Can you target your own drones with a drone

[The_Rock]

As a followup question to Paul, which part do you want me to ask about? The "firing a drone at a friend drone" part or the "drone hitting an impacted drone held in a tractor causes both to explode" part? I went ahead and asked about both, but I am curious as to which was actually bothering you?

Only the firing a drone at a friendly drone. The "SW hitting an impacted drone in tractor" is clear in the rules. (4F5c), in relevant part, "...(or if B hits A, which previously impacted and was stopped by a tractor beam)..."

1. The actual text of the rules (4F5c) states "You can target a seeking weapon on the enemy seeking weapon."

Your ruling is that the clear text of the rule is wrong and that "enemy" has no meaning. Additionally, all other aspects of "friendly fire" in Fed Com fail to hurt your opponent. If you tractor your own seeking weapon, it goes inert. If your unit is manned, you cannot fire at it at all, even to prevent its capture. Your ruling allows the only instance of targeting weapons on friendly units to cause damage to the enemy.

2. The enabling rule (4F5c) is in the section (4F5) which is all about defending yourself against enemy seeking weapons. So it is particularly odd to ignore the word "enemy" for a rule in that section.

3. The purpose of the second paragraph of (4F5c) is clearly to punish defenders who fail to - or are unable to - properly time their defensive drone launches. It is not the purpose of the rule to set up some "gotcha" situation where a drone user gets to nullify his opponent's use of defensive tractors after the tractor has already been employed defensively.

Obviously this last part is just an IMO, since Steve wrote the rule and only he can tell its actual intent. But, given that this is a rule that draws itself from a mirror rule in SFB and the rule does not have that intent in SFB (because SWs cannot be tractored at range zero of its target), my guess is that he could not have meant the rule to mean what you are saying it means (and, in fact, he did not draft the rule that way, because, as mentioned above, you have to ignore the word "enemy" in the enabling rule as that rule was drafted).

[pmiller13]

As a followup question to Paul, which part do you want me to ask about? The "firing a drone at a friend drone" part or the "drone hitting an impacted drone held in a tractor causes both to explode" part? I went ahead and asked about both, but I am curious as to which was actually bothering you?

Only the firing a drone at a friendly drone. The "SW hitting an impacted drone in tractor" is clear in the rules. (4F5c), in relevant part, "...(or if B hits A, which previously impacted and was stopped by a tractor beam)..."

1. The actual text of the rules (4F5c) states "You can target a seeking weapon on the enemy seeking weapon."

Your ruling is that the clear text of the rule is wrong and that "enemy" has no meaning. Additionally, all other aspects of "friendly fire" in Fed Com fail to hurt your opponent. If you tractor your own seeking weapon, it goes inert. If your unit is manned, you cannot fire at it at all, even to prevent its capture. Your ruling allows the only instance of targeting weapons on friendly units to cause damage to the enemy.

2. The enabling rule (4F5c) is in the section (4F5) which is all about defending yourself against enemy seeking weapons. So it is particularly odd to ignore the word "enemy" for a rule in that section.

3. The purpose of the second paragraph of (4F5c) is clearly to punish defenders who fail to - or are unable to - properly time their defensive drone launches. It is not the purpose of the rule to set up some "gotcha" situation where a drone user gets to nullify his opponent's use of defensive tractors after the tractor has already been employed defensively.

Obviously this last part is just an IMO, since Steve wrote the rule and only he can tell its actual intent. But, given that this is a rule that draws itself from a mirror rule in SFB and the rule does not have that intent in SFB (because SWs cannot be tractored at range zero of its target), my guess is that he could not have meant the rule to mean what you are saying it means (and, in fact, he did not draft the rule that way, because, as mentioned above, you have to ignore the word "enemy" in the enabling rule as that rule was drafted).

