Federation combined Drone Racks question

[MarkDawg]

Okay so I want to know if I am doing this correct I hope you guys can please help.

Not to be a Jerk to older players but please don't talk about SFB or FC it gets confusing I want to focus on this system and how it works so I can play correctly.


Lets say I have a Fed ship and it has a drone (AD) of 2 and Klingon C8 fires its full spread of drones at me.

As the Fed player I look at his attack dice take the 2 highest and then roll my anti drone ability I stop all incoming drones on those 2 chosen attack dice on a roll of a 2+?

If I roll a 1 then I loose the (AD) for that drone for the rest of the game? Or just that turn? :?:

 

[archon96]

the 2 is only youre ammo, if he fires four drones you roll to counter four drones. even if you roll a 1 you still hit the drone but loose 1 point of ammo. The massive drones attacks are meant to drain youre add trait. My question for combined racks is if you run out of ammo do you get to still fire regular drones.

 

[The Big D]

Okay so I want to know if I am doing this correct I hope you guys can please help.

Not to be a Jerk to older players but please don't talk about SFB or FC it gets confusing I want to focus on this system and how it works so I can play correctly.


Lets say I have a Fed ship and it has a drone (AD) of 2 and Klingon C8 fires its full spread of drones at me.

As the Fed player I look at his attack dice take the 2 highest and then roll my anti drone ability I stop all incoming drones on those 2 chosen attack dice on a roll of a 2+?

If I roll a 1 then I loose the (AD) for that drone for the rest of the game? Or just that turn? :?:

Let see if I've got it right myself.

The C8 fires it's 4 drones.
If it is within 18" then they all hit automatically.
If it is more than 18" then they hit on a 5+.

Assuming all 4 hit then you will roll 4 dice for your (anti) drones as there were 4 drones incoming.
Assuming only 3 hit then you only roll 3 dice for (anti) drones and so on.

Regardless of what you roll all the drones will be stopped.
If any ammount of the (anti) drone dice roll a 1 then the number of (anti) drones on the ship is reduced by one for the rest of the battle.
Multiple rolls of one against the single salvo of drones are irrelavent, but the bigger the incoming wave of drones the more likely you are a 1 will show up on the dice you roll and the (anti) drones rating will be reduced by one.

The rating of (anti) drones on the ship doesn't tell you how many drones it can shoot down. It will always stop all of them. It tells you how many times you can roll some 1s when shooting down drone salvos before your (anti) drones stop working.

The Fed drone racks are a bit of an odd one. Where an anti drone will have its rating reduced by 1 if any 1s are rolled the fed drone rack effectively loses one of its AD for the rest of the battle.
It will still be just as effective as an anti drone if it hasn't been reduced to 0 AD but it can fire less drones if used offensively!

Thats how we've been playing it and I hope we got it right!

Hope that helps.

Geoff

 

[archon96]

my understanding from an earlier post was every 1 rolled reduced add, there is a chance of running out of ammo on a single volley.

 

[The Big D]

my understanding from an earlier post was every 1 rolled reduced add, there is a chance of running out of ammo on a single volley.

Hmmm.

Looking closely at the book.

Might be my interpretation.

"If any die rolls a 1, ..... the system will run out of ammunition, reducing the Anti-Drone score by 1."

I read this as multiple rolls of 1 only result in the loss of a single AD.

If it worked that each one rolled drops and AD then I would have written it as
"For each die that rolls a 1, ..... the system will run out of ammunition, reducing the Anti-Drone score by 1."

The more I read it the more my brain wilts! :?

Not sure. Checking FAQ.

From FAQ http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/sffaq.pdf
"If I have a ship with lots of Attack Dice of Drones (such as a Kirov Battlecruiser), what happens when I roll a 1 for the Anti-Drone trait when I use the Combined Drone Rack rule?
For the rest of the game, you lose 1 Attack Dice of Drones whenever you roll one or more 1’s on the Anti-Drone trait. So, if someone throws a bunch of Drones at your Kirov, and you roll 1, 4, 4, 6, you will halt four Attack Dice of Drones as normal (remember, a 1 stops a Drone just as well as anything else!) but you will be reduced to Anti-Drone 3 immediately and will only have 3 Attack Dice of Drones in the next turn. If, in the next turn, you roll 1, 1, 1, you will go down to Anti-Drone 2 and have just 2 Attack Dice of Drones"

Nope seems I'm right first time .

