Federation Commander

Kang has posted a tacnote that if you can score 30 points of damage in a volley including a disruptor vs an Andromedan, you should use Directed Targeting vs weapons in the hope of knocking out a PA panel (which are hit on drone).

My criticism of this is twofold:

Firstly, it's hard to get 30 points of damage without overloading. Yes, the volley includes phasers. I think the only way most disruptor boats are going to get 30+ point volleys without overloading is if they are closer than the Andro typically wants to allow (range 3 or less) and fire an alpha strike. Hitting 20+ points is easily do-able, but that third burn-through point is hard to get.

Secondly (and less importantly), if you're firing at a Satellite Ship, you stand a higher chance of losing damage if you use Directed Targeting. (If you're firing at a mothership, you don't lose any damage.) On tables #3 and #4 of the DAC, you'll lose the second and first points of damage respectively if you are firing at a sat ship because they don't have labs, shuttles or C Warp. If you don't target, you'll get slightly deeper into the DAC, and still hit something good.

So if you must fire without using overloads, then directed targeting could b a good idea.

With an Andro, you need to hit the TRs, Bats, or PAs to really hurt him. You need 30 pts with a disrupter. Other boxes are mostly worthless.

If you do get 30 pts with a disrupter, you have 50% chance of hitting one of those 3 systems without targetting and 83% chance of hitting them with targetting. Well worth losing the chance of losing a bit of damage to skips.