I've always played under the assumption that a ship with F Hull, R Hull, and C Hull (or Hull) could take, for example, any F Hull hits on F Hull boxes and C Hull boxes in any way they wanted. Suppose there are 4 F Hull hits in a volley. The player could take 2 on F Hull and 2 on C Hull if (s)he wanted.If a ship has Forward, Center,
and Rear Hull hits, then any Forward hits can be
scored on Forward or Center (and must be scored on
one of them) and any Rear hits can be scored on
Center or Rear (and must be scored on one of them).
It was brought to my attention that (5J1) could be interpreted to mean that once a decision was made to take all the F Hull hits in a volley on F Hull boxes, all 4 have to be taken as F Hull. If there were not 4 undamaged F Hull boxes, then after the remaining ones were marked as damaged, any remaining hits would have to be allocated to the alternate row.
I argued that if (5J1) was meant to be interpreted that way, it would have said, "(and must be scored on only one of them)."
I'm 99.9% sure I'm right on this, but an official call would be nice.
