Forums

Ah, yes, I agree with your reading of that. I have obviously conflated the attacker reading with the counter one. 

It can't.  The reason it works like that for the attacker is every hit above 4 deals a damage according to the table.  It says at 4+ Counters "The attacker takes one hull point", but doesn't say anything about subsequent counters.

Every point of difference after 4 successes causes an additional hull point of damage. It can be way worse than 1 damage. 

The worst thing that can happen to the assaulting ship is it takes 1 hull point and the worst thing that can happen to a defending ship is it gets removed from the board.  I would say 3 hits would be a substantial victory, though if your target is in Chaos & disarray, 1 hit isn't bad.  The card that makes Exploding hits count as heavy counters is a great way to mitigate an attack and push for the counter attack, but you don't generate new dice on the defense roll.   I don't really count the re-roll cards as a pro for the defender, only because the attacker can play their own re-roll as well if their initial roll was poor.  Its more like a wash and doesn't really favor anyone unless one of the players doesn't have it in hand or on command.  Again, not every ship is made for assaulting, and regarding the Dao, I wouldn't throw it up against a ship that was great at assaulting, such as the Crown Lionhearted ships.   The Dao is perfectly fine just running up with its Hoquiang and causing that much disruption.  Different situations call for different tactics. 

How did this go?

Sorry, but I certainly cannot agree assaults favour attackers.  They get an average of about 7-10 dice (of course there are dedicated vesels getting more) and face an average of about 14 dice back. Sure, they get Exploding Hits, but given you need to win by 5 points to do anything of substance in victory?  With 5 of the 60 V/V cards counting Explosions on defence and 10 more of them being rerolls, I would say that the odds almost always favour the defender. 

If you get 3 Dao in range for their Hoquiang, you can end up doing 5-6 hull points to w/e they hit, as long as you get the minimum hits to breach armor.  Afterwards, And if you can get positioning, you can force another disorder condition due to collision or Full Reverse.  I will agree that Dao are not the best Assault ships available, but Assault does favor the attacker because the attacker can get exploding hits provided the defender isn't obscured.  And you can further the odds with SRS tokens, because you can remove an SRS token to add a dice to the Assault along side ship support(which is +2 per ship), where as the defender only gets help from escorts and their own SRS.  So the Dao vs. Dao scenario could end up in favor of the assaulting Dao.  But you wouldn't want to chance this against a Lionhearted unit.  The Cryo-generator is better for littering the map with terrain rather than attacking units.  Using it as an attack is only beneficial if you can get the most out of its blast.  There was a batrep posted by the esoteric order of gamers recently where the Commonwealth player used his cryo-generator and destroyed a unit of 5 Merian Frigates at around the 28 minute mark.  But, its still better used trying to force your opponent out of position.  As far as the Repulsion generator on them,  or any ship in commonwealth, it would make Hammer sweep more of a reality.  In regards to the generators, I was replacing the aft gun on most ships, and the Dao i was replacing the HGB.  The only factionthat can replace internal generators to my knowledge is Enlightened, because a lot of their cruisers have internal shields that can be swapped. 

Ah, excellent point, I completely forgot you can only turn off a generator when firing at a squadron! Those are some interesting ideas. they don't feel very good, for example, on a cruiser because the Huoquiang really needs to be fired independently against units, and cause damage to get it's benefits, which has only worked for me against destroyers. Point blank for guns is bad, but broadsides are OK in that range. I virtually never get to ram because anything that close is so damaged or dead I'd just lose the unit if I roll a "6". Interesting tactical ideas though, I'll be sure to give them a chance in some games (when I get the chance of course). I wouldn't ever assault with a cruiser to be honest, unless I had killed the defences earlier. If a full dao squadron assaulted itself (mirror matching), the offensive party gets 11 dice, and the defender gets 15... Not exactly great odds. maybe I use assaulting wrong? Use it to finish off basically dead ships? But considering how few guns are actually good in close range, it would be a pretty unlikely scenario... On the Khatanga, my first thought is why aren't you taking a Tobolsk instead! :p But on a serious note, the Ice bergs are kinda eh, to stop someone shooting at you, you need to roll a 6, otherwise they can just shoot over it. You can't put it within 5" of a model so going around it isn't difficult either,  so you lose virtually no speed going round them. I mean, the ram is solid, 18 dice is good, but ram is affected by obscured (for some odd reason) and 18 is a little low to hope for good damage with no explosions. Still, it would be a solid hit. I assume if a unit is expected to take fire, it needs a shroud generator, it will do wonders for survivability. It's pretty darn hard to line up a ram without turning, so you won't get the hammer sweep and if you do, you almost certainly won't be getting broadsides on the target. I feel like sitting back and shooting at the target is a much better option. I mean, I think the Khatanga is an enormous waste of points, but trying to think how it could be useful. The cryo-generator is a bloody weak generator, I just don't think the icebergs are good enough. For every 2 of them I get 3 khutsovs, and I'd rather the khutsovs hands down. I noticed with the Khtanga again the only way the devs can makle units viable is more guns, so it got a rocket battery... There really is a repeating pattern here... Back on topic, at RB2, you can get 15 dice from guns, 6 from the rocket, 4 from the broadside. The ram nets you 18 dice, guns are likely 8, and rockets 6. In this instance the ram is the better option agreed. However, you need to traverse a LOT of ground to ram something, unless your opponent is just YOLO'ing at you? chances of your opponent going "I sure hope he doesn't ram me with that dedicated ramming ship" are pretty darn low. even with skimming, keeping the range is the ideal scenario, but you could be on to something using it as a dead-zones unit to control your enemies movements... that has real potential. Board control and making your opponent activate stuff is pretty critical.  Where did you get the points for in-built generators from? Is there a resource we can look at that kind of thing? It strikes me as super strange something in-built is cheaper than replacing a gun...

The idea is not to end your activation on terrain, as the card that can turn generators offline can only be played during an attack on  a target, not during the opponent's movement.  Repulsion can allow you to ram or get into point blank range quickly for those ships that would benefit from those actions.  For example, take a Dao Light Cruiser group and replace the HGB with a Repulsion generator and they could use the skimming to launch their Huoquiang attacks on a unit, and may even be in assault range afterward.  Or even replace the Khatanga's rear gun with a Repulsion generator so that it can move over its own icebergs and/or terrain to pull off a ramming maneuver.  Between the ramming, Broadside shots, and assault(assuming you don't whiff the ramming roll), that is a lot of damage you can do to a whole unit in one activation.  And yes, they are not free upgrades, but if they are around the 3-5 range, in most units its a 9-15 point drain, which isn't too bad.