A question on guardian arrays

[Everyman]

While my last question about Black Omega recovery on fleet carriers was described as fluff vs. rules and the consensus was to favor the text of the rule rather than the spirit it seems, let me post the exact opposite on this one where the rules clearly allow it based on the text but it is completely absurd if you think about it.

On page 31 of the rule book it states, "Each supporting flight adds +1 to the ship's Interceptors trait..."

On page 71 of the fleet lists book it reads, "The Escort ship may lend any all of its Interceptor dice to any friendly ship within 8" and in line of sight."

Note that it does not state its starting Interceptor rating, so within the text of the rule it appears that you could support a Maximus with 4 fighters and lend up to 6 dice to friendlies. How those fighters are doing such with range 2 weapons is quite the trick though.

 

[Greg Smith]

You are right it is absurd.

There was a similar ruling for escorts, when someone suggested an escort could lend its AF to anopther escort, which could then lend double the AF dice to a third ship.

This is definitely a case of go with the spirit rather than the letter of the rules.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

I don't like the current escort rules in general anyway. You can use your AF trait to fire (sorry, !fire) upon fighters up to 2" away. If you have a friendly ship 8" away and then !fire upon fighters between 6" and 10" away. For some strange reason though, you just don't seem to be able to hit those damn fighters which are cunningly hiding in plain sight only 4" away...

Personally I would have just said that Escort extend the range of AF. Maybe not even as far out as 8" either.

 

[No. 1 Bear]

I thought it was a bit wierd. And anyway i don't feel that AF works that well. A notolar for 3 turns by me was ganked by 6 fighters. not one died for that whole time.

 

[Harry Lonsdale]

It doesn't make sense in a logical/"realism" sense, but it works well as a game mechanic.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

That depends very much on what you want from the game mechanic. On the whole though, the two main goals are to give an accurate representation of the universe being modeled, and to be simple to use.

The more "realistic" the mechanic, the more intuitive it becomes to use, and the more effect you can get out of using tactics without having to attack the mechanics as a mathematical problem. The flipside is that the more you throw realism out of the window, the more you turn the game into MathHammer.
Meanwhile, you can't afford to make the game too complicated either. The trouble is, the current Escort mechanic is more complicated than just extending the range of AF. This makes the current Escort mechanic a double failure.

 

[Centauri_Admiral]

The guardian array is specific to the centauri, it allows any ship with the escort trait, to lend any or all of its interceptor dice to a friendly ship within 8 inches and LOS. Only the maximus has the interceptor trait, so it can only lend its dice, supporting flights is a bonus to its starting dice not a permanent increase, when the supporting flight dies that die is gone. I'd say it is absurd, and it isn't correct, and I'm a centauri player.

That sounds to me like another case of rules bending, something I'd slap a person with a wet fish for, dirty dirty dirty rules bending.

 

[Locutus9956]

I thought it was a bit wierd. And anyway i don't feel that AF works that well. A notolar for 3 turns by me was ganked by 6 fighters. not one died for that whole time.

To be quite frank though those fighters were incredibly lucky. At hull 5 1 in every 3 shots should hit aurora starfuries and over 3 turns you looking at 12 dice of antifighter fire so on average should lose 4 flights. If the NoloTar has any sense it will do 'intensify defensive fire' as well to get DOUBLE the antifighter dice.

I was otherwise engaged at the time so didnt actually see the game in question but just to clarify: You werent rolling dodges were you? Because AF ignores dodge, stealth etc, and triggers BEFORE fighters fire. Auroras are good but 6 of them should frankly be dogmeat tackling even a not very good escort like a nolotar on their own (also I suspect Andy may not have known about the defensive fire special action).

Long story short either you guys were doing something wrong or you were very VERY lucky (knowing your dice rolls though mate, I suspect the latter...)

 

[MongooseMatt]

I don't like the current escort rules in general anyway. You can use your AF trait to fire (sorry, !fire) upon fighters up to 2" away. If you have a friendly ship 8" away and then !fire upon fighters between 6" and 10" away. For some strange reason though, you just don't seem to be able to hit those damn fighters which are cunningly hiding in plain sight only 4" away...

Think of it this way - the fighters between the ships, en route to their target, are small, fast moving and very difficult to track accurately. However, those surrounding another friendly vessel have slowed down and are making attack runs, making them far easier to predict where they will be when your shots start splashing around them. . .

 

[Locutus9956]

Not fond of that explanation in all honesty Matt, logically fighters between ships are going to be moving less evasively and more predictably than when their zipping around a target.

I personally think the escort rule makes more sense if you think of it as the escort being able to use the escorted ships sensor data to target its anti fighter weapons (basically the AF guns themselves dont have a 2" range but fighters can only be accurately tracked by targeting sensors at that range, escort just means the ship has fancy link up systems that let them use another ships sensor data with their AF guns)

Makes much more sense to me that way