Good question. I've always assumed that you can only pre-load what you have the battery power to pay for.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Friday, April 19, 2013 - 02:12 am: Edit

You can always preload/complete second turn arming for plasma and start with empty batteries (unless scenario rules define otherwise). The fact that your batteries have less power than it would take in a normal energy allocation does not matter.

If you have more batteries than power required for preload/second turn plasma arming you have power in the extra batteries for the first turn.

First case example a Federation CA has four photons and 4 batteries. The Fed player may opt to preload the 4 photons and all 4 batteries will be empty.

Second case example, a Romulan WE has one type R plasma and 6 batteries. The Romulan player may opt to complete the second turn of arming on the R torp and have 4 batteries with power and 2 batteries that are empty of power.

By Cody Jones (Codyjones) on Friday, April 19, 2013 - 07:45 am: Edit

That's what I thought. Thanks for the help!

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, April 19, 2013 - 04:36 pm: Edit

Just to confirm Paul's answer, that is the case. The point of the (4C2c) pre-game arming is to get some "free" power. The original rule said arming was done and batteries were empty, regardless of the number of each. However, that caused a few ships to be penalized and put in a bad situation. So, the rule was amended to cap the number of batteries used to no worse that the actual power cost.

So, yes, your Federation CA can pre-game arm all four torpedoes even though it only has four batteries instead of eight.

By Cody Jones (Codyjones) on Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 07:21 am: Edit

Thanks for the quick answers, guys!

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - 10:02 pm: Edit

I'm not sure if this is the right topic to post this in; but I have posted about this once or twice over on the FC forum, yet I am still not quite certain on this.


The Main Era Galactic Survey Cruiser was offered as a sample Borders of Madness Ship Card in Communiqué #29. At the time, the BoM designation was due to the ship using special sensors, which had yet to be integrated into "vanilla" FC.

(This limitation was the reason why the Middle Years GSC in Briefing #2 had its epecial sensors removed - with its Squadron Scale PV based on the combat BPV of the unrefitted GSC in SFB, rather then the economic BPV typically used when converting scout ships over to FC.)

Similarly, the SparrowHawk-C (which technically counts as a "survey cruiser" in its own right) was offered as a BoM Ship Card in Communiqué #40.

However, since then, the special sensor rules have been integrated into subsequent revisions to the "vanilla" FC ruleset. Indeed, the GSC has been given a hi-res Ship Card as a part of Federation Ship Card Pack #2. Yet the bottom of the GSC Ship Card in that newer file still lists it as a "Borders of Madness" vessel.


To clarify, now that rules for special sensors exist in the "vanilla" game, do the GSC and/or SPC now count as "standard" Main Era Ship Cards? Or are either (or both) still treated as "BoM" ships for the time being - at least until, or unless, a decision is made on whether or not to include a broader range of survey cruisers into the game system at some future point in time?

By Sean Johnson (Seanxor) on Friday, July 15, 2016 - 10:23 pm: Edit

I have a question about transporters. If there are two opposed ships that can meet all of the condition to use a transporter ( within five hexes, down/lowered shield, paid energy equal to movement, and has an unused transporter), and both want to transport a neutral object onto their ship who gets priority and can actually transport the object?

By Mike Bennett (Mike) on Saturday, July 16, 2016 - 09:14 am: Edit

I'm interested to see the answer to this one, too.

My guess is that it will be like an even tractor auction and neither can conduct the transport operation.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, July 17, 2016 - 12:28 am: Edit

This is definitely an issue that wasn't covered directly in the rules.

Unless Steve wants to do something different, I would go with the idea that they cancel each other out. I am sure we can add in something about the transporter energy fields interfering with each other and cancelling each other out if we have to, but, yes, I think they will simply cancel each other out.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, July 17, 2016 - 10:49 am: Edit

Transporter Auction?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, July 17, 2016 - 03:37 pm: Edit

Since the only alternative is to toss a coin (and I hate having scenario victory decided that way) we will go with Mike W's "cancel each other out".

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, July 17, 2016 - 09:10 pm: Edit

Shaun,

The way transporters' power works, that would end up being very weird. Let's just leave the auctions to tractors.

Besides, we do have things cancel out for other systems (e.g. webs and ESGs), so it is a rather natural conclusion.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, July 17, 2016 - 11:21 pm: Edit

Shawn,

I apologize for misspelling your name. I didn't realize it until too late to change the post. I intended no disrespect.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, July 18, 2016 - 12:30 am: Edit

How does SFB handle this?

