Federation Commander

Our group recently played a variant of the Space Dragon scenario. We had 3 Space Dragons vs. LDR NCA, Kzinti CC and Hydran IRQ.

During the game a few questions came up where we could not come to consensus:

1. A Space Dragon takes wing damage that drops it below the threshold for a lower base speed. Does the new lower base speed take effect immediately (i.e. next impulse) or does it wait to take effect until the speed declaration phase of the next turn?

2. When a Space Dragon loses entire parts of its body due to damage, skips on the damage rolls inevitably occur. Are skips treated as misses or are they rerolled until an available body part is hit?

3. Can the ships tractor the Space Dragons? Can Space Dragons apply negative tractor? If negative tractor is possible, is that power removed from speed?

Thanks in advance for any clarifications!

I'm fairly sure that Space Dragons, along with other "biological" monsters, should be immune to tractor beams.

(Indeed, in the SFB rules for Branthodon dragonships, the rule covering tractoring notes that the only reason why they can be tractored is because of the exoskeleton "parts" grafted on to the dragonship; which are large enough to allow for a lock-on... implying that a "free" dragon, without such parts, would be immune to a tractor lock-on.)

1. Not sure. The only time this could really matter was if it was asteroid damage, I suppose. Needs a Mike West opinion I think.

2. No, just like normal damage to a ship, keep rolling till it's all allocated.

3. Pretty sure dragons cannot be tractored. The negative tractor question doesn't matter, because they can't be tractored. Living monsters generally can't be tractored, as Gary notes, unless the rules require you to tractor them. For example, tractoring a Space Amoeba because the result on the chart says you have to do that to kill it.

1. I will have to check to see if there any hints. I don't think that was ever asked before.

2. Keep rollin'.

3. No tractors. This is actually covered in (5D3c), at least in RRB6.

Thanks for the input!

In our game we did item #2 correctly and item #3 incorrectly.
This clears it up.

For item #1 I figured that the speed reduction would not take effect until the next turn speed declaration phase, which would be consistent with how ship damage affects speed.

Ironically, the Space Dragon player was of the opinion that speed reductions take effect immediately.