16 minutes ago, emeraldbeacon said:

Hmm. Good point. So the question is, does Nien have time to strip the stress, before the ship is removed? Obviously, if there's another ship at his Initiative that hasn't engaged, it works... but if Nien is the last ship to fire...?

Now, I think I would argue that no, he can't remove the stress, in the case that Nien is the last Init-5 ship to attack. For the ability queue, the whole sequence happens after the attack (including the Aftermath step). Game Effects (removing a destroyed ship) trump Card Abilities (Sloane's stress, followed by Nien's removal).

🤨 Sloan still triggers during that initiative step so Nien's target hasn't been removed yet...

Destroying Ships

A ship is DESTROYED after it has a number of damage cards that equals or exceeds its hull value. A destroyed ship is placed on its ship card.

• After a ship is destroyed in a phase other than the Engagement Phase , it is removed from the game .
• If a ship is destroyed during the Engagement Phase, it is removed after all ships that have the same initiative as the currently engaged ship have engaged, which is called simultaneous fire .
• If an effect triggers after a ship is destroyed, the effect resolves immediately before the ship is removed.
• A destroyed ship's abilities remain active until that ship is removed unless the ability specifies a different timing for the effect to end, such as "until the end of the Engagement Phase." Such effects remain active until the end of the specified time.

13 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Personally, I think the proper timing for Sloane is the Aftermath step, first subsection: defending player triggers non-attack abilities with "after defending" triggers. As such, this is still during Nien's overall attack, and even if he's the last ship at that initiative step, the Defender hasn't been removed yet and Nien's ability can trigger (presuming range/arc, etc).

This is correct.

There's a minor stupid in the rules, because it specifies that abilities triggering in this step come from one of the two ships in the combat, which arguably doesn't include Sloane or other third parties, btu that argument is dumb and bad and the rule can trivially be fixed.

It doesn't change the timing of Sloane's ability.