Someone mentioned civility on the forum...

Well here's my rant to rock the boat, and it's a golden oldie.

Why did FFG rule in favour of the XI7s trumping Advanced Projectors? Why o why, Delilah?

Reading the cards over and over, in grammatical terms it makes far more sense (to me) that Advanced Projectors would mean you can deflect a max of 1 damage onto all sides. If this were the case, Advanced Projectors might see some actual playtime versus the ubiquitous ECMs, and XI7s would have a partial counter, perhaps encouraging people to experiment with other TLs like Heavy Turbolasers. As it stands now, all FFG have done is create a dominant upgrade and a load of duffers...

pffft. Come on FFG, change this one around!

Failing that, Well, at least we can still play it that way. Still bugs me though.

"Future Game Balance"

- James Kniffen, Star Wars: Armada Designer

I think AP is still pretty good anyways, particularly against bombers, which are quite popular at the moment...

xi7 is particularly useful for fleets who cannot suppress redirects and shields over multiple shots like Bomber and msu fleets can.

I think when defensive and offensive upgrades butt heads, offensive should always win out, after all we want ships to blow each other up, not a pillow fight.

As a note on my quote above:

This was one of the very few times, in the old days, where we got an explanation for the action. Generally, even our email questions were silenced.

It is also one of those situations where we had a ruling from James Kniffen, but that ruling was lost by the FFG side of things when the rules board changed there... Leading the new decider of rules (Michael Gernes) to rule the opposite for a short period of time, until he was informed (and found!) the initial James Kniffen ruling... which he then stated, "stands"

Beyond that, we really can't comment on what "future game balance" requires, entices or means...

Personally, I've always wanted to advocate for AP to have its power over the XI7, because, if nothing else, it would have taken a little bit of the shine off ECMs being the be-all-and-end-all of Defensive Retrofits. Encouraging choice is important.

But the game has evolved in a lot of ways from that point... But regardless of how it has evolved, we still have no indication , or rather, no knowledge of what is coming, or what has come, that would or could influence a change in the ruling.

I doubt we ever will.

Sounds like super star destroyer with more than 4 hullzones.

I've yet to meet a person that thinks this was the right way to rule. /shrug, maybe it'll change in the future but until then AP seems like a pointless upgrade.

1 minute ago, dominosfleet said:

I've yet to meet a person that thinks this was the right way to rule. /shrug, maybe it'll change in the future but until then AP seems like a pointless upgrade.

Its efficacy (on its own) is meta dependant.

If you use large ships, and your main threat is bombers, then AP is *excellent* at stretching out every last shield you have to survive the run.

But if your main threat is ships throwing large die pools with an ACC result, then ECM is always better.

But whereas they should be two sides of the coin that regard, its skewed towards the ECM because its been made "weaker" versus a common "ship with large die poll and a acc" result upgrade - XI7.

31 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

"Future Game Balance"

- James Kniffen, Star Wars: Armada Designer

Because otherwise mc30 would be too awesome.

I dont think ive seen an xi7 on the table of a long time now. And with so many brace negating options even ecm isnt so great now. I see plenty of bombers though!

1 hour ago, Green Knight said:

Because otherwise mc30 would be too awesome.

I can't dispute this. The only thing I really fear with an MC30 is an ISD2 with XI7. If I could take AP to obviate that, my MC30s--****, my fleet builds --would all look the same, every game.

As solidly as I'm on the side of RAW, AP trumps XI7 , and as vehemently as I advocated against it at the time... I have to say it's probably panned out. Particularly with the advent of flotillas raising the stock of accuracy tech and driving down the ubiquity of XI7s that we saw in Wave 2.

Man, that was back in April of 2015, too...

I agree with Ophion, I have seen fewer X17s lately. They are still around but less frequently in my area. If I flew rebs I'd put AdvPro on Admonition...but I don't. So maybe this isn't a ringing endorsement

2 minutes ago, Ophion said:

I dont think ive seen an xi7 on the table of a long time now. And with so many brace negating options even ecm isnt so great now. I see plenty of bombers though!

Seriously, AF2 is way too powerful with advanced projectors. Burning through 10 shields would be mathematically impossible otherwise.

1 minute ago, thecactusman17 said:

Seriously, AF2 is way too powerful with advanced projectors. Burning through 10 shields would be mathematically impossible otherwise.

I don't know if I've ever seen an AF2 survive a fight. My meta here in STL is seriously broken compared to the rest of the you apparently lol.

4 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

I can't dispute this. The only thing I really fear with an MC30 is an ISD2 with XI7. If I could take AP to obviate that, my MC30s--****, my fleet builds --would all look the same, every game.

As solidly as I'm on the side of RAW, AP trumps XI7 , and as vehemently as I advocated against it at the time... I have to say it's probably panned out. Particularly with the advent of flotillas raising the stock of accuracy tech and driving down the ubiquity of XI7s that we saw in Wave 2.

Isn't an ISD Avenger with Boarding Troopers an insta-kill on an MC30?

