Concentrated Barrage

By OggDude, in Game Mechanics

The wording for this action, even with the week 5 update, is still leaving me scratching my head. The tricky part is: "If the attack succeeds, the character may spend <A><A> once to add damage equal to the number of weapons involved in the attack to one hit of the attack ." That last bit is throwing me off. What this sounds like to me is that you roll once for all weapons and a success means you hit individually with all weapons, plus you get to add extra damage to one of those hits with two advantages. At least, that's what's implied by the wording.

So, say you're attacking with 10 medium laser cannons (damage 6), and you roll 3 successes and 2 advantages. Would that mean that you inflict 9 successful 9 damage hits (6 + 3), plus 1 successful 19 damage hit? Another possibility is that you only get one hit out of it that does 19 damage.

Any opinions on this, or am I just missing something obvious?

I think they mean that you roll once and do the six damage plus successes. Then you can spend two advantage to get +10 damage because you fired 10 guns. Nasty, but not instant death for many ships.

I think you can use barrage fire against multiple targets, but each target can only be hit once.

The wording needs work, but I think that's the intention.

I think they mean that you roll once and do the six damage plus successes. Then you can spend two advantage to get +10 damage because you fired 10 guns. Nasty, but not instant death for many ships.

I think you can use barrage fire against multiple targets, but each target can only be hit once.

The wording needs work, but I think that's the intention.

That's what I had originally thought, but the "to one hit of the attack" threw me, since it implied multiple hits. Overwhelming Barrage can hit multiple targets (once each), and its description is a lot clearer. If Concentrated Barrage does just do one massive damage hit, they should remove that clause and specify that you apply damage just once to one target.

Let's assume a battery of canon with the linked trait. Say, linked 3. (quad laser turrets D5 C3).

Your capship has a battery of 5.

You roll, get 3S 4A...

You can use (non exclusive, not listing other options than linked and barrage)

  1. 4A to hit 3 times at 8 damage each
  2. 2A to hit twice, and 2A to add +5 damage via barrage to the 1st hit. thus, 1 hit at 13, one at 8
  3. 3A to crit, 1A for some other; does an 8 damage hit plus a crit

Now, rolling and getting 1S 7A, same battery:

  1. 6A to hit +3 times, thus 4 hits at 6 damage
  2. 4A to hit +2 times, 2A to barrage the first. 11, 6, and 6 damage, respectively
  3. 2A to barrage, 2A to hit a second time, 3A to crit, damages 11, 6, one does a crit.
  4. 6A crit "twice" with a single hit (In other words, one crit at +10)
  5. 4A to hit +2 times, 3A to crit once. 2 hits of 6 damage, one does a crit.

Light bulb! Yeah, they must have had linked weapons in mind, hadn't thought of that. So, yeah, you can have multiple hits in that one situation.

I still think they need to make the description clearer.

Light bulb! Yeah, they must have had linked weapons in mind, hadn't thought of that. So, yeah, you can have multiple hits in that one situation.

I still think they need to make the description clearer.

Don't forget autofire, either. It's possible that another ship weapon might be given full autofire besides the autoblaster.

I was thinking also about minion grouped weapon arrays.

I think the way those Barrage actions are set up that there won't be minion groups involved. It would be basically a gunnery officer. Minion groups don't work because they are made to take damage and go down easy. That's not going to happen hiding behind Star Destroyer armor. FFG has probably realized this and I bet they will post stats for officers like that .