Being new to armada I have decided to read old forum posts to see what combo's/strategies people used to use. There is some very interesting and useful stuff. However one thing I noticed and found odd was a ton of people using assault proton torpedoes. Unless I'm understanding the card wrong it lets you do a face up damage card through shields. Which is great if you weren't going to get through the shields, but on something like an MC30 (possibly with Ackbar) there is a good chance you will get through shields. In which case the standard crit effect does the same thing but for free (although it can be countered by contain).

So is/was this card used to do hull damage through shields, to counter contain, or for something else? Personally I don't think its really worth it for the first 2 reasons but maybe I'm overlooking something.

You are.

The apt is an ADDITIONAL damage card

When you select the APT critical, you deal a face up card. Right away. Boom. Resolve it.

You haven’t even totaled up your damage yet.

So in that case, you might find you do a critical that drops shields - before you start piling all that damage on ?

Just now, Drasnighta said:

You are.

The apt is an ADDITIONAL damage card

So you get a black die that is a hit/crit, normally 2 damage. But APT adds a face up card for 3 damage?

Just now, Captain Ordo N-11 said:

So you get a black die that is a hit/crit, normally 2 damage. But APT adds a face up card for 3 damage?

APT does a card before you even total up how much damage you have done...

brfore you halve that number due to brace, etc...

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

APT does a card before you even total up how much damage you have done...

brfore you halve that number due to brace, etc...

Oh dang, that is super useful. Now I know why so many people used it. Well thanks for the info and speedy replies. Helps me not be as much of a noob.

Pulling that sweet sweet projector misaligned before you even apply damage is a beautiful thing

A couple base notes( because you're new)

It is still a crit effect and you can only resolve 1 per attack ( fire control team exception exists)

Not unlockable by contain ( no special grits are, unless they have damage control officer)

Arguments between this and assault concussion missiles go on forever. Spoiler: they're both good, season to taste.

Also, APT is very handy when you have Dodonna as your Admiral. Picking the nastiest crit from four damage cards is very underrated.

8 minutes ago, MandalorianMoose said:

Pulling that sweet sweet projector misaligned before you even apply damage is a beautiful thing

That is just mean, I need to try this with Dodonna.

5 minutes ago, dominosfleet said:

A couple base notes( because you're new)

It is still a crit effect and you can only resolve 1 per attack ( fire control team exception exists)

Not unlockable by contain ( no special grits are, unless they have damage control officer)

Arguments between this and assault concussion missiles go on forever. Spoiler: they're both good, season to taste.

Good things to note. And yeah, one of the people I play with (we are all new) loves assault concussion missiles. I might need to point out this card (maybe not though lol).

APTs and ACMs exist in a delicately balanced ecosystem of murdering things with black dice. The general consensus is that APTs are slightly better, but that's a combination of factors: upgrade cost, prevalence of ships with a lot of shields, prevalence of ships with high engineering values, prevalence of ships with high hull values. You would rarely be straight-up wrong for picking either upgrade, but there are situations in which one would help you more.

APTs want to deal damage straight to the hull, so they're murder for ships with small hull values. You can spike the damage higher and drill them down faster, with the idea being that you might one-shot a corvette or something like that. If a ship is hoping for a Brace token to save it, you can still make the damage nasty. A VSD that wants to Brace your 6 damage down to 3 and have its shields absorb it all? Too bad, you're still taking hull damage. In the first few years of Armada, Demolisher was the all-powerful king because it could deal an APT face-up card, then unleash its big attack, then ram, then Engine Techs to ram again. If you had enough activations (the "clonisher list"), you could do this as the last ship of the round, and then as first player do it again at the start of the next round, all without the target getting a chance to move, shoot, or repair. Pretty much nothing in the game or in this universe could survive that. These days, people are favoring bigger ships rather than a bunch of small ships, but I think it's just burned in people's brains that APTs are the best card in the game.

ACMs want to overwhelm ships with damage, and they're awesome versus ships that rely on Redirect tokens. An Arquitens could take a close-range hit to its side, have ACMs splash damage onto the front and rear arcs, then the damage to its side sets in and it has very little ability to mitigate that damage because its shields all around are gone or low. Even better is that the card merely deals damage to each adjacent arc. That does not mean only shields. After you've worn down the shields, it still takes one damage to each adjacent hull zone, but that damage becomes damage cards. In the right circumstances, you can deal your black dice damage and lay two face-down damage cards onto the target ship.

In summary, they're both good. If you're weighing whether to take these upgrades, pay attention to how you spend your accuracy symbols. When you are selecting a defense token to "lock" with your accuracy, think about what the damage will look like from your opponent's perspective, and how he would most likely spend the tokens you leave open given that damage. Sometimes you want to target Redirect instead of Brace, for instance.

18 minutes ago, Nostromoid said:

APTs and ACMs exist in a delicately balanced ecosystem of murdering things with black dice. The general consensus is that APTs are slightly better, but that's a combination of factors: upgrade cost, prevalence of ships with a lot of shields, prevalence of ships with high engineering values, prevalence of ships with high hull values. You would rarely be straight-up wrong for picking either upgrade, but there are situations in which one would help you more.

APTs want to deal damage straight to the hull, so they're murder for ships with small hull values. You can spike the damage higher and drill them down faster, with the idea being that you might one-shot a corvette or something like that. If a ship is hoping for a Brace token to save it, you can still make the damage nasty. A VSD that wants to Brace your 6 damage down to 3 and have its shields absorb it all? Too bad, you're still taking hull damage. In the first few years of Armada, Demolisher was the all-powerful king because it could deal an APT face-up card, then unleash its big attack, then ram, then Engine Techs to ram again. If you had enough activations (the "clonisher list"), you could do this as the last ship of the round, and then as first player do it again at the start of the next round, all without the target getting a chance to move, shoot, or repair. Pretty much nothing in the game or in this universe could survive that. These days, people are favoring bigger ships rather than a bunch of small ships, but I think it's just burned in people's brains that APTs are the best card in the game.

ACMs want to overwhelm ships with damage, and they're awesome versus ships that rely on Redirect tokens. An Arquitens could take a close-range hit to its side, have ACMs splash damage onto the front and rear arcs, then the damage to its side sets in and it has very little ability to mitigate that damage because its shields all around are gone or low. Even better is that the card merely deals damage to each adjacent arc. That does not mean only shields. After you've worn down the shields, it still takes one damage to each adjacent hull zone, but that damage becomes damage cards. In the right circumstances, you can deal your black dice damage and lay two face-down damage cards onto the target ship.

In summary, they're both good. If you're weighing whether to take these upgrades, pay attention to how you spend your accuracy symbols. When you are selecting a defense token to "lock" with your accuracy, think about what the damage will look like from your opponent's perspective, and how he would most likely spend the tokens you leave open given that damage. Sometimes you want to target Redirect instead of Brace, for instance.

I hate fighting ACM ships after my MC80 was killed by a kuat ISD that had them. (though my shields were gone so the extra damage went straight to hull)

Like you said, they are both good. I feel like ACM might be a little better but that could be due to the small number of games I've played with inexperienced people, most games ships have very few or no shields by the end. Maybe when we are better at concentrating fire in the same hull zones that will change.