Federation Commander

[Grant]

Can someone please clarify an aspect of 5F2c (capturing ships). In order to capture a ship, your marines have to eliminate all enemy marines, and then do an additional number of casualties equal to the number of control boxes on the ship.

Do you have to 'capture' control boxes that have already been destroyed, (prior to the boarding action) ?

Also, what happens if your marines successfully eliminate all enemy marines, and do additional casualties equal to all the control boxes, BUT the number of surviving marines is less then the total number of control boxes on the ship. Do you still control the ship?
5F2c seems to imply that you have to have as many marines on board as control boxes, or else you can't control the ship. Is that correct? And if it is correct, then what happens?

[mjwest]

You do not have to capture disabled control boxes.

The other issue was discussed here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4120

The key piece was:

[Grant]

Ok, I follow you. You don't have to capture previously destroyed/disabled control boxes in order to capture a ship. But you must have as many marines as control boxes in order to maintain control after the ship has been captured.

When determining the number of marines you must have on board, do destroyed control boxes count?

[mjwest]

As in the prior case, no.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Itharus]

Pardon my necromancy, but I had a question about capturing vessels as well, namely: what happens once you capture the ship? Do you gain control of it and are henceforth able to use it as your own vessel? Or is it simply taken out of action? Do you have to disengage with it?

I was reading the marines section in the reference ebook and I didn't see any clarification of what "capturing" actually means in game terms.

Also... can you scuttle a captured ship or massacre it's remaining crew (to leave it uncontrolled)? What? I like cat people, bug people, and Romulans. Don't tell me a little massacre here and there is out of the question?

[mjwest]

Rule (3E2) describes the limitations of operating a captured ship. Do note that a ship that is recaptured by the original owners has none of these restrictions. These only apply when held by someone who is not the original owners.

Once captured, a ship may disengage, in which case the new owners get the ship. (This also provides a significantly boost to victory points (8B2b), if the scenario uses victory points to determine the winner.) A ship may also be self-destructed using rule (3E3) and (5E7) while captured, as long as control is never lost through the end of the turn.

As for massacring the crew, that is up to the players involved. Strictly speaking, the crew are invisible to the game system, and are just along for the ride. Also, technically speaking, you must evacuate the crew (5E7) to self-destruct a captured ship. (Quick note: You *must* evacuate the crew for the self-destruction to work. You can't self-destruct your own crew/marines, and without having your marines present, the ship reverts to the original owner's control because of that invisible crew, preventing the self-destruction.) However, if you want to make special rules for slaughtering hundreds of people for the fun of it, ADB won't stop you. Or if you want to just ignore the rule preventing you for having the marines commit suicide, that's fine, too. Then everyone can die on the ship as it blows up.

Rule (3E2) is only intended to be in effect during the scenario where the ship is captured. What happens after the scenario is up to you. What options you have with a captured ship are purely outside the scope of Federation Commander. Knock yourself out.

From an game setting perspective, a captured ship will generally only be used for political gain (e.g. we return your ship and you give us a bunch of hostages/prisoners), a special one-time trick, or training/target practice. If it is too damaged to do any of that, it probably would be scuttled.

What won't happen is (outside a special one-time trick) being used as a combat unit with its original weapons. There is no way to maintain it, and the differing weapons won't work in the larger fleet.

Converting it to use the native systems (i.e. converting a Federation CA to use disruptors and drones) is possible, but will almost never be done. It would cost too much money to convert, and take too much effort to support (since your enemy has the repair parts, not you). While fun to play with, they don't really make any sense in the context of the underlying universe. It is almost always more cost effective to just scrap the ship and feed the proceeds back into producing more ships of your empire's own design. The only time it would be advantageous to convert a ship to your empire's technology is if your empire just doesn't have the ability to produce ships for whatever reason.

But none of that game setting stuff is rules. So, as mentioned earlier, do what makes sense to your group. The important part is to have fun, and if having an unmodified captured Fed CA as part of your Klingon fleet is fun you want to have, go for it.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Itharus]

Ah... 3E2. I was expecting it to be listed with the marines, lol. Thanks much

[mjwest]

Yeah, there should probably be a reference to (3E2) in the marine rules.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Sneaky Scot]

Whilst it is beyond the scope of FC, in SFB there are rules or what you can do with captured ships. Also, in various Captain's Logs, there are a series of articles called "Brothers of the Anarchist" that tells you how various empires might convert captured ships to their own use.
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Nothing is quite as persuasive as a disruptor pistol on slow burn and a rotisserie......

[mjwest]

At this point, and for the purposes of Federation Commander, the Anarchist articles can probably be summed up as follows:
- Swap out heavy weapons for empire's heavy weapons.
- Swap out secondary weapons for empire's secondary weapons.
- Creativity is encouraged (e.g. Fed/Klingon transporter/lab swaps and Hydran/Klingon fighter/drone swaps).
- If the resulting ship is significantly better than your empire's corresponding normal ship, you did it wrong. Try again.

Again, the idea is NOT to create rules for this. The idea is to do what is fun for your group and that your group can agree to. Have fun with this. Don't worry about codifying it.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Itharus]

I was mostly just asking about options for the satisfaction of crushing the enemy and wetting my troops' claws. Could be fun to cook up some follow-up scenarios though