Friday, December 1, 2017

Intensify Firepower is Really, Really Good.

Intensify Firepower is really, really good guys.

This card not only gives you a way to increase the average damage for your fleet, but also increases the damage floor.  And it does it for each shot.  We're going to take a look at this card, and the benefit it gives, comparing it to other similar cards, and see just how good this guy is.





Damage Boost:


How much damage does this add to your fleet?  Well, that is kind of difficult to figure out.  Let's start by assuming a single ship, and a single shot.  On any given shot, Intensify Firepower will increase your damage by 1 if you roll a non-hit (assuming you aren't keeping an accuracy).  So, for any given color of die, you can add the following damage on average:

Red:  .375  Blue:  .25  Black:  .25

Not too bad, and we're definitely adding more damage to the Red dice, which are fickle to begin with.  As we add more dice to the mix though, the expected damage goes up, based on this equation:

X = Chance to Roll Some Damage & Y = Number of dice
1 - (X ^ Y)

Expanding this out, we get the following damage boost for 3 dice of a specific color:

Red:  .755  Blue:  .578  Black:  .578
 
The more dice you roll, the closer this number gets to "1".  An ISD-II with Chimera title and this Fleet Command equipped adds .952 damage.

I know what you're thinking:  "Almost but not quite 1 damage isn't a lot."  Well, you're not wrong, but you're not right either.  Adding an unmodified Red or Blue die adds .75 damage on average, so already this is a better deal than a Concentrate Fire dial command, Slaved Turrets (6 points), Spiral Armaments (9 points), Expanded Armaments (10 points). High Capacity Ions (8 points) and Quad Battery Turrets (5 points).  Rerolling a blank die only gives .75*(1-(X^Y)), making this already slightly better than the token you spent to activate the card, and Dual Turbolaser Turrets (5 points).  And don't forget you can discard the card to activate it without the token.

In fact, the only upgrades that really outshine it for adding a floor to your attacks are SW7 Ions (5 points) which add 1.00 average damage if you have 4 Blue dice, and Turbolaser Reroute Circuit (7 points), which adds 2(1-(X^Y)) plus the odds of only rolling 1 damage.

But that's only one shot.


Force Multiplier:


This makes every shot you take statistically better*.  Every.  Single.  Shot.

*As long as you're shooting a ship.

Where this shines though, are ships that either don't have a lot of good ways to reroll attacks.  Namely your Red dice ships.  Add Gunnery Team (or Advanced Gunnery) and now you're averaging nearly 2 additional damage for 6 points from that ISD-II.  Get a Pelta and some CR-90A's and leave the Turbolaser Reroutes at home.  The damage can multiply very, very quickly.

The best part about this, is it is quantifiable how much average damage you will add with this.  All Fighters Follow Me! is a good card, but it's difficult to put a hard number on the amount of squadrons that you can get into the fight with it, vs not activating it.  Entrapment Formation! also has this problem - what is the actual value in terms of damage caused / saved for a speed change?  Often the true impact is felt the next turn.  Shields to Maximum is a single shield, but as we've discovered in the past, offense is better than defense, and the shield comes at an awkward time (when you activate).

This upgrade would be good on the Cymoon Refit or ISD II / Chimera just by itself, adding a floor and freeing up the weapons slots for other things.  It would be good on a Command Pelta just by itself, giving the Pelta much needed dice manipulation.  But in either case, you have lot more fleet to build around than just that one ship.  Consider Gozantis, even Assault Carrier Gozantis with the Red die out the front.  Consider CR90A's and Scout Hammerheads.  Consider Nebulon B's.  All ships greatly improved by this upgrade, and inexpensive enough to leverage multiple shots per turn.  Hell, it works just fine with a pair of long range ISDs, or with a Disposable Capacitor VSDII backing up your flagship.


Long story short, this is a point efficient command that should see a lot of play, even if it isn't flashy, and I'm excited to put it on the table.

10 comments:

  1. Yeah, my first thought was to drop all the TRC's from a corvette swarm and take this + more ships. A Gozanti swarm is interesting as well. Perhaps combined with a Sloane swarm to kill by a thousand papercuts?

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  2. Don't you think you should wait with posting this until you have some experience with this card?

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    1. If this was a movement or defensive effect, I would say yes, but it is literally good enough as a standalone upgrade for an ISD or Pelta based on math, and is fleet wide.

      To quote Carl, "I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!"

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  3. Do you think that Intensify Firepower might be enough to start making heavy turbolaser turrets worthwhile? It seems what they've lacked is a way to consistently start doing enough damage to hull to compare to xi7s

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  4. What is actually a steal is giving the ISD, best ship in game, a fleet command title. Its crazy as it stands. Rebels are stuck with the Pelta, worst ship in game, while you get Fleet command now with four differently flavoured ISDs...

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  5. Can you show the objectives now that weekend regionals are over? Just for the hell of it...

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  6. Funny enough, the first thing that came to mind was a command ISD-II or Kuat with 3x Aquitens with DTTs. That damage variance is extremely high and works perfectly with how DTTs innately function.

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  7. Does it work if a ship double arcs? or just one shot?

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  8. Does it work for double arcs? or just one shot?

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    Replies
    1. It does in fact work with every shot your ship takes.

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