@Drasnighta

How does this work out?

The RR tells us that activation starts by revealing the command dial.

SFO tells you to DISCARD top dial BEFORE you reveal a dial (i.e. before you actually activate).

Once discarded, the RR tells you that the ship can't activate.

But really, for the BEFORE in SFO to even trigger, you must have made plain you INTENT to activate that ship, or?

I really wish Armada had an ability queue like X-wing 2.0...

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Ship Activation
Ships are activated during the Ship Phase. When a ship is
activated, its owner proceeds through the following steps.
1 . Reveal Command Dial: Reveal the ship’s top
command dial. Then either place the dial next to the
ship in the play area or spend the dial to place the
corresponding command token next to the ship in the
play area.
2 . Attack: Perform up to two attacks with the ship from
different hull zones.
3 . Execute Maneuver: Move the ship at its current speed.
• After a ship activates, place its revealed command dial
faceup on its ship card to track that it has activated.
• Each ship can activate only once per round.
Related Topics: Attack, Commands, Ship Movement

Command Dials
When a ship is activated, its owner reveals that ship’s
top command dial and places it next to the ship in the
play area. It can be spent immediately to assign the
corresponding command token to that ship, or it can be
spent at the appropriate time to resolve that command.
• After a ship finishes its activation, if it did not spend its
command dial, that dial is discarded.
• When a command dial is spent or discarded, it is
placed faceup on the ship’s ship card and remains there
until it is assigned as a new command during the next
Command Phase.
• A ship with a faceup command dial on its ship card
cannot be activated.
• A player can look at his ships’ facedown command dials
at any time. When a player looks at a ship’s command
dials, he must preserve the order in which the command
dials are stacked.

13 minutes ago, Green Knight said:

Ships are activated during the Ship Phase. When a ship is
activated, its owner proceeds through the following steps.

For me this is that you choose an eligible ship to activate (that's the "intent" you mention), then start through the steps (so it's in the process of "activated" by the time you reach the first step). SFO then means it's taking place during the activation. Since you're already withing the "activated" bit when you discard the dial it's past the point where you'd check that there's no discarded dial on the card.

1 minute ago, Akhrin said:

For me this is that you choose an eligible ship to activate (that's the "intent" you mention), then start through the steps (so it's in the process of "activated" by the time you reach the first step). SFO then means it's taking place during the activation. Since you're already withing the "activated" bit when you discard the dial it's past the point where you'd check that there's no discarded dial on the card.

That is a very reasonable way to interpret it.

There was the same problem with the Strategic Adviser. The wording " you " on the card does not work if the activating is staring with the reveal of the dial.

And this was solved that you basically pick a ship first that should activate (At this time the SA is coming in). And after this you go through all the steps. But you are already in the activation of the ship when you reveal the dial.

Yep, @Akhrin has essentially the short of it.

A ship has to basically have intent to be activated so there can be a “before”, “immediately before” it does so.

Plus that doesn’t break the game through temporal causaluties. Leave those to ST:AW

I was asked via PL by a third party to add some background - there was sone questions regarding round timings in the past, and basically, it boiled down to the understanding that the “round” encompasses the phases of the game, so everything in the phases must end, before the phases end, before the round ends.

This essentially works forward as well. Activation must start Before the first step is actually started, so there is such things as before, when, during and sone such... So “activation” is an encompassing umbrella term that starts before the first step of activation begins, and ends after all steps generated by the steps finished - otherwise you try to have situations where, say, an Engine Techs move is not during activation as it implies that activation ends after you move the first time...

So consider “intent” to activate as a part of it, and “before” activation is “before proceeding to the first step”