Ted,

Yeah, that's how I have understood it, mostly, up till this point (the Fed fleet retreating was mostly an after thought to the question--the order that things happen do make a difference here, which I wasn't actually paying much attention to when writing the question originally).

So ignoring the Fed fleet for the time being, if the Klingons can retreat into one of two hexes, one of which has (fewer) enemy units, the other of which is empty, and all other factors are equal, they have to either retreat into the empty hex (as if they can avoid combat, they must) *or* into the hex with the enemy units with a fighting retreat (which, vs a base will result in no combat due to needing to offer an approach).

Now if the hex with the SB was a hex closer to the nearest supply point than the empty hex, the could freely retreat into the SB hex and just kill it the regular way.

Yeah, see, this is all what my understanding was to begin with. But when re-re-reading the retreat priorities (which are, for my money, *still* the most complicated and arcane part of the game), I suddenly got it into my head that maybe the Klingons could freely retreat onto the SB hex and *not* fighting retreat on the SB. But yeah, they can't do that (in the situation presented). Luckily, I didn't do that :-)

Thanks!

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - 04:49 pm: Edit

Peter, no problem. Retreat is quite arcane and it has taken me a long time (years) to grok it. I *think* I grok it now, that is. Well, since I'm not certain I can't say that I truly "grok" it - but fairly sure I understand pretty well anyway...

The point is that I agree that the retreat rules are arcane and difficult even for the initiated, and much more so for the noob.

[edit] you're a great player IMO - but even great players sometimes have to cogitate to get it right....

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 02:32 am: Edit

If a Kzinti DD is captured and converted to Klingon technology and then converted to an escort, is the resulting K-DDE treated as a light or heavy escort?

By Michael Calhoon (Mcalhoon2) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 03:56 am: Edit

I recall that there is a rule that no capturing race can convert a unit into a unit that the original owning race could not convert the unit into. Although this does not directly answer the question, the Kzinti treat the DDE as a heavy escort.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 10:11 am: Edit

Ted wrote:
>>Peter, no problem. Retreat is quite arcane and it has taken me a long time (years) to grok it. I *think* I grok it now, that is. Well, since I'm not certain I can't say that I truly "grok" it - but fairly sure I understand pretty well anyway... >>

I know. It's nuts. Like, for what seems like a reasonably straight forward and well defined rule, it is soooo convoluted, and one of the rules that is most likely to result in unexpected and generally kind of devastating "surprise" moves/results. And being able to really take advantage of (or abuse :-) the retreat rules is one of the main keys to being particularly effective in the game.

Has anyone ever tried to make, like, an elaborate flow chart for retreat priorities? That would be, I suspect, a really handy play aid.

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 11:08 am: Edit

Retreat? Bah! I never retreat!

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 11:32 am: Edit

the Kzinti treat the DDE as a heavy escort.

Yes, as a matter of doctrine, which the Klingons presumably do not share. Thus the question.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 11:46 am: Edit

If someone whats to hand sketch something out I will put into visio and make the file available.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 11:55 am: Edit

I've already started working on a flow chart when I was at STRATCON last month and hope to have something available soon -- maybe in CL46 later this year...

Bottom Line on Retreats:

Remember that it is an EXCLUSIONARY process; once any potential retreat hex has been eliminated within a given priority step those hexes are NOT re-evaluated in any following lower priority step (with an exception that if a given priority eliminates ALL potential retreat hexes).

By Dave Butler (Dcbutler) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 12:44 pm: Edit

Out of idle curiosity, did the SoP section on retreats change in the 2010 edition?

'Cause in 2K (through PO, at least), selection of the destination hex for all retreating units happens before movement of any retreating unit (steps 5-7C and 5-7D). So the Defender basically has to tell the Attacker the Defender's retreat hex before the Attacker chooses a retreat hex; Defender then has the honour of moving his counters first.

So Ted's assertion that the Feds could theoretically block the Klinks from retreating due to unit count isn't supported by the SoP (because the Fed units wouldn't actually be in that hex when the Klinks checked their retreat paths).

There's also a fun rules element to (FE2K-302.732), since it states "units" and each fighter factor is a unit (FE2K-501.32) ...

(Note that, by the rule, one is only required to consider SE of fighters in the case of PDU.)

All this is 2K; it may have changed in 2010.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 03:47 pm: Edit

FEDS CLARIFICATION ON (302.732) TERMS

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Quote:

(302.732) PRIORITY 2: The player cannot select a hex containing a number of enemy units greater than the number of ships in his retreating force (plus friendly units already in that hex) unless no other hex is available. A planet with one or more planetary defense units counts as a single unit; any fighters or PFs of the PDU are formed into ship equivalents as per (302.35) in addition to the PDU. A planet with only a Residual Defense Factor (508.16) is not a unit for this purpose. This step counts the actual number of units. Cripples count at the full value.

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By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 03:49 pm: Edit

Dave Butler:

Please check with F&E Q&A Staff before making assertions that may confuse players about what counts as a "UNIT" in retreat.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Sunday, July 29, 2012 - 01:11 pm: Edit

Q425.31 (425.31) lists the amount of damage that can be repaired in combat by Battle Stations, Starbases, FRDs and PRDs. What are the amouns of damage that can be reapired by Base Stations (444.0), Sector Bases (452.0) and Operational Bases (453.0) if any?

FEAR, this question got lost in the shuffle of things related to the F&E 2KX work and was never answered.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Sunday, July 29, 2012 - 02:13 pm: Edit

For base stations, see 444.12 (2 points through Y170 and 3 points thereafter).
For sector bases, see 452.12 (6 points, but can fully repair a DN even if that is more than 6 points).
For operational bases see 453.32 (2 points).

