Federation Commander

I'm not sure quite when a ship or shuttle lands on a planet.

Rule (2D5b) says that a "...landing takes place during the first Movement Sub-Pulse of the first impulse".

However, in the example in (5H5), "In the Final Step of the Turn, the shuttle is....placed on the planet"

Which is right, please? I'm assuming (2D5b).

Also, and I seem to remember asking this in the distant past but cannot find the thread, a ship/shuttle must 'stop' in order to land - Rule (2D5b) again.

I take it that this means a ship will need to be Stopped in the absolute sense of the word, not just finishing its movement adjacent to the planet.

I would assume then that an Emergency Decel would be standard procedure if a ship wants to land on a planet at the start of its next turn, in which case it will need to arrive adjacent to the planet before the last impulse of the turn, otherwise the decel will stop it at a distance away from the planet. However, if the ship does indeed land in the first sub-pulse of the first impulse of the turn, then surely the ship simply needs to be Stopped as its speed declaration at the start of the turn of landing, and a late-turn emer decel is not necessary?

But, for that last point about stopping next to the planet, what happens with shuttles? Can shuttles perform Emergency Decel? In the (5H5) example above, the shuttle arrives in the adjacent hex and then simply skips movement - as shuttles can do. So I assume then that this counts as 'stopped' for a shuttle?

I have taken those rules about landing on planets to mean that a shuttle ends a Turn adjacent to a planet. At the end of that Turn the shuttle is physically placed on the planet hex. Then on the 1st sub-pulse of the 1st Impulse of the next Turn the shuttle actually lands on the planet.

Seems a little unfair that one shuttle a couple of hexes from a planet it wants to land on must move adjacent and wait for the rest of the Turn and until the next Turn to land while another shuttle 8 hexes away moves during every Impulse to land at exactly the same time and in the same way. I guess this keeps things simple, though.

Somewhere in another thread MJWest said that shuttles can skip moving during Impulses whenever they want.

About shuttle speeds, I thought I remember seeing that too. In effect, they can decel when needed.

That I can answer with no research!

Shuttles have a fixed baseline speed of 8. They may decelerate and cancel any moves they wish to, at no energy cost.

OK, to the original questions ...

(5H5) was just taking a "shortcut" to keep from adding another sentence (or two). As it references (2D5b), that is the overriding rule.

Ships do indeed have to be "Stopped" (i.e. at a baseline speed of stopped) at the end of a turn in order to land on the planet on the following turn. Shuttles, however, do not have to be stopped (and indeed can't actually be stopped). Instead, for shuttles merely ending the turn adjacent to the planet is sufficient. (This also applies to fighters.)