Federation Commander

Had quite a good game today, multi ship hydran vs LDR. There was a bit of a discussion about Hellbore and ESG interaction which we appeared to have done (largely) correctly - though I was hoping that the newest rule book would have been a bit more explicit about some of the stuff that has been previuosly discussed on this forum - it still sounds in many ways that each ESG is affecting an indivuidual hellbore, and the wording 'since hellbores shot at an ESG field produce automatic hits' makes it sound like there is an earlier rule that stated this, but I can't find anything.

Anyway a clarification request.

ESG use and hellbore use is part of the 'me to' phase of who is firing what. But the ESG only applies to a volley.

1.Can the ESG player declare the ESG against the first/last hellbore volley to fire? rather than a specific ship. I assume not as the Hydran player needs to know who he wants to 'me to' for the extra auto hits, and as the attacker he resolves the ships in whatever order he wants.


2.If the hydran chooses to resolve the ESG'd volley last can the ESG be lost before it gets a chance to be used against that last volley? 3D2 seems to suggest not, and it isn't weapon fire per se so doesn't seem to be covered by 4A1 (indeed is it even a weapon? given it is covered under systems rather than weapons). I assume it is still useable on the last volley, even if just to keep things simple, but it seems slightly counter intuitive.

Before answering the specific questions, please remember that all volleys are declared prior to resolving any of them. Once all fire is fully declared for all potential volleys, individual volleys are then resolved one at a time. As the damage is taken, the ability of the damaged ship to do things is reduced (e.g. losing batteries prevents reinforcement). However, all declared weapons fire still takes place.

1) ESGs in anti-hellbore mode operate within the volley system. Therefore, only hellbores in that volley are affected by the ESGs in anti-hellbore mode. So, if two hellbore ships fire at an ESG equipped ship (which is, by definition, two separate volleys), the ESG equipped ship may use his ESGs in anti-hellbore mode against only one of them if he so desires, and the other hellbore ship's hellbores will not be affected by that. Yes, that is not ideal, but doing it any other way would require at least a column of rules to arbitrate the various special cases that would result.

So, it doesn't really matter. When the ESG player decides to use the ESG in anti-hellbore mode, he does it within the context of the volley. During which the hellbore ship can "me-too" the rest of his (now automatic) hellbores (assuming he had any). Likewise, the ESG player could "me-too" the discharge of additional power to mitigate the increased damage.

Also, note that, if the ESG player has enough power in his ESG(s), he can use it against multiple volleys.

2) ESGs are direct fire weapons, despite being listed as a "system" due to history. So, as long as the ESG fire was declared during the fire declaration, the ESG will fire regardless of whether it is in the first volley, or in the last volley.

Wouldn't a ship with mutilple ESG's vs. multiple hellbore volleys be able to use whatever ESG's, but each only once, against whichever hellbore volley he wants? An example for clarity: 2 hellbore armed ships fire on a Lyran CA (which has 2 ESGs) can the Lyran player use one ESG against each of the incoming volleys?

Remember that fire is resolved one ship at a time.

When the first hellbore ship declares her targets, the Lyran must decide - before any to-hit dice are rolled - whether he is using an (one only, I believe)* ESG against that ship's fire. If he decides to use an ESGs in anti-hellbore mode, those hellbores auto-hit, and the Hydran can opt to 'me-too' any other available hellbores on that ship, which will also auto-hit; the Lyran then decides how much energy to use in the anti-hellbore burst.

Once all of that is resloved, the next hellbore ship declares fire, and the process repeats.

At least, that is my understanding.

*That's from a reading of the 5N ESG rules in the v3 draft rulebook which I have to hand. It reads as if only one ESG on the target ship may respond to any one incoming volley, rather than the lot of them (say all four on a BCH).

Whoa, that makes a difference. MJW, am I reading that correctly?

After rereading the rule, I can see where you might get that reading. But you are reading too much into it.

Fundamentally, the use of each whole point available in any of a ship's ESGs are individual decision points. A given ESG may be only used in a single mode in a specific impulse, but may be used multiple times within that mode in that impulse.

So, for example, if an ESG is used in defensive mode, it is not available for anti-hellbore mode later in the impulse. However, if the ESG is used in anti-hellbore mode, it can choose to expend 2 points against one ship, and 3 points against a different ship.

So, let's take two Dragoons firing at a single Tiger. The Tiger has two ESGs and the two Dragoons have it center-lined so that all eight hellbores can be fired at the Tiger. The Tiger has both ESGs available, and they are fully charged. All of the hellbores are normally loaded, and both Dragoons are 5 hexes away.

When allocating fire during the Offensive Fire phase, all fire from one of the Dragoons is declared before moving on to the next. So, the first Dragoon decides that he will fire two hellbores at the Tiger. Now, the Tiger has to decide if he is going to use any of his ESGs in anti-hellbore mode. If he so desired, he could expend all 10 points from both ESGs, but that would be overkill. Instead, the Tiger decides to release 6 energy points. Doing this means that the two hellbores will auto-hit, but only 2 points of damage (13*2 - 6*4 = 26-24 = 2) will get through. At this point, the Dragoon has to decide if he will fire either (or both) of his other two hellbores, too. Doing so will ensure they auto-hit, but will also allow the Tiger the chance to release more ESG energy to counter the damage. The Dragoon decides to hold off on firing more hellbores, as the arcs on the remaining two hellbores will give plenty of firing chances later in the turn. We will ignore phasers, so the first Dragoon is done.

The second Dragoon now gets to allocate his fire. If he fires his hellbores, and the Tiger does not expend any ESG energy against his hellbores, they will not auto-hit. Even though the Tiger has used ESGs in anti-hellbore mode, the auto-hit only applies to that volley. Since the fire from the second Dragoon is a new volley, the whole process starts all over. The second Dragoon decides to fire a single hellbore. Now the Tiger must decide if he is going to use anti-hellbore ESGs or not. To make the example interesting, we will let him make a mistake and choose to do so. He expends 3 points of ESG energy to counter the incoming hellbore, meaning it now auto-hits, but only a single point gets through (13 - 3*4 = 13 - 12 = 1). Unfortunately, the Tiger only has a single point of ESG energy left. Realizing this, the second Dragoon decides to fire his other three hellbores knowing they will automatically hit. In response the Tiger releases the final point of ESG energy he has left. This means that the hellbores now do (13*4 - 4*4 = 52 - 16 = 36) points of damage. Again, we ignore phasers.

Given the damage he is automatically going to take, the Tiger probably should have not used the anti-hellbore ESG energy against the second Dragoon. Also note that the two Dragoons did an excellent job of drawing enough energy out on the first attack so that the second attack could overwhelm the defenses if the Tiger made the mistake of using ESGs against the second Dragoon (which, for the sake of our example, he did).

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the rapid reply! OK, back to normal, got a little excited there.

But

The Tiger has four ESGs

please tell me that's a typo.

Wow....that is totally different than how i thought it worked. Seems there needs to be more clarification in the rule book (for other things too, IMHO) or examples. Thanks for straightening things out.

Dan Ibekwe wrote:

The Tiger has four ESGs

please tell me that's a typo.

It's a typo.

The problem was that I was originally going to use a Wildcat in the example (which does have four ESGs). Unfortunately, that would give it so much ESG power that it would have just overwhelmed the hellbore fire of both Dragoons. So, I scaled it back to a Tiger (which does indeed only have two ESGs). I thought I caught all the changes, but missed that one.

I have edited the post to fix the error.