Dogfighting - Supporting Flights

[Hash]

I pretty much understand how dogfighting works but my understanding of how supporting flights worked seemed to differ from a couple of players at my last tourney.

My question is: How do additional fighters support in a dogfight; consider the following situation with Nials and Falkosi fighters.

The Minbari player wins initiative and elects to go first moving to engage the falkosi, locking up one flight...the other two chose not to move.

The Minbari then chooses to initiate dogfight - now he has a single Nial flight so has a +3 dogfight

Does the Brakiri player have:

A) +0 to dogfight, representing the base dogfight score of the single flight that the Nials are in base contact with.

OR

B) +2 to dogfight, representing the base (0) plus a +1 per flight in contact with the attacked Brakiri flight.

Also, assuming a draw and all flights survive, the Brakiri player may also initiate a dogfight back...is he compelled to roll a die to resolve the dogfight from his side, or could he choose not to press the attack? (His fighter would still of course be pinned.) - If he did press the attack would the "target" flight now change (to be the nials) so only supporting craft in contact with the Nials add to the dogfight score, i.e.

....

Sitting here very confused after my mass of Falkosi failed to support each other despite being clumped together in an organic mass..., I've posted in rulesmasters for an official answer but please feel free to discuss here.

 

[Alexb83]

For my impression of the rules, (since I was the one who flew in and killed all the Falkosi) -

All the Falkosi have moved into a mass, the Nials moved one each and engaged the outside fighters around the perimeter. These fighters are now engaged in dogfight and cannot leave it - those in the middle (unengaged) are free to move out at their next opportunity and support their dogfighting brethren, assuming they can make base contact with the enemy fighter in the dogfight.

The problem was that the Nials were placed in such a way that they were only ever in BtB contact with 1 Falkosi each, not two (which would have made a major dogfight).

I think it's covered in Revised Rules page 10 - (although the wording is odd in the way it talks about selecting auxiliary flights multiple times per turn). If you move to support a drawn dogfight, then you can force the enemy to dogfight you twice or more (one for each of your flights) without your supporting flights bonus. Or once, with all your flights contributing?

In your situation above I think it resolves thus: assuming the Minbari had initiative (which they did) the first dogfight is +3 vs +0 because your two spare flights have already moved.
If it draws, the other two flights engage, and you either get +2, or you get 3 fights at +0. Or a fight at +0 and a fight at +1.

 

[Hash]

Alex - EVERYONE killed my Falkosi

I'm happy with either interpretation, and it does seem like your understanding is correct as everyone else I played it that way - well you learn something every day I guess

 

[Ripple]

Couple of comments...

edit/ bah...your option A is correct as supporting a dogfight you must be in contact with the enemy flight. Long winded explination of possiblilites below...

We really need to distinct terms for fighters interacting this way. Supporting and escorting maybe. Escorting being the one where fighter A would jump ahead and do the dogfight for you. We die for the one in this case.

In terms of contributing to an existing dogfight and not talking about the special escorting rules then no flights are moved out of sequence, if the Nial is only touching one enemy base he only fights one enemy base. There is no support.

If the Nial is in contact with three enemy flights and the Nial is the attacker the Falkosi player has several choices. He may defend with the attacked flight only, support with one flight or support with two flights. Depending on his choice during his bound he will have different options. For this example lets say he supports with one and gets a draw.

In the Falkosi players turn he is forced to dogfight again with the flight targeted last turn. page 11 of SFoS middle column top, 'the two flights must dogfight once more.' The flight that supported in the previous dogfight has two options, it may support this dogfight again or it may dogfight another flight (not shown in the above example) it is in contact with but did not support against. The third flight in the above scenario would then have the option of supporting the first flight of Falkosi, dogfighting another unseen flight or possibly conduct its own dogfight against the original Nial.

The last is questionable and relies on the fact that the supporting rules you the term 'may support' instead of 'must support'. Since dogfights are resolved when you nominate your aux craft to attack, it is possible as written for your target to choose not to support and have multiple stands in contact with a single fighter base. This would lead to him in his bound being able to declare multiple dogfights against your flight. I would tend to say that this is not the intent of the rule and that a single flight should only be able to be in one dogfight per bound, wiht all others being able to support or not. But that is something for the game designer to rule on.

Ripple

 

[Alexb83]

Ripple, the end statement seems to be in contradiction to Advanced Rules - in there it states that a flight can be forced to dogfight multiple times in one turn.

In the situation I had with Hash, I specifically went for 1 on 1s, and he'd already moved - in the next turn he moved his unengaged fighters to support the dogfight which was drawn - but we simply counted them as supporting flights, whereas he had the option to use them to resolve individual dogfights.

As I said, the rules are worded strangely in terms of 'selecting flights multiple times per turn'.

We had one where I had a supporting flight on a ship, it was attacked by one flight whilst two other flights attacked the ship. Currently I think the rules allow the following: it dogfights its attacker. If it wins, it then has 1 chance to attack the flights attacking its supported ship.

 

[Iain McGhee]

I'd have thought if the fighter on escort was caught up in a dogfight then it couldn't be used for support that turn even if it won. I agree with Ripple's comments on the rest.

 

[Alexb83]

It does need clarification on what's 'supporting in a dogfight'. In revised rules, p. 19 - you can support (I would say 'escort') one auxiliary craft with a maximum of one more - it just means when an enemy flight attacks your escorted flight, they enter an immediate dogfight with the escorts (a maximum of once per turn).

But this has to be nominated explicitly when the flights are moved in the first place (the same way you would note that a flight was escorting a ship).

 

[Target]

This is kinda the reason our group just shoot at enemy fighters now with your fighters with dogfight score modifying the dodge. Saves a lot of confusion and is simpler.