Cluster Missiles get kind of wonky on a Raider with Ordnance Tubes. First, the rules for bonus attacks:

Bonus Attacks
When an attack granted by a special weapon has the “Bonus Attack:”
header, a huge ship equipped with that upgrade may perform the listed bonus attack while it engages, before or after its standard attack. Additionally:
• A huge ship may perform any number of bonus attacks each round.
• A huge ship can use each “Bonus Attack:” header only once per round.
• If an effect grants a huge ship a bonus attack that is a primary attack or a special attack with an “Attack:” header, it can perform only one bonus attack using that primary attack or “Attack:” header per round.

That last bullet is the most important: an "Attack" header can only be used as a bonus attack once per round. Note that Ordnance Tubes requires you to fire missiles as bonus attacks. So you fire with Cluster Missiles, but it's already a bonus attack. This means you cannot spend a charge to make another (bonus) attack with Cluster Missiles.

You could put Cluster Missiles on your Raider without Ordnance Tubes, and fire them as your standard attack. The obvious downside is now you have no way to fire your sweet 4-dice primary weapon.

This also applies to the C-ROC equipped with Corsair Refit: you may spend 1 energy to perform a bonus attack with an equipped missile upgrade, but then you've already used your "one bonus attack limit" for that "Attack" header, so you can't make another attack with Cluster Missiles.

Maybe it's best just to leave the Cluster Missiles to the fighters and other standard ships in the game.

🤯

I suppose without this rule clusters could keep triggering as long as there were two targets and charges left since huge ships can perform any number of bonus attacks. However I’d hope for an errata/FAQ so they can be used the same as a smaller based ship.

2 hours ago, Sasajak said:

🤯

I suppose without this rule clusters could keep triggering as long as there were two targets and charges left since huge ships can perform any number of bonus attacks. However I’d hope for an errata/FAQ so they can be used the same as a smaller based ship.

They can as long as you don't have Ordinance Tubes equipped on the ship or don't use the "Bonus Attack:" from Corsair Refit to fire them.

This rule was put in place to stop a particular combo: IG-88B alongside a C-ROC carrying IG-88D. The C-ROC, as a huge ship, has unlimited bonus attacks, but can perform each Bonus Attack header only once. An equipped cannon, however, has an Attack header, and there were no limits on the number of times a huge ship could perform those. So a C-ROC equipped with Corsair Refit and an Ion Cannon could fire that Ion Cannon over and over until it hit. Then it would move on to the next weapon, and if it missed, it could fire the Ion Cannon AGAIN repeatedly until it hit. And so on.

This new rule solves the problem, and Cluster Missiles is an unfortunate casualty. Let's face it: the concept of Cluster Missiles has been problematic for rules writing ever since the beginning of the game, so this doesn't actually surprise me.

But we do agree on Cluster Missiles on the Raider not being a balancing problem, right? Because for causal games, one could then simply ignore these technicalities...

14 hours ago, Stefan said:

But we do agree on Cluster Missiles on the Raider not being a balancing problem, right? Because for causal games, one could then simply ignore these technicalities...

Sure, I guess. But then, I was sure Targeting Battery was just a technicality until the FAQ proved otherwise.

What are you referring to?

16 hours ago, Stefan said:

What are you referring to?

All my early games had Targeting Battery granting a huge ship a lock even on a target beyond range 3. The devs even played this way on stream, but some eagle-eyed players noticed that it doesn't say, "ignoring range restrictions" on the card. When acquiring a lock, the object must be range 0-3, as spelled out in the Rules Reference. I assumed the missing phrase on the card was an oversight and that the card would receive an entry in the next errata. Not so. Instead, they changed the way it plays so the card would follow the rules the way it was printed.

Their whole premise is to get the rules to a point where anybody can play with the card as printed without having to reference an Errata or FAQ document. On the other hand, the FAQ is in Rules Reference document, so if they have it open to check on rules, they could conceivably scroll down to check the FAQ. It's just that a lot of players don't do that. Heck, I forget to check the FAQ for weird interactions sometimes.

So you're right, they might change it to allow Cluster Missiles to work correctly. I'm not holding my breath.

****. Thanks!