Federation Commander

I have the Reference Rulebook (5th edition) and under 5L3 for engine doubling there appears to be a confliction. In the first paragraph it decribes how Orion ships lose two warp engine boxes to reflect the amount of damage done and indicates that a given ship must double all of its warp engines or none of them.

In the third paragraph it gives a number of ships (DN, BCH, etc) which lose one box per engine and have the option to double one at a time.

It seems to me that the first paragraph is a general statement which applies unless overridden by the rules below. But I want to be certain.


Thanks.

Check out communique 42: (5L3) There is a contradiction in this rule about how many engines you can double at one time. The original rule was all of them, but Orion Attack changed that to allow any ship to double one engine at a time.

With the rule update/clarification, I understand it to be a player is allowed to double one engine at a time thus losing only one box in the doubled engine.

Some orion ships have 3 engines so you can double 1, 2, or 3 engines and lose 1, 2, or 3 boxes respectively.

Some ships double both but only lose 1 engine box, IIRC. the LR loses only one box if it doubles both engines. At fleet scale, it marks the "warp det" box, and if the warp det box is marked already, it takes one box of engine damage and clears teh warp det box.

And with the LR, once it has waited the one Turn before repairing the one engine box that is lost due to doubling, it can, from that point on in a game, keep repairing one engine box and double the remaining 9 every Turn (assuming it doesn't need to repair anything else).

All this is Squadron Scale.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this one.

The LR (near) continuous doubling works by "rotating" which box is lost each turn and repairing the one that was lost the last turn? So...

On turn 1; Warp Power = 10. Double All. Kill box 1. Warp Power = 9.
On turn 2; Warp power = 9. Double All. Repair box 1 and kill box 2. Warp Power = 9.
On turn 3; Warp Power = 9. Double All. Repair box 2 and kill box 3. Warp Power = 9.
On turn 4; Warp Power = 9. Double All. Repair box 3 and kill box 4. Warp Power = 9.

Lather, rinse, repeat...

Is this how I should see it?

This should also work for the SLV and DBR too, right?

There's no restriction on repairing boxes from engines that have been doubled?

And of course, there's the small fact of losing your stealth coating benefit for any turn that you double your engines. Just food for thought.

That's the way I see it.

Personally see it as a nice miniature supernova as it goes boom -- whaaaaaaaaaa

Remember also that the engine doubling loses you the stealth bonus for the turn. So yes you can get unlimited extra power [the Slaver can do this as well as the LR] but the enemy can hit you more easily too. Worth thinking about.

Not that big of a deal. You will probably be getting real damage (remember even just a leak point will start messing up this schedule) before too long, anyway.

Don't forget that the bigger ships can do the exact same thing as long as they are doubling a single engine. (Well, this doesn't work for the fleet scale versions of the CR, BR, and BC/CA; only the squadron scale.)

terryoc wrote:Some ships double both but only lose 1 engine box, IIRC. the LR loses only one box if it doubles both engines. At fleet scale, it marks the "warp det" box, and if the warp det box is marked already, it takes one box of engine damage and clears teh warp det box.

Had a bit of a reading comprehension issue with this one no matter how many times I read 5L3a.

If I'm correct, the Warp Det box is marked every other time engine doubling occurs, minimizing actual warp box damage. Is this the case?

You use the warp det box every turn, but you are toggling its state. So, ...

Turn 1: Double engines and mark det box.
Turn 2: Double engines, disable engine box and clear det box.
Turn 3: Double engines and mark det box.
Turn 4: Double engines, disable engine box and clear det box.
... and so on.