SFBF: Cloaking and Webs in the Formation Phase

[Kang]

How many ships can/must cloak, uncloak and/or Web during the Formation Phase?

The Reference Card seems to say that you can uncloak as many as you want, you MUST un-Web all ships, AND you may either move a ship from one Squadron to another OR [newly] cloak a ship OR Web a ship. Please forgive the capitalization of the logical operators here.

The rulebook on page 6/7 and pages 15/16 seems to be unclear on this issue, with what I feel is a confusing mix of singulars and plurals - 'ships can activate their cloaks' - 'Tholian ships can activate their webs' - 'counts as the one allowed Formation change'. I can't seem to work it out

Any ideas, please?

[droberts441]

Great Question.....one of those where I grabbed the rulebook, and realised it isn't that clear.

My impression has been that you could only do one ship (kind of like you can only move one ship in formation). Otherwise you could do all ships with webs and cloaks if you wanted.

On the top of page 7, it says that before the first turn each player may order one ship to cloak or web. I think I saw that somwhere else in the rules in a slightly different topic. Although that is not the clear answer you wanted, I think it is implied you can only do one ship (2 if you use the Step 4 action to do a formation change as well) like a formation change can only do one ship which it takes the place of.

But I am interested in what others think....that is just my interpretation.