Lol Mark I am discussing actual effects. So pushed pulled or slipped. It is all the same thing. Two ships side slipped and they were able to do what no ship can do. The moved in a side slip twice in a row. You can call it what ever you want. But the effect is impossible for a single ship to do.

Steve it is your call. But if you want to ignore the obvious and large number of rules that this violates. If you want to compare enemy ships fighting each other as the same as friendly ships using the rules to achieve results that no ship can do on its own. And increase its warp speed. And make it possible to dodge torps and bombs. I am not saying the rules have not worked. I am saying this one small aspect...of fleet only rules, makes it a rule breaker. Single ships cannot in anyway do any of this. But a tractor makes a ship faster, turn better, side slip twice in effect, gain movement hexes and even gain warp. Your answer is yeah but the rule has been around a long time. Ignoring all the rules it compromises when used in this one way. Between ships of a friendly fleet.

I just do not see how or why that would be allowed to stand since you know it violates so many rules. Other than you just dont want to redo the rule books? By adding one line of text. Anyway...your call. I completely and very strongly disagree.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 06:00 pm: Edit

Charles H. Carroll:

You might, however, check out Sabot torpedoes (FP11.0).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 06:21 pm: Edit

This is not a new discussion. It comes up now and then when someone new "discovers" something most people know. There have been term papers about this. We're not changing the rules. We knew what they did when we wrote them.

By Charles H Carroll (Carroll) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 06:23 pm: Edit

Lol Steve I am familiar with them. As late year improvements, they make a very nasty weapon. But they come very late to the party.

Anyway, I was just using speed one ships for example and ease of seeing the results. We actually have a mixture so you can do this with any two ships but...it becomes a lot more math intensive. Calculating on the fly what speed you will reduce to, and then both ships have to move on the same imp. Or each ship has to move on opposite impulses in the two impulse window.

I just feel a simple, if you are part of the same fleet and you and your tractored buddy are moving in the same direction, you should each move at the same time the one move you should make. Adding movement hexes is just wrong in this one case.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 06:41 pm: Edit

The existing rules do not violate any rule. It is the rule. You can choose to put your own spin on it to try to get it changed, but it is the rule. Your proposed fix would be a rule violation, that just because two ships are on the same side the laws of physics work differently, not for any valid reason [(G7.91) provides valid reasons for differences, e.g., why when two friendly ships are tractored fire control is interfered with].

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 07:23 pm: Edit

Guys, I said no changes. It's over. Move on to another subject.

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 09:42 pm: Edit

Question re number of scouts in a fleet.
A Hydran fleet has the following ships,
LB, TUG, KN, KN, CRU, SC, SC, SR.
Is this fleet legal even though there are 3 scouts present ?

Thanks.

Cheers
Frank

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 03:25 am: Edit

depends on context. In a campaign where you have 109 ships and 14 scouts and you need ten fleets then you can put 11 scouts in one fleet. When you use the published Fleet doctrine rules I THINK there is a scout limit intended to make you act .
Like you had to spread the scouts over many fleets.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 06:35 am: Edit

Frank see (S8.2). The fleet you listed would be considered legal. You would have to pay the higher economic BPV for each scout as the ships are part of a fleet.

The LB could command an additional 2 ships, 3 if one the additional ships is a War Cruiser (HR or TR) or smaller ship to form a battle group under (S8.282).

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 07:30 am: Edit

I think the force can have just the one normal scout and the SR.
(S8.35), This second scout could be a regular scout if the total battle force has eight or more actual ships.

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 04:44 pm: Edit

Campaign setting but we are using S8.0.
I could not find any reference to the total number of scouts allowed per fleet such as 1 free scout and 1 scout included in a command slot or can a fleet have as many scouts as it can command + the free 1 ?

Cheers
Frank

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 04:54 pm: Edit

Frank LeMay:

Fourth Paragraph of the introduction to (S8.0): "A common feature of "patrol scenarios" is that they have no future and no past. There is no previous battle to affect what ships are available and what condition they are in; there is no future battle to preserve ships for. If playing in a campaign situation, these Patrol scenario restrictions will provide some guidelines, but available ships may force involuntary violations of some provisions. For example, a carrier must have escorts, but if the escorts were lost in a previous battle, they simply are not available."

Basically (S8.0) acknowledges that if you are playing a campaign, whether a huge campaign with multiple battle fleets fighting it out over a wide front, or a campaign that it just tracing the actions of a single fleet, you should follow (S8.0) when it starts, but casualties and replacements may result in a given fleet looking nothing like the rules in (S8.0). So if your campaign circumstances result in the 10th Battlefleet going into action with a Dreadnought and 10 scout ships, it is what your campaign rules led you to. It is not a matter that your opponent can say "you have to only fight with the dreadnought and two scouts, the other eight have to stay off the map." If this is all you have, it is all you have (campaign resulted in the situation). Losses are what losses are, surviving ships are what the surviving ships are, and of course a campaign can see you going into action with several ships badly damaged in previous actions that you could not repair.

Now, rule (S8.25) SCOUTS: "One scout does not count against the command limits."

Rule (S8.35) SCOUTS: "There can be no more than one scout in the free scout slot (S8.25)."

Rule (S8.351) "One PFT or a survey ship could be used in addition to the one allowed scout. This second scout could be a regular scout if the total battle force has eight or more actual ships."

Rule: (S8.361) "Scouts, commando ships, minesweepers, escorts, survey ships, tugs/LTTs without battle or carrier pods, PFTs without heavy weapons, and other support ships are not "combat variants"."