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Sunday, July 29, 2012 - 02:51 pm: Edit

Jason, those are values for repair for purposes of standard repairs not rapid combat repair which is (425.31).

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Sunday, July 29, 2012 - 03:16 pm: Edit

Rapid Combat Repair Values (425.31)

Pending ADB approval I'll add these values to the Base SIT when I update them.

OBP=0
BS=2
Sector base=3

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Sunday, July 29, 2012 - 04:35 pm: Edit

DOH!! Missed the reference to rapid combat repair: probably subconsciously blocked due to where the rule is located. :-)

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Sunday, August 05, 2012 - 09:57 am: Edit

Q700.0 For the Driving Winds scenario (625.0) each empire has a number of HDWs. Are the modules for those HDWs allowed to be a player's choice unless otherwise specified? E.G. (702.0) Home Fleet 2xHDW. Second Fleet HDW-Q.
The HDW-Q in the Second Fleet obviously has the survey module under (525.23Q), but those in the Home Fleet seem to be open to the individual player's choice.

By Paul Edwards (Pablomatic) on Sunday, August 05, 2012 - 10:10 am: Edit

In case we are abusing the special raid rules (320.0) and/or the CPF rules (524.0) can anyone confirm that drone raiding ships can also carry casual PFTs, and then send both drones and PFTs on a PF raid (thus adding the drone bombardment factors in instead of doing a drone raid which forces the PFTs to stay "in reserve" per 320.345)?

For example we have been playing it that if a 3 ship drone raid group attacks a slow unit (say a supply tug and its escorts), the fast drones (18 compot) are doubled for slow unit (36 compot) and then the 10 CPX factors are added to that for 46 compot. At BIR 4 this is usually enough to kill an unescorted tug, or kill an escort or two if it is escorted (since slow unit escorts are also apparently considered slow units). Is that how others play it or are we missing something?

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Sunday, August 05, 2012 - 12:11 pm: Edit

Paul:

From (320.34):

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Quote:

(320.34) Attack: The attacker then adds up the total drone bombardment points (for a drone raid) or fighter/PF attack factors (for a fighter-PF raid) on the ships in the raid...

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By robert lasdon (Rjl518) on Sunday, August 05, 2012 - 04:59 pm: Edit

since i have all of F&E and the modules...and the 2010 rulebook...do i have to have the new 2010 counters as well?

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Sunday, August 05, 2012 - 05:06 pm: Edit

The 2010 counters update a number of Hydran ships with the 1/2 ftr factor designation. Other than this the counter factors on other ships are the same.

But you always need more cardboard so the answer is yes.



Hi, my name is Ryan and I'm addicted to cardboard.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, August 05, 2012 - 05:47 pm: Edit

Robert wrote:
>>do i have to have the new 2010 counters as well?>>

As noted, there is a considerable number of ships that come with half fighter factors (i.e. any ship that has an odd number of fighters in SFB now gets a .5 fighter factor--Ranger goes up to 4.5 from 4; Dragoon goes down to 1.5 from 2; Kzinti CVL goes up to 4.5 from 4; etc.). This includes crippled sides, so any ship that has an odd fighter factor on the front (Kzinti CVE goes from 3 to 1.5) gets a half factor on the back.

It is very easy to continue to play F+E with the old counters and just ignore the .5 factors (I still use the old factors, as I have so many old counters and didn't want convert to all new counters, as there are a lot of them)--it is the one thing changed into 2K10 that I *didn't* like and don't use. Across the board, it is mostly a wash, so can't imagine that *not* using the new .5 factor counters is going to impact game balance at all in the long run.

You'd also want the 2K10 counter sheets if you don't already have separate CV and escort counters; if you have older CV/Escort counters from, say, Carrier War or Carrier Ops, (and don't mind keeping with the non .5 factor carrier factors), those work fine.

By Paul Edwards (Pablomatic) on Monday, August 06, 2012 - 12:09 am: Edit

Chuck,

You wrote:

"(320.34) Attack: The attacker then adds up the total drone bombardment points (for a drone raid) or fighter/PF attack factors (for a fighter-PF raid) on the ships in the raid...

The wording in (320.34) is specific and does not permit the addition of drone bombardment factors to a fighter-PF raid."

I think you are mistaken Chuck, because (320.345) says: "If the ships in a fighter-PF raiding group have drone bombardment factors, they can execute a combined attack, adding the drone bombardment factors to the fighter/PFs. This would be treated as a fighter/PF raid but would pay the cost of a drone raid." So they can be added together.

The question is, can the CPX carried by drone raiders do a PF raid, then add the drone factors to that raid? I feel they can, and the only restriction of the preceding section of (320.345): "If drone raiding ships have fighters or PFs, these can be used in the interception battle but not the special raid attack" would be if the race in question could not do another fighter/PF raid but only a drone raid then they couldn't combine the factors for the attack. In other words, drone raiders carrying a CPX can do a PF raid (assuming their nation has a ftr/pf raid slot available), and are not forced to do a drone raid just because they are drone ships.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Monday, August 06, 2012 - 07:05 am: Edit

Paul, (320.345) specifically states that those fighters or PFs may only be used in the interception battle, under (320.35). There is a very large difference between the actual drone raid and an interception battle.

The only ships I know that would even qualify to use fighters or PFs under such conditions are the Kzinti HDWs configured for mission D (Drone Bombardment) and the Kzinti and Klingon tugs when configured with 1 drone (Kzinti battle) pod and 1 carrier pod.