Strategy: Foresight Part 1

Like other combat strategy games, Dog Fight: Starship Edition relies heavily on the combination of the meta game (the components/deck build you bring to the game), your tactical execution, and management of the resources at your disposal. As experienced players will tell you in this sort of game timing is of the essence.

Planning ahead is particularly important in Dog Fight since you must plan out multiple moves in advance before any of them are revealed and are highly likely to see the situation change in real time.

The ATTACK card Clear Shot is a good example of the importance of planning ahead, as well as its benefits if done well. The basic use of this card allows two possibilities. Either one can be very beneficial, either extending Range for the turn or ignoring Line of Sight and obstruction limitations for the turn. However, both can be used essentially at the same time.

With the use of Heavy Guns or the Achilles ship ability a player can duplicate this card's effect in one tier. The effect of "Clear Shot" states to "choose one of the following effects" and then provides 2 options. Thus a player can first use the second effect of "Clear Shot" and ignore LOS and obstructions for the remainder of the turn, and then attack with the same card in the same tier by selecting its first effect. Duplicating a single card stacks all its modifiers for that "attack", that "card", or "for the remainder of the turn", which ever applies.

Another trick to think about is altering the attacks you declare in real time. There are some situations where inflicting more damage ends up causing more harm to you than to your intended target. In such situations you can reduce your own attack by playing Deflected Attack. Normally you would save this card until your vessel is the target of combat damage, in which case you have 2 options on how much damage is mitigated.

On the other hand, you can use "Deflected Attack" in an unorthodox way. If an attack is declared in a situation where you would also suffer combat damage (i.e., the target has "Reactive Armor: Electromagnetic" equipped) this may or may not matter depending on your current Hull. If your Hull is almost gone, the effect damage originating from your own attack could destroy your ship. But by using "Deflected Attack" to reduce the damage of the shot you save yourself for another round.

There are lots of ways where foresight and timing, combined with wise use of resources, can make or break your moves.

THE CODE OF ADM SEBASTIAN