Federation Commander

This situation happened during a game tonight.

A Lyran ship is adjacent to a Kzinti ship. At the end of the sub-pulse 4, the Kzinti ship has four drones that impacted a shield. (The drones came from a third ship which was an Orion.)

During defensive fire phase, the Kzinti tractors 2 drones while the two remaining drones are not stopped. During offensive fire phase, the Lyran pulses the ESG.

Would the ESG take out all 4 drones and damage the Kzinti ship or would it only take out 2 drones and damage the Kzinti ship?

This may not matter to the situation above but we couldn’t find the rule about when to mark out damaged ship boxes. Would you do it at the end of defensive fire phase and then again at the end of offensive fire phase or would you wait until the end of offensive fire phase?

One player said that damage allocation came after offensive fire phase so the ESG would take out all 4 drones because the 2 that were not stopped had not blown up and caused any damage yet.

One player said that the 2 drones that got through blew up and caused damage during defensive fire phase but it was only damage allocation that was resolved later.

I hope I wasn’t confusing. Bottom line is, how are the impacted drones mentioned above affected by the offensive ESG?

Rule (1E2c) states, in part, "f a seeking weapon is not destroyed or tractored, ... Any resulting damage is resolved immediately, ... See Damage Allocation (3D)."

So, the two drones that were not stopped hit at the end of the Defensive Fire Phase, do 12 points of damage each, remove the relevant shield boxes and either do one point of burn-through (if the shield was not dropped) or does the appropriate number of internals (if the shield was dropped). This includes applying the damage through Damage Allocation. Any weapons disabled because of this are unavailable for use in the Direct Fire Phase.

Then, during the Direct Fire Phase any internals caused by direct fire weapons that impulse are applied through Damage Allocation and any disabled systems are unavailable for use in the Other Functions and Launch Phases.

So, in your question, at the beginning of the Direct Fire Phase, there are only two impacted drones. The other two drones have already done their damage and been removed from play. Therefore, the ESG only damages the two remaining drones (and the Kzinti ship).

I hope that clears things up.