Hi

I am not sure I am reading Alpha-3E "Esk" correctly.

" While you perform a primary attack, before rolling attack dice, you may spend 2 . If you do, your results inflict ion tokens instead of damage."

does this mean if I spend the 2 charges all crit results I roll or covert using other abilities inflict Ion tokens, with no defence dice rolled?

i.e I roll a hit and a crit that crit is turned to a ion token straight away. then the defence dice is used to cancel the hit only?

I am guessing because of the one point cost of esk, that the crit is only turned to ION token during the damage step and therefor if the defender rolls enough evade dice it means no ion token.

if that is the case I think I would rather go for deadeye on a V wing as that bypasses defence dice.

It read that when critical damage would be done, instead of that damage ion is inflicted instead. It would be after dice are cancelled and you are into the dealing damage step. So if a hit and a crit go uncancelled, the hit does damage and after that, the crit instead deals an ion.

It seems a very weak upgrade to me and should cost 0 points.

2 hours ago, 01jbell said:

does this mean if I spend the 2 charges all crit results I roll or covert using other abilities inflict Ion tokens, with no defence dice rolled?

Negative.

Damage is done during the Deal Damage step of the Attack, and the ion tokens are a replacement effect for damage.
So substep b of the deal damage step reads

The defender suffers 1 [crit] damage for each uncanceled [crit] result. Then cancel all [crit] results.

With the 3E ability active, it would effectively read as..

The defender is assigned 1 i on token for each uncanceled [crit] result. Then cancel all [crit] results.

Since crits are cancelled after hits, and also suffered after hits, it makes it harder to negate the ion token, especially when used with pilots like "Contrail" who can get rid of focus results. That said, you are still normally only rolling 2 dice (3 at R1) so rolling a crit in the first place may be tricky. That said, there maybe situations where you would rather try to ion a ship if possible, over damaging it, such as lining it up for one of your harder hitting ships, or forcing them into a potential bomb, or off the board.

1 hour ago, 5050Saint said:

It seems a very weak upgrade to me and should cost 0 points.

eh, not any weaker than ion cannon/turret which still requires you to get at least 2 results though to get ion in. Except being a config, it doesnt eat up another slot. It really depends on the build you are going for. I like the option.

1 hour ago, Lyianx said:

eh, not any weaker than ion cannon/turret which still requires you to get at least 2 results though to get ion in.

It seems much weaker. It is true that a 2-die ion primary would deal the same amount of ion as a 3 die turret or 3 die cannon, you need to spend charges on this upgrade before you roll dice meaning that you either need to hope for a crit or spend more points for Marksmanship or R7-A7 to guarantee that you can turn at least 1 crit into an ion token.