| By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Sunday, October 06, 2013 - 09:59 pm: Edit |
I agree that agreeing to agree is sound.
| By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Sunday, October 06, 2013 - 11:35 pm: Edit |
What was that sound?
| By Michael Alan Calhoon (Mcalhoon2) on Monday, October 07, 2013 - 02:41 am: Edit |
Does anyone know what the rules say about multiple maulers in a battle force and how to handle a situation where there might be two maulers in the battle force but only enough consorts for one of the maulers? Also, where can I find the rule that states where one of the maulers in the battle force must actually commit to using directed damage?
| By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Monday, October 07, 2013 - 04:34 am: Edit |
Mike:
Without going too deep into the rules, I’m inclined to say under (308.43) that the one mauler could be used for directed damage and would be considered eligible to use the 1:1 effect and that the other mauler only contributes half its attack factor.
| By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Monday, October 07, 2013 - 07:39 pm: Edit |
Chuck is that the official answer?
| By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar2) on Monday, October 07, 2013 - 08:01 pm: Edit |
Note he said 'inclined' so it was not an official answer...
| By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Wednesday, October 09, 2013 - 06:15 am: Edit |
Official? We may need some confirmation from ADB that my assessment is correct. I would suggest posting this question in the Q&A section.
That said, here are a few things to consider…
First, rule (308.41) states:
The rule says “CAN”, not “MUST”.
Quote:If an uncrippled mauler is included in the Battle Force, the owning player CAN use a number of points equal to the mauler's attack factor…
So, it looks like in Mike’s situation above, that one mauler CAN choose to make a 1:1 attack but is not required to and the other mauler’s compot is reduced by 1/2.
Quote:Maulers are not designed to operate alone. There must be two uncrippled non-mauler ships or ship equivalents (203.54) in the Battle Force for each mauler; any mauler not so accompanied has an attack factor of 1/2 of the printed value AND cannot be used for its special 1-1 Directed Damage or special pursuit capability (308.47).
Note the terms “IF ANY” and “IF” -- this implies that if following the SoP, the maulers had to contribute their compot to the battle force total to calculate what damage points are available to conduct a 1:1 attack using an eligible mauler. The commitment to whether to use a mauler’s 1:1 directed damage attack is made in SoP Phase 5-5.
Quote:No more than one mauler can be used for Directed Damage in a given Battle Force. Use this procedure. Any multi-mauler player secretly records which mauler will use Directed Damage. (The Ship # counters can be used to identify maulers temporarily.) The Attacker declares his Directed Damage (IF ANY) and IF he is using a mauler (but not which one). The Defender then declares his Directed Damage (IF ANY) and IF he is using a mauler (but not which one). Then both players expose the written record of which mauler is being used.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 11:23 am: Edit |
Assessment is good. Maulers without enough consorts can only use half their attack factors and not for 1:1.
| By Mike Parker (Protagoras) on Tuesday, November 05, 2013 - 10:05 am: Edit |
There are some discussions in Q&A regarding placement of POLs.
Part of the argument has been deciding if a hex is in supply. While I realize the wording of the POL rules are a little sloppy I would point out.
An exhaustive search of the supply rules will reveal that F&E never defines a hex being in supply. Many wargames have a notion of a hex being in supply and thus a unit is in supply If and only if the hex it resides within is in supply. F&E however has a notion of a unit being in supply never one of a hex being in supply. There are notions of what a supply node is, and a supply route, hexes where its legal to trace a supply route, but in the final knot that ties everything together its always a unit being in supply not a hex.
We need to be real careful I would say in how we word things regarding supply in these arguments as its very important to understand the difference between a unit being in supply and the undefined notion of a hex being in supply.
| By Mike Parker (Protagoras) on Friday, November 08, 2013 - 06:30 pm: Edit |
For what its worth I would like to throw my support behind Ted Fay's appeal of the slow unit pursuit/retreat issue. I do not know if I 100% agree with Ted's suggestion but I think something needs to be done to put some teeth into the slow units when they retreat. Currently its just way too easy to have a very low CR command ship and stuff with cheap escorts to lose very few of your slow units.
| By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar2) on Friday, November 08, 2013 - 08:13 pm: Edit |
Looking over this, I think it's the interaction of being a non-pursuit battle and command rating that's the sticking point since I think only the xAV's have a command rating greater than zero.
If modified similarly to the pursuit rule for the pursued (everything is included but COMPOT limited by the CR) then all the slow units would have to be in the BF and therefor damagable would solve most of this...
| By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Saturday, November 09, 2013 - 12:18 am: Edit |
Stewart - agree. That's a minimum IMHO. However, it's also precisely opposite the ruling, hence the appeal...
| By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Saturday, November 09, 2013 - 10:31 am: Edit |
I can see the other side of this too... Yes, there are hundreds of SAFs and slow units in the hex, all scrambing to get away, but to quote the late, great Douglas Adams, “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”...
Good luck trying to reacquire your targets while you are busy pounding on one or two cripples....
| By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar2) on Saturday, November 09, 2013 - 11:25 am: Edit |
True to a point, remember that the cripples in the pursuit battle are separate from the 'slow unit' battle. so one could limit the slow units down to the 'remaining battle force' after the pursuers have left (since each could get at least one slow unit)...
| By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, November 11, 2013 - 02:47 pm: Edit |
Space is unbelievably vast, but you know where the targets are and you have a 100 ships for pursuit.
Of course, F&E does not and probably should not account for splitting up attacking units for going on individual S&D missions. IMHO this notion can be abstracted into simply allowing you to kill several of the SAFs in one battle. Which is why I was appealing. Anyway, we'll just see how the powers-that-be handle this.
| By Mike Parker (Protagoras) on Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - 08:30 am: Edit |
Agreed Ted. I mean it could be that the limiting factor that the rules makers had in mind when they decided how slow retreat worked and when they issued the ruling is simply.
"We want to limit the damage that can be done to the slow units... and since CR will be garbage for the slow units that does the limiting"
It could be as simple as that, maybe they want to encourage more pursuit of cripples as I know I have seen a few times folks not pursue cripples in order to get more ships into the slow retreat battle. At least until the ruling came out and I stopped putting all the extra slow stuff in the "can be killed" box!
But I think an appeal is a good thing in this case, it just seems contrary to good sense to have slow units escaping just because they can put up a punkish flagship!
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