Buhallin said:

Well, there's also the question of can he give it to a ship that doesn't have a target lock action. Not currently possible, but could be if there were ever a Rebel ship that didn't have the action. Also comes up for people playing home games with mixed squads (though as is always the case when using house rules, the answer there is to house rule the solution to the problems created by house rules).

dbmeboy said:

If a ship didn't have the action it would be forbidden from taking the action, no?

There may be some distinction between whether a ship can normally do the action but is currently prohibited from doing so (stress, critical damage) and not having it on its bar at all, but I don't think so. Expert Handling points pretty strongly to an ability which allows an action allowing that action whether it's something the ship could normally perform or not.

Buhallin said:

Not quite… Damaged Sensor Array is the only situation in which this can arise. I think it's a scenario the game designers didn't experience in testing because its occurance is so rare, so the vagueries of how the target lock rules interact with the damage card were never brought up. As it stands I would play it like Garven's power, but I am not certain as to whether that is the intended way for it to work.

I don't expect it to be something that is likely pop up anytime in play either… that's what baffles me most about how heated some people got in this thread. It's a mostly theoretical question about something that is ambiguous but mostly irrelevent.

<shrug>

The problem is that it's grown to be well beyond some fringe interaction with a rare critical damage card.

There really are only two possibilities here: Dutch allows a free action, or he allows the effect without it being an action.

The problem is that if you're going to argue that he grants a free action, the impact goes well beyond just a fringe interaction. It hits a stressed ship as well, which is a much more common scenario. Here are other things that people have argued, intentionally or unintentionally, in this thread:

- Dutch's ability only triggers if he takes the action directly
- Stressed ships cannot benefit from Dutch's ability
- Stressed ships lose their target locks (this is a side effect of the "capable of perming this action can maintain only one target lock")
- R5-K6 and Dutch have different effects despite identical wording
- R5-K6's ability counts as an action for some things, but not others

These range from "more common than a fringe critical damage" to "chopping away at the foundational understanding of the way any rules system has to function". I'm not sure if you have much background in CCGs or CCG-like games such as Warmachine, but any sort of "break the rules" ability system works only if there is a strong framework to explain effects. Consistency in templating and terminology is a critical part of that, both in how abilities are presented and in how they're read. Understanding that templating and terminology is the foundation for understanding what abilities actually do, especially with the really slow response time we get from FFG on rules issues.

The important part of this really isn't about what Dutch grants; it's about whether every use of an action name is implicitly an action. This is not trivial, nor is it actually new - it's the same issue which was at the core of the Expert Handling debate, which went for at least as many pages as this one. I'll freely grant that the belligerance is bad on all sides - but I disagree that it's some trivial issue which will never come up in a game.

Ummm… I don't know about all this chopping the foundation business. But yes, we sent in a request to the rules support because the core of the target lock rules remains a bit ambiguous.

Buhallin, I agree.

This is about if references to the names of actions are always actions (or free actions) or not.

Expert Handling's errata was to clarify that it was indeed meant to be performing a free action.

I think the only difference between this case and expert handling (As I mentioned above) is the verb "perform".

Expert handling was originally "Perform a barrel roll"

erratta - perform a free barrel roll action. - we see "free" and "action" as the missing words.

on Dutch - "Perform" "free" and "action" are "missing" should it be granting a free acquire a target lock action.

(And without the word Perform, unlike the other actions which are also another part of speech - acquire becomes the verb)

The language on dutch is also different from all other pilots cards granting free actions.

Ravncat said:

Yeah… I think this is a little different though.

The main reason Expert Handling got that verbiage added was folks were thinking they could do 2 Barrel Rolls if they had Vader + Expert Handling, which apparently went against what the Devs had in mind. By actually calling it a Free Action, the business about not being able to perform the same Action twice kicked in and stopped that from happening.

So, I talked to Jay little earlier today. And this is what he said:

the ally being granted a target lock is NOT taking the action because the card was worded so that it was not to take the action, so DSA does not prevent the ally from gaining the target lock.

However, that ally cannot SPEND the target lock while the DSA card is still active, so it must remove the effects of DSA (I'm at the hotel, and my stuff is at the center, so I'm sorry that i don't have the card directly in front of me) before it can actually spend that target lock. Dutch's ability also can not be used on ships that don't have the acquire a target lock icon in their ships action bar.

i hope that helps, and hopefully clears that up some.

Correction, just talked to James kniffen, he said that ally can spend the tl.It just couldn't take the action on its own with dsa.

hothie said:

Good to hear this correction… I was busy trying to come up with any reason that would make sense that would prevent a ship that had a token of any kind from spending it, and couldn't come up with anything.

Buhallin said:

I think that the above question has been answered indirectly with the release of the shuttles…

http://i.imgur.com/oIktrFO.png

nimdabew said:

Actually the text in the accompanying article answers the question pretty directly when it states that "Jendon passes his target locks to the Avenger Squadron Pilots; since TIE Interceptors can't normally acquire a target lock, Jendon's ability grants them a powerful offensive boost."

It also teasingly refers to an upgrade called ST-321, which allows Jendon to acquire target locks at any range, and presumably maintain more than one.

And yes, I was in on the discussion hothie talks about above, and can confirm that being the recipient of Dutch's ability is not considered to be performing an action or free action. The ship can immediately acquire a target lock, even if it is stressed, critted with DSA, or (citing the Jendon reference above) does not have the TL icon in its action bar (which on the Rebel side is still a theoritical ship).

EDIT: I am apparently wrong about Dutch letting the ally acquire a TL if it does not have the TL icon in the action bar. See hothie's thread about his conversation with developer James Kniffen:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=331&efcid=6&efidt=816065