If I use Screed as my commander and have an Interdictor with "Interdictor", "NK 7 Ion Cannons" is it possible to use this combo to discard up to two defence tokens per turn?

Possibly throw Disposable Capacotors for a longbrange shot

11 minutes ago, Boxtwin said:

If I use Screed as my commander and have an Interdictor with "Interdictor", "NK 7 Ion Cannons" is it possible to use this combo to discard up to two defence tokens per turn?

Possibly throw Disposable Capacotors for a longbrange shot

No.

Read the Interdictor title again: another ship must activate to trigger it, and your ship can't activate again after it has shot. So impossible.

Thank you.

I believe this may have been a case of over excitement (drooling like an idiot) before engaging rational thought.

Tip: stay FAAAR away from NK-7. They are very bad. Not only do they cost a LOT, require a crit to trigger, it's the DEFENDER that picks the token to be discarded - possibly after already having used it on the same attack. That's just unbelievably bad for 10 pts.

Edit: NK-7 is in the running to become THE WORST card in Armada.

28 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

No.

Read the Interdictor title again: another ship must activate to trigger it, and your ship can't activate again after it has shot. So impossible.

Tiny Clarification:

The ship activating to trigger the Interdictor title can be the Interdictor itself - it doesn’t have to be another ship... but of course it triggers st the start of the activation, and would only be refreshing something that was exhausted without activating - mostly these are defensive in nature.

On 3/16/2018 at 8:33 AM, Green Knight said:

Tip: stay FAAAR away from NK-7. They are very bad. Not only do they cost a LOT, require a crit to trigger, it's the DEFENDER that picks the token to be discarded - possibly after already having used it on the same attack. That's just unbelievably bad for 10 pts.

Edit: NK-7 is in the running to become THE WORST card in Armada.

I'm always disappointed when I cannot find some good use for a particular upgrade card, but I have to agree that NK-7 is a really tough card to recommend for the reasons stated above. 10 points really IS a lot for ANY upgrade, and NK-7 just doesn't justify that price. If the attacker could choose the token, or it was priced at about 5 points, I'd probably not be down on this poor upgrade.

Other dubious upgrade cards off the top of my head.... Sensor Team, Jamming Field, Cluster Bombs....

17 minutes ago, LeatherPants said:

I'm always disappointed when I cannot find some good use for a particular upgrade card, but I have to agree that NK-7 is a really tough card to recommend for the reasons stated above. 10 points really IS a lot for ANY upgrade, and NK-7 just doesn't justify that price. If the attacker could choose the token, or it was priced at about 5 points, I'd probably not be down on this poor upgrade.

Other dubious upgrade cards off the top of my head.... Sensor Team, Jamming Field, Cluster Bombs....

I hate it when people crap on cluster bombs but don’t do the same for RBDs ?

Ok, I give up, what's RBD's?

Just now, Salted Diamond said:

Ok, I give up, what's RBD's?

Reinforced Blast Doors

15 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

I hate it when people crap on cluster bombs but don’t do the same for RBDs ?

Hahah! I'm not too sour on RBD's, since I see a decent value for them at their price point for some ships. Cluster Bombs seems too under-powered for it's price, perhaps if it were an exhaust instead of discard, even for an extra point or so.

1 minute ago, LeatherPants said:

Hahah! I'm not too sour on RBD's, since I see a decent value for them at their price point for some ships. Cluster Bombs seems too under-powered for it's price, perhaps if it were an exhaust instead of discard, even for an extra point or so.

But both - in their own way - save you only 3 points of damage.

ALL defensive retrofits that are not ECM and EWS are priced fir that.

It is purely a perception thing.

Weve had it out in a discussion before on the forums.

37 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Weve had it out in a discussion before on the forums.

Yes, I recall well... the Raddus Bomb comes to mind. LOL

I hope that doesn't imply we aren't friendly towards each other.

47 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

But both - in their own way - save you only 3 points of damage.

ALL defensive retrofits that are not ECM and EWS are priced fir that.

It is purely a perception thing.

I see your point, though I don't really agree with Cluster Bombs "saving" you three points of damage. I'm pretty sure you mean because CB's typically deliver 3 points of damage to an enemy squadron (4 blues, with crits counting as hits = 3 average damage) though, so I get the comparison you're making. I suppose it's primarily my own personal experience in trying out the cards that guides my opinion, and not necessarily a number-crunch, tournament mindset (although that's a totally legit way to look at things! LOL).

I will definitely agree though that ECM is generally at the top of my list for defensive retrofits however. I was pretty excited to get EWS on the table when I saw the card, but haven't really felt that it's as useful as it seems like it should be. Likely I'm not practiced enough with using it, but all too often my opponent is able to simply bypass the chafed hull zone too easily. I've gotten decent mileage out of it sometimes against squadrons, but in those instances I feel I was more specifically trying to FORCE it to work in that fashion than play the ship as I normally might.

17 minutes ago, LeatherPants said:

I see your point, though I don't really agree with Cluster Bombs "saving" you three points of damage. I'm pretty sure you mean because CB's typically deliver 3 points of damage to an enemy squadron (4 blues, with crits counting as hits = 3 average damage) though, so I get the comparison you're making. I suppose it's primarily my own personal experience in trying out the cards that guides my opinion, and not necessarily a number-crunch, tournament mindset (although that's a totally legit way to look at things! LOL).

