Federation Commander

When a ship is hit by a Hellbore, the recipient of such fire is allowed to reinforce against six separate volleys, one on each shield [power permitting]

This might sound unlikely and pedantic too, but if a ship is hit by two Hellbores from the same ship in the same Direct Fire phase, are the two Hellbores added together first in order to give one set of six volleys, or is it two sets of six volleys that can be reinforced as twelve volleys?

Not that I had the power to do that last night, but the hypothetical question was there....

I think a volley is defined as all fire from a single ship in an impulse, or all drones impacting on one shield in an impulse. So I would assume they would be part of the same volley myself. But I'm just a fellow player so I'm not the final (or beginning) word on anything.

Kang wrote:When a ship is hit by a Hellbore, the recipient of such fire is allowed to reinforce against six separate volleys, one on each shield [power permitting]

This might sound unlikely and pedantic too, but if a ship is hit by two Hellbores from the same ship in the same Direct Fire phase, are the two Hellbores added together first in order to give one set of six volleys, or is it two sets of six volleys that can be reinforced as twelve volleys?

Not that I had the power to do that last night, but the hypothetical question was there....

Rule (4K3f) states "... the damage of any hellbores from the same firing ship hitting a given shield is combined... Reinforcement (3C5) can be used against each such volley if enough power is available."

The original FedCom rule is that a Volley is defined as all the fire from a single ship during a single impulse at a single target. There is a parenthesis that says that all of this, given the rules, must hit the same shield... which I assume is meant to say that it will all hit the same shield since the direction of fire will either determine only one shield as eligible to be hit, or it will be on a hex-spine in which case it's defender's choice but it all has to go on the same shield (i.e. the defender cannot split it).

The way the hellbore rule is written suggests a precision to the Volley definition: all the fire from a single ship at a single target during a single impulse upon a single shield.

I suspect there's probably an easy way to say all that. It looks pretty clear-cut to me.

Hellbores from the same ship are combined together for purposes of calculating volleys. Additionally, any OTHER weapons fire (for instance, phasers) from the same ship that strikes the facing shield of the target ship is combined with hellbore damage to that shield from the firing ship to form a single volley.

That was it. It make sense too; otherwise the 'other' fire could weaken a shield for the hellbore first, before the hellbore is applied.

Thanks for all your input, guys

As a side issue, somethign that is also unclear in the rulebook is whether you add the "other shield" (as opposed to "weakest shield") damage of all hellbores fired from a particular ship at the same target before spreading these damage points out across the remaining 5 shields.

It seems to me to make sense to add it all up first - say for example two hellbores hit a ship and each score 2 damage to the "other" shields. Were you to resolve each in turn, the target ship could choose to take two damage points on two shields, rather than having to take one on each of four separate shields (as would be the case were you to add the total "other shield" damage first). This seems sensible, as the two points of damage scored by each hellbore really equates to 2/5 damage points for each of the five "other" shields, but of course damage has to be marked in whole numbers. If you add all hellbore "other shield" hits from the same salvo (i.e. from the same firing ship at the same target) first, you get a more realistic spread of damage across the other five shields.

That's what you do. You add up the Hellbores then spread it out.

Next time it's your turn to be on the receiving end

Looks like you all got it right ...

Yay, common sense prevails! Good to know we've been doing it right, anyway...