Federation Commander

The rule states that when entering an asteroid field, you take any damage on your #1 shield (forward movement) or your #4 shield (reverse), even for sideslips.

Fine.

What if i have tractored an opponent (1 hex range) and am dragging this poor fella through hex after hex of an asteroid field, and due to his facing it is some other shield that is entering the field. His #3, say?

My movement is forward. His movement (before it got 'cancelled' by my tractor) was forward. But his ship is kinda being moved backwards by me as I drag his #3 over lots of rocks.

Where does he take the damage? "Common" sense tells me the #3. Yet without a printed exception, the rules say #4. ?

Jon: Mike will correct me if I'm wrong (and I probably am... ), but when this situation came up in our local session, we went with your solution.

Our reasoning was the same as yours. If the ship had been moving under it's own power and entered the field, damage would have been applied tothe #1 shield )or #4 if moving in reverse), but since the #3 shield was definitely the leading shield - we applied damage there.

I agree with this solution. The #1/#4 rule only applies when a ship is moving under its own power.

Thanks.

Followup question.

As the rules discount sideslips for a ship that is moving on it's own through an asteroid field, do we also discount sideslips on the part of the move-controlling ship when determining what shield the dragged ship takes damage on?

Take my example below of the dragged ship having the #3 as the "facing" shield, but the draggER slips, shoving the dragged ship into the asteroids through it's #4. Would we use the #3 or the #4 to take the damage?

I'm not Mike West, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night...

I'd think you'd follow the same logic as in the rules and apply the damage to the leading shield, i.e. #3.

I concur. The same principle should apply.

The text of the rules is clear. Mike seems to be changing them (quite probably for the better, but a constant call from many is to limit the size of the rulebook). As I see it, and especially based on other rules and ruling, you cannot damage a ship by dragging it through an asteroid field since its movement is 0. If you do damage it, it should be to the #1 or #4 based on its movement, not the movement of the tractoring ship.

IMO, this is not a ruling by Mike, but a change to the rules. I really never play in asteroids, so I don't really care about the outcome of this particular rule, but Mike may wish to consider if the process being used is the one he and Steve thinks is best for the game.

It may not matter since this happened in SFB, but when I played a scenario at Origins, I shoved a certain LDR ship into an asteroid field and it assuredly took damage.

She Who Shoves LDR into Asteroids

Jean,
In SFB the rules for tractored and tractoring units still allow for both ships to have movement, so the damage you suffered is appropriate and covered by the rules of SFB.

In Fed Com, once two ships have become "joined" by a tractor beam, one ship controls movement (and has its base speed reduced by one or two steps) and the other cannot move at all (and has its base speed reduced to 0). So the rules to the two games are very different on this account. SFB choosing more rules and more "realism" and Fed Com choosing to have a smaller rule set and thus is less robust in certain areas.

Mike's ruling certainly makes "more sense," but it also changes the current, clear rules of Fed Com and adds complexity in the name of achieving that "more sensible" result. I am just asking Mike and Steve if the process used (Mike adds rules to the game so that a particular, narrow situation in Fed Com is given more "realism") is a process that is good for the game.

The damage is calculated at the speed of movement, i.e., the speed the two linked ships are moving.

If A tractors B and (for whatever reason) B's engines aren't involved in the conversation, B takes damage at the speed of A (and so does A) assume either enters an asteroid hex.

That's the rule, always has been. Any other interpretation is just finding something that is not there. Note that this "ruling" is not adding anything, as the existing rules already say this.

If anyone has any argument with that, they can email me and NOT POST IT HERE as I have the final word.

Just a quick correction: Paul, it wasn't MY little Orion ship that took damage from shoving the other person's ship into the asteroid field. My ship took damage when his ship blew up, though .... (Truth be told, it wasn't the asteroids that made him blow up, but the other ship that sort of shot him when I was shoving him into more asteroids.)

She Who Shoves LDR into Asteroids

The_Rock - I finally found the rule last night. It isn't under asteroids, it is under tractor beams.

Going from poor memory, it is something like 5D6d. (I'll probably have to correct that reference when I get back home and look it up). Clearly says that the tractored ship does take damage at the new baseline speed.

No mention of the shield, though.

You figure out which shield of the towed/pushed unit is hit the same way you always do.

Which rules reference is that, Steve?

I didn't find one under tractors or asteroids, which is why i had to ask the question here.

(6B2d) dictates the daamge application.
#1 shield if ship is moving forward, #4 is moving in reverse. Note that slipping into the hex still sccrues damage on the #1 or #4 shield.

This was the basic for my original contention that if dragged into the hex #3 shiled first, that would be the shield to take damage as it was the leading shield.