Rules loophole - free self-destruct!!

[Kang]

Communique #33 says this:

"Turn Break Exception-2: You can declare EM during
the Defensive Fire Phase of Impulse #8 but delay its
activation (and paying for it) to the Energy Allocation
Phase of the next turn. However, if your ship lacks the
energy to pay for EM at that time (or declines to do so)
the ship is destroyed by the destabilized warp field."

So if I have no friendly [or otherwise] ship or planet to evacuate to, in order to self-destruct, it doesn't matter anymore!

Because now I can simply declare EM in Impulse #8 of a turn, and then bottle out on Impulse #1 and not pay the energy, then my ship will blow up

Over to you, Davec_24

[Davec_24]

Why thank you... my idea to try and get around this was that instead of the ship being destroyed due to the destabilised warp field, it might work better to say it suffers a HET breakdown instead. It seems to be a reasonably similar concept that inflicts damage on the ship in both cases (though I could be wrong about this), but it might help solve the problem even if the two are not conceptually similar. What do others think about this idea?

[OGOPTIMUS]

Why thank you... my idea to try and get around this was that instead of the ship being destroyed due to the destabilised warp field, it might work better to say it suffers a HET breakdown instead. It seems to be a reasonably similar concept that inflicts damage on the ship in both cases (though I could be wrong about this), but it might help solve the problem even if the two are not conceptually similar. What do others think about this idea?

As I mentioned on the legacy board, I'm ok with either way, but if the "breakdown" rule gets used, it needs to be more severe than 10 points of damage on the fluff table (#3).

[Davec_24]

Why would it have to be more severe than a normal HET breakdown? If a HET breakdown were suffered on Impulse #1 by messing with EM in this way, the ship will remain stationary for the whole turn, making it a sitting duck. That's a fairly hefty penalty in itself I'd have said, certainly enough to deter players from declaring EM on Impulse #8 just to keep their options for Impulse #1 open, and then not following through with it.

Also, as part of the breakdown resulting from this, you could say that such a breakdown counts as having done your "free" HET if you haven't already, as the structural damage caused by the breakdown would probably prevent further safe HETs during the game.

[OGOPTIMUS]

And what about all the wonderful weapons it has to shoot at you? And all that surplus power to use overloads?

Yes, it gets spun in a random direction, but that might just be right at you, and in some cases your ship may have to move right at it (or not be able to avoid it's field of fire), which worsens the situation.

Seems like there's a loophole for abuse here by plotting speed zero to conserve all the power from movement and use it for weapons, reinforcement, negative tractor, etc.

[Sir Drake]

I would say if someone uses EM as a way to get a free self distruct, which would probly be rare but definatly possible, never play with that guy again. I would probly add punching them too the mix just to be sure they understood how I felt about it but thats just me.

[Kang]

Ok then. How about a severe breakdown - ten hits from table #1 and ten from table #6. Or even two lots of 20 damage to the power systems, seeing as you've just overstressed the warp field.

And anyway it's still a loophole if the penalty is instant death [for your ship, that is ]

[Davec_24]

I see what you mean that people might plot speed 0 to abuse the breakdown type of thing - even if the chance of them pointing in your direction upon breakdown is slim, it would be a shame if somebody won a battle by a stupid rules abuse tactic like that. Maybe if the damage was assigned from a random chart rather than chart #3 (which means it can hit important systems as well) it might be more of a deterent. The trouble with having an "EM breakdown" dealing vast fixed quantities of damage is that this will have a notably different effect on different sizes of ship, and this may end up acting as a "free self-destruct" to smaller ships, certainly more often than it would to larger ships.

Maybe something like 10 times the damage control rating of the ship in hits on random tables, or a certain proportion of remaining (or original) warp hits would keep this more in proportion to the size of ship. I still think that a "breakdown" type of solution would be better than simple destruction, as it would then eliminate (or at least remove any guarantee of it, even if it's then possible to get destroyed via the damage chart) the "easy self-destruct" loophole.

[Kang]

Maybe if we made it instant death for the player, instead. Sir Drake's solution is not harsh enough, perhaps....

[Kang]

Maybe something like 10 times the damage control rating of the ship in hits on random tables, or a certain proportion of remaining (or original) warp hits would keep this more in proportion to the size of ship.

Good ideas, all.

[OGOPTIMUS]

Maybe if the damage was assigned from a random chart rather than chart #3 (which means it can hit important systems as well) it might be more of a deterrent.

That was my thought as well.

The trouble with having an "EM breakdown" dealing vast fixed quantities of damage is that this will have a notably different effect on different sizes of ship, and this may end up acting as a "free self-destruct" to smaller ships, certainly more often than it would to larger ships.

Maybe something like 10 times the damage control rating of the ship in hits on random tables, or a certain proportion of remaining (or original) warp hits would keep this more in proportion to the size of ship. I still think that a "breakdown" type of solution would be better than simple destruction, as it would then eliminate (or at least remove any guarantee of it, even if it's then possible to get destroyed via the damage chart) the "easy self-destruct" loophole.

Ship size was something I had not thought about. You're right that smaller ships may have the "free self destruct" ability if you start dealing too much damage. The only potential problem is that we may get into the realm of "un FC-ish" making the rule rather complicated unlike the HET penalty which is 10 points flat. That's probably why SVC went straight to destroying the ship.

Perhaps something like directed targeting on tables 1 or 6, that way vital systems are hit, but you lose skipped damage points, so small ships may not apply all the damage.

Or of course, there's the other solution of not letting the ship fire for the turn if it doesn't continue EM (or load/hold multiple turn arming weapons).

[asguard101]

Couldn't we just make it simpler, like saying half of the ships warp boxes are destroyed? That would deal with the different size of ships.

[junior]

I think it's a little late to be discussing changes. iirc, SVC indicated that the new rule was going into Orion Attack, which has already shipped.

[Davec_24]

I think it's a little late to be discussing changes. iirc, SVC indicated that the new rule was going into Orion Attack, which has already shipped.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that if a better way of doing it is found (or if the originally proposed method proves not to work) that changes will be made. After all, there have been some serious changes to many rules, notably to the EM rules which brought the ruling under discussion about in the first place, and this "old way" was printed even in revised versions of the rulebook.

OGOPTIMUS, I see your point about it potentially becoming "un FC-like", I had thought of that too, and I think this is why HET breakdowns were treated like this. However, the idea doesn't make for anything too complicated, or not any more than rules for things like tractors and capturing. If it did prove a satisfactory system, it may be worth the extra "complexity". It's another one of these things that you'd have to try to be sure about it.