The rules as stated By Matthew Sprange

[MongooseMatt]

In preparation of a revised FAQ tomorrow, I have edited the original post. You'll find the change in the Federation Combined Drone Racks rule (which I renamed, as there is no such thing as a G-Rack in CTA:SF...). I'll wait for the hollers from Fed players...

This, incidentally, is _exactly_ why I don't want these whitterings to be official. They could well be reversed after deep reflection and much navel-gazing.

Also, this list (if it is to be useful) should not contain rehashes of the rulebook. For example, the first entry in the Combined Drone Racks section may well have been asked on these forums, but it is explicitly stated in the relevant rules of the book. May be a good idea for someone to go through the original post and hack out such entries as it really will benefit from being shortened.

[GreyHart]

In preparation of a revised FAQ tomorrow, I have edited the original post. This, incidentally, is _exactly_ why I don't want these whitterings to be official. They could well be reversed after deep reflection and much navel-gazing.

Shouldn't that be 'naval'-gazing? This is Star FLEET after all.

[storeylf]

You lose 1 Attack Dice of Drones for every 1 you roll on the Anti-Drone trait.

crikey, so the Fed BCH can now lose all its drones in a single use of ADD - roll 4 * 1 and good bye drones.

PS I'm not a fed player.

[Captain Jonah]

In preparation of a revised FAQ tomorrow, I have edited the original post. You'll find the change in the Federation Combined Drone Racks rule (which I renamed, as there is no such thing as a G-Rack in CTA:SF...). I'll wait for the hollers from Fed players...

This, incidentally, is _exactly_ why I don't want these whitterings to be official. They could well be reversed after deep reflection and much navel-gazing.

Also, this list (if it is to be useful) should not contain rehashes of the rulebook. For example, the first entry in the Combined Drone Racks section may well have been asked on these forums, but it is explicitly stated in the relevant rules of the book. May be a good idea for someone to go through the original post and hack out such entries as it really will benefit from being shortened.

Work Work Work.

Yesh bunch of slave drivers, and not even any Doughnuts

[MongooseMatt]

Shouldn't that be 'naval'-gazing? This is Star FLEET after all.

That is exactly what I first typed

[MongooseMatt]

Yesh bunch of slave drivers, and not even any Doughnuts

We can give you an e-doughnut

[Captain Jonah]

You lose 1 Attack Dice of Drones for every 1 you roll on the Anti-Drone trait.

crikey, so the Fed BCH can now lose all its drones in a single use of ADD - roll 4 * 1 and good bye drones.

PS I'm not a fed player.

Nope Mr Sprange strikes again with the wording.

I believe it works like an ADD so no matter how many ones you lose it goes down by only one against a single salvo. The BCH can take 4 ammo drops before its Drone rating drops to zero and it no longer has Drones or ADDs.

Otherwise the Fed players who are going to be a little miffed over the loss of the never ending ADD will be forming a lynch mob.

For example. A fed BCH takes a salvo of 4 Drones and rolls 1,2,4,1. It loses one ammo, it then takes another salvo of 4 and rolls 2,6,4,3 and loses no ammo. The third salvo rolls are 2,5,1,3 and the BCH loses another ammo. Next turn it has Drone 2.

I’m sure Matt will explain what he meant tomorrow but if he really means every single one rolled then he is going way too far the other way from never ending ADD of Drone proof BCH to flying target in one step.

It does however remove the only fleet that was fairly capable of standing up to Kzinti Drones since even the biggest Fed ships can now be quickly stripped of not only ADDs but also of the ability to Fire Drones back and the Feds are not the most mobile of fleets. We will have to see when the Hydran and Lyran get here but this does mean that the Feds will have to attack fast before they lose all Drones and have no way of fighting a Kzinti fleet that is keeping its distance.

From cheddar to mouse food, how the mighty do fall.

Makes the Klingon’s the only ones now really capable of facing Kzinti again because they can manoeuvre well. Maybe the Kzinti players have been sending him lots of emails, some of them have been rather upset over losing the All powerful killer Drone storm.


PS I have been known to play Feds but I'm not a Flat Top fanatic, I just like to se everyone given a decent chance.


Who Are we. GORNS

What do we want. Cruisers that can turn corners

[Captain Jonah]

Yesh bunch of slave drivers, and not even any Doughnuts

We can give you an e-doughnut

You lot are as bad as the Terra/Sol guys.