By Nick Blank (Nickgb) on Monday, July 18, 2016 - 08:45 am: Edit

I think just by usually requiring the transporting unit to "take control" of the thing to be transported with boarding parties first. Rarely are there any scenarios with truly "neutral" items to be beamed aboard where this sort of conflict could occur, and when it comes up it is covered by special scenario rule to handle the specific situation. Rule (G8.15) speaks to the need to capture enemy items before transport, but the rules do not mention the simultaneous attempt to transport "neutral" items.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Monday, July 18, 2016 - 09:08 am: Edit

I don't think SFB handles this situation, either. In both cases, the normal situations are to transport "owned" items (usually personnel) and not "neutral" objects. Most "neutral" objects have to be tractored, not transported.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, July 18, 2016 - 10:08 am: Edit

Would there be any advantage in this case for empires with "superior" transporter capabilities - by which I mean the transporters themselves have capabilities which other empires lack, such as the Andromedan ability to launch or recover satellite ships - or would an Andromedan player and a non-Andro player cancel the other's transporters out while attempting to grasp a neutral object?


On a side note, can rival Andro players in a "civil war" scenario use their transporters to block their opponent's transporter recoveries? As in, if Mothership A tries to beam a given satellite ship (or energy module) aboard, could Mothership B use one of its own transporters to "cancel out" this recovery?

And to clarify, would I be correct in assuming that a non-Andro ship cannot use its own transporters to try and interfere with an Andromedan recovery operation, since other empires presently in FC lack the transporter capacity required to beam a satellite ship around in the first place?

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Monday, July 18, 2016 - 10:37 am: Edit

If my understanding of the rules is correct...

1. No. A transporter is a transporter.

2. No. You can't transport a thing owned by another player without that player's permission. Therefore, you can't use a transporter to affect an unfriendly sat ship in this way.

3. Same as 2.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, July 18, 2016 - 11:46 am: Edit

To the best of my knowledge (and by this I mean memory), having checked the rulebook, this issue only comes up in Star Fleet Battles in some scenarios. I think the scenarios either ignored the issue (as above, i.e., the issue did not occur to the author or to ADB at the time and was not discovered in playtesting) or in some cases specifically noted a solution. I do not remember for sure if the solution was "nothing happens/cancels out" or "each player rolls a die with the higher roll succeeding; re-roll any ties," but both systems may have been used in different scenarios where the issue was discovered.

The problem is that there are a lot of scenarios to review to find such issues.

For what it is worth, I would tend to go with the "Nothing happens" solution with the caveat (in Star Fleet Battles) that the object (or person) cannot be transported for four consecutive impulses (this is the same interval between two hit-and-run raids hitting the same object). In Federation Commander that means until the end of the next Impulse. Note that this does not stop both parties from beaming troops into the same compartment of a neutral ship, the issue then being resolved in the combat phase at the end of the turn.

Gary Carney:

I would say Terry O'Carroll is correct.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, September 09, 2016 - 04:00 pm: Edit

MIKE WEST: I need you to review this entire Q&A topic and send me anything that needs to be in communique. As soon as practicable. Then I'm going to delete and restart the whole topic. Do you think we need to copy into the restarted topic all of the Q&A from Communique since Revision six?

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, September 09, 2016 - 04:09 pm: Edit

I will work on this over the weekend.

By Oliver Upshaw (Oliverupshaw) on Friday, April 28, 2017 - 11:51 am: Edit

Looking over the free rules for Fed Commander I see that Photons and Disrupters automatically hit at close range in this system. While in SFB they cannot be fired in standard mode at these ranges. They can be fired in overload, but that causes feedback. Is there any penalty applied for firing Disruptors/Photons at ranges that they can not miss? I am assuming not and this is balanced by the fact that you get several movement opportunities were firing opportunities so that it is harder to get to these ranges when it is time to fire.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, April 28, 2017 - 08:31 pm: Edit

There is no feedback damage for firing at point blank range, whether with normal loads or overloads.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 02:56 pm: Edit

Update to the cloaking rules modification.
Current version of the cloaking rules modifications are as follows:
(5P3c) Seeking Weapons: At the instant that the ship becomes fully cloaked, seeking weapons may lose tracking. If the cloaked ship's allocated speed (2A1) is Stopped or Speed Zero, all weapons more than one hex from the ship are removed. If the cloaked ship's allocated speed is Speed 8, all seeking weapons more than four hexes from the ship are removed. If the cloaked ship's allocated speed is Speed 16 (or higher), all weapons more than eight hexes from the ship are removed.

(5P3d) Voided Cloaks:
1. The cloak is voided for two impulses, not four, assuming that the cloak remains active that long. In cases where the cloak is continually re-voided (e.g., the ship is held in a tractor beam) the cloak is, indeed, continually re-voided.
2. While the ship with a voided cloak loses most of the benefits of being cloaked, damage from seeking and direct-fire weapons is still reduced by 50%.

The main change in the above, from those published in Communique 104 and a Captain's Log (forgot the number) is that the change to (5P3c) eliminates the ability to Emergency Decelerate prior to (or as) cloaking in order to change their Speed to Stopped. This is the baseline change now, and play testing is required to undo the Emergency Deceleration modification.

By Mike Bennett (Mike) on Tuesday, February 27, 2018 - 10:23 am: Edit

After reading the current discussion in the SFB section about ships not being able to land or dock on moons, asteroids, and such, I'm glad FC allows ships to land. It sure eliminates a lot of controversy.