Federation Commander

When do I declare that I want to do Directed Damage? Is it before rolling the firing weapons' dice, or is it before rolling the damage allocation die?

There would be occasional times where it could actually matter......

Rule 3D4c says it is declared before the first die is rolled. This was later clarified (not sure where, but I would guess trying Briefing #1 is a good idea, as it's in my running rules update file) to mean before the first to hit roll is made.

So do it after declaring weapons fire but before even picking up dice to see what hits.

Hey Tony,

Paul is correct. Steve clarified this for us about a year ago.

The declaration for directed targeting is most definitely, positively made before the first die roll [that being the "to hit" roll] is made. I think I like the idea of making it before you even pick-up the dice. It's not strictly necessary, but it can save a lot of grief later about when it was / wasn't declared.

Prior to the "to-hit" roll is correct.

Heh. Thanks, guys. That's pretty unambiguous, I'd say It makes a lot of sense in every way.

This definitely makes sense - you can't shoot at a particular part of the enemy ship until you've decided what you are shooting at! Also your hit dice could affect whether you want to use directed targetting or not so it is important when you declare it.

For example, if you were uncertain whether your salvo would result in a large, crippling salvo causing lots of skipped hits, or less damage with hardly any skips (maybe a big barrage of photon torpedoes or something - not overloads because you can't use directed targetting with them). In this case, because skipped hits are lost when using directed targetting, if you are going to do a huge amount of damage in one shot it often isn't worth using directed targetting as you will probably do more damage overall with as much damage to the enemy's critical systems without using it.