If I understand what The_Rock is trying to point out I agree with him. In SFB this tactic does not exist because you would never defend yourself by tractoring a drone at range 0. The danger is SFB is that if I target a enemy drone with one of mine and I mistimed the launch, my drone and the enemy drone could reach the enemy drones target at the same time and then my

friendly drone

ends up doing damage to a friendly ship. In SFB you would never target your own drone with a drone. There is even a tactical hint in this rules that says something like

Hint drop tracking on your own drone to prevent this from happening

This makes it seem that the clear intent of the rule is again to be careful in targeting an enemy drone with your own drone as you might inadvertently hit yourself with your own drone, not let an enemy hit you with 2 drones by targeting one on you and one on their own drone.

I will gladly except that this is a new tactic based on the differences between FC and SFB but I would just like that specific clarification from SVC as this is works very differently from one system to the other.

[Bolo_MK_XL]

With a little more than cursory read of 4F5c ---

I see that A launches drone/SS at B, B or X launches Drone at A's weapon,

If A's weapon impacts before B/X's reaches it, then B/X's drone goes inert ---

So it appears (as written), that to get damage from both, they have to enter the ship hex the same sub-pulse, or that A's is tractored before B/X launches --

Some say that portion has A/B is reversed, but with specific reading, you see it's not, and explains a bit of the action ---

It's all directed at Drone 2 being launched from or by a ship friendly to the target of the first ---

[storeylf]

If seeking weapon A is targeted on seeking weapon B, and B impacts its target before A reaches it, then A is removed and B is treated as an impact. If A and B both reach the target of B on the same subpulse
(or if B hits A, which previously impacted and was stopped by a tractor beam)

Note both A and B are seeking weapons. B is not a ship launching a seeker, and A is targeted on B. not the other way around.

Note that or bit about B hits A, which previously impacted and was stopped by a tractor. I.E. A (the drone fired at B) has impacted and was tractored. If A impacts B then A will not be tractored as B is a seeking weapon and has no tractors. B cannot hit A as B was seeking something else. Clearly a misprint, and meant to say A hits B.


Nothing in the rule notes anything about either drone beng launched by a friendly of anyone. In fact even if SVC does state that you cannot launch at your own seekers then this scenario and tactic will still be valid. Remember not everyone plays 2 player games. In a free for all if someone tractors someone elses drone during defensive fire then I could launch at that as it is not my drone, and both the launcher and target are my enemies.

[The_Rock]

In SFB you would never target your own drone with a drone.

This is not true, but it is in a rare instance that it is useful. In SFB, Type VI drones ignore WW (something not available in FC). So it is a tactic to launch a type VI drone at a ship, with or without other drones), then launch other drones at the Type VI drone timed so that they reach the Type VI on the same impulse as the Type VI reaches its target.

But, there are multiple aspects of this that make it immaterial to FC, the most important of which is that it is very difficult to time. The inability of drones to be tractored at Range 0 to their targets makes any tactic involving targeting drones on other friendly drones difficult to pull off.

That they can in Fed Com is a kludge to make 1 activity step after 4 movement steps. That is why defensive fire on a drone uses the R1 chart (because a drone at R0 has hit and cannot be intercepted by fire). If they really wanted to make it work right, they would have maintained that the drone tractored in defensive fire is actually at R1, not R0, but that bring up other problems, so this was an acceptable compromise.

Most importantly, however, is that the enabling rule in SFB does not restrict targeting to enemy units. This is also true of Fed Com (4F2a) in its general section regarding seeking weapons, but is not true of the specific (4F5c).

Ultimately I do not care if the rule is that Seeking Weapons cannot target friendly units at all or if the rule is the double hit provisions of (4F5c) only apply when an enemy seeking weapon is the target. I think it is cleaner in Fed Com to just not allow the targeting of friendly units, but ultimately I am indifferent on that (as, without the special double hit rules of (4F2a) there is no reason I can think of to target your own seekers in Fed Com).

[Steve Cole]

This question got bigger this morning and...

1. all previous answers are suspended

2. we're looking into it.

3. it may not get done today. Make that, it won't.

[Wolverin61]

I see in the new Communique that the answer is no.

[Scoutdad]

Bummer.