24 minutes ago, Thraug said:

Isn't an ISD Avenger with Boarding Troopers an insta-kill on an MC30?

It would be easier to list the ships it wasn't an instant-kill on, for what it's worth.

1 hour ago, dominosfleet said:

I don't know if I've ever seen an AF2 survive a fight. My meta here in STL is seriously broken compared to the rest of the you apparently lol.

I've one-shotted AF2s, but in order to do so you need above average rolls without defense tokens being spent. And that's with X17s.

Advanced projectors on an AF2 is another 12 damage points to chew through before hitting the brace or evade. 12 pints, just so we're clear, is only 1 point less than you need to kill an ISD from the rear without redirects. That's a LOT of damage to inflict on a ship. Me and everyone I know were taking about how we were going to put AP on the ISD2 and remain effectively immortal vs ships.

The FAQ changed that severely. Suddenly, losing shields on one hull zone was a big deal again.

1 hour ago, Thraug said:

Isn't an ISD Avenger with Boarding Troopers an insta-kill on an MC30?

Marginally more likely than an XI7 shot at close range. But so is any other non-barebones ISD at the close range which your inclusion of BT presupposes.

That's why I avoid taking close range shots from ISDs.

I didn't say things that will kill you if you can't fly MC30's, I said things I fear.

There is a difference.

5 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

I can't dispute this. The only thing I really fear with an MC30 is an ISD2 with XI7. If I could take AP to obviate that, my MC30s--****, my fleet builds --would all look the same, every game.

As solidly as I'm on the side of RAW, AP trumps XI7 , and as vehemently as I advocated against it at the time... I have to say it's probably panned out. Particularly with the advent of flotillas raising the stock of accuracy tech and driving down the ubiquity of XI7s that we saw in Wave 2.

Exactly.

3 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

Seriously, AF2 is way too powerful with advanced projectors. Burning through 10 shields would be mathematically impossible otherwise.

But then what about taking heavy TLs? The ruling not only took APs out of general use and made ECMs the auto take, it also nullified other TL options.

And for those advocating based on the MC30, if the ruling was different, even APs would have only moved 3 of the hits instead of 1. Still very possible to be one shotted by an ISD with XI7s.

5 hours ago, Thraug said:

Isn't an ISD Avenger with Boarding Troopers an insta-kill on an MC30?

If an MC30 is so crazy to park in front of an ISD with Boarding and Avenger, it deserves to die.

But even without the Defense Tokens, its still 7 damage that has to be done to the MC30. And the Admo can still negate one die. So you need still 9 damage (on an Admo, 7 on all other) from the 8-10 dice you are rolling. One less if the ISD can ram the poor small ship.
Not impossible, but still a lot of room for not killing it.

• XI7s beats Advanced Projectors .
• Intel Officer beats ECM (sort of).
• Ganging up on one target beats Redundant Shields .
• Hall Monitor Vader beats Reinforced Blast Doors .

So every defensive upgrade has its own counter making non of them the auto-include (which would make the others useless). It's as if this game had a mysterious design team that cares about game balance and keeping nearly all upgrades relevant. And a good thing too.

1 hour ago, Mad Cat said:

• XI7s beats Advanced Projectors .
• Intel Officer beats ECM (sort of).
• Ganging up on one target beats Redundant Shields .
• Hall Monitor Vader beats Reinforced Blast Doors .

So every defensive upgrade has its own counter making non of them the auto-include (which would make the others useless). It's as if this game had a mysterious design team that cares about game balance and keeping nearly all upgrades relevant. And a good thing too.

Well, it depends on the way you look at it. I think it makes much more sense to view this as a comparison within the slot, since ultimately they're competing with each other. Given you don't know what you're opponent is bringing to the table, it's typically a case of which upgrade gives the broadest coverage or gives the biggest bang for its buck in the current meta.

Looking at it this way, you'd probably argue ECMs has ruled the roost in this slot as being the most cost-effective defensive upgrade with the broadest use, even with Intel officer. Otherwise, why else would we see ECMs nearly ubiquitously used for this slot? APs and Redundant Shields simply don't stack up, though the former might have done if its interaction with XI7s hadn't been ruled in the way it has been.

Redundant shields would need to cost at least half of what it is now to be worth considering, or failing that have twice the effect.

Blast doors is niche. It can be a great life saver, but if you're one shotted or you delay too long to use it, then you may not get any use of it at all. One might say it has its own limitations based on how it works. With ISDs it's definitely more reliable.

Cluster bombs. Just no. Terrible card, wasted opportunity.

5 hours ago, Jambo75 said:

But then what about taking heavy TLs? The ruling not only took APs out of general use and made ECMs the auto take, it also nullified other TL options.

And for those advocating based on the MC30, if the ruling was different, even APs would have only moved 3 of the hits instead of 1. Still very possible to be one shotted by an ISD with XI7s.

Heavy Turbolaser Turrets are awful regardless of the X17 ruling.

Apparently, my local meta is messed up as well. We see ISDs and MC80h all the time. It is very rare that they die with shields left even without AP.