Hello everyone!

I have got a question about the pilot ability of IG88A.

Let's say you have got three ships with the IG-2000 upgrade, of which one is IG-88A.

Scenario:

IG-88A has got 2 calculate tokens. He would like to transfer one of these tokens to SHIP C via his pilot ability.

SHIP C is too far away though.

Question:

Can IG-88A transfer the calculate token to ship B first, from where the token gets transfered one more time to ship C? As mentioned before, all ships have got the IG-2000 upgrade card.

Does the "once per opportunity" rule or any other rule prevent this?

I believe this would be disallowed by rules surrounding "requirement for an ability"

Rules Reference page 31

Quote

Q: What is meant by a requirement for an ability?

A: A requirement for an ability is a conditional if-statement, such as "if you are tractored" or "if the defender is in your bullseye arc." A ship being in-arc at range for an attack made as part of a triggered ability, such as Snap Shot or Foresight, is also a requirement for that ability.

If an ability's requirements are not met at the time the ability would be added to the queue, it cannot be added to the queue.

If the ability's requirements are not met at the time the ability would be resolved from the queue, the ability is not resolved and is instead removed from the queue. If an ability instructs you to make a choice, such as choosing a ship, that is not itself a requirement to initiate an ability.

The second sentence of the answer; since, in your scenario, Ship B did not posses a Calculate Token "At the Start of the Engagement Phase", it then could not add its ability to the queue after it received the Calculate Token from Ship A leaving Ship C out of luck...

Non-Brobot Example: this is what keeps a swarm of Nantex from passing tractors to each other indefinitely with Ensnare.

12 minutes ago, drazen90909 said:

I believe this would be disallowed by rules surrounding "requirement for an ability"

Rules Reference page 31

The second sentence of the answer; since, in your scenario, Ship B did not posses a Calculate Token "At the Start of the Engagement Phase", it then could not add its ability to the queue after it received the Calculate Token from Ship A leaving Ship C out of luck...

Non-Brobot Example: this is what keeps a swarm of Nantex from passing tractors to each other indefinitely with Ensnare.

Ensnare requires you to be tractored to add the ability to the queue. IG-88A's ability does not require it to be calculating to add its ability to the queue.

I agree with Maui. I think it works. So even a ship with 0 calculates can enter their ability to the queue and resolve it (with 0).

If another source gives it a calc before it’s ability resolved then it can choose to give it 1.

The only check I see that it makes to enter the queue is that a ship has the calc action.

I concur; it works. The only requirement to trigger is timing (start of engagement), and a viable target (a friendly ship that can Calculate). Once all of your ships have triggered, then you can start resolving one at a time; A passes to B, then B passes to C.

If for some reason that A would be unable to pass to B (also out of range), then when it came time to resolve B's trigger for passing a token to C, the ability would fail to resolve, due to lacking the relevant calculate token .

yes, it works. you need to know in which order ships will be passing along their tokens before you start measuring or transferring tokens, though. this is because the queue is built all at once and then resolved. after you start resolving the queue you cannot add more abilities with the same timing to it. only abilities that trigger because of effects resolving from the queue can be added to it after it starts resolving.

so your scenario is a no. you cannot announce IG88A is transferring and go on to resolve that only to realize the ship you want to transfer is not in range and then declare you want another ship to transfer a token as well. you need to declare which ships are transferring and in which order first. on the other hand, you can just always announce that all of your ships are transferring and then skip using the ability on any of the ones you realize you don't want to transfer from when resolving the ability, since it's written as a may-statement.

also, IG88A's pilot ability does not have an ability's requirement, no. just a timing and an effect.

18 minutes ago, meffo said:

also, IG88A's pilot ability does not have an ability's requirement, no. just a timing and an effect.

Agreed. I was wondering if the "choose a ship at range blah" would have an impact, but it looks like even that doesn't matter:

Thanks everyone!

9 hours ago, meffo said:

yes, it works. you need to know in which order ships will be passing along their tokens before you start measuring or transferring tokens, though. this is because the queue is built all at once and then resolved. after you start resolving the queue you cannot add more abilities with the same timing to it. only abilities that trigger because of effects resolving from the queue can be added to it after it starts resolving.

so your scenario is a no. you cannot announce IG88A is transferring and go on to resolve that only to realize the ship you want to transfer is not in range and then declare you want another ship to transfer a token as well. you need to declare which ships are transferring and in which order first. on the other hand, you can just always announce that all of your ships are transferring and then skip using the ability on any of the ones you realize you don't want to transfer from when resolving the ability, since it's written as a may-statement.

also, IG88A's pilot ability does not have an ability's requirement, no. just a timing and an effect.

I think I disagree with this one tiny bit. I think you get to measure FIRST from your chosen ship to all targets. Then choose a ship. But yes, A has to go first measures, C is out, gives to B, etc

So OP’s scenario would work imo

edit: that may have been what you were saying, actually. Not sure. Lol 😝

After reading all the responses, I can agree. This does work, as having a calculate token (in the state of calculating) is not a requirement on the card. See this is why healthy is debate is good, we all can learn things.