Over the past week or two I have asked several questions over on the Wizkids site, and I thought that I would share the official responses. All answeres are provided by mcortez, the Rocketment rules guy.

I hope this is useful to at least some people out there...



1. If two friendly ships with full crew compliments are docked, can crew transfer between them? The rules say that crew can transfer to any ship that has room. But both ships are full when one starts to transfer, so there is no open space for a crew to go to. This becomes a 'null' question if you can transfer multiple crew simultaneously (eg, swap a pair of crew), but if crew transfer has to be done one at a time, then crew will tend to get 'stuck'.

2. More of a clarification, really... What's the maximum damage that can occur from a single wave of boarding? Is it limited by the larger number of dice rolled, or the smaller number of dice rolled? Say a full cruiser takes on a fighter with a pilot and no pods. The cruiser rolls 5 dice, the fighter 2. Do the extra dice from the cruiser have no effect (other than giving them more chances to roll higher than the fighter), or are the cruisers extra dice basically 'free hits', because even a 1 is larger than 0. The rules imply that the max damage would be limited by the lower number of dice, but I've seen it explained the other way elsewhere...

3. If an enemy ship is docked with an opposing home base, and a Space Station is brought in with at least one shield pod to replace the base, is the enemy ship still docked with the station? On one hand, the rules say that everything that was docked with the home base is docked with a station that replaces it, but under shield pods it says that a ship cannot dock with an opposing ship if it has at least one shield pod.

4a. If a fighter is docked with an opposing ship (or any ship, really), and it is successfully attacked, can it use Evasive Maneuvers? There doesn't seem to be anything in the rules to prohibit this, but then you'd think that 'Evasive Maneuvers' would be a bit hard to pull off while physically attached to something...

4b. If a fighter is involved in a boarding action (ie, at least one wave has occurred, but both parties are still alive), and the fighter is shot at, can if use Evasive Maneuvers? Evasive Maneuvers is 'optional', but is it 'automatic'. The boarding rules state that you cannot take any other actions while boarding is going on. But is Evasive Maneuvers an 'action'?

5. Can a home base (not a Space Station) initiate a boarding action? Under boarding, it says that to initiate a boarding wave, you need to spend 1 AP. But home bases have no AP. Thus, if someone tries to board them and they survive the initial wave, they can't 'counter board' on their next turn.

6. If a ship collides with a Space Station with shields, what is the end result? If the ship survives taking two damage, will the ship be docked, because after colliding with a large object you automatically dock with it, or do the space station's shields protect it from being docked with?

If the ship does dock, while it's painful (2 damage), it means that a shielded space station is not immune from boarding (and especially blitz boarding).

7. Yet another question. This one deals with Asteroid Home Base boarding dice. For each separate boarding action (not separate waves, but different boarding between different attacking ships), does the home base always start off with 4 boarding dice, or does damage from other actions carry over?

Here's an example to illustrate my question: two Griffon's have docked with an asteroid base. The first initiates a boarding action. At this point, the base has 4 dice (assume no crew), the fighter one has 3 (no crew again). After the dice are rolled,fighter one takes 2 damage, and the base takes 1. Now fighter two initiates a boarding action. Does the base start off with 4 dice, or only 3?

The reason I ask this is according to the rules on page 15, bullet one states that an asteroid base gets 4 boarding dice, and bullet two states that each point of damage a base takes permanently removes a boarding die from _that boarding maneuver_.

So, if a removed die affects all boarding actions from then on, it shouldn't be that hard for a squadron of fighters to take out a home base. But if it's the other way, the bases are more rugged, but it can become confusing to keep track of how many boarding dice each separate ship is facing....

Thanks for the info :)

A quick question in response to the answer to question #6. If a ship is in "contact" with a base on the beginning of the next turn is it considered to be a whole new collision, or is it just "contact without docking" ergo, no damage.

Because it started the turn not moving, so it's not really ending a move action. So I would think, no damage.

Okay, that definitely removes the Ultra Scary Boarder aspect of fighter squads. :) And makes it real fun to keep track of boarding actions involving a whole squad.

---Dave