B5ACTA Energy Mines vs Stealth

[H]

Blasting figters with an emine certainly seems like "firing upon" them.

well, as stated, the e-mine does not fire upon anything apart from a bit of space, the fighters just have the misfortune to be in the blast. if you don't target the fighter, you are not firing upon them, nice eh

You may not be targeting the fighters with an e-mine. But you certainly are firing upon them. As stated in Powers & Principalities - hitting a vessel with the blast of an e-mine "will count as a successful attack." (page 6).

lifes too short...

 

[Democratus]

True enough.

I'm just finding a hard time seeing firing e-mines into your own fighters as being in the spirit (much less the letter) of the rules. They go out of their way in the book to explain how a navy never fires upon a dogfight because of the fear of harming their own pilots. It isn't like the admirals suddenly think that the fighters are immune to mines.

Since the fluff and the rules seem to prohibit such activity - it would take something very convincing for me to go to a group of players and say that I'm going to just start nuking dogfights that I know I'm going to loose.

Seeing that there are 2 races in our campaign that use e-mines (EA and Narn) this is a non-trivial change to the nature of combat. I'm just trying to hash it out with you fine people here on the forums so I can have a firm grasp of how to approach my friends.

 

[bayruun]

I've hit my own ships with emines several times, as I figure I can take damage far more readily than my opponents. It's probably going to become a regular occurrence. However, I can see not being able to hit your own fighters with mines, from a "spirit-of-the-game" point of view.

 

[Mean Mutton]

True enough.

I'm just finding a hard time seeing firing e-mines into your own fighters as being in the spirit (much less the letter) of the rules. They go out of their way in the book to explain how a navy never fires upon a dogfight because of the fear of harming their own pilots. It isn't like the admirals suddenly think that the fighters are immune to mines.

Since the fluff and the rules seem to prohibit such activity - it would take something very convincing for me to go to a group of players and say that I'm going to just start nuking dogfights that I know I'm going to loose.

Seeing that there are 2 races in our campaign that use e-mines (EA and Narn) this is a non-trivial change to the nature of combat. I'm just trying to hash it out with you fine people here on the forums so I can have a firm grasp of how to approach my friends.

What is amusing is that in our group, the only race anyone really plays that uses e-mines is the Gaim and it seems kind of ridiculous for them to consider their fighters as anything but expendable.

Either way, here are the rules as written:

Energy Mines
The use of Energy Mines by other races has proved very effective
against stealth-using enemies, particularly the Minbari, as the
blast effectively highlights the ship’s silhouette against empty
space.
If a ship with the Stealth trait is caught in the blast of an Energy
Mine, this will count as a successful attack, giving other vessels
the normal +1 bonus to overcome Stealth.

That looks pretty clear to me that this only counts as a successful attack for the purpose of reducing Stealth. Also, the rule regarding attacking your own ships doesn't use the word "attack". It says you can't "target" your own ships. Targeting and attacking are different in the game.

 

[Da Boss]

I would agree with LBH that it has always been the way it has been played in games that I have been a part of - friendly and tournament alike including official ones.

However this does not make it something you have to play - also considering that some decisions regrding rules at tournaments have been debatable or indeed actually wrong.

I would say the rule is arguable either way ...........so play what your group is comfortable

 

[Democratus]

Also, the rule regarding attacking your own ships doesn't use the word "attack". It says you can't "target" your own ships. Targeting and attacking are different in the game.

Except the rules for fighters use different wording. They say you can not "fire upon" fighters in a dogfight. Nothing at all about targeting.

Da Boss has it right. We are all free to play however we like, so long as our local group agrees with it. My group is (perhaps sadly) made of recovering Warhammer 40K players, so they worship at the altar of RAW. Any time I approach a rule interpretation I have to be armed with quotes and citations. The up side is that I have a group dedicated enough for campaign play. So, on the balance, I'm happy.

 

[Burger]

The problem with not being allowed to fire e-mines on friendly fighters, is that you could be prevented from firing them at targets that you really want to fire at.

Eg. your opponent puts a fighter on each side of a ship. You move in to dogfight with 2 of your own fighters, and win both. But now you can't fire the e-mine, because your fighters would get caught.

In some fighter-heavy engagements it could be quite a pain! Especially with Gaim... they tend to cluster their fighters all around enemy ships, which would make the e-mines unusable.

In some situations such as these, rules interpretations are necessary. Those 40K friends of yours can't produce any rule that says "fire upon" includes e-mine fire, so RAW is a stalemate in this situation.

 

[Democratus]

The problem with not being allowed to fire e-mines on friendly fighters, is that you could be prevented from firing them at targets that you really want to fire at.

Eg. your opponent puts a fighter on each side of a ship. You move in to dogfight with 2 of your own fighters, and win both. But now you can't fire the e-mine, because your fighters would get caught.

The obvious answer there is that you shouldn't have put your own fighters next to a ship you wanted to e-mine.

Seriously though...tactical decisions like that (to intercept enemy fighers or to emine a ship) make the game better by giving it more depth. The more tactical errors you can ignore by bypassing the friendly fire rules (or others) reduces the rewards for players who put a great deal of forthought into their play.

In some fighter-heavy engagements it could be quite a pain! Especially with Gaim... they tend to cluster their fighters all around enemy ships, which would make the e-mines unusable.

The answer to this is to attack some ships with emines and others with fighters. Or - better yet- put all your fighters on one side of an enemy ship and emine it from the other side. This has the added benefit of avoiding counter fire from multiple arcs.

On the defense (with emine fleets) it is to spread your formations so that you can drop emines around a friendly ship without hitting other ships. You can be very precise with these weapons and 2-3 mines should be able to scrape off most fighters surrounding a ship without hitting it. Or you could take multiple escorts. Or just use dogfighting interceptors as most races would do.

Again, this is an example of tough decisions and tactical planning - something that improves the game through difficulty. It's a much better earned victory to manuver your fleet into a diamond formation and use saturation fire to counter enemy fighers than to simply drop templates all over everything without any real tactical dilemma.

Of course, everyone has a different flavor of game they prefer. So long as we're smiling at the end of the game it is a win.

 

[Greg Smith]

The other answer is to attack a ship with suicide fighters, so they aren't there to get emined when it comes to firing.