Wow - thought process in action!!

Geoff

 

[Rambler]

I am pretty sure big D has it right. When using the Drone Rack as a AntiDrone trait it stops AOL drones in the salvo weither it is 1 or 100. Just like a AntiDrone you roll a d6 for each drone in the salvo. If you roll any number of 1s your Drone Score will go down by 1 for the rest of the game.

 

[Captain Jonah]

This does keep coming up due to the poor wording.

If you go back a long way you can find the official ruling of Matt (whose rulings are unofficial but as close as you can get to gospel)

All Drones fired by a single ship against a single target count as one attack. Roll one dice for every drone in that attack. If one or more dice come up 1 your ADD ammo rating is reduced by one. As long as your ADD rating was higher than zero it fires and all drones in that attack are destroyed.

With the Fed combined Drone racks at the end of a Turn in which they were fired as ADDs if the ships ADD rating has been reduced then next turn the Ships Drone rating is reduced to reflect the ammo lost in the last turn.

Example. A C8 fires 4 Drones at you, you use your Combined Drone Racks in ADD mode. All four drones are automatically destroyed. If your four rolls were 2,3,4,5 then no ammo is lost and you still have ADD2. If no one else fires Drones at you then next turn you will have a Drone rating of 2.

If your rolls were 1,2,4,6 then you lose one ADD rating and your ADD is now ADD1. If no one else fires Drones at you then next turn your Drone rating is Drone 1.

Rolling 1,1,3,4 you still lose 1 ADD rating since it is one or more ones lowers your ADD by 1. That is the same for Kzinti and Klink ADDs.

So the C* fires 4 drones at you and you roll 1,3,4,6. All four drones are destroyed and you now have ADD1. Then later on you have fired your Phasers and a D5 fires two drones at you, you roll 2,5 and destroy both retaining ADD1. Then another two drones are fired at you and you roll 1,4. Both are destroyed and your ADD is reduced to ADD 0.
Next turn your Drone rating is Drone 0 and so you have no Drones or ADDs.
Does this help.

 

[McKinstry]

Nicely done Captain. The examples are perfect.

 

[MarkDawg]

Okay but if a C8 fires its drones at me 4 attack die and I have a combined rack of 2 I would only get to roll 2 dice not 4 correct?

Or when I engage anti drone I get to stop all 4 and I roll one for each of the C8's attack die and if I roll 4 ones my AD are only reduced by one?

 

[McKinstry]

Okay but if a C8 fires its drones at me 4 attack die and I have a combined rack of 2 I would only get to roll 2 dice not 4 correct?

Or when I engage anti drone I get to stop all 4 and I roll one for each of the C8's attack die and if I roll 4 ones my AD are only reduced by one?

The second example is correct. A 100 drone launch (from a C88) would have you rolling 100 D6 and even if you rolled 20 ones, your ADD/combined rack would only go down by 1 and you would stop all 100 drones.

 

[Nretnimoc]

Not to confused the situation further, but another thing to bear in mind with Federation Drone racks are they are a weapon system!

IE, if you are on power drain and you say...are firing only Phasers. It means your Drones can not be used for Anti-Drone as well.

Something to keep in mind!

Captain Jonah has it 100% correct, as I have read, discovered, and been told.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Some time ago we tried to pin all this down. Look for a post the rules according to Matt.

It took some effort, a lot of posts and some luck but we managed to pin Matt down and get answers.

We need to find a few burly blokes close to Mongoose towers so we can send them in to get, ahem, quicker answers to questions from Matt :twisted: :wink:

 

[MarkDawg]

TBH I see a lot of language in this book that was written in much more long drawn out sentences as not to sound like other games.