That Mike, he gets the team doughnuts then because everyone is working on line he eats them himself

[McKinstry]

You lose 1 Attack Dice of Drones for every 1 you roll on the Anti-Drone trait.

crikey, so the Fed BCH can now lose all its drones in a single use of ADD - roll 4 * 1 and good bye drones.

PS I'm not a fed player.

Nope Mr Sprange strikes again with the wording.

I believe it works like an ADD so no matter how many ones you lose it goes down by only one against a single salvo. The BCH can take 4 ammo drops before its Drone rating drops to zero and it no longer has Drones or ADDs.

Otherwise the Fed players who are going to be a little miffed over the loss of the never ending ADD will be forming a lynch mob.

For example. A fed BCH takes a salvo of 4 Drones and rolls 1,2,4,1. It loses one ammo, it then takes another salvo of 4 and rolls 2,6,4,3 and loses no ammo. The third salvo rolls are 2,5,1,3 and the BCH loses another ammo. Next turn it has Drone 2.

I’m sure Matt will explain what he meant tomorrow but if he really means every single one rolled then he is going way too far the other way from never ending ADD of Drone proof BCH to flying target in one step.

It does however remove the only fleet that was fairly capable of standing up to Kzinti Drones since even the biggest Fed ships can now be quickly stripped of not only ADDs but also of the ability to Fire Drones back and the Feds are not the most mobile of fleets. We will have to see when the Hydran and Lyran get here but this does mean that the Feds will have to attack fast before they lose all Drones and have no way of fighting a Kzinti fleet that is keeping its distance.

From cheddar to mouse food, how the mighty do fall.

Makes the Klingon’s the only ones now really capable of facing Kzinti again because they can manoeuvre well. Maybe the Kzinti players have been sending him lots of emails, some of them have been rather upset over losing the All powerful killer Drone storm.


PS I have been known to play Feds but I'm not a Flat Top fanatic, I just like to se everyone given a decent chance.


Who Are we. GORNS

What do we want. Cruisers that can turn corners

I think that is how we all thought it might be from the beginning. Roll a one, or four ones, on the ADD roll and the drone count goes down by one permanently. This pretty much places the Feds in the same position as everyone else as regards defense and makes them much worse as regards offense versus any drone fleet since they cannot shoot and defend in the same turn. I'm OK with this coupled with the three ship maximum targeting rules for drones although this makes the need to revisit points much less except on the BCJ and even then, lowering the CA and CC cost is probably the better answer.

[gord314]

I'm a federation player and I really don't mind this change when taken with limit on drones fired at a single ship. Most federation fleets will have enough defensive fire to not use ADD (since drones can shoot down drones 1-1 normally) and still take minimal damage per turn while closing. Everyone seems to think closing is hard, it really isn't on a fleet scale. Lumbering can be a problem, but even a turn 6 ship will have no problem closing distance unless their enemy is headed directly away from them, but then the fleeing enemy will run out of table fast.

[Captain Jonah]

Nope Mr Sprange strikes again with the wording.

I believe it works like an ADD so no matter how many ones you lose it goes down by only one against a single salvo. The BCH can take 4 ammo drops before its Drone rating drops to zero and it no longer has Drones or ADDs.

For example. A fed BCH takes a salvo of 4 Drones and rolls 1,2,4,1. It loses one ammo, it then takes another salvo of 4 and rolls 2,6,4,3 and loses no ammo. The third salvo rolls are 2,5,1,3 and the BCH loses another ammo. Next turn it has Drone 2.

I’m sure Matt will explain what he meant tomorrow but if he really means every single one rolled then he is going way too far the other way from never ending ADD of Drone proof BCH to flying target in one step.

From cheddar to mouse food, how the mighty do fall.

Who Are we. GORNS

What do we want. Cruisers that can turn corners

I think that is how we all thought it might be from the beginning. Roll a one, or four ones, on the ADD roll and the drone count goes down by one permanently. This pretty much places the Feds in the same position as everyone else as regards defense and makes them much worse as regards offense versus any drone fleet since they cannot shoot and defend in the same turn. I'm OK with this coupled with the three ship maximum targeting rules for drones although this makes the need to revisit points much less except on the BCJ and even then, lowering the CA and CC cost is probably the better answer.

Yep. Odd that just about all of us thought it was that way, then someone sort of important but apparently unofficial told us about the Fed ADD of never ending and it all went on from there.

