On 6/27/2018 at 8:32 AM, Drasnighta said:

Fundamental difference -

Redirects don’t save damage - they reposition it... the damage remains.

EWS “saves” damage by removing dice that are never rolled (the amount of course is nebulous per die, as blanks exist...)

You've missed my point.

I was responding to the point about SQUADRONS , which was noting that EWS forces them to move to a different target hull zone which is valuable because you force them to reposition shield damage instead of dealing hull damage (thus "saving" some hull damage).

My point was that in these situations, forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via EWS is very much comparable to forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via Redirect x4, and many ships that people seem to want to put EWS on already have four Redirect tokens. So the argument that EWS prevents substantial hull damage against squadron-heavy fleets is questionable to me, because I'm not convinced it's going to prevent many damage cards beyond what the ship's innate Redirects will prevent.

50 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

You've missed my point.

I was responding to the point about SQUADRONS , which was noting that EWS forces them to move to a different target hull zone which is valuable because you force them to reposition shield damage instead of dealing hull damage (thus "saving" some hull damage).

My point was that in these situations, forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via EWS is very much comparable to forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via Redirect x4, and many ships that people seem to want to put EWS on already have four Redirect tokens. So the argument that EWS prevents substantial hull damage against squadron-heavy fleets is questionable to me, because I'm not convinced it's going to prevent many damage cards beyond what the ship's innate Redirects will prevent.

Mc75 with it's one redirect?

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

You've missed my point.

I was responding to the point about SQUADRONS , which was noting that EWS forces them to move to a different target hull zone which is valuable because you force them to reposition shield damage instead of dealing hull damage (thus "saving" some hull damage).

My point was that in these situations, forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via EWS is very much comparable to forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via Redirect x4, and many ships that people seem to want to put EWS on already have four Redirect tokens. So the argument that EWS prevents substantial hull damage against squadron-heavy fleets is questionable to me, because I'm not convinced it's going to prevent many damage cards beyond what the ship's innate Redirects will prevent.

This also only works if squads cannot choose which hull zone they attack. Redirect is useless if the next squad simply has to attack the zone to which you redirected.

Yavaris would be a realistic reason why they couldnt move, but i think we agree that 2 redirects do not stop three yav double taps very well.

11 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

You've missed my point.

I was responding to the point about SQUADRONS , which was noting that EWS forces them to move to a different target hull zone which is valuable because you force them to reposition shield damage instead of dealing hull damage (thus "saving" some hull damage).

My point was that in these situations, forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via EWS is very much comparable to forcing damage to be spread to a different hull zone's shields via Redirect x4, and many ships that people seem to want to put EWS on already have four Redirect tokens. So the argument that EWS prevents substantial hull damage against squadron-heavy fleets is questionable to me, because I'm not convinced it's going to prevent many damage cards beyond what the ship's innate Redirects will prevent.

10 hours ago, geek19 said:

Mc75 with it's one redirect?

And Admo wanting to keep those redirects to also cancel dice?

And as was said, to prevent hits on the rear hull zone? Having 12 redirect tokens doesn't prevent scoring points.

And talking about 12 redirect tokens. Any ships have 4 tokens. There are with two, usable twice each one, true, but that save just 4 attacks. It's great if we are talking about b-wings that are able to eat the shields around. 4 bombers bombing a hull zone without shields can burn your tokens and let the following bombers to bomb free and you keeping useless shields on other hull zones. Forcing them to move to another hull zone with shields, not only allow you to save those tokens against another incoming attack, it also help to use them to redirect to a third hull zone.

ECM and XI7 are the most balanced cards ever! EWS is an amazing useful card that has so many great uses! Squadrons and ships are equally powerful! The game is flawless! Armada is alive and well and will gets lots more expansions and love from FFG soon once they have time!!! My Store Championship will have thirty, maybe 40 people!

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

ECM and XI7 are the most balanced cards ever! EWS is an amazing useful card that has so many great uses! Squadrons and ships are equally powerful! The game is flawless! Armada is alive and well and will gets lots more expansions and love from FFG soon once they have time!!! My Store Championship will have thirty, maybe 40 people!

Sounds like a great place to play, wish I could attend! And I agree totally, squadrons and ships ARE both viable. I'm glad you finally have come around and are finally happy with the game, congrats!

12 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

ECM and XI7 are the most balanced cards ever! EWS is an amazing useful card that has so many great uses! Squadrons and ships are equally powerful! The game is flawless! Armada is alive and well and will gets lots more expansions and love from FFG soon once they have time!!! My Store Championship will have thirty, maybe 40 people!

Balanced relative to what?

Xi7's may be fine, (and I don't dispute that they are a great upgrade) but without an upgrade that suppresses brace with the same "efficiency" that xi7's suppress redirect with (heavy turbolasers turrets can't cut it and I defy you to argue that they are good enough) there is always going to be a huge imbalance between the importance of brace tokens and redirect tokens... and ecm will continue to be close to an auto-include on ships that can equip it because that brace token that your ship has needs to be protected as your only line of defence against most large ships.

6 minutes ago, namdoolb said:

Balanced relative to what?

