Wesley's STCCG card of the day #56

Hi, folks,

opinions differ quite a bit about today's card, but see for yourself:

EXOCOMP

Personnel, Federation, uncommon.
Integrity 9
Cunning 8
Strength 1
If aboard ship, can repair damage in two of your full truns, without returning to outpost. ENGINEER. Universal.
"Sentient artificial life-form incorporating an advanced microreplication sys- tem. Specializes in repair tasks. Servomechanism designed by Dr. Farallon."
This is the first card we have with a very specialized skill. (Hope we see more of them in the future, however.) Besides being an ENGINEER with great INTEGRITY and CUNNING and the (sometimes very important) fact that this card in not affected by Love interests, diseases, and similarily nasty stuff, we also get a special ability: The ability to repair a damaged ship.

What is this good for? Well, not for battle. It is WAY too slow to work in battle, as it needs two full turns to work and we can spare only one. However, it is great against those "nuisance" dilemmas and interrupts. Auto-Destruct, Null space, Nanites, Gravitic Mine and Microbiotic Colony all damage ships only once, so there is no need for an immediate repair. But the time spent returning to an outpost, waiting two turns and coming back to whatever I want to do is way too long. By the time I get my ship back into action, I can easily have lost the game against a fast deck. This is where Exocomp kicks in. The most I'll lose of this is 2x4 Range points (if my damaged ship was the Enterprise or something similarily fast).

Although this might translate into more than 8 movement points lost (let's say the sequence I want to bridge is 2-4-3-4-3-2-5-4, figure that one out for yourself - it is the worst case!) this loss is still sustainable. And in most cases, I don't even want to move immediately. Most ship damage will come from Dilemmas, (there are just more Dilemmas that do it than other cards) and thus I will just be wanting to continue my mission attempt. In this case I can just go on and have the repairs as a side effect.

Hint: in rare occasions, it is even possible to repair battle damage if you are willing to flee and you have a Transwarp Conduit, Distortion of Space/Time Continuum, Temporal Rift or Time Travel Pod. The former two will only work, if your opponent has a ship with range 7 or less, however and if span constellations work in your favor. You are well advised to calculate your escape route before attempting this.

Favorite combo(s):
Ratings for : EXOCOMP 

Wesley's rating:                8.0
Allen Castaban's rating:        4.0
Data's rating:                  7.6
Habib's rating:                 6.0
Bryan's rating:                 6.5
Jeff's rating:                  1.0
Holt Kernodle's rating:         4.0
Jack's rating:                  6.5
Jason's rating:                 6.5
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AVERAGE RATING:                 5.6
Please direct all email concerning card of the day to: blohmer@pips11.informatik.uni-mannheim.de
LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

"A couple of lightyears can't keep good friends apart"