Federation Commander - Newsletter August 2011

August 2011

     Peter Wiggen asks: Ship A moves first and strikes a mine. Ship B does a High Energy Turn so the mine strikes on a clean shield.Mine explosions are resolved. Is that the sequence of events? The player who laid the mine was angry because he thinks the mine explosion should have been resolved immediately. Who is right? I think the Sequence of Play resolves the issue, but wanted to make sure.
    ANSWER: The explosion is triggered by the motion in 6A2, but is not applied until the appropriate part of 6A3. That means that since the High Energy Turn also occurs during 6A2, the explosion damage is applied to the post-HET facing shield.
     Note that High Energy Turns occur during the normal movement sequence, so that ship B could only do a High Energy Turn in reaction to ship A's movement if it was moving faster or, if moving the same speed, had a better Turn Mode than ship A.
     Follow-up question: What if ship A had an ESG that would have swept said mine? What then?
     ANSWER: Annex #2 tells us that the interaction of mines and ESGs is resolved before damage from mines, so the mine would apply its damage against the ESG (and possibly ship A as well) by (G23.61). The ESG will absorb all of the mine's explosion and funnel the remainder to the facing shield. Even ships in the same hex as the ESG ship will be unaffected by the mine.
    Jon Berry asks: I recall seeing a chart at one point that described the 'standard' configuration for the various classes of Barbarian [Module C4 (R55.0)] ships to the empires of the Alpha Octant. Was this an official thing, or am I confusing it with the similar one done for the Orions Pirates as part of their Anarchist article?
     ANSWER: The chart was in Module C4 in the Barbarian R section, i.e., see Page 46 of Module C4.
    Jonathan Jordan asked: A rules question came up today that I could not find the answer to. I know it is possible to beam crew units, pilots, Boarding Parties or whatever onto a shuttlecraft (to recover spent scatter-packs, deactivate suicide shuttles, and take over shuttles, right?), but is it possible to use the transporter to recover crew from a shuttlecraft? This came up as someone wanted to recover an Ace Fighter Pilot that was about to take a dogfight drone to the face. This quickly spawned into a discussion, while looking for the relevant rule about possibly withdrawing Boarding Parties from hostile shuttle takeovers during the uncertain outcomes as well.
    ANSWER: The rules allow you to beam pilots out of shuttles or fighters with their permission, see (G8.15). It cannot be done during a dogfight, so if your pilot had the drone launched at him while he was in a dogfight (J7.25), he may have to grab the eject lever. Even if the dogfight drone smacks him, there is still a chance he will survive, see (J6.6). But in general you can transport pilots and/or crew units, to include Boarding Parties, off of friendly shuttles; enemy shuttles have to give you permission.
     As to beaming a Boarding Party onto an enemy shuttle and trying to extract them from an "issue in doubt" result, sorry, but no. Rule (D7.602) includes this as its final sentence: "Neither side can transport their personnel off the shuttle until the action is decided."
     Francois Lemay asks: Two ships in same hex each have 100 points of plasma targeted on them; both have conducted emergency deceleration and launched a wild weasel. Both wild weasels, while still in same hex as the ships, are hit by 100 points of plasma damage. According to (J3.31), 100 damage points (or more) on a wild weasel yields ten damage points to the shield. Since there are two wild weasels in same hex, are they treated seperately thus each would yield ten points damage for a total of twenty points of damage to the ships in same hex?
     ANSWER: Rule (J3.302) does not say anything about combining damage from separate wild weasels. The damage from each wild weasel would probably strike a different shield. For each ship, the damage from the wild weasel it launched would strike the shield facing the launch direction of the shuttle, while damage from the other ship's wild weasel would strike a random shield. Ship A might have launched its weasel such that it would take the collateral damage on its #3 shield. Ship B might have launched its weasel such that it would take the collateral damage on its #5 shield. While those points are fixed, each ship will have to roll randomly to determine the shield that is hit by the other ship's collateral damage. This is irrespective of their relative facings towards each other, the speeds at which they entered the hex, the direction from which the plasma torpedoes entered the hex, and all other conditions. Thus the ships might be oriented such that ship A is in front of ship B (ship A's #4 shield is facing ship B's #1 shield). Ship A selected its #3 shield to take the collateral damage from its weasel, and ship B selects its #5 shield to take the damage. Ship A then rolls a die to see where it will take the collateral damage from ship B's weasel, rolling a 6 and scoring the collateral damage on its #6 shield, even though the weasel was obviously well behind it. Ship B then rolls, and its captain complains bitterly when the collateral damage from ship A's weasel is also scored on its #5 shield.