Xi7's may be fine, (and I don't dispute that they are a great upgrade) but without an upgrade that suppresses brace with the same "efficiency" that xi7's suppress redirect with (heavy turbolasers turrets can't cut it and I defy you to argue that they are good enough) there is always going to be a huge imbalance between the importance of brace tokens and redirect tokens... and ecm will continue to be close to an auto-include on ships that can equip it because that brace token that your ship has needs to be protected as your only line of defence against most large ships.

Intel Officer

1 hour ago, Ginkapo said:

Intel Officer

Then we just need xi7's for brace tokens which are balanced relative to Intel officer, and all will be good

51 minutes ago, namdoolb said:

Then we just need xi7's for brace tokens which are balanced relative to Intel officer, and all will be good

I mean... HTT I guess? Or just take Intel Officer, it’s incredibly powerful in today’s big ship meta

3 hours ago, MandalorianMoose said:

I mean... HTT I guess? Or just take Intel Officer, it’s incredibly powerful in today’s big ship meta

Well, Intel officer is great as a defence token hater... it hates on all defence tokens equally... which still leaves us in a lopsided position.

And HTT? yeah, you pretty much covered the state of HTT with your post. This is (imo) the crux of the matter: the answers for the two principal defence tokens need to have parity, or near enough.

As it is, redirect (subjectivity the lesser of the two tokens) gets nerfed to the ground by xi7's, and the answer to brace (HTT I guess...) doesn't do enough to answer the defence token.

Wether the defence token hosers need to both be brought up to xi7 level or both be brought down to htt level? I'm not sure that matters too much, but we need to have parity in the available hosers to these two defence tokens.

Balance there must be

19 minutes ago, namdoolb said:

Well, Intel officer is great as a defence token hater... it hates on all defence tokens equally... which still leaves us in a lopsided position.

And HTT? yeah, you pretty much covered the state of HTT with your post. This is (imo) the crux of the matter: the answers for the two principal defence tokens need to have parity, or near enough.

As it is, redirect (subjectivity the lesser of the two tokens) gets nerfed to the ground by xi7's, and the answer to brace (HTT I guess...) doesn't do enough to answer the defence token.

Wether the defence token hosers need to both be brought up to xi7 level or both be brought down to htt level? I'm not sure that matters too much, but we need to have parity in the available hosers to these two defence tokens.

Balance there must be

Why

Intel Officer already counters brace, with the added benefit of also killing scatters and single redirects...

16 minutes ago, namdoolb said:

Well, Intel officer is great as a defence token hater... it hates on all defence tokens equally... which still leaves us in a lopsided position.

And HTT? yeah, you pretty much covered the state of HTT with your post. This is (imo) the crux of the matter: the answers for the two principal defence tokens need to have parity, or near enough.

As it is, redirect (subjectivity the lesser of the two tokens) gets nerfed to the ground by xi7's, and the answer to brace (HTT I guess...) doesn't do enough to answer the defence token.

Wether the defence token hosers need to both be brought up to xi7 level or both be brought down to htt level? I'm not sure that matters too much, but we need to have parity in the available hosers to these two defence tokens.

Balance there must be

Most ships that have brace tokens have a single brace token so even with ECMs it's very prone to overheating or if you don't have ECMs it's prone to getting locked down. Redirects are usually duplicates so they don't have the same intrinsic issue, even if they're less powerful and their counter-turbolaser is stronger. The only ships in the game with duplicate braces (LMC80, Neb-B) don't have access to defensive retrofits and have their own survivability issues related to uneven shielding.

If you're having serious problems because your opponent is using ECMs, then it sounds like you didn't include anti-ECM tech into your fleet despite knowing it was vulnerable to ECMs (typically in a fleet with few total attacks because it's focusing on a few big beaters).

43 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

If you're having serious problems because your opponent is using ECMs, then it sounds like you didn't include anti-ECM tech into your fleet despite knowing it was vulnerable to ECMs (typically in a fleet with few total attacks because it's focusing on a few big beaters).

Whoa there....

Thank you very much for your sage advice, however I regret to inform you that I am not suffering from the problem described.

Thank you for your goodwill though

3 hours ago, namdoolb said:

Balance  there must be

Technically there isn’t, nor will there be. ? Brace and redirect do different things, appear on a different number of ships, and are weighted differently on those different ships. If the solution is a turbolaser upgrade, the solution unfairly favors ships with a turbolaser slot. Adding something that’s symmetrical in one aspect to an asymmetrical game doesn’t equate to overall balance (and all else aside, balance is pretty great at the moment.)

4 hours ago, Snipafist said:

Most ships that have brace tokens have a single brace token so even with ECMs it's very prone to overheating or if you don't have ECMs it's prone to getting locked down. Redirects are usually duplicates so they don't have the same intrinsic issue, even if they're less powerful and their counter-turbolaser is stronger. The only ships in the game with duplicate braces (LMC80, Neb-B) don't have access to defensive retrofits and have their own survivability issues related to uneven shielding.

MSU fleets are really the best at this. For example, a Sato ACM Hammerhead fleet can push damage through a brace, and because of their uneven these ships go down fast. Bracing down 2-4 to 1-2 often isn't useful in comparison to bracing 10-8 down to 4-5. I think most of the problems brought up in this thread come from the fact that right now, people are playing predominantly Big Heavy, which is weakest against Brace + ECM, where your 1-2 big attacks a turn can be neutered, while squadron heavy and MSU are less prominent, which can ignore brace and ECM to a degree, but are increasingly vulnerable to redirect.