Federation Commander

We're playing the scenario 'A Question of Franchise' (8B104) and I'm a little stuck on the rules for two enemy boarding parties on the same ship. I'm ok with the concept of splitting the forces to attack different foes, but in this case one of the foes is the control spaces of the freighter.

Let's say, for a starting position, that I and my opponent each have four marine squads on the freighter, and the freighter's crew hold the control spaces.

So, do we 'assign' forces to attack the freighter's control spaces, and also assign forces to attack enemy marines?

And what happens when some control spaces are 'owned' by one player, some by the other, and some by the freighter's 'crew'?

How does all this work?

Perhaps it's just me having trouble getting my head round it, but help would be appreciated

This is a scenario that we have played a few times (and its a good one!).

The way we ruled on the issue you brought up was that if there were any enemy Marines on a ship, they had to be eliminated before control spaces could be attacked.

According to (5Fc2)...

Capturing: To actually capture an enemy ship, you eliminate all defending Marines and then score an additional number of casualty points equal to the number of control systems (5A) on the ship (3E2). You can then withdraw any boarding parties which exceed the original number of control boxes.

The other Pirate's Marines are not actually defending the freighter in a technical sense, but (in a practical sense) both sides' Marines are battling it out in order to find out which side gets the opportunity to capture the control spaces.

One other point. A group of Marines cannot divide their combat between attacking enemy Marines and the control spaces. If the enemy Marines are eliminated and additional losses are called for, those losses become captured control spaces. But an attacking force cannot use part of its strength on one die roll to fight enemy Marines and use another part of its strength on a different die roll to try to capture control spaces.

EDIT: This explanation is WRONG. See later post.

A couple more questions we had about boarding combat and this scenario:

After a ship's Marines have been eliminated, that ship's control spaces do not "fight back" against attacking Marines. But what about after a ship has been captured? The capturing player is supposed to leave a number of Marines on board equal to the number of control spaces.

Suppose a ship with 4 control spaces is captured and 4 Marines are left behind. Another player puts Marines on that ship in an attempt to capture it.

Question #1: Do the "defending" Marines fight back with a die roll during Marine combat?

Question #2: Does the player with the "defending" Marines lose control of the ship if any of his Marines that are occupying the control spaces are killed?

Question #3: If the answer to Q3 is "No," do the "defending" player's Marines need to be killed AND THEN the control spaces captured ("killed") through boarding combat die rolls for the attacking player to capture and control the ship?

Perhaps some of these answers are in the new CRUL, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment and thought these questions were a logical outgrowth of Kang's original question.

You can also check out the large multi-sided marine combat example in Communique #25.

OG - yeah, I was looking at that example in more detail. It looks as if it might well answer my question, actually.....

From reading the Comm25 blurb about Marine combat and capturing ships, it looks like my answer (and the way we had been playing) was wrong.

If both Pirates have Marines on the freighter, each Pirate player can allocate Marines to attack the other Pirate's Marines and also allocate Marines to attack the freighter's control spaces.

To capture control spaces from the other Pirate player who has already captured some of them, the other Pirate must first disable the opposing Marines. Any "overkill" points would then be applied only to control spaces that had been captured by the other Pirate's Marines.