18 minutes ago, Wazat said:

You know what I love? Rulings and errata that raise myriad questions instead of making it all clear.

Maybe they'll fill the official rulings thread with some answers soon...?

That's actually 100% the reason I raised the question in the first place.

The Cova ruling looks to me to have broken (not in the over powered sense, broken as in they no longer do anything) several cards that lack timings.

Cova ruling:

"Q: When an effect checks the difficulty of your revealed
maneuver (such as Cova Nell’s pilot ability), do any effects
that alter the difficulty of your maneuvers (such as R4
Astromech [ ] or Leia Organa [Resistance, ] apply?
A: No. The difficulty of a revealed maneuver matches its printed color. The
speed and bearing of a revealed maneuver also match their printed value
and type, respectively."

Activation Phase (Bolding and underlining affected part):

"ACTIVATION PHASE
The Activation Phase is the third phase of a round. During this phase, each
ship activates, one at a time, starting with the ship with the lowest initiative
and continuing in ascending order.
Each ship activates by resolving the following steps in order:
1. Reveal Dial: The ship’s assigned dial is revealed by flipping it faceup
and then placing it next to its ship card.
2. Execute Maneuver: The ship executes the maneuver selected on the
revealed dial.
3. Perform Action: The ship may perform one action.
After all ships have activated, players proceed to the Engagement Phase.
• If a player has multiple ships with the same initiative value, that player
activates them in any order—finishing the entire activation for one ship
before activating another ship of the same initiative value.
• If multiple players have ships with the same initiative value, player order
is used to determine the sequence. The first player activates all of
their ships with that initiative value in any order, then the second player
activates all of their ships with that initiative value in any order.
• When a ship activates, if it skips the Reveal Dial step, it cannot resolve
any abilities that trigger after the ship reveals its dial.
• A stressed ship cannot execute red maneuvers or perform actions.
• If a stressed ship attempts to execute a red maneuver, the ship executes
a white [ 2] maneuver instead."

Maneuver (put here to show there is no section referencing upgrade/ship cards changing difficulty being applied):

"MANEUVER
A maneuver is a type of move that a ship can execute. Each maneuver has three
components: speed (a number 0–5), difficulty (red, white, or blue), and bearing
(an arrow or other symbol). Each bearing is further defined with a direction.
A ship can execute a maneuver by resolving the following steps in order:
1. Maneuver Ship: During this step, the ship moves using the matching
template.
a. Take the template that matches the maneuver from the supply.
b. Set the template between the ship’s front guides (so that it is flush
against the base).
c. Pick up and place the ship at the opposite end of the template and
slide the rear guides of the ship into the template.
d. Return the template to the supply.
2. Check Difficulty: During this step, if the maneuver is red, the ship
gains one stress token; if the maneuver is blue, the ship removes one
stress token and one strain token.
Additionally:
• While executing a maneuver, if a ship would be placed at the end of the
template on top of another object, it has overlapped that object.
• While executing a maneuver, if only the template was placed on top of
another object, the ship has moved through the object.
• While executing a maneuver, the ship is picked up from its starting
position and placed in its final position. The full width of the ship’s base is
ignored except in its starting and final positions.
• If a stressed ship attempts to execute a maneuver with a red difficulty,
the ship performs a white [2 ] maneuver instead.
• A card effect can cause a ship to execute a maneuver that does not
appear on its dial.
• Some abilities reference a ship’s revealed maneuver outside of that
ship’s activation. A ship’s revealed maneuver is the maneuver selected on
its dial, which remains faceup next to that ship’s ship card until the next
Planning Phase.
◊ If a ship’s dial is not revealed, or it was not assigned a dial that round,
that ship does not have a revealed maneuver."

Affected ship cards and upgrades (I might be missing a couple):

If you consider that FAQ ruling to only affect cards that use the term " Revealed Maneuver " then it has no impact on any of those cards or the rules for activation, and that is probably the best way for judges to rule on any of these interactions.

4 minutes ago, joeshmoe554 said:

If you consider that FAQ ruling to only affect cards that use the term " Revealed Maneuver " then it has no impact on any of those cards or the rules for activation, and that is probably the best way for judges to rule on any of these interactions.

Doesn't follow RAW..

7 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Doesn't follow RAW..

How so? The FAQ ruling for Cova Nell says that abilities which alter the difficulty of a maneuver do not affect the difficulty of a "revealed maneuver" but it doesn't say anything about them not affecting the difficulty of a "revealed dial", or selecting a "maneuver of the same ... difficulty" or "After you reveal a red or blue maneuver"

3 hours ago, joeshmoe554 said:

How so? The FAQ ruling for Cova Nell says that abilities which alter the difficulty of a maneuver do not affect the difficulty of a "revealed maneuver" but it doesn't say anything about them not affecting the difficulty of a "revealed dial", or selecting a "maneuver of the same ... difficulty" or "After you reveal a red or blue maneuver"

Reference (formatting added to indicate direct connections):

From Activation Phase:

1. <Reveal Dial>: The ship’s assigned dial is revealed by flipping it faceup
and then placing it next to its ship card.

