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« Cannon « | Table of Contents | » Cargo Bay » |
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The Cannon is a direct fire weapon and must have facing and line of sight to come to bear on the target. The Missile Bay is indirect so it just needs any external facing to let the missile out (see page 106). The Cannon configured to Fusion mode needs facing and line of sight to a target hex and then deals indirect damage to everything in range and line of sight of the explosion it generates. Although technically a Science-based module, the Teleporter can also deliver ordinance or boots on the deck to an enemy ship. Its use is covered in page 142.
Even though their use is described in their respective module descriptions, Missiles and Teleporters both use the hit allocation rules outlined here.
A ship's Cannon applies a hit in a column or row going into the target ship based on the Guns power of the attack. a Cannon in Multi configuration delivers damage at a Guns power of 1 and does not get a Used marker when used.
Draw a line from the center of the hex your ship is in to the center of your target's hex. This is the line of sight.
If the line passes through (not just along, but through) a hex that contains an asteroid or larger object, line of sight is blocked. Starbases, ships, fighters, missiles, spacewalkers do not block line of sight. Asteroids, moons, planets and stars block line of sight.
The edge of the hex where the line of sight passes through your ship counter and your target's counter determines facing.
A ship laid out in modules has four sides but the hex map has six hex facings. This is resolved by counting the front and rear of a square module as one facing each and each side (port and starboard) as two hex facings.
Thus, if the 1 position is the front of your ship and the 4 position the aft, 2 and 3 would be starboard making 5 and 6 port, giving a total of 360 degrees.
If a ship module is the first thing that would be hit along a row or column from a given direction, it has line of sight in that direction regardless of its orientation.
Note how the Cannon placed at the forward-most point of a Human scout (page 272) isn't blocked to port, starboard or forward, so it has facing in every direction but aft, giving it 300 degrees of facing. The module is pointing forward but still has facing to port and starboard because it is not blocked in those directions.
The line of sight also determines which side of a target ship is struck by an incoming hit. If the line passes through the forward or aft hex side of the target's hex, the shot strikes the forward or aft side of the ship. If it passes through either of the port side hexes, it hits the port side of the ship, and likewise for the starboard side.
When a line of sight hits a corner of a ship, the firing character chooses which side to hit.
If a ship is in the same hex as another ship, all weapons on all sides are considered to have facing on the enemy and the firing ship chooses which facing it will strike with each shot.
After a shot hits and the side is determined, you use hit allocation to see where on that side, the ship is struck. In the case of missiles, rams and indirect fire weapons, you use the center mark as indicated on the ship layout as your center line.
When firing a ship's Cannon or a Teleporter, you can choose your center line by picking a spot and calling that the “7”.
To roll hit allocation, roll 2 dice and total them. If it is a 7, you hit the center line (or the place you declared as your target).
If the hit allocation roll is higher the shot goes further starboard, if hit from the forward or aft angles, or aftward if hit from either side.
A lower hit allocation is the opposite (portward if shot from the front or rear, or forward if the hit is coming from either side).
Each scan you have on a ship may be expended to reroll one of the hit allocation dice. The firing character may spend Luck on the hit allocation roll.
Each ship's weapon has a specific effect as detailed the module description. Cannons are the workhorse of ship's weapons and are detailed here.
Cannons can be in on of three modes: Standard, Long, or Multi; and deal penetrating damage that is mitigated by shields.
(A ship with a Fusion Node Cargo Bay item may also configure Cannons in Fusion mode.)
A Standard Cannon will have a shot with power equal to the Guns of the firing ship. A Long Range configuration makes the Cannon count range has half (round up) but also its Guns power (round down). A Cannon configured in Multi mode has effective Guns power at only 1 but firing does not add Used markers.
After hit allocation finds the strike point of the hit, you'll need to determine how severe the hit is by rolling an amount of dice equal to the Guns power for the firing ship plus the Shields power of the target ship. Cannon fire is retarded by shields so you'll take away a number of the highest dice equal to the Shields level of the target ship. Thus a ship with Guns power 5 firing on a target with Shields power 4 will throw 9 dice but remove the highest 4. This is how shields retard the damage. A roll of (6,6,6,4,4,3,2,2,1) becomes (4,3,2,2,1) after you remove the shield dice. Reduce the Shields level of the target ship by 1 each time it is struck.
After you've thrown the dice and removed the highest dice for shields, apply the remaining dice one at a time to the modules in order, starting in the module of impact and stretching directly away.
Our example above puts the 4 in the module of impact and the 3 in the next module and so on. The amount on the die indicates the number of points of hull damage the target ship sustains.
Any die result that is 4, 5 or 6 breaks the module, causes two dice of collateral damage to anybody in it, and raises the ship's OOC level by one.
Any die result that is 1, 2 or 3 causes only one die of collateral damage to the occupants and does not break the module or cause OOC.
See Personal Damage (page 34) for the effect of damage on characters.
Dice that miss the silhouette of the ship (whether by passing through the ship or missing entirely) deal only 1 point each of hull damage but generate OOC if they are 4, 5 or 6. These dice still whiz by close enough to do a little hull damage, reduce the shields and possibly rock the ship, but don't break anything important or harm any of the crew.
A module that has a Broken marker on it will not function until it is repaired. It requires an Engineering Skill check action of 11 to remove a Broken marker from a module.
A module that has two Broken markers on it is “slagged”. This means each square in the module is considered slagged.
Any action (including repairs!) taken in a slagged square is at a penalty of +3 difficulty. A module can have at most two Broken markers on it.
Movement in a slagged square costs 2 points of movement. (Exception: You may always move 1 square even if it is a “pop” in a slagged square; see page 30).
The total hull damage for a ship adds up over the course of a session. You can track it on the ship record sheet (page 264). Common practice is to use polyhedral dice to count it near the ship control card. When hull damage reaches the minimum threshold to require a hull check, and each time it is hit thereafter, the ship needs to make a hull check or be destroyed.
The difficulty of the hull check is based on the amount of damage the ship has sustained as indicated on the following chart, and is reduced by ship size.
Damage | 1 | 3 | 6 | 10 | 15 | 21 | 28 | 36 | 45 | 55 | 66 | 78 | 91 | 105 | 120 | 136 | 153 | 171 | 190 | 210 |
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Hull Check | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
To make a hull check anybody rolls two dice. A Hull Stabilizer Cargo Bay item allows you to reroll one of the dice. Any character on board the ship may spend Luck to reroll a hull check die. You can keep rerolling as long as your Luck holds out. If the ship runs out of Luck and hasn't rolled high enough (or if it can't roll high enough) the ship explodes and all aboard suffer 10 dice of damage and become spacewalkers.
A ship that explodes deals damage like a Cannon blast at a Guns strength equal to its Size to each object in its hex, and less damage to things further out. Treat hit allocation and Shields as normal. Subtract one from the explosion power for each hex of distance away. Thus, a Size 5 ship would deal 5 dice in its hex, 4 dice one hex out, 3 dice two hexes out and so on. Anything docked to an exploding ship suffers the effect twice.
Threat these blasts as standard Cannon hits on ships (reducible by shields). Spacewalkers suffer the full amount as damage dice.
For microships, you do not add a Damage level but you do make one survival check of 7 plus the number of Damage levels they already have.
Missiles are detailed in the module description on page 136.
See Tractor Dock on page 120 for details on docked combat.
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