Rule (S8.551) "A police flagship counts as a scout unless it is leading a squadron of at least two other police ships of frigate size or smaller."

So if you were just playing a "patrol game," the force is not legal and you cannot have a second scout (scout in this case is referring to a second SC, not the SR) because you only have seven ships [you had eight with the three scouts, but you cannot have all three scouts under (S8.351)]. So your force could legally have one of the Scouts and the SR (again under (S8.351). If you were to replace the SR with some other warship then you could use both SCs. however, even though you have less than eight ships, you are allowed to use on scout (SC) and can have survey ship or a PFT as a second scout.

But, again, if this was a campaign and the "previous battles" of the campaign you had played out resulted in these being the ships you have available to fight the current battle, the campaign situation is what the campaign situation is. That is to say your opponent may be bringing three maulers to the battle for the same reason (they are what he has available because of the way the campaign played out.

NOTE: In the above cases "what is available. You should still in the campaign follow the doctrines, and if your available ships in the campaign would enable you to field an eighth ship (fleet command rating of 7) and a non-scout is available to be the eighth ship, you should use the non-scout, assuming it is not somehow limited by another rule.

By David Finan (Bbanzai) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 05:20 pm: Edit

So I have a question about some terrain interaction rules. If I have a map with a Class M Planet with an Atmosphere that has a ground based starbase, and that planet is in a nebula. Does the atmosphere of the planet protect the ground base starbase from the full effects of the nebula? Meaning would get its full strength shields. Obviously if you leave the atmosphere (.ie launching shuttles that leave the atmosphere docked ships leaving the atmosphere, firing at ships in the nebula) the nebula rules would apply. But how much of that would affect a ground base.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 05:29 pm: Edit

David Finan:

As long as the base is in fact in an atmosphere, then it is in an atmosphere (not all Class M planets defined in the game have an atmosphere, but if the planet is defined as having one, then it does). Nebula rules would be in force outside the atmosphere, but not within it (shuttles in atmospheric flight are not suddenly swatted into the planet by eddies in the Nebula, but a shuttle that leaves the atmosphere ... you did not like the pilot of that shuttle, did you? The base's weapons and other systems would be affected by the nebula if they in any way interacted with something in the nebula (ECM effects, you are not attaching a tractor beam to anything that is not also in the atmosphere, etc.), but would operate normally within the atmosphere of the planet.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 07:22 pm: Edit

Scouts can be in the battlegroup if you had another ship that would qualify to be in the battlegroup. See (S8.2822).

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 07:51 pm: Edit

Thank you SPP !

Cheers
Frank

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Saturday, April 11, 2020 - 07:18 am: Edit

Shameless plug here ………… :>)

Looking for a Hydran Admiral replacement in Border Wars campaign.
Current year is spring Y164, Hydran have 7 borders, 4 with the Carnivons and 3 with the Klingons.

This is an online campaign using Matt Potter's wonderful program !
No book keeping involved, just assign your forces to scenarios, fight, enter result, repeat.

Scenario results pending on winning or losing could be inflate your income, deflate it, gain or lose borders etc.

If interested, please send me an email.

Cheers
Frank

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Saturday, April 11, 2020 - 10:59 pm: Edit

Hydran Admiral has been found.

Thanks.

Cheers
Frank

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - 05:03 pm: Edit

Mines.
If there is a Dummy T-bomb in a stack of other mines and a ship enters the detection zone. Does the Ship Roll for all the mines and the dummy? Or is the dummy ignored and only the other Mines rolled for?

I can not find a rule on this. I am sure there is one were.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - 07:15 pm: Edit

Gregory S Flusche:

(M2.911) Dummy mines appear and operate in all ways as explosive mines, but will not explode, trigger, or do anything else.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - 02:01 pm: Edit

Gregory S. Flusche:

As noted, the dummy T-bomb does not do anything, but it is not removed from the map because it might have been set for a different size class from the ship (drone, shuttle/Fighter/bomber, PF/Inteceptor/Skiff, etc.). The only real way you will know if it is a dummy (besides destroying it with less than four damage points) is if you moved every size class next to it and it never triggered.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - 05:28 pm: Edit

ok

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - 05:57 pm: Edit

I take it back, a Dummy T-bomb does two things:

It sits on the map screaming as loud as it can "I am a mine."

It takes one damage point to destroy.

You move next to it at your own risk (it might not be a dummy T-bomb after all), but if you do move next to it, does nothing but continue to scream "I am a mine." The fact that it did nothing else (as noted) can mean that it is a real mine with instructions for triggering that your ship (or shuttle, or drone, or etc.) did not meet.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, April 16, 2020 - 04:17 pm: Edit

Old T-bomb trick.

I was being pursued by an enemy, so I beamed out a T-bomb such that if he moved forward it would trigger off his down #2 shield.

His side slip mode was not satisfied, so he turned, facing his down #2 shield toward my ship, safe to do since I had no weapons left to fire (neither did he, but he wanted to be on top of my ship when they recycled), as my ship was in pretty bad shape and moving slower than he was.

Since he was in pursuit mode, and did not want to fall any further behind me, on his next move he side slipped toward my ship, triggering the T-bomb I had laid out my hatch on his down #2 shield.

The resulting damage did not destroy his ship, but he went from pursuing me to moving to disengage because I now had more weapons (once they recycled) then he did and was beginning to turn to chase him.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, April 16, 2020 - 05:06 pm: Edit

Nothing more satisfying than beaming a dummy T-bomb ahead of the Andro chasing you, and then watch him displace hop over it and run right smack into the real T-bomb you rolled out the shuttle hatch.


Garth L. Getgen