2. Execute Maneuver: The ship executes the maneuver selected on the <revealed dial>.

From Maneuvers:

• Some abilities reference a ship’s revealed maneuver outside of that
ship’s activation. A ship’s revealed maneuver is the maneuver selected on
its dial, which remains faceup next to that ship’s ship card until the next
Planning Phase.

So Revealed Maneuver = selected maneuver on dial, which is the same as the maneuver Step 2 of the Activation Phase instructs you to perform. Was previously adjusted by mandatory effect abilities and, while being executed, timing triggered abilities.

Cova FAQ Ruling:

"Q: When an effect checks the difficulty of your revealed
maneuver (such as Cova Nell’s pilot ability), do any effects
that alter the difficulty of your maneuvers (such as R4
Astromech [ ] or Leia Organa [Resistance, ] apply?

A: No. The difficulty of a revealed maneuver matches its printed color. The
speed and bearing of a revealed maneuver also match their printed value
and type, respectively."

Adding something that I think is one of the straws I missed, Cova/Revealed Maneuver is ignoring mandatory ability effects:

From Use of "May", "Can", and "Must":

"Although all effects that are not “may” effects are mandatory, the inclusion of “must” is used to reiterate a
mandatory effect that could provide a drawback to the ship with the effect."

Resistance Leia is an optional ability:

"After a friendly ship reveals its dial, you may spend 1 . If you do, the chosen ship reduces the difficulty of that maneuver."

R4 Astromech is a mandatory effect:

"Decrease the difficulty of your speed 1-2 basic maneuvers."

As is Nien Nunb:

"Decrease the difficulty of your bank maneuvers."

And L3-37 once unshielded:

"If you are not shielded, decrease the difficulty of your bank maneuvers."

None of the 3 abilities above have a timing while Leia does.

So the "revealed maneuver" is the maneuver that the dial is set to. The maneuver that the dial is set to is the maneuver you are instructed to perform during the Execute Maneuver step. Yet the "revealed maneuver", which is the maneuver that the dial is set to and you're instructed to perform, ignores mandatory changes to the difficulty of the maneuver from card abilities that have no timing which were believed to be continuously in effect. Since this supposedly doesn't contradict the Golden Rule "If the ability of a card conflicts with the rules in this guide, the card ability takes precedence." (R4 not reducing the difficulty of a "revealed maneuver") when are the timingless, mandatory ability effects applied??? Currently it looks like they aren't...

"Revealed Maneuver" is a defined keyword that is referenced by certain abilities. This keyword is not referenced in rules regarding the activation phase.

3 hours ago, Maui. said:

"Revealed Maneuver" is a defined keyword that is referenced by certain abilities. This keyword is not referenced in rules regarding the activation phase.

"Some abilities reference a ship’s revealed maneuver outside of that
ship’s activation. A ship’s revealed maneuver is the maneuver selected on
its dial, which remains faceup next to that ship’s ship card until the next
Planning Phase."

Yes. That one.

13 minutes ago, Maui. said:

Yes. That one.

Nien crew, R4 Astromech and L3-37 say nothing about the Activation Phase either.

So we have a few options as to what conclusion we can draw:

1) These upgrades do not work

2) These upgrades work, but "revealed maneuver" is not a maneuver

3) These upgrades only affect maneuvers while they are being executed

21 minutes ago, Maui. said:

So we have a few options as to what conclusion we can draw:

1) These upgrades do not work

2) These upgrades work, but "revealed maneuver" is not a maneuver

3) These upgrades only affect maneuvers while they are being executed

1) As written they don't, they'll be applied anyways. The rules need to be adjusted to allow for legal application of their abilities.

2) contradicts the RAW definition of Revealed Maneuver.

3) Neither the cards themselves nor the rules state this.

The problem isn't that the cards do nothing in practice. Any time a card's RAW interpretation leads to no effect ever, you have to go with the most sane option of it doing something.

Rather, the problem is how this affects our ability to interpret abilities in general. If we have to make a sanity-exception for several cards, then that makes it harder to understand -- and interpret exceptional cases of -- the general rule.

FFG needs to fix the wording not so Nien has worth in the game, but so that the rules aren't a patchwork mess of exceptions, assumptions, and logic dead-zones where we simply don't know how to rule an effect. That was a regular problem in 1E IMO, but FFG has done much better in 2E of addressing these things. Still needs work, but I'm encouraged at least.

Hopefully they'll tighten up the wording soon so a lot of the questions in this thread are easily resolved. That means future questions about edge cases are easier to resolve, and we're not stuck throwing our hands in the air and saying "we cannot know, we have to wait for FFG to rule on it". That's the goal of well-written rules -- you don't have to get help from the writer all the time.

@Wazat That sanity in and of itself is a subjective assessment doesn't help.

I'm a software engineer. Self-assessment of sanity, and assessment of sanity of any ruleset, is always probabilistic and subjective at best. My expectation is we're all a bit mad here...