Federation Commander

Has anyone given thought to Non Violent Combat? This is rule D6.4 in SFB.

In SFB the big effect of this is that more than 50% of all hits miss after penetrating shields. After that the only systems that can be hit are control spaces, weapons, sensors (which replace weapons on the SSDs seen so far), and power systems.

In terms of translating this into FC, a simple way would be to roll normally on the Damage Allocation Chart and then just ignore any non-blue, red and orange spaces. Any damage that hits these spaces is just lost, no skipping ahead to other columns, much like directed targeting. I'd have to run the percentages of this versus the SFB counterpart, but it's simple and avoids multiple rolls like SFB.

And of course seeking weapons, and a few other "area effect" weapons would not use these rules, since they have no idea how to target specific parts of a ship.

Now for those of you asking, WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS?!?!?, this could be used by Orions who want to disable ships and keep cargo intact and the Feds are always out to say "We're more moral than you". And it could just be used to help balance out a scenario (if you could come up with some way to justify it).

Any thoughts?

I thought directed targeting was the FC version of SFB's so-called "non-violent" combat???

True, non-power or non-weapon hits still occur even when the die rolls go right, but the power/weapon systems go in a hurry.

As I recall from my Commander's edition SFB days, non-violent combat was declared for a ship at the start of a scenario and had to be exclusively used throughout that scenario. The FC directed targeting method gives much more flexibility, IMHO.

I've always thought that 'Non-Violent Combat' is an oxymoron.

Yeah...a really dumb person gasping for air!

Sorry. I couldn't resist...

Mike wrote:I thought directed targeting was the FC version of SFB's so-called "non-violent" combat???

Me too. And the ability to switch it on or off at will [poor old Will] is in my opinion far superior in terms of tactical flexibility.