I will definitely agree though that ECM is generally at the top of my list for defensive retrofits however. I was pretty excited to get EWS on the table when I saw the card, but haven't really felt that it's as useful as it seems like it should be. Likely I'm not practiced enough with using it, but all too often my opponent is able to simply bypass the chafed hull zone too easily. I've gotten decent mileage out of it sometimes against squadrons, but in those instances I feel I was more specifically trying to FORCE it to work in that fashion than play the ship as I normally might.

It encourages the bomber to either not shoot you (saves damage) or the damage you deal to it lets you kill it turns quicker - saving the damage it would deal.

on average that equates to 1 damage a turn,

3 turns = 3 damage saved.

26 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

It encourages the bomber to either not shoot you (saves damage) or the damage you deal to it lets you kill it turns quicker - saving the damage it would deal.

on average that equates to 1 damage a turn,

3 turns = 3 damage saved.

Great Point. It's certainly a deterrent to your opponent, though in my own experience it never seems to alter my opponents actions much. They willing accept the consequences, probably because most squadrons with bomber (the ones most likely to be attacking ships) generally have at least 5 hull, so they can take a little beating on one of their members if it means getting off a nice bomber run.

I particularly find RBD's useful though on an H1MC80 Assault. Pop an ECM in one slot, and the RBD in the other. The RBD's can make purposely swallowing a particularly mean shot without using a redirect a decent strategy to conserve shields for later use. Take your lumps, then discard the damage at the top of the next round, without having to sacrifice your adjacent shielding. Just be sure you that you're likely to survive until the next round before you make that choice!

1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:

It encourages the bomber to either not shoot you (saves damage) or the damage you deal to it lets you kill it turns quicker - saving the damage it would deal.

on average that equates to 1 damage a turn,

3 turns = 3 damage saved.

It's a good point, but RBD is useful against all types of fleet whilst CB is useful only against opponents that have or want to use squadrons to attack your ships. So for that I think that RBD is better than CB.

But if I have to name an upgrade that I think is really bad for its cost/benfit is Point-Defense Reroute

1 hour ago, Lemmiwinks86 said:

It's a good point, but RBD is useful against all types of fleet whilst CB is useful only against opponents that have or want to use squadrons to attack your ships. So for that I think that RBD is better than CB.

In the same vein, RBDs are no good against Crit-Seeking Fleets that are based around APTs and/Or Dodonna... Since you can only discard face-down cards with it, the more Face-ups they stack, the more useless they are... Discouraging or Preventing Damage is better than repairing damage in the first place .

I mean... That's medicine 101, right?

3 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

In the same vein, RBDs are no good against Crit-Seeking Fleets that are based around APTs and/Or Dodonna... Since you can only discard face-down cards with it, the more Face-ups they stack, the more useless they are...

Sort of. That math is modified by a lot of other considerations too, though. A third (18/52) of the damage deck flips face-down after dealing a crit, meaning RBD applies. Of those, 8 are Structural Damage, which is another eligible damage card for RBD. Contains improve the value of RBD by preventing any damage not dealt by APT or XX-9 from being faceup--DCO takes that a step further. Even crit-fishing fleets are usually going to be dealing some amount of damage in addition to the crits, through rams or packets of >1 damage.

You very quickly reach the point where your own hull value matters much more for the utility of RBD than your matchup, which is why it's a much more useful upgrade than CB.

For an upgrade with a narrow niche of usefulness defined by the rest of your fleet , you can guarantee that value by only using it in a fleet that gets value from it, which is why RBD gets a pass. For an upgrade with a narrow niche of usefulness defined by your opponent's fleet , you have only a chance to get the value from it. That's the whole idea behind a "tech" or "counter" card: you get more value from it in the right matchup than you would from a generally-good card, but in exchange you get no/less value from it in the wrong matchup.

The problem with CB is that it takes the "tech" card penalty--useless in a bad matchup- - but only reaches parity with the general-use RBD in its favored matchup. It should significantly exceed the value of RBD when facing attacking squadrons.

Now, it may be that my assessment is wrong and CB does actually provide more value than RBD when facing squadrons, and I'd be happy to see it demonstrated to do so. My point is mostly just that the standard is not that it be equal to the alternatives when facing squadrons; it needs to be better than them. By a fairly wide margin, too, given its utter uselessness in bad matchups.

I'm not going to disagree - even when it is somewhat of a loaded comparison... (I mean,my stance is that all non ECM/EWS retros are worse than those two, and that at least is unchallenged...).. Especially when the points are taken into comparison (then Reinforced Shielding is the worst )...

But even given all of this, people are still complaining about too many squadrons...

2 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

my stance is that all non ECM/EWS retros are worse than those two

Yeah, I pretty much agree in general. There would be a case for AP on the MC30 if XI7 weren't a thing.

1 minute ago, Ardaedhel said:

Yeah, I pretty much agree in general. There would be a case for AP on the MC30 if XI7 weren't a thing.

On that ship, yes... Because the ~3 health it gains you is completely worth it, and RBD isn't since once you're taking Hull damage, you're dead

How did you went from a question about NK7 to a discussion about Blast doors and Cluster Bomb.

6 minutes ago, Tokra said:

How did you went from a question about NK7 to a discussion about Blast doors and Cluster Bomb.

On 3/31/2018 at 5:56 AM, LeatherPants said:

Other dubious upgrade cards off the top of my head.... Sensor Team, Jamming Field, Cluster Bombs....

On 3/31/2018 at 6:14 AM, Drasnighta said:

I hate it when people crap on cluster bombs but don’t do the same for RBDs ?

Right there.