Reply: Battle Beyond Space:: Rules:: Re: Questions! (mainly about powers)

by JFarceur

Thank you for your time, and complete answers! :-)

I'm having a great pleasure discussing this with you. I hope you understand that I like the game as it is. I find interesting when you describe "what you had in mind", as it helps a lot finding rulings that doesn't alter the game in its essence.

Will you make a FAQ with all the questions/answers you've been receiving?

Earther special power: "Once per game, one of your fighters can self destruct."

fbranham wrote:

No. We allow it to happen before moving or after moving the full amount of movement.

The second ruling I've made recently is that the power CAN be used as the ship collides with another ship. But this only happens on the Earther's turn.

Ok, so we should not be able to self destruct in an opponent's turn either.

My thinking was that if my fighter carries a bomb like that, it didn't needed a button to be pressed in order to explode, but more like "if the ships blows off, the bomb also explodes". I understand you meant this as an "attack", and not a trap/reaction or something.

fbranham wrote:

And you get to look at your first movement card as you are setting up.

Oh I did not know that. Thanks for the tip.

fbranham wrote:

Good set of questions. Yes, moving the central asteroid does change the scoring location for 2 points around that asteroid.

Probes don't move, and should be destroyed. The idea is that the asteroid is small enough not to have a strong gravity field.

So... if the "central asteroid" is destroyed (i.e. : into a capital ship) ... nobody gets the points? That's why I thought the "central asteroid" should be considered different.

fbranham wrote:

I think I'm following the train of logic. The intent of adding the "asteroid crashed into undamaged cap ship" is as you describe. I want everything in the game to do one point of damage, and so it takes two "things" to kill a cap ship. (Death Blossom and the MegaWeapon are two exceptions as they do their damage on a per-hex basis).

The rules that restrict capital ships running into asteroids and other capital ships have four intended reasons:

1. You cannot suicide a capital ship without giving the points to another player.
2. Only one thing sits on a hex when you are done colliding.
3. We never do the Robo Rally push/shove thing (that feels a bit wrong to me, and leads to a fairly complex set of situations I did not want to bury the game in details around.
4. We avoid running into another cap ship because you get a few extra rules describing the various situations. Plus with that rule, cap ships were running into each other all of the time, as it is easy to do.

I, indeed, have been inspired by the Robo Rally pushing/shove mechanic. I believe that such a "feature" can add about 1 page of rules that don't necessarily fit with the game "essence", making it undesirable. I also admit I did not predict that capital ships would start running into each other like that, because they "usually" have low movement values. So I'll just forget about all the "knock back" things.

On the other hand, I would still keep the "When a capital ship moves onto an asteroid, it takes damage, and the asteroid is destroyed (no suicide allowed).", in a hypothetical case where moving anywhere else means instant death by incoming enemy fighters. "Better scratched than dead!"



I have another question.

Firing from capital ships:
Capital ships may fire at any ONE target within two hexes of EITHER of the capital ship's hexes. A capital ship may not fire though any obstacle. The target does NOT have to be two hexes in a straight line from the capital ship.

In that case, does "partial cover" counts? I took some minutes to assemble this *haherm* magnificient example :



In these cases, when "partial cover" occurs, can the Capital ship (the grey platypus) fire at one of the targets? The situation arised, and we ruled that it was allowed, but I wanted your call on that.

Thanks again for your answers!