Federation Commander

Played a game the other day with a H-Overlord and a Seltorian Heavy BC versus the Juggy.

I couldn't find any rule covering this, but how do Hellbores work against the Jugs rule futzy armor and shield? As I read it if the Jug doesn't have his shield snapped to #4 then hellbore gets internals directly to the warp engines, effectively reducing the Juggy in a matter of turns. Is this right?

I'll just have to go with the SFB rule in this case.

[Rest deleted and superceded by note below ...]

That's kind of what I thought. That makes Hydrans wee bit dangerous to the good ol' jug. In our game I made 3 overloaded Hellbore shots, and he didn't have his shield up on the #4 arc. I effectively knocked him out in turn 1. Granted, that's only because he fired all his Ph-4's and 1's at the Selt at longer range...

Thanks for the response.

So, then, I guess the rotating shield does not 'snap' to a new position in response to Hellbore damage, in any way, since it's multi-directional?

...and Mike, do you have a rule mumber for the SFB Juggernaut rules? Were they in the Captain's Log where it featured 'Return of the Juggernaut'? The reason I ask is that the original Juggy scenario was written before any weapons giving non-directional, or more accurately, multi-directional damaging weapons were invented. Enveloping plasmas, Hellbores, PPDs, any weapons that can impact more than one shield were but a figment of the future....

Just thinking that Juggs don't have shields, use armor -- so wouldn't the HB take every (what would be determined as) shield position except the rotating shield, as the weakest --

Yes, you'd think that it would count as an unshielded target, wouldn't you? Perhaps its being 'electrostatic' armour helps?

Hmm. It appears I misinterpreted someone's comments on the rules. Fortunately, a quick query and answer on the SFB Q&A topic found me the rules I need. It is located at (SL246.462) in CL33. The SFB rule is as follows:
"If hit by a hellbore [or] PPD ..., no damage is done to the (nonexistant) #4 armor unless the fire came from that arc. Determine the enveloped damage normally, but simply ignore any damage which would strike the #4 shield. In the case of hellbore damage, no matter what the strength of a given armor belt [is], the hellbore will divide its damage as if the Juggernaut were an unshielded target."

Now we must remember that hellbore damage is done a bit differently in FC than in SFB, so I will change my above ruling to the following:
"If a Juggernaut is hit by a hellbore or PPD, no damage is done to the (nonexistant) #4 armor unless the fire came from that arc. In the case of hellbores, add the two damage numbers together, then distribute them as described for the second number in (4K3d) across all six armor positions."

Hellbores kinda suck against the Juggernaut ...

mjwest wrote:"If a Juggernaut is hit by a hellbore or PPD, no damage is done to the (nonexistant) #4 armor unless the fire came from that arc. In the case of hellbores, add the two damage numbers together, then distribute them as described for the second number in (4K3d) across all six armor positions."

So if the fire comes from an arc other than #4, does the damage get divided by five? And if it does come from arc #4, is that when we divide it by six?

Also, even given your above ruling, how does the rotating shield come in to this? Does it block the one-[sixth or one-fifth] damage for a single armor belt?

As the ruling states, the damage is always spread across the six positions. Therefore, if the first does not "hit" the #4 position, any damage assigned to the #4 position is lost. One must assume that since the defender assigns the points, any "extra" point will always hit the #4 position and be lost.

Yes, the damage going through the position protected by the rotating shield will hit the shield. In fact, all damage going through the position protected by the rotating shield must be applied to the shield first. The rotating shield does not affect the division of hellbore damage. It does still take the damage, though.