Since this is how it reads in the rules and its what most all of us thought there should be few problems. I can't quite remember who it was told us about the never ending bit and put us all on the wrong path. Someone who posts here a lot, name starts with M

[MongooseMatt]

You lose 1 Attack Dice of Drones for every 1 you roll on the Anti-Drone trait.

crikey, so the Fed BCH can now lose all its drones in a single use of ADD - roll 4 * 1 and good bye drones.

PS I'm not a fed player.

Nope Mr Sprange strikes again with the wording.

I believe it works like an ADD so no matter how many ones you lose it goes down by only one against a single salvo. The BCH can take 4 ammo drops before its Drone rating drops to zero and it no longer has Drones or ADDs.

Storyelf had the right of it - he was suggesting it was possible to roll a 1 four times and lose ADD in one go, not that you lose all ADD if you roll one 1.

[MongooseMatt]

I can't quite remember who it was told us about the never ending bit and put us all on the wrong path. Someone who posts here a lot, name starts with M

I _said_ you shouldn't take my word here as golden. This is why

[Captain Jonah]

crikey, so the Fed BCH can now lose all its drones in a single use of ADD - roll 4 * 1 and good bye drones.

PS I'm not a fed player.

Storyelf had the right of it - he was suggesting it was possible to roll a 1 four times and lose ADD in one go, not that you lose all ADD if you roll one 1.

I do hope not. What storyelf is saying above is that a BCH (DRONE 4) can now lose all its DRONES in a SINGLE use of ADD. He didn't say in one turn, he said a single use. As we have been over this a number of times no matter how many ones are rolled an ADD loses ONE unit of ammo durring a single use.

Rolling 1,1,1,2 against a 4 Drone attack costs ONE unit of ammo and would lower the BCH from Drone 4 to Drone 3 next turn.

Or am I wrong and you are saying that if the Fed player rolls 1,1,1,2 defending against a single attack of 4 Drones he loses THREE units of ammo and next turn is reduced to Drone one. If that is the case it is clearly different to (I think) everyones current understanding of ADDs and will lead to a lot of (polite) arguments.

[archon96]

my understanding of the way it was written is a roll of 1 = loss of 1 ammo. there i would assume that 6 drones in coming and you role 4 number 1s then youre out of ammo.

[storeylf]

No idea what the intent was, but the wording seemed very explicit - 'every' one rolled.

That does seem to make sense SFU wise. The fed racks had less drones than normal drone racks and less ADD rounds than normal ADDs. They could do both which was nice, but they couldn't keep it up as long as dedicated systems. This puts the Feds at a point they should be IMO - they can handle drones well but only for a short burst of time.

As we have been over this a number of times no matter how many ones are rolled an ADD loses ONE unit of ammo durring a single use.

Maybe, but this isn't an ADD. It's a Fed rack.

[Captain Jonah]

That’s me reading posts like these and getting confused then.


viewtopic.php?f=103&t=50039

If you roll _any_ number of 1's, the ADD loses one rating, so 2 goes down to 1.

It was in response to these rulings of Matt’s that I started this topic, because of Matts response to this question I put this:

• Roll as many dice as there are drones in the attacking wave (all Drones fired by one ship at one target make up the wave), if one or more of those dice are ones then the ADD rating is reduced by ONE. Every drone is automatically stopped in that wave regardless of rolling any ones.

On the first post here.

So this one needs removing as well then ???

[storeylf]

That ruling may well be correct. Remember ADD is not the same as Fed drone racks. They may well be different.

Clearly there has been some intent to change to Fed drone racks, but that doesn't mean there was any intent to change ADD. Indeed given that Matt went through your first post reading it and changing that bit, I'd assume that indeed the intent is as now worded.

[McKinstry]

Since the ability to lose all 4 ADD/drones in one throw would be vastly harsher, I strongly suspect we will be back to the standard Day 1 interpretation in which a 4 drone Fed will take rolling a one at least over four separate attacks to lose all drones.

If not, the BCH can drop to 215 and the Feds can consider themselves honorary plasma users after turn one.

[storeylf]

The BCH is still pretty immune to drones without even using the ADD-mode drones.

4 drones (never run out) and plenty of phasers is quite capable of handling a max 3 ships launching drones at it.

Only when it gets close and wants to use phasers offensively will it need to switch to ADD-mode, and they will normally last for a full turn of 3 drone attacks, so I don't see much problem for the Feds with this rule even in its harsest form.