it's late so maybe my brain just isn't working.

Yes. You spend the die, so you lose the use of whatever symbol it had. Thus if you roll 2 black dice and get BLANK HIT/CRIT, you may spend the crit to activate the target squad, and it receives no damage, or you could not spend the crit, the squad receives 1 damage, and remains unactivated.

I've been playing lists lately, quite succesfully, where non of my ships in the list can take Def. Retro.

So the choice of ECM vs AP vs RBD is a non issue for me

6 hours ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

Yes. You spend the die, so you lose the use of whatever symbol it had. Thus if you roll 2 black dice and get BLANK HIT/CRIT, you may spend the crit to activate the target squad, and it receives no damage, or you could not spend the crit, the squad receives 1 damage, and remains unactivated.

6 hours ago, dominosfleet said:

With FT's if you roll hit/crit do you lose the hit by spending the crit die? I don't know why I'm reading it that way, it's late so maybe my brain just isn't working.

And the advantage to it being this way (Spending the Die instead of resolving a Critical), is that only damage can be Scattered away... The Fletchette effect of activation forcing can't be.

12 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

And the advantage to it being this way (Spending the Die instead of resolving a Critical), is that only damage can be Scattered away... The Fletchette effect of activation forcing can't be.

That's a super helpful thing to know.