Federation Commander

are these official rules as of now?

4F6
there are some Romulan vessels that can launch 2 plasma F at the same target in the same round but the plasma F have to exit the firing hex into different hexes because of firing arcs. How does this work with swarms?

You are reducing the effectiveness of seeking weapons because there will now never be "over kill" on seeking weapons. Weapon damage will just flow into the next seeking weapon. This especially reduces plasma weapons.

thanks
Nicole

They are playtest rules. The results of playtesting will determine if changes are needed.

Excellent question on the 2 torpedo plasma swarm. We'll have to work on an answer for that. I am not sure of what the answer is. My initial take would be that they would not form a swarm.

Since damage is applied by firing weapon, there definitely can be overkill. That still happens. Playtesting will determine if it takes too much overkill out, but it is still there. (And if there is not enough possibility of overkill, then simply removing the enforced order of application would definitely change that!)

However, I am not really seeing it affect plasma too much. I have almost never seen plasma phasered down to literally nothing. It is almost always just to reduce strength, and that will work as intended with the swarm rules. But that is just what I have seen, and I am far from representative.

Can somebody give me an example or two of how the 'enforced order of application' of damage makes a difference? I understand how to use the rule but I'm not sure what the point of the rule is.

Sure. Here's a simple example.

A swarm of four drones passes a ship that is not the target. It fires three phasers at the swarm doing 4, 3, and 1 point of damage. The enforce order means they have to be applied from largest damage total to lowest damage total: 4, 3, 1. So, the owner of the swarm applies the 4 points to one drone, destroying it, 3 to a second drone, and 1 to a third drone. If the owner of the swarm could apply the damage in any order, he would apply the 3 points to one drone, then apply the 4 to the same drone, wasting three points of damage on overkill.

You can still get overkill even with the enforced order, but not nearly as much.

Does that explain it?

But if a weapon does 5 points of damage, 4 points destroy the drone and the leftover 1 goes to the next drone ?

Yes. That's part of the trade off for simplifying the drone rules.

This also makes Overload Disruptor and Plasma extremely effective anti-drone weapons.

Brazouck wrote:But if a weapon does 5 points of damage, 4 points destroy the drone and the leftover 1 goes to the next drone ?

No.

If a weapon does 5 points of damage, the previously undamaged drone is destroyed and the leftover 1 point is lost.

The damage from a single weapon is applied to a target within a swarm or flight in its entirety. The damage from a single weapon cannot be shared between two targets within a swarm or flight.

Dal Downing wrote:Yes. That's part of the trade off for simplifying the drone rules.

This also makes Overload Disruptor and Plasma extremely effective anti-drone weapons.

It is the exact opposite of this. An overloaded weapon is an extremely poor anti-drone weapon as too much if its damage will be lost.

Which is exactly how it should be.

I prefer that second answer