Federation Commander

Interesting question came up during a recent game.

We had a ship that was pretty much shattered -- every box destroyed except for Frame. The opponent declared that he wanted to try to capture it...

would this ship still have its full Marine complement available? Or would they have taken damage as well at some point along the way?

I personally don't know of any rule in FC that causes losses to personnel because of ship damage.

Indeed. There is no rule saying that.

Losing boxes on a shipcard represents losing the capability and things being inoperative more than anything else (it's why they can be repaired; tough to do if they were outright destroyed). The marines and the rest of the crew are assumed to be fine, until or unless the whole ship goes boom.

Admittedly an abstraction, but FedCom abstracts a lot of things in the interest of speed.

Tracking individual crew units, etc., would take a lot more rules and just slows things down. That kind of rules crunch is for SFB.

SFB does have a rule for losing Marines as the ship is damaged, FC does not.

Correct. SFB has a rule for losing Marines as the ship is damaged, FC does not. It was part of simplifying the rules set.

A Call to Arms: Star Fleet also has rules coverig the loss of Marines through various critical hits; but, for the time being, there are no boarding actions in print for that game (though there are for other games using the same base engine, such as A Call to Arms: Noble Armada).

And how does the mechanism of ACtA apply to Federation Commander?

The SFB reference makes sense, as it is a frequent source of confusion on some "phantom memories" of Federation Commander rules that don't exist. But I really doubt anyone is confusing ACtA rules and Federation Commander rules.

mjwest wrote:And how does the mechanism of ACtA apply to Federation Commander?

The SFB reference makes sense, as it is a frequent source of confusion on some "phantom memories" of Federation Commander rules that don't exist. But I really doubt anyone is confusing ACtA rules and Federation Commander rules.

I find it a valid evidence supporting the argument that, perhaps, there OUGHT to be rules for losing Marines through combat in Federation Commander.

I think it's better to leave it out for simplicity's sake myself.

ecs05norway wrote:I find it a valid evidence supporting the argument that, perhaps, there OUGHT to be rules for losing Marines through combat in Federation Commander.

Nah, it doesn't really fit into the overall scheme of Federation Commander.

Besides, even in SFB, the loss of marine units is fairly minor. It is more window dressing than anything else, and Federation Commander tried to avoid window dressing like that.

I think it's better to leave it out for simplicity's sake myself.

I agree, but there needs to be an update on the Mobile Base X-ray Scenario. I will check when I get home, but I believe that the Romulans MUST capture the base to win, which is not possible in Federation Commander as the Romulan ship in the scenario has one transporter and less marines than the base.

It works in SFB as you can kill marines. Not so much in FC.

It would be simple enough to implement...

I can think of two possibilities off the top of my head:

1) For every full 10 internals from a volley, one Marine is lost.

2) For every Hull hit, one Marine is lost.

Even the original SFB rules were not that destructive towards either crew or Marines. A ship had to be pretty well shattered before its personnel began to take serious casualties.

There is a reason for this.

Remember that damage to ships is mainly a loss of function of the damaged part. A Hull hit means that your bowling alley or mess hall does not work any more. Perhaps your swimming pool has sprung a leak, to the great delight of your damage control people

A 'phaser' hit is perhaps a power surge damaging the control systems; perhaps a 'photon' hit is damage to the containment field coils around the conduits that bring the antimatter to the photon tubes. A 'bridge' hit is the flashes and bangs that knock out their instrument panels, just like on the TV series.

Only 'Frame' hits necessarily represent actual damage to the spaceframe itself. Maybe then 'frame' hits could destroy Marines, but it's a long shot. It's perhaps best we leave things as they are!

Just for the sake of argument, the rule from SFB says that you lose a marine unit when you take 50 points of damage, then lose another every 10 points of damage after that. However, the last two marine units cannot be killed using this mechanism.

Yes, it would have an effect, but there are ways to mitigate it in SFB using Commanders' Options and militia, so it isn't that great of an effect. In Federation Commander, there are no such options. As such, not having a similar rule makes sense by ignoring that whole set of window dressing.