Avoiding battle with the fighting retreat
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation & Empire: F&E INPUT: F&E Proposals Forum: 0-FOLDER: The Designer Found Merit: Avoiding battle with the fighting retreat
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Archive through December 31, 2012  25   12/31 06:48pm
By Michael Calhoon (Mcalhoon2) on Monday, December 31, 2012 - 10:16 pm: Edit

Be sure to add that a force that "avoids battle" could retreat but could not pursue.

Why would a force whose battle was avoided be forced to do a fighting retreat? Wouldn't it just be forced to retreat under normal retreat rules.

And now the hornets nest. Why would units being fighting retreated over be allowed to avoid battle, while a force being regularly retreated over NOT be able to avoid battle.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Monday, December 31, 2012 - 10:57 pm: Edit

Presumably units conducting a normal retreat are withdrawing in good order, or at least attempting to do so, while units conducting a fighting retreat are executing the "getting the hell out of dodge maneuver".

By Matthew Urch (Matthew_Urch) on Tuesday, January 01, 2013 - 09:23 am: Edit

Just my two cents, and I'm not a very experienced player, but I'm strongly in favour of the proposed rule change. Fighting retreats can be abused. I think the proposed change makes sense, it adds an underlying rationale.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, January 01, 2013 - 12:20 pm: Edit

Not quite Ryan. (302.771) Only allows players to retreat into any hex not eliminated by priorities other than 4.

Perhaps I am missing something however.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Tuesday, January 01, 2013 - 01:47 pm: Edit

Perhaps I'm missing something here. I just don't see how you can you do a fighting retreat over a garrison ship or a original owner ship.

The only way to fight a battle over a garrison ship is from a battle hex in an adjacent hex. One of two things has to be true for a "fighting" retreat to then be conducted: 1 all adjacent hexes have enemy ship or ships in them. Or two the only valid retreat path is closer to supply and directly requires such a move. Given the nature of the 6 sided hex, the first condition must be true before condition 2 comes into play.

In both cases, the person conducting the retreat would have to be outnumbered under (302.732) and then all other conditions would have to be unable to be met to force the fighting retreat.

At the same time I do see the value of a rule for the owner of ship(s) not conducting combat operations against a force that is doing a fighting retreat, even with the penalties imposed by the fighting retreat rules under (302.77).

I would think the reverse of this would be more likely to be true, and that would be in a way to force the garrison ship(s) to have to conduct a fighting retreat. This could be done in a way to limit the use of enemy reserve fleets either by distance, or by pinning, or by attacking other targets of higher value.

Even after all the above, I am in agreement with Ryan that the retreat priority rules and fighting retreat rules in F&E2010 solve any such issue.

Edit:
X-Ships and their ability to react to reserve movment could change this situation, but that would not be a game changer given the limited number of X-Ships and the limited ability of empires to produce and convert ships to X-Ships.

By Patrick Sledge (Decius) on Tuesday, January 01, 2013 - 02:36 pm: Edit

Quote:

Perhaps I'm missing something here. I just don't see how you can you do a fighting retreat over a garrison ship or a original owner ship.



There are two ways to go about it under the present rules which don't require anything so complicated:

The riskier of the two is to put yourself in a situation where your force is temporarily out of supply (but was in supply at the start of the turn, and thus has its full compot). You then choose not to elect priority 1, have a larger force than the target(s) you're running over so priority 2 doesn't apply, have no retreat option in supply so priority 3 doesn't apply, and then use 302.77 to ignore priority four and go merrily walking over targets. Just remember to make the last hex in your retreat chain one that does put you back in supply so you can retrograde (or open supply with a later battle).

The safer variant is to simply arrange it so one of the options left after priority 3 has your victim in it while the other is empty (Given the fact the game uses hexes, you get two equidistant options for supply paths quite often) and then proceed to choose the occupied hex over the empty one (Don't elect priority 1, you have the larger force so no priority 2, your desired hex is left from priority 3, ignore priority 4 per 302.77). For extra bonus points, set up an earlier battle that causes your opponent to retreat a small force into the 'target' hex.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - 09:37 am: Edit

The designer finds merit here. Work it up and we'll put it in rulings or something.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat2) on Friday, March 01, 2019 - 09:17 pm: Edit

Did this one ever become official?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, March 02, 2019 - 10:28 am: Edit

Staff never did the draft.

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