4 hours ago, PhantomFO said:Underslung Blaster: wow that's a terrible card. A 2-die, range-1 attack, with the ordnance icon to prevent a bonus die, that can only attack a ship that enters range 1 in the direction of your turret, but only if you have a lock on it. And the only dice mod you can use is by spending that lock.
You can also have a friendly use Targeting Synchronizer, but then you're throwing more points down to make this card work.
It has a few things going for it as a card.
Firstly, unlike Snap Shot, the additional arc for strafing actually matters. No one really cares about the front arc coverage to get the cruddy bowtie, but side arc coverage at range 1 for knife fights can really make a big difference.
Second, TL only modification is worlds away better than an unmodified 2 dice attack. Vs a 2 dice unfocused defender you are looking at an 80% chance to deal damage, as opposed to a 50% chance.
The issue is, of course, it requires a TL, which means your trading your TL on your main attack... so modifying the attack vs most ships isn't a good idea as your trading around 1.1 damage for .3 damage vs an unfocused 2 dice defender. You can maybe do stuff with an R3 as well, as you can get a TL on a target for your primary and a target on your flank to try to hit with the turret. Seems questionable, but maybe if you already are holding a Target Synchronizer for some reason? I doubt a list of ships all rolling this to fire 'side saddle' with R3s and Synchs will make a ton of sense, but it is funny to imagine.
There is also mathy stuff with held focus actions.
The real winner with this upgrade is Lt. Bastian who can both set up the initial TL for free if an ally hits the target, and if they land a hit with this thing they can fire their follow up primary shot during the turn for free. As a bonus, their low initiative helps them out in actually catching people out.
It probably won't ever be great, especially if it ends up overpriced like with Snap Shot, but it has potential on one pilot at the very least as its a straight damage upgrade potentially on Bastian vs 2 and especially 1 dice defenders.
One weird thing is that despite the fact the benefit here is you may spend a TL to mod where you can't with a regular attack, this is generally a raw deal. Spending the TL first double tapping into a 2 dice focused defender only does an average expected damage of 1.7, while if you don't spend the lock you do 2.1, both because of the initial attack's damage and because your opponent may spend focus to avoid damage from the initial shot. A target locked attack at range 1 vs a 2 dice focus defender does 1.7 damage already on average, meaning using the main 'upside' to this vs Snap Shot completely removes any actual advantage from this upgrade in terms of damage output.
Still, vs a relatively common 'genre' of target, this thing is giving you .4 damage a turn if they land in your sights, which isn't nothing. Vs a 3 dice defender the value drops like a rock though. Only .2 damage, and while the value of not spending focus to reduce a damage on the first attack isn't as clear with 2 defense dice (Your probably only reducing damage by 1 on the follow up attack anyway, but maybe not, so it makes sense to spend the focus on the turret shot if you get the option and need to to reduce the damage), with 3 defense dice your target is much more likely to both have the focus for the follow up no matter what and know to just not spend it anyway. Vs a 1 dice defense target the thing completely chunks, at .6 bonus damage a turn, and with a focus, and Bastian is getting their TL back 90% of the time if they fire it on the first shot, meaning they are gaining a full damage a turn!
So this thing seems like a way to really put some pain on big base ships, especially for Bastian, rather than something you use to control aces. Considering the possibility of a meta shift towards that, its worth keeping an eye on unless its like... 8 points or something dumb which it probably will be.
Edited by dezzmont
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damage."
