I was looking at the Heavy laser cannon and it reads:

Attack: Attack 1 ship. Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you must change all of your Critical Hit results to Hit results.

Now I'm wondering what is the advantage of changing a critical to a hit. Isn't a critical hit still count as a hit which can do extra damage or am I playing these wrong. After you do what the card says you flip it over as a hit Changing a critical hit to a hit you lose the extra ship or pilot damage so why do it

Thanks

Binderchk

It is not an advantage, it is a disadvantage, which is why it says "you must".

The HLC hits with more dice, at long range, and denies your opponent his extra defense die if he is at range 3 (because HLC is a secondary weapon). The drawback is that is is much more difficult to inflict critical hits with the HLC, since you can only get those if you use some other effect (rerolls, marksman, etc.) in order to generate a crit after the initial roll.

The "advantage" to dealing a [hit] instead of a [crit] is that if you hit a ship with Determination with a face up pilot card it's as good as not hitting it at all. Now that may be a very specific example of where it is an advantage but generally it is considered a drawback.

KO pretty much summed it up, it isn't an advantage. Think of it as the price you pay to be able to use the HLC's.

I have been running Blue Squadron B-wings with the HLC's a lot lately and I think they are fantastic. If you are facing ships that have shields having to change crits to normal damage is no big deal especially at the beginning when you need to chew through their shields anyway. Rolling 4 dice from range 3 and your opponent not getting bonus dice is a great start to eating through shields. Then when you get in to range 1 you use your primary weapon and still roll 4 dice but only now their shields are hopefully gone and you get to keep your crits when it matters.

The HLC would cost too much if it could do crits. Think of an HLC that could do crits v ties. That would end the predominance of the tie swarm pretty darn quick. As it stands now I kind of hate seeing an HLC across the table from my swarms as they ignore the range 3 bonus and they thwart my Draw their Fire shenanigans.

It's meant to be a blunt force weapon; a lot of power but not much finesse.

That said, you can increase the odds with any number of abilities or upgrades, since the no-crit rule only affects your initial roll and not anything that might modify (to include rerolling) the results. Marksmanship or a good old fashioned Target Lock being good examples.

Wait, if you use a TL to re-roll any misses and get a crit you get to keep it w/o changing to a regular damage?

Wait, if you use a TL to re-roll any misses and get a crit you get to keep it w/o changing to a regular damage?

It seems so. The FAQ explicity states that you only convert critical hits into regular damage on the INITIAL roll. Then, any modification (including re-rolls from Target Lock) keeps the critical hits.

The FAQ seemed vague on rerolls as modifications as was a point of contention until an official answer came in from FFG. The official answer from FFG is that rerolls count as a modification (so you get to keep crits on rerolls).

It's in this thread on BGG: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/13351917#13351917