ACTA: Stand Down and Prepare to be Boarded!

[Gargoyle117]

I just had an itch today to read over this special rule again. It seems kind of odd to me that the ship or ships performing the action must have greater total starting damage pools than the defender.

As an ISA player, this means that my ships will be forcing basically no one to surrender. The extreme example is a Whitestar Gunship (War, 24 Damage) trying to force a Centauri Amar (Skirmish, 25 Damage). It would not be possible for the Gunship to ever force the Amar to stand down, even though it is a War level ship vs a Skirmish level ship.

I understand that the ISA do not carry many troops, but those are not a factor in SDaptbB.

Is this the correct interpretation of the rules? Are there any updates I have missed?

Thanks

 

[Alexb83]

I thought it referred to the damage pool remaining on each ship at the start of the turn when SdaptbB! is attempted?

 

[Burger]

No, it is the starting damage.
Its kind of a sucky rule.

 

[Gargoyle117]

Thanks Burger,

Hopefully this rule gets a little bit of attention in V2. It would be nice, as the ISA, to be able to pull this off once and a while with something other than an Armageddon level choice.

 

[Burger]

You could always take a T'Loth or an EA Explorer as allies

 

[Iain McGhee]

I've always thought it might be better to go with priority levels rather than damage points e.g. 2 White Stars could order a crippled Omega to stand down. Never tried this in practice mind, so there could be just as many problems with that method as there is with the current one.