Two Newbie Questions on Combat

[xiombarg]

1) Why does the Flag Squadron have its AS halved? It's sort of implied it's because of the formation bonus, but this isn't true of any other ship with a formation bonus. What's up with that?

2) On p. 77, in the Ground Combat example, in Turn 2 Player A has his Regular Infantry invade the planet a second time, despite the fact that in Turn 1, his Marine Unit established a beachhead, even if his Regular Infantry did not. According to p.74, once a beachhead has been established, friendly units can simply disembark. It's not the same turn the beachhead was established, which is the only caveat... So why can't the Regular Infantry disembark in Turn 2 after the Marines established a beachhead in Turn 1? Is the example wrong, or am I reading the rules wrong?

[Gareth_Perkins]

1) It's assumed that the flag squadron is protected by the rest of the fleet - and perhaps some distance away from the primary action - and this is why it gets +1 formation bonus as well as the halved AS penalty.

I believe an errata was that the flag squadron lost this bonus and penalty in fleets with only one squadron.

Possibly the idea is that you put your carriers and ballistic ships in the flag squadron (ballistic ships don't halve their AS rating) and use it for combat support.


2) I don't have the example handy, so I couldn't say for sure,

However, I believe that you don't get an attack in on the turn you land unless you are invading.

So the infantry could either invade to establish another beachhead and get an attack in, or land normally and not attack until the next turn. Sometimes I guess that extra attack is important.

[mwaschak]

Good answers Gareth. I also posted a response to the list.

-Jay

[virtutis.umbra]

I have a new newbie combat question!

I assume this is the case, but I wanted to make extra-super-stupid-obvious certain. Do crippled/destroyed outcomes from the Ships Fire at Ships phase take immediate effect, i.e. are the crippled ships at half AF and the destroyed ships absent for the Ships Fire at Flights phase?

EDIT: oh, and P.S. - "Crippled units have all of their combat factors halved." Does that include DV??

[virtutis.umbra]

And another question!

One flight of DV 3 Raider Heavy Fighters is harassing a Tawasi squadron that rolled 1 damage on Ships Fire at Flights, and then 2 more on Flights Fire at Flights. Is the Raider flight dead?

Is it legal to combine AF damage from a squadron's AF factors (rolled in 3.6.3.12 Ships Fire at Flights) with their own dedicated anti-fighter flight escrots (rolled in 3.6.3.13 Flights Fire at Flights) for the purposes of determining whether a flight gets destroyed?

[Tyrel Lohr]

I assume this is the case, but I wanted to make extra-super-stupid-obvious certain. Do crippled/destroyed outcomes from the Ships Fire at Ships phase take immediate effect, i.e. are the crippled ships at half AF and the destroyed ships absent for the Ships Fire at Flights phase?

I have always played that you don't adjust unit stats to reflect damage until the end of the weapons fire phase. That way units that are crippled or destroyed during one fire step still get to do so in the later rounds that turn. That might not be right, but it's what I've done!

EDIT: oh, and P.S. - "Crippled units have all of their combat factors halved." Does that include DV??

Nope, DV doesn't get halved. That wording is an issue still in 2E, but I have tried to make it explicit that while combat factors are halved, DV always remains the same.

As for the third question, as written the AF damage from one fire step doesn't carry over to the next fire step, so they wouldn't take damage. I personally home ruled that you did apply the hits to the flights and then once the number of leftovers were enough to score damage I would apply the point of damage. Or if at the end of a battle the flight had taken hits but not enough to score a point of damage I just gave it 1 damage to show it had been hurt during the fight.

[virtutis.umbra]

Good to know: so Crippled affects AS, AF and CR? Do special ability ranks (scout, cloaking) also halve?

[virtutis.umbra]

Another newbie combat rules question!

Does the Scout Fleet Support ability only protect against Anti-Ship damage, or can it also be applied vs. Anti-Fighter damage? (Since the rule specifies that it applies before Directed Damage it sounds like it's Anti-Ship hits only...)

I'm imagining it wouldn't make much sense to allow the "damage reduction" to benefit Flights active in enemy squadrons this round, but perhaps Flights active in friendly squadrons should benefit from Scouts' protective work?

[Tyrel Lohr]

I think the Scout Fleet Support ability from 1E protects against all damage uniformly, absorbing the first 1D6+4 damage per scout function that the fleet takes, be it Anti-Ship or Anti-Fighter. That's how I always played it, but looking at the rules again it does seem that since the rules say that flights score directed damage and the fleet support doesn't affect directed damage, I would say that the rules as written don't support that interpretation. I would still recommend that you have the damage reduction apply uniformly to both starship and flights, or at least all Anti-Ship fighter (but not Anti-Fighter fire).