Captured Ships in Campaign Games

[Anbar]

Captured 2 ships this campaign turn which raised quite a few questions:

1) If you capture a ship that is crippled and skeleton crew, using stand down and prepare to be bparded, you cannot use that ship for anything this game AND you must keep one of your ships within 10 inches the whole game time? (yes/no)

2) TO have captured that ship you need to ahve SHIPS whose total current damage points are MORE THAN the STARTING damage of the ship being targeted.

So: two skirmish ships target a Raid ship both declare Stand down and prepare to be boarded (they are in a squadron of 2).

The total points of the 2 skirmish ships is (taking into account damage) 27 and the targeted raid ships started with 22 points of damage.

Both skirmish ships can attempt SDAPTBB ont he RIAD ship, meaning that the raid ship ahs to 'defend' twice, once against each ship.

(correct?)

3) At the end of the battle, being in posession of 2 enemy ships, what ahppens to those ships? DO they transform into ships from my fleet roster, or do i get whatever the actual ships were (be they narn, centauri or whatever)?

4) The 2 ships, being badly damaged, need reapirs, this costs RR points and XP as usual?

5) I need to completly re-crew the ship, regardless of (any) enemy crew left onboard (i dont think there were any tbh, but it could come up possibly?)

 

[AdrianH]

1: Yes, you must keep (at least) one of your ships within 10" of the surrendered ship.

2: I believe so. The first ship tried to declare SDAPTBB, failed the opposed CQ check, so effectively has no special action. Another ship can therefore try. (I once tried it three times against the same target - the third one got lucky. :twisted

3: The captured ships disappear. You can not use the ships and you do not get their equivalents from your fleet list.

4: See 3.

5: If there are no enemy crew aboard then you can't declare SDAPTBB because there is nobody left to surrender! The ship is running adrift and counted as destroyed for VP purposes. What you can do is put a troop aboard, either by "Launch Breaching Pods And Shuttles" or with a real breaching pod, and capture it without resistance. You still don't get to keep the ship, though. (The exception is Raiders in a Campaign of Terror; the specific rules for Campaign of Terror do allow Raiders to keep what they board if they win the scenario, in which case the Raider player must indeed pay RR points to repair and recrew the ship.)

 

[katadder]

if I remember rightly you can actually get resource points for captured ships.
but i may be wrong as been quite some time since our campaign in B5

 

[Mean Mutton]

if I remember rightly you can actually get resource points for captured ships.
but i may be wrong as been quite some time since our campaign in B5

Raiders in a normal campaign get RR points for a captured ship. Everyone else in a normal campaign only get the bonus VPs and XP for capturing (I think they're double).

Raiders in a Campaign of Terror get to add the ships to their own roster.

 

[Anbar]

Thanks Chaps!

 

[AdrianH]

if I remember rightly you can actually get resource points for captured ships.
but i may be wrong as been quite some time since our campaign in B5

Raiders in a normal campaign get RR points for a captured ship. Everyone else in a normal campaign only get the bonus VPs and XP for capturing (I think they're double).

The pak'ma'ra also get to scavenge RR points for captured ships.

Raiders in a Campaign of Terror get to add the ships to their own roster.

If they boarded the enemy ship, yes. The original question mentioned "Stand Down And Prepare To Be Boarded", which does not actually involve boarding the enemy ship and so I would not think it invokes the "Boarding Ships" section of the Campaign of Terror rules.

 

[Greg Smith]

Personally, I would think Stand Down and Prepare to be Boarded did allow capture. The ship surrenders, so I would think it would be boarded after the battle.

 

[Anbar]

I think we are going to play it with ships that are captured get captured and given to the opposition that captures them.

seems a little bit daft not to be able to do anything with ships you ahve taken the effort to actually capture.

 

[Burger]

Well from a fluff point of view. Would a bunch of Drazi really be able to repair, recrew and use a Sharlin in the next battle? Especially since all the controls and computer are no doubt in Minbari, and require hacking to bypass the security measures. Even the other way around, if the Minbari captured a Drazi ship, they would still require a long time to translate, decode and understand how it works sufficiently to be able to use it in battle.

Using captured ships sounds cool but is not really believable.

 

[AdrianH]

Some fleets are allowed to use the same ships as their opponents. Civil war is the obvious case. A fleet which is allowed to use allied ships, fighting against its "ally", is another, e.g. Psi Corps vs. Earth. Or a composite fleet fighting one of its individual members - a Drazi might not be able to figure out the controls of a Sharlin, but if he's fighting on behalf of the Army of Light then he can call on the assistance of some friendly Minbari. However, there's still the matter of battle damage, both inflicted by your own weapons and by the crew as sabotage before they surrender.

What you could do in this case is buy the same ship as if new. As far as the rules are concerned, you did buy the ship new. As far as the campaign story is concerned, it's the captured ship with everything repaired and good as new. Just give your new ship the same name as the captured one. It doesn't do anything for game play but it does allow you to rub in your victory. :twisted:

 

[Burger]

There's still the matter of encrypted command codes etc. Any Tom Dick or Harry can't just walk onto a ship and use it, even if it is the same race.

Although you could always try "peekaboo"...

 

[Mean Mutton]

I think we are going to play it with ships that are captured get captured and given to the opposition that captures them.

seems a little bit daft not to be able to do anything with ships you ahve taken the effort to actually capture.

We had tried this once. It really unbalanced things for the Gaim player (me). The raw mass of breeching pods that I typically use to win individual fights totally turned the tide of the campaign for me.

If you're going to do it for the "fun" factor, I'd highly recommend that you have to spend some RRs to reconfigure the ship. Maybe half the cost to buy new.

 

[Da Boss]

Or just grant the player some RR points for capturing the ships and sending it home to be examined and tech reverse engineered.

You could even allow a free refit roll on the ship that captured it to represent this technology gain as I imagine that campaign turns represent reasonable periods of time?

8)

 

[AdrianH]

A ship which captures an enemy gets double XP. You can restrict the use of the bonus XP to giving the ship one refit roll, rather than a choice of however many refit and other duties rolls can be bought with the extra XP, if you like.

One problem for rewarding a ship which captures an enemy by boarding is, which ship gets the reward if two or more ships send troops to board the same enemy? This happened to me in a campaign once. The answer on that occasion was that the rules only give double XP to a ship which forces an enemy to surrender; no mention is made of XP for boarding an enemy, so neither of the boarding ships got anything.

Perhaps, when one of your ships is spending XP on a refit, it is allowed to roll on the other player's refit table. If you get a result which you can't use, tough - you attempted to incorporate captured Minbari technology onto a Drazi Warbird and it didn't work very well.

 

[Anbar]

Or just grant the player some RR points for capturing the ships and sending it home to be examined and tech reverse engineered.

You could even allow a free refit roll on the ship that captured it to represent this technology gain as I imagine that campaign turns represent reasonable periods of time?

8)

Actually I think RR is a good idea, cheers

 

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

Some fleets are allowed to use the same ships as their opponents. Civil war is the obvious case. A fleet which is allowed to use allied ships, fighting against its "ally", is another, e.g. Psi Corps vs. Earth. Or a composite fleet fighting one of its individual members...

Aren't you usually limited to not taking allies from an opposing fleet in the same campaign though, same with the Other Duties role 'Assistance Rendered'?

 

[AdrianH]

I can't find such a restriction in the fleet rules for the ISA or any League fleets, only in the "Assistance Rendered" Other Duty. Psi Corps and Earth don't even have "Assistance Rendered".

Besides, it's just a house rule for a bit of fun which should not mess up the game balance. If the other player objects to you "capturing" his ships this way, it's not fun any more so don't do it.